Perfidy
Who needs a steady hand?
When you’re not sure you can hit a target in single-fire mode:
» Read the rest of this entry «
Not merely wrong
Heh.
This is taxonomy I can get behind
From that compendium of wonderful things, boing boing, we find this:
My current favorite metal band, Amon Amarth is not on this flowchart, but I imagine it would be under “Foriegn Sounding” under a new bubble for “Invented Languages” or “Elvish.” Clicky on the pic for the flowchart in its full, uh, flowcharty glory.
I am frankly terrified
This, more than anything I have ever experienced, makes me want to want to dig a hole and pull it in after me.
Watch the first minute or so, if you can, and then jump to 3:54.
Sheesh. I need more guns.
[wik] Ashton Kutcher as the face of the new order of the ages. Along with the obvious horror, a secondary horror is the staggering historical ignorance this little piece of unintentionally Orwellian theater demonstrates in its art design.
[alsø wik] Ashton Kutcher, I have always felt, represented something evil. I just wasn’t sure until today what it was.
[alsø alsø wik] I for one would like to be among the first to welcome our Stepford Hollywood Elite Overlords. Non servium.
[Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?] My wife just suggested Non Servium would make a nice tshirt. So as not to implicate myself as a Satanist, we’d need to add a picture of Obama. Maybe done up Che-style, but I think the socialist realist depiction from that video would perhaps be most apropos.
[See the løveli lakes...] And really, Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër? Sweden seems almost Republican now.
Heretical shitburgers
2008 was a shitburger sandwich with a side of fries in many respects. Financially, it was a wash, and my work in the bowels of Customs and Border Protection was quite simply the worst work environment I have ever experienced. And I worked at a place where someone tried to kill me. Long hours of boredom and sociopathic coworkers were bookended by two hour commutes.
In a word, it completely fucking sucked.
But before our three remaining readers start dialing the suicide hotlines on my behalf, not all was crap on rye. For instance, there was the birth of my daughter Claire, which alone more than outweighed working for one of the tentacles of the Department of Homeland Security.
And all that free time at work gave me a lot of time to read. And my interminable commutes gave me a lot of time to ponder.
I wasn’t really able to convert much of that to prolific blogging thanks to time constraints and the prejudices of the internet filters at DHS facilities. Which I hope to rectify, somewhat, in the near future.
Some of the fruits of my year of suffering are these:
I no longer believe that the entire community of astronomers, astrophysicists and cosmologists have the least fucking clue what is going on in the universe past where the air gets kinda thin.
I no longer have unlimited faith that democracy is the best system of government.
I think Velikovsky may have been right. Or at least on to something.
I drifted into these things sideways, really. While I am naturally a bit of a contrarian, (Okay, a really big contrarian. Shut up.) I have not made a habit of seeking out outre heretical thoughts just to make a spectacle of myself.
Since I was a kid, I have always read with amazement and delight all the breathless stories, describing all the remarkable, implausible theories modern science has come up with. Black holes, quasars, quantum strangeness. I ate it up and went back for seconds. And if it wasn’t for beer, I might have actually been a physicist myself.
But in the nineties, I started getting a little dubious. Once, a friend of mine and I were attempting to explain the concept of Ockham’s razor to a particularly dim and more than slightly drunk sorority chick. Why we thought that it was important that we should do so, and whether we thought it would do any good is beside the point. But in trying to find an example, we settled on gravity. We explained that mass attracts other bits of mass. You’re sitting on a particularly large bit of mass. So it pulls you down. See? Simple. Can be explained by a few lines of equations, utterly predictable and nice.
But why is this explanation better than any others, she asked. Well, shit. Uh, imagine that there isn’t any mystical force of gravity. Imagine that the only thing that is holding you in that chair is gravity trolls. Their job is to hold stuff down. There’s trillions of them, and they, with infinite care, go around holding shit down. That’s there job.
But I don’t see them! Oh, we forgot to mention, they’re invisible gravity trolls. You can’t see or feel them. But trust us, they’re holding you down right now.
Oh. But what about airplanes? she asked. Well, while the invisible gravity trolls are diligent, the curvy shapes of wings confuse them. They forget to hold them down. Helicopters work the same way. And, before you ask, hydrogen, helium and hot air make them drunk.
Why is there no gravity in space? Well, what do you think, invisible gravity trolls can breathe vacuum? How do satellites stay in orbit, then? Well, there’s a long line of IGT’s holding hands, and the last one is grabbing the satellite.
And so on. We spun out a massively baroque and ridiculous IGT theory of gravity. And then, we said that given the two theories that both explain the curious phenomenon of stuff not floating away, it’s probably best to take the simpler one.
Anywho. Later on in that decade, we started hearing a lot about dark matter. And then more about dark energy. The universe, it seems, wasn’t behaving right. The invisible gravity trolls were acting up – and a central bit was that galaxies were spinning as if there were much more mass than could be seen. So, invisible mass was proposed. Other problems arose, and dark energy explained these discrepancies.
It got to the point where cosmologists now insist, with their faces hanging out, that 96% of the universe is undetectable by pretty much any imaginable means. I started thinking, that smells like fudge, as in fudge factor. I started suspecting IGT’s. But, not being a physicist, and not having anything better to put in in its place, I let it go.
Then I ran across Plasma Cosmology. The basic thought is that electromagnetism – a force which is 41 orders of magnitude stronger than gravity (that’s 41 zeros) might just have something to do with how the universe fits together. For the same reason that a child’s magnet can counteract the force of the inconceivably larger earth below it when it picks up a paper clip, electric and magnetic fields in space could have an effect on how stars, nebulas, and whatnot all behave.
They say, and I have come to believe, that substituting a gravity plus electromagnetic universe explains things better than a gravity only universe, and without resort to dark matter and dark energy – which had already seemed to me to be fudge factors more concerned with preserving theory than explaining what we actually see.
And that led in to a lot more stuff, which I plan on writing more about later.
But first, to get you started, read this introduction to plasma cosmology. It explains the basic idea in a readable way, and makes a good starting point.
Scary Brother
My youngest child seems to be somewhat concerned about her brother’s intentions.
If this won’t get you to the range, nothing will
By way of Boing Boing, there is this:
Seeing as there were bear sighted on my street over the Christmas holiday, I might need to get me one of them.
Ham yourself a merry little Christmas
Chew on this, y’all. Tonight’s menu:
Ham steak with pear, ginger and maple glaze
Potatoes Anna
Maple-whipped winter squash
Pois au Provence (a pea and herb concoction of my own devise with lavender, fennel, thyme and sea salt)
American-style pasta salad with the mayo and boiled eggs
Ham steak with pear, ginger and maple glaze (serves 2-4)
1 1-pound cured ham steak. A good one. Niman Ranch at the very minimum. None of that generic water-filled crap.
1 very hot skillet
1 tablespoon oil
1/4 cup pear and ginger marmelade
1 tablespoon butter
2 tablespoons maple liqueur
But wait, John. Not everyone has pear and ginger marmelade and weird Canadian hooch lying about…. Not to worry! Lacking the marmelade and liqueur, substitute:
1 smallish pear, peeled, cored and finely diced
1/4 tsp grated fresh ginger or 1/4 tsp dried ginger
a trace each nutmeg, allspice, clove
1 tablespoon American whiskey (Bourbon or Tennessee)
1 tablespoon got-damned real maple syrup, grade B or A ONLY.
Film the very hot skillet with the oil. Place steak therein. Let get very brown and crusty in spots on both sides over medium to medium-high heat, about 7 minutes per side.
Remove steak from pan and set aside to cool. Add butter and once melted add either the marmelade and liqueur or the subsitutes. Scrape browned bits off bottom of pan as you go. If using the substitues, add a splash of water and let the pear cook for a few minutes until quite soft. If using the real deal, just heat through and pour over your steak. Serve and swoon.
Maple-whipped winter squash
1 butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and diced into 1-inch dice
2 tablespoons butter
salt
pepper
1/8 tsp cinnamon
a few gratings (or 1 dash) nutmeg
2 tablespoons maple syrup, grade B or A
Steam the squash until tender. Mash and force through a food mill or fine-meshed strainer.
Stir in other ingredients, and charge $10 for a number 8 ice cream scoopful of the stuff. Seriously, this will knock the pants right off you.
Merry Christmas
To everyone, a merry Christmas.
It is just Christmas now, the little Bucketheads are all asleep. I’ve just laid out all the presents under the tree, and nothing is stirring, except for me and Willoughby, my Aunt Susie’s puppy. We’re going to hang out a bit, enjoy the quiet and see if we can bag us some reindeer.
It’s strange, now, to see the frustrated anticipation, excitement and impatience on my son’s face and remember how I felt. I know I won’t be getting the Lego galaxy cruiser, or the Millenium Falcon I once wanted. But watching my children open their gifts will be better still.
My only Christmas regret is this: my mom has decorated her bathroom in a presidential theme. We tease her mercilessly for this, because even though she knows it’s silly, she makes her decisions about what should or should not gain a place in the presidential bathroom with great seriosness.
I saw the picture at the top of this post yesterday, and didn’t buy it.
I wish all of our remaining readers, and my fellow ministers the best of Christmases, joy, friendship, family and a happy new year.
Oh, and some change and hope.
Ronpaul SMASH!!
Too, too funny. This election, I’m feeling like the GM.
Watching the World Explode
I’ve decided that rather than worry about the current economic crisis, I’m going to enjoy it. Not because I enjoy seeing people suffer, but because I have great respect for the concept of chaos, and undoings of any sort intrigue me. I love giant snowstorms, for example, not because I like snow, but because nothing thrills me more than watching Ma Nature incapacitate Cleveland as if to serve a bitch-slap reminder that she is still in charge, godammit.
So, yes, chaos, and I keep looking up at CNN to watch the Dow drop lower and lower and lower. As I type this, it’s thinking about dropping below 8,000. Fascinating. This makes me wonder. If the market, say, drops to zero, what happens? Will all the bespectacled brokers on the market floor snap entirely and turn on each other, feasting on each other’s flesh and triumphantly waving human femurs in the air as the big electronic screens rain sparks on the bedlam below? That might be fun.
When we hit the zero mark, does that mean we just bag money entirely and go back to being agrarian? I’ve given this substantial thought, and I’m considering that the best investment any smart American could make right now is in the Sheep Industry. You know, for barter. I have a rather substantial backyard that I believe could accommodate a head of sheep, assuming that a “head” constitutes a number less than 50. Mapgirl has already agreed to help with shearing and wool processing. I think I’d also plant stuff so we could eat.
Ministers, I have your backs. At the culmination of the decline of the American infrastructure, you shall all be welcome here in Cleveland Heights. I’ll feed you, keep you warm, and make sure the WiFi stays churning. You bring the booze and guns.
Evil is as evil does
I meant to share this one earlier. Yes, I’m pimping my strip here but this one is pretty perfidious in its nature.
Read the entire strip from infancy to present day right here. The Adventures of the S-Team…bringing teh funnay every weekday for like two and a half years ‘nshit!
True Dreaming with GeekLethal: Night of 4Oct08
The only detail I remember from that night’s dream was watching CNN. Tells you what kind of hair-raising shenanigans I was up to in my unconscious that Saturday night, when friggin’ CNN was the most memorable piece of it.
The dream basically ended with me reading CNN’s ticker. The last item I saw said something along the lines of, “Fans shocked by Howard Stern’s apparent suicide”. I had just enough time to be surprised and puzzled by this news before I woke up and realized it hadn’t really happened.
The next day, Sunday, a friend was over. As we were enjoying potent coffee and putting a dent in my son’s absurdly oversized birthday cake from the day before, we were talking about the usual topics- military policy, foreign policy, non-fiction books we were reading, politics, and chicks- and CNN was on in the room. I happened to be looking at the tv when I saw the words “Howard Stern…” start to creep across the screen on the ticker, and I about fell out of my chair.
Holy shit!, I thought, did he really kill himself? Did Howard really kill himself?! And I frakking dreamed about it just a few hours before?! I’m a psychic! A precog! And how do I parlay this into a payday?
And then the rest of it came over “…weds his girlfriend in NYC”.
Ah.
Well, suicide after a fashion, I suppose.
I gave myself half-credit and a little more cake.
Help! I don’t get it!
So, the economy is in the pits, and if I listen to the media, I will be lead to believe that at any second, the earth will split open and suck us all into a vortex of poverty and anarchy.
Here’s the thing …
My kneejerk reaction to the massive bailout is “Hell no! Screw those companies! Where’s the help for the middle class?”
However …
I realize that, as is the case of most kneejerk reactions, my feelings only scratch the surface of a much larger issue. I’m 32. My husband and I do not possess large 401Ks or IRAs whose continued existence depends on the performance of the markets. No one’s taking away my retirement fund at the moment. My parents, however, are nervous, as they’re sitting on quite a few pension/retirement bucks that they’re worried could disintegrate in the wake of a spectacular economic implosion.
I’m aware that my parents’ retirement could very well be contingent upon the success of a bailout. Yet, on the other hand, I despise that our economic livelihood is largely debt-driven. Some debt is inevitable, yes, but is it smart practice to provide a solution that simply enables business as usual?
Part of me wants to watch Wall Street burn and let our economy rebuild itself by forcing us all to become more fiscally responsible. Everyone gets screwed in the short-term, sure, but at the end of what will certainly be a long recession no matter how Congress decides to vote, would we find ourselves among a nation of people who only buy what they can afford without the help of extraneous credit and without the need for a subprime market? I’m not necessarily saying we should all start paying cash for huge purchases like homes and cars, but what about those who charge plasma TVs when their old tube set could easily suffice?
Talk to me, smart people! Educate me, people-who-understand-economics-better-than-I-do! What’s the answer? Is there a right answer?
Be all vice-presidential and shit
Among her many sterling qualities, Republican veep candidate has a charmingly uh, let’s say, eccentric way with the baby names.
If you want to get in on that action, Politics Tsk Tsk Tsk has helpfully provided this handy dandy Sarah Palin baby name generator.
If Sarah had been charged with naming me instead of my dear own mom, I would have this rockin’ monicker:
Knife Pile Buckethead
And if I asked her to name my kids, they’d be Strangle Thicket, Quarter Pipe, and Sack Panther. (In descending order of age.)
My next kid would be Meat Notgay, which really makes a statement, I think. That kid wouldn’t grow up to use 9mm like GeekLethal.
My world right now
A minute ago, they were all on my chest, jumping and screaming.
This post courtesy of iBlogger, a nifty iphone app from the makers of Ecto, the mac blogging application.
This post courtesy of iBlogger, a nifty iphone app from the makers of Ecto, the mac blogging application.
Should I also bring a pair of sharpened #2 pencils?
Upon receiving the following informative missive from the Cuyahoga Board of Elections, I was initially excited by its cover. “Instructions for New Optical Scan Voting System Inside,” it promised, and I thought, “The BOE is going to SCAN MY RETINAS to figure out who I’m voting for.” Then I considered the fact that any such equipment was probably manufactured by Diebold, and that meant that my eyeballs could be hacked by anyone with an iPod, some jewelry wire, and an old dog-eared copy of Electric Company magazine, and I instantly felt dubious.
But no, alas, there will be no Sci-Fi-Channelesque machine that says “Access Granted” in a soothing feminine robot voice. Instead, we here in the rustbelt will be employing the skills we mastered in 1982 while taking the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. Evidence these instructions:
So, apparently, I am to fill in the circle? When I cast my vote for George Washington? Isn’t he that dude who hangs out on the stoop down the street and asks me for loosies every time I walk by on the way to the bodega? Huh. I didn’t even know he was running for office.
I Like This Album
Until you become a parent, you simply can’t imagine the compromises you make without a thought to accommodate the needs of your children. Quite apart from the poop factor (in which the pre-kid categories of “no poop” and “poop” are joined by new states of being like “just a little poop,” “no visible poop,” and “I don’t smell anything, let’s make dinner”), all parts of your life are subtly altered in ways you don’t even notice until something throws the changes into stark relief.
Take music, for example.
My kid turned one year old this week, which means it’s been a pretty cool year. He’s already musical, capable of banging a drum in time for up to five beats in a row or strumming my guitar with his little fist if I make a chord for him. That’s wonderful, but it also means that he cares what noise is on the stereo. Therefore, anything that isn’t kid-approved has for now mostly passed from my life.
The Boy’s favorite music is metal (Iron Maiden, Amon Amarth, Metallica), bossa nova, and bluegrass, which mean’s I’m an incredibly lucky person with an incredibly hip youngster. But his favorite favorite music is one specific lullaby album that he needs to hear every night at bedtime, and often at naptime too. Given that bedtime can ramify without warning from a fixed moment in time into an exhausting four-hour campaign of sorties, clever feints, temporary détentes, and diplomatic appeals to reason (lost, by the way, on the infant mind) which only through Herculean effort grinds toward a denouement in which our little angel drifts away to dreamland, sometimes that damn CD gets played straight through five or six times.
The upshot is, no matter how much NPR and jaded indie-rock I can cram during the daylight hours, the last twelve months of my musical life have been owned by “Dancing with Bears” and “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.”
Which is why the latest release from the New England-based Midriff label has been so welcome. The 2006 release by their flagship band, The Beatings, titled Holding On To Hand Grenades, was my favorite album of that year, and several other Midriff releases have come close to that very high standard. Since Midriff is essentially “the Beatings and their friends and collaborators,” the various projects, side projects, solo releases and guest appearances add up to something like a white, postcollege Wu Tang Clan. Protect ya neck, New England!
The latest Midriff release is called The End of the New Country, and is attributed to a duo calling themselves Get Help. Get Help is a collaboration between Beatings guitarist and vocalist Tony Skalicky and New York musician Mike Ingenthron, who began writing songs together as a break from writing ad jingles. If Midriff has a GZA, it seems to be Skalicky, who has a very clear idea of what he wants his music to sound like and sticks to the plan like a pro.
What this means on vinyl (or in bits or scattered photons) is that like many other Midriff releases, Get Help drenches well-written songs and strong melodies in layers of fuzzy guitar and feedback which gradually build and ebb between enormous climaxes and quiet moments, a sound that is definitely, undeniably, refreshingly adult – not at all for little kids, and not at all like jingles.
Ok. I will admit, even without a kid in the picture this kind of stuff is like catnip to me. I can’t deny it. Give me some reverb, some layers of distorted guitars, and a slightly downcast lyric and I’ll go for it like a sucker. But – and this is important – at the end of the day, the songs need to be good. Without a great song, pretty sounds are just pretty, and the bloom quickly comes off the rose. That’s the story of dozens, if not hundreds, of albums that have crossed my path in the last two decades, and you probably haven’t heard of any of them.
Luckily, at least half of the songs on The End of the New Country (due out October 14) are very good indeed, with Skalicky’s brittle baritone voice (which resembles a cross between Ian Thomas of Joy Division, British folk icon Richard Thompson, and Jimmy Buffett) and Ingenthron’s lighter voice cutting through the sumptuous bed of dissonance and soaring overtones that is one of the Midriff label’s trademark sounds. The musical DNA is Sonic Youth, Morphine and My Bloody Valentine, but Skalicky and Ingenthron manage to invoke the sounds of their influences without becoming a thin imitation of them. (Does the fact that all the comparisons I can draw with Get Help are a decade or more old say something about them, or about me?)
But I did say “half.” One weakness many musicians have in common is an attenuated ability to self-edit. Call me old fashioned, but it’s usually a mistake to assume that just because a CD can hold 74 minutes of music, it therefore should. That’s so wrong. An album takes as long as it takes — and that time is generally under twelve songs and 45 minutes. Ask the Ramones; given half an hour, six microphones, and four chords you can make an all-time classic.
In the case of The End of the New Country, the album opens and closes extremely well, but the sheer number of songs on the record (fifteen), and a tendency toward sedate tempos and plush guitars means that the middle sags somewhat and some gems get buried. “Traveler’s Shave Kit,” which opens the record, and “Growing Circles” which closes it, are good enough to amount to statements of purpose. However, apart from the excellent title song I find myself hard pressed to identify standout songs when playing the record straight through.
Take for example “The Town Fires,” which is the twelfth song on the album. It’s a quiet and understated song that in the context of the album fails to stand out. But when it emerges in a random playlist it turns out to be a very welcome, winsome, and lovely three minutes of music. I guess too much of a good thing amounts to too much of a good thing.
The End of the New Country is a jumbled and slightly messy project with stretches of real beauty, strong melodies and sumptuous production. But on the songs that aren’t standouts, the production is merely soothing rather than dramatic. This record is worth buying, ripping, and then making your own ten-song version out of the raw materials presented. Most importantly for me, this album does include at least ten very good songs that provide an alluring and mature break from lullabys and “The Itsy Bitsy Spider.”
Previously published on Blogcritics
What I Did On My Summer Vacation
Let’s just pretend it hasn’t been a year since I last posted.
So anyway, I’ve gone buck-nutty this summer making up salads, some of which are even delicious. Here are two.
Carrot and red cabbage slaw with toasted fennel
1 small head red cabbage, cut into eights and finely shredded
4-5 medium carrots, grated
1 tablespoon fennel seeds
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/2 cup white balsamic or white wine vinegar
1/2 tsp grated ginger
1 tablespoon honey
salt
black pepper
Heat a small skillet over medium heat. Place the fennel seeds in the skillet and toss over low heat until they darken slightly and you can smell them.
Remove immediately to a spice grinder and pulverize.
In a small bowl, combine the vinegar, oil, fennel, ginger, honey, salt and pepper. Whisk vigorously to combine and let stand for 10-15 minutes.
In a large bowl, pour the dressing over the carrots and cabbage and toss well. Refrigerate for several hours or overnight. This salad is DOPE, yo, and excellent with pork or steaky-type fish.
Variation 1 – carrot and fennel slaw with orange dressing
Grated carrots
Finely shaved fennel bulb
Dry-toasted fennel seeds
Orange juice
Vegetable oil
White balsamic vinegar or white wine vinegar
Golden raisins
salt
and maybe a splash of Grand Mariner or Cointreau
Criminals become annointed by God
Yesterday, Mrs. Buckethead and I went into town to register to vote. And, as is the case whenever we both leave the house, our passel of youngins came with us. My oldest, Sir John-my-cup-runneth-over-with-questions, wanted to know what was up.
John: What are we doing?
Me: Registering to vote.
John: Why are registering to vote?
Me: So we can vote.
John: Can I vote?
Me: No.
John: Why can’t I vote.
Me: Because I said so.
[wife hits me in arm]
Me: And because you’re not old enough.
John: So you and mommie will vote?
Me: Yes.
John: What is voting?
Me: A magical process whereby criminals become annointed by God.
[wife gives me evil eye.]
John: Dad, are you joking me?
Me: Strangely enough, no.
Happily, we got to the voter registration office before that conversation deteriorated any further. My response was off the cuff cynicism, which should surprise no one who knows me. But pondering it further as we drove to the courthouse (John: why are we going to the courthouse? Me: To pay mommie’s ticket. John: what’s a ticket? Me: A means by which the government extorts money from the innocent. John: So the government is going to pay us money? Me: Not in this lifetime.) it occurred to me that my earlier comment was exactly true, if in a larger sense uninformative.
Why do we feel that divine and inestimable principle, DEMOCRACY, is of such great value? If 50% + 1 of the population of eligible voters who have bothered to register to vote and make the additional effort to actually, you know, vote, agree on anything, then that thing is not merely agreed to. It gets more than that. That thing is divinely sanctioned, and it becomes heresy to argue the result. Even if it results in something like Hezbollah getting control of the Palestinian government. Or only slightly less bad, some egregious asshat like, say, any president over the last century or their opponents getting to be leader of the free world.
It has been said, most famously by Winston Churchill, that democracy is the worst system of government devised by man, except for all the others. We’re measuring our system of government on the bad scale, which can’t be a good thing. “Jesus this sucks, but at least we don’t live in a Islamic theocracy.”
“Jesus!” we might also say, ”this generic spam from the black striped can tastes like ass, but at least we’re not eating dog food.”
Shouldn’t we be thinking about inventing some fine French cuisine, or at least McDonalds?
I think that there is a fundamental disconnect between our notion of freedom and liberty, and the notion of democracy. Or more to the point, I don’t think we mean what we think we mean when we say these words. We conflate the idea of living in a democracy with living free, with liberty. The one must naturally lead to the other. But does being able to select, with a few of your buddies, the town second assistant dogcatcher make you free? Or the president?
I’ve commented on this blog, long ago, that I think one of the true wonders of life in America is that so few things are really political, and almost none that matter. We have removed so many things from the political sphere, and this is good. Where you live, whether you live; where you work or whether you work are not questions of politics. Did I support the right candidate? Oh, shit, the Democrats took power and now I won’t be able to get work cause the registered Democratic plumbers will get all the jobs. Oh, the humanity!
Or, oh shit, the Republicans are in charge, and it’s the reeducation camps for all the performance artists, gender studies professors and community organizers.
Hey, not a bad idea…
Anyway, that’s not how it works here, thank god. Nor does it work that way for most anything. Politics does not effect most of what we do, except at the edges. Which is not to say that the government doesn’t have a huge effect on our daily lives – but politics, partisanship, that polite and largely gunless civil war, does not. We should cherish this. And to extent we do, every time we decry “partisanship” and “the politics of personal destruction” and the like. We have a sense that that sort of thing is squalid, furtive, and somehow… dirty. And we feel that way for the very simple reason that it is. Politics is a zero sum game, and for you to win, I must lose.
So why do we feel that our quadrennial reality show makes us free? The federal and state bureaucracies are not accountable to our elected officials, let alone ourselves. Hell, governors and presidents can’t even fire people, the way any CEO can. The civil service is responsible for writing the tens of thousands of pages long federal register, that has only a passing resemblance to the laws passed by Congress, and is itself responsible for enforcing them, and can be fully as selective as it likes. Just ask Martha Stewart. If we stopped choosing, how would our lives change?
In this country, I can live where I want, work where I want, talk to whomever I choose, write what I want, marry any woman who will put up with my shit, with a level of freedom that compares favorably with the Soviet Union if not the America of a hundred years ago. I can be somebody! I can do what I want, so long as I don’t run afoul of any line from the five hundred pound federal register, in which case I have paramilitary law enforcement officers doing a no-knock entry on my house and shooting my dog.
They always shoot the dog.
If I build a treehouse and fail to file a environmental impact statement, or pay $500 for a building permit, or or hire a union electrician, or …
And god forbid that I smuggle nail clippers onto a plane, or joke about bombs in front of a TSA agent.
Voting for Obama or McCain will not improve my life. The only question is whether one of them might be able to make it worse, which is the only significant power remaining to the Presidency in the 21st Century.
Why do we think that voting makes us free?
I can fuse atoms at room temperature
I was listening to that new song that all the kids like, “Handlebars.” And I dig it. It’s groovy. Swell, even. But it also occurred to me that the one line,
I can split the atom of a molecule/of a molecule
That just doesn’t play for me. I could go into the chemistry and physics of it all, but that would be pedantic and rude.
So, how about we just fix it, mkay?
I can split an atom of uranium/of uranium
Or, my favorite,
I can fuse atoms at room temperature/at room temperature
That’s better, isn’t it?
[Wik] Another thing, when I first heard that song on the radio in the car I thought it was a parody. Mocking megalomania and whatnot. Saw the video later and was stunned by the disconnect between my perception of the tone of the song and the apparent intent of the artist.
O’zapft ist (fast!)
Two weeks to the traditional tapping of the keg and the start of the 175th Oktoberfest.
That’s THE Oktoberfest, not your local beer festival that lamely goes by the same name and serves swilly beer for a couple hours in the park while a band plays Kenny Loggins covers and most of the people around look like they’d rather be someplace else.
Bavaria, friends. Munich. Dirndls and lederhosen. Oktober-fucking-fest.
If you care to see how the world’s greatest party is shaping up, look here.
If you care to cry yourself to sleep tonight certain that you will never have that much fun, just remember to cut lengthwise down the vein, not perpendicular.
[Wik] Or, you can thank Jebus that the game Herzerljagd, advertised at the above link and which asks, “Can you see those sweet girls on your screen? Maybe you can win their hearts, but at first you have to shoot them”, doesn’t load right and is unplayable in IE.
The Gods Need Douchebags
At least, I sure hope they do.
Growing up I always enjoyed Scandinavian mythology. To be sure I read alot of Greek tales as well and I found them no less exciting, what with the crazy monsters and the brave heroes and the beastiality. But the Norse tales were, I dunno, edgier somehow. That world was battle, broadsword, and blood on the ice, a far cry from the Mediterranean climes, vineyards, and olive groves of the Greeks. I knew what deep snow and arctic chills were about; I don’t think I could have picked an olive branch out of a lineup. While the Norse tales were more challenging, due perhaps to their obscurity relative to the domination of Greco/Roman sources on subsequent publication, their telling always resonated with me in a way the Greek stuff never did. They were both fantastical, but the Norse tales will always seem more…real.
Which brings me to the Ragnarok, the final war of Gods and Men.
As best I understand the Norse cosmology, when men die they go to one of three places: Hel, a horrible place of shadow and icy mist reserved for that sorry lot who die in their sleep of old age, and from which none return; Volkvangr, Freya’s hall, for folks who died in violence but not neccessarily in glorious battle, not sure what becomes of these folks in the end; and of course Valhalla, Odin’s hall.
Valhalla was reserved for the bravest warriors who fell in battle. Odin’s servants, valkyrie, would choose the greatest of the slain (and indeed may have caused their deaths in the first place, by “fettering” or otherwise crippling the hero at the critical moment- there is seemingly some overlap between conceptions of Norse valkyrie and the Celtic Morrigan here), and wing them to Valhalla. There, the spirits of the Earth’s mightiest warriors fight by day and feast by night, training to serve under Odin’s command at the Ragnarok. And even though Fate has foretold the result and the ramifications of the final battle and the end of the universe, no party- Men, the dread Jotun (giants), or even the Gods themselves- can alter it.
So where does that leave me?
I don’t have a battle, even a metaphorical one, that would hope to qualify me for Valhalla. And I’m not going to be the guy who tries to get in, you know, by default. I’m not going to tell thousands of burly vikings that I should be included because, yeah, I didn’t fight an actual battle but I *DID* improve the database interface between IT, Advancement, and Admissions and got 5’s across the board at my last annual review because of it, which was kinda like a battle because Jean in IT is so prickly and it’s almost impossible to get a meeting with Janet in the Business Office to finalize the budget.
No sir.
My only hope is that Asgard’s army will need administrators. Maybe on some fateful day the valkyrie will come, desperately in need of a chubby douchebag administrator to help do some import and config work so Valhalla’s database can talk to Volkvangr’s, and thereby contribute to the final battle.
Because unless that’s the case, I’m probably going straight to Hel.
The morning’s email as a learning device
The email read:
Many of you may have used the derogatory term “dickhead” to refer to someone who may deservedly have earned such a title. Others of you may have earned the title for yourselves.
However, it should be noted that though they are seldom sighted, real “dickheads” do exist in the wild, as evidenced by this undercover shot taken at a pool in your neighborhood.
True Dreaming with GeekLethal: Night of 11Aug08
I was the first human explorer to set foot on Mars.
The dream began with me stepping onto the planet, so don’t ask me anything about the trip, the balance of the team, the mission objectives, or even the mode of conveyance- wasn’t there.
The surface had much more terrain excitement than is seen in actual imagery. My dream-Mars was all crushed stone, almost like a carpet of gravel with bits of bigger rock here and there. It looked like the remnants of a long-extinct glacier, or huge flood- possibly two sides of the same coin, I thought. I walked around a bit, quite satisified with my spacesuit, which was very lightweight and not at all uncomfortable; in fact, I may not have been wearing a helmet at all. In short order I found that the landing site was on a shelf, really a titanic mesa, and from the edge I looked down into a huge canyon. I could see the bottom- the ambient light was pretty good, and not nearly as red as prior missions would have you believe-and one edge, but the rest of it went off to obscurity.
That’s when I saw the hut.
Further down the mesa’s rim I saw a small structure, unmistakably an Earth-type dwelling space. I walked over, perhaps a half-mile (hard to gauge Earth distances on foreign planets, dontchaknow), and walked inside. I don’t remember there being a door. The hut enclosed a single space that mimicked my own bedroom, at least in size and the layout of the bed. Yes, the bed- there was a king-sized sleigh bed in the middle of this hut.
Then things got weird.
On the bed, just kind of hanging out, was my stepfather, who has been dead for over three years now. Or so we all thought. He explained that he had faked his death and moved to Mars to just kind of get away. You know, leave it all behind for awhile, and he wasn’t particularly excited to see me. I was trying to make sense of that when I realized there were two other people in the room. I think it was one of his brothers and his sister-in-law, neither of whom at this writing is either dead or pretending to be. They knew he had been faking, and had gone back and forth to Mars a couple times to visit.
The whole scene was making me a little uncomfortable, so I went back outside to the mesa’s edge. I looked again down into the canyon, and was thinking it would make a pretty good lake if someone filled it. After some moments of indecision, I figured I’d go back inside and try to get some more details. As I turned away from the canyon I saw movement farther down the rim. I could make out two, maybe more, figures slowly walking toward the hut opposite the place I had started, but at about the same distance. In short order I found them to be tourists from Earth, startled to see not just one but several people already there. They had paid a premium for the exclusivity of the destination, and were kinda pissed that it wasn’t quite so exclusive.
My stepfather, meanwhile, was getting kinda pissed that all of a sudden all these people had showed up uninvited at his place.
Awesomeness
Posted without further comment.
Bandwagon
I ran across this video the other day, and in the interest of furthering Dark Knight Hysteria, I present it here for your edification and amusement, and to make you extremely depressed.
Why?
Because it’s a fake. It’s not a real movie, and it never will be. Still, though…wow!
[Wik] from Buckethead: if you go here, you can read the entire screenplay for the nonexistent movie this is a trailer for.
Prepwork for the inevitable apocalypse
[Wik] Apparently, Zombies suck at keeping their websites up. I’ve adjusted the image so that it again displays, but no guarantees into the future
A taste:
luvs2cuddle
Tagline: “I enjoy long, slow, lumbering walks on the beach”
Interests: Lumbering, staring vacantly, cuddling
Dislikes: Sniper fire, barricaded windows, fast-moving automobiles
Note well the disclaimer, however:
Disclaimer: ZombieHarmony is for zombies only. We advise signing up for ZombieHarmony only if you lack a pulse, have limited motor skills, or feel an intense desire to feast on human beings. We are not responsible for lost or ingested loved ones. If you go on a date with a zombie, we cannot be held liable for contributing to the apocalypse.
Please date responsibly: bring a baseball bat or crowbar.
The courts have spoken
Court rules lesbians are not just from Lesbos
Tue Jul 22, 2008 12:21pm EDT ATHENS (Reuters) – A Greek court has dismissed a request by residents of the Aegean island of Lesbos to ban the use of the word lesbian to describe gay women, according to a court ruling made public on Tuesday.
Three residents of Lesbos, the birthplace of the ancient Greek poetess Sappho whose love poems inspired the term lesbian, brought a case last month arguing the use of the term in reference to gay women insulted their identity.
…(continues)
Related:
… Straight Lesbians Want Their Identity Back
… Also, a quote for which I cannot, for the life of me, find a link on the web, Cliff Clavin of Cheers referring to someone as being “…from the island of Lesbos”, which I remember thinking, at the time many years ago, was both hilarious and totally made up.