Personal Metaprogrammatic Language

re-mix as "fine art"

2009-11-24T23:43:00.010-05:00

In the olden days when I posted more frequently to this blog I uploaded a number of paintings and pen drawings.

The technique for such works is always this:

1) I use the web to locate images from which elements could be taken and cobbled together to form a work with a theme unrelated to its constituent parts.

2) I re-scale and distort these images in photoshop to fit my re-mix work and then lay a piece of paper over my laptop screen.

3) I trace the picture directly over the screen using the light from it as a sort of backlight.

4) I ink or paint the pencil tracing as appropriate.

That process may be my own, but I am not alone in making art from disparate elements taken out of their original context.

I've recently seen works by another artist that does the same sort of thing, but for sculpture. Kris Kuksi uses bones, plastic models, found objects, and dollhouses to make sculptures that have a re-mix approach similar to mine.

Think about it, won't you?

All Portland Has to Offer

2009-09-14T17:56:00.003-04:00

I took this on a trip to Portland, OR last spring. It was in the window display of the city historical society. I had a great time in that city and encountered very little in the way of assisted suicide or Indian casinos. But I did eat some fish.

Puerto Escondido Pt. 1

2009-06-21T17:34:00.004-04:00

There is only one flight a day from Mexico city to Puerto Escondido's tiny airport and that flight takes off at 1330. Coming from Boston as I was, it was impossible to make that flight the same day I left. I was forced to sleep in Houston airport.

When I got there I asked the guys at the Sbarro pizza place where there were some seats without those fucking armrests that make sleeping on them impossible. They directed me to E-1 as the best option. The seats all had armrests though and I was forced to sleep on the floor. I snatched a garbage bag off a cleaning lady's cart as a prophylactic between me and the world's dirtiest floor, put in earplugs against the din of CNN, wrapped a bandana around my eyes against the bright lights, and went to sleep. I was woken a few hours later by an insistent nudging against my foot. It was a man with a vacuum cleaner who told me that they were shampooing the rugs in E-1 and that I had to move. I picked up my garbage bag and moved to E-2.

I met Harlow and Ashley when I arrived in Mexico city. We met up at the gate departing to PE and while we waited to board, Ashley writhed in the throes of hangover. She had gotten into some 151 the night before, which is bad enough, but she had compounded her folly by going for a drunken jog around the apartment building. A good sport though, she didn't fully succumb and pass out until we all got settled into the apartment in Puerto Escondido.

Arrived in PE in the afternoon and decided that the first thing to do was to go to the beach a block from our apt. and go for a swim. We were not prepared for how big the surf was or how strong the current. In combination, the effect was to break a swimmer in half and then sweep the pieces out to sea.

I've been surfing before, but that was pre-shoulder surgery and on much smaller waves. The ocean literally laughed me off my board when I paddled out into Puerto Escondido surf. That was fine with me though, I then devoted myself whole heartedly to reading in a hammock on the porch and drinking Tecate, activities at which I am highly skilled.

more to follow...

Guinea Pig Zero

2009-03-25T14:18:00.008-04:00

I entered into the prospect of being mildly electrocuted for a medical study with a spirit of journalistic curiousity and a desire to be paid. I'm not alone in the latter. There are people who make 80+ grand a year by participating in medical studies. Some of those studies, like mine, are a short and easy couple sessions that end with getting a check for a few hundred. Others, and these pay $5,000 or so, involve staying in a hospital for weeks at a time while you manifest the side-effects of a new anti-depressant. I don't think I'm willing to trade what remains of my sanity for a paltry 5K, but the proposition is interesting.

But where to find such a proposition? In the back of any city newspaper are advertisements that say "safe sex, get paid!" and "smoke weed, get paid!" Those are scams (I looked into it). There is, however, a site called Center Watch where you can look up studies in your state. I found one studying "extinction of adrenal response" and with a name like that, how could I resist?

It consisted of two sessions of looking at a computer screen with electrodes on my fingertips that delivered a tingling sort of shock when certain pictures were displayed. On the palm of my other hand were two sensors measuring my galvanic skin resistance (sweatiness/stress). Certain pictures became associated with a shock and others with a not-shock. The goal of the study, or so I have surmised, is to see if a person's natural stress response can be overcome through being conscious of when they should and shouldn't be stressed.

The people who took blood and administered the test were all nice and I probably spent a total of an hour and a half at the place. I even got to customize the level of shock my fingertips got. Easy money.

Lazily Efficient Eating

2009-03-22T23:19:00.005-04:00

Eating is second only to sleeping as a waste of human life force. Too much time and effort is spent producing, buying, preparing, and eating food. That isn't to say I don't sometimes get great pleasure from food, I just don't want to be a slave to my stomach 3 times a day when I have to go on a hunting/gathering mission to stay comfortable and alive.

I'm interested in alternatives to a "meal". In The Man Who Ate Everything the author described in one chapter a meatloaf-like substance that could be made which contained all the nutrients and calories a person needs. You make a loaf of the "sludge" out of oats, soy, etc, and eat a slice or two for every meal. It tastes like nothing special, but it's cheap as hell and can be consumed quickly and efficiently. The recipe was given in the book, but I've yet to look it up again and try it out.

Then there are the food and water combinations like this one. Maybe put it in a giant hamster water bottle and hang it on the side of the house or office.

Is it apparent that I'm hungry as I write this, but too lazy to do anything about it?

I Wore an Orange Safety Vest

2009-03-13T16:42:00.009-04:00

Initially, the temp agency said they had no jobs for me (or anyone else for that matter). When I explained to the temp manager that I was willing to schlep boxes or wash dishes or anything at all though, he told me there was a one day gig on the 12th that I could have. I would be "Parking Manager" at a biotech sales conference hosted at the Harvard medical center.

Parking managers, as I discovered, arrive before the sun-up, don those lovely vests, stand on the street in front of the medical center, and help the sales reps from the biotech companies unload the displays, samples, and other crap (pens, plush toys, etc) from their cars. I then handed them a ticket that allowed them to park for free in the lot around the corner. It was the job of my colleague, Dave from the Bronx, to actually cart the salesmen's paraphernalia up to the display areas on the second and third floors.

Dave from the Bronx preferred singing Dean Martin loudly to doing his job. In fact, he had temped the same biotech conference last year as "parking manager" but the temp agency decided to make me the manager this time (an unknown quantity in terms of work ethic or ability) because he was so remarkably unreliable.

Many of the sales reps didn't trust Dave or I, despite our collared shirts and orange vests, to handle their sensitive equipment. Some of them actually seemed to resent our offers of assistance. It reminded me very much of being a parking valet one summer during college. No one really wants to surrender their stuff, much less their car, to a stranger even if they really need the help.

I saw one small white woman, who had refused our help, balance a pile of heavy boxes and poster tubes on one of those little roller suitcases. She made it 13 feet before it all hit the deck. Needless to say, we vested professionals were scolded loudly about the irregularities in the pavement as we helped her pile it all back on her crummy little suitcase.

Still, it was 8 hours work and that means a little money coming in, instead of steadily leaking out. When I got home I celebrated by buying groceries.

Imperialist Grooming

2009-01-18T00:42:00.008-05:00

Not being in the Navy anymore means I don't have to shave and like all recently released males, I have grown a scruffy goatee. My goal was merely to look unemployable, but someone pointed out that the facial hair makes me look a bit like a certain portrait of Sir Richard Francis Burton. It's wishful thinking on my part, but maybe there is a resemblance.

To complete the look I should really have an African warrior throw a spear through my cheeks to have those famous scars.

Freedom and Democracy are no longer my concern

2008-11-07T00:14:00.006-05:00

Today was my last day driving on post and getting things signed, photocopied, etc. That and Obama being elected makes this one of the best weeks ever. Also I avoided having to switch to the hideous new uniforms the navy has in store for us.

I'm so psyched about Obama that I may not have to move to another country, but I might anyway. I wouldn't trust our nation's crumbling public school system to do right by my (hypothetical) kids.

Huzzah!!

2008-11-05T07:14:00.002-05:00

Obama will be our next president. I didn't dare hope early on in the process, but as election day drew nearer, the hope would actually keep me awake at night.

"oh wow, he'll probably get a health care system started, and since he's actually a good man, he can pay for it by taxing the people that bush jr. has been helping to pig out for the last eight years... decriminalization of cannabis... end the war on rational thought and science... get the christians out of positions of power... pull out of IQ and AF so fewer of my peers and colleagues die horribly... "

Then I would have to turn the light on and read some 50s pulp science fiction to reset my brain to be able to sleep.

I know that all the positive energy that I, and many others expended in the form of sleepless hoping had an effect on the outcome of the election. It's an event of karmic justice and those things are powered by positive thinking.

Yes We Can.

Pulp Fiction, The Jack Williamson Way

2008-10-23T17:02:00.014-04:00

Read any one of Jack Williamson's stories and you will say "No wonder he was relegated to cheap pulp magazines! This stuff is about as sappy and 'atomic' as it comes." And you'd be right, sort of.

The typical Williamson story breaks down like this: A man is going about his business in the regular world. Something happens (something extraordinary) and he is transported to another world. The female who will become his love interest is present at the extraordinary happening, or appears soon afterward. A conflict is introduced via a bad guy who threatens them directly or simply prevents their return to the normal world. Action ensues and the protagonist wins out in the end, usually through the MacGuyveresque application of some scientific principle. All ends well, with the hero and his girl destined to live happily ever etc.

"The Green Star", for example, reads like a cross between Star Trek and a game of Candyland. Our hero arrives in a future world where all human needs are taken care of yada yada yada. The description that Williamson gives of the world of the future is the kind one usually gets from 50s science fiction. Things are "atomic" and all the problems of society are solved with "science".

There environment is a bucolic wonderland of perfectly manicured lawns and shrubs separating futuristic houses shaped like white towers. There are levitating rocket cars that shuttle men and women to home, work, or play. Cut gemstones play a very large role in the world of the future. They provide light, roofing, and a form of currency. They also provide Williamson with an endless supply of metaphor for the new inventions he witnesses.

The landscape of the future prompts him to write, "Here and there were low, forested hill, meandering silver brooks bordered with emerald verdure." When he meets the obligatory monster, our hero remarks that, "The red eyes were hard and cold and malignant as frozen rubies." The effect of all this comparison to jewels does give the future a gloss of the shiny and perfect, but it is so out of line with reality that it comes across as more of a hallucination than a vision of the future.

Make no mistake, Williamson is not deep reading. I fall back on WIlliamson when I am looking for literary popcorn. I read it with the same smile that I read Howard's stories of Conan the Barbarian or watch an episode of Mystery Science Theater. They are fun and illuminate the spirit of their time even where they fail at things like character development and believable plots.

To be fair, Williamson's work might suffer from that affliction that strikes artists and writers who started something that went on to be imitated extensively. Their work seems cliched now, but it was groundbreaking at the time. Nah...

Another One

2008-08-25T23:57:00.002-04:00

zucchini throw pillows

2008-08-25T00:21:00.003-04:00

This is the only thing I've done recently that fits in my scanner

I'll post more soon.

The Land of the Boll Weevil, where the Laws are Medieval

2008-08-17T15:48:00.003-04:00

The Boll Weevil is a small restaurant in downtown Augusta. It is also an insect pest that infests cotton plants. I went to the restaurant shortly after moving here and now I remember why I hadn't been back after that first visit.

The Weevil's main dining room has regular tables and also very high backed booths around the walls for patrons like me to hide in while they eat. There is also a banquet room for larger groups and today it was occupied by a party of chattering white women. Their presence should have been a strong indication that the "Weevil" wasn't going to be to my tastes, but I ignored them and looked at the menu. I saw another bad sign. One full page of the two page menu was devoted to salads.

The sort of restaurant that caters to the "I think I'll just have a salad" crowd is not catering to me. Salads are a fine start to a meal, but they are not a meal in themselves. The entree section took up only half of the other menu page and was comprised mostly of sandwiches.

I ordered the Havana Chicken which promised Jamaican jerk seasoned chicken served on a bed of dirty" rice, a southern specialty. The chicken was 3 smallish breasts that had been "blackened" with a coating of so much cajun seasoning that it was all but inedible. The rice was ok though, so I contented myself with eating that. As acceptable as the rice was though, it wasn't worth 13 dollars.

In the interest of saying at least one nice thing about the Boll Weevil, the wait staff was good about refilling my iced tea.

I give the Boll Weevil 1 out of 5 for food, 2 out of 5 for atmosphere, and 1 out of 5 for price.

traffic control device

2008-07-13T23:58:00.003-04:00

I got off work tonight at 1030 and drove the 20 minutes or so it takes to get home. I came to the stoplight that lets me on to the road that runs past my apartment building. The light was red and a small bmw convertible (also red) was stopped at it.

We both sat there for a while. No cars went past. We sat a little longer. 3 minutes went by with no cars taking advantage of the other road's green light. I decided that Mr. Bmw and I were probably of the same mind, so I rolled down my window, cupped my hands around my mouth and shouted "I'll go if you do!"

As soon as those words left my mouth, the bmw was on it's way and so was I. We ran a red light together and gave each other big thumbs up as we rolled down the road.

My love for humanity was fully restored.

Erotic Transformers Comic Book Art

2008-07-06T20:12:00.004-04:00

Words fail...

http://plotsntombstones.com/GandC.html

Are you a Psychopathic Killer Nazi? Or are You Just Blond?

2008-06-29T23:31:00.007-04:00

Blonds get a bum rap. Fair haired women are slandered in numerous jokes about their supposed stupidity and blond men are characterized in media as villains. Few would debate my assertion about blond women, but in support of the idea that blond men are "villainized" I offer the following evidence.

In movies made for school aged children and teens, the blond villain is often the stuck-up sociopathic rich kid type. A good example of this character in a recent film is in the Harry Potter movies. Sneering and pretentious, we know to hate him before he even speaks and that's largely because of his blond hair. If he was dark haired but equally pompous acting, the viewer might not know if he was a "bad guy" or not. He might be the adversary who turns into a comrade after an emotional revelation or any number of other characters. The blond hair sends a clear signal to those who were raised in this media tradition that this kid is a little Hitlerjungen whom we can hate without hesitation.

Harry Potter is a relatively recent phenomenon, but blond villain typecasting has been going on at least since "The Karate Kid". Those other readers who were 6 years old when it came out and consequently saw the movie 32 times will surely remember Johnny. As a member of the Cobra Kai karate group (with a number of other blonds), Johnny used his karate powers for evil instead of good. Johnny also got fresh with the Karate Kid's love interest, further damning that blond character as a thorough brute.

Acid-Filled

2008-06-25T20:35:00.003-04:00

There is a Chinese grocery store in Augusta that stocks a considerable variety of Asian foods like Pocky, those black duck eggs, and dozens of different Ramen flavors. It's not a small place, but unless you knew it was there you'd have trouble finding it behind the alterations and accessories shop that occupies its storefront. I always feel a little strange walking into the tailor's and going straight to the back of the store where a narrow doorway opens into the grocery store.

I like wandering the aisles of oriental fare and trying to think of applications for things like artificially fruit flavored seaweed. The labels on a lot of those sort of products are quite humorous too. Since US law requires that food be labeled with basic nutritional information (in English) and many other countries do not, there are poorly printed and clumsily applied stickers on the backs of things with info about saturated fat etc.

If you look closely at that label on a package of pork udon noodles, you will see the statement "This product is acid-filled, so taste sour is normal." but I must have gotten a dud because they were delicious.

The Rapture that no one noticed

2008-06-13T00:05:00.003-04:00

The trumpet sounded last tuesday afternoon. All the good christians got shot up to heaven and the rest got left on the earth.

Obviously, if you are reading this, you didn't meet the requirements for admission to heaven. You shouldn't be too surprised. Of all 300 million Americans living last tuesday, only 32 turned out to be "good christians". So you probably won't even notice that anyone is absent unless you happened to know one of the 32.

This is great news for the rest of us though. The christian faith has fulfilled its final prophecy and will now disappear. No more metaphysical bullying and crypto-racism. Plus, all the land held by the church will be converted to parks and all its moneys will be put towards space exploration. I, for one, am glad to be "left behind".

Thunderball

2008-06-09T21:07:00.004-04:00

I've been listening to a podcast while I drive called the "Viking Youth Power Hour" you can sample their goodness here. It's a mishmash of topics in philosophy, literature, technology, etc. They did a two part podcast on Eschatology, which, as we all know, is the study of the apocalypse. I'm not a believer in the end of world, but it was fascinating to hear about these different theories of how it will go down. The Mayan calender ends in 2012, for example, so many impressionable sorts have deduced that 2012 will see the end of the world.

There was also a fascinating interview with author Corey Doctorow about his book "Little Brother". It's a novel geared towards young adults, but the subject matter is quite sophisticated. A group of kids get entangled with the Department of Homeland security and have to extricate themselves using all their techno-geek skills in security cameras, RFID, cryptology, and the like. Doctorow impresses me as literary kin to William Gibson, but I won't know if he lives up to that until I read "Little Brother". I'm planning on buying a copy to give to my cousin (after I read it of course).

Here are some more of the things I've painted/drawn. enjoy.

Aht

2008-05-27T18:49:00.009-04:00

Living in GA means you have to make your own fun, and nothing is more fun than monkeys running complicated machinery.

The disembodied head is that of Sir Richard Burton, patron saint of Middle Eastern studies.

Perforated Shoulder

2008-04-20T16:17:00.004-04:00

I had my torn rotator cuff repaired last week. Army medical care is damned fast and I was in, under, awake, and out in the space of 6 hours or so. I now have the next 20 something days to hold my shoulder immobile in a high tech sling. No work or anything, it's like a painful housebound vacation.

The sling that holds my right arm immobile is all black. It has "Slingshot 2" silkscreened on the side and a foam rubber ball by the hand that can be squeezed to maintain bloodflow. There is a large pad between the sling and my torso to keep my arm away from my body and, I suppose, in a more therapeutic position. The whole apparatus reminds me of an SUV with all the fittings for off-road driving and camping that is intended to do neither. I looked up the price of the "slingshot 2" on the interweb and it goes for $150 retail (add another zero for DoD purchase). It seems a little much when a t-shirt tied up properly would do. I suspect this extravagance is the result of all that righteous indignation money that congress gave military healthcare after the moldy hospital scandal.

My hiatus gives me ample time to read and watch endless episodes of mystery science theater, often at the same time. Combining two and sometimes three removes of media has interesting effects. I passively listen to and sometimes watch a b-movie from the 60s while it is riffed upon by the three mystery science theater actors. That the movie is constantly commented upon disrupts my suspension of disbelief in it and "Attack of the Giant Leeches" becomes a sequence of sounds and pictures rather than a narrative. Combine to this reading a book, and the movie is even more diluted. Then I use my laptop to look up things I've read in the book and so add another media to the frenzy. The overall effect is one of saturation of course, but I can cultivate a temporary attention deficit disorder that gives whatever I draw or write about a nice hysterical quality.

witness this pile of printers' ornaments.

A Problem with Panties

2008-03-17T13:28:00.010-04:00

In the days before elastic waistbands, women in America were plagued by a peculiar problem. It struck most often when they were dutifully carrying home groceries to prepare meals for their husbands. Simply put, their panties (usually pink with lace trim) would fall down around their ankles making walking difficult or downright impossible. This problem led directly to today's underwear suspender system that we are all familiar with.

Atlanta Comic Expo

2008-02-17T01:05:00.007-05:00

Last weekend my colleague Averill and I attended the Atlanta Comic book exposition. I used to collect comic books and was really "into" them during my junior high years. I don't read them much these days unless I run across some particularly interesting underground work.

My interest in the comic book expo was mostly to see the superfans dressed up like storm troopers, pre-pubescent Gandalfs, 300 lb. catwomen, etc. I also was hoping to find some old pulp science fiction magazines from the 50s and 60s, a genre I've recently developed a taste for.

After a quick stop at the mall in Atlanta so I could purchase a nice but rather expensive shirt, We arrived at the Atlanta Sheraton hotel where the expo was being held. There were a few dozen artists who I hadn't heard of signing autographs and selling originals of their work in the first room. The larger second room had all the vendors selling comics, figurines etc.

I was a little bit disappointed by the fact that the expo seemed to be an event for selling stuff first and chance for nerds to converse with each other second. There was one seller though that had some of the pulps that I was looking for but not many. i asked him if he had any more and he told me to come by his store in columbia, SC to see his full collection.

I went to that store today hoping to finally score some ancient back issues of "Fantastic Science Adventure Stories" but the man I had spoken to wasn't there and the clerk said that the pulp collection was locked up and only the guy at the expo had the key. Muy disappointing. I got a couple fiction magazines but since they were from the 70s and 80s their tone and artwork was completely different than the earlier pulp magazines. Hopefully I'll be able find some quality pulps either there on a future trip or from the interweb.

Obituary

2008-02-12T19:25:00.007-05:00

A friend of mine, Nathan Hardy, was killed while conducting an operation in Iraq last Monday. He and I were in the same class at DLI and though he was my peer, I admired him as one would an elder.

The training required to become a SEAL, which Nate was, requires an enormous amount of will and self-possession. Nate had both, as well as a real knack for leading people by example (even us linguists with more brains than sense).

For example, Nate handled my division's PT program for a long time and even though he was running everyone absolutely ragged, we loved it. He had simply turned every evolution into a competition that he also participated in. The reward for winning was being able to sit out the next evolution. Everyone (especially the males) would push themselves to the utmost trying to be the first one to the top of the hill or to crank out 50 push-ups.

I am proud to say I was able to beat him consistently when we were running stairs one day. I gloated a bit at the time, but he had his revenge a few weeks later when he called me at home and said that he had been told that all navy personnel had to wear dress uniforms to a test we had that day. I showed up in that stifling polyester uniform and was greeted by great guffaws of laughter.

Nate was a great guy to have a beer with and though he might deny it, there was a kind of sweetness in him. He didn't sport that un-smiling thousand yard stare most of his spec-ops colleagues show the world. He had the humility and capable attitude of someone who possessed real self-esteem.

The world is poorer for losing him.

Nate is survived by his wife Mindy and his 7 month old son Parker.

Cloverfield

2008-02-03T16:58:00.000-05:00

Thinking of seeing the movie "Cloverfield"? Let me save you the ticket price and two hours of your time. All you need is a friend to scream the following lines directly into your ear.

"Oh my god! Rob! Where are you guys going!? Oh my god! You guys, what the hell is that thing!? Aaaaaaaaaahhhhh! Rob, wait! Rob, oh my god! Rob, are you ok!? What are we going to do!? You guys, we need to get out of here, like now!! Oh my god, Rob! What are we going to do!? Wait a second you guys! Rob, where are you going!? Rob! I don't believe it! What are we going to do!? Rob!!"

For a really authentic experience, find a toothless redneck woman to shriek "ASS-HOE!!" when it's time for the monster to show itself.

Without a doubt, the worst movie theater experience I have ever had

Chapter the Second, wherein our hero drowns a baby and eats it.

2008-01-28T16:11:00.015-05:00

Patrick O'Brian wrote a series of historic novels that are unequivocally the best in the entire world. In them, the diet of a British sailor during the Napoleonic wars is extensively remarked upon and great detail is dedicated to describing the meals consumed by Jack Aubrey, Stephen Maturin, and the other characters that make their appearances in the books.

Evidently, I am not the only person to wonder at the exact make-up of dishes like "comfits" and "lacquered duck" because there is an excellent cookbook on the subject called "Labscouse and Spotted Dog". The authors are obviously also great fans of O'Brian's work and write very well on the subject of preparing meals in the old fashioned manner of the Royal Navy.

They even include a recipe for "millers" which is another word for ship rats. In times of famine aboard a ship, millers were in great demand as a source of protein. Starving midshipmen (growing teenagers for the most part) would hunt and eat every rat in the ship's hold if necessary. The authors of this book got their hands on a half dozen rats and prepared them in the traditional style. Good eating, they write, rather like a tender rabbit.

A recipe for rats might not be practical to the average cook, but it gives a sense of the authors' level of commitment.

I wouldn't be adverse to eating a rat, but they are not readily available at the local Publix. I decided to start with a dish that merely had a disturbing name instead of disturbing ingredients. So began my quest for "drowned baby".

I won't bore you with the recipe for drowned baby, but it results in a gelatinous mass that is then boiled for 2 1/2 hours and served in slices. The baby is supposed to be wrapped in sailcloth for boiling, but lacking any sailcloth that I could part with, I used an old t-shirt.

Drowned baby is a suet pudding. Suet is the fat from an animal's kidneys and it is the basis for many English puddings. When I asked my local butcher if he had any, he said that he did, but couldn't sell it to me because he used it to turn the venison that hunters brought him into sausage. I then asked if he had any regular beef fat lying around that wasn't spoken for. He did, and gave it to me for free!

To make that non-suet fat better suited to the recipe I froze and grated it. Now as I write, the baby has been drowning for an hour and a delightful smell of cinnamon and beef fat is wafting from the kitchen.

Fine

2008-01-28T09:18:00.000-05:00

Ever see an old movie where someone says "oh Ethel, that'll be fine!" with that perky inflection that makes "fine" sound like a synonym for "great"? "Fine" these days means something more like "whatever", but it literally means something far better. Fine china, fine living, fine Columbian flake... Its definition is more akin to "luxurious" than a sign-off meaning "I'll stop arguing, but I hate you".

Suthun' Singin'

2008-01-20T08:32:00.000-05:00

Those three dozen other people who saw "No Maps for These Territories" will remember William Gibson speaking about recordings of rural musicians in the 1920s. He said that because those people had never heard recorded music, their music sounded fundamentally different.

They might play "Buonaparte's Retreat" using the same sequence of notes as a studio musician, but it just sounds different. I can't pin it down either, lacking the proper training as an ethnomusicologist, but it seems that there is an honesty in the sound that comes from not having a standard that can be referenced as "the right way".

This is similar to the way average people look in old photographs. In the 1860s, few had seen a photograph, much less been in one. They have that "deer in headlights" look when they appear in pictures and this is also probably a result of not having a standard to refer to when presenting one's self.

These days we all pose a little bit when we know we are being photographed. I think that most times we don't do it consciously. It's not as though a person says to himself "I'm going to frown and pinch my lips together like that person in the magazine." (At least I hope they don't) but we've all become actors to an extent. The reproduction of music and the reproduction of visage are second nature at this point.

How different the world would be if the only music we heard was when it was actually being played and the only pictures we saw were originals that were painted or drawn by an artist. I suspect we would value those experiences to a greater degree than the experience of listening to an iPod or seeing the Mona Lisa on a computer screen.

Listen to some old spirituals and work songs that have been archived by the library of congress here

Valium for the Modern Warfighter

2008-01-10T10:22:00.000-05:00

Each war of the modern age, starting with WWII, has had a unique psychology. The reasons men went off to fight and die, the things they told themselves to cope with impending mortality, and the substances they used to forget what had happened and what might happen are different in each conflict. The "chemical zeitgeist" you might call it, strongly colors the way that war is prosecuted and the way the soldiers experience and remember it.

Soldiers in the second world war, like those in the european wars preceding it, had alcohol to comfort them during their down time and to help them cope with the daily reality of murdering their fellow man. The German and Japanese militaries made wide use of amphetamines to maintain alertness and provide that murderous energy we all associate with meth users. Addiction to amphetamines became a serious problem in Japan after the war, with organized crime using the same technique as modern modern meth labs to make what they called "philopon".

Vietnam saw the first widespread use of chemicals as coping mechanisms in American soldiers. Many of them took advantage of the abundance of opiate drugs and marijuana in that country. Simultaneously, America was experiencing a surge of interest in these drugs domestically. Thoughts of the 1960s inevitably include the influence of drugs like marijuana and lsd.

Marijuana, unlike alcohol or speed, will almost always make a soldier less war-like and more prone to deep reflection instead of action. LSD has a similar effect. Many militaries tested it on their troops though, with the idea that it could be used as a mind control agent. See the heroic failure of this effort here For the most part, 60's drugs were antithetical to war fighting and might have contributed to the enormous disaffection soldiers experienced in vietnam.

Today we fight a war in Afganistan and Iraq. The advent of urinalysis in the military precludes the use of illegal drugs by soldiers, so very few of them are sampling the famous Afghani opium crop.

Instead, and remarkably, Soldier in the Coalition AND in the insurgency are both making wide use of variety of drugs that doctors prescribe to sedate and relieve anxiety in patients. Soldiers on both sides are using enormous amounts of benzodiazapines like valium to help crash at the end of the day but also in combat situations.

The Mahdi Army is sometimes referred to as the "pink army" by local Iraqis because of their widespread use of pills. The drugs are available without a prescription on the streets of Iraqi cities and Coalition soldiers have been making use of their calmative qualities to get a night's rest.

It's pretty clear why both insurgents and Coalition soldiers would be attracted to benzos during their off time, but what is interesting is that some of them, especially in the Mahdi army are using them while conducting operations. This is counter-intuitive at first glance. Why would fighters be so keen to use a substance that sedates them and renders them placid?

Benzodiazepines have other interesting side effects though. Most of them act as a short term amnesiac, meaning that people have difficulty or are completely unable to recall what they experienced while under the drugs' influence. This could be useful to a insurgent organization that routinely commits atrocities against civilian targets because those events would literally be forgotten.

Also, the placidity that benzodiazepines cause should not be assumed to preclude aggressive action either. Indeed, subjects tend to live in the immediate moment with little regard for the past or future consequences of their actions. An insurgent who acts on the spur of the moment could be useful. They would obey orders with little question and even put themselves in harm's way because they wouldn't know better.

The US's adventure in Iraq and Afganistan has a distinct psychological flavor for both sides fighting. In a theater where forgetfulness is an asset and confusion about who is the enemy is assumed, Gore Vidal was correct in terming the current state of affairs "The United States of Amnesia"

The Elderly are Actually Just Lazy

2008-01-05T06:14:00.000-05:00

Scientists revealed a report yesterday in a press conference at the Mayo Clinic that the elderly do no actually suffer from fatigue or joint pain any more than healthy middle aged people.

According to these studies, the reason for all the slow puttering and sitting down on the part of the elderly is pure, unadulterated laziness.

So the next time you're on the bus, feel no guilt for taking that handicapped/elderly seat. When an old man shuffles up to you and stands there swaying as the bus turns and brakes, merely remember that he is no more uncomfortable standing than you would be. He and his ilk simply have the rest of the world fooled.

Likewise, if you are in a supermarket, stuck behind a doddering old woman who is pushing her cart down the aisle at half the speed of smell, don't hesistate to scold her loudly for her laziness. Those who witness you disciplining the elderly will immediately identify the quality of your character. You should not truck with dilly-dallying on the part of lazy senior citizens.

Uberman's Sleep Schedule

2007-12-27T11:01:00.001-05:00

I think that it's a bit excessive for human beings to spend a third of their lives in an unproductive state of suspended animation. While I fully appreciate the value of dreams, indeed I try to record them as often as I can recall them, the amount of time they take seems excessive. Sure, there are drugs like modafinil that reduce sleep time with no repercussions on concentration or performance, but they are expensive.

A Polyphasic sleep system replaces the typical 8 hour stretch with multiple short naps throughout the day. The result is far less total time spent asleep.

Polyphasic sleep systems have been around at least since Da Vinci who is said to have slept for 15 minutes every two hours. This schedule would be roughly equivalent to the Uberman system in terms of total time asleep in a given day. Uberman is regarded as the most extreme polyphasic method. It consists of a 30 minute nap every 4 hours for a grand total of 3 hours asleep. The less drastic regimens include a 3 hour stretch in addition to the napping.

The best known polyphasic sleeper in recent history was Buckminster Fuller. For those not familiar with the man, he was a genius and inventor of things like the geodesic dome, revolutionary cartography, and a three wheeled car called the dymaxion. The fact that both he and Da Vinci utilized polyphasic sleep is a pretty illustrious endorsement.

Does the reduction of sleep necessarily mean more real life is lived? I have often meditated on the idea that people on stimulants get a larger amount of life-force out of a given stretch of time because they have 3 thoughts for a normal person's 1. Polyphasic sleep would be ideal for people who are working on a project with a deadline and can't afford to waste a minute or military personnel standing watch or manning a checkpoint. You get more out of them if they sleep less.

2007-12-08T14:27:00.000-05:00

Work has been particularly slow recently. I find this hiatus strange, seeing as there is a war on, but it has afforded me an opportunity to indulge in interweb wanderings on the regular computer in my shop.

I have always had a soft spot for used industrial and military equipment. Indulging a whim, I was looking for an icebreaker ship for sale. I came across a website called Apollo Duck, which offered a beautiful icebreaker at a very reasonable 2 million dollars. Not only that, but there were old Swedish Navy frigates, tugboats, and hundreds of cargo ships.

That same day I learned of an anime series called "Black Lagoon". It's set in present day SE Asia and follows the adventures of a pirate crew who sail around in a PT boat doing odd/illegal jobs like running guns or outright piracy.

Because I am completely impressionable and bound to do whatever is suggested to me, I have decided to combine these two interests in a "plan". The plan is: Get fast boat and crew of five or six friends, get a letter of Marque from some banana republic to make it legit, roam the seas snatching up ships laden with beanie babies or whatever, and retire at 40 with a nice fat swiss bank account. Now, who wants to man the 50 cal?

QR codes

2007-07-31T05:29:00.000-04:00

You've seen these codes before. Airline tickets, especially those printed at home, are often marked with a little black box that serve the same purpose as a bar code but comprised of little squares instead of lines.

The nice thing about QR is that the technology seems to be freely available to anyone who wants to encode information that way. You can go to the title link above and enter a sentence of text or string of numbers and have it rendered in QR format right before your eyes.

You might think, "so what? I can't look at a QR code and read it any more than I can look at a bar code and read it." And you'd be right. The lousy little camera in your phone however, can read QR codes. With the addition of a little program, also found on the website, you can snap a picture of a code and have it translated back into alphanumeric characters.

I think this would be an interesting way to pass information securely, safe from prying eyes that wouldn't be able to decipher it even if they got a glimpse. Messages could even be displayed in public places where none but those looking would even notice them.

Admittedly, that's a little James Bondish. If you can think of a better application for these things, leave a comment.

Sustained Release

2006-12-27T22:30:00.000-05:00

DC metropolitan airport is a fairly busy place and the people there are largely business types (yuppies). We, however, formed a little enclave of our own at gate 35A. We were all going to Columbia, South Carolina. "My" people were easy to spot. If they weren't sporting a camoflage mesh-back hat, they were wearing a USC t-shirt, size XXXL.

They tell us we're boarding and we all go outside and get on a shuttle bus that will presumably take us to the plane. We sit there for 20 minutes or so and then the woman who took our tickets comes through the door. She says, "We apologize to our Columbia passengers, but the attendant for this flight hasn't arrived. The new departure time is 10:03." There are a few disappointed groans and even a shout, but it ends there. These are southerners, they don't turn vicious when they are inconvenienced.

The south loses two points for fashion failure and wins one point for appropriate docility when stressed.

Hogs and Harlots

2006-12-12T20:51:00.000-05:00

She didn't feel the applause was adequate when she finished spitting flame. Looking down from the top of the bar where she stood, she yelled "What?, do they do this at the fucking Olive Garden back in New Jersey!?" We all tried to make a little more noise the next time.

Audience participation is mandatory at Hogs and Heifers, a dive bar in Manhattan's meatpacking district. Failure to do so will get you the treatment imposed on a group of 30-something men who wore the polo shirts, khakis, and belt mounted cell phones of successful "tech guys". They were singled out for ridicule early on. It began when one of them made the mistake of asking for a water. "Oh did you just take a fucking Midol and you need something to wash it down with?! Are you having your fuckin' period?!" The water drinker tried to smile good-naturedly and play off the comment by saying "Yeah, its that time of the month" She wasn't impressed. "Whatever, buy a fucking shot."

I was in New York to look at The New School media studies graduate program and was staying with my friend Laura in the West Village. The second night I was there I expressed a desire to go to a smelly dive and get tanked. Hogs and Heifers fit the bill perfectly.

It sports a giant collection of brassiers hung on the wall behind the bar and a juke box that only plays classic rock. There was a heated debate some years ago about which bar was the basis of the film "Coyote Ugly". The obvious answer is that it was based on the bar of the same name. Some argued, however, that Hogs and Heifers was the real inspiration.

The theme of both bars is a kind of dirty dive ambiance and really mouthy, but attractive, women in skimpy clothing tending bar. There were two of these bartenders there the night we went. One of them was wearing a black leather bikini top and jeans, the other was wearing a midriff-exposing halter top and black pants.

Leather bra girl had a giant grey megaphone that she used to address the customers over the din of 80s hair bands. After the "tech guys" left, she zeroed in on a group of men in leather jackets who were standing behind Laura and I. "I'm thirsty!" she complained. "Are one of you guys gonna man-up and buy us girls a drink?" The men merely smiled and said nothing, but made no move towards the bar. She continued to harass them but they never responded. Just before they left, I heard a snippet of their conversation and realized that they were Russian or something. They hadn't understood the attacks on their manhood.

I like to laugh at the misfortunes of others as much as the next guy, but this was even better because on top of giggling at their discomfort was the sense of relief that it wasn't me getting singled out for ridicule.

Grammar? Diction? Who needs 'em?

2006-11-18T22:20:00.001-05:00

Nothing makes you sound dumber than using management-speak words and phrases when trying to communicate with colleages or underlings. Both verbally and in print, however, meaningless turns of phrase like "pro-active" are becoming more popular. This infectious vocabulary seems to exert its influence most strongly on people in positions of petty authority. I believe that when these individuals want to sound professional, they disconnect their own brains (which may be perfectly good) and connect to an insipid hive mind. This amalgamation of mediocrity is populated with uncreative middle management types who desperately want to sound smarter than they are. The following examples are ones that are particularly prevelant.

Example #1
"Ok folks, the paperwork for enrolling in a language class is on the department's website, vice the regular Navy website."

The use of vice here is apparently supposed to mean "instead of", but they've taken the wrong part of "vice versa". "vice" simply means "place" and when combined with "versus" means "switching places". "versus", however, means "instead of" in this context and would be perfectly appropriate to use in the example above. I have noticed this little gem popping up more often recently. It is being adopted by more and more admin types who probably heard it from someone else and thought it sounded smart. Well it doesn't.

Example #2
"If anybody has a conflict in their schedule with tomorrow's meeting, send an email to Mr. Jones or myself."

Myself is a reflexive pronoun. You use it when you are talking about your person specifically, not as a "smart person" substitute for "me". Perhaps "me" sounds unprofessional to the idiot's ear, but why should that be? Rastafarians avoid the use of "me" because it is felt that "me" reduces a person to the level of an object and is reminiscent of slavery. I don't think this is the same reason that idiot supervisors avoid it however. Reducing people to the level of objects is what they do best.

Example #3
"We will begin counseling those individuals who don't file their TPS reports properly. That being said, those who get them all filed properly for 3 months will get a day off"

While not completely wrong, "that being said" is unnecessarily wordy. The gerund of "is" is not needed here and "that said" would be better. Wordiness is thought to denote intelligence though, and any time you can frame a sentence in the passive voice, you get to insert an extra couple of words.

As an aside, I am surprised at how widespread this phenomenon is in the military. The straight talking petty officer or sargeant has been replaced with a mealy-mouthed and dishonest sounding "boss" of the corporate world.

I'm sure my readers could come up with more examples of management-speak atrocities, so do it. Post some comments and we'll be able to favorably impact this networking paradigm in a proactive fashion.

Dick

2006-10-08T01:26:00.000-04:00

I was thinking the other day of a former colleage of mine, Dick, that passed away some years ago. He and I worked for my uncle John, a land surveyor. We were partnered up as a field crew that did most of the machete-through-the-woods and digging for monuments type work.

Dick was a man who enjoyed telling of his sexual exploits as a young man. We would pass a non-descript house and Dick would exclaim "You see that house there? I got laid in the driveway! Yeah, she wasn't that good looking and she had a huge bush. Really, it went up to her belly button!"

Most of our conversations went this way. If I had kept track, Dick would probably proved to have laid every other woman in Suffolk county. As an antidote, I played music in the truck's tape deck. I was into Bjork at the time and "Homogenic" got heavy play. "It sounds like two reindeer fucking!" Dick said. I think he said reindeer because I had told him the singer was Icelandic.

Dick was a little bit fixated on bodily excretion as he had prostate trouble and was slightly incontinent. He would shout out the window at dogs he saw pooping "Atta way doggie! Squeeze it off, squeeze it off!" The shovel and roll of paper towels that we kept in the truck got a lot of use and most job sites were left with a stinky momento of our visit.

One time, Dick came back from a sprint to the woods muttering "didn't make it, didn't make it". He took the truck to his trailer to have a shower and change clothes. I waited at the job site for him to get back and then spent the rest of the day with my head out the window of the truck to avoid the smell. Dick didn't seem to mind it.

Dick once confided a secret recipe to me that he had learned from a poker buddy. The man suggested that one acquire a half of a baloney, make a hole one inch wide and a few inches deep in it, and fill that hole with cheez whiz. The purpose of this culinary construction is the sexual stimulation of the user.

Dick described the technique. "So what ya do is ya stick yer pecker in that hole in the buloney and then fuck it like regular. Feels like real woman!" I gagged a little, probably as you, gentle reader, are gagging now...

He wasn't all sexcapades and pooping though. Dick could do complex math in his head almost instantly. He would give the complement of angles we measured to the thousandth place as soon as it was done. He was also a gifted draftsman and drew field maps that were virtually identical to the ones the computer eventually produced. He was a special kind of guy.

CONFLUX Baby! CONFLUX!

2006-09-18T18:17:00.006-04:00

I have wanted to attend this psychogeographic arts festival for a few years now. School or work kept getting in the way though. This year I took leave to attend all four days, thursday through sunday. It was great.

I stayed with Laura, a friend from college who lives in the west village and was kind enough to put me up for the festival. Laura had to work thursday and friday, so I attended the events on those days by myself. Conflux was headquartered at a gallery in Williamsburg with great paintings of robots covering the walls. All the events started here and afforded us a place to congregate and chat about the projects. There were no corporate sponsors here, just artists and geographers sharing their projects and interests with anyone who wanted to come along. It was very refreshing.

On Thursday it rained lightly during the first event I attended, "City Sample". The idea was to record the ambient sounds of the city as participants ran through Williamsburg with cassette recorders loaded with 3 minute tapes. A few kids from a college in Minnesota that were attending conflux as part of a "new media" project and I were the participants in this evolution. I was given a cymbal to smack into things as I ran to contribute to the sounds of my heavy breathing and footfalls. I also found an old couch to jump on. This made a neat noise in the mix later.

Back at the gallery, the two masterminds of this project mixed all our tapes together into an experimental music piece. The best part was that they had two tape decks set up like turntables and one of them physically manipulated the tape sprockets as they played to create lower and higher frequency renditions of what we recorded.

That night was the opening party for Conflux at a bar, again in Brooklyn, called Supreme Trading. It boasted an all-female dj line up and some anime scenes ("Desert Punk" I think) playing on a projection screen. Pretty good, though we didn't stay long. A slice of pizza back in Manhattan was calling me.

Friday was another outdoor event called "Smelling Committee". It was based on a group of the same name that first researched the origin of the terrible smells that williamsburg was suffering from back in the 1800s. Our committee didn't have such lofty goals, just that its participants concentrate on smelling the different parts of the neighborhood. The guides were dressed in 19th century garb and stopped periodically to point out an interesting smell and its significance. The smell from a laundromat prompted the strong memories most people have with the smell of laundry. But the odor coming out of the open door of an elementary school as the kids assembled outside was another, less pleasing recollection.

We also smelled "art" at a gallery, "meat" at a polish butcher, and "trendy" at a clothing store that one woman said "smells like sweatshop labor". Very interesting and it definitely made me more attuned to smells around me in the days to come.

On Saturday Laura came with me to do the "Grafitti Walking Tour and Street Party" which was also a guided tour through Willyburg, but this time there was a guy riding a three wheeled bike that had a speaker set up on it. This unit blasted a good selection of hip-hop and made a great rallying point when we stopped walking for the participants to hear various grafitti pieces expounded upon.

There was another spot with a lot of cool pieces that we could only see by climbing out onto a concrete jetty and looking back at some graf on the wall of the building that faced the water.

It turns out the famous "Banksy" has done some pieces in this area too.

Saturday night was by far the most fun Conflux event. "Journey into the Night" was a sort of city-wide game of manhunt. Along with Laura, my friends Josh and Julie showed up to play. We all started at HQ and got signed up, receiving a white armband that identified us as runners, and a red one that we were to wear if caught by the chasers and became chasers ourselves. We also got a map of the 6 locations where signatures could be got and the game advanced. Players could take public transportations, walk, or ride bikes. No cars allowed. The distances covered were pretty huge. We crossed the Williamsburg bridge on foot into Manhattan, collecting a signature on the way, got chased pretty far and lost an exhausted Julie to the chaser. We came back over the Manhattan bridge for another signature, outsmarted a chaser twice and then walked half of the brooklyn bridge to get another signature, and ended up in Fulton at the end of it.

The after party was at a place called Barcade. It sported a huge beer selection and a variety of vintage arcade games. We talked to some geographic arts people there and traded stories of close calls with chasers and crossing busy streets while being pursued.

Conflux was awesome. I will definitely try to attend again next year and recommend it to those looking for an interesting way to experience a geographic space as diverse and interesting as New York.

The Irish Travelers II

2006-08-31T16:48:00.000-04:00

We set out in the afternoon to see what this Traveller stuff was all about. The exit that deposited us in traveller territory was only 10 minutes down the highway. All this time, a surreal little world was just around the corner...

The first thing we noticed was the houses. Big beautiful brick houses. Nicely landscaped and completely deserted. Sheets of plywood covered what were undoubtably very nice windows. There were dozens of these houses, they were set back far from the road, but there weren't very many tall trees around them. The Travellers seem to have collectively decided to take over a particular subdivision and that fairly recently. We decided to turn off of Murphy's Road and get a little closer to our subjects.

Though invisible from the main road, there were indeed small campers in each backyard, what the brits call a "caravan". It seems that the owners of these suburban palaces reside in their little campers and leave the house empty. I had heard of this phenomenon before and it was widely attributed to letting the "evil spirits" filter out of the newly constructed house. I wonder if they do the same thing with a new trailer.

As we progressed further inward, the houses got smaller and the trees got taller. I guess this part is the old growth white trash. Older, more established poverty and drunkeness. They fly the proud flag.

Around the same neighborhood, We saw a dog walking awkwardly down the street. It looked like a dalmation from a distance, but as we got closer, it became clear that not only was that dog not a dalmation, it was not a complete dog.

Check out the tits on that dog! Hartman shouted. Those are the biggest I have ever seen on a bitch... Manije mumbled. Lets take a picture, I suggested.

We took pictures and they probably sum up everything I have come to learn, not only about the Travellers, but about the South in general. Seems like a nice place right? This is a thinking man's hell.

The Irish Travelers

2006-07-30T15:27:00.000-04:00

There is a community just north of Augusta, on the South Carolina side, where 1500 people share just eleven surnames. Names like Caroll, Reilly, and Murphy. The town of Murphy's Village, SC is home to a sizable chunk of a group which is known as the Irish Travelers.

Erroneously referred to as "gypsies" because of their cross-country roaming during the summer months, they have gained a reputation as scam artists and con-men because of the questionable way that many of them make their living.

At the beginning of the summer, the men of the community pack up and leave their home town to travel the country. During this time, they will work as driveway pavers, painters, and roofers. The scam comes in when they approach a homeowner, unsolicited, and point out the sorry condition of their driveway or roof. The homeowner is then offered a great price on a new layer of blacktop for the driveway because their original customer has died. They just need to break even so that they won't get fired (wink, wink).

Often, the homeowner (usually elderly) sees a good deal and accepts it. Later, he realizes that what he thought was a new layer of blacktop on his driveway is actually just black spray paint and he has been taken for whatever he paid. The Travelers are long gone.

The Travelers roam the country pulling jobs like this throughout the summer. They sometimes bring their young sons with them to teach them the ropes of bilking old people out of their retirement money. Thus the community is sustained and the craft is passed on.

All this would seem scandalous enough to warrant nationwide recognition of these people and the danger that they pose to the gullible and aged, but remarkably little attention has been paid to them. Within the community, they observe a mafioso-like code of never snitching on a fellow traveler and almost never does an outsider become a member of the group.

I decided that since I live so close to this curious clan and have sometimes seen them at bars, shopping malls, and movie theaters, I should at least try to investigate their way of life a little further. I will follow this post up with one that documents whatever transpires on my journey to Murphy's Village.

A Most Amazing Sight

2006-07-16T23:24:00.000-04:00

I was reminded recently of an incredible occurance that I witnessed some years ago. I was living in Los Angeles at the time, unemployed, sleeping on a friend's couch, and spending most of my time at a local drinking establishment called "Sonny's".

Sonny's was pretty neat. It featured a card table in the back that you could spy on through a two-way mirror in the men's room. It also had a pool table that was positioned by a door that opened onto the street and was often left open to let in the less-smoggy air of Santa Monica.

I was at Sonny's that afternoon, having a couple pints and playing the occaisional game of pool with some of the other regulars. At one point, I got a phone call on my cell phone. I walked out the door near the pool table to escape the perpetually blaring Tom Petty music.

As I stood on the sidewalk, my conversation was interrupted by a loud obscenity from inside the bar. A moment later, a nine ball came bouncing out the door. It skipped across the sidewalk and onto the street. A city bus came roaring by and intercepted the nine ball before it had made it a foot across the street. The front tire struck the nine ball at 40 miles per hour and sent it sailing down the street, about ten feet off the ground.

At the peak of its arc, it hit a palm tree that was planted in the sidewalk. The nine ball fell straight down the trunk and landed on the little patch of grass surrounding the base of the tree. It didn't bounce or roll at all. It just stopped.

The shouter of the obscenity came out the same door the nine ball used and asked if I had seen the ball he lost. I told him "Yeah, it was incredible."

I've been busy...

2006-06-20T15:32:00.000-04:00

Those of you who have enjoyed this blog and maybe even read it more than once will be wondering why I haven't posted to it in a while. The reason is that I have been working on a new website called

www.shootyourcuffs.net

where friends and colleages of mine can contribute their art, writings, or reviews. I will be posting to the blog from time to time, but for piping hot content, you are better off going to the new site. And hell, if you got something worthwhile, email it to me! I will probably put it up.

Lisbon Baby! Lisbon!

2006-05-21T23:39:00.000-04:00

I have been negligent in not posting a summary of my trip to Portugal sooner, but saving the world on a daily basis is rather time consuming and can be mentally taxing.

To start, I did the necessary hoop-jumping for the Navy so that I could get permission to leave the country. I corresponded almost daily with the woman who was renting us the apartment in Lisbon. If anyone is contemplating a trip like this, I really recommend getting a place of your own instead of staying at a hotel. The cost is pretty much equivalent, and affords much more flexibility as regards eating etc.

There were the usual euro-fixtures like a bidet in the bathroom and a switch that prevents one from running the dishwasher and washing machine at the same time. In fact, if you had the TV on at the same time as either washer, the circuit breakers would pop. Energy conservation I guess...

Also, I think the towel racks in the bathroom merit special comment. They seem to be designed to put your hand towel at risk of falling into the toilet.

I arrived a few hours before Amara and EJ (both of whom were on spring break from university) and investigated the area surrounding the apartment. I was pretty hungry but the citizens of this fair city seem to sustain themselves entirely on cigarettes and tiny cups of coffee. Eventually I found an outdoor cafe that offered a ham and cheese sandwich in addition to the ubiquitous 1 euro hits of straight caffeine.

While I was wandering and looking for a grocery store, I got curious looks from passers-by (not many 6'3" blond guys stroll these streets.) I succeeded in getting myself lost, which was sort of my objective, but I found no Quik E Marts selling bread, eggs etc. Then I smelled the sea. I followed my nose down the hill towards the water and found an enormous open air market with many stalls of hanging hams, fruits, vegetables, and flowers. Unfortunately, they weren't open yet, but at least I knew that real food was available and I wouldn't have to survive on candied almonds and lucky strikes.

The Barrio Alto neighborhood is considered the hippest part of Lisbon and we spent a lot of time wandering around and eating there. There were a number of neat little bars and we went out for drinks a few times after dinner. It seems that the social dynamics in Portugal are a little different than they are in the states. When out on the town, the average Lisbonite is one of 5 or 6 of his or her peers that gather in a tight cluster and converse solely with one another.

The restaurants that we ate at were all good and a few of them were really good. The cod fish seems to be the staple seafood and is prepared in myriad ways, most have a peasant-fare sort of feel. We did the touristy thing one night and went to see some Fado at a place that claims to be the second oldest Fado bar in the city. The food was adequate, but the music was really beautiful. Men and women sing haunting songs of unrequited love with minimal mandolin accompaniment.

There was also, unfortunately, a dance troupe that did far too much entertaining. They stomped and swung eachother around, pausing at one point to get some members of the audience to march around the stage with them. Thankfully, Fate smiled at us and we were not tapped for this dubious honor.

The consumable that Portugal is most famous for is, of course, port wine.

One day, while EJ and Amara were in Sintra looking at a castle, I elected to stay in the city and go to the Port Institute of Lisbon.

(If I had a better picture, I would have used it. Sorry girls.)

The results are as follows:

1) 20 year old Borges
Snobbery doesn't mix well with touristic self-consciousness. The employees seem haughty and the customers seem nervous. There is an American couple in the corner who don't really want to drink but feel that they should. The Borges is delicious, but I am at a loss to find its subtleties. It is bright tasting and refreshing, not cloying. Maybe some cherries? Thoughts of vanilla... Definitely tastes like it would be sticky if spilt on the floor.

2) Barros 1983
I chose this one because 1983 was an interesting year. This one is dryer than the Borges, less fruity. The wife in the American couple complains loudly about the cigar smoke she smells as she leaves the bathroom and crosses the room (it IS a port tasting for fuck's sake).

3) Ca'lem 1989
Getting tipsy... This is supposedly better than the 1988 on the menu. I feel much more brandy on my tongue. Some apple with a long finish. This is a most pleasant way to have a drink, dark, smokey and sunk into a deep comfortable chair.

We went to the big mall one day so that I could look for a sport coat and EJ could go to the gym. The gym was very expensive for just one day pass, 20 euros! Amara and I looked at clothes while EJ pumped iron and we were actually successful in finding a sharp looking coat at Massimo Dutti.

Amara was most helpful with her eye for the way many of the coats I looked at were cut to fit a fat guy.

All in all, a most satisfying, albeit temporary, escape from the deep south.

CrackSpread

2006-05-12T09:14:00.000-04:00

What do you think of when you think "CrackSpread"?

I was watching C Span at work and heard a man named Howard Gruenspecht testifying before the House Energy and Commerce Commitee. He repeatedly used the phrase "crack spread" to refer to the difference between the price of a barrel of crude oil and the price of a barrel of gasoline. The process of refinement is called "cracking" because crude oil's hydrocarbon chains are broken to make gasoline or other substances. Mr. Gruenspecht is a heavy, middle-aged, balding man and hearing him and various congresspersons talking constantly about "crack spread" struck me as uproariously funny...

Now oil refinement isn't all that amusing, rather the mental associations I think of when I hear the words "crack spread".

Sure, there's the buttocks related action, but what really gets me going is imagining a marshmallow fluff-like substance with some horribly addictive qualities. I can picture it used to make sandwiches when combined with peanut butter, a "Cracker Nutter".

I would also like to see it packaged like those handi-snaks with the the little red plastic thing for spreading cheez on the included saltines. A "CrackSpread" version would have that little tub on the end filled with high impact cocaine in spreadable form instead.

Think of the possibilities to market CrackSpread to both parents and children. It could replace ritalin as the stimulant-du jour for treating ADD. And for the non-attention deficient, its being withheld or provided by parents to their addicted children would be the ultimate punishment/reward tool for controlling behaviour. A child would know that screaming in the supermarket would definately mean no crackspread in tommorow's lunch, so best be quiet. Forget love and attention as rewards for good behaviour, they can't compete with CrackSpread's chemically inspired bliss.

While a fluff-like substance would be best suited to lunch, we should consider the possibility of breaking into the lucrative breakfast market. Cracky O's would offer a pick-me-up to start your day with way more kick than sugar...

As you can see, the possibilities are huge. All that needs to happen now is for cocaine to become not only legal, but approved by the FDA for use on children. Write your congressman!

1949 Comet

2006-04-18T00:38:00.000-04:00

For 350 dollars, I'd have been a fool not to buy it. She's old, to be sure, but in nice condition and only needing a good bottom sanding and a little re-varnishing up top. The guy selling it agreed to trailer it down from South Carolina for an extra 75 bucks, so that's what we did. He turned out to work at a Michelin factory and had access to many busted tires, 6 of which he brought with him. The comet now rests upon these, upside down.

After buying a small detail sander, I got most of the paint off and was then confronted with a layer of resin. It is my understanding that there is no good way to tell what kind of resin it is, and if I wish to supplement it with another coat, I run the risk of mismatching the resins which will result in poor adhesion to the existing layer, like trying to weld regular steel to galvanized steel.

Obvious solution? Strip the fucker bare.

The detail sander wasn't really up to this job though, and it took an hour or more to clear a small patch. My roommate, a half owner of the craft, was willing to poney up for a belt sander and this has made the process much easier.

I rapidly approach the point where I will have to outlay a considerable sum for the epoxy resin that will coat the bottom anew.

I was afraid that the landlords might object to my storing a boat on my cement pad in back of the apartment. They haven't said anything yet and I think they probably won't, but the 20 foot mast was difficult to store outside without having it touch the shingles on the roof. That, they would have objected to. The solution was to store it inside, but where? I settled on the hallway on the second floor.

The mast went through a second storey window and now rests on the floor. It comes out of the spare room, down the hall, past the bathroom, and about 4 feet into my room. I have narrowly avoided tripping on the thing a few times when nature calls in the middle of the night. Those stays are at a perfect height for ankle entanglement.

There are a few long, narrow cracks that run lengthwise down the hull. I suspect that they are the result of the boat being out of the water for so long and the wood contracting. Will they close up when it gets wet? Should I soak the hull with water before applying the resin so that there isn't conflicting directions of expansion between the resin and wood when it finally does get wet? And what about the cracks top-side?

I know that some of my gentle readers are boat people, so make with the responses!

Waking Up

2006-04-15T23:52:00.000-04:00

How are We Waking Up?

1) To the sound of loud humping

2) Tied to a chair

3) To the sound of a gun being cocked

4) In a pool of something

5) To the smell of burning hair

6) To a big line of crystaline powder

7) Stiff as a board

RFID ASAP

2006-03-27T23:58:00.000-05:00

A high frequency fever is infecting teens from coast to coast. It involves the voluntary implantation of a radio frequency identification chip, and boy is it fun!

The chip registers a specific and unique numeric code when read by a scanning device. It can be employed to do everything from unlocking your screensaver to starting your car. No more passwords to forget or keys to lose, and best of all, it will be with you until you die (and after, actually)

How do I, the adventurous and lazy consumer, get my hands on one of these so I can implant it in said hands? Luckily, the surgery is relatively simple and can be done by a sober friend or you can spend hundreds on a moonlighting surgeon.

The location of the chip is in the fleshy junction between thumb and forefinger. This usually causes no discomfort and after the operation, the hand is fully functional in a few weeks.

The actual procedure is pretty simple, (The title link shows the entire operation) and the cost of parts is little more than $100. The only shortcoming of this particular body modification is in the software department. The pioneers of this movement are computer programmers and electrical engineers, so they simply design their own custom software to suit their needs. Ignorant hicks like you and I are forced to copy their program for starting the coffee maker, for example, and then try to tweak it to unlock our car doors.

I predict, however, that these little automation programs will soon be a part of everyday life. They will be created and sold by companies like microsoft so that even the non-programmers can enjoy a life that is free from having to touch things.

Tarot Cards and a Nine Millimeter

2006-03-14T21:24:00.013-05:00

I have attended two "shows" in the past year. First, a "Psychic Fair" in Monterey and then, a "Gun and Knife" show last weekend in Augusta. As we shall see, similarities abound...

The Psychic Fair attendees were mostly women, some of whom were followed around by their bored or nervous-looking husbands.

The Gun Show enthusiasts were mostly men, some of whom were followed around by their bored or nervous-looking wives.

The pervading smell at the Psychic Fair was the pungent, sweet smell of patchoulied hippies, incense, and that new electronics smell that I think came off the many racks of organically dyed fabrics.

The Gun Show odor was a combination of burnt cordite, stale cigarette smoke, and a special variety of body odor that only wafts off a man who wears suspenders over a yellow T shirt and a camouflage, mesh-backed ball cap.
The vendors at the Psychic Fair were divided into two camps. In the center were silver haired women with faraway looks who provided palm readings, horoscopes, and massages that utilized many carefully placed crystals. Around the perimeter were the sellers of ointments, little statues and clothing. Many articles of jewelry were also on offer. Amber necklaces, silver pentagrams, and tiaras made of herbs were all for sale at rather steep prices.

The vendors at the Gun Show were almost entirely in the business of selling weapons. There was one booth run by the NRA and another manned by the John Birch Society, but all other spaces were occupied with people selling guns and related accessories. I saw all varieties of ammunition, rifles, pistols, (including the cop-killer FN Five seveN) and even some ninja throwing stars. Like the psychics, gun people like a little jewelry but all of the necklaces and rings for sale were of the rather uninspired Cross/Flag/Eagle variety.

There was a booth at the Psychic Fair where a woman was extolling the benefits of a vitamin enriched body creme to a small but enchanted group of older women.
More adept at carnival barker showmanship, the Gun Show had a man who drew a large crowd of onlookers with his gun cleaner spray. He proved its efficacy by spraying it into a styrofoam cup full of water, the bottom of which promptly fell out. Oooooh, Aaaaaah...

I had the pleasure of dealing with one vendor at the Psychic Fair who took pictures of people's auras.

At the prompting of my companions (who were also kind enough to pay for it) I had a picture of my aura taken. The method of Aura photography is a bit un-magical though. You put your hand on a hand-shaped sensor, and it measures the heat and moisture of your skin. The degree of warmth and moistness of your hand is rendered in color and superimposed over your photo. You can kind of see a hand outline over my face on the picture below.

At the gun show, something far less enchanting than aura photography occupied the John Birch Society booth. The man called out as I passed "you ever heard of the European Union?" I answered in the affirmative and saw surprise on his face. Apparently, he was not used to this response. According to him, Americans are going to give up their national sovereignty like European countries did when the FTAA treaty is passed. He warned that hordes of Mexicans will overrun us. He urged me to buy a copy of his magazine so that I would be better prepared to fight them. I declined.
These two spectacles of consumerism are more alike than different. As such, I would like to see some combination Psychic/Gun shows. Brass knuckles and hollow-points would be interspersed amongst birthstone amulets. Sellers of ankle holsters could share table space with the woman who pushes organic dream-catchers. Most important would be to get the John Birch guy to have a photo of his aura taken. I bet he's a yellow/pink.

Augusta's a Great Place to Lose a Limb

2006-03-03T20:48:00.007-05:00

I didn't lie exactly. I may very well write a book someday about an Iraq war vet who meets his wife while being fitted for a prosthetic limb. True or not, the well-dressed folks at Augusta Prosthetics were interested when I pitched them this hypothetical book and agreed to help me research it. Skip, the boss, was very excited to help me understand the wonderful world of plastic arms and legs. "Hey man, check this out. This model got a hydraulic in it! You know how you'll be runnin' and all that weight lands on your heel? Well, we got a special unit that locks up the knee so it doesn't buckle."

I noticed that amongst the numerous caucasian colored arms and legs, there were some with a darker tint.

I asked Skip if they used color swatches to match the limb to the person. He furrowed his brow, crossed his arms for a moment, and then answered a question, which I hadn't asked, about the advantages of plastics and resins over wood. "You wanna talk about the olden days! Look at those two in the corner there. Solid wood, all carved by hand by my father, may he rest in peace."

Though finely crafted, they were quite heavy. I had to use two hands to pick one up and couldn't imagine trying to lug that thing around on a leg stump.

So far it was all legs and I wanted to see some robot substitutes for upper extremities, so Randy, Skip's assistant and good friend, showed me the "Speed Hand".

Randy took the disembodied hand out of a box and explained how "The older ones would crush stuff that you tried to pick up, like beer cans, you know? But this model's got a sensor in it so it knows when to stop closin'." Randy then remembered that he had some video of a patient using it.

A 22 year old power company employee had been so badly electrocuted on the job that he lost one arm and everything below the waist. (Yeah, that too.) This guy was seriously messed up. The video showed him in a prosthetic torso and arm assembly to which the speed hand was attached. I could see his neck move a little bit when he contracted the pectoral muscles that controlled the prosthesis, but the hand did seem to move on its own.

I was curious about the volume of artificial arms and legs that were being made and sold. I have seen people with fake limbs only a few dozen times in my life, but judging by the sales of this company and the existence of three others in Augusta, it would seem that every fifth person you see in the street is sporting a robotic extremity. I asked if the nearby Army Medical Center at Ft Gordon, was a big client, but Skip said not. Limbs lost by disease or accident account for the majority of his business.

The Return of ODB

2006-02-18T09:25:00.001-05:00

According to Tibetan astrologers, Old Dirty Bastard's soul has been reincarnated in the body of a beautiful newborn baby girl. Sweet little Ashley, as her parents call her, is the daughter of Kevin and Tanya Stoker of Columbia, South Carolina.

Dzigar Kongtrul is a Tibetan monk who has spent years mapping the reincarnation of great thinkers and sages like Old Dirty Bastard. He maintains that, "by studying the heavens on the day of Mr. Bastard's passing, we can see the path of his energy from the floor of the studio where he overdosed to the hospital where, at the same moment, little Ashley was being born."

ODB's reincarnation in Ashley was confirmed when the Tibetan monk showed Ashley an assortment of personal effects, one of which was actually owned by the man with the moniker "Big Baby Jesus". Dzigar explained that, "when Ashley reached her tiny hand towards the bullet-proof vest, I knew we had found the earthly manifestation of that noble prince."

Ashley's father, Kevin Stoker, expressed some ambivalence about his beautiful baby daughter being a vessel for the soul of loud, drug-addled rapper. "Umm... I never really listened to his work, but I don't think that rap stuff is really music, its just a lot of talkin'. "

To allay the new father's fears, Dzigar said, "She may seem sweet and innocent now, but as she grows up she will become much dirtier. You may rely on it."

2006-02-18T07:12:00.000-05:00

News Flash: Climbing mount Everest should be safe and fun, like a trip to the dentist.
Instead, it is dangerous and expensive, like a blowjob from a crack-whore...

News flash: Qaddafi's "laugh lines" are actually the result of years of screaming at people.

Justice League meets Arab League

2006-02-11T10:33:00.001-05:00

The Justice League announced today that the first of a series of meetings with the Arab League had not gone well and accomplished little.

Despite a relaxation of Justice League dress code to allow female members to cover their arms and legs out of respect for the sensibilities of the Arab representatives, the middle eastern guests expressed displeasure with the extent to which spandex was used for this purpose. The dress code issues were just a taste of what was to come. Later, Wonder Woman and the gentleman from Syria nearly came to blows over her claim to an "invisible aircraft".

The Syrian delegate stated: "She's clearly delusional, and when I hinted to my staff that perhaps the aircraft was a metaphor for something, she made threats against me involving the tying up of my person with an 'invisible rope' which is very offensive to someone from my culture."

Wonder Woman claimed that, in retaliation, the Syrian gentleman "wished my bedclothes would become infested with the fleas of a thousand camels. What the fuck is that?"

After the Flash and Aquaman subdued a raving Wonder Woman, Superman attempted to smooth things over by telling an oft-repeated anecdote. "You know what's great about you Arabs? Sand. You guys got tons of that stuff. I remember the time Darkseid was going to vaporize Asia with his giant space laser. I was able to fuse a mirror together using my heat vision and all that sand you guys got and I reflected the beam away from the earth."

At this point the gentleman from Saudi Arabia spoke up. "Oh yes, besides oil, sand is one of our largest exports. However my government frequently recalls the incident of which you speak with some regret and anger." Astonished, Superman replied, "With anger? But I saved Mecca sir, I did it to preserve your (ahem) remarkable culture."

Not allowing the conversation to stray from his aim, the Saudi delegate said, "Of course you saved Mecca, but Allah had written that that would happen, so you don't really deserve any thanks for fulfilling your destiny. You do, however, deserve this." At which point the gentleman of Saudi Arabia handed the gentleman of steel a pile of stapled papers.

"Ali Laden Construction Enterprises?!" Superman exclaimed. "What the hell is this?"

The Saudi delegate explained. "Why the gentleman whose sand you took of course. He has graciously agreed to charge you only the wholesale price because of your reputation as a great humanitarian."

"Okay" said Superman "I'll pay for the goddamn sand, but if you ever need another favor, go ask the Legion of Doom." At this point it was clear to all concerned that the meeting of the two Leagues had descended into petty bickering. This had to do with the bill for the sand of course, but also at fault was the Justice League members' truly heroic intake of cocktails.

The bright side was a display of unity on the part of an Arab League so famous for squabbling and in-fighting. To quote the Jordanian delegate, " We all believe that Superman should pay for the sand, and may Allah cause his loins to produce no fruit if he does not."

Appliances for the 21st Century

2006-02-10T20:24:00.004-05:00

In the future, appliances will be made of genetically engineered biomechanical parts. Your diswasher, for instance, will use a giant tongue to clean your dishes. Water and electricity will be saved because the tongue will derive nourishment from the bit of mashed potatoes that you didn't eat and will require only enough water to keep the tongue alive and moist. These biomechanical parts, however, will be subject to the same fate as all living and mechanical things. They will get old and die/break. The solution to such obsolescence though, will be different than simply replacing the appliance as we do now.

The appliances will be technically alive in some ways, so it will be possible to mate appliances with each other and produce working offspring. Your stove, for example, will reach adulthood and be mated to a friend's stove. Your stove will become pregnant with a baby stove. The baby stove will be raised to replace its parent and can even be an improvement over the old model.

Traits, both good and bad, will be inherited from the parent appliances and mates will be chosen with this in mind. Also, improvements can also be made during the appliance's childhood. Teaching your newborn air conditioner to tell time, for example, will insure a clock display in the mature model.

An industry of appliance "studs" will also emerge. Efficient, hard-working, and long-lasting appliances (like my microwave oven that was purchased in 1985 and still works perfectly) will be available to impregnate someone else's lesser model for a fee. This will result in an improvement in the offspring of the stud appliance's customer.

Modern Materialist Bride

2006-02-10T19:23:00.000-05:00

Napkin holder nesting on a yellow pages scale

Like "People" magazine but with your picture pasted over every celebrity

Frilly white lace love

Ecstatic anxiety over biggest/most special/best day of your young life

A lifetime of deserts

Promises of bridal bliss (man of dreams not included)

Emotional masturbation fantasy of thrilling domesticity

Fun Facts About God

2006-02-09T18:24:00.000-05:00

God can't see you at night.

If you wear a hat, God can't read your mind.

If you die in a place that is predominantly occupied by non-christians, your soul will not be admitted to heaven.

For everyday aches and pains, God takes regular old aspirin.

After a car accident, God makes sure that the insurance company assigns fault to the owner of the car that doesn't display a Christian bumper sticker.

If you lust after a woman other than your wife, God will give a horrible disease to that woman or your wife.

People in the jungle who haven't heard of Jesus will go to pet animal heaven when they die.

"The Constant Gardener" Conspiracy

2006-02-05T16:16:00.000-05:00

I had heard good things about "The Constant Gardener". I tried for 2 or 3 months to rent a copy from the local Movie Gallery store, but everytime I looked all 12 copies of the dvd were rented out. I even asked an employee if there were some behind the counter that had been returned but not restocked. I did all this to no avail. Finally, fed up with Movie Gallery's inability to provide a copy, I went to the local Blockbuster, but met with empty shelves where 12 copies of the movie should have been. While "The Constant Gardener" is a good movie that was liked by critics, it is in no way the kind of movie that video stores can't keep in stock because it is so popular.

I am a suspicious and paranoid man by nature, so I arrived at the conclusion that someone was checking out all copies of "The Constant Gardener" in Augusta so as to keep them out of the public's hands. Why would someone do this?

Those who have seen the movie know that it deals with issues surrounding a pharmeceutical company's illegal testing of a drug on impoverished Africans. Many of them die and are secreted away to a mass grave outside of town. The company's rationale is that fixing the drug in the lab would be more expensive than covert tests on humans.

Augusta, Georgia is home to the Army base where I work as well as the Medical College of Georgia. MCG is Georgia's only public medical school. It derives only 11% of its donated income from alumni, so the rest comes from government grants and (wait for it....) pharmeceutical companies using MCG's facilities to develop and test new drugs. Eli Lilly is one such company with history of doing business with MCG, and as we will see, their tests have not always gone well.

In 1997 two MCG employees were indicted for, among other things, bribing another employee to hide a suicide that was the result of trials of Eli Lilly's new schizophrenia drug, olanzapine.

"A bribery count in the indictment alleges that Borison and Diamond paid an undisclosed sum to an MCG employee in exchange for her not filing a complaint regarding a patient suicide that occurred during a clinical study of olanzapine. A spokesperson for Eli Lilly and Co., the drug's manufacturer, said that despite the allegations of financial misfeasance against Borison and Diamond, they are confident that none of the data provided was compromised in any way. Following the pair's resignation from MCG, Lilly arranged for new principal investigators to take over ongoing trials." (Psychiatric Times April 1997 Vol. XIV Issue 4.)

It is my theory that one or many of these companies, possibly in cooperation with MCG, have arranged for "The Constant Gardener" to be unavailable to the local population so as to avoid any negative publicity or public outcry because of the tests done by them on local people. TV and movies are the way many are made aware of issues such as this and to deliberately deny people access to such media is wrong. I will continue to look for copies of the movie, but i believe it is being deliberately withheld.

Traffiking in Georgia

2006-02-01T17:09:00.000-05:00

Bitching about stuff on your blog is so cliche'...

So here goes.
I believe the drivers in Georgia are unique. They approach various traffic control devices with a perspective I don't have. To a Georgian, a green light means: hit your brakes as you go underneath it. An on-ramp to the interstate means: treat the YIELD sign as if it said STOP. A blind spot is just that. Don't bother turning your head before changing lanes. You wouldn't be able to see that car next to you even if you looked for it.

Another difference in driving characteristics that leads this native New Yorker to cry tears of frustration is the lackadaisical attitude Georgians have toward stoplights (a column of cars might stretch back 50 deep because of this). When the light turns green, the foremost driver must count to 3 before accelerating. The driver behind him must commence his count to 3 as soon as the driver in front of him pulls away. The result is often that only 4 or 5 cars get through a green light, but not to worry, that time you spend sitting there will give you an opportunity to closely examine the bumper stickers on the car in front of you. The primary purpose of these stickers is to alert you to the driver's preference in handguns and churches. Georgia has an abundance of both.

If one wanted make a sweeping generalization (my specialty), one could say that everything in Georgia is like everything anywhere else, but inferior. The food, for example, is standard food, except here they deep fry it in pork fat and cover it with cheese before serving it. I find companies that add "A Southern Company" to their title very amusing. To me and some others "southern" means drunk, racist and quick to anger.

I recognize that not all people from this part of the country are drunk, racist etc, and I have met some genuinely good, enlightened people here. I make these assertions because I am pretty sure no Georgian will read this blog, but do correct me if I'm wrong.

The Audience

2006-01-22T18:27:00.000-05:00

"flip"
I hate what this viagra is doing to your shoulders, you used to stand up so straight.

"flip"
You just want to be able to say "I'm screwing a model!"

"flip"
Not available in stores

"flip"
...the most powerful handgun in the world...

The Audience is best visualized as a vicious, lazy, profoundly ignorant, perpetually hungry organism craving the warm gut flesh of the annointed. Personally, I like to imagine something about the size of a baby hippo the color of a week old boiled potato that lives by itself in the dark in a double wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It's covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth, no genitals and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channel on a universal remote or by voting in presidential elections.

A New Car for Johnny

2006-01-22T18:18:00.000-05:00

This photo is pretty much exactly what my car looks like, minus the golden rims. The link tells all the specs (0-60 in 5.5). This thing is a blast to drive. It seems to go however fast you want it to and throws you back in the seat every time (if you want, and I want) The interior seems like your standard Japanese mid range sedan stuff. The only addition is a turbo gauge on the steering column.

The flipside of this recent purchase is that the little Beemer that took me cross country is up for sale. I feel a slight twinge of remorse when I think about getting rid of her, but then I drive the Subie and those thoughts vanish.

New Diamond Age

2006-01-22T10:42:00.000-05:00

This is a fascinating article about the advances made in artificial diamond cultivation. The real loser in this is DeBeers, whose enormous stockpiles of diamonds will no longer be sold in a trickle at a huge profit. The testing equipment for verifying whether a diamond is natural or not is very expensive and besides that, it assumes that people want a natural diamond. There is plenty of market for cubic zirconia in America's trailer parks and cultivated diamonds would seem to be better just by merit of being real diamonds. Let DeBeers die the death of a thousand cuts, its only fitting for a company with it's spotty record as regards conflict diamonds and the like.

There are a couple of sites that offer diamonds and other stones that were created in a lab for a very low price. For example, a 100 carat peridot is only 26 bucks.

Marsh Jewelers

Sleep System Banking

2006-01-21T22:32:00.002-05:00

Financial institutions will begin requiring clients and applicants for loans to disclose an additional item of information for verification of identity: the "sleep number".

"The purpose of requiring social security numbers, names, and addresses is to verify exactly who is applying for a loan or whatever and the bank can accurately assess the risk involved in lending money to that individual." So said Todd Brant, an accountant with Bank of America. "However" he went on, "with the rise of identity theft, even more data are required to determine that a person is who they say they are."

The "sleep number" refers to the calibration number that luxury mattress owners select for their prefered firmness. For many owners their sleep number is closely tied to their identity. Some go so far as to mention it in introductions. "Hi, I'm Marty, sleep number 43."

Some consumer groups are worried about financial institutions requiring the provision of a sleep number. They have objected on the basis that not everyone owns, or can afford to own, a luxury mattress. Mr Brant counters that, "As a lending institution, we prefer to lend money to people who are already wealthy and probably won't default on a loan. In addition to identification, a sleep system number tells us that a person is well off enough to minimize that risk. That is, that they aren't a single mother or a minority or something."

The Silent Victims of America's Obesity Crisis

2006-01-21T21:59:00.000-05:00

As Americans get fatter, our nation faces difficult new problems with the physical and mental health of obese people. There are non-medicall side effects however, and first amongst them is the silently suffering toilet.

Which household appliance do you feel the strongest connection with? Is it the oven? The provider of sustanence? or maybe the hot water heater that lets you take a piping hot shower every day.

The toilet, however, is the only appliance with which interaction is frequent, unavoidable, and very, very intimate. For the most part, the toilet is only too happy to dispose of your liquid and solid wastes, usually without objection. But in a nation of people who can't see their genitals when they look down, toilets are put under increasing physical stress. In some cases, the porcelain may crack after years of bearing too much weight. In others, the violent shifting of immense weight on the toilet will cause it to strip the bolts that hold it to the floor and the toilet (along with its occupant) will topple over completely.

Next time you think about having a second helping, pause and consider the effect it could have on your long suffering potty.

What is Geography?

2006-01-21T21:47:00.000-05:00

"Mere placenames are not geography. To know by heart a whole gazeteer full of them would not, in itself, constitute anyone a geographer. Geography has higher aims than this: it seeks to classify phenomena (alike of the natural and of the political world insofar as it treats the latter) to compare, to generalize, to ascend from effects to causes and in doing so to trace out the great laws of nature and to mark their influence upon man. In a word, Geography is Science, a thing not of mere names, but of argument and reason, of cause and effect."

William Hughes - 1863

Metaprogramming My Biocomputer

2006-01-21T19:44:00.000-05:00

To wit: there is hardly a electric impulse in the universe that is not capable of a shiny new Reagan bonus. The ability to fly down stairs is essential, but who cares if that antioxidant fruit punch is runny and crusty?

"Flacex" in our Children's Food?

2006-01-21T18:53:00.000-05:00

Pfizer's recent announcement to aggressively market it's new drug "Flacex" has been met with some criticism. Human rights groups are already calling for a ban on the drug that promises to cure users of penile erections permanently. Dikembe Johnson, a lawyer with Human Rights watch, stated in a press conference that: "The medical need for this drug is already dubious. GOP senators have no right to subject our nation's schoolchildren to its effects even if it has been shown to reduce teen pregnancy." In opposition to the backlash, the proponents of a plan to mix "Flacex" into all school lunches say that when taken every day, Flacex is 98% effective in preventing erections in middle and high school male student populations. "When there isn't an erection, there isn't sex." says Linda Boynsa, chairwoman of the Mothers against Mothers Without Husbands. "We can all agree that teenagers shouldn't ever be having sex right? So when will the government stop all this dilly dallying and approve the Flacex program in our schools?"
Some people, however, are still uncomfortable with the idea of drugging school lunches. It seems a little too close to dystopian movies like THX 1138 and 1984. Linda counters that, "I don't know you meant with those letters and numbers you just said, but sex outside of marraige is morally wrong and I know that if it had been a problem in the days of our founding fathers there would be a law in the constitution against it."