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  May 2008
 
The Astonished Head Tee! Buttons, Small and Bigger! Chomskybat Magnet! Proloxil T-shirts and Mugs! 
Ba-Bow Limerence (Falls In Waves) 
Astonished Head: The Ad Miserable Ovoid Creature 
Current Crygender The Hacker Crackdown The Ethics of Ambiguity The New Goddess In the Queue Love and Limerence A General Theory of Love Labyrinth of Desire The Second Sex Decoding Gender in Science Fiction Male Bodies, Women's Souls 
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July 02, 2003
Many people haven't asked about the music in the two Flash bits. But credit where credit is due: Astonished Head: The Ad: "My Blue Heaven," Juan Garcia Esquivel (who died just last January) Miserable Ovoid Creature: "Poor Me," Charlie Patton (1934); and "Mucha Muchacha," Juan Garcia Esquivel
Holy crap! Over the past few days, a few sites have linked to Miserable Ovoid Creature...apparently, it's got international appeal. People, they like the multimedia! From around 150-200 hits a day, I've bumped up to 320 and then to 691, close to the all-time high when I got Vodkapunched last year. So, thanks to: Xeron, in Spanish And, as always, most grateful thanks to the regulars who keep visiting even when I have nothing to say and/or am insane (you know who you are!) July 03, 2003
Yikes. 1,882 hits yesterday--mostly from the Netherlands. It's so very odd...I mean, why there? I wish I could read Dutch. Then I could decipher comments like, "Wat een bullshit, geweldig!" Ahh, the holiday. I've got a five-day stretch of at-homeness ahead, which will involve Margaritas and so forth. Sweeet. The Fourth is not a tradition for me, not really. I went to see the Macy's Fireworks exactly once while I lived in the city, and swore that I would never again be packed into a sweltering mass of humanity on highway offramps watching explosions. I've kept to that vow. However, the roof of my apartment building in Queens did offer a fair-to-middling view of the show, in that out-of-sync flash..............boom kind of way. Now, I've got a new-to-me house with a deck and some plastic deck furniture. I don't even know if there are fireworks in my new town. I've got a friend coming in from the city and some other friends stopping by from North Jersey and we'll sort it all out as necessary. There may or may not be a grill; we don't own one yet. It's all new. All good! July 04, 2003
Every American has read this, at one point or another. We all manage to get exposed to these words to a greater or lesser degree. How well we remember them depends, perhaps, on how interested we were in history when this document first came our way. It is this declaration's civilized, reasonable statement of principle, and its firm announcement of the objectionable facts of oppression, that continues to define Americans not by blood or soil, but by an interconnected set of ideals that form a philosophy of life and governance. It is here that who we are as a people is spelled out, premise by premise. And it is the deliberate, methodical intent displayed here that sets these words and sentences apart and makes them powerful. Lately, I've been remembering George Carlin's flip phrase: "America was founded by slaveowners who wanted to be free." It's been annoying me, because it's a cynic's dig at men who had a better grasp of language and of meaning than he does. Is there irony in the circumstances of this nation's founding? Certainly. But ideals are, by definition, goals to be reached. Putting them into practice requires commitment. It also requires a certain kind of faith, belief that humanity can better itself through intention and reason. Those who point out obvious instances American of hypocrisy throughout our history, as though they have made some brilliant observation, are missing the point entirely. Imperfection and failure are part of human nature. But it is the continual reference to the standards described here and in the Constitution that make this nation what it is. Today, on this day, read these words again. All of them. It won't take long. --- IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776. The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world. He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends. We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor. --- Georgia: North Carolina: South Carolina: Massachusetts: Maryland: Virginia: Pennsylvania: Delaware: New York: New Jersey: New Hampshire: Massachusetts: Rhode Island: Connecticut: New Hampshire: July 07, 2003
So, of course, within days of writing this, what should show up at my door in the guise of a housewarming gift? The. Devil's. Drink. A big blue bottle of Bombay, in fact. So, of course, much debauchery ensued, and the demon likker got ahold of me good. I don't remember much about Saturday, but I think there was a social gathering involved. Of course there was a social gathering involved. That's how the Devil's Drink works. As far as I know no lampshades were donned. But I have dim memories of a goat and some kind of dance involving palm kernel oil. The other wonderful thing about the Drink is its lovely interactions with SSRIs of various stripes. Instant return of prior symptoms. Fabulous! So all day today I was beset with my old friend, anxiety. All of which is my own fault, of course. All talk of deeemons and devils aside, my compulsions are psychological, hatched in the complex webs of my own battered psyche and, were I a better man, I would resist them with Victorian vigor...which is to say, my drunkenness would be a private affair, except for maybe in the brothels I'd visit every other weekend. In addition, I'd have syphilis and a snuff habit. But never mind that! Tomorrow is another day, full of more opportunities to succumb to mental mischief. July 08, 2003
According to the Big Book Of Words, "hypocrisy" is The act or practice of a hypocrite; a feigning to be what one is not, or to feel what one does not feel; a dissimulation, or a concealment of one's real character, disposition, or motives; especially, the assuming of false appearance of virtue or religion; a simulation of goodness. Although derived originally from the Ionic Greek hupokrisis, meaning simply a "reply or answer," it is the the later Attic Greek usage that I find most provocative. In Attic hupokrisis primarily indicated the playing of a part, as on a stage, or, literally, an "outward showing;" it was also used to indicate an orator's "delivery." It wasn't until the New Testament, written in Koine Greek, that the word was metaphorically used in its modern derogatory sense (as in Matthew 23:28). It's interesting to me that this word has its roots in performance, for so much of our modern information culture is bound up in stagecraft and the manipulation of perception. A further consequence of that information culture--especially for public personas--is that past pronouncements and activities can and often do become part of the overall searchable "soup" of facts and factoids. This means that it is becoming easier and easier for people to compare today's performance with yesterday's, and to make public accusations of hypocrisy, particularly with regard to the "concealment of one's real character, disposition, or motives" and "the false appearance of virtue." I've been thinking about this because of my own apparently hypocritical stance as the Paxil-popping creator of satirical anti-depressant advertisements. It's easy to observe, from my various writings and my cartoon, that my relationship with psychiatric pharmaceuticals is ambivalent at best. I choose to call it a "complexity" or a "contradiction," but the case for hypocrisy may seem to be easily made. I'm also thinking about hypocrisy because of Amiri Baraka (née Leroi Jones), who recently came up in an inebriated conversation I was trying to have with a poet friend of mine. Baraka, you may recall, wrote "Somebody Blew Up America" [full text here] shortly after the September 11 attacks. He was Poet Laureate of New Jersey at the time, and the work caused controversy because of just a few lines: Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed Who told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers To stay home that day Why did Sharon stay away? I find Baraka to be well-soaked in the post-modern idea that "truth" is just a word, subjective at best. This has furnished his mind with a somewhat tweaked idea of what Keats and Dubois meant when they called for poets to bring forth Truth and Beauty. Although he claimed that subsequent calls for his resignation were "an attempt to repress and stigmatize independent thinkers everywhere," his credulous repetition of this particular conspiracy theory--and his repetition of many others--is based on bits and pieces of information gleaned from the Internet, most of which, apparently, he couldn't source. Unfortunately for him, the independence of one's thinking is not actually measured by the outrage it causes in the establishment, which is an idea often held by veterans of the various 60s "revolutions." The entire stink was given fuel and vigorous fanning by the Anti-Defamation League, which obscured some of the more important issues raised in Baraka's work by wrenching a few lines out of their context. The poem is, in fact, a mostly consistent litany of complaints against those in power, from a perspective typical of the far left (Baraka is a self-described "Third World Marxist"). True to post-modern academic form, Baraka is not necessarily peeved about skin color per se (witness his condemnation of the blacks in the White House), but about the structures of power that oppress the poor and the lower classes world wide, most of whom happen to be non-white. His poem is an attack, he says, on "Imperialism, National Oppression, Monopoly Capitalism, Racism, Anti-Semitism." Thus, he can quite un-self consciously pick and choose the information tidbits from the media and Internet soups that support his assertion I WAS NOT SAYING ISRAEL WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE ATTACK, BUT THAT THEY KNEW AND OUR OWN COUNTERFEIT PRESIDENT DID TOO! The poem is about hypocrisy--or, at least, it's intended to be. How can white America start a War on Terrorism when power-elite whites wiped out Indians, Jews, blacks, Vietnamese, and any other fashionably oppressed ethnicity you might care to name? How can the elites claim moral cause when they "invented AIDS," doped up the Chinese, and killed Lincoln, Kennedy, and every important black leader ever? Clarence Thomas, Condoleeza Rice, and Colin Powell are all traitors--house Negroes. And on and on. There is, in fact, nothing in this poem that truly contradicts Baraka's previous assertions that blacks can't make their own world until "the white man is dead" ["Black People," 1967] and that white people "are a cancer" who can best help black people by dying [The Autobiography of Leroi Jones, 1984]--this, from a man who now loudly objects to Israeli Chief of Staff Moshe Ya’alon's description of the Palestinians as a “cancerous manifestation." I say there is nothing here that "truly contradicts" his prior racist assertions because Baraka, like most people, has grown and changed as he's gotten older. Simply pointing out that he advocated the death of white folks in 1967 and now claims to write against racism, and crying hypocrite! is to avoid looking at another possibility; namely, that what Baraka called "white people" in 1967 has evolved in his mind into "power elites." His outrage is the same, but perhaps he has come to realize that it is not just the melanin content of one's skin that makes one an oppressor, but rather the ideas one holds and the actions one takes as a result of those ideas. His evolution as a writer is roughly divided into a "Beat" period, a "Black Nationalist" period, and a "Third World Marxist" period, and his ideas about who the oppressors of the world are have changed throughout each of them. In the preface to The Baraka Reader he writes My writing reflects my own growth and expansion, and at the same time the society in which I have existed throughout this confrontation. I don't doubt his sincerity because, frankly, he'd have to be a blithering idiot not to see the glaring contradiction between calling for white blood and claiming to be against racism, and as a thinking person the way that he has chosen to resolve that contradiction is to identify what offended him about the "white oppressor" and to attempt, to some degree, to remove race from that quality. He fails to do so in this work--these days, far more Africans are being killed by other Africans, in the most brutal ways, than are being killed by whites; and far more Arabs were killed by other Arabs than were ever killed by Israelis. But I suspect that he would still have difficulty placing those murdering Arabs and Africans among the power-elites. It's not really my intention to engage in a line-by-line critique of this particular work, or to defend the Anti-Defamation League's shrill accusations, or to point out that the man who refused to "apologize to Evil" and who has serious problems with the white capitalist government establishment was happy to take an official, paid position with that government (New Jersey Governor McGreevey saw to it that Baraka never got that $10,000, but Baraka certainly didn't know that would happen when he signed up). I won't question whether a person ought to be able to "grow and expand" at the taxpayer's expense. My simple point is that contradiction is sometimes an indication of complexity. But very often, I read what passes for critique out there among the juicy fact-bits and the bobbing factoid-dumplings: so-and-so said this, but look: five years ago he said the opposite! There was a recent spate of this as various Google-savvy bloggers dredged up a nice gooey haul of past quotes from prominent Democrats, all calling for action against Sadaam Hussein becuase of his WMD programs. And these very Democrats are now yelling for an investigation into the Bush administration, for attacking Hussein because of these "purported" WMDs! Imagine that. No, my point is: so what? Merely throwing up a pair of snipped quotes and going ta-daa! as though something requiring thought or insight has been accomplished is unimpressive at best. The information soup is rich, and full of crap. Such a presentation of mere contradiction is tantamount to yelling, hypocrite! and, as I have hopefully shown, hypocrisy is an issue of character, not of the validity of ideas or the content of a given argument. If your goal is to edge closer to the truth, yelling hypocrite! is an ad hominem attack and a logical fallacy. The exposure of contradiction, if treated with a Socratic sensibility, is an occasion for satisfaction, because it indicates progress in an argument: here are two possibilities, both of which cannot be true at the same time. Therefore, we are on the cusp of eliminating an error in our thinking. It is not the end of the process, merely one step in it. Unfortunately, proper execution of the Socratic method requires a "congenial soul;" that is, one who is amenable to the process. It can't be done alone, or with someone whose goals are not your own. It can't be done via the Internet unless you're actually exchanging e-mails with the party in question. And it most certainly can't be done by a poet chanting words before crowds that, by and large, already agree with him. Thus, when Baraka's spoken words--and "Someone Blew Up America" is meant to be heard, not read--rattle off rhythmic denunciations of all the contradictions that litter American history in particular and Western history in general, my final response is: so what? I used to piss in my pants, but I don't anymore. Oh, the contradiction of my childhood as compared to my adult nature! All of these things are obvious. Yes, Americans owned slaves. Yes, we are a racially divided culture. Yes, yes, yes! But cultures--being composed of and created by human beings--are rife with contradictions. And cultures--again, being composed of and created by human beings--grow and expand. Ask a lower-class black American whether he'd rather be poor here, or poor in Africa. Ask a Rwandan about racial tolerance. Ask a Jew living in France about anti-Semitism. Ask a Saudi woman about misogyny. Ask an Egyptian Christian about freedom of religion. Ask the millions of immigrants why they came to this racist, imperialist, capitalist hellhole of oppression and misery. The answers will illustrate the difference between the failure to live up to some Marxist, utopian ideal of human perfection, and the reality of what America is. So, in the Attic sense, Baraka is a hypocrite. He is an orator, delivering rhetoric. He is a player on a stage, as evidenced by his adoption of a black patois for his script. And though I question his virtue, and certainly reject his ideology, I can't in good conscience call him a hypocrite in the Biblical sense without applying that label to myself. July 10, 2003
To date, a little over 8,000 people have viewed the Miserable Ovoid 'toon. That just boggles my mind. Except, perhaps, for a comment in Dutch that contained the word "bullshit," comments on various discussion threads that I've sneaked into have been uniformly positive. Beats the hell out of self-produced chapbooks!
Back in 1995 I spent the summer in Princeton, acting in Much Ado About Nothing and The Real Inspector Hound. It was a dastardly hot summer that year, topping out at 102. I was sharing a third floor room at the theater company house with my girlfriend of the time, and all of the whirring fans we had running just made us cook faster and dry out, like beef jerky. So the cast spent a lot of time outside, or in the theater, which had air-conditioning. A popular spot was the plaza out in front of the International Studies building on the Princeton University campus, because it had a great big honkin' fountain in front of it, long and rectangular with a bit of tangled modern sculpture in the middle, over and through which water splashed and burbled. Most of the fountain was about two feet deep, and illuminated, so that it glowed blue and inviting in the stifling evenings. One night, as a group of us sat along the marble benches along one side, I saw a fellow in a business suit approach the far edge of the fountain. He carefully stepped in, one leather-shoed foot at a time. He sat on the edge of the fountain for a moment, his dark pants swirling in the water, and then lowered himself the rest of the way in, up to his neck, stretching his legs out. His tie floated atop the water, pointing straight out from his chin, undulating like a very flat, striped sea snake. I nudged whoever was next to me and pointed him out, just to confirm that I was, in fact, seeing what I was seeing. I decided that I simply had to know why this fellow had just dunked his business-suited self into the fountain. I got up from the bench and walked over to him, but by the time I got around to his side of the fountain he had already emerged soaking from the water, and headed rapidly off into the shadows of the modern-columned facade of the International Relations building, leaving a trail of sopping shoe prints. I decided against pursuit, reasoning--quite logically, I felt--that there was every possibility that he was insane. Besides, it was too hot for a chase. Later that same night, an acquaintance from my old Boy Scout troop showed up on the plaza; I hadn't seen him in years. He was tripping on acid. So when he saw me from across the plaza, he shouted "Ian! Holy shit!" and ran in great circles around me going "Whooooa!" I told this wide-pupiled fellow the story of the Fountain Businessman. He couldn't figure it out, either. That evening has always stayed with me. I was freshly returned from Mexico, I was onstage, in a houseful of loopy actors I hardly knew, and I was 100 pounds thinner, to boot (it's amazing what amoebic dysentery will do for your waistline). It was a good time, a good time to be me. I should figure out a way to arrange the thirty-something equivalent of that summer in my life, now... For Nostalgia Corner, I'm Ian Wood...thanks for watching. Brought to you by a grant from: Allen's House of Figs and Viewers Like You July 14, 2003
See, here's the thing about gin (The. Devil's. Drink, you know). Alcohol is a poison--the Temperance Unions were right about that--but it's got a really long, shallow dose-response curve. Which means: sure, it'll kill you, but you've got to drink an insane amount before you die of alcohol toxicity, and it would help if you've been locked in the trunk of a car and are the sort of person who really needs to belong to a fraternity. This is in contrast to something like nicotine, which will kill you dead at 40-60mg, or the venom of the Australian taipan snake, a mere 2.3mg of which will throw an average-sized man off the mortal coil and onto his ass right quick. Then there's Juniperus communis, the common juniper, the "berries" of which some twisted deviant decided to toss into the distillery along with a hodegpodge of other herbs, thus creating gin (he, in turn, got this idea from a demented Frenchman, Count de Morret, who developed juniper wine in the 15th century). Juniper "berries" are actually the cones of this particular species of evergreen, and in accordance with rumor they are indeed poisonous, but all you'll get from eating a bunch them is a raging case of diarrhea and a boot to the head for being an idiot. That being said I have found that gin, unlike the other clear spirits, produces a cold and camphor-like sensation in addition to its potent, head-muddling inebriative qualities. This is a uniquely deep, aromatic drunkenness which can lead to near-total anesthesia, tattoos, and sticking pins into your scalp. I, of course, have no tattoos. But you see my point. Or do you? This is actually supposed to be about plumbing. The future is, indeed, plastics. It certainly isn't lumpen, corroded, multi-ton lengths of cast iron. Once again, plans for turning Peapod Manor into, well, a manor have been somewhat delayed by the need to have bourgeois things like working toilets and the luxury of taking showers without standing ankle-deep in soapy effluvia. And so, we spent a couple of days this weekend with Ed the Plumber, who removed the aforementioned lumpen iron and replaced it with many lengths of shiny black ABS plastic pipe, all chemically welded together into a functional, properly-inclined arrangement. It is the Darth Vader of drain systems. During the course of this operation, the spirit of Bucky was ever-present, although--technically--the poor arrangement of the cast-iron drains was the fault of the original builder of the house (who, as I understand it, is 85 and lives the next town over...if he were, say, 75, I'd find him and berate him). But it was Bucky who elected to live for 20 years with a back-inclined tub drain--leading to the previously mentioned effluvia footbath--which led to a completely blocked roof vent, which was in turn the cause of the expensive problem alluded to here shortly after we moved in. During the course of spending time with Ed talking about plumbing and What's Wrong With Liberals and Why Bucky Needs A Beating, I happened to glance up into a sheltered nook in the basement beams. I saw the butt-end of a plastic soda bottle tucked away up there. So I pulled the plastic bottle down--and discovered a homemade bong. You know, the kind you make with the barrel of a Bic pen and a soda bottle, with a bit of brass plumbing if you've got it, or some artfully arranged tinfoil if you don't, all sealed up with electrical tape, and then eventually you realize that when you're pulling hard on it you're actually burning the plastic of the Bic and inhaling toxic gasses...? Maybe you don't know. Anyway, it was one of those. So, the list of Things Bucky Left Behind now includes: one porn tape ("Midnight Snatch," tucked away above the inside of the bathroom closet doorframe), a beer can and an empty pack of cigarettes (both found in the duct housing when I replaced the furnace filter), and one homemade bong. Not to mention the holes in the wall, the rotted floorboards, the shoddy roof repairs, the half-assed home improvement projects, and so forth. Which, I suppose, brings me back to The Devil's Drink. The day of the closing, we went to the house for the first time, with our freshly-mortgaged keys, and within half an hour a van from the local telephone company showed up. The repairman said that there was a problem with our lines, which we were very impressed by, because we hadn't even been in the house long enough to unpack a phone. The cause of the phone trouble? The "self-wired" lines in the house were a tangled, shorted-out web of telephone wire, speaker cable, and wet string. In the course of welcoming us to town, the telephone man told us a bit about the prior owners. "That guy," he said, "spilled more beer in a day than most people drink in a week." Uh-huh. As it turns out, that simple fact would explain alot about the state of Peapod Manor. I can just imagine...over the course of twenty years, so many projects were begun, and then the day just wore on...Eh...it's too hot today. Fortunately, Bucky is alive and well somewhere in Florida with his motorcycle. If he were dead, I'd be worrying about some Stephen King-style situation where I inexplicably quit my job and go to work as a heavy-equipment operator, then buy a Harley and start smoking Marlboros and leaving empty beer cans in the heating ducts. July 19, 2003
Kazoo Can you kazoo? No, wait, that's all wrong. Wait a tit... Kazoo Can you Kazoo? Cut! Ever have one of those days where nothing goes right? The sort of day where you start your car in the morning only to discover that some thug nitwit has mistaken your auto for that of the mob boss up the street, and--noticing the grinding engine and the oddly blinking digital dashboard clock--you get out just before it explodes in a cotton-ball puff of gasoline-dynamite flame and blackened Detroit steel? The sort of day where you brush yourself off and miss the next bus but catch the second, which is then commandeered by a cyborg robot from the future who takes all 65 passengers on a raging Bruckherimer-fest through downtown, finally running the bus off of a pier into the bay, where it sinks and then explodes, just after you struggle to the surface? The kind of day where you stagger onto the beach in shredded business-wear and catch a cab on the boardwalk, only to have the cabbie turn out to be a blackglass-eyed Rastafarian from the Nth-dimension who takes you a zany sparkling interstellar ride through universes full of jelly lifeforms and giant amoebas before dropping you off in London, an ocean away from where you started? The kind of day where you barely manage to catch the Conorde to back to LA to make your meeting only to have the supersonic 60s jet plunge flaming into a Paris vegetable market, leaving you oddly unscathed but quite shaken and very, very late? The kind of day where at that very moment aliens descend upon the Earth and pry back its tectonic plates to get at the juicy magma center, leaving you stranded eight miles up on a looming mountain that used to be France? The kind of day where Sherpas parachute from the sky and lead you back down using faster-than-light yaks but leave you stranded on the yurt-spotted plains of Outer Mongolia? The kind of day where you get taken in by slant-eyed herdsman but all they've got to eat is goat-jerky and comise (the famous alcoholic beverage made from fermented goat's milk)? No? Oh. Never mind then. July 21, 2003
As a Person of Rotundity, I am alternately amused and dismayed by the various theories, methods, fads and metabolically Machiavellian weight loss methods purveyed by our dysmorphic popular culture. A couple of recent articles over at TCS made me shake my head once more. The formula is simple, people: Total Caloric Intake > Total Caloric Expenditure = Weight Gain Decreasing caloric intake without increasing physical activity will result in temporary weight loss and a subsequently increased tendency towards weight gain. Increasing physical activity while maintaining current caloric intake or decreasing that intake will result in metabolic increase and weight reduction. It's a cultural pathology, I think: we want results without actually having to do anything. In the early 80s my father lost quite a lot of weight because his physician put him on thyroid medication, artifically revving up his metabolism. Short version: medication stopped, waistline expanded. Our pill-philic society loves the idea of a "skinny pill" the same way it loves the idea of a "happy pill." It suits our technological bent, in that a pill is a small, compact device that can be used to Improve Our Quality Of Life, like a microwave or an iPod or a kitchen sink margarita dispenser. Often, the Skinny Pill proves to be Bad. Fen-Phen--a combination of fenfluramine and dexfenfluramine--worked wonders, but tended to gunk up heart valves with thick, waxy crap, requiring cardiac valve-replacement in about one-quarter of those affected. The other technologically shiny methods are so-called "meal replacements" like Ensure, Slim-fast, and so forth. These are much better than Astronaut Ice Cream for sheer sci-fi cachet. Why eat a meal when you can have a "nutritionally complete" meal-in-a-can/bar/pouch? Mmm, satisfyin'! But they're not. Millions of years of human evolution were geared towards walking from place to place, running down our meals, and generally moving about much more than we do now. We have machines that move us thousands of miles without any physical effort on our part beyond the exertion of ripping open a package of peanuts and unscrewing the cap of a miniature wine bottle. We're supposed to be loping about on the plains or dragging sharp sticks through the dirt and poking at it with seed drills. The length of my belt, of course, is a testament to the notion that knowing and doing are not the same thing. But there was a time, before the city beat me into the asphalt, that I used the noblest of moving machines to haul my carcass from place to place. And now I'm on the verge of making regular two-wheeled forays into the countryside...soon as I get new cleats for my new bike shoes...provided that I'm sufficiently motivated... and the weather's nice... and... ooo... cheeseburger...
July 22, 2003
In '98 or '99--so long ago, when we were young and life was an open book--I bought a computer from these folks. Well, not these folks, exactly...as it turns out, the Texans that I bought my iDot from all leapt to their deaths from tall buildings during the .com crash, and iDot's assets were acquired by a California-based company called Medialand Systems, Inc. Or, as the website now states, they "acquired the remaining of iDOT computers, hoping to revitalize online business by integrating the expertise and experiences that Medialand has had over the years." Which doesn't instill a great deal of confidence. But then, the fact that the original iDot team shipped my computer with the wrong frickin' motherboard installed in it didn't exactly convince me of their Gatesian techno-savvy, either. But never mind that. It was a cheap computer, and--once tech support cottoned to the fact that Hey! That motherboard doesn't support Celeron chips! and swapped it for the right one--it ran fine. Until yesterday. The machine's long-suffering power supply, the fan of which ceased spinning last year, the hot components of which were thickly sheathed in gray-brown cobwebs of dust and cat fur, finally pushed its last electron, farted once, and then headed off to the great swap-meet in the sky. So, for now, I'm computerless, until my replacement power supply arrives. It should be four or five days to get the part and an hour to make the repairs...if that's the actual source of the problem. Until then, we'll be running on minimal life support and rations. No holodeck, necessary replicator use only, and we'll just have to hope that no one comes across us and tries to take advantage of us while we're adrift. You're a fine crew--the best in the fleet. And I know we'll come out of this-- Whoops. Bit of a delusion, there. Must be the Paxil.
July 23, 2003
Although first organized in 1865, the Engine 10 and Ladder 10 companies have been housed in Ten House since 1980 and 1984, respectively. The firehouse was nondescript. I barely noticed it before September 11...sometimes they'd go out on a call while I was getting lunch at the Food Exchange a few doors up. The engines would roll out, sirens wailing, and you have to notice that sort of thing, because it's loud and nearby and shiny-red. On September 11, they rolled out, doing their jobs, and never came back. The firehouse lost six firefighters that day. The oldest was 60 (and retired, to boot). The youngest was 26.
Like the Food Exchange, the Lemongrass Grill, Burger King, and the other occupants of the buildings along Liberty Street, Ten House was overwhelmed by debris, smoke and dust as the skyscrapers fell to earth a block away. Even after the temporary fences came down, and Ground Zero began its transformation from mass grave into a transportation hub, the firehouse remained hidden behind chainlinks shrouded with green fabric as workers completely rebuilt it. Last month, the Burger King at the corner of Liberty and Church re-opened, scrubbed clean of the orange crosses it bore from its use as a medical triage facility. But the firehouse remained hidden. Last week, the new facade became visible: modern brushed steel, the same hue as the Towers' aluminum, arranged in a series of tight, horizontal lines, with FDNY outlined in four-foot letters sunk into its surface. A few days later, the fences came down. This morning, as I walked along the South edge of Ground Zero, a shiny-red ladder truck was beeping and backing up along the pedestrian path that used to be a street for automobiles. I kept walking, until I realized what I was seeing: a fire truck, backing into Ten House. There were eight or nine firemen from various companies watching, and I asked on of them, "So--are you guys back in business?" "Not yet," he told me. "We're just testing out the ramp." He pointed to the new concrete skirt that fronted the twin garage doors of the firehouse. Across the street, a Port Authority police officer in a pickup truck on the other side of the high barriers around Ground Zero yelled, "Welcome back to the neighborhood, boys!" A few other people who had stopped to watch clapped as the truck eased its way into the firehouse and came to a stop. Yesterday, members of the 101st Airborne killed Uday and Qusay Hussein, eliminating a pair of sociopaths who subjected an entire people to their murderous pathologies. On cue, the usual pack of True Believers spewed forth their cynical denunciations, like irreparably scratched and skipping records. This morning, as I walked away from Ten House and its newly-sheltered ladder truck, I smiled the sort of genuine smile that feels as though the corners of your mouth are being gently tugged skyward by an upwelling of the soul. Because I know why Uday and Qusay are lying in American-made pine boxes somewhere, and it doesn't have anything to do with approval ratings or politics or oil. First and foremost, Uday and Qusay are dead because they were unrepentant mass murderers, and that's what's supposed to happen to such people in a normal society. But they're also dead because 19 Arab men, supported by people in positions of power throughout the Arab world, killed 3,000 Americans using the most potent weapons that they could get their hands on as individuals. They're dead because the Hussein regime demonstrably planned to manufacture the most potent weapons that it could as a state. They're dead because Iraq is not somehow isolated from the Arab culture that has presented the world with sanctified slaughter and theocratic fascism. They're dead because the Hussein regime in particular, and the Arab status quo in general, represents several future decades' worth of unacceptable risk to the world and to America. And, lastly, they're dead because America is worth defending, and American lives are worth protecting. Yes, I know why Uday and Qusay are dead, and there are good reasons for it. Can any of you cynics tell me why Sean Tallon is dead? Can any of you frothing Bush-haters tell me why Jeffrey Olsen is dead? Will a card-carrying loather of Western Civilization please tell me why Stephen Harrell is dead? Or Paul Pansini? Or Gregg Atlas? Or James Corrigan? Or, for that matter, any of these people? Anyone? I'm waiting. July 24, 2003
At a small victory, I read this: "Consider your country, Americans: a nation that commits political assassinations to get a better hand from a deck of playing cards. CNN No matter how despicable these brothers were, think of what you become if you rejoice at their deaths. And what the detestable leadership of our country has become, to conduct regime change by smart bomb, with no scruples, and with lie after lie to have their way, the ends justifying the means, with no hesitation about the cost to our souls." To which I replied: In WWII, Allied bombing raids over German cities killed 600,000 civilians and left over seven million people homeless. One particular raid conducted by the Royal Air Force--called "Operation Gomorrah"--dropped ten thousand tons of high explosive and incendiary bombs onto residential areas of Hamburg. The city was engulfed by mile-high flames, which generated winds so violent that they alone destroyed houses. When it was over, many thousands of German citizens had been roasted in their own fat, or cooked in the water from bursting boilers, or reduced to crumbling ash. That was the nature of industrial warfare in the 20th century: indiscriminate slaughter of civilians along with soldiers. America did it. Britain did it. So did Germany. That was how war was waged: break the hostile regime by breaking the entirety of the nation which hosted it. Today, we have weapons so precise that they can flatten a single gun emplacement in the courtyard of a hospital and leave the hospital fully intact. We broadcast instructions to enemy troops on how to surrender without getting killed. And we can pick off the military leaders of the regime, one at a time, while leaving the civilian population virtually unscathed. What have we become? Morally improved. Thanks for asking. July 25, 2003
Or rather, they will be when you order one: the Astonished Head Proloxil Tee. Let folks know that there is help for their miserable ovoidness. Front: "Are you a miserable ovoid creature?" w/ Proloxil logo. Back: "www.astonishedhead.com" with flying ovoid. Get yers today! Also available: Proloxil "Big Pharma" mugs. From the Astonished Headshop. (The couple o' bucks I make from each item will help pay for the bandwidth charges that over 12,000 views of the Miserable Ovoid cartoon have incurred this month!) July 28, 2003
"You dedicate all your talents, all your efforts. You're loyal to your employer, this case being the U.S. Navy, and what do you get in return? A kick in the you-know-what."
--Ana Angelet,
Puerto Rican Chapter,
American Federation of Government Employees
Color me Highly Amused. Apparently some Puerto Ricans, after their fellow citizens agitated long and hard to close the live-fire naval base at Vieques, are now upset that the Navy is pulling out of the island altogether. This will cost the Puerto Rican economy $300 million a year. Yeah, it's all about the Evil, Imperialist, Exploitative American Empire...until they start missing those sweet, sweet dollars. Good job, folks! You eliminated the largest employer on an island with a 50% unemployment rate.
Oh, this is good: Let's begin with [Michael Moore's] bold-faced lies. In an appearance on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" in March 2002, Mr. Moore announced that during the period that planes were grounded for two days after the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration allowed a Saudi jet to whisk away bin Laden family members over FBI objections. As Snopes.com, an Internet site devoted to tracking down urban legends, points out, the planes did pick up bin Laden family members--on Sept. 18 and 19, days after commercial flights had already begun flying again--and they did so only after the FBI had questioned the departing Saudis. At the college talk, I witnessed another stunner, when Mr. Moore announced--without so much as a blip on the polygraph line--that even though the media report that children in intact families are better off, "every study shows that's a big lie. Children of single mothers do better in life." Go read, and chortle. The piece begins to hit its stride with the above passage, followed by accounts of Moore's "lies of omission", his "artistic lies," his "insinuating lies," and his "lies of exaggeration." It builds to a nicely damning account of Moore's "moral stupidity," including: ..external threats by foreign terrorists? It just cannot be. "Many families have been devastated tonight. This is just not right," Mr. Moore wrote on Sept. 12, 2001, as the World Trade Center and the bodies of 3,000 lay in smoking ruins. "They did not deserve to die. If someone did this to get back at Bush, then they did so by killing thousands of people who DID NOT VOTE for him. Boston, New York, D.C., and the planes' destination of California--these were the places that voted AGAINST Bush." In Mr. Moore's Manichaean world, if Republicans alone had died on September 11, they would have had it coming. Now, that is what I mean when I say "frothing Bush-hater" and "loather of Western Civilization." Someone so wrapped up with deep, personal animosity, so devoted to hatred, that he or she is incapable of reason or ethical thought. Facts simply bounce off, never to be seen again. As far as memes go, Moore's brand of insensate, ideological sewage is of the utmost virulence. We'll have to send the jackboots after him, and lock him up in the Montana Gulag. Or maybe we should get the Cigarette-Smoking Man to put a bullet in his eyeball. Yes, I think that would be best. After all, we can't leave him free to make millions of dollars from purveying such dangerous ideas, now can we? I mean, he might publish best-selling books, or even win an Oscar. UPDATE: Noted Sensible Loon Steven Den Beste writes about being targeted by the frothers and the loathers and speculates about the causes of their failure to impact anyone outside of their special, select choir. July 29, 2003
Had meself a fine sunset bike ride this evening...not too long, half an hour, about six miles. Breaking in the new Cannondale mountain shoes--the ones that don't turn my feet into those of a Chinese woman, like my too-big overnarrow carbon-soled Lake road shoes--and enjoying the new cleats for my Frog pedals. Nothing like having your feet firmly fixed to the pedals in a nice pair of shoes. Ommm...I am one with my BLT. So much more pleasant than the city...rolling hills with fresh green almost-produce...earthy smells...water scents rolling along under culverts as I roll over above...nobody honking. Nobody stepping dead-eyed off the curb directly in front of me, as though 250 pounds of bike and rider won't knock them to the ground and break their bones. None of that. Just a large population of fat dumb groundhogs living in roadside condos and a breed of mosquito that is, apparently, fast and strong enough to bite a rider's legs while they're in motion. I'm a bit sunburnt. Tired in the kind of way that means I won't have to shave off a sliver of Benadrool to give the Big Sleep Assist. And I get to do it again tomorrow. July 30, 2003
Now, you too can own Rebecca Romijn-Stamos' breasts. And her hair. Bidding starts at $250.00. Or, you can have Arnold's chest...sort of. That's pricier, though--$3000.00 and up. July 31, 2003
An innaresting tidbit on the BBC via NPR this morning. It seems that certain European telecom companies are upset with the American plan for running the contract bidding on rebuilding the telecommunications infrastructure in Iraq. It's an open bidding process, but American planners have disqualified companies that are partially owned by governments. Any telecom company that has sold more than 5% of its stock to the government can't bid. This locks out France's Orange SA and a German firm whose name escapes me at the moment, but leaves the field wide-open to privately held companies, like US-based Worldcom. The gist of the Beeb report was, of course, the Unfairness Of It All (Especially The Bits Of "It" That Are Run By America). However, I think that the lead might also have been, "Governments Of France And Germany Upset Over Loss Of Opportunity To Profit From Iraq War." After all, that's what's so wrong and nasty about the American involvement over there, isn't it?
A pair of economists' take on the recently nixed so-called "Terrorism Futures Market": Financial markets are incredibly powerful aggregators of information, and are often better predictors than traditional methods. The examples are numerous. The futures market in orange juice concentrate is a better predictor of Florida weather than the National Weather Service. The Iowa Electronic Markets outperform the opinion polls in predicting presidential election vote shares. Hewlett Packard ran a market forecasting printer sales that outpredicted any of its analysts. The Defense Department should be applauded for admitting to its own limitations. Last winter we studied a market in "Saddam Securities" that proved to be a good predictor of the probability of war in Iraq. The reason markets work so well is that they reflect our collective wisdom. And your opinion will be reflected only to the extent that you are willing to put your money where your mouth is. When I first heard of the idea (persuasively and intelligently criticized as "unbelieveably bad, stupid, and just really bad...or something," by Some Important Person in Congress), I thought that it was a creative, outside-the-box sort of concept. We've been presented with a complex intel problem, and such a marketplace might serve as a kind of "parallel processor" made up of multiple human intelligences, all doing what humans do best: gather, evaluate, and act upon information. But if someone has a sneaking suspicion (or an overt belief) that markets--i.e., "Capitalism"--are massive engines of exploitation with inhuman gears that crush the disadvantaged of the world into a fine paste for eventual bottling as Uncka Sam's Po' Peeple Sammich Spread, they may have some difficulty accepting this as an interesting possibility that might save lives. The rest is at the Washington Post (simple, non-invasive registration is required to get in--I read the article as a 99-year old woman from Wisconsin).
Space has a terrible secret. But they are here to protect us.
Agh. I've been cocooned. Must...break...out...of rut... 
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"Ten House" sits at the corner of Liberty and Greenwich in downtown Manhattan, directly across from where the Twin Towers used to stand. It's home to the Engine 10 and Ladder 10 companies, and it's been closed since September 11.
Mmm. Mell-oh.
