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December 02, 2003
 Man I got one of these and it was styyylin', you know I was all like clikclikclik with the groovy camera and like gabgabgab on the phone and like, uh, whatever noise you make when you're on the Internet wirelessly. But the gizmo was also going clikclikclik all by itself, as though I was poking at its touchscreen with my stylus, which I wasn't.
And so after about 24 hours of ownership, zoomzoomzoom off it went in the FedEx truck back to wherever it came from, because it was busted. DEFECTIVE. Which, for a brand-new expensive silver Device O' Technological Convergence, is pretty dismal.
But the folks at Verizon were up to the task, and a new unit is winging its way towards me.
For many years I have resisted the cellular urge. But gradually, as I began to spend more time on the road, I borrowed Pea's cell phone for emergencies, and that morphed into a morning call to home from the ferry, and an evening call to home from the train, and then she decided to get a new phone, and then zot! they had me. Why spend $100 plus $30 a month on a phone that's just, you know, a phone, when I can spend $600 plus $80 a month on a phone that is also a PDA, a camera, a web-browser, opens wine bottles at the touch of a button and makes a smashing paperweight?
So, after a single day of being among the Cellular, I now wait nervously...I should be cruising the web from my couch...making a phone call...entering new contacts...calibrating my touchscreen, charging my battery, and taking random photos of the cat! Where is it? Where is it?!?!? We neeeds it, we do, give it to uss!
Pardon me.
As you may have gathered, I've got nothing to say today. But, that's what you're paying for, right? Right.
I was joking about the Virus Buddy 9000.
Now, from the Discovery Channel store, here's the Discovery DNA Explorer Kit: "With this deluxe, first-of-its-kind kit, you can extract, view and map real DNA yourself."
December 03, 2003
...sniffsniffsniff...
...mmm....grmumble...find the funny...
...sniff...sniifffff...
...mmm...is this the funny?
...mmm...no, not funny at all...sniffsniff...grmumble...
Ahhhh. Maybe this is the funny....lessee here...a 350-pound fat man high on PCP, cocaine, and White Castle cheeseburgers...beaten in the lower torso by police...dies...coroner calls death a homicide, but says this "should not be interpreted as implying inappropriate behavior or the use of excessive force by police..."
nahh...that's not the funny...that's...man...I dunno what that is...grmumble...find the frickin' funny...
...mmm...this could be the funny..."CIA Agent Valerie Plame Goes Undercover In Vanity Fair..." yeah...sure thing...'cause, you know, that whole "the Bushies blew my wife's cover in a treacherous act of political backstabbing" thing was never intended to sell, you know, his book...still...not really the funny...sort of pathetic and lame...mumblegrr...sniffsniff...
...mmm...
CRAP!!!
There's no funny today!
December 04, 2003
Just another day in line at the Neuronal Soup Kitchen.
This morning I took a different route from the ferry dock to my office, crossing over the West Side Highway on the new pedestrian overpass at the east side of Ground Zero. Once on the other side of the highway I walked past the only remaining bit of aboveground structure from the WTC complex: a scraped and truncated section of a concrete stairway, leading nowhere. I tried to figure out where the stairs would have been, and if I had ever used them. But I couldn't imagine it, not really...they were in the general area of the old Borders bookstore, but they could have been for service use, hidden away behind the retail facade, tread only by maintenance workers.
I also passed by the entrance to the new PATH station on Broadway, which opened recently. When I lived in Jersey City, I took the PATH from Exchange Place to World Trade, and rode the towering escalator from the station, seven stories underground, to the mall concourse. It was one of the longest escalators I've ever seen...I always wanted to hop over the rubber handrail and slide down the smooth metal between the up and down escalators, but some stern engineer somewhere had decreed the placement of round discs of metal along the slide at precise, testicle-crushing intervals. So I never tried it, and now no one else will, either.
I paused for a moment before the surface entrance to the new station, sheltered by its swooping gull-wing roof, and looked at the stairways leading down into the station...down into the pit.
Nope, I thought. I'm not going down there.
I was a bit surprised by that, although I suppose, I shouldn't be. Ever since September, I've had creeping flashes of bafflement, pointed bursts of anger, all accompanied by the low-level gut-hum of anxiety that, it seems, I will have for as long as I am anywhere near this island. Bastards.
Nope. Not going down there. I remember when "down there" was filled with a million tons of burning steel and concrete, and with thousands of people rendered into tons of flesh. No thanks.
Some days, I really hate here.
Other days, I just dislike it.
And, sometimes, I miss my old apartment in Astoria, and think about getting a pied á terre for the two of us, since so many of our friends are still in the city or close to it. Maybe in Battery Park, where the rents are still low...then I remember why the rents are low, and why I left, which brings up the problem of still being here.
Then, I think of another option: hey! I could just relax. Two years is a long time to be on edge. I do believe I'm getting fed up with it. Enough, kidney-borne adrenals! Enough, stress-producing glands! Enough, unbalanced neurons! Enough, enough, enough! I'm tired of this.
I used to be more fancy free, a little light-loafered fellow was I...or, maybe that was just the drugs of my youth, masking the depressive mania that seems to have been my lot for quite awhile, now. Who knows? I don't, and perhaps that's the problem...a problem of self-definition, I think, and--dare I abdicate responsibility, here--just when I might have been on the verge of breaking the repressive chemical habits of my childhood due to simple aging and maturity, along comes another external event to wallop me upside the brain, filling me with trauma-induced physiological echoes that crested and harmonized with those of my childhood that were just starting to fade. My body and mind are used to this sort of stress; I grew up bathed in it...not actual disaster, mind you, but what's the difference between the catastrophes of a child and those of an adult? What we can imagine becomes our worst fear, and a child's world isn't composed of terrorists and skyscrapers and falling bodies, but of parents and broken toys and punishment.
But there comes a point when something has to give, and by God it's not going to be me. I may have been helpless before an advancing column of gypsum powder-filled smoke and a rain of steel, but that's not happening anymore, not here and now, and it doesn't make any more sense to be imprisoned by that experience than it does to be imprisoned by the helplessness of the Childe Head, who was not so much astonished as he was bewildered.
Onward! Upward! Or, failing that, sideways, over to the left a bit, then a hop up onto the ledge and through that window there, so we can get to the new staircase, which leads Upward! And Onward!!!
Mmm...mmmarrgh! I found the funny! This is the funny!
That settles it: I've been trying to decide between consoles, and now I see that my game console shall be bulletproof.
December 05, 2003
 Once again, I am so fashionable that I travel backwards through time.
In today's NYT: Hot Item Smells Like a Fig.
Now, the article is worth reading for the headline alone, but here's what it's about:
"Fig is big.
So far, the only "must have" item this holiday season is not a toy. It is not an article of clothing. It is not even a specific model of cellphone, or DVD or digital camera.
It is a candle that smells like a fig [...]
The general manager of Henri Bendel, Ed Burstell, said the Fig had been restocked at least 10 times. The scent is "very sophisticated,'' he said, and then paused. "Nobody knows what fig smells like, anyway," he added."
Oh Edward, thou Philistine!
I have been an admirer of figs for many years. Back in 1994, I even went so far as to impale a column of dried figs on my Dodge Omni's radio antenna, stacking them as high as possible, and I drove about with them for a year and a half. That's true, by the way--I'm not just being wacky.
Well, I was being wacky, but right now I'm just telling you about a past instance of Genuine Wackiness™.
I am so fond of figs that I love the very sound of the word: fig. What a soft syllable, like fluff, yet also brief and punky, like fuck. I like the word so much I will say it for no reason at all. Ask me what's on my mind, and I might just say figs. Ask me what I want for dinner, I might say it again, just to take advantage of the opportunity to do so.
Fig.
There, you see?
 Now, I'm not partial to dried figs, or to fig newtons. Most of the dried figs you can get here, pressed into plastic-wrapped Turkish wheels and crusted with an excrescence of sugar, are just nasty, chewy leather bulbs. And fig newtons have too many insect bits in them.
But fresh figs...ahhh, now there's an untrammelled delight. I first discovered them in New York when, for a few brief weeks in late summer, the dusty purple bits of Mediterranean fecundity showed up on street vendors' fruit carts in Manhattan and at Korean fruit stores in Queens. They were a bit expensive, but oh! How fitting that the first humans should cover themselves with the broad green leaves of this divine fruit! Eat a fig and you're ingesting a symbol of richness and bounty that humanity has been contemplating for thousands of years. The goddess Demeter gave the fig to the Greeks, and their Olympian champions wore it as a medal. It's mentioned 39 times in the Bible. The Bodhi tree, beneath which Buddha attained Enlightenment (And How To Do It, Too), was a species of wild fig.
Now, in its latest incarnation, you can apparently set fire to it and fill your home with bourgeoise potpourri-style scenty goodness:
"Inspired by the legendary fruit of the Greek Islands," begins the copy on the side of the box, "Fig is juicy, indulgent and richly aromatic, combining the scent of the sun-ripened fruit with that of its woodsy leaves. With a hint of sweet jasmine, spicy anise and sensual sandalwood, it evokes a hot summer's day resting under the cool shade of the sacred tree."
I'm not sure I approve. Almost 4,000 years ago, the Egyptians recorded the words of the fig:
Compliments to my lady.
Who more noble than I?
Why not I your servant, if you have none?
They brought me from Syria
As plunder for the beloved.
I consider a Dodge Omni antenna full of figs analogous to the adornment of a chariot with divine fruit. But there's something ignoble about a stinky candle called Fig. I mean, just listen:
Compliments to my lady.
Who more noble than I?
Why not I your servant, if you have none?
They brought me from Syria
As plunder for the beloved,
Who may purchase me for twenty-five dollars at Henri Bendel,
Although Bath and Body Works has me on sale for nineteen fifty.
Doesn't sound quite right, does it?
Fig.
The first snowfall of the season. We've gotten about an inch of waxy, fluffy snow over the past hour, and it's coming down steadily. It seemed like a good time to try out the replacement i700. Decent pictures, considering that I took them with a telephone.
Have a good weekend, everyone.
December 06, 2003
The same view up the street, about sixteen hours later. We've got a good eight inches on the ground now, and it's still falling. (I replaced the earlier blue-tinged photo with this one, following my discovery of the White Balance option.)
December 07, 2003
Well well well. I'm submitting this entry from my coich downstairs, typing two-fomgered. Fimheged. Fingered!
Bloody hell.
Amyway, yechnology marches on and so forth.
And I suppose I should say something about America being sneakily and brutally attacked 62 years ago today, but I think I'll leave that to folks with, you know, something to say.
Besides, There's a certain other sneaky brutal attack that's a bit more towards the front of my memory, if memory can be said to have a front and back.
December 08, 2003
 Well, the snow has come and...stayed. We got about a foot, give or take, and yesterday I and my spine shovelled out the driveway and exposed the hidden concrete of the sidewalk. Peapod's roof is frosted with a hefty layer of white and the gutters, now clogged with frozen sludge, are bearded with dripping icicles.
I must be older, and in worse shape, than I was last year. This morning, my vertabrae were protesting, and the flaccid muscles in my side, so rudely awakened from their fattened slumber, were aching in disturbing ways that evoked images of lungs protruding from beneath my ribcage.
This year, like last year, I never quite got to the leaves before they vanished beneath the snow. But unlike last year, we had a series of terrific windy days in early November, so the leaves blew out of the yard, and were mostly piled up against the fence or atop the flower beds along the edge of the house. Our compost pile will suffer, but our lawn--such as it is--won't.
And unlike last year, the now-crunchy snow hasn't really perked up my contemplative winter soul, probably due to the large mugs of jittery graham-cracker coffee I've been pouring down my gullet. My long-suffering corpus, with its Expando-Gut™, its resultant aching feet, its strangely twitching musculature and its generally entropy-laden demeanor, has come to dominate my incarnative experience.
Whoa. Somebody get a stout club and beat that one back to the wordy hell from whence it came.
What I meant to say was that my body is distracting me with its aging. I can't seem to stop the process, and it's really quite annoying. If anyone has experienced this sort of thing themselves, do drop me a line and let me know how you've managed to stop it.
See, where I come from, no one ever gets old, or sick, or infirm, decay is nonexistent, and time itself is a plaything that makes for an amusing way to pass...well, it. This whole "physical world" thing you've all got going on here is really getting tedious. But, eventually I'll kick off, and then I can get back to lolling on the eternally green grass on the other side of the river, contemplating the sea of air.
December 09, 2003
Yet another experiment in mobile Heading.
I'm on the train into NYC.
Which is fairly cool, except for the slow typing thing.
Next to me, two rabbis are discussing a point of Jewish law.
Interesting, but my thumbs are cramping.
December 11, 2003
"Me and Sad Sally, we got a solid box down by the waterfront, under a high dry pier from when the river was still flowing...Sally rigged up her wireless and got a good bounce off a unsecure company node in a tower across the mud channel, and so we set up the dark net and ran it from the box under the pier. Afore The Man got ahold of it, you could have a site anywhere you wanted on the net, put anything up you wanted...now we got threads and sites running catch as catch can, backed up onto high-density cubes that tote around easy, and we put up the net when we can find holes to squeeze through. Sally and me, we host about 1,500 people, and we carry it all with us wherever we go. We've got 76% uptime, which is pretty fine considering we run off busted old fuel cells and crank-batteries and eat at soup kitchens."
--Feckless Jim
I'm taking my ball, and going home.
December 14, 2003
HUSSEIN CAPTURED, DEMANDS STYLIST
CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - Many in the Arab world greeted news of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's capture with initial disbelief that turned to joy and hunger for revenge against the tyrant or, among some, sadness that an Arab leader should come to such a disheveled end.
"Impossible! No, I don't believe it," cried Rami Makhoul, who works at a salon in the Syrian capital Damascus. At an outdoor market in Cairo, hairdressers and manicurists could be heard yelling at each other, "They say he's been captured, and that he looks just terrible!"
In the Jordanian capital Amman, 77-year-old Sheik Abu Khaled saw the TV footage of the ragged, bearded Saddam and declared, "This captured man isn't Saddam. He would never allow himself to be captured without having a color rinse, set and dry, with maybe some mustache conditioner and a protein-pack facial. And that beard! Please. Saddam knows he's got the wrong face shape for such a beard, and would never grow such a mane. It cannot be him."
In the Yemeni capital San'a, Mohammed Abdel Qader Mohammadi, 50, a colorist at Abbas' Fabulous Salon, said he was surprised that the arrest took place as it did, with Saddam caught lying down in a tiny, underground hiding place then videotaped by the Americans, wild-haired and puffy-eyed, as a doctor checks inside his mouth.
"I expected him to resist or commit suicide before falling into American hands," Mohammadi said. "He disappointed a lot of us, looking like that. He may be a dictator, but he was always very well groomed."
Makhoul, the salon employee in Damascus who at first did not believe Saddam had been captured, said he had mixed feelings about the former Iraqi leader's arrest.
"This is a great day for the Iraqi people and I share their happiness," he said. "Saddam is a dictator and this should be the fate of all dictators."
Makhoul, however, said he was sad that Saddam should meet his fate at the hands of the unfashionable Americans, whom he said "cared nothing about the personal appearance of the Iraqi people, and know nothing--I mean nothing--about real style."
Samer Saado, an employee at a Damascus day spa, said he didn't care about Saddam but felt overwhelming sadness for Iraq and the entire Arab world. He watched the footage of Sadaam's examination at the hands of American military doctors on the spa's small television.
"What the Americans are doing in Iraq and everywhere else is humiliating," he said. "I mean, we'll never live this down. Look at those split ends." He shook his head sadly. "Just look at them."
---
UPDATE:
In all seriousness...I look at this photo (cruising my own site, as I often do), and all I can think is: we got you, you fuck...we got you, we got you, we got you...
And, on another far less serious note, let me just say:
ALL MICROSOFT PRODUCTS SUCK ASS IN EVERY POSSIBLE WAY AND WILL NEVER DO ANYTHING OTHER THAN SUCK ASS, UNTIL THEY ARE SO FULL OF ASS THAT THEY BURST AND SCATTER MICROSOFT-LADEN FECES UNTO THE FOUR CORNERS OF THE EARTH, AND THEN IN EVERY CORNER OF THE EARTH MICROSOFT-LADEN PILES OF FECES WILL INDEED CONTINUE TO SUCK EVEN MORE ASS, AND SO ON, UNTIL THE VERY END OF TIME, AT WHICH POINT THE UNIVERSE WILL IMPLODE AND START OVER, AND, AT THE APPROPRIATE POINT IN SUBSEQUENT UNIVERSAL EVOLUTION, MICROSOFT PRODUCTS WILL AGAIN SUCK ASS, AND SO ON, FOR AN INFINITE AMOUNT OF TIME AND AN INFINTE NUMBER OF ASS-SUCKING INSTANCES OF MICROSOFT.
Fortunately, Bill Gates will smoke Satan's spiny cock in hell in infinite succession, and, hopefully, I will be able to tune in and watch said Satanic cock-sucking at will using a divine operating system THAT DOESN'T SUCK ASS!!!!
[PS: Said divine operating system is not MacOS.]
December 15, 2003
 Despite the supremely asstacular performance of Winblows 2000 I managed to get this fairly decent shot of the Baptist church in the center of town (circa 1810) from my telephone-camera-bottle opener into my PC and thence to my website with very little trouble, aside from having to kill one of the cats as an appropriate sacrifice to Gozer and turning myself into an undead servant of evil for the next 4,287 years already.
Do note the artistic cheapital merits of the shot; namely, how the snow on the roof blends seamlessly with the winter-pale sky, making it appear as though the roof has severe structural problems. This counterbalances nicely with the pretty twinkly lights on the tree and the overwhelming presence of the Baptists since the nineteenth century, who have presided over this sinful little village and kept it from the squalor which I, the insurgent ex-urbanite, represent so willfully and well.
As I write now in the midnight depths of a Californian merlot stupor, the snow we have been so generously blanketed with for the second weekend in a row has turned to lovely freezing drizzle which, on the morrow, should make for some postcard-pretty sparkling ice on the tree-twigs photos, and, if all goes well, might also provide a decent surface for the piloting of my zippy remote-control hovercraft. As I am a low-level master of all things technological and rechargeable, the longer-running of its three battery packs is even now sitting in its charger, eagerly sucking up current from the mains in anticipation of a good twenty minutes of wintery hovery goodness on the morrow.
This, in turn, brings me rather forcibly to the contemplation of my misanthropy which, if you've read this far, is no doubt of supreme interest to you. Such ill will--if I can call it that, for it is not so strong--has been much on my mind of late, as it is every year when the sky turns to slate and the ground becomes hard with frosty frozen fortitude. It is in this season that I turn ever further inward, but as I grow older I realize that it is in this season that I give full vent and force to my year-round inclination, which is to remain indoors and away from others as much as possible, and to comment firmly and with conviction upon the failure of most every member of the race to meet my most worthy expections.
This, in short, makes me a bastard with no manners. But have at you for that, because there are still a slight few held in my noble hand that make "the cut," so-called, whose company or correspondence I can maintain despite my arrogant perception of imperfection. This is made doubly notable, or even more so, by my keen awareness of my own wretchedness; no one is so harsh a critic of myself as I.
Not that you would know that, Dear Reader, because like all in this sphere I pretend to some degree of impervious, well-founded conviction, and although I cannot speak for others I can, for myself, claim that I know for certain not one single goddamned thing and, furthermore, that my continual pouring forth upon these virtual pages is a neurotic symptom of utmost insecurity.
Be that as it may: now is the winter of my contentment. Next year, I will enter the time of life that Our Lord saw fit within his own to begin his ministry, a year that ended with Himself banged in the wood and slit up a treat.
With luck, I shall avoid this.
But if! If I shoud turn out, by God's grace and infinitely compassionate cruelty, to be something other than the miserable soul that I am; if! by some queer turn of fate I should become briefly notable; then! it is here on these pixelated pages that those who seek to know of me shall read of my warts and farts and idiocies.
Hoo-ha!
Take that, posterity, and here, have this face-full of mud and this kick in the testes.
Asshead!
And so forth.
December 16, 2003
 Ya'll remember Manwich? Not the needlessly freaky 12-minute Taj Mahal wackfest, but the sauce, what's over there on the left looking like a big can of gloppy Wal-Mart America. Just add ground up bits of dead cow, slop it on a bun, and you've got yourself a fine meal of sauced-up cow bits on bread. I had it once or twice in me youth, but not often...and I think it was because of my disdain for the Food Admiration Routine.
The Food Admiration Routine (FAR) is what happens in television commercials for various food products. Some examples are more egregious than others, but it was a Manwich commercial that first revealed the FAR to me, with such impact that I still remember it two decades later.
It's a simple scene. Busy Mom makes Quick N' Easy Meal for her On The Go Family--thanks, Manwich!
But there's one key moment, when the Busy Family is sitting at the respectable-but-not-too-fancy dinner table, and Male Head Of Household has his Special Advertising Product Instance (SAPI) of the Manwich firmly in hand. The SAPI is a lot like the sci-fi hero's prop tricorder or blaster shown in movies and television. These devices have all the twinkly lights, and all the detailed painting and decals, because they'll be front and center as Kirk demands to be beamed up or Ripley blasts away at the Queen Alien Bitch. Actors in the background get props made of roughly cast resin that look real enough to be used in the background. Likewise, the SAPI of a Big Mac, for example, is fluffy-bunned, adorned with perfectly arranged sesame seeds, packed with thrillingly green lettuce, with a perfectly balanced ooze of special sauce laced with sparkling onion bits along the edges of the buns, and just the right anount of meat-shine on the all-beef patties. It is the quintessential Big Mac, and you can never have one.
A Manwich is, by definition, a sloppy thing. But the SAPI of the Manwich consisted of a non-soggy bun of perfect bakery roundess, a fine, green leaf of ruffled lettuce, and a neat blat of rich, beefy red sloppy-joeness in the middle. Male Head Of Household holds the SAPI firmly but lightly, still in his workshirt but sans necktie. He takes his first bite of the SAPI, and then busts out the FAR.
In quick succession, he looks at the SAPI, with its small, neat, half-moon bite. He smiles as though he has just been told that he will get one free blowjob a day for the rest of his life, wherever he is. While grinning thusly, he nods his head up and down with great satisfaction and pleasure, and then, as the FAR crescendos, he flips the SAPI of the Manwich over while holding it, as though he simply must admire all sides of this food item of the gods. It's a quick flip, once, and then back again, while he displays his deeply pleased smile and uses his affirmative headbob to great effect.
The effect being, in my case, sudden and near-total irritation. I remember thinking: who the hell does that? Who flips their damn Manwich around and admires it like it's a work of art? Nobody. Who smiles and nods at their food like that? Nobody! Nobody does that, and if I ever saw anybody I knew doing that I'd ask them what their fucking problem was.
Then it got worse. Busy Mom catches Male Head Of Household's FAR and smiles back, maybe thinking about all those blowjobs she had to promise him to get such Manwich affirmation from him. These undertones are missed by On The Go Son and On The Go Daughter, who are simply glad to be at the table eating Busy Mom's Quick N' Easy Meal. They're happy. Man's happy. Dad's happy...maybe a little too happy, but everybody's happy! Tra-la-la! Thanks, Manwich!
Why do I remember this commercial from my youth? No idea. But the FAR is everywhere. The latest and most blatant instance is found in a commercial for McDonald's new atrocity, the McGriddle, which is sort of like an entire breakfast of pancakes, eggs, sausage and bacon, impregnated with syrup and special flavor-removing enhancements. White Urban Fairly Hip Young Man is sitting on a city park bench rapping about the taste that only McDonald's is makin' (who the hell else would?), and how all these people are staring at him, but they're not checkin' him, see, they're checkin' out his McGriddle.
Then, some freaked-out Bootsy Collins wannabe wearing a silver track suit and matching star-shaped sunglasses rollerblades past, backwards, his mouth making a big "Ooo" as though he's never seen a McDonald's product in his entire life. Next we see that Black Rollerblade Man has taken a seat next to White Urban Fairly Hip Young Man, and the climax of this multiculturally healing moment is--you guessed it--a double FAR of the SAPI of the McGriddle. Black Rollerblade Man isn't just admiring, he's downright amazed at this food item: he's taken off his silver star sunglasses to get a better look, and shakes his head while making the "Ooo" of appreciation, rearing back as though overcome by the intense, utter hipness of the McGriddle. To help out the viewers at home, there's a close-up Black Rollerblade Man's-eye view as White Urban Fairly Hip Young Man thrusts the precisely-bitten SAPI into the camera, so that we can see the perfectly yellow sheet of neatly folded egg and groove on the maple-flavored syrup laden pancake-bun things. That's right: now you, watching at home, can participate in the FAR...it's almost like being there with a McGriddle an inch from your face!
I get the impression that after White Urban Fairly Hip Young Man finished his McGriddle, he and Black Rollerblade Man hit it off and went to some loft space in Tribeca and jammed out with all their cool friends, then went out to a bar and drank some cocktails made with happening flavored vodka, and finally went home with beautiful women and had sex for hours with the aid of illicitly obtained fashionable pharmaceuticals that helped them maintain their erections and assisted in the throwing of footballs through tire swings.
There. I have successfully segued from sloppy joes to erectile dysfunction in just over a thousand words, and can therefore retire to my bedchamber after a full and productive day.
December 17, 2003
I AM THE CHEESEMASTER.
ALL DAIRY PRODUCTS WILL COME UNTO ME THAT I MAY POSSESS AND INGEST THEM.
I AM LORD OF ALL FERMENTABLE THINGS!
ALL WHEELS, WEDGES, RONDELLES, AND TUBS OF NATURALLY-DERIVED OR PROCESSED CHEESE FOODS ARE FULLY WITHIN MY DOMINION, YEA, FOR I AM THEIR MASTER, AND UNTO ME THEY WILL MAKE SACRIFICES OF THEMSELVES, FOR THEY ARE WORTHY OF MY DIGESTION; AND BEFORE ME THEY WILL MAKE OBEISENCE, FOR THEY ARE DAIRY.
BUT TAKE THOU THY CHEEZ-WHIZ FROM THIS PLACE, FOR IT IS NASTY IN MY SIGHT, AND USE IT INSTEAD TO SEAL THE HULLS OF YOUR BOATS, REPAIR BROKEN WINDOW GLAZING, AND CURE THE CONSTIPATION OF YOUR WIVES AND CONCUBINES.
AND SO ON. DON'T FORGET TO WRITE ALL THIS DOWN AND STORE IT IN A DRY CAVE SOMEPLACE. IN A FEW THOUSAND YEARS, IT'LL REALLY PISS OFF THE ORTHODOX.
--Gospel of Philip the Cobbler, 2:1
Viggo Mortenson explains why he's wearing his "No Blood For Oil" shirt on Charlie Rose:
"I've heard a lot of people say to me, and I've read in a lot of places, about the first movie, and increasingly about the second one - I've seen where people try to relate it to, you know, the current situation and specifically the United States and their role in the world right now, and I.... If you're going to compare them, then you should get it right. I don't like hearing... I play the character that's defending Helm's Deep, and I don't think that "The Two Towers" or Tolkien's writing or Peter's work or our work has anything to do with the United States' foreign adventures, you know, at this time, and it upsets me to hear that in a way, and it upsets me even more that questioning what is going on right now, what the United States is doing , is considered treasonous, really, and "how dare you say that" and "how un-American of you."
And really, this country is founded on the principal that if the government isn't serving the people, you at least have the right to say "Wait a minute! What's going on?" And there are no questions really being asked at large about what we're doing. Whereas in "The Two Towers," you have different races, nations, cultures, coming together and examining their conscience and unifying against a very real and terrifying enemy. What the United States has been doing for the past year is bombing innocent civilians without having come anywhere close to capturing Osama bin Ladin or any presumed enemy, and you know, as a distraction we're now - apparently it's a given - we're hell-bent on increasing the bombing that has been going on for the past 11 years in Iraq. And I don't think that the civilians on the ground in those countries look at us in the way that maybe Europeans did at the end of World War II, you know, waving flags in the streets. I think that they see the U.S. government as Saruman, you know.
John Rhys-Davies explains himself in a roundtable interview:
"I think that Tolkien says that some generations will be challenged. And if they do not rise to meet that challenge, they will lose their civilization. That does have a real resonance with me.
I have had the ideal background for being an actor. I have always been an outsider. I grew up in colonial Africa. And I remember in 1955, it would have to be somewhere between July the 25th when the school holiday started and September the 18th when the holidays ended. My father took me down to the quayside in Dar-Es-Salaam harbor. And he pointed out a dhow in the harbor and he said, “You see that dhow there? Twice a year it comes down from Aden. It stops here and goes down [South]. On the way down it's got boxes of machinery and goods. On the way back up it’s got two or three little black boys on it. Now, those boys are slaves. And the United Nations will not let me do anything about it.”
The conversation went on. “Look, boy. There is not going to be a World War between Russia and the United States. The next World War will be between Islam and the West.”
This is 1955! I said to him, “Dad, you’re nuts! The Crusades have been over for hundreds of years!”
And he said, “Well, I know, but militant Islam is on the rise again. And you will see it in your lifetime.”
He’s been dead some years now. But there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think of him and think, “God, I wish you were here, just so I could tell you that you were right.”
What is unconscionable is that too many of your fellow journalists do not understand how precarious Western civilization is and what a jewel it is.
How did we get the sort of real democracy, how did we get the level of tolerance that allows me to propound something that may be completely alien to you around this table, and yet you will take it and you will think about it and you’ll say no you’re wrong because of this and this and this. And I’ll listen and I’ll say, “Well, actually, maybe I am wrong because of this and this.”
[He points at a female reporter and adopts an authoritarian voice, to play a militant-Islam character:] ‘You should not be in this room. Because your husband or your father is not here to guide you. You could only be here in this room with these strange men for immoral purposes.’
I mean… the abolition of slavery comes from Western democracy. True Democracy comes from our Greco-Judeo-Christian-Western experience. If we lose these things, then this is a catastrophe for the world."
The warrior dwarf is articulate and thoughtful. Alas, the human king seems a bit dim.
December 18, 2003
U.S. Moves to Reduce Diplomatic Presence in Saudi
Wed December 17, 2003 07:10 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States moved on Wednesday to reduce its diplomatic presence in Saudi Arabia by offering free flights home to nonessential diplomats and to all embassy dependents because of "the potential for this whole oil-soaked shithole to blow sky-high."
The State Department also advised private U.S. citizens to consider leaving the country, standard advice that it gives whenever it makes the offer to pay for nonessential diplomats and dependents who wish to leave. "Look, either they're going to shoot the place up themselves, or we will," said a State Department official who asked not to be named. "Either way, the amount of lead in the air is going to be somewhat unhealthy."
While the offer falls short of ordering diplomats out, it reflects the acute U.S. security worries in the kingdom, which has seen several residential compounds for expatriates attacked this year. On May 12, suicide bombers killed about 35 people, including nine Americans, at housing compounds in Riyadh.
"The decision to authorize voluntary departure is based on the reality that Saudi Arabia is just chock-full of fanatics," said State Department spokesman Lou Fintor, adding that Charles Freeman, the American Ambassador to Saudi Arbaia, had killed three fanatics he found hiding under his bathroom sink just this morning. "They're like roaches," Fintor continued. "They hide in cracks in the walls, and at night they come out to eat crumbs of food on the kitchen floor and plan martyrdom operations."
The decision to offer free flights home to nonessential diplomats and embassy dependents was announced in a State Department travel warning that largely echoed previous statements about threats in Saudi Arabia.
"Due to the ongoing activities of mindless Jihadi wackos... the Department of State has authorized the departure, on a voluntary basis, of family members and nonemergency personnel of the U.S. Embassy and Consulates in Saudi Arabia," the travel warning said. "Private American citizens should evaluate the big red targets painted on their foreheads and should consider departing the country."
"The U.S. government continues to receive indications that various nutjobs continue to hate and despise everything that makes civilization worthwhile, and intend to blow up anything that reminds them of the total failure of their movement to produce anything even remotely comparable" it added in language identical to its last warning on Dec. 8.
"Credible information indicates that terrorists continue to sneak into residential bathrooms and kitchens in Saudi Arabia, particularly in the Riyadh area, but also compounds throughout the country. Anywhere there's a dark space to hide, really."
The U.S. embassy said it was recommending that diplomatic and non-diplomatic personnel stop by and pick up anti-fanatic spray for use until they are able to leave the country. Produced in cooperation with American Cyanamid and safe for indoor application, the spray uses standard NATO 5.56mm rounds and can fire up to 800 rounds per minute.
© Reuters 2003. All Rights Mocked.
If you've heard the oft-repeated charge that America created and armed Sadaam, you simply must go check out Bill Hobbs' well-linked account of exactly how we did it.
Ah, the joys of old-timey technological nostalgia.
When I starting using computers, there weren't no such thing as an "Internet," and I had to crawl on my knees eight miles to school through piles of snow and broken glass, and when I got home at midnight half an hour before I went to bed my father would kill me and dance about on my grave singing Hallelujia.
Or rather, there was an Internet, but few people knew about it, and it was all texty, not full of pretty nekkid pictures the way it is now. Instead, the popular thing to do in those days was to cruise the bulletin boards--BBSs. Each BBS had its own phone number. You called in, poked around the text-based interface, hung up, and called somewhere else. Busy signals were rampant. Every so often you'd get the dreaded NO CARRIER, and lose the connection. Sometimes this was because you hadn't configured your modem and its protocols properly, and this was considered bad form--dropping carrier without sending a proper disconnect string could cause the BBS at the other to lock up, thus preventing other users from dialing in and downloading their grainy, monochrome, five-second CGA video loops of Ginger Lynn masturbating.
Those were the days! And, my new fancy cellphone/camera/web browser/marital aid really takes me back. Because it uses cellular service to connect to the Internet, it "dials up," and the signal can come and go. I have to plot strategies for dialing in and staying connected...I know, for example, not to be doing anything important between the Sloatsburg and Tuxedo train stations, because the signal's really poor there, and I always get booted off.
The speed of the connection varies from the service maximum of 150kbps in NYC to a glacial 20kpbs, depending on where I am, with the average non-NYC throughput being about 90kbps. For reference, DSL is 500kbps, or should be if you have a service provider that doesn't suck. So it's not fast, but with the right 3rd-party apps it's perfectly usable.
I have gained a new sympathy for those among my readership who don't have broadband, or who are amputees and have to navigate the web by using pencils affixed to their noses.
Therefore: I have cut the number of days displayed on the Astonished Head front page to seven. This will help the page load faster. If you must re-experience a particularly brilliant bit of my wit that's more than seven days old, or if you have been handcuffed, wrapped up in a nice vinyl bodysuit and locked in a trunk somewhere and need to catch up, do use the  button over there on your left.
December 20, 2003
Cast of Characters
Many people have not written asking about all the people who are quoted on this site at various times. Here are some of them, in alphamabeticalized order:
Bud Atkins, farmer and witness to the Apocalypse.
Reginald Bastard, Astonished Headcorp's company secretary and roving reporter.
Commentator, sports and politics announcer. Shouts a bit.
Li Cho, anachronistic 17th-century Chinese poet. His only surviving work, Millennia of Choked Laughter, did very well in late 19th-century Britain for no readily apparent reason.
Jesus Christ, Himself. Hasn't been around much, but will make an appearance on Nightline.
Billy Fidget, hep prophet of God. Smoove wif the ladies. Has his own archive.
Blind Frankie Meringue, legendary Depression-era bluesman. Big Ugly Feet Blues represents the extent of his surviving recorded works, but other blues attributed to him, such as Big Ol' Bird Done Crap On My Head, Fell Off The Barstool and Got Gravel In Muh Biscuit, are classics of the genre.
Courageous Abe, very important rich person that you should know. Started ETV, the first non-subscription 24-hour pornogrpahy network; also started the most popular television news network in American history.
Feckless Jim, cybertech idiot savant from the future.
Gabriel, Archangel of the Holy Sefiroth, Angel of Aspirations, Truth, Joy, Childbirth, Death, Vengeance, Revelation, the Annunciation, the Resurrection, and the Apple Tree, Chief Ambassador of God to Humanity, Ruler of the Sixth Heaven, Ruling Prince of the Cherubim and of Justice, Divine Herald and Husband, Trumpeter of the Last Judgment, Governor of Eden, the name says it all, don't you think? Will appear on 60 Minutes in 2006.
The Great Prognosticon, v. 2.0, second release of the famous prescient software. Still a bit buggy.
Ralph Hitler, expert on paper dolls and exegete of the apocryphal Big Big Book of Bog, Mr. Hitler has a keen interest in rumors about a the sexual ambiguity of a certain German naughty person.
Phil Shallot, somewhat random person from a not-too-distant urban future that may or may not be Earth's.
John Smith, angel of the Lord. His murder trial and subsequent disappearance are profiled in the book, God On Trial: The Peculiar Case of John Smith of Queens.
Rabbik, another prophet of God. Although his exact age is uncertain, Rabbik has been kept alive for over 130 years by technology and the will of God, with whom he has an ambivalent relationship at best. Also has his own archive.
Lord Alfred "The Bastard" Wembsley, mentally disturbed member of the peerage, amateur theologian, and author of a book of neurological poems.
Robert Willis, Gardener To The Queen
December 21, 2003
Political sniping continues to be squelched a bit by the re-examination of information about the activities of and connections between the various Islamist roach-nests in the Middle East and the nation-states of the region. This Weekly Standard piece, titled "The Clinton View of Iraq-al Qaeda Ties," is worth a look if you're interested in the whole secularists and fundamentalists don't cooperate with each other theory.
Excerpt:
"Democrats who before the war discounted the possibility of any connection between Iraq and al Qaeda have largely fallen silent. And in recent days, two prowar Democrats have spoken openly about the relationship. Evan Bayh, a Democrat from Indiana who sits on the Intelligence Committee, told THE WEEKLY STANDARD, "the relationship seemed to have its roots in mutual exploitation. Saddam Hussein used terrorism for his own ends, and Osama bin Laden used a nation-state for the things that only a nation-state can provide."
And Joe Lieberman, the Connecticut Democrat and presidential candidate, discussed the connections in an appearance last week on MSNBC's "Hardball with Chris Matthews." Said Lieberman: "I want to be real clear about the connection with terrorists. I've seen a lot of evidence on this. There are extensive contacts between Saddam Hussein's government and al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. I never could reach the conclusion that [Saddam] was part of September 11. Don't get me wrong about that. But there was so much smoke there that it made me worry. And you know, some people say with a great facility, al Qaeda and Saddam could never get together. He is secular and they're theological. But there's something that tied them together. It's their hatred of us."
Via Instapundit, who has apparently been shot.
December 22, 2003
Help Kurdish Kids Make Music Again
Countering Islamist extremism, an American soldier seeks musical instruments for people who are now free to play.
$8,000 provides instruments for a village cultural center
$500 pays for a piano, $200 pays for a violin
$100 pays for a music table, $30 buys an amplifier
Any amount helps!
It's almost as though the Taliban--and others like them--have surpassed evil and come out into the other side into cartoon villainy: There vill be...no myoosik. Und no danzink! AHH-HAHAHAHAHAAaaa. You know what we need over there? Kevin Bacon. That'd teach 'em.
Failing that: help buy some Kurdish kids some musical stuff!
December 23, 2003
All the other Santa, Menorah mascot, and various ecumenical holiday-style pictures were rented already, so this is what we got.
HAPPY HOLIDAYS AND SO FORTH FROM THE CAST AND CREW OF ASTONISHED HEAD
December 28, 2003
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 Just how does the Institute achieve its amazing results? Through the use of proprietary hardware and our unique Astonished Conditioning Technique™, we are able to successfully demonstrate to each patient exactly why he or she is terribly mistaken about everything.
Over the course of several weeks, the patient gradually learns the proper way to think about any subject by working closely with a small team of attentive specialists and using a series of topical skin creams.
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If you're tired of not having a decent thought in your itching, flaking head, contact the Institute today. Our helpful admissions staff is ready to get you started on your way towards proper thinking and dermatological health.
The Astonished Head Institute For The Establishment Of Proper Thinking
Isn't it time you were right about something?
December 30, 2003
Meanwhile, at the offices of Astonished Head's Department of Ancient Languages...
 "These are the words of Bostwick, the Arzawa man,
a big-nippled servant of god
who travelled to the sands of Assyria with my feet unshod,
who was covered with the glory of god's presence
and illuminated by the--"
Excuse me, but I don't think you've got that quite right.
Beg pardon?
I'm not entirely sure that "Bostwick" was a name common to Anatolia during the second millenium before Christ.
Well, it's Hittite you know.
Seeing as how the tablet you're working on was dug up near Bogazkoy and dates from 1700 BC, that would follow, wouldn't it? Still doesn't explain "Bostwick," though.
Look: Arnilis, Zuliyas, Uhha-muwas...Bostwick. Perfectly normal Hittite name. He was in charge of keeping the temple roofs from leaking, apparently.
And what's this? "Big-nippled?" Since when do the authors of Hittite incantations refer to themselves as "big-nippled?"
Hittite men were known for their large areolas.
That's as may be, but it's all about the text, isn't it? What Hittite words are you translating as "big-nippled?"
Friedrich translated the "Ritual Against Overwhelming Male Nipplage" in 1926.
What?
And Güterbock published three of the eight sections of "Purification Ritual Engaging the Help of Protective Male Demons with Unusually Perky Nipples" in 1947.
Look, I don't care if Friedrich and Güterbock translated "The Song of Ullikummis' Tremendous Man-Tits" and set it to the tune of Rock Me Like A Hurricane, it's still a matter of accuracy. Let me see that tablet!
No. It's my tablet. You can't have it.
Your tablet? It was donated by the estate of Liberace!
No it wasn't. I found it on a bus.
Look--it's got a label saying so on the back! Here, hang on a minute...what's this?
What's what?
When I gave this tablet to you for translation, it did not have a giant florid "L" on its back made of rhinestones pressed into the clay.
Hittites were very fond of sparkly things.
You made this tablet, didn't you?
And men with big nipples. They loved that sort of thing.
Look, I'm director of this Department, and it's my responsibility to insure the academic excellence of our work here, not to mention keep track of exceedingly rare cuneiform tablets, which we're lucky to get at all, considering that we're only a website.
Very trendy people, the Hittites. Good dancers.
What have you done with the original tablet?
I dated a Hittite once.
Alright, that's it! Enough of this nonsense. This post is too ridiculous and it's quite obvious that no punchline will be forthcoming. That's it! Everyone out. We'll try again tomorrow.
Do you think Liberace was a Hittite?
Shut up!
Liberace: Secret Hittite?
Why do I even bother? I was offered a post at Tübingen...
December 31, 2003
MY RESOLUTION:
BE MORE COLORFUL.
!Yappy Hew Near!
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