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February 01, 2006
I Do Believe It's The Fluorescents
Be a dear and have the steward smash them all with his head, would you?
This always happens to me. Whenever I have to spend a significant length of time beneath the alien lighting found in most offices, I get the big brain-fade.
It's the damnable phosphorescent spectrum, y'see, so artificial, so lacking in healthy greens and reds.
That's all well and good if you're from some trashy planet with an electroluminescent atmosphere full of vaporous mercury and argon, but quality organisms such as myself simply do not do well under such illumination, suffering from unfocused vision, a general thickness in the head, and a near-total loss of super powers.
Caffeinated beverages such as coffee and this fine Lime Diet Coke right here offer some assistance, but only delay the inevitable return of the mental cloud, which usually lands with a soft thump on my skull as I'm barrelling down the Parkway at 80 miles an hour listening to a miniature Lionel Rogg belt out Bach on the tiny pipe organ that's hidden inside my iPod.
If all offices, corporate and governmental alike, were required to pipe in natural light, I think we would achieve world peace and universal prosperity within a generation.
Trying to do business or rule the world while under the influence of the irregular, broken spectrum put out by these blue tubes of hot-ballasted death inevitably leads to thoughts of petty politics and genocide.
February 02, 2006
Fuel Our Economy With Alcohol? Brilliant!
Via He Who Needs No Links, this vision from Robert Zubrin:
Energy conservation offers only a strained strategy for enduring economic oppression with very slightly ameliorated pain. Today’s petroleum monopolists would still ultimately have us over a barrel. The ballyhooed hydrogen economy, meanwhile, is a hoax.
If we are to win the critical energy battle, there is only one way to do it. We must take ourselves, and the rest of the world, off the petroleum standard. Only by doing this can we destroy the economic power of our enemies at the very foundations. Only in this way can we transfer control of the future from those who take their wealth, pre-made, from the ground (and therefore have no need for education or freedom), to those who make their wealth through hard work, skill, and creativity (who thus must build free societies which maximize the human potential of every citizen).
Our nation’s founders stipulated that the purpose of our government is to provide for our defense, promote our welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. In our current economic and military dilemma, decisive action for energy independence is one of the most dramatic steps we could take to achieve those ends. Congress should immediately require that all future vehicles sold in the U.S.A. be flexible-fueled, thereby launching us into an alcohol-energy future that holds promise like few other options within our grasp.
Yes! Let us kick the Arab oil monopolists in their collective huevos by converting our liquid-fuel platforms over to a substance prohibited by their Prophet. We will run our entire economy on the infamy of Satan's handiwork! Then, if we could find a way to manufacture automobiles from pork by-products, we wouldn't have to bother hunting down bin Laden...his head would explode of its own accord.
Mr. Zubrin neatly explains why the transition to economically and politically viable liquid fuels - as opposed to the puritanical "conservation" so often touted as a solution - is the vital task of the 21st century.
Read the whole thing.
It's Coming!
According to Paul Sims - Production, Tech, R&D and Web Guy at Greenspeed - my trike left Australia* today, bound for America!
This is good news. I'm at the point where most of the equipment that I'm going to be taking with me on my voyage has either arrived or is on its way, and I need to have the trike so I can start the final build of the solar and communications systems.
This week saw the arrival of the tinted Windwrap fairing that will shield me from headwinds and the sun's baking rays, as well as the Wilson 3-watt dual-band amplifer that will significantly improve my cellular voice and data signal strength.
Soon, I will be pedaling around the countryside on a sweet, three-wheeled ride, and when I'm not doing that, I'll be stripping wire and nursing solder burns on my fingers. Joy!
*From Ascot Vale, in Victoria...which conjures up images of a dale filled with rough and ready outback-style men frolicking in a stream wearing nothing but brightly-colored scarves.
But I'm almost completely certain that I am alone in such imaginings.
February 03, 2006
Matthew Wilder In My Sleeping Brain
 Last night I had the strangest dream
I sailed away to China
in a little rowboat to find ya
and the Chinese navy destroyed it
with an SS-N-22 "Sunburn" supersonic anti-ship cruise missile
which is a bit of overkill
but I guess
they're touchy
these
days.
Vaguely Racist Onomatopoetic Phrase #217
February 06, 2006
The Terror Of Waking
For me, the primary of effect of anti-depressant medication was a great leveling. No lows, but no highs, either...everything became a sort of washed-out sepia, which was neither alarming nor comforting. It also turned off my emotional response to music, so that it no longer served as my audio madeline, and I was no longer transported into reverie.
The medication served its purpose. I've been off it for quite awhile, now, and I'm better able to manage my emotional state, mostly because I can usually recognize when it is my body, rather than my mind or spirit, that is driving that state. I no longer worry that something is wrong! just because my adrenals have kicked in and there's a leaden ball in my chest. I'm able to analyze my current circumstances, compare them to my physiological activity, and decide that my body is simply mistaken.
Lately, my corpus has been doing its damndest to panic me. The thought of coming in to work will cause an elevator-drop in my gut, and I will soothe myself: You're there for three months, hired gun. In and out, no sweat, with a bundle of cash. Confronted with emptying out and cleaning my home office in advance of visits by prospective buyers, I will become suffused with an annoyance that thinly masks the overwhelming fear that I just can't get it all done, and I will tell myself: one shelf at a time, one bag of trash, and soon it will be done. I have to carefully limit myself to one or two ales at the most on weeknights, lest I slip back into the habit of soothing my bodyfear with the anesthesia of alcohol.
In the morning, when the alarm goes off, my chest instantly constricts and tightens, and I lay there trying to snooze for fifteen or twenty minutes, to push off the terrible experience of being awake and aware of the pressures and demands of my life.
Then, I realize: you are leaving all of this. In two months, three weeks, and four days, you will be embarking on a long journey, where the greatest pressures you face will be finding a place to camp and deciding if you want to detour and see the World's Largest Ball of Twine. This is your body panicking, not you.
That helps. But, as Pea said last night, the fact that potential buyers are finally coming to see the house next Saturday makes all of this real.
We're really selling this place, really parting ways.
Everything will change.
Maybe my body is on to something, here!
The fear! The fear is upon me! I claw my own eyes out to spare them from the horror of of its tentacled visage, its glistening maw, its baleful eye, its keening banshee cries! What madness was it that drove me to surrender my morphine syringe for this: hated, crawling reality! Agh! Yuargh! Blauugh!!!
And so on.
I am fully aware: in the category of "sources of stress in life," getting out of bed to get to a well-paying job and making my house ready for sale at a not-insubstantial tax-free profit so I that can galavant across the country on an expensive imported three-wheeled toy doesn't really rank up there with, say, folks who walk ten miles each way for drinking water full of guinea worm larvae that eventually exit as fettucine-looking adults through excruciatingly bloody holes in their legs and feet. Believe me: whenever I come up for air from the navel pool, I thank Whomever that I am where I am and able to do what I do.
Stupendously Fat British Person Is Dead
Now, I'm fairly certain that there's a Sad Story here, as there usually is in such cases, and the supplied picture of Jack with his gaffer's tape "wig" makes him look like a fairly miserable bloke.
But enough of this humane chit-chat. It's an oddity of language in the Sun's reportage that caught my eye:
Unmarried Jack, who became a recluse in 1975, will be buried in Rawdon, Leeds, tomorrow.
At what point does one "become" a recluse? After one has stayed indoors for six months? A year? Two? Did Jack stop leaving this house in 1970, and not qualify for recluse-hood until 1975?
What does that mean?
[Via boingboing.]
February 07, 2006
Good God!
Apparently, I forgot to put my pants on this morning.
I've been here all day and no one said a damn thing.
February 08, 2006
Idiocy On Parade
 I suppose that the irony is entirely lost on them: were they in Saudi Arabia, with a picture of an American flag flying over, say, Nasiriyah Palace, they would be arrested, and beaten with rubber hoses. If they were lucky.
As it stands: I am most grateful that I no longer work in downtown Manhattan, because al-Mutt and bin Jeff here are standing on the corner of Liberty and Church, with Ground Zero in the background. For seven years, I crossed Church street at that corner several days a week, as I walked from the ferry terminal to my office.
I am grateful because, if I still worked in downtown Manhattan, and came across this pair, I would be compelled to go into the cafe that's in the background there, and purchase several ham croissants. Against my better judgment, I would be driven to stand about six feet in front of them, and place the croissants on the ground, where I would unwrap them, and take them apart. I would remove the ham, setting it aside in several small piles. Very carefully, I would peel a thin slice off of the first pile, and ball it up.
Then: slowly, deliberately, and with great enjoyment, I would flick the ball of wadded-up ham at them. I'd make another one and do it again. I would continue doing this, with care and fine aim, so that I might achieve my goal of getting several tiny ham-balls stuck in the ill-kempt, ridiculous-looking beard that supposedly demonstrates the masculine piety of the goat-fucker on the right.
I'm sure it would've ended badly.
But I don't work in downtown Manhattan anymore.
And that's a good thing...for many reasons.
[Via protein wisdom, who got it from Jihad Watch, who got it from the United American Committee.]
My New Favorite Snack-Style Combination
When I was a wee lad, I used to crumble Pop Tarts into bowls of Dannon yogurt. That's some quality disgustosnackage right there.
But I'm an adult now.
And these days, nothing beats a big bag of Wild Bill's Hickory Smoked Beef Jerky and a pint of Samuel Smith's Imperial Stout.
Oh yes.
You heard me.
Try it! It's like the American Revolution in your mouth.
February 10, 2006
It's In New Jersey
My trike has arrived at my dealer's shop. But I've got such a bad case of brain-jackassery that my only comment is meh. Folks are coming to view the house tomorrow, which means that after a nice few hours of office work wackiness I get to go home and finish off all the house prep work I've been nibbling away at all week.
Meh.
And mrrrgh, too.
-----------
UPDATE:
-----------
Just what is brain-jackassery? I'm glad you asked.
Medical opinion is divided. However, speaking as the world's leading expert on my own head, "brain-jackassery" is the mental state that results when the bottom falls out of my neurochemical soup pot. Key levels of certain neurotransmitters - dopamine, say, or the ever-popular serotonin - drop below an ill-defined threshold, leaving me with a bad case of the heebie-jeebies, a feeling of impending doom, general malaise, depression, and so on.
I blame the ale. I thought I could get away with two in an evening; apparently I can't. Probably even one a night for too many nights in a row is too much. This isn't a hangover, not at all. It's just that the Belgian monk's brew upsets my mental state more than is tolerable.
Which means I can't enjoy a simple evening libation as often as I'd like.
It's a little self-corrective mechanism, I think: hey, beer-boy! Getting a little too friendly with the fermented beet sugars there, aren't you?
I've said it before, I'll say it again: at times like this that I cannot believe I used to drink as much as I did. Idiot.
Anyway: my mood has lifted a bit since this morning, and I'm not quite as convinced that I am a wretched fool who has blown his only chance for happiness and is attempting to fix his self-shattered life by pedaling off on an ill-advised journey of avoidance that will almost certainly end badly.
February 11, 2006
Or...!
Maybe it's not the beer. Maybe I've just got a head full of bad wiring. Fucked in the head! But instead of stealing a couple of nuclear weapons from the Air Force and demanding $255 million...I'll just have a pint or two.
We're supposed to get a mess of snow tonight. And, in the interests of scientific rigor, we must - must, I say! - test these things.
So, if tomorrow morning I am in a fine frame of mind and enjoying the newly-fallen snow, I will conclude that it is the pints in combination with early rising and driving to work that drives me into the shallow-end of the mood pool, there to flounder about with all the other miserable kids and their half-inflated water wings.
If, however, I wake up in a pool of flop-sweat, contemplating the unmitigated disaster that regaining consciousness most certainly portends...well then.
Stupid neurochemistry!
We hates it, we does.
February 12, 2006
Then Again...
Maybe it was the beer, or maybe it's the nitrogen bubbles in my brain, or maybe, really, it doesn't matter much at all what it was or is or will be.
I'm just another human with too large an existential mirror before his face. That style of perception simply does not fit well into cubicles, doesn't match carpet tiles, and reacts miserably with fluorescent lighting. Neither, I should add, is it much good for growth beyond the age of...oh, let's say 30. I'm four years late. Need to start my ministry so I can get banged in the wood, as it were, or, at the very least, have some exciting adventures with green-skinned foil-clad women who shoot laser beams from their eyeballs.
Need to bust my bubble.
Pop it with my savage fist of wacky triking fury!
It is no match for my Three-Wheeled Style!!!
Huuaaaaa....ka-zang!
And so on.
(This will get weirder before it gets better.)
February 13, 2006
More Bias At The NYT
Usually, the folks at the NYT make some sort of attempt to disguise whatever narrative they're pushing, usually with ample use of the passive "Some have criticized...," or the ever-popular "Sources say that..." These are rhetorical illusionist's phrases that are intended to give the impression of solid reporting, but really only serve as poor cover for the reporter's own agenda. This is usually coupled with insinuation and descriptions of the reporter's impressions of the situation, which are presented as though they constitute objective information that should be taken into account by the reader.
The recent flap over Dick Cheney's hunting accident is a perfect example. Reporter Maria Newman does her best to turn this non-story into something conspiratorial and newsworthy:
Bush Did Not Learn for Several Hours That Cheney Shot, Ate Baby
By MARIA NEWMAN
Published: February 13, 2006
President Bush did not learn for several hours that Vice President Dick Cheney shot and ate a baby in South Texas on Saturday afternoon, The White House said today.
In a briefing with the White House press corps, Scott McClellan, the president's spokesman, said he himself did not learn until about 6 a.m. on Sunday that it was Mr. Cheney who had shot and eaten the baby during a weekend baby hunting trip along with several others at the Armstrong Ranch in South Texas.
The White House has been criticized for not publicly reporting the incident, or details of what happened, even up to today, when Mr. McClellan deflected most questions about the matter to the vice president's office. Some have also criticized the The White House for not disclosing that several key Republican supporters often accompany the vice president on baby hunting trips, during which they and the vice president often kill and eat more than thirty babies on a weekend.
News of the baby-eating was first reported on the Web site of The Corpus Christi Caller-Times, after the owner of the ranch, Katherine Armstrong, called reporters there late Sunday morning to tell them of the incident, which had taken place about 18 hours earlier. Republican campaign supporter Harry Whittington, 78, was also wounded by shotgun pellets in the neck, shoulder and chest as the vice president tried to bring the baby down.
"That is of course not something that you want to happen, but it does happen sometimes," she told the newspaper. "It's a risk when any shooting sport is involved, especially if you're trying to bag some of the faster babies we have on the ranch here."
Mr. McClellan was questioned intensely by the White House press corps today about why the White House never released the information itself and why it was left to a private citizen to report to the world that the vice president of the United States had been shooting and eating babies. They also seemed frustrated that Mr. McClellan could not tell them exactly when Mr. Bush learned that the vice president was, in fact, eating babies, despite the fact that most reporters present knew that the President also eats babies, and regularly sacrifices young virgin girls in a secret room within the bowels of The White House known only as "The Secret Room Where Bush Does Really Evil Stuff."
"Listen, you swine," Mr. McClellan said. "We can pretty much make you and everyone you care about disappear, so don't fuck with us."
Mr. McClellan would not answer questions about whether he, himself, ate babies.
Mr. McClellan seemed on the defensive several times during the briefing about why the fullest accounts of the incident seemed to come from Ms. Armstrong, who told The Associated Press and CNN on Sunday that it was her idea to go to the press.
"I said, Mr. Vice President, this is going to be public, and I'm comfortable going to the hometown newspaper," she told The A.P. in a telephone interview. "And he said, you go ahead and do whatever you are comfortable doing. Try a leg!"
Mr. McClellan said, "The vice president thought that Ms. Armstrong should be the first one to go out there and provide that information to the public, which she did. She reached out early Sunday morning to do so."
He added: "I think you can always look back at these issues and look at how to do a better job...there's always a way to improve the marinade, so to speak."
I've highlighted a number of the rhetorical tricks I mentioned earlier.
We're onto them. When will reporters figure that out, and stop peddling their opinions as fact?
[Previous NYT Cheney coverage here.]
Philip K. Dick Is Missing, Alas
Apparently, the robot version of dead sci-fi author/maybe-prophet Philip K. Dick has been stolen:
The quirky android, which made a major splash at Wired Magazine's NextFest in Chicago in June, was lost in early January while en route to California by commercial airliner.
"We can't find Phil," said Steve Prilliman of Dallas-based Hanson Robotics, which created the futuristic robot with the FedEx Institute of Technology at the University of Memphis, the Automation and Robotics Research Institute at the University of Texas at Arlington and Dick's friend Paul Williams.
"We're very worried because it's been a few weeks now," said Prilliman. "We're pressing hard to find Phil."
Robotics wizard and lead designer David Hanson built the robot as a memorial to Dick, whose 1968 book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? inspired the 1982 classic Blade Runner starring Harrison Ford.
[...]
Along with an eerie likeness to the author, the robot features award-winning artificial intelligence that mimics the writer's mannerisms and lifelike skin material to affect realistic expressions.
Top-of-the-line voice software loaded with data from Dick's vast body of writing allows the robot to carry on natural-sounding conversations, although it does come off as a bit doddering at times.
Biometric-identification software and advanced machine vision allows the robot to recognise people - even in a crowd - read their expressions and body language and talk to them sounding a lot like a normal, albeit slightly senile, author who likes to quote his own books when he gets confused.
If I has the chance, I'd probably steal him, too. We would escape together to some idyllic corner of northern Canada, but that part of our adventure would be cut from subsequent versions of the movie.
[Via boingboing.]
February 14, 2006
More Like Him, Please
Frank Miller, that is. I've often wondered what it is about "Creatives" in our culture - artists, writers, actors, and so on - that makes so many of them distressingly inclined to be complete dolts when discussing real, grown-up things like war and terrorism.
The creator of The Dark Knight Returns, however, shows that you don't have to be divorced from reality to be a Creative. Miller is going to pit Batman against al-Qaeda, and is doing so with a forthright purpose in mind:
Miller proudly announced the title of his next Batman book, which he will write, draw and ink. Holy Terror, Batman! is no joke. And Miller doesn't hold back on the true purpose of the book, calling it "a piece of propaganda," where "Batman kicks al Qaeda's ass."
The reason for this work, Miller said, was "an explosion from my gut reaction of what's happening now." He can't stand entertainers who lack the moxy of their '40s counterparts who stood up to Hitler. Holy Terror is "a reminder to people who seem to have forgotten who we're up against."
It's been a long time since heroes were used in comics as pure propaganda. As Miller reminded, "Superman punched out Hitler. So did Captain America. That's one of the things they're there for."
"These are our folk heroes," Miller said. "It just seems silly to chase around the Riddler when you've got Al Qaeda out there."
I look forward to seeing Batman vanquish bin Laden or a reasonable facsimile thereof.
As long as he doesn't end up coming back as some sort of super-villain who wields a giant flaming scimitar, or wears a servo-powered armored robe and a turban that launches exploding Jihadis.
That would suck.
[Via He Who Needs No Links.]
Coke-fueled Craziness
So, this afternoon I took the last bit of the office coffee from the office coffee pot, and bought a 20-ounce lime Diet Coke from the office Coke machine, and I mixed the cooling coffee with the Coke, thinking "Hey! A coffee-Cokie treat!"
It was OK.
But the interesting thing, the interesting thing, see, was that the mixture foamed up with a thick head. Normal Coke, subject as it is to massive testing by food scientists with a vast knowledge of food technology in their noggins, has a very precise foaming head action: just enough to look appealing, but it doesn't last long enough to stick to your lip if you drink it from a glass or shoot out the bottle if you open it right after it tumbles out of the machine. The coffee-Coke mixture threw all that careful science off, and the foam persisted.
Hours later, not really paying attention, I stuck my empty water cup into the empty coffee-Coke cup, in preparation for their disposal, and a great puff! of mysterious dry fluffy stuff shot up into the air and drifted slowly back down. I caught some on my finger, and it vanished into a smear of pale brown powder.
I had forgotten about the coffee-Coke foam, so it took me a minute to figure out where the airborne fluff had come from and what it was. The foam had dried into fine light lace, and when I stuck one cup into the other the resulting air pressure forced the stuff into the air.
All of which probably wouldn't have been nearly as interesting if I had not, in fact, made the coffee-Cokie treat in the first place. Wired me up pretty damn good, yeah sir you betcha!
February 15, 2006
Onomatopoetic Mood Expression #16
So...Dell Doesn't Suck?
Dell's customer service has taken some very public dings recently, and my own experience with trying to get them to replace a $100 AC/DC automobile charger that made stinky sizzling noises and died after 90 days was ludicrous at best. The part didn't fit into their customer service scripts, so the half-dozen Indian reps I talked to over the course of two or three days were mostly at a loss.
However: after nine months of light use, the life of my trusty Inspiron 700m's main battery dropped to 45 minutes or so. After two e-mail exchanges, which included some straightforward trouble-shooting procedures, I am going to receive replacements for not one, but two batteries. That's a replacement battery and a free battery, in less than 24 hours.
Now that is how customer service is done.
I was contemplating whether I wanted to take a bit of the house money and get a newer, smaller laptop to take with me on my cross-country journey, perhaps a swanky Sony Vaio with a carbon fiber case...but no. Every so often you get a machine that, despite the industry standard 1-in-5 lemon rate, just hangs together and keeps going, and I think my 700m might just be one of those. If Dell will back up the laptop as well as they back up the battery, I have no qualms about dragging it across America.
---
UPDATE:
Not only did they send two batteries: they sent a regular battery, an extended battery...and they arrived in one day.
February 16, 2006
Still Life, With Sweetheart Cups
(From my After Lunch period.)
I Could Really Use Some Potassium Benzoate Right About Now
You know...to protect my taste.
Because if I go stale, I become a bland lumpen bag of self-aware salt solutions and lipids, and will be most embarrassed if I am set upon by a hoard of cannibals and then rejected. Just imagine: Pfaugh! Like shoe leather, this one! Do we have any of that missionary jerky left?
I'd never hear the end of it.
Mainly because I'd be dead.
But still.
A Collection Of Small, Strange Amusements
 I check my referrer logs often, because I am egoless, like a Buddha. Some time ago, while viewing the logs and meditating on the vast numbers of people who link to this site because I am so incredibly interesting and humble, I came across a referral or five from a site called Laughin' Vacuum, which contains a number of these smallish, oddly amusing little drawings. This one right here made me laugh out loud, because it neatly summarizes my feelings towards bumper stickers and the people who put them on their cars and minds.
Turns out: it's my half-brother Royce's site. Didn't know I had one of those, did you? Ha! You'll find I'm full of surprises, young Jedi!
I last saw him in 1993 or so, when he was a twee lad. We've recently been corresponding, but I didn't know this was his site until he posted a comment here yesterday. So it's all kinds of uncanny with the genetic whatzit and so on, because aside from, y'know, the spermatozoic contribution, we don't have much in common in the way of upbringing or envrionment. Unlike the rest of you squares, he was highly amused by Turkey Death Day, which makes him a kindred in the spirit of the Big Strange, too.
So: go check it out.
February 17, 2006
No Explanation For Stinking Blue Clouds
This morning: I'm tearing along whatever road it is that runs parallel to the New York Thruway, so that I can get to the Thruway and then backtrack along it in the other direction (lovely), and I keep encountering these great towering gouts of oil-stinking blue smoke.
It's raining out, and there's misty droplets flying off of other cars, so the Lexus SUV I peg for the cloud-maker because it's "smoking" under the hood turns out to be just fast and wet. Ditto the Jeep Wrangler up the road a bit, and the busted-up old K-Car. Each time, I have the brief thrill of Mystery Solved...but no! No cars have made the stinking blue clouds at all.
So I remain puzzled.
I expect it will gnaw at me until, at last, I am compelled to kill, and leave a puff of burned-oil smoke at each crime scene.
Let's see Grissom figure that out!
Of course, he'd probably use an ant colony to find this blog, and catch me.
Bastard.
Now There's A Government That Deserves To Have Nuclear Weapons
"We must believe in the fact that Islam is not confined to geographical borders, ethnic groups and nations. It's a universal ideology that leads the world to justice. We don't shy away from declaring that Islam is ready to rule the world. We must prepare ourselves to rule the world and the only way to do that is to put forth views on the basis of the Expectation of the Return. If we work on the basis of the Expectation of the Return [of the Mahdi], all the affairs of our nation will be streamlined and the administration of the country will become easier. Some politicians think we had a revolution so that some could hit others in the head and have one party ruling for some time and another party in opposition for some time. But we had a revolution to achieve a lofty goal, on the basis on the Expectation of the Return."
So says Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
As Andrew Sullivan notes: history teaches us that it's generally "good to listen to what our enemy says. And it's good to believe him."
Go Over There
Hey, it's been a big ol' barrel of mostly crap over here lately, but if you're in the mood for some hot Hunter S. Thompson Meets Joseph Conrad Whale-on-Human Action, go read Vanx.
That's what happens when you actually write for a living and travel around while you do it, instead of just staying in one place sucking the corporate teat while occasionally farting out a grab-assery of business-style words that no one ever actually reads or cares about: you get good.
Hopefully, all that will change for me in [checks watch] ten weeks and three days.
February 19, 2006
C'mon, Man, Just Some Grounds, Or: Baking With The Rabbi
Apparently I have entered the zone where coffee and heroin intersect. I wake up with a headache that feels like my brain has been replaced by a homunculus that crouches in my skull and has its tiny hands wrapped firmly around the back of each eyeball, squeezing...squeezing...and I know that if I don't get If I don't get a cup of the browned juicings of the naughty bean soon, I'll be stealing televisions and turning tricks for Japanese businessman.
Fortunately, I've got a big jar of satin-sheened dark-roasted beans, a grinder, and a brewing machine, so I just stumble into the kitchen and make some coffee.
I had a very involved dream last night wherein I was "apprenticed" to an Orthodox rabbi, who was teaching me how to make bread. Not challah, or any Jewish-specific baked product, but all kinds...sourdough, Italian-style, rye, you name it. We worked in the basement of his house, which seemed to be somewhere in a Brooklyn-like setting.
I was baking with the rabbi because it was an experience that I had sought out for myself. His attitude towards the endeavor was somewhat gruff, and utterly competent. One day, though, he left me alone in the basement bakery, and although I had the skills to do what was required, I either chose not to, or lacked confidence. I couldn't make the dough properly, and if I managed to make some, I couldn't bake it properly. I thought about going upstairs into his house to use the residential oven in his kitchen, but was ashamed to do so...I thought of so many ways to either shorten the labor involved in the task at hand, or to avoid it entirely.
Now, if I were a Mondo Mystic of some kind, I might interpret this dream as, say, a condemnation of the newly-fashionable study of Kabbalah. Those seeking to avoid the labor of studying Torah and Talmud prior to studying Kabbalah will never be able to stand on their own in the community. Seeking to understand Torah and Talmud through Kabbalah is like trying to understand how to bake bread by studying a finished loaf.
But I'm not a Mondo Mystic of any kind, and I do remember, back in 1995, actually talking to someone at Union Theological Seminary - a graduate-level institution - about whether it might be possible to attend without a completed BA. Because I knew, see, that I was so smart that I didn't really need that BA, and I could just skip over that and head right into the advanced study of theology. A similar pattern repeated itself in my various attempts to study Koine Greek. The idea of knowing the ancient language was so very compelling, but the actual study of it, the memorizing of the stems and their multitudinous declensions, created some weird psychological reverberation within my lazy mind that almost literally prohibited me from undertaking the activity. It was all very neurotic, and my most recent attempt at studying Greek, among other things, was cut short by the terrorist attacks of 2001: I decided (secretly, almost thankfully) that I could not wrestle with my inner intellectual demons, look for a house, and cope with the aftermath of the attacks at the same time, so I withdrew from school, bought a house, and fled New York.
Now, that particular epicycle of consequence is almost complete: the For Sale sign went up in front of the house on Friday. I'll be embarking on a months-long journey during which, I expect, I'll have a fair amount of time to Think About Things. One of those Things, perhaps, might be deciding whether I actually want to learn to bake bread, or just eat it.
Meanwhile: my heroin is done, so I'm going to go pour a cup of it, and read a book.
February 20, 2006
Uh...Here. Appreciate This Blintz:
February 21, 2006
Your Session Has Expired From Inactivity
So my computer tells me. Pity: it was a good session, strong-backed, wanting nothing more than the fruits of its own labor, a cold beer at the end of a hard day's work, and children to carry on its traditions and values.
And now it's gone.
Let us a take a moment, to remember the session that was.
I'm Not Writing Another Word...
...until somebody appreciates the blintz.
What've you got against blintzes, huh? Is it a Jewish thing? I'll have you know that some people who are very close to me are Jewish, and if you're agin' blintzes, well, then, you're agin' the People of The Book and agin' me too.
I won't stand for it, ya hear?
Now then: I'm waiting.
February 22, 2006
Ha! It Worked!
OK...OK, I'm not writing another word until someone brings me a ham sandwich and a fistful of Krugerrands!
Yeah!
Today's Caffeinated Nasal Effusion
That was fast, thanks!
Meanwhile: I found the word "dystotato" coffee-snortingly funny. This bit was also amusing, but with less nose involvement:
Cheez-It Twisterz
These "baked cheese snacks" combine two flavors. In the case of the box I have in front of me, those two flavors are "Cheddar & More Cheddar." That's right, food scientists have finally broken the cheddar barrier. For centuries it was thought that cheddar and more cheddar could not be combined, and that any attempts to do so would result in a poison cloud at best and the complete destruction of all space-time at worst. But somehow, the good folks at the Sunshine bakery have figured out a way to put both cheddar and more cheddar in the same snack. I'm thinking they're probably being held in an electro-gravitational plasma field.
Downside: They're stupid.
Read the rest for a momentary diversion: Fun Food for the Trivia-Minded.
[Not via Fark. If you wanted to read stuff you can find on Fark, you'd read Fark, right? Right. Bring me a knish.]
What A Waste
 I've always liked Muslim architecture. In the Metopolitan Museum of Art's Near East wing, they have an entire interior room from an 18th-century Arabian residence, with a small fountain pool in the center of its tiled floor, and walls covered with intricately carved wooden panels depicting verses from the Koran in the elegant calligraphy of Arabic. It's a peaceful place, and whenever I visit it I want to hop over the velvet rope, close the elaborately worked doors, and have a nap on one of the low benches that line the room. Similarly, I am entranced by the museum's prayer niche, with its blue and white tiles, and by all of the various bits and pieces of mosques that are on display. The integration of the ephemerally sacred into earthly structures fascinates me. We in the West have our cathedrals - which I also appreciate - but they are isolated outbursts of piety and wealth. Aside from the Hindus, no culture has taken sacred architecture as far as the Arab Muslims.
So it saddens me that, in yet another example of their stupid, barbarous malignance, the "insurgents" in Iraq have blown up the golden-domed al-Askari mosque in Samarra. Once again, what is sacred to one sect of Islam is merely a target for terrorists whose only real faith is in murderous destruction.
Remember the Imam al-Mahdi, the messiah-style person whose return President Ahmadinejad apparently thinks will be hastened by his acquisition of nuclear weapons? The now-shattered golden-domed shrine of the mosque contained the tombs of the 10th and 11th Imams, Imam Ali al-Naqi and Imam Hasan al-Askari, who was the father of the Imam al-Mahdi. Right next to it is the shrine called Maqam Ghaybat*, which was supposedly built on the cellar into which the Imam Mahdi disappeared before his occultation in 873. Or so the Shia believe. The Sunnis who subscribe to the Mahdi tradition believe that he will be born anew in Medina, and that, like the Prophet Muhammad, his father will be named Abdullah.
Nothing like smashing up the beauty your culture has produced in order to prove...what? Your piety? Your bad motherfuckerness?
Idiots.
Before the appearance of the one who will rise, peace be upon him, the people will be reprimanded for their acts of disobedience by a fire that will appear in the sky and a redness that will cover the sky. It will swallow up Baghdad, and will swallow up Kufa. Their blood will be shed and houses destroyed. Death will occur amid their people and a fear will come over the people of Iraq from which they shall have no rest.
So said the 6th Shia Imam, Jafar al-Sadiq, speaking of the Mahdi's return. I'm sure that blowing up the golden dome moved things right along, prophecy-wise...especially for those who have a vested interest in moving things along.
*Updated to correct information about the two shrines on the mosque site.
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Omar at Iraq the Model reports on the mood in Baghdad.
February 23, 2006
Well, You Know What They Say...
...when the going gets tough, the tough grab the going by the throat, yank out its trachea, and make it into a charming if oddly fragrant flute.
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BONUS POST: ALTERNATE TAKES
- ...when life hands you lemons, load them into a compressed-air cannon and shoot them back at life until you crack its skull open and can feast on its delectable lemon-flavored brain.
- ...a rolling stone gathers no pie...no, that's not a keeper...and Bill, can I have a bit more monitor in the headphones? Thanks. Is it lunchtime yet?
Even More Waste
No building, no matter how sacred or shiny, is worth this:
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 23 — At least 95 people, some of them prominent Sunni Arab clerics, were killed in revenge in Baghdad and the surrounding areas in the chaotic 24 hours following the bombing Wednesday morning of one of Shiite Islam's holiest shrines, in the town of Samarra, an Interior Ministry official said today. More bodies were being discovered throughout the day across Iraq.
In Baghdad, Omar reports:
Spokesmen of the Islamic Party and Muslim Scholars claim more than 120 mosques have been blown up, set ablaze or came under small arms and RPG fire including the Um al-Qura mosque which is the HQ of the Association of Muslim Scholars which came under several drive-by shootings.
Radio Sawa reported a short while ago that the central morgue in Baghdad received some 80 bodies of people who were killed with gun shots since Wednesday afternoon.
All of which, I'm certain, is exactly what the as-yet-unidentified bombers had in mind.
One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other
February 24, 2006
What Is It With Smart People?
Richard Dawkins holds a doctorate from Oxford. He was Assistant Professor of Zoology at the University of California at Berkeley. He is currently a lecturer in Zoology at Oxford University and a Fellow of New College. He holds the Charles Simonyi Chair of Public Understanding of Science and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He is the author of several best-selling books, including 1976's The Selfish Gene. He is a fierce proponent of evolutionary biology, and coined the intellectually fashionable term, "meme." Richard Dawkins is an educated man.
Like a distressingly large number of educated people, he seems to delight in shooting small fish in even smaller barrels:
Tipped off by a thread on Echo, I bittorrented both episodes a few days ago. From the vantage point of the United States, the program is remarkable: You simply would never encounter such a brazen denunciation of religious faith on this country's airwaves, because the outcry from the religious right would be deafening. Dawkins's narration drips with contempt; as he goes about his rounds, it's as if he can hardly restrain himself from shouting, "I'm surrounded by IDIOTS!" The smoke coming out of his ears leaves a trail behind him wherever he goes.
In the seven-and-a-half minute clip linked through the image below, Dawkins visits Colorado Springs to attend a sermon by an influential but proudly ignorant pastor. In a conversation with Dawkins after the sermon, the pastor likens the event to a rock concert. Dawkins suggests that it was more akin to a Nuremberg rally—a comparison that the pastor appears to be too uneducated and ignorant to be offended by.
Imagine for a moment that Dawkins was attending, say, the Million Man March, which was probably not overly populated with Oxford-educated doctorates, and was most certainly well-populated with various flavors of Bible-believing Christians, Koran-believing Muslims, pastors, and ministers. Suppose Dawkins got a camera to follow him around, as he snidely compared the gathering to a Nazi rally in ways that those in attendance were "too uneducated and ignorant to be offended by." Would that be "remarkable," a "brazen denunciation?"
Of course it wouldn't. Dawkins would be denounced as a bigot. Do the same thing at a white church in Colorado, however, and it becomes an amusement.
Perhaps the reason we "simply would never encounter such a brazen denunciation of religious faith on this country's airwaves" is because in this country, we have an ever-lowering tolerance for watching self-important academics make fun of people. But for a certain segment of the polity, Christians - evangelicals in particular - remain acceptable subjects of mockery and derision, while other identity groups enjoy the privileged status bestowed upon them by Dawkins' fellow intellectuals.
Is ignorance good? Of course not. Education and learning are fine and valuable pursuits.
Mockery and derision, on the other hand, are not. And those who celebrate the mocking and deriding of others, I think, are perhaps not as well-developed as they think they are.
While discussing such mockery in the context of "a certain standard of good taste in social behavior" and its relationship to virtues possessed by the cultivated gentleman, Aristotle wrote:
Those then who go to excess in ridicule are thought to be buffoons and vulgar fellows, who itch to have their joke at all costs, and are more concerned to raise a laugh than to keep within the bounds of decorum and avoid giving pain to the object of their raillery [...] as matter for ridicule is always ready to hand, and as most men are only too fond of fun and raillery, even buffoons are called witty and pass for clever fellows; though it is clear from what has been said that Wit is different, and widely different, from Buffoonery.
You can probably find more than a few examples of my own Buffoonery in the archives, of course.
But I consider them the result of my laziness, not evidence of my intellectual superiority.
[Via boingboing.]
I Never Learn
No matter how yummy coffee is, it is never a good idea to bolt three cups of it before 11AM.
Now, my physiology is telling me that I am about to be leapt upon by a paleolithic beastie of some kind, who will savagely dismember me before I can breed.
However, because this is 2006 AD and not 206,000 BC, instead of being all sharpened up and ready to defend myself with a rock and a stick, I'm jumpy and full of dread and frightened of what the future might bring.
Too much coffee sucks, and I think it's time to wean myself back off it. I need this crap like a lobster needs a cell phone.
February 25, 2006
I Am Off...
...to pick up the trike.
Pictures and other goodies to follow.
[Here are the brackets that contain my little Happy Dance.]
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 OK- here's just one photo from Johannes' shop, demonstrating my Chuck Mangione-style attitude towards my trike, my impending journey, and the Universe in general. Note the warp field exuding from the tires.
I've only had the briefest of rides on the trike but: it is a sweet ride. There is unexpected chrome involved, which I'll explain later. Right now it's in the dining room, with its newly-installed fairing. This is the tradition in my house: new pedaled conveyances spend a few days indoors, where they can be coveted and fawned over. More pictures in a bit.
February 26, 2006
Shiny New Trike, Crappy Old Cell Phone Camera
I will have more (and better) pics later on, but for now, feast yer eyes:
February 27, 2006
Look At My Enormous Orange
 This orange is so huge, I do not think that I can eat all of it.
But I'd better eat some of it, because a big orange like this cannot be left intact, for the good of humanity.
I think that it is already plotting to smash buildings by rolling over them. It particularly wants to crush Japanese people and to fight other giant fruit.
I'd better get started.
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UPDATE:
I won.
February 28, 2006
Battery Mayhem!
This is potentially huge news:
...a new line of teeth-rattling 36-volt cordless saws, rotary hammers, and drills from DeWalt, a division of Black & Decker, finally delivers. The potent black-and-yellow beasts have twice the power of standard 18-volt tools and run for twice as long per charge. How? Each packs the M1 battery, a hand grenade of electrons that promises to transform mobile power.
The M1, based on the same lithium-ion technology used in your cell phone and laptop, is the first product from MIT spinoff A123 Systems. Cofounder Yet-Ming Chiang, a materials science professor, succeeded in shrinking to nanoscale the particles that coat the battery's electrodes and store and discharge energy. The results are electrifying: Power density doubles, peak energy jumps fivefold (the cells pack more punch than a standard 110-volt wall outlet), and recharging time plummets.
The new battery technology can weigh up to 80% less than current rechargeables.
Personally, I would love to get my hands on some M1 batteries to try in solar applications. The battery pack I'm building for the trike weighs six pounds, and puts out 13.8 volts at 8 amp-hours. That would run this laptop, for example, for about 2 1/2 hours. I'm mainly relying on the battery to run some lower-amperage communication gear, and to serve as a backup for when the laptop's own batteries run out on cloudy days or at night. But with the new M1 batteries, I could squeeze 12 to 14 hours of power into the same space and weight.
The trouble is, lithium-ion batteries tend not to perform well in deep-cycle applications, where the batteries are discharged to near-zero capacity and then recharged, again and again. Modern solar charge controllers - devices that control how much voltage goes to the battery from the solar cells, and prevent overcharging - are all designed to work with heavier, more durable sealed lead-acid batteries.
But hopefully someday soon, some smart MIT-style person will revolutionize batteries. The basic technology was used by the Greeks 2,500 years ago, and could really use a bit of updating.
Now, I have to post this, because my laptop's battery warning light is blinking.
Goddammit, I Need A Cheeseburger
But the best cheeseburger place in town is only open on Thursdays, Fridays, and Sundays, and I'm not going to go out and shoot a cheeseburger myself, so now I'm contemplating venturing forth and acquiring some sort of inferior cheeseburger, or maybe a pound of buffalo meat and some Irish cheddar on a potato roll, or BY GOD the big big death will come to all infidels!
Whoa, hang on...that last bit doesn't belong here at all. Like Hillary Swank! She wouldn't bring me a cheeseburger, so I kicked her out.
Hey - I didn't sack Rome, it was the friggin' barbarians, man. You want to lay that on me? No way, buster. I didn't nail Himself in the wood, either, so you can just walk that on back into your tinfoil-hat freakshow refrigerator right now.
Ack! The incoherence!
It burrrrns!!!
AIEEEE!
(That Altoids commercial, where the nebbish guy in the sideshow eats two Altoids? That rocks.)
*cough*
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UPDATE:
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I sped off and acquired buffalo meat, Swiss cheese, eight square feet of bacon, big-style English muffins, plus green leafy things and hydroponic round red things.
I also got two miniature pies.
And some Guinness.
So maybe Swiss buffalo bastard burgers aren't in the cards this evening.
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UPDATE:
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I created a stupendously fabulous BLT instead, using two square feet of bacon.
Then my heart stopped.
I'm OK now, though.
Now you know!
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UPDATE:
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Give me your panties.
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