October 30th, 2006 at 1:35 am ()
“If I think I might not get something, I won’t ask for it,” she tells me.
“If you don’t ask for it, then you certainly won’t get it,” I said.
“Maybe,” she replied,
After a long pull from her cigarette,
“Maybe it’s not what I really want anyway.”
10-30-2006
October 26th, 2006 at 1:32 am ()
No nukes or meteors or disease. No ice age or space aliens or religious civil wars.
This is how the world will end.
It will end at a certain frequency, when matter rearranges. There will be nothing we can do about it. There will be no gods to whom we can appeal, no Universe to offer us an escape, no solution developed by Doctor Crusher at the last minute. Matter will rearrange and we will be no more.
Behold the power of YouTube!
October 24th, 2006 at 1:31 am ()
There are certain things I’ve never gotten the hang of. Football, poker, and unicycles are the three I think of, usually. I wonder what the connection is.
October 23rd, 2006 at 1:30 am ()
The inability to read minds is probably one of mankind’s greatest gifts.
October 19th, 2006 at 1:29 am ()
I have a peculiar philosophical peccadillo that suggests it is sometimes more useful to not talk about how things have gone wrong as much as it is to talk about how things should be going right. It gives people a model against which they can conform and behave.
I learned this my first year at a small community college. My mathematics professor would review homework every day on the board before his lecture. Several times he would do something on the board in answer to a question from a student and the student would then start speaking their mistake aloud, for example “Ooooh, I forgot to include the last term in the differentiation.”, but he would stop them, saying “Please don’t repeat out loud how to make a mistake. This is the correct way to do it and this is what I want you all to hear. If you’ve made mistakes, you already know how you made mistakes, so I don’t want that going into your ears as well.”
I’ve been surprised at how effective this technique has been at solving problems.
However, I’ve also discovered that sometimes it can be useful to know where and how you misstepped, in order to better avoid the same stumbling block later. As long as you use this tool in a healthy way, it does a good job.
October 18th, 2006 at 12:41 am ()
Rising consumption of natural resources means that humans began “eating the planet” on 9 October, a study suggests.
The best part is the final quote from Fredrik Erixon, director of the European Centre for International Political Economy: “A debt is where you have over-savings in one area of the economy, and under-savings in another. Then you have a transfer of savings from one actor to another in the form of a loan. But who are we indebted to? Perhaps ‘ecological exuberance’ is better than ecological debt.”
I think debt is a better term and I think we better hope that loan is never called.
The idea of calling it “exuberance” is quite possibly one of the most wide-ranging and irresponsible efforts at spin control I think I’ve read of in a long time. If I had not read this in an actual news report, I would have sworn it was simply a deliberately comic misinterpretation of a terrible event, much like referring to the execution of five Amish schoolgirls as, oh, a “quaint rural misunderstanding”.
October 17th, 2006 at 12:40 am ()
It is a vital part of our national defense strategy for other countries to think we are insane. In theory, we are not. In reality, we might be. In theory, acting crazy and having nuclear bombs is a deterrent. In reality, acting crazy and having nuclear bombs means everybody secretly wishes we would get our clock cleaned. In theory, this would be done by beneficial aliens who would cleanly and easily render nuclear weapons into harmless “joy confetti” while bestowing us with tremendous wisdom. In reality, this will be done by someone crazier than us.
October 16th, 2006 at 12:08 am ()
How much of life do we think of at a time? Do we think of this afternoon? Do we think of today? Do we think of this week? A month? A year? The past decade? Our entire life? I think there’s something a little dodgy about spending too much time thinking about right now. Can’t quite put my finger on it, but it seems as if it’s like spending too much time reading and not a good amount of time looking at the sky, talking to other people, and other things that offer perspectives. Sure, a day can be dodgy, but when’s the last time we considered how the past decade’s been going? When’s the last time we thought about our lives in general — good or bad?
October 12th, 2006 at 12:03 am ()
Well.
Let’s take a good look at this, although briefly.
Atheists don’t subscribe to supernatural forces that threaten punishment for bad behavior. Bad behavior for an atheist has immediate and direct consequences, for which the atheist must respond. If an atheist feels regret at hurting someone, they don’t have an imaginary friend who forgives them — they have to approach that person, acknowledge what they’ve done, apologize, and if they want forgiveness, then it must come from the person who was hurt. There is no post-mortem patch, there is no robed figure to absolve them and forgive their trespasses — they must do all of this themselves, following a sense of honor and rightness that doesn’t depend on the whim of a supernatural creature who destroys life by flood and fire, and random slewing and smiting.
Imagine two people, each alone in a room with a cookie jar. They each know dinner’s coming up. One person doesn’t want to eat cookies before dinner because that will impart an unhealthy balance to the whole incoming food deal. Too many cookies and other more healthy foods are displaced. The other person is simply told “Eat cookies and you’ll be in big trouble.”
One operates from a position of sensibility and rational choices — the other only does what they do because they are threatened by force (and as we’ve seen with so many of our religious leaders, evidently that threatening force isn’t nearly strong enough to keep their hands out of the cookie jar). Who really is the most trustworthy?
I don’t look forward to the next civil war in this country.
October 11th, 2006 at 12:02 am ()
It’s interesting to hear adults negotiating with children. Even for things that are non-negotiable. Hitting people, for example. This is not a situation for “Now, remember when we talked about how we don’t hit our friends…?” This is a time for “Stop that!” Analyzing it can come later. In the middle of a fight is not the right time for a memory lesson with applications. It is, however a good time for a lesson in negotiating. Reminds me of people who calmly discuss behavior problems with their pets, as if perhaps their pets are perfectly willing to engage in all sorts of symbolic logic and discussion.
I see lots of kids negotiating back with their parents. It seems pretty clear where they learned this. I wonder how they’ll end up.
October 9th, 2006 at 12:00 am ()
Some “two-fers” are stupid. In today’s paper, a local business is selling stereo speakers for $59 each, or two for $118. This is stupid for two reasons.
The first is that stereo speakers are sold by the pair — that’s what “stereo” means. So, offering to sell them one-at-a-time is just stupid.
The second reason is that there’s no incentive or even reason to offer a “two-fer” price that is exactly double that of the one-off price. That, also, is just stupid. Unless your customers really suck at basic math, in which case, you might as well sell ‘em $59 each, or two for $140. That way, even if people are only thinking of buying one (assuming they’re want to switch to a monaural system), they’ll buy two anyway, just because they’re getting a deal. The difference is that this way, they feel smart, rather than the other way, when they realize that the advertiser thinks they’re stupid.
Never let your customers feel like an idiot. Even if they are.
October 6th, 2006 at 4:07 pm ()
If I had my own airline, it would probably be Air Aztec.
Air Aztec is free, but at the end of each journey, one person is sacrificed to Quetzalcoatl. Videos of the sacrifice are for sale. The sacrifice is voted on by the passengers and by the crew and flight attendants, so it really pays to be nice and if you have a “condition”
Best-of videos provide additional income stream.
Insurance also provides an income stream. Insurance doesn’t prevent you from being chosen — but it does provide a monetary settlement to your survivors.
Underage flyers aren’t chosen, but their guardians might be, so you are completely responsible for the behavior of your child.
Potential mottoes:
“Air Aztec — the only airline with heart!”
“Air Aztec — the most courteous airline on the planet!”
October 5th, 2006 at 4:05 pm ()
There’s something oddly magical about a Stan Ridgway song. I don’t mean magical like with pixie dust and Disney elements, but magical as in the gritty sort of street magic that you might have just missed if you had peeked around that corner sooner, or the dark kind of magic that you feel when you turn off the engine after a long night working and instead of going in, you just sit and listen to the desert. That kind of magic.
I’ve been trying to figure out how to classify Stan Ridgway and although classifying him seems pretty ridiculous on the face of it, I keep thinking he’s basically a fantasist. An urban fantasist. An urban fantasist with a New West streak a mile wide. Or maybe that’s just the wild harmonica speaking.
Stan Ridgway was front man for Wall of Voodoo, an aggressive and crazed band from the mid and late 80′s. Their blip was a frenetic tune called “Mexican Radio”, although I happen to think “Call of the West” was far superior in every way (and “Spyworld” is damn great, too, but I guess if you sing about eating iguana, you’re gonna draw a crowd). But still, “Mexican Radio” gets the airplay. I even heard it on the radio a week or so ago.
Since “Wall of Voodoo”, though, Ridgway’s single albums have cut a very weird and fascinating path through music’s landscapes. I keep coming back to “weird” when I think of them, and this should be used to mean both “strange” and “eldritch or magical” (there’s my Lovecraft reference for the day). If you’re not paying attention, if you’re not listening to the lyrics (which would be quite a trick, as there aren’t too many folks who are easier to understand than Stan Ridgway, despite the unmistakable twang), then you stand the chance of hearing something that sounds vaguely Westerny flavored, with harmonicas and guitar in there, but with strong beats and rhythms. A brief bit of sitar (or something like a sitar) might throw you off suddenly, make you think of mystical Eastern philosophy, and then the next few seconds drain off a metallic pounding from a piledriver at work. So it’s hard to classify, and I think that’s good.
Then, you might start listening to the lyrics. And it gets weirder. Is that a song about an evil car? Is that a song about a ghost marine? Is that a song about a futuristic spy wandering around our world, lost and confused?
Lately, I’ve been spinning his album “Partyball”. A lot. I can spin this CD over and over and over and not enjoy it one whit less.
Every track is amazing.
Jack Talked
“Jack talked like a man on fire and his eyes moved like two shiny steel ball bearings”
Thunderous and weird.
I Wanna Be a Boss
“I wanna take a two week vacation, twenty-six times a year!”
I still hear this on occasion, too, usually requested on morning radio shows. A perfect example of Ridgway taking an ordinary situation and gradually moving it into this weird fantasy world, where a man decides to become a boss and from there ends up vastly wealthy, buying Mars to build an amusement park, etc.
The Roadblock
“One foot slammed on the gas––no shoe, just an argyle sock and that car was screamin’ wild down the highway, like lightning toward the roadblock”
I like the idea that a small town, filled with ordinary folks, would suddenly decide that a car could be, practically, supernatural, but that however supernatural such a thing might be, a good roadblock by honest men is the solution. Well, that and snowcones.
Snaketrain
“I was chasin’ a ghost––pale and white and hard to see”
Beauty for the ears.
Right Through You
“And I see right through you, right on through, but I know you see right through me too.”
Of all the words I could think of to describe this song, I keep thinking “gentle”. It’s just genuinely nice, yet it hides nothing. No one can have secrets in this situation — everyone is transparent, and that’s okay.
The Gumbo Man
“And nobody bothers to conceal what they cannot hide”
Moving into more of the street magic kind of mentality, “The Gumbo Man” feels like walking over a road that only thinly covers an ancient graveyard. It buckles and humps and beneath it you know there are secret things writhing.
Harry Truman
“And Harry Truman finally dropped the bomb, so I can go to sleep at night.”
Everybody should sleep. That’s the best way. And while you sleep, Things Happen…
Overlords
“And both moons are glowin’ purple, and there is no sun to shine”
Pure science fiction. Ten years after World War Nine, mankind is enslaved on a distant planet, digging deep mines. But this has been his place for a long, long time. The only thing that’s different is who’s holding the whip. In this case, the Overlords.
Uba’s House of Fashions
“From behind a desk, inside a cool green cloud, a strange low voice told me then to join the crowd”
Even weirder. Love it!
Beyond Tomorrow
“Everyone will be saved”
It probably doesn’t mean what you think. “Beyond Tomorrow” is a crazy vision of a strange future that looks not unsurprisingly like the one in which we are living now.
I should also add that between many of the songs are odd little instrumental interstitial tunes, each one a brilliant little psychedelic pill.
I can spin this CD all day long and my life just keeps getting weirder and weirder.
October 4th, 2006 at 4:03 pm ()
I heard a theory once.
If you take twenty gallons of sewage and you pour a glass of fine wine in it, you have twenty gallons of sewage. On the other hand, if you have twenty gallons of fine wine and you pour a glass of sewage into it… you have twenty gallons of sewage, too.
I suppose sometimes it becomes necessary to thin the herd, but I think it should be done with a measure toward selectivity.
October 3rd, 2006 at 4:02 pm ()
A little poetry for y’all this morning. And yes, I know I’m mispronouncing “Gein”. Oh well…
Eating poison ivy vine,
Crawling down into a mine,
Swimming blind across the Rhine,
Diving, snagged in fishing line,
Head-bash contest with a stein,
Fist a grinder set on “Fine”,
Ignore the “Pitbull bites hard!” sign,
Upon my own foot (roasted) dine,
Poke a shark in the behin’,
Declare those ballots all were mine,
Make a date with old Ed Gein,
Force e-mailers to use Pine,
Replace all “cosines” with just “sine”,
On nicer forks, bend just one tine,
All these things I’d rather do
Then spend a second more with you.
(written 3-7-2001 — so no one has to panic!)
October 1st, 2006 at 4:01 pm ()
I have a theory. If I see a bug or a glitch or an error in an online thing, I log it in my head. If I see it a week later, then I report it.
Usually, other people find these things faster than I do.
Of course, it all breaks down if everyone uses my theory, but they wouldn’t, so I’m safe.