Notes from the Petting Zoo

When you get a broken tortilla chip, does it somehow feel as if you’re not getting your money’s worth? Why do you suppose that is?

I think part of the fun of eating tortilla chips is the destructive aspect, the pleasure we seem to derive from putting an entire perfect tortilla chip completely in our mouths, sealing it into our Masticatory Death Chamber like a crisp corn-flavored James Bond, and then crunching down and destroying it. Do we trap the tortilla chip’s soul by doing it this way? Do we gain some power by consuming not only the chip’s shell, but it’s essence as well?

Back to the Master List of Essays

When I see a bag of tortilla chips that has sustained damage, where many are broken and smaller, I find myself wondering why these don’t get sold as “New! Now 150% edgier!” chips.

Back to the Master List of Essays

I have a feeling we’re ending the era of Private Real Property soon.

Frankly, I’m not completely convinced there ever was such a thing as private property. Sure, we “own” it, but we pay the government for that privilege. If we don’t pay, then they take it back. Is that owning?

Let’s look at the whole structure of real estate loans, here. Usually, we don’t even come close to owning that property. You know who owns it? The bank owns it. We don’t pay the bank, and they — yep — take it back. Is that owning?

When someone finally explained to me how home loans really worked, I was appalled. The way the compound interest is determined, you actually sign up for several times your loan amount by the time the day is done. Buying a hundred-thousand dollar house? Expect to pay a whole lot more than that! Three hundred thousand or more, depending on your rates and the period of the loan. And if you default on the loan and the bank takes away your house and sells it someone else, they never lose. They really don’t! The only thing that gets lost is the payment against principle for that month or two, and for a thirty-year mortgage, that might be, oh, forty bucks a month. Houses are a commodity owned by banks, and every time they can cycle tenants through there, the bank sets itself up for a little more money. Is that the part where we own something?

I see more shopping malls that have apartments built into them, with the excuse that private people simply don’t provide the kind of income that a bank needs to keep slurping, so now there are these hybrid neighborhoods, lame-ass human tenants clinging to the sides of small businesses in order to not be completely marginalized by the ravenous banks running this freak show. Is this where we should be grateful we “own” that condo? If we don’t pay our mortgage, or we don’t pay our fees — we lose the place!

I think “private property” must be an unwholesome social construct, fabricated by banks during a time when they were trying to figure out how to squeeze more money out of individuals. Up until that moment, only big amounts of money could afford to buy a home. But somewhere, in a meeting, someone said “Hey, if we simply charge three times the price, but structure the loan to reduce the bank risk to practically nothing, we can make out like bandits.”

Of course, the tool to keep people in line is also a bank tool: your Credit Score. If your Credit Score sucks, then you can’t get those big shiny things. So, if you want a good Credit Score, then you better keep paying this horrifying amount of interest.

You know, there is a business where you think you own something, but you don’t. Other people control you by manipulating your fear, and threaten that if you don’t make regular payoffs, you will lose the thing you own.

I believe that business is called extortion.

Back to the Master List of Essays

This is why NPR refuses to interview me:

• Liquid nitrogen is not a toy.
• Cats are sharp and must be declawed before insertion.
• Many other people have witches in their heads.
• There must be balance, that for all the people who try to be decent and helpful, they feel the need, the cry to be wicked as well, and that when offered an opportunity to do so in abundance and free of regret or pain to others, they still shy away from going the whole hog. Cowards.
• There is no bullet on Earth that is designed for (or even effective at) clearing away a smashed up pencil crammed in the barrel of a shotgun.
• Evoking a mental image can cause as much trouble to the brain as a witch.
• Drill chucks can hold a lot of things.
• Microphones have to be really, really small before the PE teacher doesn’t see them.
• Wipe front-to-back, unless you have a colostomy bag, in which case the correct procedure is emptying the bag in the nearest pickup truck bed, as long as there is at least three beer cans in it or a loose trailer hitch.
• When the dog is in the pickup bed, the leash needs to be about two feet shorter.
• Sandpaper is not found in most First Aid kits with good reason.
• Given the opportunity, trains really do operate with the same kind of deadly lethality I see in Warner Brothers cartoons.
• In Mexico, it’s not vanilla they sell “with the worm!”
• Fire and rain don’t mix — unless it’s a rain of gasoline, in which case the cameras better be rolling, goddamit, because gasoline is expensive!
• Coffee can be drunk for effect, can be sprayed on little Hawaiian frogs to kill them, or can be used as an enema, so if someone says they don’t drink coffee, all you have to do is ask if they live in Hawaii.
• No matter where you go, people like to laugh — preferably at the imagined pains of other people.

This I believe.

Back to the Master List of Essays

Time is our friend only when we’re immortal. Otherwise, time is more like a rubber band that’s stretched way tight by a person you don’t trust very well, while you’re holding the other end in your teeth.

Back to the Master List of Essays

I think that if we still feel hungry when we’ve eaten, then food wasn’t the thing we needed.

Back to the Master List of Essays

Sometimes there are movies that are released on DVD in a format that is “unrated”. Early on, this usually meant “saucy scenes that we shot, but that the MPAA had us take out so that we could get the rating we wanted” and so that was good, because you got to see a little more of whatever it was the director wanted you to see, and usually this was one of the Two Magical Ingredients that the censors cared about: sex or violence (nothing else was worth being called “unrated” — who, for example, would care to see the unrated version of a historical costume drama?). Generally more of either was good.

This didn’t last long, however, because once “unrated” became synonymous with “desirable”, distributors went crazy. Still, it’s true that there are probably very few historical costume dramas that expect a lot more buyers by selling an “unrated version!”, but the real audacity of releasing a film unrated has been diluted, although it is still technically accurate. Most people don’t realize that, all other things being equal, an unrated film is cheaper because the MPAA charges to give a rating to a movie. So, a distributor could save a bundle by, for instance, taking a shitty movie and selling it direct-to-video as “Unrated!”. Technically true, but very misleading to those of us who are looking for something more audacious than we saw in the theater.

Another example of technically accurate bastardy in this realm is taking a movie that already was mediocre, but did enjoy a theatrical release. Add a few scenes back in that had previously been cut. Voila! An “unrated” version! It doesn’t matter what those scenes are. Main character staring off into the sunset holding a copy of “War & Peace”? Was it in the version passed by the MPAA? No? Then this is an “unrated” version! Ooooooh! Again, accurate, but highly misleading, and just plain no fun. Unless you like Tolstoy references. Maybe a naked violent Tolstoy?

A variant of this is to shoot the movie planning to release an “unrated” version. Then, cut the hell out of it and show it on the most pappy of venues: television. Be sure to add gratuitous use of blurring. Be also sure to include advertisements for the “unrated” version of this exact program, perhaps subtitled “Too hot for TV!” or “Censored from broadcast!”. Technically true, but dastardly.

I hope the fish stop nibbling at the “unrated” hook soon. I’d just like to watch movies in peace.

Back to the Master List of Essays

I wish that people who designed web pages (or probably more accurately their bosses) would stop thinking as if it’s printing, or a television, or a billboard, or anything else like what they’re used to. It’s not. People shape and form their browsers in all sorts of different ways and there is absolutely no non-vanity reason why content can’t conform to whatever shape the viewer wants.

When we see a magazine with half the page striped white, we assume there is some kind of error. When we see a television screen with half the screen snow, we assume there is some kind of error. Yet, we accept as perfectly normal a web page that tries to tell us how we should be shaping our browser window. This is unpardonable hubris.

And bad design, which I happen think is an even worse crime.

I would be thrilled if I never saw a horizontal scrollbar again (although in truth, I use a couple for certain very-wide pictures, but those are panoramic images maps, so I’ll except those for anyone), and if I never saw a huge dumb-ass gap to the right of web content or at the bottom of web content, it wouldn’t be soon enough.

Back to the Master List of Essays

I have on several occasions lately, felt the stirring of the Universe and the connections it makes. I’ve been doing my silly little thing, traipsing along, and suddenly hyperfocused on something that needed doing. No explanation, no understanding, just a curve of the gravity of my attention in a way too acute to ignore. Notice this rock out-of-place. Touch this tree. Listen to this man talking. Weird things. Funny things. Things seemingly without pattern, outside of the fact that they draw me.

If I were of a supernatural bent, I’d suggest the Universe is trying to draw up something for me, something strange and complex. Cool!

Back to the Master List of Essays

Have you ever listened to your house? Simply pressed your ear against a wall deep in the quiet time of the night and listened? I’ve been amazed at what I hear when I do this. I hear the voice of my house, the creaks and groans and the way the air moves through it and the way the water moves through it and the way it talks.

When there is strong weather — storms or wind — I think the house shouts against those. During those times, I can hear it’s voice without pressing my ear to the wall. But if I do anyway, I swear the house is ranting and cursing like a sailor!

Or maybe houses talk to each other on the wind. Like we do. Casting their voices out and if they are heard by another house, then a conversation happens. Or maybe just a chorus of houses on a steady wind, each adding to the river of communication in the air, each adding their distinct voice and each hearing the voices of those upwind of them.

Back to the Master List of Essays

That’s just that.

At some point in time, I used to think that people who seemed very adamant about controlling other people had some sort of moral crusade going on. I know, that’s pretty reprehensible as it stands, but at least I understood it.

But no, not anymore.

I think I have finally come over to the Camp of the Smart People.

I’m just taking it as read that from now on, if someone is a really vocal critic of something completely unrelated to them, their motivation is pure and simple jealousy. They don’t feel as if they’re allowed to do it, so they try to prevent anyone else from doing it.

I just can’t allow myself to keep living the pink-assed lie that there’s any kind of morality or sense of what’s right in any of these objections.

Sex-row US pastor ‘bought drugs’

Born again: Evangelist sex scandal

TV evangelist quits over sex scandal

And, oh hell, here’s a bunch

Back to the Master List of Essays