Big Bad Bald Bastard

Fabulous Job, Jersey!

2012-02-13T19:21:00.002-05:00

New Jersey decided to join the 21st Century today, although Baron Harkonnen in Trenton threatens to veto the bill, thereby putting the "big" in bigotry.

If Chris Christie goes ahead and vetoes the marriage equality act, then I say all bets are off, we should send a Takei/Tengrain tagteam (note to readers... no Takei/Tengrain slashfic, now!) to snark Christie's ass back to the goddamn Stone Age, from which he derives his bigoted "morality".

Congratulations, New Jerseyites! You did the right thing.

Houston, She Had a Problem

2012-02-12T10:52:00.001-05:00

I have to confess that I really didn't listen to a lot of Whitney Houston's music... I had nothing against her, but my musical tastes didn't run toward conventional pop songs. Still, it's a shame that she died at the age of 48... I still remember co-workers discussing rumors of her death in 2001. Ms. Houston is another one of those cautionary tales- the talented singer who succumbed to drug addiction. She also had a problem with the men in her life, it seems that she attracted all sorts of scumbags.

Rather than focusing on the sordid later years, I'd rather remember Ms. Houston's early career, when she was young, had a promising future ahead of her, and she wasn't the person onstage with a substance abuse problem.

Once in a while, there's a youtube comment that is worth reading... I present:

stargate121 (2 hours ago)

RIP to a gorgeous, talented performer. I miss you, Serge.

Adieu, Mademoiselle Houston, adieu!

What Is the Sound of One Party Dying?

2012-02-11T19:43:00.002-05:00

I have to admit that I've been pretty lackadaisical lately... still languishing with a cold-based malaise. To compound matters, I've been dicking around watching Italian ~~Helping Jennifer~~Spiderman in its entirety. Strange to say, I must have watched the "trailer" a half-dozen times, but never watched the rest because I foolishly thought that the trailer could not be topped (for the record, I thought the original "Terminator" was so damn good that I refuse to see the other movies in the series- I really should do a post on the movie in future). Holy crap, that is some funny, funny cheese, a brilliant send-up of a bizarro-world giallo by a bunch of Australian students. Check it out, pussycat, then make me a macchiato, PRONTO!

Needing another comedy fix, I decided to check out the results of the Maine Caucuses (in my not-so-together-today head, I am conflating Lewis Carroll's Caucus Race and Loster Quadrille), and was shocked (and highly amused) that fewer than 6,000 people participated! This pathetic showing comes right on the heels of other races in which turnout had dropped dramatically. It seems the Republican Party is involved in a suicide pact in which the plutocrats and the theocrats are egging each other on towards the cliff, while the general electorate is jumping out of the car careening toward political oblivion. Not too long ago, GOPeratives were talking about a permanent Republican majority, but with these numbers, it's looking more like the last days of dicko.

Of course, even though, as Thunder would say, the schaden freudes itself, this is no time to become complacent- voter suppression efforts continue apace and SuperPAC's are going to dump fucktons of cash into the presidential election. Yeah, even though it seems the beast is dying, it can still lash out in it's final throes, so we still have to be vigilant and prepared to work our asses off.

Just Not Inspired...

2012-02-09T19:32:00.002-05:00

I feel like crap, and I don't have time to put up a substantive post, so I'm going to fall back on that "post a video" gambit... at the mothership, mention of Mr French was made, which led a certain bastard to post a video by Angel and the Reruns, who were supposedly America's best loved all female/all ex-con band (sigh, I never knew it was a put-on). Back in my big blond afro days, the band's tribute to the short life and sordid death of TV's Anissa Jones was actually played on the radi-adi-o:

And now, for ~~something completely different~~ those of you who want some of that sexy "Mr French" magic, here's the man himself:

Mitt's Hopes Washing Away in Wave of Santorum

2012-02-08T16:49:00.003-05:00

It seems I'm not the only one posting on the unstoppable wave of Santorum that has washed over the heartland...

While Santorum picked up no delegates in yesterday's race, his trifecta means that any momentum Romney may have had is kaput. Romney's numbers are, to put it mildly, embarassing.

The G.O.P. likes lube and shit
Better than a dude named "Mitt".

The real story, however, is the dramatic drop in the number of primary voters. Maybe it's the bruising primary campaign, maybe it's the craptastic roster of candidates. At any rate, the schadenfreude I experience while watching this ugly contest between ugly candidates is a most delicious feeling.

Seems to Happen This Time Every Year

2012-02-07T19:16:00.002-05:00

Just like the swallows returning to San Juan Capistrano, some things occur every year at about the same time. For me, I usually get a really nasty cold every February that makes me feel like crap for a week or two. Not being the sort of person who takes antibiotics at the drop of a nose (uh, people, colds are viral infections, so antibiotics don't do squat to help), I resign myself to feeling like crap for a week or two and cope with drinking plenty of hot toddies and, uncharacteristically, bundling up in a half-dozen layers of clothing. If my nose gets really congested, I blast my sinuses with a neti pot (I imagine somebody out there is aroused by that video). The neti pot, while pretty off-putting, does the job- it really flushes the garbage out of your head.

Thankfully, I live in the Northern U.S., so I don't have to worry about brain-eating amoebae infesting my neti pot. That's one less thing we have to worry about. If you're concerned about the presence of brain eating amoebae in your water supply, this map will show you where the brain bashers live- their range is indicated by the red color.

Go Ahead, Make My Car!

2012-02-06T19:10:00.002-05:00

Although I did not watch the Super Bowl last night, I did watch Clint Eastwood's Chrysler ad on the portable binary numbers mill. Well, the ad had at least one right-wing cobag (and the cobaggiest cobag of all) whining like a bratty kindergartner. I imagine the right-wing blogosphere is awash in butthurt and garment rending. I think the real cause for these bad fee fees is that conservatives tend to be drawn to the sort of movies that Eastwood has starred in and directed and they consider the reliably Republican Eastwood to be one of the fold. Hell, even his best known tough-guy line was co-opted by conservatives' tutelary demigod.

That's some betrayal, so Eastwood must be excommunicated from the Conservative Movement, the members of which have never been fans of his movies.

I want to suggest, just like President Obama is a Manchurian candidate, a Kenyan born Muslim elevated by a conspiracy so prescient and far reaching that it faked his birth announcement in Hawaiian newspapers in 1961 just so he could become President in the 21st Century in order to destroy America, I have come to the belief that Clint Eastwood has always been a Manchurian candidate to destroy Movement Conservatism. Born during the Great Depression, CLINTON Eastwood would have been bombarded with pro-New Deal, pro-FDR propaganda throughout his youth. He would go on to co-opt the image of the heroic American gunslinger and frontiersman in order to lull Middle Americans into a false sense of comfort. In the 1960's, Eastwood traveled to Italy to work with a socialist turned anarchist, collaborating on a series of films which subverted American and capitalist (although I am being redundant here) ideals. After his return from his Italian socialist indoctrination, he would go on the star in a series of films in which he seems to embody the perfect right-wing law and order stereotype (although everyone knows that conservatives are all about the "rule of law for thee, not me"). Even as the character of Dirty Harry seemed to embody an almost cartoonish "tough on crime, tougher on criminals" archetype, such left-wing themes as a denunciation of "shoot first, don't bother asking questions later" vigilantism crept into the series. Eastwood even went so far as to satirize the school lunch policy of the sainted Reagan:

Another of Eastwood's acclaimed films, portrayed honest mining industry moguls as heartless land-grabbers and murderers. Commie Eastwood took the side of the squatters, rather than the Randian supermen and job creators.

Eastwood's always been a pinko socialist infiltrator, aping the ways of true Americans. It's just now, when the mask has slipped, and he has backed the Kenyan Usurper's Big Government car bailout, that the true, red-blooded Conservative can see the truth... that he has never been a Clint Eastwood fan.

Can't Be Arsed Watching Spectacles

2012-02-05T20:34:00.000-05:00

So, there seems to be some sort of sporting event taking place tonight... I decided to cover for a co-worker so he could watch the game with his children. I just can't be arsed watching the overblown spectacle, and the ubiquitous commercials. I used to enjoy going to a local tavern to watch the game... most places had open bar deals and it's a great night for chatting up teh ladeez (the funniest snappy comeback I've ever had was when I started hitting on a willowy gal who told me, "Most guys hit on my friend, because she's bustier than I am." to which I replied, "Do I look like a baby to you?" Editor's Note: Don't answer that question after looking at the profile picture of the big-headed hairless guy). For the last couple of years, I just couldn't be arsed participating in the whole spectacle... better to work than to blow a day's pay on booze and sundries.

My uncle Richard used to have some of the best season tickets in Giants' Stadium. Back in the '60s, my grandmother won four season tickets in the upper tier in a high school benefit raffle. She gave the tickets to my uncle Richard, and he was able to upgrade every year until he finally had tickets in the third row behind the Giants' bench on the 40th yardline. Here he was, an ordinary middle class guy from the Bronx, with the best damn seats in the house. Every home day, he'd get to the stadium early, and put on an elaborate tailgate party. He'd often give tickets to co-workers or relatives- he allowed himself the luxury of buying the season tickets every year, and he never stinted when it came to extending his hospitality.

Back in 2008, when the new Giants' Stadium was opened, the organization decided to charge Seat License Fees. My uncle would have had to have shelled out $80,000 for the privilege of purchasing season tickets. Suddenly, the one luxury that a middle-class guy from the Bronx could indulge in became unaffordable. No circuses if you've got no bread, Joe Punchclock.

Of course, my uncle had to give up the tickets that he'd had since the Johnson administration. He'd been less enthusiastic about heading out the games anyway, not being as young as he used to be. The last time I attended a game with him, I found it none-too-enjoyable... the sound system was way too loud, and goddamn commercials were broadcast on the scoreboard between plays. I left the stadium feeling insulted and wishing I'd brought earplugs.

I opted out of professional sports fandom. I'd rather watch the amateurs. Why buy into the hype and the high finance of the big leagues when I can see a camogie match in Van Cortlandt park, or the annual New York Open every March?

Thank You, Internet?

2012-02-05T05:01:00.002-05:00

In a very moving recent post, the lovely, gracious, and talented vacuumslayer thanked the internet for exposing her to viewpoints with which she was not familiar. Yeah, the internet is a great place for learning about topics one had never really considered before, a wonderful mechanism for broadening one's horizons... that's good, really good. At any rate, I'm pretty sure it's good, even if it kinda freaks you out.

Brando put up a recent post about video game addiction (friends don't let friends catass!) which led me to do some googling of online games. In my search, I found **DRAMATIC PAUSE** Voregotten Realm, which would, from its description, seem to straddle the line between a multi-user game and, frankly, some rather outré porny content, specifically porny content with a vorephilia theme (check out the artwork of the dragon swallowing someone, which is probably not considered a bad outcome in this particular game). From the description of the game (which is apparently not available these days), characters in the game can choose to be humans or furries (but, alas, no sexy robots).

In a world in which people are getting off by pretending to be anthropomorphic raccoons being swallowed whole by monsters, plain old gayness seems to be quaint and old-fashioned. The Kinsey scale should be reconfigured to look more like a spirograph than a straight line. Still, in this age of multifarious sexual expression the bigots still fight to keep a sizable segment of our population in "second-class citizen" status. They know their time is nearly up, so their fight is a rear-guard action of particular viciousness and desparation.

For an unsensational depiction of the related macrophilia, this post is a good one. While I'm pretty goddamn vanilla on the kink scale (any seemingly masochistic tendencies on my part can be chalked up to "sport"), there are very few consensual kinks that freak me out (hey, as long as nobody gets hurt, everything's cool). Now, I can't end on a serious note, so... anybody got a macrophiliac/voraphiliac Chris Christie fetish?

Where Are My Eagles?

2012-02-04T07:14:00.002-05:00

This week, I took my annual pilgrimage north to do a bit of eagle spotting but, due to time constraints, only went to Charles Point Park, just north of the Indian Point nuclear reactor. This being an uncommonly warm winter, there were no ice floes in the Hudson, and I did not see any eagles in the vicinity. Today is the day of the annual Hudson Eaglefest, at which I could pick up info about good eagle-watching locations this year... if I didn't have to go to Manhattan to teach small children how to fight (to make matters worse, one of my all-time favorite students just had her appendix removed, so she'll be out of the loop for a while). Like I said, I only had time to hit Charles Point Park, and was unable to brave the eldritch horrors of Croton Point Park. I'll probably take a trip there next week to see if I can spot any big boids.

Until then, I will echo the cry of the Emperor Augustus, "Where are my eagles?"

I'm sure Thunder could make a golf joke out of that...

Won't Celebrate Groundhog Day

2012-02-02T18:28:00.003-05:00

This winter has been so mild that six more weeks of it would not be such a bad thing. That being said, I don't celebrate Groundhog Day, and never did. In the past, my most bitter rival was a Woodchuck-American, and celebrated Groundhog Day in a most raucous style. I would not have given him the satisfaction of celebrating a holiday that ennobled his culture.

As much as he annoyed me, I mourned his passing when he kicked the bucket. Even with our long feud ended, I just don't have it in my heart to celebrate Groundhog Day... I can still remember what my workplace smelled like while he was decomposing under the foundation.

A Couple of Boobs

2012-02-01T21:19:00.000-05:00

Just in case any threads at the mothership go off-topic, Canada's best dressed man and hat aficiando Spearhafoc brings the commentariat back to the topic at hand... hot, well-nourished redheads. Spearhafoc doesn't blog (or he'd be on my blogroll, which conforms to Canadian Content laws), but he does use Twitter, so if any of you tweeters want to send him a twat, or whatever you do, then by all means do so. Oh, and while you're at it, tell those goddamn little blue birds to GET OFFA MAH LAWN!!!

Anyway, as is typical, Spearhafoc brought a recent thread around to the proper topic, a smoking hot firetress with an endowment equal to that of a small northeastern university. Not being one to pass up the opportunity to take the mickey, I commented: I’m beginning to suspect that you were prematurely weaned! For the record, I take the problem of premature weaning very seriously, and annually participate in the Tits for Tots fundraiser to benefit the Prematurely Weaned.

Spear's reply to my "piss take" was I have a type. So sue me. I don't think I have any grounds on which to sue him, but I think he should be brought up on charges of crimes against huge mammaries.

Yeah, I know you're thinking, "What a pair of boobs!" On a serious note, the Susan G. Komen Foundation pulled grants for breast cancer screening from Planned Parenthood. Of course, Planned Parenthood tends to operate clinics in poor neighborhoods, and African American women are more likely than other women to die of breast cancer. The Komen Foundation's Senior Vice President for Public Policy is a teabagging failed politician... not the sort of person who'd give a tinker's damn about the mortality rate of poor black women.

I've donated to participants in the Komen Foundation's three-day walk, my mother (and the mothers of many of my friends) have successfully fought breast cancer. I support efforts to reduce the incidence and seriousness of breast cancer. What can I say? I love the b00bz. The Komen Foundation sure as hell isn't getting any more of my donations.

As Von Would Put It, Fridge Note

2012-02-01T16:53:00.002-05:00

As Von periodically does, I'm going to put a note on the fridge. I'll be returning to my usual snark and satire after a week of earnestness. Before I resume the snark, though, I have to mention that Soul Train impresario Don Cornelius apparently took his own life this morning. My favorite Soul Train moment involved a somewhat nonplussed Don Cornelius interviewing members of YMO, the "number one dance band of Tokyo, Japan". What a moment- there's a sense of culture clash, albeit a benign one, and there's the reassurance that the groove transcends all boundaries. It's a pity that Don Cornelius' life took a turn for the worse, and that he ended it all.

We will resume our snark momentarily.

Odd Solace

2012-01-31T19:12:00.003-05:00

As anyone reading this blog on a regular basis knows, this has been a hell of a bad couple of weeks for me and my mine. I tend to be even-keeled to a sometimes cartoonish extent, though. It's been rough, but I've never been one to wallow in the Slough of Despond (when I was still in my teens I lost two friends in two unrelated incidents in one week, and I was a sobbing **note the b's people** basket case for a whole weekend, but that horror of a time inured me to despair). Things have been rough at times, but ya just gotta carry on. Every birth is a death sentence, so you have to enjoy life, and to work so those around you get a shot at happiness (this is why I've always abhorred bullies). One role I try to play is the rock, the steady center that will hold when the shitstorm comes. Unlike Paul Simon, I am not an island... you can't just shut yourself away because life is going to kick your ass. Love ends up as loss every time (that "til death do us part" lies at the back of even the most perfect relationships), and is all the more precious because of that inevitable fact.

Saturday, I was able to take solace in routine and in physicality. I went down to midtown Manhattan for my volunteer gig and, during lulls in our class schedule, was able to fight like hell with one of my friends. Six three-minute rounds of tachi waza randori with a bad mofo is a hell of a distraction! At one point, the kids in the class were running laps around the dojo and a couple got a little close to where we were fighting (they were cutting corners, when they should have been on the different colored mats on the border), I actually snarled at one kid, "Move it! You see we're fighting, do you want to be hit by a 400-odd pound meat meteor?"

The dojo is a strange place... it's a place where one puts aside mundane concerns. The conflicts, though real, are friendly... although you are fighting full-tilt, there's a mutual trust, a mutual obligation to keep each other's safety in mind. We beat the hell out of each other, but every time someone crashed down to the mat, we'd be laughing our heads off. I don't know what the parents thought of the whole spectacle, but I do know that I was glad that, in the course of a bad, bad week, I was able to lose myself in the role of a crafty, formidable brute. Not having to think about anything more complicated than fighting another large, fierce terrestrial mammal (which is complicated enough), and being able to channel one's stress into action, without any negative emotions intruding, is an amazing thing. The fact that I've taken beatings on a regular basis is perhaps the greatest contributor to my equanimity. When you've had a giant beating the bejeezus out of you, the ordinary day-to-day stresses just don't get to you.

It's an odd solace.

Yorkshire Wit, Yorkshire Grit

2012-01-30T17:44:00.002-05:00

The mark of a good life is that there's as much laughter at the memorial services as there are tears. Today, at the funeral of my dear family friend, there was a lot of both. Mrs. Stoffel had left her mark on everybody around her, and the reminiscences came fast and thick. At the wake, I had summed up her personality in six words: unstinting hospitality, boundless generosity, and devastating candor. Add a wicked wit, and a stoicism in the face of adversity to those characteristics, and you have a good idea of her character. She was a woman who was impossible to embarass (much to the chagrin of her children)... she had no problem asking strangers for directions or advice. She'd approach anybody and strike up a conversation, truly embodying the "strangers are just friends you haven't met" outlook.

She never pulled her punches, although she was never mean-spirited. She told her kids to "always call a spade a bloody shovel!" One could never harbor any illusions while in her company. If you were dressed like a slob, she'd tell you, "You look like a hobo." If you were acting like an idiot, she'd let you know. My friend George told us that she once chided him, "I love you, but you're a bastard!"

Her eldest child, John, came down to help her out every weekend since Christmas... he related how she took bad news from her doctors in the same way that she would a weather report, with a joke and that famous stiff upper lip. She had the gracious resignation of a person who had nothing to lose- she'd traveled the world (she worked for years as a travel agent), and she had seen her children start families of their own. She lived well, and she went bravely.

Mrs. Stoffel and I always joked about belonging to a mutual admiration society. We got along famously. I'll miss her terribly.

One Week, Two Wakes

2012-01-29T19:29:00.001-05:00

The charcoal grey suit has been getting a workout lately... in the space of a week, I've attended two wakes. So far this year, I've been to three wakes (the father of a friend died three weeks ago). It's been a rough year, but one can't get morose. Remember the lives, celebrate with the living... that's the best way to cope.

The old charcoal grey suit could use a break, though.

Losing One of the Best

2012-01-28T20:02:00.002-05:00

It's been a pretty horrible week... it started with a road trip to upstate New York to attend a wake, and it continued with the death of another dear family friend. Previously, I'd written:

In other horrible news, an old grammar school friend of mine recently called to tell me that his mother had terminal esophageal cancer. She decided to forgo chemotherapy, and will be receiving hospice care in her home. She traveled extensively in her youth, and she saw her children marry well and start to raise kids of her own, so she decided (with her characteristic Yorkshire stiff upper lip) that she didn't want to buy a few more weeks at the expense of her quality of life. Her door was always open, so I'll be sure to visit her when she needs support.

Mrs Pauline Stoffel of New Rochelle, New York died in her home on Wednesday night. She was a tremendous individual, and her unfailing hospitality, wit, love, and support meant a lot to me throughout my life. Her door was always open, and she embraced an enormous, diverse extended family, of which I was a part. Her complete lack of b.s. was a salutary thing for any kid to experience- if she thought you needed to "come correct" about anything, she made sure you knew (which is something a lot of people are afraid to do). She was as fearless as she was generous. She raised three incredible children- John, Kate, and Peter, who I have had the privilege of knowing since I was in grammar school, and had a coterie of beautiful, brilliant grandchildren. News of her passing hit me particularly hard... I had planned to visit her on Friday, after a terrible, terribly busy week.

It's been a rough time lately... thankfully, the extended family is incredible, and we'll get through this.

Ahem, Pinko

2012-01-27T17:47:00.001-05:00

Look at the blogroll
Lotta "Ahem, Pinko"s there.
Bastard's jumping in!

Romneyo and Newtiet

2012-01-26T18:02:00.002-05:00

I think the Newt Gingrich/Mitt Romney campaign is the most mutually destructive relationship since that of (the admitted fictional, but are Newt and Mitt real, genuine human beings?) Romeo and Juliet. Like the star-cross'd lovers of the Bard of Avon's tragedy, Mitt and Newt seem bent on a path to mutual destruction. Unlike the hapless, loveable Romeo and Juliet, Romneyo and Newtiet's (insert "Crapulet" joke) destruction is not a tragedy... although the fact that they are the frontrunners in a political primary surely is. The 2012 GOP presidential campaign is one long, extended tragicomedy. It just remains to be seen if Romneyo supporter Suredoucheyo survives the third act.

Two campaigns, both alike in perfidy,
In fair Amurka, where we lay our scene...

This post is an elaboration of a comment I posted at T&U's place.

A Crazy Day

2012-01-25T15:48:00.002-05:00

Yesterday was a crazy day- I got up around five o'clock in the morning so I could make sure that mom got on the road in time to beat the traffic on her ride home to Virginia. After getting her bags in the car, I bid her godspeed at a quarter to six. She made decent time, although visibility was piss-poor due to foggy conditions all along the Atlantic seaboard, there was little traffic. About five hours after she got home, she left for the airport.

On a lighter note, I got my ass to Times Square last night to celebrate the birthday of my great and good friend, Secret Science Club Goddess and Force of Nature, the divalicious Dorian Devins. Dorian being Dorian, she celebrated in style, singing standards backed by her jazz combo (Lou Rainone on piano and Austrian Jazz Machine Alex Gressel. After a hell of a week (even though it was only Tuesday) it was a much needed night of strong coffee, good friends, and fantastic music. Ya just gotta get the hell out of Dodge every once in a while.

Whirlwind Sadness Tour

2012-01-23T09:42:00.002-05:00

Today is going to be a crazy day- last week, one of mom's oldest friends from her Bronxtucket stomping grounds died from chemotherapy complications. He'd been suffering from inoperable cancer for a long time, and his chemo regime wreaked havoc on him. Mom is leaving Virginia tomorrow morning, driving to Yonkers, where we'll rendezvous, and drive together to the Catskills area for the wake. After the wake, we'll drive back to my place, where she'll stay overnight, then she'll wake at the crack of dawn to drive back to Virginia, so she can fly out to Colorado to visit my brother Gomez and his family, and my brother Vincenzo's family (Vin's in the greater Kandahar metropolitan area right now). She'd booked her flight a few months ago, and changing it would have been a major boondoggle. I'm sure she'll be glad of the opportunity to get the hell out of Dodge for a couple of days.

In other horrible news, an old grammar school friend of mine recently called to tell me that his mother had terminal esophageal cancer. She decided to forgo chemotherapy, and will be receiving hospice care in her home. She traveled extensively in her youth, and she saw her children marry well and start to raise kids of her own, so she decided (with her characteristic Yorkshire stiff upper lip) that she didn't want to buy a few more weeks at the expense of her quality of life. Her door was always open, so I'll be sure to visit her when she needs support.

It's been a heavy couple of days... gotta put the brave face on. The snark will resume sometime soon- it's my primary coping mechanism.

UPDATE: Thanks for the outpouring of support, people. I am privileged to have you in my online circle of friends. Mom and I drove upstate in a heavy fog, and a constant drizzle. The wake was really something... my mom's friend John had retired from the NYPD with a 75% disability pension after being involved in a bad motorcyle accident while on duty. About thirty years ago, he had an opportunity to buy a lumberyard upstate, and he quickly became a pillar of the community of Cairo, New York. I had total strangers coming up to me (I seem to be the sort of type that people approach to shoot the breeze with) and telling me about how had been a great person to deal with- honest, generous, and compassionate. The local contractors all told about how he'd assist them when business was tough, how his handshake was as good as a contract. One woman told me about how she'd had a run of trouble, and John was able to help her out so she could turn her life around. It's a horrible irony that a guy without a bad bone in his body would succumb to bone cancer.

A Fistful of Butter

2012-01-22T05:03:00.004-05:00

It's shortly after five A.M., and I am at work, so I think I'll expand a comment at fish's place into a post (I blame fish for this laziness). Not being a T.V. watcher, my main familiarity with Paula Deen is from videos like this, which (no doubt) fixate on her more heinous concoctions... Kathleen has a few more of these dishes chronicled. I don't hate Paula Deen, I don't even know her, but I think it's pretty crazy that the woman who is pushing the bacon and egg topped hamburger served on two glazed donuts is also pushing medicine for type 2 diabetes sufferers.

Paula deen is playing gastrointestinal "Yojimbo", she's playing the stomach off against the pancreas, ensuring their mutual destruction, all the while earning some serious cash.

Of course, the Italian remake of Yojimbo was A Fistful of Dollars, in which Clint Eastwood played the role of the amoral mercenary, originally played by superbadass Toshiro Mifune. The movie has also been remade as Last Man Standing, which I couldn't be arsed to see.

I think a remake starring Paula Deen is in order. Titled A Fistful of Butter, it would feature Ms. Deen, playing The Woman With No Restraint, supplying the bacon-donut-burgers and diabetes meds to the ravenous residents of a small town... the sugar-laden burgers and the diabetes medication then fight it out in the gastrointestinal tracts and blood vessels of the town's residents, thereby making big bux for The Woman With No Restraint and the local coffin maker- "Make that four coffins, y'all!"

As an added bonus, unrelated to busting Paula Deen's battered, breaded, and deep-fried chops, the soundtracks to both Yojimbo (by Masaru Sato) and A Fistful of Dollars (by Ennio Morricone) are fantastic.

Finally Feeling Like Winter

2012-01-21T06:07:00.002-05:00

It's been a weird winter here in the New York metropolitan area- a mix of warm days (50's Fahrenheit (that would be around 10 Celsius) and some bone-chilling days (teens in Fahrenheit, about -10 Celsius), but no snow until today. We received more snow during Halloween weekend than we have all winter. While that snow was a heavy, bough-breaking slush, what's falling now is a nice, light powder.

Uncharacteristically, my scheduled volunteer classes don't start until around ten A.M. I had planned on leaving for the volunteer gig directly from work, and then sacking out on a spare mat in the dojo for an hour or so, but I'm going to take a "wait and see" approach... I may have to let the Manhattan-residing coaches handle today's classes. I imagine attendance will be light because of the precipitation.

That being said, there was a lot of hype for this storm , probably because last winter was brutal, and the region's transportation adminstrations were largely caught unprepared. I think the MTA will be on top of things this time, but still, I'll have my ear glued to the radi-adi-o for up-to-the-minute information about the travel situation.

Troglodyte Tears

2012-01-20T10:37:00.003-05:00

Earlier this week, multi-instrumentalist and novelty-funk impresario Jimmy Castor died at the age of 71. I first became aware of Mr Castor's work through a post at Thunder's place. Let us remember Mr Castor, not only for his music, but for his work in the field of paleoanthropology:

Secret Science Club Post-Lecture Recap

2012-01-19T15:00:00.001-05:00

Wow! Last night's Secret Science Club lecture by NYU's Dr David W. Hogg was attended by a standing room only crowd at the beautiful Bell House. An overflow crowd in the front room was able to hear the lecture... I think an expansion of the Bell House may be in order!

Speaking of expansion, the talk was about the Big Bang, the event about 13.7 billion years ago which kicked off this universe of ours. As large as that number may seem, it's generally thought that the "lifespan" of a proton is ten to the 33rd years (sorry, can't be arsed using superscripts for a better looking expression of scientific notation), while the universe is a mere 13.7 times ten to the ninth years old. Yeah, the universe is still pretty much a pup.

The universe has been determined to be expanding- light from distant stars shifts toward the red end of the spectrum due to the Doppler Effect, so those stars are moving away from us. The early universe was a lot denser and a lot hotter than it is now- go back far enough, and a lot of the gas in the universe would actually have been plasma... before the formation of protons and neutrons (as the universe expanded and cooled), the matter in the extremely young universe would have been a quark-gluon plasma. Approximately 300,000 years after the Big Bang, the formation of atoms would have been possible.

"The Big Bang" was originally a pejorative name coined by astronomer Fred Hoyle who believed that the universe was relatively unchanging, and that there were many sources of matter, rather than all matter originating at once in a, so to speak, big bang.

As an interesting aside, Charles Darwin noted that hundreds of millions of years would have been necessary for evolution by means of natural selection to have resulted in all of the modern life forms on the earth, but physicist Lord Kelvin determined that the sun was, at best, tens of millions of years old- Kelvin made his determination based on the assumption that the sun's energy was due to its contraction from a less dense state. Nuclear fusion hadn't been discovered at this time (for a good overview, this blog post is a great, and amusing, read. Think of it, Charles Darwin could have revolutionized physics as well as biology!

Dr Hogg also gave an overview of black holes, and mentioned the supermassive black hole at the heart of a typical galaxy.

The talk veered into a more speculative vein, as Dr Hogg opined that it may be possible that multiple universes were formed in Big Bang, each might have different "laws of physics", but laws of physics in observable universe seem to be constant. In a very funny aside, he mentioned a statement by another scientist who joked- just think how fucked we'd be if, instead of three spatial and one temporal dimension, there were two spatial dimenstions and two temporal dimensions.

The observable universe is homogenous and isotropic- there seems to be no observable center to it... wherever you are, you are the center of the universe. Well, last night, the center of the universe was in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn.

I apologize for not doing the lecture the justice it deserves- I'm a little rushed as I write this. It was another great talk, and Dr Hogg was a funny, engaging lecturer who seemed to be having a ball.

Going Dark Today

2012-01-18T00:01:00.002-05:00

Today, "Big Bad Bald Bastard" will be going dark because I will be running errands in the morning, meeting up with a friend of mine in Manhattan in the early afternoon, and then heading down to Brooklyn so I can drink copious amounts of beer while learning about the cosmos in order to protest the draconian SOPA and PIPA acts.

It is pitch dark:

Cheesequake

2012-01-17T17:33:00.003-05:00

Holy schmoley, it seems that over a million signatures were collected in the effort to recall Governor Scott Turdwaffle Walker. Damn, I knew there'd be an overwhelming number of signatures, but I didn't know that they'd hit the one million mark... Walker has basically been nuked from orbit. Of course, there's a funny hypocritical comment from Walker, who was in Manhattan attending a $2,500/plate fundraiser hosted by world-class scumbag and economy-wrecker Maurice "Hank" Greenberg when the recall petitions started coming in:

During the Limbaugh interview, Walker warned of recall "shenanigans" and said recall organizers have gotten "tons of money from the big government unions in Washington."

Damn, Scotty, there's enough projection there to run a goddamn multiplex!

Of course, the real fun now begins, with the upcoming election. I honestly can't see Walker winning against any opponent now, even with donations from awful out-of-staters pouring into his coffers. It's funny to see all those well-heeled shysters doing to fiduciary equivalent of pouring water down a drain, trying to prop up this stupid "Weasel in a Badger State".

The anti-Walker efforts have certainly rekindled the fervor of liberals across the country, hopefully this enthusiasm will last until November. Thank you, Badger Staters, thank you very much- before there was an "Arab Spring", there was a Wisconsin Winter.

Of course, some loon with a rag named Scott Walker 2011's "Governor of the Year", and I have to agree with the guy. Scott Walker should get that distinction because his stupidity led him to overreach in his greedy, regressive policies, thereby tearing the mask off the GOP playbook and sparking a massive backlash. Well played, dumbass!

About that title... the funniest park name in the Northeast seemed like the perfect title for a post about Wisconsin... and sorry about those Packers. **snerk**

UPDATE: Edited to substitute "turdwaffle Walker" Google search results for Yahoo search results in original post... yeah, I was stumped by the Yahoo results myself.

I Get Mail

2012-01-15T18:32:00.006-05:00

So, just the other day, I find that I have received a sizable envelope from the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. When I open it, I find this lovely sketch ~~(uh, I can't rotate the image in Blogger, and I can't save the rotated image of the downloaded pic, so bear with me)~~. UPDATE: Hat tip to the redoubtable M. Bouffant, whose suggestion saved the day, so to speak... thanks, old chum!

The sketch, of course, is a rendition of this photo, drawn by everybody's favorite zombie architect. Wisely, he focused on the good-looking one for the sketch. The writing on top reads, "This is not actually a CAT scan." I have had "This is not a CAT scan!" running through my head all day.

Thanks, old chum. I'm going to have to bring the sketch in to work to show all of Moses' other buddies... can't keep this all to myself!

Funny, I've Never Posted This At My Blog

2012-01-14T21:43:00.003-05:00

I have a confession to make. Tonight, I posted links to the song Stuart by The Dead Milkmen on two other blogs. I have linked to the song on my own blog, but I have never posted the video of the song. Tonight, I rectify this grave, grave error.

Stuart, originally released on 1988's Beelzebubba album, is a perfect evocation of the paranoid streak in American culture in under two-and-a-half minutes. Whenever I read of FEMA death camps, black helicopters, chemtrails, and the like, I always think of Stuart. The "narrator" of Stuart is the sort of guy who'd subscribe to Ron Paul newsletters, the kind of guy who'd consider voting for Rick Santorum, a typical John Birch Society, Lyndon LaRouche, Ron Paul, Alex Jones whack-a-doodle. Stuart, almost a quarter-century after its release, is one of the great political satires (even if not originally conceived as such) of our modern era, when the lunatics have taken over the asylum. Plus, the song starts out with one of the all-time greatest opening lines in the history of ~~pop music~~ everything:

You know what, Stuart, I LIKE YOU. You're not like the other people, here, in the trailer park.

The 'Milkmen have recently reformed, so here's a clip of them performing Stuart in Brooklyn:

If you find the lyrics hard to understand, there's always the brilliant album version... so many hilarious lines, all crammed into 2:21.

Friday the Thirteenth Horror Movie

2012-01-13T20:19:00.003-05:00

I'm going to say that I'm not a huge fan of horror movies (or for antipodean readers- never heard of these guys before today), and I am really not a fan of slasher films at all, finding them reactionary and misogynistic... although I do like the original The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which kinda plays (in my estimation) like a slasher film made by PETA.

That being said, I finally got around to purchasing the 2005 Call of Cthulhu film by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society (I am a big fan of their loving parodies), and it is a charming piece of work. Beautifully done by brilliantly creative amateurs, the movie (filmed in "Mythoscope") pays homage to not only the old gent from Providence, but to great silent horror films such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (I'll have to do another post on CoDc). Here's the trailer, for those who are interested in HPL or silent movies:

The film is really a nice piece of work- although filmed with digital cameras, small splotches and other flaws have been added to it, to lend it the air of an old film. The sets are well done (the horrid city of R'lyeh is very much like the nightmare village in "Caligari", and one particular scene nicely captures a bizarre moment in the story, in which a hapless sailor meets his doom due to some unearthly geometry:

Parker slipped as the other three were plunging frenziedly over endless vistas of green-crusted rock to the boat, and Johansen swears he was swallowed up by an angle of masonry which shouldn't have been there; an angle which was acute, but behaved as if it were obtuse.

And you thought you had a hard time with math!

The cast of unknowns does a yeoman's job, and the gaudy Fleur de Lys building of Providence makes a notable cameo. The props are really well done, and our boy, the monster god who launched a million memes is nicely rendered in glorious Willis O'Brien-esque stop-motion animation.

If there's one slight beef I have with the film, it's a minor plot change- **SPOILER ALERT** in the film, the crew of the Emma find the Alert deserted, rather than being attacked by the crew of the latter. It's a shame, because I would have liked to see a portrayal of the "particularly abhorrent and desperate though rather clumsy mode of fighting" employed by the cultists.

If you like the old silent horror movies, or the writings of Lovecraft, by all means check this gem of a film out. For those of you who haven't been acquainted with the daddy of all sanity-crushing horrors, the original tale can be found here.

Phony Soprano

2012-01-12T15:00:00.002-05:00

I make no secret of my contempt for New Jersey governor Chris Christie. I think he's a goddamn boor, a looter of public employee salaries and pensions, and a hypocrite.

Chris Christie made a big point about the T.V. show Jersey Shore portraying a poor image of New Jersey, saying, "I am duty-bound to ensure that taxpayers are not footing a $420,000 bill for a project which does nothing more than perpetuate misconceptions about the State and its citizens."

Meanwhile, Chris Christie basks in similar stereotypical (albeit a stereotype promulgated by the entertainment industry) behavior when he mock-threatens Iowa voters if they don't vote for Mitt Romney, "But let me tell you, you people disappoint me on Tuesday, you don't do what you are supposed to do on Tuesday for Mitt Romney, I will be back, Jersey Style."

He thinks he sounds like Tony Soprano when he says this, but a "Jersey Style" Chris Christie reminds me of a New Jersey style hot dog- overly fatty and not good for you at all.

Another recent example of Chris Christie's faux tough-guy act is his misogynistic retort to a female audience member at a Romney rally, "You know, something may be going down tonight, but it ain’t going to be jobs, sweetheart." He sounds so catty, and he's so sure of himself, that I'm convinced that he's really talking about how Romney will be blowing him for his endorsement.

Chris Christie's faux tough guy act is really obnoxious. Chris Christie's great at haranguing retired teachers and young girls, but I don't think he'd be able to take his fair share of hits on a level playing field. Oh, and, if you haven't seen Tengrain's amazing, hilarious photoshop, you are deprived (if you've seen it, you're depraved- warning: you can't unsee the image!). Show Tengrain some L-U-V!

The Laptop Situation, Continued

2012-01-11T17:00:00.003-05:00

Okay, so the laptop I purchased (used, but "current"- if that term can ever be applied to computers) last year is still in the shop. The screen was extremely dark (oddly enough, I could "read" it if I shone a really bright light at the screen), and it's been in the shop for about two weeks. In the meantime, the power supply that I finally got around to ordering for my 2004-vintage Compaq Presario 2000 arrived in the mail. The old machine's held up pretty well, though the "finger pad" is partially worn through, the cover of one of the "mouse" buttons has fallen off, and there's a slight crack in the "case". Besides being slow due to a nearly full hard drive (damn, 60 Gigabytes sure seemed like a lot of memory), the machine runs pretty well. I am using an outdated browser, so the Y00t00b gives me some grief, and some websites inexplicably crash, but I can write, and I can read, and I can write on what I read... it feels great to be the bastard once more!

Post Scheduling and the Laptop Situation

2012-01-11T05:35:00.000-05:00

The last couple of posts, and this one, were composed in the wee hours of Sunday morning so I could "work around" my laptop situation. Hopefully, my laptop should be back from the shop (and/or the power cord I ordered for my antiquated Compaq laptop will have arrived in the mail) by today, so I can put up some more substantial, more topical posts.

Although these posts have been spread out over the course of a few days, the fact that I wrote them in the course of a few hours reminds me of my 24 posts in 24 hours effort... though I seem to be less inspired then I was then.

The Future Just Isn't What It Used to Be

2012-01-10T05:21:00.002-05:00

Last week, Ned posted a 1900 conceptual sketch of New York in the year 1999... lotta dirigibles, lotta really, really tall skyscrapers. In the 1960's we had a view of a future characterized by flying cars and bubble cities.

No bubble cities... no moon colonies... no flying cars... at least we've got one thing those old-timey futurists never foresaw, we've got phones we can watch porn on.

"Blah" People

2012-01-09T11:33:00.000-05:00

I don't know why there's such an uproar about Rick Santorum saying that he doesn't want to make "blah" people's lives better by giving them somebody else’s money. Why the hell would Rick "frothy mix" Santorum want to make "blah" people's lives better by giving them money? After all, he's running against some of the most "blah" people, one might even say blech people, on the planet.

Still using the work computer to post... firewall don't like the first "Santorum" result.

Largely Unsung and Way, Way Too Young.

2012-01-08T01:38:00.002-05:00

I just found out recently that Jennifer Miro, the lead singer of San Fransisco "Art Punk" band The Nuns and fetish model died of cancer on December 16, 2011 at the age of 54. The Nuns were one of the opening acts at the Sex Pistols' infamous last concert.

Their early work was arty punk, sweetened by Ms Miro's vocal (she sounds like she's channeling Debbie Harry here):

Their later work could better be characterized as danceable pop music with some Goth-y and dreampop-y hints. While the male lead vocals could be somewhat cheesy, when Ms Miro sang, the music positively soared (I had a hell of a time tracking the video for It's a Dream, It's a Nightmare down, because it's not listed by the title):

When's the last time you've heard anything so unabashedly pretty? Well, since the last time you heard Ghosts of American Astronauts by The Mekons, that is... It's almost criminal that this dreamy music wasn't better known while Jennifer Miro was alive to enjoy the acclaim.

GOP EPA Mendacity

2012-01-07T05:22:00.003-05:00

Hey, presidential candidate and almost lifelike human simulacrum Mitt Romney has some lies to tell about the Environmental Protection Agency:

Of course, the reality of the job-killing EPA trope is bullshit. The critics of environmental regulation aren't interested in creating well-paying jobs, they're simply trying to squash any alternatives to the fossil fuel industry.

Tighter regulations would force innovations in the renewable fuel sector and in the efficiency of our appliances and conveyances. The fossil fuel extractors really aren't engaged in grand, sweeping innovations- they just refine techniques that date back to the 19th Century. In addition, environmental remediation would result in the creation of many jobs which can't be outsourced. Meanwhile, other nations will leave the U.S. in the dust in the alternative energy field. It's way past time that we do something to end our dependence on fossil fuels- it's been a problem for decades. Deregulation and a "more of the same" approach to our energy production will hasten the seemingly inevitable decline of 'Murka. As much as I am disappointed in President Obama's approach to governing, if a GOPer wins the 2012 election, things will be much worse.

VOTE GOP 2012: building a bridge to the 19th Century (uh, without the plentiful resources to exploit, that is).

Lost Opportunities

2012-01-05T17:47:00.002-05:00

Foo, my laptop is still in the shop (I have just ordered a power cord for my seven-year-old laptop as well so I'll have a backup), so I have been away from the t00bz. Thanks, people, for thinking of me while I've been out of the loop (this is the first time I've been able to use a workplace computer since Sunday).

I missed some good opportunities for snark... I would have named my Tuesday post Idiots Out Wandering Around (that's some biting Wisconsin humor, there), with the follow-up yesterday "Trail of Santorum from Iowa to New Hampshire" or "Santorum Trailing Behind Mitt"... stupid firewall blocking offensive content! I didn't know this, but the Santorum was gritty (insert "sand in the Vaseline" joke).

I was kinda blindsided this week- New Year's Day was so quiet, with so little news coming in, that I didn't set up any posts for the week ahead, and I figured that I'd have had my laptop early in the week. I have been doing a lot of reading, though, reading books... you know, those slabs of paper, with the individual slices being marked up with ink. Of course, this means that I'll have some material for posts when I have a bleepin' laptop that works!

I'll have a couple of quiet days coming up, during which I hope to be able to compose some posts. Not being able to blog (having a blog clog) has been pretty annoying. I missed blogging, and I missed you.

All is Quiet

2012-01-01T10:09:00.002-05:00

I rang in the new year at work, and had to be back for an atypical 8-4 shift. I set the kidney clock when I got home from work, so I had no problemo waking up. Much like Christmas Day, today is very quiet and, as an added bonus, it's absolutely gorgeous outside... sunny and mid-40s. I spent a good deal of time playing with the beautiful Ginger. Life is pretty tough, innit?

Of course, the title of the post refers to a song by an obscure band led by some guy named Boner, or something... but you knew that, didn't you?

As Is Traditional...

2011-12-31T19:45:00.002-05:00

I am working on New Year's Eve, as I typically do. No biggie- I'm not a big New Year's Eve fan- there's usually a lot of dumbassery afoot, and most places overcharge anyway. It's a nice, quiet night here at work, and I'll get home before most of the madness on the roads starts. I'll be back tomorrow morning, but it will be a quiet day, much like Christmas was.

2011 was an okay year, but no great shakes. I tend to play a pessimist on the Internet (I'm much less so, by nature), and I really don't see 2012 being any better. There's going to be a lot of political idiocy, a lot of stupid, often racist, spam from former co-workers in the inbox, and a paucity of good news on the economic front. Personally, my 2012 will be okay, but I just don't see it being a good year for society. Damn, I hope I'm wrong, and that things pick up.

Mom's Last Day at Work

2011-12-30T19:23:00.003-05:00

Today was mom's last day on the job before her retirement. Today, I called her office for the last time EVER!!! She was not at her desk, she was hanging out with co-workers. I spoke to her this evening, and she told me that her last day was bittersweet- there are a lot of co-workers who she will miss. Of course, I pointed out to her the fact that she can always stay in touch with the co-workers she's close to, while not having to put up with the boneheads.

Mom's last year at work pretty much followed the modern model- she put in long hours (often coming in on Saturdays) in order to handle an increased workload, she had to deal with a stupid alteration in a computer system (the new system only allowed one user to log in at a time- WTF?), and her commute was horrendous. She'd always had a good work ethic, and she excelled at her job, but she was starting to get burned out.

It's pretty disheartening when everybody seems to be working either too many hours, or not enough. Joe and Jane Schmo are either working sixty hours a week, and shitting a brick about losing their jobs, or they are working twenty hours a week and shitting a brick about losing their house, or they are not working at all and they are shitting a brick about losing their minds. It's not healthy, from either an economic or a epidemiological standpoint.

Mom found out that her employer was offering a generous retirement package, and she was eligible for a handsome sum from Social Security, so she opted to retire. She got out while the getting was good. The house is fully paid off, she lives well within her means... it was time she took her nose off that grindstone. I imagine the first couple of weeks will involve some adjustment (what with having no daily routine), but she'll be flying out to Colorado to visit my two younger brothers' families in late January- after that, I think she'll take well to her newfound life of leisure.

End of Year Malaise

2011-12-29T05:59:00.002-05:00

It's another weird stretch at work... my last stint was three consecutive workdays mashed into a 40 hour period, now it's two consecutive workdays stretched out- I leave at 8AM today and don't have to be back until 32 hours later, for the 4PM to Midnight shift. The "use them or lose them" vacation policy results in a lot of late-December work schedule lunacy. Things get really quiet for the next couple of months- the only hassle is the potential for crazy weather.

As an annoying aside, the monitor light on my newish laptop has got kaput- the screen can get none more black, so the damn thing is in the shop (the proprietor and his wife are relatively recent immigrants from China, so they didn't pick up on my Spinal Tap allusion in our exchange)... I didn't even spill wine on the damn thing. I've shopped around for a new power cable for my 2004-vintage Compaq laptop, but I'll have to order one online. I think I'll have to "light a fire" under the owner of the shop I took the newish laptop to for repair- he's had it for over a week (although the Christmas holiday did eat up a few of his business days). Sheesh, two laptops, both not-so-functional... I'll try to keep to a decent posting schedule.

A Belated Christmas Present

2011-12-27T10:14:00.000-05:00

While poking around the t00bz, I ran into some old live recordings of Blondie from the days before they released their first album. The band sounds rawer, almost garage-y, providing a nice, sludgy background to Debbie Harry's high, clear vocals:

There's an even older video of a recording by a proto-Blondie... it's short and sweet, but incomplete. It's a nice little snapshot, and one listen is enough to tell you that the band was destined for bigger and better things.

One thing that I did not know about Miss Harry- she was in her 30's when Blondie's first album came out. This flies in the face of modern entertainment conventions, when pre-packaged teen popstars are churned out by the Entertainment Industrial Complex like such much sausage. Debbie was smart, sarcastic, and sexy as hell, a combination that a younger singer would find hard to pull off.

As an added bonus, here's the original version of the song which got all Disco'd up and released as monster hit Heart of Glass:

Quite a different sound, eh? I've long thought that Debbie and the Band had their tongues planted firmly in their cheeks when they recorded Heart of Glass, it's very different from the rest of the "Parallel Lines" album. Of course, jokey one-offs becoming monster hits is not all that rare.

St Stephen's Day

2011-12-26T05:01:00.002-05:00

Besides being Boxing Day, December 26th is also the feast of St Stephen, the original Christian martyr. In Ireland, it's also known as Wren Day:

Of course, the wren is the king of all birds because, when it was determined that the king of birds would be the one that flew highest, a wren was piggybacking on the eagle, and when the eagle reached the apex of its flight, the wren took off, flying higher than the eagle.

As you may imagine, St Stephen's Day is a great day to hit the pubs, and I live in the tavern district. What better way to celebrate the stoning of St Stephen than to get stoned, eh?

Now, the best known song about St Stephen's Day in the Anglophone world is Good King Wenceslas, a song about a 10th century Czech king by a 19th century English churchman. How's this for trippy? Tom Jones singing about the bonny Bohemian:

Heh, I've got my own plans for the feast day:

Big Bald Bastard's drinking stout,
On the Feast of Stephen.
Acting like a drunken lout,
Tryin' to keep from heavin'.
Chatting up a local girl,
Trying to play the man-whore.
Says, "Hey, baby let's take a whirl
All around the dance floor!"

I'll never become the sainted king of Bohemia at this rate...

In a serious aside, I really hope I make it out tonight- I've had three consecutive workdays jammed into a forty hour period- Saturday 4PM to Midnight, Sunday 8AM to 4PM, Monday Midnight to 8AM. Sheesh, it's been eight hours on, eight hours off for the last two days- I need to have a talk with the scheduler (he's on vacation all week) about avoiding such madness in the coming year. I know we have a lot of ground to cover, and we're understaffed, but this kind of ass-kicking is unwarranted... I think he makes up the schedules for different sites separately, with no effort of reconcile them. I can sustain this sort of effort for a while, but can't do it without a resultant "crash" anymore. It'll be a St Stephen's Day miracle if I don't sleep straight into Tuesday!

Working Christmas

2011-12-25T14:12:00.003-05:00

Here I am, back at work on Christmas Day. Hey, don't feel bad- although I had to turn down all of my invites and only got five and a half hours of sleep, it's a gorgeous day (pushing 50 and sunny), and things have been very low-key. Also, my worksite is uncommonly beautiful, in the scenery department.

As an added bonus, I have been able to spend some quality time with my beloved co-workers Fred and Ginger. I've also had an opportunity to model my genuine fur heated neck warmer:

That magnificent beast, perched on the shoulders of a very tired-looking (hey, 5 and a half hours of sleep!), unshaven Bastard, is Moses, who was named after basketball great Moses Malone. When Moses was a kitten, the guys would put often him in the hoods of their sweatshirts, where he'd ride around, warm and contented. While he couldn't fit in a typical sweatshirt hood now, he makes do. On one occasion, I had him ride on my shoulders for half an hour. When it's cold out, this is a great thing- he does a great job at keeping the ears warm.

Yeah, don't feel sorry for me working on Christmas... the workload is light and the company is divine.

Christmas Eve, Babe

2011-12-24T16:35:00.004-05:00

It's the most unusual of Christmas songs, really... a sweeping, bawdy, maudlin ballad named after a hilariously raunchy, at times melancholy, novel about a young widower recently repatriated to New York City after a sojourn abroad and a brief marriage. The song, by Shane MacGowan and Jem Finer, begins with a sweet, though plaintive piano intro... and then the ragged vocals start:

It was Christmas Eve, babe, in the drunk tank,

We're not in ordinary Christmas music territory now...

The melancholy vocal intro continues:

An old man said to me, "Won't see another one."
And then he sang a song
The Rare Old Mountain Dew
And I turned my face away
And dreamed about you.

While the music is slow and melancholy, the episode in the drunk tank would have sounded more chipper, as the moribund old man sings out a cheerful, uptempo number:

The narrator of the song however, dwells on a single bright point in his otherwise crappy night in jail:

Got on a lucky one
Came in eighteen to one
I've got a feeling
This year's for me and you
So happy Christmas I love you baby
I can see a better time
When all our dreams come true.

This little bit, the fact that his pony came in and he won a considerable sum of money, is probably the reason he's in the drunk tank to begin with... this is not an inhabitant of a sappy Christmas special, the closest thing to it is the end of the original "Simpsons" Christmas Special. This bit also reminds me of the brilliant, filthy Bottle of Smoke ("Twenty-fucking-five to one, my gambling days are done, I bet on a horse called 'A Bottle of Smoke' and my horse won!"). The fact that the song's narrator believes that a gambling win is a harbinger of better times to come just adds to the song's pathos.

After this melancholy intro, the song completely switches tempo, and a female vocal kicks in:

They've got cars big as bars
They've got rivers of gold
But the wind goes right through you
It's no place for the old.

When you first took my hand
On a cold Christmas Eve
You promised me Broadway
Was waiting for me.

This is a story told by an immigrant girl, dazzled by the overwhelming spectacle of New York City, with its promise of wealth (she could be the subject of the traditional song A Stór mo Chroí, forced to emigrate by privation at home). The female vocal was originally supposed to be sung by la suntuosa Cait O'Riordan, the original bass player of the Pogues. I have to say that I love Cait's voice, but it's a good thing that she didn't sing on the final recording, because the dear, departed Kristy MacColl's vocal is perhaps the finest match of voice and subject matter- it's not a sweet voice, and it perfectly captures the initial naivete and eventual frustration of the female lead. Kirsty inhabits the vocal.

The song then shifts to a duet, as the young couple falls in love, not only with each other, but with the city in which they've found themselves:

You were handsome, you were pretty
Queen of New York City
When the band finished playing
They howled out for more,
Sinatra was swinging
All the drunks they were singing
We kissed on the corner
Then danced through the night.

The sweet chorus depicts the (non-existent, at least at that time) NYPD choir singing a nostalgic song of their homeland:

The boys of the NYPD choir were singing Galway Bay
And the bells were ringing out for Christmas day.

Ironically, the song referenced in the melancholy intro is a chipper ditty, while the song referenced in the chorus is more contemplative, more downtempo:

The song then describes the couple falling on bad times, and having a falling-out. They hurl abuse at each other (whether one interprets their epithets literally or not is up to the listener). Once again, this is most unusual vocabulary for a Christmas song:

You're a bum you're a punk
You're an old slut on junk
Lying there almost dead
On a drip in that bed.

You scumbag you maggot
You cheap lousy faggot
Happy Christmas your arse
I pray God it's our last.

The sweet chorus follows this most acrimonious exchange... and then there's regret and reproach, followed by the possibility of redemption, or at least of a temporary reprieve from strife:

I could have been someone
Well so could anyone
You took my dreams from me
When I first found you
I kept them with me babe
I put them with my own
Can't make it all alone
I've built my dreams around you.

This is the emotional climax of the song... the expression of lost opportunity, the biting but all-too-true reproof, and the eventual recognition of mutual need. We don't know how the couple's life together will turn out, but there's a momentary reprieve, a second wind. Will they rekindle their love for each other and get out of their rut, or will they spiral back down into antagonistic co-dependence? It isn't spelled out... are you an optimist or a pessimist?

Hey, enough of my yakking, how about the song itself, in all of its glorious perfection?

For extra credit, here's the first part of a documentary about the song:

I had no idea that the song was inspired in part by Ennio Morricone's soundtrack to Once Upon a Time in America, but it makes sense... it's not the Pogues' first Morricone tribute. The documentary also features an interview with J.P. Donleavy, whose novel lent the song its title! It also has a snippet of Cait O'Riordan's original vocal on the demo, which is a lovely bonus. Watching the documentary is bittersweet, in light of Kirsty MacColl's untimely death. Who'd a thunk that Shane would ever outlive her?

Happy Christmas, you scallywags, and try to stay out of the drunk tank!

49 Million Living in Poverty

2011-12-23T19:45:00.002-05:00

Here's a little something guaranteed to give you some Christmas cheer- by some criteria, the poverty rate in the U.S. is 16%. To put it in starker terms, just about one out of every six Americans is poor, for the under-eighteen set, it's even more horrific- about one-in-five children under 18 is poor. Even more appallingly, the six heirs to the Wal*Mart fortune have as much wealth as the bottom 30% of America's population. Let it be said that they've made their fortunes by killing well-paying manufacturing jobs, while relying on government assistance programs to subsidize their poorly-paid employees.

Yeah, I can't believe it, we're in the Third World. I'm doing okay, but I really want to see everybody doing well... I just don't see why the hell anybody would want to see a large portion of the populace in poverty (well, there is sociopathy, and a Calvinistic equation of wealth with piety). I'm reminded of an anecdote which Thom Hartmann often recounts, in which a German executive accepts his high tax rate, saying "I don't want to be a rich man in a poor country."

On the Christmas front, those poor kids should be pleased to receive a lump of coal in their stockings, because Congress wanted to cut home heating assistance to low income families. The whole thing is appalling... how about a Christmas song, albeit a topical one?

The Kinks' Father Christmas is another of those "not really a novelty song", much like Androgynous by The Replacements. Crank it, but make sure you remember those kids who've got nothing, while you're drinking down your wine.

Squidmas!

2011-12-22T17:42:00.003-05:00

Squidmas arrived this week- by that, I mean, my badass Secret Science Club T-shirt arrived in the mail, along with my official Secret Science Club membership card (I am now a card-carrying member), CD of sciencelcious tunes, and a postcard commemorating the Brooklyn Space Program:

Gotta love that badass logo with its Cthulhu-meets-the-Illuminati vibe:

Yeah, it really looks like the Leviathan from Illuminatus! I CAN HAZ LIMITLIS POWAH NAO? This may be, nay this is, the best Squidmas ever.

Send Latkes, Gelt and Kugel!

2011-12-21T02:15:00.002-05:00

I'm going to recycle a comment I made on last year's Hanukkah post, a little Hanukkah song I'd written. Before I start, though, I have to confess that I can't stand Adam Sandler... I just can't bear his weird combination of Jerry- Lewis-with-a-mean-streak humor and the heaping doses of schmaltz he uses in a cack-handed attempt to leaven it. I have had an aversion to the man ever since catching a bit of Water Boy while channel surfing back in the days when I had a TeeVee machine. That being said, his Hanukkah Song was amusing the first two times I heard it... yuck! I see a need for more popular Hanukkah hanukkarols, even if a goy-boy has to do the writing (after all, one of the most beloved Christmas songs of all time was written by a Jewish-American troubador. So, here goes nothing, here's my bastardy Hanukkah song (the tune should be familiar):

I went home for the Shabbos,
The way I always do.
How am I to show, that I'm an observant Jew?
I was gambling with a dreidel,
I took a little risk.
Send latkes, gelt, and kugel.
Invite me to the bris.

I'm the innocent bystander,
And somehow I got stuck.
Between a rock and a hard place,
Oy vey, I'm a schmuck.

They took me for a gonif.
A shyster, to be sure.
Send latkes, gelt and kugel
To show my heart is pure.

Send latkes, gelt and kugel!
Send latkes, gelt and kugel!

It's a shonda for the goyim,
The way it all went down
Send latkes, gelt and kugel
Before I leave this town.

I'm actually toying with the idea of making latkes, although it's a time-consuming process. Being a goy, though, I'm planning on serving them alongside a bigos. I already hit the Ukrainian butcher shop to buy some fantastic smoked kielbasa and a big chunk of slab bacon. Yeah, it's not kosher by any stretch of the imagination, but it'll have enough oil to make all that cabbage palatable.

Death of L'il Kim

2011-12-19T00:20:00.004-05:00

Whil I knew he'd been sick for a while, it's still a shock the hear that Kim Jong Il has died. L'il Kim was the epitome of the loony tyrannical dictator, with the fashion sense of a Dr Evil and the grandiosity of a "James Bond" villain. While the people of North Korea faced chronic starvation, he indulged in the consumption of luxury goods- even his "Dr Evil" fatigues were made of expensive cloth. Amidst the background of crimes against humanity, Kim also indulged in quixotic crimes, such as kidnaping actresses. He apparently had a great love for action films and even wrote a book on cinema. I used to joke that the best way to remove him from power would be to offer him a starring role in a cheesy action flick with Sylvester Stallone. Well, now that's not necessary.

Of course, the question of succession is now of utmost importance... will he be succeeded by his son Kim Jong Huey, or his son Kim Jong Louie, or his son Kim Jong Dewey? Hopefully, his successor will be amenable to suggestions to step down, to open up North Korea to the world, and to allow the North Koreans a measure of freedom, a measure of security against famine and repression. Sadly, I just don't think that's going to happen. Relief agencies should be flooding North Korea with food aid, all the while trying to persuade the regime's leaders that they should join the world community.

I'm not optimistic about North Korea's future, although the death of Kim Jong Il is certainly a good development. Maybe the best way to assuage my misgivings is to watch Pulgasari a movie made at KJI's behest by a kidnaped South Korean filmmaker:

Of course, with the death Kim Jong Il, the world is bereft of a James Bond villain, but there's always another James Bond villain waiting in the wings, and attempting to rise to the status of "Dear Leader".

Bibliophile's Angst- Lending a Cherished Book

2011-12-17T11:53:00.000-05:00

I have a friend and co-worker who is such a bibliophile that she'd probably bleed ink were she cut. In one of our conversations, which invariably lead to the subject of books, I mentioned John Bellairs and she said she was a big fan. I then told her that an omnibus edition had been published of Bellairs' fiction for adults, and that it included an unfinished draft of a sequel to The Face in the Frost, the existence of which she was unaware. Well, now I've gone and done it... I feel compelled to lend her my copy of Magic Mirrors. Hey, I know where she works, so the odds that she'll scarper off with it are pretty slim. Now I guess I have to put up a review for the unfinished sequel, the title of which is The Dolphin Cross.

The Face in the Frost is, at its core, the story of an investigation- the protagonists, Prospero and Roger Bacon, become aware of a threat to their (particularly Prospero's) continued well-being, and seek to determine the nature of the threat. Throughout the course of the narrative, they are unsure of the nature of the threat, though they journey on to its potential source in a desperate attempt to counter it.

The Dolphin Cross takes place a few months after the end of The Face in the Frost, after Prospero and Roger Bacon (with some unlooked-for help) have thwarted the evil machinations against them (the nature of the threat is never made explicit). While working outside his improbable house (a line from The Face in the Frost comes to mind- "I do not think, Prospero," he said, "that one should attribute a very high degree of reality to your house."), Prospero becomes aware of the movements of armies throughout the kingdom in which he lives, and he is eventually attacked by a mysterious knight of a singular nature. While catching up with news of local happenings at a nearby tavern, he is separated from his all-important wizard's staff. Thus handicapped, he is unable to fend off another attack and is exiled (like the Prospero you are thinking of) to a remote island. Much of the manuscript is a prison narrative, with Prospero alternately killing time, and devising a means to escape from his captivity. All the while, his sympathetic but unrelenting jailer lets fall snippets of information regarding a new claimant to the throne of the disunited kingdom who seems to wish to bring all of the petty fiefdoms under his rule. Bellairs' description of the disposition of Prospero's country is an inspired bit of lunacy:

The South Kingdom, where Prospero lived, was an insane mélange of tiny princedoms, dukedoms, free cities, fiefs, independent farms, and toll-free bishoprics. The only extant map of the whole domain was done by Abraham Ortelius, cartographer to King Gorm the Wonderworker, the ruler of one of these miniature principalities. The "Measles Map", as it was called in the rather small intellectual community of the South, looked like a picture of something in the last stages of a malignant and disfiguring disease. Blotches of purple rot crept across streams and fields. Pimples and boils popped up everywhere in realistic colors, for when Ortelius had to depict, say, a kingdom within a dukedom within a princedom, he always used pink for the outer ring, red for the next, and bright pustular yellow for the pimple's head. The largest of these nations was about the size of Connecticut, while the smallest was only half an acre. It was called Bedd, and whenever Prospero looked at the map- there was a copy tacked up in his living room- he imagined the crabby old Bishop of Bedd peering over the top of his brass fourposter, threatening all comers to try and do him out of his rightful fief. Or frightful reef. Or something. You couldn't look at the Measles Map for very long without getting the giggles.

So, for much of the narrative, our protagonist sits in lonely exile on a tiny, remote island, until he is able to escape with the aid of a magical MacGuffin which he finds when he makes a thorough search of his environs. Meanwhile, there is a brief interlude in which Roger Bacon discovers that his friend is in danger through the agency of a magic alarm bottle, and departs from his abbey in Scotland. The plot resumes with Prospero safely ashore, where he poses as an itinerant leech-gatherer until he gives his wizardly avocation away by using a trick to cheat at a game, thereby gaining the attention of an angry mob. Escaping the mob, he makes his way to a nearby island where he falls into the clutches of one of Bellairs' most memorable villains, a malignant wizard who calls himself "The Bishop". The scene in which Prospero dines with The Bishop is like a creepy spin on a scene in a "James Bond" movie, in which the spy dines with the supercriminal... the description of the table setting allows Bellairs to indulge in some of his signature creepiness:

What else was there? Hmm. Well, over there was a covered dish of some kind. It was shaped like a duck, with overlapping layers of copper feathers and an ivory bill. One leg was missing. Prospero stared at the thing. For an object that was obviously artificial, it had a very lifelike air. He wondered why. Maybe it was the way the glass eyes caught the firelight. Prospero looked around some more. Near him, behind a small covered dish, stood a sugar bowl shaped like a badger- a badger with the top of his skull cut away. Prospero winced. He had an owl-shaped cookie jar at home, and the head was removable. But he never felt that he was beheading the owl when he reached in to get a cookie. These dishes were obviously made of china, porcelain, and metal, but they all seemed real. And the things they were shaped like were maimed, twisted, mutilated. Prospero felt that he was staring at the display case of a sadistic taxidermist.

The fragment ends with Prospero's escape from The Bishop, and Prospero's parting view of the Bishop's home is another of Bellairs' architectural flights of fancy:

The castle was something to stare at. It looked like what Buckingham Palace might look like if it ever went on a two-week drunk. Essentially, it was a big stone strongbox covered with cornices and pediments and balustrades and balls and vases. But instead of being all triangles and rectangles and squares, as such places usually are, it was droopy crescents and parallelograms and lurching unidentifable shapes. Every angle was out of kilter. Here and there, in niches and in split pediments, Prospero saw busts, and even at this distance he could tell that they were meant to be busts of the Bishop. But some were covered with spider webs and some dripped moss; one was only a half-face split down the middle. The whole building seemed to be afflicted with some horrible stone disease, so that the gray surface was covered with blisters and blotches. A low dome of green copper sprawled across the roof of the building, and from the center of the dome a column of black smoke rose.

The Dolphin Cross went unfinished due to Bellairs' concentration on writing successful children's thrillers (his young adult fiction career began with The House with a Clock in its Walls). The published draft of this, the first third of the book, is a tantalizing glimpse of what might have been. While it's not the equal of The Face in the Frost (it's a draft, so it's not very polished), it does feature Bellairs' trademark blend of humor and horror, though the horror is not quite as unsettling as that in "TFitF". The dangers presented in the plot are more concrete, less existential. There is, though, one moment in which I had to pause in my reading to howl "NOOOO!!!", an experience which most Bellairs fans would no doubt share, especially since the book is unfinished, so the actuality of the plot hook remains up in the air.

Now, here I am, looking at my cherished copy of Magic Mirrors, questioning the wisdom of letting it out of my sight for an instant. I know I can trust my friend, like I said, I know where she works. Yeah, I have to lend it out... I know the exact moment when she'll pause in her reading and howl "NOOOO!!!"

Forgive Me While I Indulge in Some Major Geekery

2011-12-16T14:39:00.004-05:00

Today, I am going to majorly geek out about a subject I usually don't cover, but have addressed in a pair of posts which actually garnered a fair amount of hits... that subject being computer games. I don't engage in much "gaming" these days, with the one major exception being the free, beautiful Battle for Wesnoth (warning- major time sink!). Today, though, I am inspired by this post by Cerberus at the mother ship and a post (which I cannot find) excoriating Frank Miller (and another comic book guy who wrote this about The Onion:

The Onion lost all credibility for me a while back when they did a “story” on the Hudson River cleanup GE was forced to do. As some of you may recall, one of my neighbors is a GE veep, and he was directly in charge of this, so from him I found out all kinds of details the press did not bother to pass along to the public. Since The Onion apparently gets its info from other papers, the story was full of inaccuracies.

What are they, Michael Moore?

Anyway, I stopped reading The Onion from then on.

At any rate, the post which I cannot find (I'll have plenty of time to hunt down a link when I work the midnight to eight shift on Saturday) compared Frank Miller and John Byrne to the eponymous antagonists in the classic computer game Myth: The Fallen Lords, former heroes who have been corrupted, and now fight to destroy the civilization that they once defended.

The Myth series of games involved simulation of squad-based tactical combat in a pseudo-medieval setting, a mash-up of world legends and Glen Cook's Sword & Sorcery novels. Medieval soldiers rubbed elbows with extras from Braveheart, fallen-samurai-turned-penitent-Mayan-curanderos and Molotov-cocktail tossing dwarfs. It was a glorious mess, but it all played out swimmingly because the production values were so high. The soundtrack, by the talented Marty O'Donnell, and the narration were equal to anything that the film industry has produced recently. The action was fierce- the player had to fight a series of seemingly hopeless battles against multitudes of implacable foes, against a backdrop of a war for the very survival of humanity. The very fate of a shitload of code was at stake!

The game began with an animated introduction, as a lone Braveheart extra fights his way out of a ruined city with a mystical MacGuffin (WARNING: content may be offensive to members of the Undead-American community):

The game in earnest begins with an introductory episode, as a small squad of soldiers defends a small village against a bunch of not-so-fresh antagonists:

It's the narration, and the dedication to plot which really knocked the game out of the park, the gameplay and the vaunted physics engine notwithstanding. To cap it off, the haunting soundtrack lends a melancholy air to the proceedings, with the piece introducing the third episode, The Siege of Madrigal being particularly beautiful:

The Siege of Madrigal piece has appeared in Bungie studio's subsequent games, typically as an Easter egg for obsessive-compulsive fans to find. The song has appeared in all of the games in the Halo franchise.

Some enterprising (or totally obsessed) individual has posted videos of the entire game to Youtube- if you were fans of Peter Jackson's films loosely based on The Lord of the Rings (I'm not really a fan of Mr Jackson), these videos may be of some small interest to you. There's some amazing imagery there- a jolt as a monstrous trow advances on a small huddle of unsuspecting soldiers, a frisson of horror as a lost regiment comes upon a vast platform composed of skulls by a long-dead nightmare people. Of course, locating a copy of the game would be a better idea- just make sure your "dorf" doesn't blow up his comrades with a poorly-lobbed Molotov.

One feature of the game which lent quite a bit of pathos to it was that each of the units in your squad was named. If you screwed up, Cruniac or Balin would be killed, and you'd feel bad about his non-existent orphans, the bits and bytes that made up his grieving mother. It's just a pity that our politicians don't feel the same way about the real kids they consign to the meat grinder that I did about the named sprites I was responsible for.

The sequel Myth 2: Soulblighter, was another triumph of plot and gameplay, another desparate series of skirmishes as humanity seeks to defeat the remnants of the evil forces which it had fended off in the first game. The sequel has a couple of surprising plot twists in it- the players were assumed to have some familiarity with the background of the setting. The game was most noted for it's "modding" community- the source code was available online, and many variations of the game were created by fans. There is still a web presence for the community.

Yeah, forgive my supergeekery, people... now I have to see if I can run the games on my current machine. If there are no new posts for a month, you'll know the reason!

A Ringing Endorsement

2011-12-14T17:27:00.002-05:00

You want a ringing endorsement, you need someone with a bell- a book and a candle are optional. Well, America's second favorite witch, Christine O'Donnell, has endorsed Mitt Romney in his presidential bid. Of course, this being the cack-handed O'Donnell, her endorsement is not exactly favorable to Romney: "That’s one of things I like about him, because he’s been consistent since he changed his mind" Oh, yeah, that's a great turn of phrase, perhaps the best since Marion Barry declared, "Outside of the killings, DC has one of the lowest crime rates in the country."

I have a noted tendency to develop internet crushes on cute lunatics, but I am not sure if O'Donnell is truly insane, or if she's waging an elaborate, deep-cover campaign against right-wing ideology. Hell, O'Donnell was instrumental in preventing a Republican takeover of the Senate in 2010.

This brings up the topic of Poe's Law, which officially refers to religious fundamentalism:

Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won't mistake for the real thing.

I would expand Poe's Law to encompass all of American movement conservatism... it's impossible to determine if any right-wing commentary is in earnest, or if it's a satire. I call this "Ruppert's Corollary" to Poe's Law, after the ur-troll Gary Ruppert. Is Gary real? Is Gary really a right-winger? Is Christine O'Donnell a performance artist who is attempting to bring down the GOP from within? At any rate, she seems to have put a hex on Romney's campaign.

Tax Cut Madness

2011-12-13T14:23:00.003-05:00

Let the record show that I do not mind paying my taxes, and I supported letting the Bush tax cuts expire (although the renewal of those taxes was pinned to an extension of unemployment benefits). Now, with a proposal to cut payroll taxes in the offering, I have to say that I adamantly oppose such a measure, especially since the ratfucking GOP house is attaching all sorts of horrible riders to the bill.

I am currently working... I gladly render my payroll taxes unto Caesar to shore up the safety net that I may need at some point in my life when I am unable to work due to old age or disability. I know that a lot of people are strapped for cash, but the wholesale mortgaging of our future is not the best way to boost the economy, especially since there is no provision to increase the tax responsibilities of the affluent (taxes aren't a burden, they are the dues that one pays to be a member of Club Civilization).

I have this sinking feeling that the Democrats in Congress are going to make a bad deal yet again. They just don't know how to handle hostage negotiations, especially in light of the fact that the hostage takers are completely insane. Shit, just drop the whole payroll tax holiday bullshit altogether- the decreased revenues for Social Security will be used as a pretext to blow up the program.

While I'm at it, I would love to smack Newt Gingrich in his doughy face... that gormless gobshite has the nerve to say, regarding unemployment benefits, "I don't want to pay people 99 weeks to do nothing." Where the fuck does Newt come off with this bullshit? He doesn't want to pay people? Last time I checked, people who are receiving unemployment benefits paid for their unemployment insurance. Newt Fucking Gingrich had nothing to do with their benefits. Hell, he's been the one sucking on the taxpayers' teat- previously taking taxpayers' dollars in the form of his congressional salary, and currently taking them in the form of his generous congressional benefits package. Fuck this pasty-ass parasite with a weed whacker. He's not even fit to bear the name Newt- because newts are charming creatures. If Newt ever gets elected, we're eft.

CONFESSION: Whenever I read "tax cut madness", I immediately have the chorus of Sex Farm, or a facsimile thereof, running through my head...

Tax cut madness, why can't they let things be?
Tax cut madness, ignore the GOP.
Tax cut madness, can't they see the concept really sucks, sucks, SUCKS!

The Conservative Stool

2011-12-12T20:06:00.002-05:00

I hadn't seen this unintentionally hilarious coinage until I poked around the t00bz looking for an account of Robot Romney hiring being endorsed by attack poodle Ann Coulter and found a bunch of flip-floppery about Romney. This 2008 quote from Rush Limbaugh is very amusing to me:

"there probably is a candidate on our side who does embody all three legs of the conservative stool, and that's Romney. The three stools or the three legs of the stool are national security/foreign policy, the social conservatives, and the fiscal conservatives."

Now Rush doesn't even consider Mitt a conservative. Of course, if one is looking for a candidate who embodies the conservative stool, there's always Rick Santorum. Now, that's some serious stool that is poised to sweep through the conservative movement.

Ugh, I clicked through to a conspiracy lunacy site which had an article entitled "Santorum: Gingrich not a good leader" (not gonna link to it), and found this unintentionally funny comment:

I wish Santorum had more money and oppertunity to speak to the country as a hole…I believe he is the man for the job…Honest,hard working,careing and intuitive…

Dude, Santorum always speaks to the country as a hole.

The Cool Kids are Moonblogging!

2011-12-11T20:53:00.003-05:00

Sometimes, you just gotta follow someone's lead. Hell, I've done moonblogging before, and it never gets old (like the moon itself, it never gets shopworn).

The moon has been gorgeous all weekend... I should know, I watched a glorious moonset in yesterday's pre-dawn hours, then returned to work (after three hours of sleep) in the afternoon, and spent the evening under a fantastically beautiful full moon. I should have worn moonscreen, as I woke today with some peeling on mah nose. I always joke that my job is extremely cushy except when it's not, and this was one of those "not" weekends. My department is small, so when things are busy, we get overextended. I worked a graveyard shift, then had to work some hours at an event.

This entire month, we have a bunch of fundraising events at the end of our busy season. We go on hiatus at the end of December, and much of our workforce, being seasonal, is laid off for two months. It's a bittersweet time of the year, as the year-rounders like myself say "see ya later" to the ten-month workers, and the other seasonal employees. For the next two months, things will be very quiet, and my constant workplace companion will be the cold wind of winter. The December fundraisers are low-key, and the events are spectacularly beautiful, so we end things on a high note. Yesterday was an especially nice night to work, even with the sleep deprivation (working much of the night outside helped- I find the cold bracing).

This was yesterday morning's moonset, a sad little blur of a picture taken with the workplace cell phone:

The picture doesn't capture the pale yellow beauty of the orb, partially shrouded by wispy clouds, and setting over a calm body of water. Yes, that picture was taken at work- is it any wonder that, even when I am getting my ass kicked schedule-wise, I love my job?

The Most Carnivorous Night of the Year

2011-12-10T04:12:00.006-05:00

On Friday night, I went to the annual Carnivorous Nights party at the beautiful Bell House in Brooklyn's Gowanus section. Because I had to work a Midnight to Eight shift afterwards, I eschewed my traditional pre-party spleen sandwich, and ended up napping when I should have been munching on some delicious spleen.

For the second year running, I represented the brilliant Peter Cua of Singapore, who crafts beautiful, lifelike miniature animal sculptures. This year, Peter submitted a gorgeous sculpture of a whitetail buck:

Once again, I was in awe at the painstaking attention to detail that Peter puts into his work:

It was an honor to present such a lovely sculpture, a dainty deer with a pelt of goat skin. My medium is quite a different barnyard product, so I sculpted a cock-and-~~bull~~buck story from the substance of my choice:

Ladies and gentlemen, once it again it gives me great pleasure to present another work by the brilliant Dr Peter Cua of Singapore. If you attended last year's Carnivorous Nights event, you will recall that Dr Cua is the master of mammal miniaturization- his specialty being even-toed hoofed mammals. He puts the "art" in artiodactyl.

A couple of years ago, Dr Cua was approached by members of the International Venison Board, who wished to boost worldwide sales of venison. The obstacle preventing home cookery of deer is the size of the animal- an adult deer is simply too big to fit into the kitchen of the average household, and the sale of juvenile deer for consumption is impractical because of the Bambi barrier. The solution to this dilemma was to develop a tiny deer which could fit in a typical roasting pan, a Cornish game deer, if you will. One of the board members recalled seeing an ad in the classifieds section of Split Hoof Quarterly: Dr Cua's got know-how, to shrink an antelope or cow! Why not a deer? Why not, indeed?

Dr Cua decided to undertake the Kitchen Deer project- through a process of selective breeding, undertaken at his diminutive ranch on the outskirts of Singapore, Dr Cua's deer became smaller and smaller with each generation.

The specimen presented tonight is the prize breeding buck of Dr Cua's herd... the penultimate pygmy of the deer world. This tiny buck met its untimely end last spring. It had slipped under the perimeter fence of the Cua Compound and was wandering down the access road, when it was hit by the miniature car of a Shriner from the Indonesian island of Flores. The driver of the car escaped a serious brain injury due to his enormous brow ridge. The deer, however, did not fare so well... tough luck, buck!

Heartbroken, Dr Cua brought the deer to his laboratory and attempted lifesaving surgery to no avail. The miniature organs of the deer were simply too small, too delicate to operate on effectively. Unable to save its life, Dr Cua decided to immortalize it through the taxidermist's art. The deer is mounted, and displayed in front of one the signs which now mark the perimeter Dr Cua's ranch, warning drivers that they on private property.

I invite all interested audience members to inspect the deer at close range, because most of you will be unable to travel to Dr Cua's facility.

Once again, it was a fun night, though I had to skip out before the end of the show to get my ass to work. There were a couple of interesting trends- the show featured two monkey-riding-canine pieces, and three of the attendees had bright magenta hair. While I heartily support both of these trends, I think I prefer the magenta hair trend, even though I won't be adopting it any time soon.

Oh, and while I am on the subject, if you are looking for an entertaining, informative book to read, I recommend Carnivorous Nights, though I am hardly a disinterested party, because the authors are friends of mine.

A Little Christmas Music, Bastard Style

2011-12-08T14:02:00.003-05:00

Given that yesterday was the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack, and that Christmas is coming soon, how about a song which, oddly, combines a WW2 theme and a Christmas theme?

One of the bands which features most prominently in my "80's" playlist is Australia's Hoodoo Gurus, whose first album, Stoneage Romeos is a personal favorite (seriously folks, it's all killer, no filler). It's a bizarre album, which features songs about girlfriends who choose sacrifice to a volcano over marriage, heartbroken lovers driven to necrophilia, and the Flying Dutchman, along with more traditional songs about unrequited love and the simple pleasures of listening to popular music. There are two songs on the album which reference World War 2, but only one of these is a Christmas song.

The song Tojo is a parody "response" to the song Santa Never Made it into Darwin, which was written about the Cyclone Tracy, which destroyed 70 percent of the buildings in the city of Darwin and killed 71 individuals. Darwin had survived bombings during the Second World War, but Tracy accomplished what Tojo could not (warning- video depicts 80's hair):

The album's other song is this vein is I Was A Kamikaze Pilot (they gave me a plane, but I couldn't fly it).

The Hoodoo Gurus are still a going concern- still slinging their heady mix of straightforward rock-and/or-roll and gallows humor. I've seen them play live a few times, and they never fail to deliver the goods, unlike that Santa guy.

Pearl Harbor Anniversary

2011-12-07T16:37:00.002-05:00

Today marks the 70th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the infamous event which ~~catapulted~~ trebucheted (fixed for Dr. B.) the U.S. into World War 2. Of course, the attack by the Imperial Japanese Navy also inspired to United States' government to do something shameful. Well, there's also this, which is nothing to inspire pride:

The internment of the Japanese-Americans was an unfortunate example of bigotry, and Japanese-Americans rose above such bigotry to serve the U.S. with distinction. The book Yankee Samurai details the heroic service of Japanese-Americans in the Pacific theater, serving largely as translators. The book has a harrowing account of a young GI being lowered naked into an Okinawan cave to convince the people inside to surrender. Sadlynaught commenter pedestrian (in an epic, epic thread) suggested that Ito Hideaki play said GI).

Of course, parallels can be drawn to the conflict in which the U.S. is currently embroiled, to the extent that right wing pundits (notably the odious Michelle Malkin nee Manananggal (heh, Wak Wak)) defended internment, making a case for similar treatment of Muslim Americans. The "sneak attack" aspects of both Pearl Harbor and 9/11 were remarked upon, and the unfortunate characterization of American citizens and resident aliens as a "Fifth Column" soon followed.

Yeah, remember Pearl Harbor, but learn from it. The people of Japan are now steadfast allies of the people of the United States. This is mostly due to the fact that our occupation of Japan post World War 2 was relatively restrained, and efforts were made to rebuild the Japanese economy (I imagine this was largely as a bulwark against Soviet expansion in the Pacific Rim). Yeah, soft power works. Unfortunately, we have recently tended to treat our allies worse than we used to treat our enemies.

To get your minds of Malkin and wingnuts, here's FDR's famous "Pearl Harbor" speech:

A Fistful of Kumquats

2011-12-06T11:53:00.007-05:00

So, last night was the party thrown by my employer... a very, very nice evening. It was great seeing people from all of our sites, many of whom I don't see often enough. Perhaps unfortunately, the music was pretty low-key, and I didn't hear any real rump-shaking tunes- it wasn't a night for dancing. The young social media guru explained that he had just put together the playlist and set it on "shuffle". I decided to wear a suit, and I got a lot of good-natured ribbing about coming straight from my other job as a big bank executive. There were plenty of hot "hoover doovers" and a table loaded with cold snacks- dips, crackers, wedges of pita bread. Upon closer inspection of the buffet table, I saw that the table was decorated with kumquats. Now, kumquats are one of my favorite fruits- they taste like miniature "inside out" oranges- they have a sweet rind and a sour pulp, and they leave a pleasantly astringent aftertaste on your palate. They're kinda like the anti-clementine- while clementines have a sweet pulp and an easy-to-peel rind, and few seeds, kumquats have thick rinds and a fair amount of seeds.

When I saw that there were kumquats on the table, I went to work, palming them and transferring them to my jacket pockets. Hey, sometimes, you have to embrace your inner cafone, and I have a well-nigh insatiable greed for kumquats. I did, however, point the kumquats out to our social media guy, so he and I split the remainder of the ones still on the table, and I did give one to my universally beloved co-worker (the brilliant jet-eyed charmer with the sweet alto voice and the engaging personality), who was unfamiliar with them. That left me with plenty to take home, although they didn't last the night:

Also, thanks to M. Bouffant for providing a cut-and-paste template for rollever text to my neo-luddite self.

Sweetums' Birthday!

2011-12-05T14:03:00.002-05:00

As is my annual tradition, I am posting happy birthday wishes to my older brother, Sweetums. Many happy returns, vecchio! For those new to the blog, Sweetums received his moniker from my hilariously acerbic sister, who was making fun of Sweetums' perfection- of course, being perfect, everybody within earshot decided that it was an apt nickname, and we all use it without the slightest hint of irony now (even her). Sweetums and his wife and kids live in the greater Zurich metropolitan area. Their first apartment was right across the Limmat River from the formerly infamous former needle park. The last time I visited them was during the month of May, and the temperature hit the low 80's Fahrenheit. Sweetums and I decided that it would be a great idea to jump off the bridge into the river (I never travel without a bathing suit- I could be traveling to the interior of Antarctica during the austral winter, and I'd still pack a swimsuit), and swim to the last accessible ladder along the esplanade. There we were- two Yankee nutbars shedding shoes and shirts, and going over the railing. The water in the river was so cold, it burned- we half-swam, half-floated with the current until we hit the last ladder, perhaps an eighth of a mile downstream. It was one of those "seemed like the right thing to do at the time" moments, and it was the right thing to do... it was glorious. I'm sure my sister-in-law thought we were both completely out of our gourds, but she was too tactful to tell us so.

On an unrelated note, today the office is throwing a brief party to celebrate the holidays and the end of the busy season. We have a young guy in the P.R. department who is our "social media" whiz-kid... he is responsible for the organization's Facebook postings and Twitter announcements, and he's very savvy. He's been tapped to serve as D.J. for the evening, and he told me that the Human Resources rep told him, "Make sure you spin some 'Gaga'." I never would have pegged her as a fan. As for myself, only a couple of my co-workers have ever seen me dance, so this might be an interesting evening...

Christmas Gift Guide

2011-12-04T22:37:00.002-05:00

If you are stumped about what to buy the kids for Christmas, I suggest buying them Star Wars toys. Them crazy kids are well-nigh overenthusiastic about that Star Wars, and well they should be. Star Wars was perhaps the best damn movie ever made by a Turkish film studio:

There is a major controversy over the revised version of the movie which was released in 1997, which has led to some serious nerdrage on the t00bz. For the record, I prefer the original version to the new version in which (at 4:15 in the video) Buckethead shot first.

Objectivist Morrissey Don't Need No Golden Lights

2011-12-03T04:49:00.003-05:00

Since Christmastime is upon us, many homeowners are decorating their homes with festive lights. Of course, Objectivist Morrissey, being a devotee of PURE REASON, has no truck with such fripperies and frivolities. There are no Christmas trees cheerfully illuminating the Gulch, kiddo... golden lights can't cheer up Objectivist Morrissey, but he's not against gold by any stretch of the imagination:

Golden coins, displaying my worth
Golden coins, I'm best man on Earth
Scorning poor folks
Gives me much mirth.

One in a million, a John Galt, a big boss
How dare you question my profit and your loss?
How dare you question my greed,
When it's much more noble than your need

Golden coins, displaying my worth
Golden coins, I'm best man on Earth
Scorning poor folks
Gives me much mirth.

I made my money, wheeling, dealing,
You, stupid moocher, accuse me of stealing.
Your regulations are raising my hackles,
They bind me surer than shackles.

Golden coins, displaying my worth
Golden coins, I'm best man on Earth
Scorning poor folks
Gives me much mirth.

Top tier titan, capital kingpin.
I seek the truth, Jack, with pure reason.
You hate my brains, and my guts, my success.
Your envy causes such distress.

Golden coins, displaying my worth
Golden coins, I'm best man on Earth
Scorning poor folks
Gives me much mirth.

This is a spoof of Golden Lights which featured vocals by the late, great
Kirsty MacColl (of course, she sang the female lead on the Greatest Christmas Song Ever, and I really have to do a future post on her and another one on her dad, folksinger Ewan MacColl, who -I did not know this- wrote First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, one of Roberta Flack's signature songs).

The song Golden Lights was originally recorded by 60's teen pop pixie Twinkle:

Cross posted, as always, at the gulch.

Been at it Two Years

2011-12-01T12:52:00.004-05:00

Today marks the two year mark of this blog... I have to thank everybody in the bloggerhood for making this a very fun, very enlightening endeavor. I kinda see this blog as my personal "magazine", an e-publication in which I have complete editorial control. I'm the reporter, the bloviator, the humor columnist, the gossip columnist- I even brew the coffee and clean the pissoir. The one thing for which I'm not responsible is the "Letters to the Editor" section, so thanks a million for your comments, everybody. I'm really grateful for your friendship and your support... without you wonderful folks, I'd just be some guy yelling at a cloud.

It's funny... the whole concept of the Big Bad Bald Bastard really started as a bit of a joke- while the Bastard is recognizably moi, he's a tongue-in-cheek version of me. He's a spoof of the manly-man stereotype, rendered by a guy who's really a supergeek at heart. I hope it's a spoof of gender stereotypes done right. That being said, I'd be lying if I said it wasn't useful to play the Bastard at times (a couple of times, I've had belligerents back off by telling them, "Uh, I'm not as wimpy as I look!"). As an aside, fighting's like fucking, it really should only be done with people you like, who know what they're doing, and have your best interests at heart (this sentence, which has been kicking around my big bald noggin for quite some time now, deserves its own post)

Anyway, that's a bit of Bastard backstory... now onto a quick review of the year. I think my greatest blogging achievement of the past year (indeed, of my whole career) was my 24 posts in 24 hours slog. I had to work that cruelest of workdays, the graveyard shift/evening shift (worst slashfic EVER!!!) split, so I decided to amuse myself with a series of largely stream-of-consciousness posts. It was on that fateful day when Objectivist Morrissey, first conceived of in a Sadly, No! comment, shuffled out of the gulch, so to speak.

This year also marked the glorious occasion when I became the internet's number one unapologetic ass man (although I originally applied that moniker to Frank Frazetta (to this day, that post remains, by far, my most popular, with the search terms "voluptuous women" and "Frazetta women" being my two most popular search criteria- I hereby offer a sincere apology to all the hapless horndogs who came looking for Dejah Thoris' ass and found my face).

The blogroll has grown quite a bit, and I'm happy to have had Laura and Dusty join the cast of regulars who have been so supportive all along. I love how the neighborhood keeps expanding, and I'll continually keep an eye toward expanding it.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that I got to meet the celebrated Substance McGravitas in person. I'd met fellow Noo Yawkehs actor and Ned previously, but meeting a guy from a mysterious northern land who flew all the way across the continent was pretty mind-blowing.

Let me mention that, if any of you plan on visiting the New York metro area, don't hesitate to drop me a line (MEMO TO MYSELF: ~~do the dumb things I've got to do- touch the puppet head~~ post your e-mail on the blog)- I'd love to meet you for a spleen sandwich, a beer in a baby biergarten or a foot fetish party. Until then, I have to be content having you drop by my place, my place in cyberspace. I'll probably do a couple of more additions to the blogroll soon.

Thanks, everybody, it's been another fun year of blogging, and it wouldn't have been possible without you. I love hearing from you, I love reading your stuff, and I love the genuine feeling of community I get from you. I look forward to our next year together.

Vincenzo's Birthday

2011-11-30T14:56:00.002-05:00

Today, my brother Vincenzo celebrates his birthday in the greater Kandahar metropolitan area. He was deployed soon after the birth of his youngest child. Vin was promoted a few weeks back- he was commissioned in the mid-nineties, when the U.S. considered itself a "unipolar hyperpower". Yeah, no Cold War, what possible conflicts could the U.S. become embroiled in? My baby brother, Gomez, was commissioned two years later. They both received a spectacular education courtesy of Uncle Sam, and they are continuing their postgraduate studies in the school of hard knocks.

Vincenzo has a dynamic personality- he's the guy who thought nothing of posting the address of the family homestead on a bulletin board and telling his comrades that the door was always open. He'd arrange carpools to bring his overworked comrades home so they could unwind, and live some semblance of a normal college life. While posted in American Samoa, he made a point of picking up a smattering of the local language, and learning about the culture. He's always had a knack for languages, and loves shocking the hell out of people by dropping a phrase of their lingo into a conversation. Before his current deployment, he spent some time at the Joint Readiness Training Center running simulations in Potemkin villages set up on the post- arabs, both from the U.S. and Iraq, were settled on base to help soldiers role-play different situations, from home searches to negotiating with family or village elders. Paradoxically, for a guy involved in the most hierarchical organization on the planet, my brother has always been pretty skeptical of authority... a punk rock officer and gentleman is something not to be expected.

People like my brother are going to play a major role in a necessary reorganization of the military after two decades of foolish adventurism. Ever since 2001, the military was used as a private army for a coterie of sociopaths and war profiteers. Even Colin Powell, long thought to be the "last honest man" (although his role in the My Lai horror was a shameful one), completely ignored the precepts which came to be known by his name. The military is supposed to be used as a last resort, when diplomatic means fail- it's not supposed to be used in a tinhorn dictator's personal Risk game.

I have no doubt that my brothers will make a career of the military, and they will be entering the upper echelons of the military hierarchy at the tail end of an extremely bad era in U.S. foreign policy. I have no doubt that they'll learn the lessons of the noughts, after having seen two administrations forget the lessons of Vietnam. I just hope that they will have the authority to make sure that the mistakes we've made aren't repeated (although the current saber rattling about Iran is really, really dismaying).

Happy birthday, Vincenz, this one's for you:

On an unrelated topic, this is my 30th post this month, I can haz Nablopomo?

Everyday Elitism

2011-11-29T15:02:00.003-05:00

If there's one thing that chaps my ass, it's how "arugula" has become a catchword among right-wingers and the lazy media types who never call them out on their bullshit for snobby elitism. While shopping at the local C-Town supermarket, I ran into a display of elitist leaves (eleafists?):

Yeah, at $1.29, that's really something that only a Snooty McSnootington could possibly afford to buy. Hell, a bunch of arugula is cheaper than a goddamn box of four hot pockets, and cheaper than a Big Mac. If eating arugula is elitist, it's the sort of elitism than an ordinary working stiff can afford. Sauteed with a little garlic and served with cannellini, arugula can be a delicious, nutritious meal on the cheap. For the record, I'll probably make a salad with the bunch I purchased- some olive oil, a hint of balsamic vinegar, some shaved pecorino romano, and good crusty bastone... bellissima!

I have no idea why a certain segment of the population thinks that processed crap is authentic, and that quality foodstuffs are suspect. Let me get this straight... industrial product extruded out of a plant and stamped into a shape reminiscent of something edible is real food, while a perfectly nutritious leafy green is somehow fit only for rabbits? Grazie, ma no! I think I'll stick to the elitist rabbit food.

Doing the Stealation...

2011-11-28T14:22:00.003-05:00

Hey, the cool kids on the blogroll have convinced me to jump on the bandwagon. Who says peer pressure is a bad thing?

1) What are you reading at the moment?

I am reading... WAIT FOR IT... The Sign of the Labrys by Margaret St. Clair, a copy of which I purchased for 50 cents at a huge used bookstore in Manassas, Virginia. You may recall, this book had the bizarre blurb on the back cover- WOMEN ARE WRITING SCIENCE-FICTION!!! It's a pretty bizarre book, and I may have to review it in a future blog post. I must say, I am very pleased with my fifty cent purchase.

2) As a child, what did you read under the covers?

I don't really remember doing this particularly, but I loved John D. Fitzgerald's "Great Brain" books and Beverly Cleary's books (Ramona the Pest is one of the greatest comic creations of American children's literature)- the wikipedia says that Ms. Cleary is still writing at the age of 95... this really makes me happy.

3) Has a book ever made you cry, and if so which one?

I'm not a big crier, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't notice a large quantity of dust in the air while I read the end of Watership Down ***SPOILER REDACTED**'s final moments are beautifully written, as his strength ebbs out of his body and he feels it flowing into his descendents. Damn, that's some fine writing, even the little touch of having the first primroses in bloom at both beginning and end of the novel was delicious. Yeah, it's a simple "adventure story", but it was well done.

4) You are about to be put into solitary confinement for a year and allowed to take three books. What would you choose?

Does a multi-volume book count as one book? If so, one of the big translations of the Ramayana would be a good choice... If not, I have a single-volume edition of Frazer's The Golden Bough, sure it's dated, but it's extensive, so it would be a good read for the cellbound. I'd also take a translation of One Thousand and One Night- hey, that'd cover a year, no? I'd also take a honking big Borges collection.

5) Which literary character would you most like to sleep with?

Princess Eilonwy of the red-gold hair from Lloyd Alexander's The High King, because she was all growded up in that particular book.

6) If you could write a self-help book, what would you call it?

Keep Your Thumb Out of Your Ass

7) Which book, which play, and which poem would you make compulsory reading in high school English classes?

Book (if non-fiction is allowed): Prothero's Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters- it's gorgeous, well-written, and a good antidote to bullshit. If only literature is allowed, Homer's Odyssey is a good "foundational" work to which a lot of other literature alludes.
Play: Arthur Miller's All My Sons, it's a powerful indictment of war profiteering.
Poem: Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky, followed by a discussion of possible meanings for the nonsense words, and how the meanings of actual words change over the course of time, and new words are coined all the time.

8) Which party from literature would you most like to have attended?

I'm with zrm here, the eternal flying party from Life, the Universe, and Everything

9) What would you title your memoirs?

F*** the Courtesy Flush

10) If you were an actor, which literary character do you dream of playing?

Grettir from Grettir's Saga.

Woefully Belated Secret Science Club Post Lecture Recap

2011-11-27T03:42:00.003-05:00

Finally, I have some time to do a decent writeup of last Monday's Secret Science Club lecture by paleontologist/physical anthropologist Dr William Harcourt-Smith of the American Museum of Natural History and Lehman College. The lecture began with a quote from Mark Twain, illustrating his opinion of the anthropocentric philosophy:

Man has been here 32,000 years. That it took a hundred million years to prepare the world for him is proof that that is what it was done for. I suppose it is, I dunno. If the Eiffel Tower were now representing the world's age, the skin of paint on the pinnacle-knob at its summit would represent man's share of that age; and anybody would perceive that the skin was what the tower was built for. I reckon they would, I dunno.

After a brief overview of hominin evolution (this graphic, although omitting Homo florensis, is a good depiction of the distribution of humans and their relatives), with discussions of relative brain-to-body size, and the use of microscribe imaging tools in morphological studies, Dr Harcourt-Smith went on to discuss one of his primary fields of inquiry, the development of bipedalism and the morphology of hominin feet.

Humans are the only mammal to habitually walk bipedally, placing one foot in front of the other to walk. Other extant mammals that typically move on two feet move by hopping. There are more living mammal species that lay eggs than there are those that walk on two legs. Evidence of bipedalism dates far back in hominid evolution, with the Laetoli footprints being a beautiful example of evidence that our australopithecine forbears walked erect, and lacked the grasping big toes characteristic of other primate groups. The evolution of bipedalism had long been assumed to have happened in linear fashion throughout the course of hominin evolution, but Dr Harcourt-Smith's research suggests "that there may have been greater diversity in human bipedalism in the earlier phases of our evolutionary history than previously suspected". Different hominins were probably "experimenting" with bipedalism, as suggested by the different "mosaic" of foot bones in fossil hominins- in particular the morphology of the arches of their feet.

Dr Harcourt-Smith's current fieldwork is at an Early Miocene site on the island of Rusinga in Kenya. The site is associated with fossils of the early "ape" Proconsul, which shared its "world" with now-extinct mammal lineages such as creodonts and chalicotheres.

While early paleontological expeditions primarily concentrated on extracting "significant" fossils, current fieldwork involves searching for fossils of all sorts in order to determine what sort of biome characterized the site. Whereas earlier expeditions tended to concentrate on the dramatic fossils, often ignoring the less "significant" fossils which could be useful in determining the prevailing environmental conditions. One anecdote recounted by Dr. Harcourt-Smith illustrates this point- a fossil of a crocodilian was largely ignored by the Rusinga team because it was dismissed as "just a crocodile fossil". When a crocodile expert joined the expedition, the fossil was reevaluated, and may be that of a previously unknown species.

Once again, it was a fantastic lecture. For additional reading Dr Harcourt-Smith regularly wrote blog posts from the field, which make for great reading.

UPDATE: I was somewhat rushed writing this post- I forgot to mention that Dr. Harcourt-Smith mentioned Homo florensis in his lecture, remarking on how large the feet of this little hominin were. He also gave a quick overview of possible reasons for the evolution of a bipedal gait- one theory is that walking on two feet substantially reduces the amount of sunlight, and thus heat, that a body has to deal with. He also cautioned against extrapolating the behavior of extinct hominins from the observed behavior of modern hunters and collectors such as the San. Simply put, the San are modern humans, and exhibit a cultural sophistication that our extinct forebears were unlikely to possess. He also mentioned a recent discovery of a series of footprints dating back to the early days of Homo sapiens, but hinted that the National Geographic Society would come after him if he said anything further about it.

Home from the Holidays

2011-11-26T00:06:00.003-05:00

Friday was a bit of a "hell day"- up at 5:30AM, hit the road by 6:30, and back in the New York Groove in time to eat a decent sit-down lunch before going to work (I didn't have time or inclination to go home before work). I'm wrapping up at work now (we had a small fundraising event, so I was unable to "surf" much , and my one dream is to drive home, brush my t00fies, and pass out until the early afternoon. Yeah, that's AMBITION! I've been slowly catching up with the regulars' posts and leaving comments, but it'll take a while to really do a proper job.

I'll be working midnight to eight on Sunday morning, so I hope to put up a recap of **gasp** last Monday's Secret Science Club lecture when I have time to write. I have my notes, and have an outline for the post, but it needs linkage, and I'm a bit punchy right now, so I'd do a half-assed job.

Thanksgiving was great- it was wonderful seeing mom, my sister, my brother-in-law, and my two eldest nephews after more months than I'd care to consider. To give you an idea of what the family is like, we were sitting in a local restaurant on Wednesday afternoon (before hitting the huge local used book store), and, when a large bible study group gathered at the next couple of tables over, we started discussing the implications of the possibility that faster-than-light neutrinos have been detected in the large hadron collider. Unfortunately, this was ineffective as an "exorcism"... maybe they thought we were "speaking in tongues".

I think I shall pass out now!

The Annual Orgy of Consumption

2011-11-25T06:37:00.001-05:00

Black Friday... shit, the very notion of getting up at four in the morning in order to elbow, claw, and shove your way into stores in order to buy a whole lot of cheap, poorly made crap on credit is totally foreign to me. Of course, many stores are now opening on Thanksgiving night this year. Damn, if overeating and lying on the couch watching football aren't sacred anymore, nothing is. I have scorn for the people who would descend upon the stores on Thanksgiving night, but I have nothing but pity for the poor folks working in retail. Damn, as if dealing with the people weren't bad enough, they don't even have time to digest their dinners before being thrown into the grinder.

I'm not into the whole consumerism thing, and I think an "opt out" on Black Friday would send the message to our corporate overlords that we are citizens, not consumers. There's a Say No to Black Friday (and to Rebecca Black's Friday) movement, a movement I heartily endorse. Reject the consumption, because, as the Reverend Mojo Nixon observed, America has turned into a "mondo condo shopping mall hell". While I can't endorse arson as a remedy, I do think that, barring the burning, Mojo was onto something:

I hope to be back from Virginia this afternoon and, with any luck, will catch up with the comments on previous posts and resume my typical posting routine. I shall make posting my post lecture recap a priority.

Happy American Thanksgiving!

2011-11-24T09:54:00.000-05:00

Yeah, the economy sucks, and our political system is proving a failure, but there are plenty of things for which to be thankful. If you're reading this, you're alive, and that's a start. I don't really have anything to write about Thanksgiving that would be appreciably different from last year's Thanksgiving post. I especially love having a reason to post Turkish Song of the Damned, a song which is breathtakingly amazing, both musically and lyrically. To think that it was inspired by a drunken misinterpretation of a request for a jokey novelty song boggles the mind. Here it is, in a video which highlights Shane MacGowan's alarming dentition in quite gruesome fashion:

Now, we had our "Turkish Song", now how about a touching love song to listen to after dinner, while sitting before the fireplace? The world can be divided into two broad categories of people- those who realize that Turkey Dinner by the Hoodoo Gurus is the most romantic song ever written, and those who are flirting with a lifetime ban. Once again, the video to Turkey Dinner cannot be embedded, which is something for which I am anything but thankful.

Happy Thanksgiving all, and thanks for reading. You can be assured that I am grateful to be able to interact with such an amazing bunch of people as yourselves.

Big Bad Bald Bastard's Best Boston Brown Bread

2011-11-23T07:49:00.001-05:00

If you're going to steal, steal from the best, I say. Posting a recipe, I decided I'd crib Laura's "best ever" schtick, leaving out the "E" word for the sake of alliteration.

I have to confess that, although I am a born and bred New York boy, New England looms large in my background. My paternal grandfather was born and raised in Framingham, Massachusetts, and our family would always spend a couple of weeks camping in Maine every summer. One does not readily get New England out of one's blood. Oddly enough, my New England past caught up to me recently (perhaps it's because of the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, when everybody in the U.S. gets a little New England-y), and I had a strange craving for Boston brown bread.

Boston brown bread is a throwback to the early days of the settlement of New England, before decent stoves were developed. The multi-grain bread (equal parts rye, corn, and wheat flour) is sweetened with molasses, and steamed in a mold (nowadays, using an empty coffee can is typical). It's not the typical sort of thing I crave, but I inexplicably had a jones for it, and the commercially canned stuff, like Moxie, is not readily available outside of New England. If I wanted it, I'd have to make it myself.

I want to note now that I am, culinarily, strictly a stove-top operator. I am not a baker, in fact, my ability to kill yeast surpasses that of Monistat. Of course, Boston brown bread's not really baked, so I figured I'd be okay. To start my brown bread experiment, I needed a mold. One comment on a Food Network site suggested using the can in which Pepperidge Farm "Pirouette" wafer are packaged. My beautiful co-worker **REDACTED** had one of these on her desk, so I have confess, I had my eyes on her can for quite some time (I was joking with another co-worker, and when I mentioned that I was eyeing **REDACTED**'s can, she asked, "The cookie can? What for?" See, I'm no Herman Cain, so I can get away with such things). Not being a "can shark" (FUTURE BLOG POST?), I decided that I had to buy a can of Pirouette wafers- they are tasty, but a little too sweet, I had them with coffee, to cut down the sweetness factor.

Now that I had the can, I had to assemble the ingredients and get to work. The recipe I used was from Epicurious:

Equipment:
Empty can (I used a "Pirouette" wafer can, because it has a convenient cover)
Saucepan
Oven safe pot

Dry ingredients:

1/2 cup rye flour
1/2 cup wheat flour
1/2 cup yellow corn meal
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

Wet ingredients:
1/3 cup dark molasses
1 cup milk

Add in:
1/2 cup raisins

Additional:
Butter for greasing the can

Start off by liberally greasing the can (heh heh), make sure the entire can is well lubed before you continue. Set the oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit. Set saucepan full of water on stove to boil.

Mix dry ingredients, mix wet ingredients, then mix wet ingredients into dry ingredients to form a batter. Add raisins and mix into batter. Pour batter into greased can to approximately 2/3 capacity. Cover can (if using coffee can, use aluminum foil, and tie foil into place) and place in oven safe pot. Fill pot with boiling water to the 2/3 of the can's height. Put pot into oven for two hours. After removing pot, let the whole shebang cool for an hour or so, and then "unmold" bread.

The bread itself is very moist, virtually crustless, with a pronounced molasses flavor... it's kinda like a massive muffin. While it goes well with butter, I imagine it would go really well paired with a mild cheddar cheese, kinda like a Bostonian take on the Jamaican classic bun and cheese. I imagine the recipe could be tweaked, substituting buttermilk for the milk, and playing with the flour proportions and amount of molasses. I think my next batch may have less molasses, as I really don't have much of a sweet tooth.

There you have it, an interesting quick-bread recipe for those of us cack-handed types who can't bake worth a damn.

A Little Traveling Music Please

2011-11-22T07:13:00.001-05:00

For me, the classic road-trip music will always be Roadrunner by Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers (the original lineup included Jerry Harrison, who was a founding member of Talking Heads, and David Robinson, who drummed for The Cars). Here's a live version that, I confess, I'd never heard before:

Of course, Roadrunner sounds suspiciously like Sister Ray, by the Velvet Underground:

Roadrunner has become somewhat of a standard. Joan Jett tackled it:

The song was also hilariously butchered by the Sex Pistols in a rehearsal, with a confused John Lydon ad-libbing in quite entertaining fashion:

Mojo Nixon & Skid Roper's Jesus at McDonald's was a tongue-in-cheek "tribute" to the song:

The song's got legs, which is pretty outstanding for a love song to Stop and Shop.

Gonna Be a Busy Week

2011-11-21T01:53:00.002-05:00

This week will be pretty nutty- I am working a graveyard shift now (Monday morning) and will be traveling to Brooklyn for a Secret Science Club lecture (this one is really up my alley, so I am looking forward to it). I plan on driving down to Virginia to spend (American) Thanksgiving with my mom, and my sister, her husband, and my two eldest nephews. I plan on leaving the Old Dominion at the crack of dawn on Friday, and driving straight to work. Yeah, it'll be a hell of a week, but family is paramount.

I'll be putting up scheduled posts for the week. I have some quiet hours to do some writing. Unfortunately, my responses to any comments will be sporadic at best, but I'll take some time to respond to posts when things return to a semblance of normality. Now, gotta crank out some posts.

Follow Up on Yesterday's Post

2011-11-20T13:35:00.002-05:00

I've been thinking about the Penn State scandal (who the hell in the States hasn't), and I'm still astounded and appalled that it could have gone on for so long, and to have victimized so many children. I don't know what sort of mindset would allow such a series of occurrences to take place, but I'd guess that it the corrupting influence of money takes center stage. The Penn State football program is a multimillion dollar enterprise, which may explain why nobody wanted to rock the boat skippered by Joe Paterno. "Hey, the kids who were victimized were disadvantaged, and Sandusky delivers the goods on the gridiron... why jeopardize Lions football?" Of course, this is merely a symptom of a whole culture poisoned by greed, authoritarianism, and unaccountability.

Another thing which has had me scratching my bald pate in puzzlement is the "Don't talk to strangers!" injunction. All too often, abusers are trusted individuals- clergymen, close friends or family members, authority figures all. Often, it takes an outsider's perspective to suss out that abuse is occurring. The abusers are able to cloak themselves in the mantle of respectability, so other members of the community are unable to call their actions or intentions into question. Hell, in the Penn State case, one has to wonder whether Jerry Sandusky founded his charity largely as a "spiderweb" to entrap vulnerable children. How does one educate one's children to be skeptical enough of authority to never kowtow to the predator's "classic" veiled threat: "Don't tell anybody! Who would believe you anyway?" How does one convince a kid not to be afraid to shine a spotlight on a "trusted" member of the community who is doing evil under the noses of the populace? I know the schools typically don't teach kids to question authority, but I'd tell any parent that it's crucial to do so.

Responding to the Penn State Horror

2011-11-19T21:04:00.002-05:00

Last week, the horrific Penn State sexual abuse scandal dominated the U.S. news cycle. This week, a similar scandal broke on the Syracuse University campus. Who the hell knows what other scandals will come to light as additional victims, emboldened by these revelations, decide to come forward? Part of me fears that these scandals are not confined to these two institutions.

Shortly after graduating from college, I started volunteering as a coach for a children's athletic program. The program is a multi-sport endeavor, the kids participate in a variety of athletic activities. In all my years of involvement in the program, there hasn't been the faintest hint of any inappropriate behavior on the part of any of the coaches or administrators. That being said, the director of the program came around to all of the coaches and informed us that, because of the heinousness of the Penn State crimes, that we would be taking measures to minimize any chance that anything like it would happen with us. In a strictly CYA move, all of the coaches in the program would be subject to a background check. I've got no problem with this- hell, I had to submit to a background check last year, when I worked for the Census Bureau. Of course, a background check would only reveal a problem if an individual happened to be caught, but it's still something demanded in the interest of due diligence.

In all of my years coaching, I've always abided by the simple rule: "Don't be alone in a room with a kid, unless it's your kid." I'd add the corollary: "Don't allow anybody else to be in a room with a kid, unless it's their kid." In our particular system, the kids are grouped according to age, and each group is shepherded around by two or three counselors, high school kids- former participants who have come up "through the ranks" and garnered the job (the counselors are the only paid staff members) through good attendance and dedication over the years. Two of our current counselors have stayed with us while in college, and some of the counselors have passed into the ranks of the coaches over the years. If a kid needs to go to a locker room to get something, there's no need for an adult to accompany them- the counselors are there to act as chaperones. Kid needs to go to the bathroom? Have a counselor escort the kid to the pissoir. No need for an adult to be involved. Hell, I couldn't even begin to fathom why an adult with honorable intentions would seek to be alone with someone else's kid.

Nothing untoward has occurred in the course of our program, but we're still feeling ripples from the Penn State horror. We're going to take steps to minimize the chances of a similar occurrence occurring under our roof, but I'd be lying if I said that things haven't changed.

Yoga for Right-Wingers

2011-11-18T20:11:00.003-05:00

In the comment thread at Roy's Place, commenter Zuzu wrote on an NPR piece about an Ayn Rand quote on a Lululemon yoga store shopping bag:

Speaking of John Galt, I heard this story on NPR yesterday and was just gobsmacked. The yoga apparel retailer Lululemon, whose shopping bags are carried around by its customers like totems, recently pissed off its customer base by printing the phrase, "Who is John Galt?" on those bags.

The owner of the company, Chip Wilson, apparently read Atlas Shrugged at 18 and never grew out of it.

Of course, the reason why "Who is John Galt?" was printed on the bags is because "Who is Sri Tirumalai Krishnamacharya?" wouldn't fit on them.

I wonder if this new shopping bag slogan will lead libertarians to practice yoga. Now I am imagining what Libertarian yoga would be like, so help me out. Ya got Ron Paul in yoga pants, now what kinda "poses" is he going through? So far, I've got:

Downward Dagny

Freedom Eagle Pose

Looter's Position

I took the easy ones, people...

Representing the other, God-bothering wing of the American Right, washed-up-actress-turned-right-wing-fundamentalist loon Janine Turner decided that yoga was too pagan for God-fearing heartlanders, so she decided to file off those Hindu serial numbers and present, I shit you not, Christoga:

What the hell is with these people? They genuinely think that demons lurk everywhere, waiting to spring upon the unwary. Practice yoga? You'll be possessed by a demon. Read a "Harry Potter" book? You'll be possessed by a demon. I wonder how the hell they could eat Chinese food without this guy going after their asses.

Personally, I think the yoga thing is a fad, and that the next exercise craze rooted in the traditions of the Indian subcontinent will hit these shores any day now.

Just Keep It Off the Money!

2011-11-17T19:24:00.003-05:00

It's been a busy day at work for me, so this'll be a quick follow-up to yesterday's post. Serial crier/serial liar Glenn Beck has referred to Rick Santorum as the next George Washington. What the??? All I know is that I don't want Santorum on any one dollar bills, nor on any quarters. Uh, a "fistful of Santorum" is wrong, wrong, wrong! Even the Obamas, with their purported predilection for unconventional erotic activities, would want to avoid such a thing! Fistful of Santorum? I think I'd rather be a pauper!

Yeah, you'll need brain-bleach to scrub that image from your minds, so how about one of my all-time favorite Ennio Morricone pieces?

Of course, Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars was a remake of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo, which is even more badass:

This post is somewhat rushed, I'll try to clean it up tomorrow- embed some links, and all that ~~shit~~ santorum.

Postscript: Santorum on the quarters would single-handedly kill off the drinking game based on the quarter's ability to bounce a short distance.

Wave of Santorum About to Hit Iowa!

2011-11-16T19:11:00.002-05:00

Ordinarily, I don't link to HuffPo, because of a preponderance of anti-vaxxer lunacy, and celebrity I-really-don't-give-a-shit (plus allegations that they stiff their staff), but it's the only place where I can find anything about Santorum's ambitions in Iowa. Even the headline is hilarious:

Rick Santorum Waits His Turn To Ride The GOP Primary Carousel

Protip: If you're the next candidate on the carousel after Santorum, wipe the "horsie" off well... use bleach!

Damn, the LULZ0RZ are strong in this article:

Craig Robinson, a former state GOP official who now writes a political blog, wrote that Laudner -- a former chief of staff to influential Rep. Steve King, who is also connected to all of the significant camps within Iowa's universe of social conservatives –- "will now travel all across the state in an effort to activate his network for Santorum."

I've seen signs saying "will work for food", but "will activate network for Santorum" is a new one. Pretty damn disgusting if you ask me.

Even the bit of charming down-home whackaloonery in this article is hilarious:

The only Republican presidential candidate yet to have his moment in the spotlight could not tear away from an elderly woman on Wednesday who was advising him about home therapies for common illnesses, such as "onion juice."

Is "onion juice" a common illness? Oh, now that I re-read this awkward sentence, I see that "onion juice" is a home therapy... maybe it can be used to prevent an... uh... embarassing problem "down there", if you know what I mean, and I think that you do! Too bad onion juice can't fix a Google problem.

You may not believe it, butt (sic) a huge wave of Santorum is going to sweep over Iowa... it's anyone's guess, though, how the hell the 55 gallon drums of lube are going to end up in the manure lagoons.

Preoccupy Bloomberg

2011-11-15T19:17:00.002-05:00

The big story in the local media has been the eviction of the "Occupy Wall Street" protestors from Zuccotti Park around 1AM. Before I go any further, does anything noble or prideworthy happen in the wee hours of the morning under a media blackout? Didn't think so...

I first heard of the eviction on the Mark Riley's WWRL morning show, followed by an interview with City Council member Jumaane Williams, who indicated that his colleague Ydanis Rodriguez had been arrested (after apparently being injured during the raid). Yeah, it's pretty much a goddamn mess.

Bloomberg gave a press conference in which he claims that the eviction was for the good of the protestors. Damn, Bloomberg really came across as the worst sort of concern troll. He's actually something worse, he's an ogreish oligarch wearing a concern troll's mask... a veritable Napoleon in Nordstrom's. Here's the transcript of Bloomberg's statement. This particular section struck me:

No right is absolute and with every right comes responsibilities. The First Amendment gives every New Yorker the right to speak out – but it does not give anyone the right to sleep in a park or otherwise take it over to the exclusion of others – nor does it permit anyone in our society to live outside the law. There is no ambiguity in the law here – the First Amendment protects speech – it does not protect the use of tents and sleeping bags to take over a public space.

Bloomberg's appeal to the rule of law is particularly galling because he connived to overturn the term limits law he once supported and again supports during his third term. This is the very definition of privilege. Your laws? They do not apply to weasel Mike Bloomberg, the poster boy for the one percent.

Of course, the eviction is bound to backfire. The movement is more galvanized and more fluid. Cast from its moorings in Liberty Plaza (some irony there), the movement can go mobile. On Thursday, the plan is to literally occupy Wall Street, then clog up the transit system for much of the day. If he thought the occupation of his girlfriend's little fiefdom was bad, shit's about to get real. Damn, Bloomberg needs to be hounded continuously by protestors- his preoccupation with the Occupy Wall Street movement needs to be moved from the existential realm to the real world.

Worst... Pundit... Ever!!!

2011-11-14T11:24:00.006-05:00

I'm a huge nerd, but I'm not a comic book nerd, so I wouldn't have heard about this post's topic if it hadn't been for the intrepid M. Bouffant. I won't link to the piece he critiques, seeing no need to drive additional traffic to the asshole's site, but I will link to a piece by the always entertaining David Brin (whose "Uplift" novels are a fun read) which excoriates the author's best known recent work.

When I read M. Bouffant's synopsis of a scathing opinion piece about the Occupy Wall Street movement by Frank Miller. I thought I remember that Frank Miller guy... wasn't Frank Miller the guy who used to make prank phone calls? Oh, wait, THAT Frank Miller... the comic book guy- he used to be really funny. How about we dip into the fetid, inky waters of Frank Miller's troubled psyche? I'm going to yank pieces out of the essay to snark about, claiming "fair use" all the while.

Miller starts off with a funny intro... Everybody’s been too damn polite about this nonsense: Heh, indeed, the media's been treating the movement with kid gloves. Good one, Frankie.

The “Occupy” movement, whether displaying itself on Wall Street or in the streets of Oakland (which has, with unspeakable cowardice, embraced it) is anything but an exercise of our blessed First Amendment. Yeah, the City of Oakland has embraced the Occupy movement, right... "unspeakable cowardice", Frank, I do not think it means what you think it means.

“Occupy” is nothing but a pack of louts, thieves, and rapists, an unruly mob, fed by Woodstock-era nostalgia and putrid false righteousness. These clowns can do nothing but harm America. Whoa, Frank Miller is actually a pen name for Sean Hannity... who'd a thunk it?

“Occupy” is nothing short of a clumsy, poorly-expressed attempt at anarchy, to the extent that the “movement” – HAH! Miller, a professional writer, actually wrote "HAH!" Also, attempt at anarchy? If you don't succeed at anarchy, it's probably because you are disorganized - HAH! Facchinello this guy got paid to write shit? Some “movement”, except if the word “bowel” is attached- Folks, this is nothing short of a clumsy, poorly-expressed attempt at humor. Frank, Frank, Frank, leave the POOP! jokes to the pros. is anything more than an ugly fashion statement by a bunch of iPhone, iPad wielding spoiled brats who should stop getting in the way of working people and find jobs for themselves. Damn kids and their fancy electronic geegaws! Damn, they should be using cans and string to communicate if they are so poor and downtrodden... and they should GET OFF FRANK'S LAWN!!! Damn, I always suspected that Miller was a hack who made his living by piggybacking on the intellectual property of others, but this whole "THEY GOT iPHONES" shit is really unimaginative hackery-dickery, doc.

This is no popular uprising. This is garbage. And goodness knows they’re spewing their garbage – both politically and physically – every which way they can find. Wow, how original... DIRTY HIPPIES ARE DIRTY!!!

Wake up, pond scum. America is at war against a ruthless enemy. Oh, good, Frank's going to admit that the "too big to fail" predatory banks and "collateralized debt obligation" traders have been waging war on the middle class? I say, I say, is a glimmer of reality filtering through that little blue bonnet of Frank's? Uh... no:

Maybe, between bouts of self-pity and all the other tasty tidbits of narcissism you’ve been served up in your sheltered, comfy little worlds, you’ve heard terms like al-Qaeda and Islamicism. Huh? Yeah, they've never heard of al-Qaeda. Damn, Frankie, the head of the head of the leader of al-Qaeda is now hanging in the Oval Office, and, anyway, al-Qaeda is not a mass movement, but has always been an astroturfed organization funded by shadowy, reclusive millionaires.

And this enemy of mine — not of yours, apparently - must be getting a dark chuckle, if not an outright horselaugh - out of your vain, childish, self-destructive spectacle. Yeah, just like this enemy got a dark chuckle, if not an outright horselaugh out of the costly, fraudulent Iraq War. Stupid comic book guy is st00pid.

Here comes my favorite part of Miller's cri du cul:

In the name of decency, go home to your parents, you losers. Go back to your mommas’ basements and play with your Lords Of Warcraft.

So, let me get this straight, the guy who makes his money writing comic books is telling the kids to move back into their parents' basements. Yeah, by all means, retreat from the real world, stop trying to change your circumstances for the better. Why engage with the world, and take your place at the center stage of domestic affairs, when you can retreat, and lose yourself in escapist fantasies? "I know you don't have any bread, but I have circuses for you... BUY THEM!!!"

To add to the hilariousness of Miller's crossness, it has to be noted that Miller's career was based on cribbing off the intellectual properties of better talents. He made his name by giving an "edgy" reboot to Batman, a character actually created by Bob Kane, a nom de plume of the late cartoonist Bil Keane, created so he could indulge his darker leanings. As an aside, the issue of Batman in which the caped crusader stops a crime wave perpetrated by master criminal Not Me is a riveting read. Yeah, Miller's career has basically consisted of piggy-backing on the works of others... so much for the Randian superman, making it on his own.

Hey, let's give Miller another kick in the metaphorical 'nads... Another one of Miller's more popular works was his take on noir-ish urban melodrama for people lacking the literacy required for tackling Raymond Chandler and lacking the cultural sophistication to sit through Aldrich's masterpiece... noir for numbnuts, if you will.

Perhaps his most successful recent endeavor was a homoerotic soft-porn distortion of history for sexually repressed neocons. Brin's takedown of this bloody, fascistic distortion of history is a must-read for all Miller maligners.

Yeah, Miller's a hack, even the derivative work which put him on America's cognitive map is hackwork. Shit, Miller's take on Batman was supposed to be edgy, but shit, look at this... if that's edgy, I have a goddamn head of hair that Chewbacca would envy. Why not have Batman riding on a unicorn, with a rainbow in the background? As if that weren't bad enough, Miller ripped off the concept from a bootleg action figure. Fuck, Miller, you can't even steal from the best, ya clown.

Furthermore, Miller's success has always been contingent on the availability of the "99%" to earn enough money to spend on entertainment (protip- the Koch brothers don't buy comic books). Frank. the kids who just aren't making it anymore were the customers who lined your pockets. Foot, meet bullet.

For your final taste of Miller self-ownage, here's the closer:

Or better yet, enlist for the real thing. Maybe our military could whip some of you into shape.

They might not let you babies keep your iPhones, though. Try to soldier on.

Uh, nothing in Miller's C.V. suggests that he ever served in the military. He's a classic example of a chairborne ranger, playing a tough guy on the internet. He'd say he did his part... didn't he write three-motherfucking-hundred, thereby saving the world from the Persian menace? I picture Miller huddled behind the ~~skirts~~ cape of his comic-book protector, ranting at people he thinks should fuck off back to their parents' home and buy his juvenalia.

This bravado, this macho insistence that these kids shut up and knuckle down, is telling... fuck, even his "Lords of Warcraft" crack is a tell- does the d00d, who's probably been to more comic conventions than just about anyone on the planet, really think he's fooling anyone by pretending to be geek-unaware? Even the movie projects he's been involved in seem to be visually informed by video game imagery. Perhaps the memory of the cold metal of the locker interior chilling his exposed skin haunts him decades after his freshman torments have ceased. Perhaps it's the fact that a slight miasma of cat pee will always cling to him, impervious to any amount of scrubbing.

More likely, it's probably his bitterness at having his latest, most reactionary work being excoriated for being a piece of crap.

Frank's the one who's never grown up, the bubble of his fantasy world pierced only by fear of an enemy who has been largely defeated. The kids on the street? They're growing up- fighting back against the system which has been gamed shamelessly for the past thirty years, they're finding their voices, and creating institutions to replace the ones that have failed them. Frank wants them to regress, to return to their parents' basements, to enmesh themselves in the not-so-protective cocoon of childish escapism, to shut up and hand him their dwindling cash supply.

It's too late, Frankie, they've left you behind, and that's what's really chapping your ass.

NOTE: I changed "hackery-fuckery" to "hackery-dickery", which scans better. I also cleaned up some grammatical errors (protip- he who lives by the cut-and-paste dies by the cut-and-paste... if he doesn't edit afterward).

You Wish It, I Dish It: Nettle Request

2011-11-13T01:51:00.002-05:00

In a comment on my last post, Hunger Tallest Palin, snark-meister and Rumproast contributor (heh, that's some real Redundancy Department of Redundancy material right there) asked:

BTW - Care to post a picture of the edible nettles for those of us who like to forage?

Seeing that it is pitch dark and I am ~~likely to be eaten by a grue~~ unable to get a good photo of my nettle patch, I will defer to a foraging expert who has some beautiful pictures of nettles. Of course, when in doubt as to whether or not a plant is a stinging nettle, one can always brush one's hand up against the plant... if it hurts, it'll be delicious! This cack-handed, but effective, technique should never be employed in New Zealand.

Back in peak spring nettle season, I posted a video about edible nettles. I typically treat the nettles in the same manner I treat spinach- a particularly fine dish is creamed nettles served on toast, and topped by a fried egg. Typically, I'll saute half an onion in butter, add a tablespoon of flour and make a simple roux, then add milk, half-and-half, or cream (depending on where I fall on the "guilt" and "ambition" axes in the culinary realm) to form a simple bechamel sauce. I add the parboiled nettles, cook them through in the bechamel sauce, then let it cool enough so I can throw it all in the food processor for a serious pureeing. Like I said, put on toast, and topped with a fried egg, it's an incredible dish. I have also made a spanakopita knockoff with nettles, nettle malfatti, and fettucini with a nettle-cream sauce. Whenever a dish calls for spinach, nettles can make a good substitute.

I typically eat nettles once or twice a week in the spring, before the flowers appear. In the summer, I shift to purslane, wild grape leaves, and lamb's quarters as far as the wildfood consumption goes.

Wooly Bear!

2011-11-12T05:11:00.003-05:00

Reading Laura's last post, I couldn't help but notice that she had a couple of pictures of a wooly bear caterpillar. Hey, I've got a picture of a wooly bear too!

If there are two things I like, they are wooly bears and water bears, neither of which are like bears at all. Funny language, English...

I hadn't been aware that wooly bear caterpillars typically survive the winter by freezing, the caterpillars producing a natural protection from cell damage. Live and learn, I say!

The wiki also says, about the "bristles" of the wooly bear "The setae of the Woolly Bear caterpillar do not inject venom and are not urticant." Not urticant, I guess that means that the application of wooly bears wouldn't be good treatment for arthritis. There goes yet another get-rich-quick scheme... You know, for a guy who eats a lot of nettles, I still have problems pronouncing Urtica. I also mispronounce quite common words: salpinx, bordereau...

Speaking of nettles, the inedible flowering nettles have all gone the way of all annuals, and the nettles currently growing all over the place at my jobsite are the late fall batch of edible nettles. It'll be one last orgy of nettle consumption before the winter kills off the tasty, sting-y little green things.

Plans, Not Platitudes

2011-11-11T11:11:00.004-05:00

Today being Veterans' Day, I imagine that politicians of all stripes will bend over backwards to participate in photo ops with current members of the military, and will spew meaningless platitudes about "honor" and "duty" and "service". The sad reality is that veterans are currently facing high unemployment and potential cuts in benefits. Additionally, the rate of suicide attempts among veterans is nothing short of alarming.

One of the most offensive developments of an offensive decade was the development of the "If you are against the war, you are against the troops" meme. Meanwhile, the horrible persons who flogged this meme were massive profits while placing soldiers in danger by cutting corners.

On a more personal level, two young veterans have been injured in incidents of police brutality while protesting the unjust economic conditions which are disproportionately affecting veterans.

I don't have a television, so I will be spared the spectacle of military personnel and veterans being used as props, while their genuine needs are being unmet, and the "props" will be abandoned on the 12th. That being said, I still find this sort of hypocrisy appalling.

I take this sort of thing personally- my two younger brothers are commissioned officers in the U.S. Army, and my brother Vincenzo is currently in the greater Kandahar metropolitan area (coincidentally, he's "pinning on" a new rank today). My baby brother, Gomez, returned from Afghanistan earlier this year. My brother-in-law is a commissioned officer in the Air Force. My family members aren't background players in some egotist's drama, to be paraded in front of... the largely working class kids who they lead into harrowing conditions are not toys for power-tripping sociopaths to play with. I'll sit out the kitschy displays of faux patriotism- the real test of one's devotion to the men and women who served their country is a continuing dedication to their well-being. Our society needs a plan to assist the veterans, enough with the platitudes.

Of course, this post wouldn't be complete without a scathing social commentary about the situation faced by young military personnel, sung by an empathetic member of an occupied populace... it's never inappropriate to blast Stiff Little Fingers' Tin Soldier:

Secret Science Club Movie Night

2011-11-10T19:02:00.003-05:00

Last night, I headed to the beautiful Bell House in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn for a Secret Science Club sponsored presentation of The Illusion of Time an episode of NOVA's The Fabric of the Cosmos. Rather than give a recap, I've linked to NOVA's site, and the video is available there.

Before the film presentation, Munier Salem of the Columbia Astronomy Public Outreach group gave a brief talk on "The Anatomy of the Cosmos". Most of the universe is composed of dark matter and dark energy. Dark matter, which neither emits nor scatters electromagnetic radiation, is thought to be distributed in "webs" which form the "scaffolding" of the universe. "Normal" or baryonic matter (composed of atoms, as opposed to Byronic matter, which alternates between writing poems and engaging in scandalous behavior, and Baryonyx matter, which went extinct during the Cretaceous period) is thought to aggregate in regions where dark matter clumps. Current models indicate that galaxies are surrounded by a spherical aggregation of dark matter likened to a halo.

Mr Salem's talk was very informative, and he gamely fielded questions from the group on a range of subjects in astronomy and physics. I wish him well in his academic endeavors and look forward to the day when Herr Doktor Salem can give a lecture at the Bell House in the near future.

The Little Chips Don't Know Where Home Is Anymore

2011-11-09T12:24:00.002-05:00

In yesterday's post about the "obsolete-before-it's-built" plans for the Tappan Zee Bridge replacement, I concluded with the observation:

The very idea of nickel-and-diming infrastructure projects until they are "built broken" is asinine. The whole disposable culture has got to end. Remember when things were built to last, and one paid a fairly high price for durable goods? Now, we buy cheap crap that we have to continually replace, which is wasteful and stupid. It's wasteful and stupid when such items as shoes, clothing, and small appliances are concerned, it's tragic and suicidal when major infrastructure is concerned.

Speaking of tragic and suicidal, we can't even build killing machines (something we used to excel at) that work any more... weapons manufacturers have purchased over 59,000 cheap Chinese microchips for installation into weapons systems. Some of the chips may have been hacked so that they will fail at critical moment. Personally, I am appalled at the hypermilitarization of our culture and believe that we should have relied on "soft power" in foreign relations rather than a bloodthirsty policy of "kill them and take their stuff". That being said, even the bloodiest of hawks would be appalled that we are now buying cheap foreign components for our vaunted weapons. At the end of the Cold War, pundits were speaking of aUnipolar Moment (I believe that Charles Kraphammer coined the phrase, but I won't send any hits that ghoul's way), when the U.S. was a single "hyperpower" after the fall of the Soviet Union. Now, after eight years of Dubya dumbassitude and ten years of continuous war, we have now reached "banana republic with nukes" status. By cutting corners even in the construction of our war machine, with the resultant increase of profits for the war profiteers (reminiscent of Arthur Miller's All My Sons), we are even losing that dubious distinction. With the renewed drumbeat for drumbeat for strikes against Iran, the possibility that our weapons incorporate faulty chips could make a really, really bad decision into a positively disastrous decision. Hell, we're even losing the ability to be a belligerent rogue actor on the world state.

The "bad chips" scandal reminds of a key plot point in Jack Vance's novel The Killing Machine in which **WARNING: MAJOR SPOILER** the protagonist incorporates an intentional design flaw into a weapon which is being designed at his enemy's behest, a design flaw which is instrumental in the protagonist's victory over his foe. I don't know if any of the Chinese military brass are Jack Vance fans, but the intentional sale of flawed components to a greedy, stupid U.S. military industrial complex would be a plan worthy of a fictional mastermind.

Of course, the title of this post is a riff on a lyric from Making the Bombs by the Circle Jerks:

What Would Be the Point In Replacing It?

2011-11-08T17:20:00.002-05:00

I'm going to geek out on a local issue now, so please indulge me. The plans for replacing the Hudson River spanning Tappan Zee Bridge have been unveiled and, frankly, they stink. The proposed design of the bridge lacks any mass transit component- the current four traffic lanes (during rush hour, there's a movable divider) will be replaced by... four traffic lanes, thus ensuring that the current congestion problems are not solved. Some of the comments on the CBS web page are great, including the observation "They are replacing a 1950′s bridge with a 1950′s bridge." County Executive Rob Astorino's comment was "We can’t build an eight-track bridge in an iPod world." When one replaces a badly-needed piece of infrastructure, it's foolish to hamstring the construction to save money. Why the hell would anyone cripple this project right out of the starting gate?

Personally, I would like to see a light rail line along the entire I-287 corridor, connecting stations in Rockland County to the Tarrytown, White Plains, and Port Chester train stations, linking the three major rail lines and creating a real regional mass transit network. Of course, I would also put in bicycle/walking paths, as Town of Greenburgh supervisor Paul Feiner has suggested (Mr. Feiner is one of my favorite politicians- he has good green credentials and is a tireless promoter of bicycling). Actually, Mr Feiner has introduced a plan to convert the existing Tappan Zee Bridge into a walking/cycling path, which would be awesome (I've ridden my bike across the Tap' during several MS bike-a-thons).

The very idea of nickel-and-diming infrastructure projects until they are "built broken" is asinine. The whole disposable culture has got to end. Remember when things were built to last, and one paid a fairly high price for durable goods? Now, we buy cheap crap that we have to continually replace, which is wasteful and stupid. It's wasteful and stupid when such items as shoes, clothing, and small appliances are concerned, it's tragic and suicidal when major infrastructure is concerned.

She Still Looks Gorgeous at Fifty

2011-11-07T17:44:00.004-05:00

Some movie stars look as radiantly gorgeous at fifty as they did when they first burst upon the scene. Of course, I am talking about Mothra, who made her debut in an eponymous film. Mothra sure is a looker:

Now, that's one fine looking moth. Of course, no post about Mothra would be complete without the Mothra theme song, sung by the ***SPOILER ALERT*** two little pixies who lived in the temple on Mothra's home island:

I had wanted to post a clip from the movie, but embedding was disabled. While the scene doesn't play "creepy", the subject matter is pretty chilling when one considers it- the audience sits, enraptured by the very singing that will bring about their doom. The beautiful pixies which have been enslaved for their entertainment are sending out a call for vengeance, vengeance in the form of a giant moth!!! You are on the way to destruction! Destruction at the ~~hands~~ antennae of a moth... now that's lepidopterror!

The moth-summoning pixies of the movie were played by twin sisters Emi and Yumi Ito, who recorded as The Peanuts. When not bringing the wrath of giant insects down on their oppressors, these ladies were swinging:

Those Ito twins were really something. Of course, other pop acts have taken on the Mothra Song, but there's no substitute for the original. Just imagine, if the ill-conceived, piss-poor American "re-imagining" of Godzilla hadn't been such a flop, thus dissuading American studios from tackling other Toho properties, we may have had a remake of Mothra starring the Olsen twins.

A few years back, I found a cute site called "The Church of Mothra", which was a fan site by a neo-pagan who posited that Mothra, being a nature goddess, would be worthy of worship. That site is now defunct, but there is a current Church of Mothra blog which doesn't seem to be theological in nature.

I Know You Don't Care Much For What I Think...

2011-11-06T13:05:00.002-05:00

...but I'd be remiss if I didn't tell you anyway.

Motivated by nostalgia, I searched throughout the t00bz for a bit of (sadly unpopular) pop perfection from my y00t. I remember the legendary WLIR playing the hell out of the eponymous EP by Dancing Hoods, a band fronted by Mark Linkous (who tragically took his own life last year), frontman of the band Sparklehorse- not to be confused with sparkleponies!

With that being said, here's a pure pop confection with some great lyrics- 1984's Reputation by Dancing Hoods:

For a faster, more "aggressive" sound, here's another track from the EP (GOOGLE IT, YOUNGUNS!!! After you get offa mah lawn, that is), Not the Only One... blast this one, folks:

No trip like the nostalgia trip, folks.

UPDATE: I'm writing this post in the four o' clock hour while at work (thank you "Post Options"), so I feel compelled to post an additional song, one which seems to be my theme song these days:

Not Slacking, Honest!

2011-11-05T23:41:00.002-04:00

When it seems like I'm slacking off with the posts, it means I'm up to my ass in alligators at work.

This is, as they say, one of those days (weeks... months... years...)- I left the house at 8AM Saturday for my volunteer gig, then had to head off for a long slog at work- 4PM to 9PM at one site, 10PM to 6AM tomorrow at another. Our busy season is drawing to an end, and things get real quiet for a while. I can't wait.

I wanted to embed the video for Belly's lovely Now They'll Sleep (gotta love Tanya Donnelly...), but stupid Warner Brothers won't allow embedding.

Back Off, Missy, That's a Man's Makeup!

2011-11-04T13:37:00.003-04:00

Okay, so I'm straying to some interesting corners of the web, and I run across a cover version of Ikenai Rouge Magic done by a... wait for it... wait for it... done by a girl!!!

Jumpin' J-pop on a pogo stick! Everybody knows that ~~the burrow owl lives in a hole in the ground~~ Ikenai Rouge Magic is about men's makeup... it's about makeup machismo, and the glam rock lifestyle. It's not supposed to be sung by a girl! There's nothing macho about the preceding video... the heavily made-up face of badass masculinity looks like this:

What's this world coming to? Everywhere you look, male privilege is toppling like an impotent phallus. Hell, even the He Men Women Haters' Club has female leaders now.

Of course, the title of the post is ripped off from one of my favorite B. Kliban cartoons:

B. Kliban's work was instrumental in the development of my admittedly warped sense of humor- while still in high school, I bought a copy of The Biggest Tongue in Tunisia and never looked back (I wouldn't have seen anything with that tongue in the way). While his pictures of kittehs were at one time ubiquitous, it's his surrealistic works that appeal to me. Here's a good selection of some of his work.

Tradition Should Not Be a Cudgel

2011-11-03T13:54:00.002-04:00

I've been thinking about this post for a while now, over four months, in fact. The word "tradition", like the word "family" has been nuked from orbit by right-wing authoritarians.

The American Heritage Dictionary (heritage is another word which has been "nuked from orbit") defines tradition as:

1. The passing down of elements of a culture from generation to generation, especially by oral communication.
2. A mode of thought or behavior followed by a people continuously from generation to generation; a custom or usage.
3. A set of such customs and usages viewed as a coherent body of precedents influencing the present: followed family tradition in dress and manners. See synonyms at heritage.
4. A body of unwritten religious precepts.
5. A time-honored practice or set of such practices.
6. Law. Transfer of property to another.

Given the fact that I like alliteration, I'd define tradition as "the sum of the practices, preferences, and prejudices that are passed down from generation to generation in any given culture." Some traditions, like eating sfingi on St Joseph's Day are great. Other traditions, like working to deny human rights to certain members of the population, are awful. Being multi-ethnic, I've always had the benefit of approaching tradition in "buffet" style- I can pick and choose which aspects of my heritage to play up at any given time. My advice is to embrace the aspects of one's culture that affirm life and liberty and to expunge those aspects which impinge on the ability of oneself and others to life a free and fulfilling life. In other words, "Inhale Einstein, Exhale Hitler"... eat the lefse, shun the lutefisk... leave the gun, take the cannoli... You get the picture, there are good and bad traditions. If Tevye had been singing about hating on the gays, would this song be a beloved classic of the musical theater?

Be wary of anyone who claims to be a traditionalist, a whole lot of stupid, bigoted nonsense is likely to follow such a proclamation. Of course, New Traditionalists are an entirely different matter.

Sitting Shiva

2011-11-02T13:36:00.003-04:00

I was going to do a post on All Souls Day or El Dia de los Muertos, but a sad recent development caused me to change my focus.

Over the weekend, the father of a dear friend of mine died peacefully in his sleep after being ill for a few months. Dr Dave was a gracious, kindly man with a gentle, generous spirit. He was intelligent, cultured, funny, and charming. I have fond memories of going to the home he shared with his lovely wife Elaine to celebrate Hanukkah with their family.

I learned about the funeral after it had taken place, having spent much of the weekend in my workplace without electricity. In Jewish tradition burial takes place as soon as possible after death and the ritual washing of the decedent. The funeral took place on Monday, and the traditional mourning period shiva began.

Last night, I headed over to my friend's childhood home to pay my respects. When I arrived, I met my friend outside the house, walking to dog before the house was filled with mourners. After offering my condolences to her, her mother, and her brother, I helped her husband, also a great and good friend of mine, set up a couple of platters of food on the kitchen table (he's known me for a long, long time, and knew that I'd worked in a delicatessen in olden times, when I had hair). There are two general rules I adhere to when visiting friends' houses- first of all, make your way to the kitchen as soon as possible (it's the center of the home) and when in doubt, help out (this was the first time I'd ever sat Shiva, although I did a bit of reading on what to expect during lulls at work).

The house soon filled up with friends and neighbors, many of whom were members of the good doctor's synagogue. The mourners' Kaddish was going to be led by the female cantor of my friend's synagogue, a less conservative congregation. The cantor (cantrix?) explained to the assembled mourners that hers was a Reform synagogue, and that the form of the Kaddish would be slightly different from the Kaddish recited at a more Orthodox Shiva, and handed out booklets with the entire Kaddish text. One of the older men handed out yarmulkes for the men to don while reciting the Kaddish. I donned mine, and tried to follow along with the English text of the Hebrew prayers. The prayers were sung a capella, and after the Kaddish was over, the assembled mourners sang some of Dr. Dave's favorite traditional songs, including a lovely rendition of the love song Tumbalalaika:

Being among the people celebrating the life and mourning the death of a wonderful human being, I was struck with the thought, "While I may not be a member of the tribe, I am a member of the family, which is more important." As I have written before, tribe is important to me, but it's always, always, always trumped by family.

Saints and Divinities

2011-11-01T03:25:00.002-04:00

This being All Saints' Day, I figured I'd do a quick rundown on some pagan divinities and heroes who have snuck in under the theological "velvet rope" and entered the Communion of Saints. Traditional Roman Catholicism is a blend of European philosophical and pagan religious folkways with Levantine monotheism. Much of the work of St Thomas Aquinas was rooted in the philosophy of Aristotle, and the writings of the Greek philosophers exert almost as much of an influence on Catholic theology as the Bible itself.

On a more basic level, the expanding Church incorporated local beliefs into its monotheistic model, and a veneer of sanctity was applied to pagan figures.

St Christopher is often depicted as carrying the Christ child across a river, much like the Greek hero Jason carried the goddess Hera across a raging river. While St Christopher has been quietly removed from the liturgical calendar, devotional medals and emblems are often worn or displayed on car dashboards to invoke protection for travelers.

The Irish goddess Brigid, a patroness of arts and trades, akin to the Greek Athena, has been subsumed by St Bridget of Kildare (also known as Bridey. The feast of St Bridget falls upon the old pagan feast day of Imbolc.

St George, often depicted as a dragon-slayer, shares qualities with a legion of monster slayers.

Even Jesus' mom can't escape association with paganry- the Virgin of Guadalupe is often conflated with the Aztec goddess Tonantzin.

Yeah, even saints sometimes have skeletons in their closets, such as a wild, pagan youth (sometimes, even a youth spent as a god or goddess). Of course, St Adiposa, who sought martyrdom through overeating, doesn't have a pagan connection, but I don't see her listed on the liturgical calendar. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say that her feast day falls on Thanksgiving.

Mentioning St Adiposa reminds me, I never did review the non Face in the Frost parts of John Bellairs' Magic Mirrors... who's the patron saint of unfinished business?

At least I know who the patron saints of the stranded are:

Nobody Dreams of a White Halloween!

2011-10-31T11:07:00.004-04:00

To put it bluntly, Mother Nature pretty much stepped on my dick this weekend... while wearing cleats. One of the big news stories locally has been the monster snowstorm which hit much of the northeastern seaboard of the United States. Locally, we got about four inches of slushy stuff near my home and my workplace, but some areas of the New York Metro Area got slammed by a foot and a half of wet snow.

Of course, this snowstorm hit on the biggest fundraising weekend of the not-for-profit for which I work. We had three major events scheduled for Saturday and Sunday, all of which had to be cancelled. I started of Saturday as I typically do, taking the subway down to midtown Manhattan for my volunteer coaching gig. We had two classes, and then (instead of our noon to one P.M. Class) the kids had a Halloween party. It started snowing around eleven o'clock, and the snow had started accumulating on the sidewalks. Right outside Central Park, I made eye contact with a young woman, and we instantly started chatting about the snow. She was visiting from Australia, and was unused to seeing snow in such quantities. She said, “I've never seen snow like this.” I had to laugh, and said, “I haven't either- not in October!” Yeah, green leafy deciduous trees should not have snow on their boughs... it's just wrong, wronger than a soup sandwich (although pretty).

After an uneventful subway ride, I had a few hours to kill before I had to show up at work, so I decided to hit a really good Indian restaurant on the way to work and descend upon their buffet lunch like an avatara of gluttony. I hadn't had breakfast, and I didn't know when I'd be able to leave work, so I gorged myself, leaving the owner silently weeping, and cursing the cruel fate which allowed me to be able, uncharacteristically, to arrive at his place before 2:30 in the afternoon.

Not having anything else to do, and not wanting to drive on messy, messy roads, I decided to head to work early. I knew our fundraising events were cancelled, and I knew that the sheer foulness of the weather would work in my favor. I thought I'd be standing in the parking lot with my dick in my hands, telling people to go away, that they'd automatically get a refund. Needless to say, nobody even showed up looking to attend an event.

Shortly after I arrived, the power died. The heavy snow, combined with the weight of the leaves still on the trees, caused a lot of tree limbs to come down, many of them on the electric wires which our bass-ackwards municipalities have not buried in the ground. My dreams of being able to surf the web during lulls in the job, maybe put up a post, were dashed. I did, though, get a nice picture of a tree on the site which, because of its orange-and-white color scheme, reminded me of mah prehshuss kittehs:

For a few hours, things were a little scary- I could hear the crashing of falling branches, so many that I was reminded of boyhood days spent on Bronxtucket, listening to the fusillade of shots coming from the NYPD firing range on Rodman's (and not the one you're thinking of ) Neck. Yeah, it was pretty ugly, especially considering that I'd have to do a couple of walkabouts throughout the night to assess any potential damage on-site.

Things actually got better, weatherwise, as the night progressed- the snow was less heavy, the wind less fierce. Inside, though, it was a different story- I basically sat watching the emergency lights slowly dying as the backup battery power bled out, listening to the various quacks and beeps of different alarm systems (which eventually died out as the power completely went kaput). Thankfully, I knew where I could find some candle stubs (the grounds staff often puts out candles during nighttime events to lend a certain atmosphere to the sites), and was able to find a widemouthed jar in which to stick them (my relief took my cue, and now I have a fat, four-wicked votive candle sitting on my desk.

Not being able to surf the net, and not having much juice left in the laptop, I did something very appropriate to the season, I busted out a copy of Dracula and started reading it in the candlelight, in the rapidly cooling building (I'm on a bit of a Transylvania kick, having just read **FUTURE BLOG POST**). I got as far as the bit with the three **SPOILER** hot vampire chicks **END SPOILER** part before my relief came.

Thankfully, when I got home, the power was on. Yay, light and heat! Of course, I was so beat, I crawled into bed within twenty minutes of getting home.

I arrived at work not knowing what to expect. When I got here, the power was still off. The day was characterized by beautiful weather, though the roads were a mess due to the prevalence of downed limbs. Having no power on site, we had to cancel the fundraiser yet again, though this time, I had to stand in the parking lot giving the “No event, you'll get your refund. So sorry, go away” routine, along with the site director and an assistant manager. Everybody was pretty cool, even though some people were upset to be missing the event. Telling people there's no light or heat, and the road to the parking lot is closed due to a downed electrical wire tends to put things in perspective, though. Yeah, you don't even want to stop in and use the bathroom, people... you'd be more comfortable pissing on a shrub.

It's late enough now that people have stopped coming, and I am sitting in the candlelit office, typing this out (the light and scant amount of heat provided by the laptop help make the room more comfortable. I warned my relief that the power was still off, so he should bring batteries for the radio if he wanted to listen to anything other than the ticking of the battery powered wall clock (or, if he were to step outside, the sound of the generator that the good people of Consolidated Edison are using to run their worklights). I just received a call on the company cell phone from the site director, directing whoever is on-site to call him as soon as the power comes on (I am sure my relief will be thrilled at the prospect of calling the site director at home at four in the morning). It's been a bit of a downer, having the marquee weekend of our fall fundraising events stomped by snowstorms. As hectic as the events are, I actually enjoy working them- I see people I haven't seen in a while, co-workers, contractors, and repeat visitors who I have come to like. I even enjoy running around for the better part of a night, though the all-day Saturdays kick my not-as-young-as-it-used-to-be ass hard. I'd take the hustle-and-bustle over the silent dark anytime.

While a White Christmas is something that many people look forward to, a white Halloween just flat-out sucks worse than candy corn (I'm expecting some dissent from outraged candy corn lovers, but really, you candy-cornballs need to get your heads checked, and this is coming from a guy who eats spleen sandwiches). White Halloween has been on my mind so much this weekend that it manifested itself as a couplet:

Nobody Dreams, of a White Halloween
The Very Concept itself, is striking me as obscene

Of course, not being the sort of person to let a joke go to waste, even when up to his ass in suckitude, I have to say this about our snowy Halloween... this whole weekend kinda feels like The Nightmare Before Christmas 2: Santa's Revenge:

MESS WITH SANTA, GET THE CLAWS!

H.P. LOLcraft

2011-10-29T12:28:00.003-04:00

Alright, this being Halloween season (I think all holidays should be like Chanukkah- multi-day celebrations, rather than one day affairs), I think I'll do a little riff on riffs on "horror" literature. I make no bones about being a fan of H.P. Lovecraft, even though a lot of his work is problematic. HPL's kinda like America's lovable racist uncle (even though he's kinda horrible at times, you just can't throw him under the bus, even if he would have written a letter complaining about Rosa Parks riding in the front seat), unlike Pat Buchanan, who is America's contemptible racist uncle.

One thing about Lovecraft, though, is that, not sharing the man's considerable hangups, I don't really find his works scary. The best description of HPL I've ever read (can't remember the source) is "he doesn't write scary stories, he writes stories about people who are scared." That being said, I think the one story he wrote which I find genuinely unsettling is about the slow disintegration of an isolated New England family, a theme which is also that of the scariest book I have ever read.

Most of the time, though, I find HPL to be funny, and I'm not the only one. Some of the best HPL take-offs are "Muzski's" hilarious Tintin/Lovecraft mash-ups.

Another hilarious send-up is DrFaustusAU's wonderful Dr. Seuss/Lovecraft mash-up. Hilarious, though true to the source material.

Also very true to the source material (it's The Shadow Over Innsmouth condensed into a hilarious one-and-a-half minutes, so the whole video is one huge spoiler) is It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Fishmen:

Another funny take on the Old Gent from Providence's work is The Casting Call of Cthulhu (the production team has done several funny Lovecraftian shorts):

Confession time, I think the actress who played "Stacy Gilman" in the video is dark, smallish, and very good-looking... girls who are gilly drive me silly.

Yeah, I love Lovecraft, but I find his writings more funny than horrifying. If I were to have an opportunity to do a Lovecraft adaptation, it would be a workplace comedy based on The Shadow Out of Time, in which (***MAJOR SPOILERS FOLLOW***) the day-to-day frustrations of the captive minds laboring in the Great Library are mined for LULZORZ:

Yeaahhhh, Wingate, if we could possess your body for another two, three years, that'd be great. Mmmm-kay?

An Ageless Beauty

2011-10-28T13:39:00.002-04:00

Maybe it's the fact that she's French, but, at 125 years old, the Statue of Liberty looks as good as it ever did. Bearing the full name "Liberty Enlightening the World", the statue has stood as a symbol of the promise of new life in a country that embraces freedoms since being erected in New York Harbor. Like many other immigrants, the hearts of my ancestors (except my maternal grandfather's, because he was born on a boat steaming to New York City from Buenos Aires and was more preoccupied with the flesh-and-blood goddess who was cuddling him that the copper giantess in the harbor) must have beaten a little faster upon seeing the statue, with its promise of hope and opportunity. Of course, others have looked upon the statue, and their hearts have beaten faster for entirely different reasons:

While most people don't look on the Statue of Liberty with erotic longing, it's safe to say that most people don't see the statue as a demonic idol, foisted on an unsuspecting United States by French Freemasons. The crazy is so strong in this assertion, I think I have to embed the video:

It's funny how all those people who claim that the United States was founded as a Christian country ignore the goddesses who seem to pop up throughout our cultural history (many of whom are on my blogroll). Yeah, the country has always had a majority Christian population, but its culture is rooted in the values of The Enlightenment, and acknowledges an indebtedness to ancient Greek democratic principles and the ancient Roman (specifically, the Republic) ideal of the rule of law. Yeah, pagan goddesses are as American as apple pie and anti-intellectualism, and they are gorgeous.

I think I'll have to do an All Saints' Day piece on the pagan divinities who have snuck into the Communion of Saints (some of whom still make the grade, and some of whom have been dropped from the liturgical calendar.

Proud Descendent of Headhunters

2011-10-27T18:03:00.005-04:00

This being Halloween season, I decided that I'd emulate the cool kids and do a little skull blogging.

I make no bones about describing myself as a descendent of headhunters. Yes, the forebears of my mirthful, moon-faced saint of a paternal grandmother used to chop off the heads of their enemies, and display them:

A magnificent, brown-purple buckler he bore, with five wheels of gold on it, with a rim of pure white silver around it. A gold-hilted hammered sword at his left side. A long grey-edged spear together with a trenchant bye-spear for defence, with thongs for throwing and with rivets of whitened bronze, alongside him in the chariot. Nine heads he bore in one of his hands and ten in the other, and these he brandished before the hosts in token of his prowess and cunning. Medb hid her face beneath a shelter of shields lest Cuchulain should cast at her that day.

Yeah, the prevailing attitude in those days could be summed up as "two heads are better than none, a hundred heads are so much better than one" (I love that video- it seems like it could be the inspiration for Stonehenge).

Being the descendent of headhunters, the best way to honor this proud tradition is to engage in it. Simply put, I've collected skulls since I was a child. Most of my collection is now in the family camp in Maine in the cabinet of curiosities (my apartment is too small for a large collection of crania). I could not bear to part with one particular skull, though, a gorgeous raccoon skull I found while hiking with my maternal grandmother in a park near my house:

I leave it on the bookshelf, next to Kinsella's retelling of The Táin. Unfortunately, I never saved the brain of the raccoon, in order to fashion it into a weapon for home defense.

If you have some free time, and want to read one of my all-time favorite pieces of literature, The Táin is available online, in all its ultra-violent, scatalogical glory.

POSTSCRIPT: It's a shame that people of Irish descent have given up headhunting- what ancient Celt wouldn't have given his eye teeth to be able to display this giant-sized baby-head as a trophy?

M. Night Shabba Doo

2011-10-26T06:45:00.004-04:00

If you are a fan of movies that feature a twist ending, you will love the films of M. Night Shabba Doo. One of his most famous films is the medical thriller Dr. Boogie:

Twist ending: He's not really a doctor!

Here's another M. Night Shabba Doo film with a shocking twist ending:

Who the hell could have seen that coming? Even the cast was surprised!

As an aside, I've never seen The Sixth Sense. I'd read a review of it in the local paper, and shortly afterwards a co-worker had mentioned that she'd seen it, and that it had an incredible twist ending. I was familiar with the premise of the film, so I said, "Incredible twist ending? Let me guess- **REDACTED: SPOILER**." She scratched her head and asked, "You're right, how did you figure that out?"

Sheesh, doesn't everybody have to read Ambrose Bierce in middle school?

As another aside, one of the best movie reviews I ever read was a review of Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo which proclaimed that the movie was "primarily of interest to Shabba Doo completists." I wish I remembered who wrote that brilliant line.

Nein! Nein! Nein!

2011-10-25T02:31:00.002-04:00

I can't let Gocart Mozart have all the fun ripping on Herman Cain's horrible 9-9-9 tax plan. Here's my little effort in the "making fun of Herman Cain" song parody sub-genre:

Nine nine nine is the plan
Put out by that pizza man.
It's regressive, dumb as hell.
That is why it polls so well.
The voters in the GOP
Love this kind of fuckery.
Crushing on the pizza man,
With the dumb nine nine nine tax plan.

Nine nine nine is the plan
Put out by that pizza man.
Cut tax on capital gains,
Tax the milk and tax the grains.
Spare the rich and soak the poor,
That's what nine-nine-nine plan stands for.
Why should rich folks share the pain?
Cast your vote now for Herman Cain.

Nine nine is the plan
Put out by the pizza man.
Working stiffs, hey, life's a bitch.
It's your fault you aren't rich.
"Lazy bums" old Herman mused,
"Just buy clothes and food that's used."
The next election's on the line,
With old Herman's stupid nine nine nine.

Of course, this is a takeoff on the biggest hit by my liebchen Nena Kerner and her eponymous band. For those of you who have lived much of the last three decades under a rock, the video is available, though cannot be embedded. Huh, there's a recently recorded remake of the song, which isn't as good as the original, but Nena still looks fantastic, and there's a moment in which a certain political figure is mocked...

I'm going to reiterate that any disparaging comments about Nena and her eponymous band could very well result in a lifetime ban. I think that, if I were to hear any disparaging comments about Nena made in my presence, I'd give a beating to the mocker. Hell, I'm even kinda pissed at myself for writing this parody... I think that I... uh... just might have to beat myself... just as soon as the video is over.

What the hell are you snickering about?