The Yankee Clipper Journal

I'm back.

2008-03-24T19:17:00.002-05:00

Okay, so it's been almost a year since my last post.

To be honest, either I haven't been sufficiently amused/ticked off to feel that I had anything worth writing about (Yeah, the same lazy, stupid dipsticks that didn't shovel their sidewalks the LAST few winters maintained their perfect record this year, but I'm just resigned to it and now only hope that if I fall and split my skull open on some lazy bastard's sidewalk, that my daughter and son-in-law will get a nice settlement from the lawsuit...), or I've been TOO cheesed off (at, say, the sock-puppet-in-chief and his Vice) to be able to write anything about Iraq, Iran, the almost-but-not-really-a-recession, the Bank Bailout: Part Deux, etc., in any manner that would not get me an all-expenses-paid vacation on a lovely Caribbean island...

Today, however, I ran into a fascinating example of corporate stupidity that I'd like to share with all and sundry.

Now, I have my cable TV and internet access both provided by Comcast so if, after posting this bit of corporate asininity. I suddenly become incommunicado, you may start by checking to see if my e-mail account has suddenly ben terminated.

Because this is all about Comcast, you see, and - by extension - the inability of big business to actually fix ANYTHING out of the ordinary now that they have gone to "efficient" centralized "customer service".

So...

I turned on the TV this morning to check the local forecast on the Weather Channel. Immediately, I noticed a couple of things:

1 - There was no sound.
2 - The usual "crawl" showing the local conditions, capsule forecast, etc., was not running across the bottom of the screen.

Watching for a few minutes, I noted that:

3 - The lack of sound continued into the commercials, and;
4 - The every-ten-minutes forecast had TWC's generic "four-alphabetically-arranged-national-cities-per-page-changing-every-few-seconds" forecast, rather than the LOCAL conditions and forecast.

Having run into this before, I decided that it was a local cable-office problem, rather than a Weather Channel problem since:

A - At least some commercials are inserted locally, and ALL were soundless, and;
B - The local forecasts are inserted locally, or at most, regionally.

Having had this happen once before, and contacting TWC to find out if it was them or Comcast that had had a lapse of attention, I was told by the TWC people that I needed to get the local ID number that starts off the crawl, and they could contact the relevant people to reset their system and all would be well. I got the number, sent same, and (relatively quickly) had my local forecast back.

Of course in THIS instance, with no crawl, I have no way of getting the ID number to send to TWC.

Which left me trying to contact Comcast.

(Oh... I can hear you starting to laugh, now...!)

Because Comcast, like so many companies, has become "efficient" by having one national call-center, with no one who knows how to do anything but schedule a service call to your house.

Which is fine, actually, IF THAT"S WHERE THE FRICKIN' SCREW-UP IS!!!

There is, unfortunately, no way to schedule a technician to make a service call on the HOME OFFICE AND FLIP THAT ONE BLEEDIN' CHROMIUM SWITCH TO TURN THEIR COMPUTERS ON AGAIN!!!!!!

...And no way to CALL the local office to point out their problem, because all calls go to the NATIONAL FRICKIN' CALL CENTER!!!!!!

I won't give you the whole sordid phone conversation, because it's just TOO depressing, but I think some high(?)-lights are in order:

Customer Service Drone: ...and just to confirm that this is the holder of the account, can I have the last four digits of your Social Security number?

Me: Why do you need my (SSN) to report a problem that's at YOUR end of the wire?

CSD: It's to make sure that no one is making service requests on your account.

Me: So... someone is going to call you up... pretending to be me... in order to let YOU folks know that YOUR service is down...? Does this even make sense...?

Eventually, we got past that hangup by giving him the address on the bill.

Silly ME - I thought that that could be used to find the address and internal phone number of the local office, so that he could report their problem to them...

No... that was just so that he knew where to send the service call... and they had a slot open on Tuesday, at...

Me: No... No... NoNoNo... Let's try this again... (You may now imagine that little vein in my forehead is starting to throb...)

My cable connection... is fine.

Every other channel... is fine.

Every channel EXCEPT the Weather Channel has a picture and sound and everything...

The Weather Channel has a picture but no sound...

It has the generic national forecast that TWC feeds to its uplink, but not the LOCAL forecast information that YOU people add.

These facts tell me that the problem is NOT at the Weather Channel's end, and it's not at MY end, but at your downlink and distribution center, which is a mile-and-a-half away from me...

And which I can't call...

CSD: (Proudly) ...Because all customer help requests come to the national call center...

Me: ...And for which I do NOT feel like getting out of my sickbed - this being the reason that I'm HOME on a Monday afternoon - so that I can WALK DOWN THERE AND TELL THEM TO SEND SOMEONE INTO THE BACK ROOM AND FLIP THE BLEEDIN' SWITCH!!!!

CSD: That does appear to be the case.

Me: (Resigned) Yeah... fine... okay... thanks...

CSD: So, will there be anything ELSE that I can help you with, today, Mr. Mo...

Me: *click*

As I've been writing this, I think that I may have a solution to the problem that will get Comcast's attention:

Because, the way that I see it, all of those companies ADVERTISING on TWC on Comcast should be due a rebate for the day(s) that they lose getting their full money's-worth on their ad investments. Once "someone" calls the advertisers about the problem, the clients call their agencies, and the agencies' media buyers call Comcast asking for their money back, I think the problem may be solved...

Now where did I put that pad of paper...?

More Out-And-About oddities...

2007-04-23T22:20:00.000-05:00

Just a few more oddments that I have spotted while on my various perambulations...

For instance - I saw this walking to the office one morning last week.

I'm not sure, but I have to assume that either our street cleaners just want to eliminate the middleman, or they're making an editorial comment on our local newspaper; I'm not sure which.

Of course, things show up when I'm going home as well - such as this slightly schizoid dining establishment.

Not that we are alone, in Our Little Town(tm), in the production of things that might nake one go "Hah?"

Oh, no.

Last Saturday, I was on my semi-regular trek into Boston to run errands that I can't do out here in Sector R, when I passed aone of the new bloody expensive residences rising on the edge of Chinatown.

Now we are all, I assume, familiar with the tendency to name a mall, housing development, office building, etc., for whatever was filled in, bulldozed over, or chased out in order to erect the said edifice: "Fox Run", "Pheasant Lane" "Piney Dells", ad infinitum. Since this is on the edge of Chinatown where the Combat Zone used to be, it probably should have been called something like "Strippers' Runways" or "The Drunks", but instead they named it Archstone.

Which would be fine, and wouldn't bother me in the least... IF THEY HAD ACTUALLY USED A FRICKIN' ARCH ANYWHERE IN THE FERSHLGGINER BUILDING!

At BEST it should be called "Lintelstone"... or maybr "LintelVeneer" since, it is after all, a curtain wall hanging on a steel-beam substructure.

...But Archstone is Right Out. (And before anyone says anything - it's at least half-a-dozen blocks away from Arch Street, so it's not named for its location...!)

I dunno...

...Is it just me...?

Okay, so this is entertaining, ...

2007-04-04T12:59:00.000-05:00

...in a weird, borderline creepy, sort of way…

Two posts ago, I mentioned that I was fascinated with the continuing dramedy that is the YABS ("You'll All Be Sorry") forums on the Comic Book Resources website – specifically this one.

When I first mentioned the site, I only named the forum’s moderator – Gail Simone, a comics writer whose work I happen to enjoy. I figured that, if either of my readers were interested in the details of the controversy and the impetus for same, they could follow the link and decide for themselves whether there was any steak in amongst the sizzle.

Here’s where it gets interesting: I have this blog listed in my profile at the CBR forums, and have referenced my posts when the thread has veered into the realms of pop music, art and design, etc., since these were subjects on which I have posted here in the past. I have made no effort to separate my identities; my name is freely available in both places and, let’s face it – “CutterMike” and “The Yankee Clipper” are pretty well-worn jokes among my friends and not exactly world-class aliases.

So yesterday, one of the regulars on the YABS thread posts that Rick Olney (the inspiration for the thread - and whose name I had not, until now, mentioned here) had posted an item on his MySpace page: a story about how he had received an anonymous phone call from a Mysterious Stranger who, disturbed at how vindictive the “Rick Olney: Fibber or Mega-Giganta-Fibber…?” thread (which, again, I had not named in this blog until this moment) had gotten, supposedly pointed him to my post on the subject as an example of how bad things were.

Upon coming here, Rick Olney, or "Orcafresh" (one of his online names), was apparently shocked – SHOCKED, I tell you – at how vituperative my comments apparently were, because he posted a long response here (mostly cribbed from Wikipedia) on the subject of “hate groups”. He then followed up by copying my full post - making sure to include both “Mike Moyle” and “Cutter Mike” in his framing sequence - and his full response on his MySpace blog.

The curious and fascinating fact is that, rather than use my rather low-key – almost Joe Friday-ish – post regarding the YABS thread (the one to which he responded here), he actually copied my more recent post – the screedlet on SUVs and walkie-talkies – and gave the impression* that THAT was the post to which he was responding, and that the tone of that post – the patented Merkin/Moyle Rent-A-Rant was somehow typical of the sort of burden that he had to bear.

* This is another habit that I’ve seen him use on the YABS thread – he has tried to imply something in a post then, when called on it, say “I never SAID that!”

Oh… And just for giggles, I went to his blog to see whether HE allows readers to post comments on HIS entries. Was I surprised to find that I was unable to post a rebuttal there?

Not really.

Based on others’ comments on the RO:FoM-G-F, and on his OWN posts there, this is not unusual – he has even gone so far as to delete his own posts when someone has tripped him up on his posts contradicting one another.

For those who don’t feel like wading through 20,000+ posts on the thread, the gist of it is that a number of freelance comics creators and ex-employees/business associates started comparing notes, regarding non-payment of bills for work done for Mr. Olney and his company “TightLip Entertainment”, and supposedly found that the sums total to over $60,000. (Some posters have claimed that it might reach $100K, but the most commonly-accepted number is in the $60K+ range. Note that I have these numbers at second-hand; these are just the figures used on the thread.)

As far as I have been able to make out, at least part of his argument for why he doesn’t need to pay these people appears to be that, by going public with the fact that he hasn’t paid them (some, I believe, for as much as a year or two), they have broken their Non-Disclosure Agreements and voided their contracts.

(This is the moment at which most people will take a deep breath and raise one finger as if about to make a point, then sit there with their mouths open while a cricket chirps in the background…)

Thus far he has apparently lost two civil judgments (one for $4500 or so, plus costs, IIRC), through the simple expedient of not responding to the summonses. This is, according to Mr. Olney, because his attorney told him not to even bother responding, since it will be easy enough to have them overturned on appeal. (If your eyes are crossing and glazing over at this – and a second cricket has joined the first - you’re not alone; professional lawyers have gotten the same look, when asked about this legal theory…!) Reports also seem to indicate that he is a “person of interest” to the New York Attorney General’s office regarding a charity auction that he held at a convention a few years ago. The auction, you see, was supposedly held to benefit St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Which appears to have surprised the folks at St. Jude when they were asked about it a month or two ago, since – according to the report – that was the first that they claimed to have heard of it!

That’s the Cliff’s Notes version of the story to which I alluded in my previous post.

The one good thing about all of this is that many of the unpaid creatives, and MANY others have joined forces to form UNSCREWED COMICS, a resource site and support group whose goal is to... welll... help keep comics creatives from getting screwed!

I had, in fact, planned to leave the story as it was, and let any curious reader follow the link and look the story up for hirself but, since I was denied the courtesy of responding TO Mr. Olney’s blog ON Mr. Olney’s blog – a privilege that I allow here – I felt that I was within my rights to respond on MY forum.

If Mr. Olney feels the need to respond here again, I would hope that he would at least have the decency and courtesy to allow me equal time on his blog, rather than setting me up there as a straw man for his own purposes.
--------------------

…A-a-a-a-a-and, just to complete the story…

Before posting this, I went to Mr. Olney’s MySpace page to make sure that his …borrowing… of my post was still up there.

Again: Was I surprised to find that he had taken it down…?

Nope. As noted above – it’s what he seems to do whenever someone catches him out.

Fortunately, it was quoted in full by the original (re)poster on YABS. If anyone is curious, it can be found here. (And before anyone blames Danny, it's not his fault - Rick Olney really DID originally post it with all of the text center-justified. Makes it a bear to read, doesn't it!)

Based on this… pathology is the only word that seems to fit… can both of my readers see where the fascination for this whole thing comes in for me?

I mean, I will admit that I’m far from perfect, and I will admit that, by most of Middle-America’s standards, I am decidedly not normal… but the more I read this guy’s OWN WORDS, the more I feel that, by comparison, I‘m ready to become a church Deacon and join the Rotary Club!

-No 30-

And another thing that ticks me off...

2007-03-11T13:38:00.000-05:00

People fascinate me; they really do.

I'm particularly fascinated by their (presumably) unconscious egotism.

Okay, that should probably be "our" egotism - since I'm posting this like I think that I've got something worthwhile to say. But at least this can be ignored; the stuff that I'm talking about really CAN'T be.

Case in point: Okay; assuming for some reason that you have an actual NEED for a Hummer, or some other big-ass SUV - business haulage, you have a cabin ten miles off any paved road, etc., fine... it makes good sense. But if you NEVER take it off of city streets, then what's the point? The only one that I can see is to say: "HEY, EVERYONE! LOOK AT ME-E-E-E-E-E!!" But even that pales, almost into insignificance, against the one(s) that I've seen locally that are painted BRIGHT YELLOW.

Now there are three reasons that I can see for this:

1 - As noted above: ""HEY, EVERYONE! LOOK AT ME-E-E-E-E-E!!", but with added exclamation point action;
2 - The words "...must take delivery from dealer stock..." played a large part in the purchasing decision, or;
3 - The owner is afraid that people WON'T REALIZE THAT HE'S A DICK!

I am ignoring as almost completely unlikely the fourth possibility: that the driver is using the bright color to intentionally *WARN* people to steer clear because he's a moron - this would be too self-analytical to expect.

(...For my part, is it evil of me to be amused by the fact that the dick in question takes the Short Bus to work every day...?)

But, in all fairness, I've actually gotten resigned to the above. The latest thing that's ticking me off is the cell phones with the walkie-talkie capability.

Look, people, if you MUST carry on a conversation in public on a walkie-talkie, can you TURN THE FRICKIN' *BEEP* DOWN?!!? Is this even possible? It just needs to be loud enough that you and the person on the other end know that you've let go of the bloody TALK BUTTON!

...BUT YOU SHOULD ALREADY KNOW THAT!!!! I mean, it's YOUR THUMB, ISN'T IT?!!?

...And the beeps that come through from the other end are, generally, quieter than the one that we hear from YOUR handset, so, again... WHAT'S THE POINT!

The other thing that annoys me about them is that, while listening to one half of the average inane cell phone conversations was simultaneously boring AND annoying, listening to BOTH sides just becomes depressing, since it drives home the fact that there are TWICE AS MANY OF YOU OUT THERE!!

Again: Are you afraid that people won't notice that you're a dick?

Yeeeesh!

They say that the first step is admitting that you have a problem.

2007-02-27T23:40:00.000-05:00

Hi. My name's Mike, and I'm a YABS addict.

See, I started reading this forum, You'll All Be Sorry on ComicBookResources.com because the moderator is one of my favorite current writers, Gail Simone (Birds of Prey, The New Atom, and others), and lots of other interesting people stop in and post.

Then she started a thread here
http://forums.comicbookresources.com/showthread.php?t=156451
regarding her dealings with a convention promoter who invited her as a guest at his convention and resisted reimbursing her out-of-pocket expenses (She fronted her own money to attend, which most convention planners would not THINK of asking of a prospective guest - thy're invited, after all, to ATTRACT the paying customers, not to BE one!), all the while, apparently, alternately swearing that the check was, indeed, in the mail, or that his his entire team of accountants had sloped off to Brazil with his bank books and his dog (Okay - I'm making up that last part... But after reading the thread for a while, one begins to feel that I'm not exaggerating by much!). This brought more people out of the mist who had done work in just about all jobs imaginable for the guy's would-be publishing company and, similarly, not been paid.

The whole thing snowballed from there, with the (alleged) deadbeat in question entering the fray, throwing racial, sexual, and every other readily-available type of insult around at the posters, as well as veiled (and not so veiled) threats - legal and otherwise.

This started on Dec. 15 of last year, and has now well-passed 1,000 pages of... I'm not sure, exacty, *WHAT* to call it...

...Did/do either of my readers ever have that friend who couldn't miss "her shows"? I knew people in college who scheduled their classes so that they could be back in the TV lounge at the dorm to catch their afternoon soaps.

That's what this is - it's *MY* soaps, and I'm absolutely addicted. Watchig what I see as the self-destructive behavior of the individual in question is fascinating - in a clinical (and, yes, slightly morbid), watching-a-cancer-choke-off-its-own-blood-supply, sort of way. Sometimes its like watching slow-motion footage of a train wreck, with that inevitability about it.

I sat up until about 3:00 AM last night/this morning trying to get caught up, and fell further behind as I did! It's insidious and addictive!

My name's Mike, and I'm a YABS addict.

An Open (and short) letter...

2007-02-09T22:45:00.000-05:00

Senator Carl Kruger
The State House
Albany, NY

Dear Senator Kruger:

I read with interest you proposal to lay a $100 fine on persons tuning out the world with loud music when entering crosswalks, and I have to say, I agree with you wholeheartedly! While I don't live in New York, I visit New York City on occasion and it's blatantly obvious that people are tuning out the world around them by playing music loud enough to drown out all outside sounds, and it needs to be stopped - particularly with those loud subwoofers booming out and the windows closed! I mean, how can they possibly be aware of any...

...I'm sorry...?

What...?

Your bill is intended to fine pedestrians wearing headphones in crosswalks...?

...Because they're dangerous to themselves by crossing the streets without being aware of vehicles, and so on...

Hunh...

Well, it's an interesting approach, I suppose - although proving that the pedestrian in question HADN'T hit the "Pause" button as s/he stepped off of the curb and restarted the music upon reaching the other side could be difficult...

Wouldn't it just be easier to - oh, I'm just sort of tossing out a wacky idea, here - but wouldn't it be easier to simply fine people who cross against the lights or don't even use the crosswalk - we could call it something catchy like "Jaywalking"! Ohh...! Or maybe we could have the Police issue citations and fines to drivers who fail to yield the right of way to a pedestrian who is legally in a crosswalk.

Do you think that maybe actually enforcing either or both of those might do the job without adding any new laws onto the books?

Hmmm...?

Yours, EVER so sincerely

Mike Moyle

So, I'm walking to work this morning...

2007-02-05T20:24:00.000-05:00

...freezing various body parts off...

...and I am handed a valuable lesson:

Politeness + Paranoia = The Force (tm)

After my (more-or-less) daily mile walk, I was almost to the office - I just had one small street and an open plaza to cross to get into the building and I was, frankly, not wasting time - it was bloody COLD out!.

Now, the street that I had to cross, was one half of a fork - traffic comes in from about 2 o'clock and splits so that two lanes of traffic swing to my right and behind me, and two lanes cross straight in front of me (I'm actually at one corner of a large, triangular island and the other two corners, towards which the oncoming traffic is heading, BOTH have stop lights. Occasionally (*a-HENH* Ah say - OCCASIONALLY!) drivers will see that they have a green light ahead of them and will gun it from further back than is reasonable, in order to make the light while it's not TOO red, if y'know what I mean.

(Of course, from MY point of view, it's like I'm playing a neverending game of "chicken" with a succession of cars, all of whom are pointing straight at me until they swing left or right...)

So, I'm at the corner, and bearing down on me is a BIG commercial delivery truck - like, the last step before a semi- big - what's that... a 24-foot box...? Anyway, he's coming down and I'm not sure which way he's going, so I'm standing and waiting and freezing in place. It turns out that he's going to cross in front of me, but he comes up to the crosswalk and he stops (Thanks, W.B. Mason - you have nice drivers!)

Now, both of my readers know that I'm compulsive about cosswalks - my daughter calls me a Crosswalk Nazi.

Nolo Contendere.

BUT... while I will get cranky and bounce pennies and such off of cars that ignore crosswalks, if someone is courteous and stops I will, as often as not, tip my hat and wave them through - Hey... you be polite and I'll be polite. (Let's hear a rousing chorus of "After you, my dear Gaston!")

So, this big-ass truck has stopped in the lane right in front of me at the crosswalk and, while I *AM* bloody cold, I flip my mental coin and the good face comes up, and I decide to wave him through. (There's the politeness part of the equation.) Along with that: we *ARE* both stopped, and - you know how, sometimes when BOTH of you are waiting for the other guy to do something, then BOTH of you decide that the other guy ISN'T going to do anything so you BOTH start to do that thing that you were going to do at the same time and either bump into each other or do the start-and-stop thing a couple of times before you figure it out? (Good heavens! I think I'm channelling Roseanne Rosannadanna!)

Anyway - I decide that this guy is just WAY too big to play that sort of game with, so I decide to play it safe and (again) wave him to go ahead. (...and there's the paranoia...!)

He nods and waves back, and he's just BARELY started moving into the crosswalk...

When the FRICKIN JACKASS who never so much a slowed down goes whizzing past him in the right lane, straight throught the crosswalk and, coincidentally, through where I would have been if I hadn't waved the other guy to go first!!!!

(Cue Sir Alec Guinness: "Trust your FEELINGS, Luke...!")

Frickin' moron...

(The driver, not Sir Alec...!)

So that pretty much made my day - there's something about being two steps away and hearing that metaphorical bullet go ka-PWEEENGing past really clarifies the mind tremendously.

Of course, eventually I get into the office and, about an hour or so later - when the adrenalin rush has worn off - a project that hasn't been taken care of, because it requires input from about twenty-seven people, and which no one can figure out how to do, and which is now OFFICIALLY about fifteen seconds into the last minute - gets dropped on my desk...

(Bill Cosby - as Noah, talking to God - ..."You let me bring in a PREGNANT ELEPHANT... Did you TELL ME that the elephant was pregnant...? No! You gave me NO manual for delivery; you DIDN'T tell me that the elephant was pregnant; no NOTHIN'! Here's good ol' Noah standing UNDERNEATH the elaphant...*BWOOOAAAARRRPP*!!!")

And as everyone flusters out of my office... I look at this pregnant elephant... and I say to myself: "Man... I could have been laying around a nice warm emergency room with nurses and all sorts of good drugs... But, NO-O-O-O-O...! I had to use the Ffrickin' FORCE!!"

So how was YOUR day...?
----------

Almost Closing Thought for Today:

"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it." -- George Bernard Shaw
----------

Actual Closing Thought for Today:

"Ya HEAR that, you DIPSTICK?!!?" -- Me

Two Bombs for the Price of None

2007-02-04T20:33:00.000-05:00

Further proof, if any were needed, that the Mooninites really *ARE* smarter than the rest of us - or at least smarter than Bostonians...

*sigh*

Now, besides feeling compelled to apologize for unleashing Mitt Romney on the rest of the world, I feel like I have to try to convince everyone else that we're not *ALL* completely clueless bozos on this bus.

...again... *sigh*

Yes, I'm going to weigh in on the "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" promo stunt that went awry.

For anyone who has been living in a cave on Mars for the last few days, Turner Broadcasting's Cartoon Network hired a guerilla marketing company (whose name I'm currently too lazy to Google-ize) to promote their ATHF (see above; I'm also too lazy to keep retyping the name of the series everytime I mention it!) series and the apparently soon-forthcoming feature film which probably NEEDED the publicity, since this is the first that I've heard of it and I watch CN fairly regularly... but I digress...

The promotion consisted of hiring locals in a numbeer of cities to place magnet-backed blinking signs featuring one of the afore-mentioned Mooninites giving passers-by the finger. It's pretty much a naked circuit board, a couple-dozen lights, and a battery pack. A number of these displays were planted in Boston, New York, Los Angeles and other cities and have, apparently, been up for two to three weeks.

The first one found was, apparently, spotted around 8 AM on Wednesday on I-93 in Charlestown and blown apart with a water cannon some two hours later. Other devices, now that people were lookig for them, were spotted later in the day and, eventually, according to the Boston Globe (http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/02/01/froth_fear_and_fury/), "Sometime between 2 and 3 p.m., ... a Boston police analyst..." looked at one closely enough to say, "Y'know..."

The two people hired in Boston were arrested, with much fanfare and hoopla, by local poloce and charged with "placing a hoax device in a way that causes panic and disorderly conduct", or something similar. Note that they are *NOT* charged with actually planting bombs, but with carrying out a hoax to cause panic.

As near as I can tell from the news reports, the only ones who panicked and caused disorder were the POLICE!

Maybe I'm missing something here...

Now before anyone says anything: Yes, I possibly WOULD be one of those people lambasting the Boston Police if they HAD been bombs and had started going off around the city - because my understanding is that THEIR JOB IS TO NOTICE WHEN SOMETHING'S WRONG AND TAKE CARE OF IT BEFORE ANYTHING HAPPENS!!!

Now, these things have, supposedly, been in place for AT LEAST TWO WEEKS and, again supposedly, the local police are patrolling the SAME streets that these were intended to be visible from, and NEVER NOTICED THEM!!

THEY WERE FRICKIN' **BLINKING*** AT NIGHT, PEOPLE!!!!

Two weeks - That's 336 hours... for 196 of which these things were in darkness - flashing - and NO public safety people spotted a single one: not the Boston Police, nor the Charlestown Police, nor the MBTA Transit Police, nor the State Police...

NONE OF THEM!!

And when one is finally pointed out to them, they shoot it with a water cannon two hours later.

Now, I'm no expert, so maybe I'm missing something, here... But it seems to me that, at some point in those two hours, SOMEONE from the bomb squad HAD to have said, "Yeah, it's got wires and... that's probably a battery... but I don't see any thing that looks like an EXPLOSIVE...?" I mean, except for those lights on it, it'a all of about a sixteenth-of-an-inch thick..."

Now, I had wondered about the actual size and layout - that is: *COULD* it have been reasonably taken for a bomb - until I finally found a picture of one here:
http://www.myfoxboston.com/myfox/pages/Home/Detail?contentId=2233130&version=17&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=TSTY&pageId=1.1.1

I have to say; it doesn't look it to me, but then - as noted above - I'm no expert. Maybe to someone who KNOWS bomb technology inside and out it fairly screams "I'm a BOMB! I'm a BOMB! I'm a BOMB!" ... but I have to say that, somehow, I doubt it.

So clearly, what this REALLY is, is an embarrasment for the city and the commonwealth and their various public safety agencies... their, apparently, very EXPENSIVE public safety agencies since, according to Boston's Mayor Menino, they ran through $750,000 in the six hours that this whole fiasco took. (I'm going to be charitable here and assume that Hizzoner isn't counting the Police Department's regular daily running expenses, but ONLY the extraordinary expenses... overtime, fuel for driving out the water-cannon truck, etc. He wouldn't try to inflate the figures to make the situation look bigger than it really was, would he...? *NAH!!*)

And worst of all, he didn't even get a personal apology from Ted Turner! Again, according to the Globe article: "Menino was also upset, he said, because top executives at Turner Broadcasting did not contact him directly to discuss what happened. The mayor said he did not receive a call from the company until about 9 p.m., and it was from a low-ranking press official."

...no comment...

Compounding the problem is that Boston's Police Commissioner, Edward Davis, has only been in the position since December, and Governor Deval Patrick and Attorney General Martha Coakley started just a couple weeks ago. None of the three, even if they WANTED to, can afford to say anything that could be POSSIBLY be construed as making them look soft on crime and/or terrorism.

So two men have been arrested and charged with "placing a hoax device in a way that causes panic". Now maybe it's just me - and I'll freely admit that I am as competent a lawyer as I am a bomb-disposal specialist - but doesn't part of "placing a hoax device in a way that causes panic" sort of require INTENT - i.e., to intentionally make something that LOOKS like a bomb and then to INTEND that it cause panic? I mean, if I carry a toy gun in my pocket and rob a bank by showing the bulge to a teller -- that's armed robbery, since I THREATENED the teller and CONVINCED her/him that I was armed. If I made a "gun-shape" in my pocketr with my finger and did the same - same thing. If I stuck a digital clock, some batteries and some wire onto a five-pound block of modelling clay and left it under the seat of a subway train, THAT's "placing a hoax device in a way that causes panic" and is, as I see it, a slam-dunk.

But being hired by a major corporate entity to stick up illuminated signs that, as far as you can tell, do not resemble bombs, is NOT a slam-dunk and, as far as I can see, there was no intent involved; case dismissed. (The lack of apparent intent was a fact which the judge in the case noted to the Assistant AG prosecuting, while leaving it as an item to be taken up at a later hearing.)

And, yes; I actually DO understand that these two prosecutions are just so that the city and commonwealth can get at Turner Broadcasting's far deeper pockets, but it disgusts me that they are potentially ruining two lives by doing so.

One defendent, in particular, is in an extremely tenuous position. Peter Berdovsky, 27, is a freelance video artist who is in the U.S. with a green card and is seeking asylum in the United States. Even if he is not convicted, I could imagine that merely being charged with a felony relating to terrorist activities might not work in his favor in his asylum request and could result in his being deported back to Belarus.

...And they have the nerve to say that a little honest work never hurt anybody...

HAH!

...And SHOULD these two be convicted, it sets what I see as -potentially - an extremely dangerous precedent. From that point on, anyone who accidentally leaves a package on a bus or a train or a bench could conceiveably find him/herself in court, attempting to prove that the package NOT intentionally left so as to "...(cause) panic and disorderly conduct." Federal inspectors open your luggage at the airport and your bottle of baby powder has poofed a little bit out...? It'll be up to you to PROVE that you didn't intend people to think it was anthrax, or botulinum, or ricin...

Am I exaggerating? Am I overreacting? HOW FREAKIN' MANY bottles of her own breast milk did a nursing mother have to drink in order to convince a government-issued moron that she wasn't going to blow up an airplane with it...?!!?

...Yeah... I'M overreacting, and none of THESE nitwits are...
----------
Closing Thought for Today:

Actually, I'm torn - they both relate - pick one:

"In a mature society, 'civil servant' is semantically equal to master.” -- Robert A. Heinlein

"Those who would give up Essential Liberty, to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." -- attributed to Benjamin Franklin

So, I'm walking to work this morning...

2007-01-31T21:58:00.000-05:00

... and as I'm waiting for he light to change, I see a white delivery van go past. And on the side, it says:

"FedEx Express"

Now, check me on this... The comnpany is (or was) "Federal Express"...

Which makes this Federal Express Express.

Is all of their marketing being done by the Department of Redundancy Departmant?

Is this because they're aftaid people won't KNOW what "FedEx" means...? Or is it to somehow differentiate it from their "FedEx - Slow as $#!+" division?

I dunno... I dunno...
----------

On a different note:

Regarding my previous posting about things changing - The other night I was reminded of things that HAVEN'T changed.

Bill Cosby was on the Tonight Show and, my goodness; the man's still got it. Granted, he did his stand-up sitting down, but "Bill Cosby Is (STILL) A Very Funny Fellow".
----------

No Closing Thought for Today - I had my closing thought at about 7:30 tonight and you missed it. Sorry! Please Try Again!

They're making my brain get all fizzy, again...

2007-01-27T23:41:00.000-05:00

Look - I suspect that NONE of us wants to admit that we're getting old enough that the Icons of Misrule (tm) of our youth have become boringly mainstream, but it's getting harder and harder to pretend that we're the COUNTERculture.

Case in point: I was coming home from running errands in Boston this evening, and heard the start of tomight's episode of "Nights With Alice Cooper".

Yes, Alice Cooper has a syndicated "Classic Rock" (or what we used to call "Oldies") radio program and has, so I found out, been on the air since 2004.

Alice Cooper...

...Is spinning Beatles records.

...And running rock-n-roll trivia contests.

...And his website has "I (heart) Nights With Alice Cooper" T-Shirts and Hoodies.

...In kids' sizes.

...And he has a theme restaurant in Phoenix - "Alice Cooper'sTown - Where Jocks & Rock Meet".

Gott hilf mir!

...Why am I picturing Mick Jagger sitting on a park bench, with canary-yellow Sansabelts pulled up under his armpits, feeding pigeons?

Has the whole world gone mad?!!?
__________

Another sign of passing times is the mergers and disolutions of business icons, local and otherwise.

For example: some few years ago, Boston's Jordan Marsh department store chain was acquired by Federated department stores and wiped off of the map, to be replaced by Federated's signature store, Macy's. (All that s left of Jordan Marsh in downtown Boston is a plaque on the building, describing the history of the store. I'm probably reading too much into the fact that what looks like a nicely-patinaed bronze historical marker plaque is actually cast in verdigris-green plastic...)

A few years after that, Federated bought up the OTHER iconic Boston department store chain, Filene's, and - since it makes no sense to have TWO Macy's stores across the street from each other, closed the place down. Gone. Kaput. Finito.

...All, that is, except the Basement store, which had become a separate entity a few years previously and will remain. (Yay!)

I bring this up because I was on my way into the Basement a couple of weeks ago and went in through the old main store.

And saw this.

It's silly, I suppose to wax nostalgic over the disappearance of a departmant store, but it's another piece of the past - at least, a piece of MY past - that has been excised in the name of the conglomerate-ization of America.
__________

On the other hand, it's comforting, in a way, to know that weirdness still exists and has not yet been homogenized out of the world.

Case in point:

...In regards to which, I will only say: "Hah?!!?"
__________

...And just when I thought that some things had reached the apex of annoyingness, I saw one of THESE while I was out walking the dog a few days ago:

I had actually managed to convince myself that Hummers had pretty much gotten as ugly and annoying as they could possibly get.

I was wrong.

It had flashing white strobes on the bumper and over the cab.

And BLUE strobes behind the wheels.

ALL of the wheels.

*sigh*

Closing Thought for Today:
Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell. -- Edward Abbey

Just something quick...

2006-11-21T21:52:00.000-05:00

I'm actually in the middle of writing a long (albeit, as usual, essentially useless) post, but to tide you whiners over, here's an item that I found irresistible.

WHAT IF...
Stan Lee had created the Fantastic Four with Jack Chick, instead of Jack Kirby?

I'm not saying anything...

2006-10-12T21:17:00.000-05:00

...but I couldn't help noticing:

...Just an observation...

About those pictures...

2006-10-09T19:12:00.000-05:00

It's true, as Amysue pointed out in her comment on my last post, that I find the oddities that I see in the world more interesting than the "pretty landscapes", etc. It appears that I may need more "leavening" in my world than most do - or at least, a different FORM of leavening.

As an example, I find that MY opinion of when the fall foliage colors "peak" is different from the news-critters' opinion. In my opinion, things peak when there's still green foliage visible, for the reds and yellows to play aginst. Once everything is "autumn-y", I lose interest - it's back to being all one thing, agin - it's just moved halfway around the color wheel... big deal! It's when the span is from blue-greens, through true greens into the yellows, oranges, and reds, that there is contrast and interest.

I suppose that it's similar to the way that my musical tastes run. I LIKE straight-on music - Art Tatum, Beethoven, Janis, Ella, et.al. But mixed in there, I NEED my Whisky Before Breakfast (Rock 'n' Roll with bagpipes), Don Angle (Ragtime harpsichord), and Babaloo (Punk Mambo).

So, getting back to the items tha I find to photograph; again, it's the odd juxtaposition - the element that (arguably) has no place being what and/or where it is that fascinates me.

As examples; presented for your approval...

Sorry about the quality of this one - it was shot at dusk, looking west (that is - INTO the shadows) with eveything on automatic. At that point, without a rest of some sort, the picture WILL be blurry. I just didn't dare take the time to change the settings for fear of missing the shot.
---

A while ago, walking around town, I (again) noticed something odd, which made me curious, and led to more cheking and led, evntually, to this picture:

As near as I have been able to tell, EVERY fire station in town has a fire call-box on the front of it. Which, of course, raises the question: WHO ARE THEY GOING TO CALL? Or if it's for public use, wouldn't it be easier to open the door and shout: "Hello-o-o-o...! Your firehouse is on fire! Hello-o-o-o-o!!"
-----

As I mentioned in my last post, I went to New York for a couple of days, recently. I had gone a while previously and had snapped some pictures of local oddments then, as well.

This, for example, is apparently what happens if you screw the manhole coves on too tight.
-----

More later - I want to walk the dog and get settled in before "Heroes" starts.

Back, again...

2006-10-05T19:41:00.000-05:00

Yeah-yeah... It's been a while - work was crazy, I had some computer problems that I haven't fully resolved yet, yaddada-yaddada...

And right now I'm almost over a nasty cold that I had tail-end of last week/first half of this week... The only symptom left is that my lymph nodes absolutely REFUSE to drain, giving me the feeling that my head is going to explode from the jawbone back ("And THANK YOU for sharing that," I hear you say... Tough! You grumble about the fact that I'm not posting, you get what I feel like posting!)

On a lighter note, I took some long-overdue vacation time last week and spent part of that week in New York. As often happens, a couple of odd signs caught my eye as I was out and about.

This one, I spotted on the way to catch my transportation:

Now I have to admit that, at first glance, I thought that offering a free buffet at a women's health-club/weight-loss-center was wildly inappropriate. But on a moment's reflection I realized what a brilliant bit of marketing it was: Anyone who would be drawn in by the free buffet is EXACTLY the sort of person that they are trying to bring in!

On a similar note, I saw this one near the Port Authority Building in New York:

Again; it seems incongruous at first glance (or at least, it seemed so to me...), but THINK about it...

If they can walk in, then it's PROBABLY NOT THAT BIG A PROBLEM!

I mean, if someone just decides to walk in off the street into your foot care center, they probably don't have the sort of foot problems that could lead to you getting sued for misdiagnosis/mistreatment! And in any case, you're STILL billing by the hour!

It makes perfact sense.

At least in THIS world.

More later... my head just went "boom" again.

Though for Today:
"I know I've made some poor decisions lately, but I'm feeling much better now." -- HAL-9000

I made inappropriate noises at work, today.

2006-07-31T21:15:00.000-05:00

About once a week I'll check Randy Cassingham's JumboJoke.com site.

Normally it's good for a laugh, but this one really caught me.

...And, of course, I had just taken a big ol' swig of coffee...!

That's all for today. I'm tired.

Okay-Bye!

...Probably the post that will get the biggest response (sigh)...

2006-07-19T23:05:00.000-05:00

I’m going to take a break today from the usual round of “Stupid People Tricks” and “Mr. Sock Puppet Goes To Washington” (redundant, yes, but so it goes…) and instead address one of the most important subjects in media today: The constant references to Cyclops of the X-Men as a self-absorbed whiner.

(Non-comics-geeks and anyone who wants to pretend that they have a life may be excused, now.)

It has become fashionable among writers (both pros writing in Marvel’s X-Men titles, as well as fanboy bloggers) to regularly harp on Cyclops’ alleged self-pitying ways. Generally this seems to be a variant on Gilbert Gottfried’s comments on his role as “Iago” the parrot in Disney’s “Aladdin”. He pointed out that the plan seemed to be “whenever the movie slows down - hit the parrot!” In this case, whenever the story hits a lull, have Wolverine make a snarky comment about Cyclops’ whining. This seems to have been picked up by the fan writers as a sort of “everybody does it” kneejerk.

When a pro writer does it, s/he is (we will presume) having a character expressing the character’s opinion, and not necessarily the writer’s. When the fans do it, in my opinion, they do it because “Wolverine does it all the time and Wolverine is kewl…!”In short, they are actually taking a fictional character’s opinion as fact.

(Which is sadder: that they are doing this or that I’m using time and bandwidth to point this out?)

(Well; it’s not like I ever claimed to have a life…!)

So, in defense of the much-maligned Mr. Summers, let’s look at the facts. (“Facts”, here, being defined as more-or-less canonical events in the stories of the X-Men characters, as well as those things that occur in the world that exists outside of the pages of four-color publications.)

Defense Exhibit A: Meta-Information
Outside of, say, Deadpool (who is certifiably crazy*), name a single other costumed Marvel protagonist who ISN’T a whiner! Is there a SINGLE BLEEDIN’ ONE who doesn’t go on and on about his or her lost love/partner/parent/sibling/chance for a normal life/hamster/etc. for ten pages out of a twenty-two page story? Characters whining about how much having god-like powers have screwed up their lives are the very things that have MADE Marvel’s fortunes since 1961! That being the case, Cyclops’ mooning over Jean Grey is pretty much par for the course! (And, in my opinion; nowhere NEAR as annoying in that respect as the Lee/Ditko Spider-Man!)

* - For purposes of this analysis, we will accept without comment the idea that someone who chooses to go outdoors in Technicolor(tm) Spandex(tm) expecting to be taken seriously as a threat/authority figure could actually be sane in the first place. They are. Of course they are. It says so, right here on the package.

Defense Exhibit B: “Scott Summers; This Is Your Life!”
Having established how Marvel Comics has made its collective living off of selling damaged goods as role-models for over 40 years, let’s look at the life-story of Scott Summers.

Initially it was established that Scott was brought up in (at least one) orphanage, his power manifested in his mid-to-late teens, and he was the first mutant that Charles Xavier recruited for his school/team of heroes. Adding in later accretions, the formative events in Scott’s life can be listed as follows (Note: ages are approximations, but are, I think, defensible):

Age 12: Scott and his younger brother Alex (8, 9, 10?) are strapped into a single parachute and pushed out of their parents’ airplane shortly before it is blown up by aliens. The parents are killed. (Actually, they turn out to have survived, but we are looking at this from Scott’s experiences as they happened. As far as formative events go, his parents were killed in an airplane explosion when he was a pre-teen.)

His mother’s last words to him are “Take care of your little brother.” The brothers are separated in the orphanage system. Through no fault of his own, Scott has failed in fulfilling his mother’s dying request. Is this an unreasonable and unfulfillable responsibility to dump onto a 12-year-old…? Of course it is, but that fact won’t change how he feels; he’s failed his dying mother.

Oh... And how many times does he try to explain that his parents were killed by space aliens before he gets a rep around the orphanage?

Age 15: His developing mutant ability manifests first in the form of migraines that can only be eased by shading his eyes with special ruby-quartz lenses.

Great! From being the geeky kid who gets headaches all the time, he becomes the one who always has to wear the dorky glasses! Right at puberty, when the need for social acceptance is arguably at its highest! And did the orphanage kids have to go to the local public schools? Oh, yeah; great! "The dork from the orphanage…? Y’know; the tall, skinny one with the doofy-looking glasses…? "

And just exactly how much do sunglasses made of optical-quality ruby quartz COST, anyway? This is NOT the sort of expense that orphanage administrators like to see their charges racking up. (And thinking about the “tall-skinny-orphanage-dork-with-the-doofy-glasses-at-the-public-school” thing; you just KNOW that they had to buy replacement pairs! Possibly even a LOT of replacement pairs! (Maybe this is where Scott learned to fight and become the tactician that he did.)

Age 17: His optic blast finally manifests itself. Of course (being that he’s a Marvel character), it manifests at just about the worst possible time, causing a crowd of people to believe that he was attacking them. Need I add that it was only the resulting angry mob’s full complement of teeth and the lack of torches and farm implements that kept this from being a perfect remake of the classic “Frankenstein” scene? He goes on the run and, for a time, becomes a criminal’s unwilling henchman.

Age 18: Found and recruited by Charles Xavier, Scott meets and falls in love with Jean Grey. His potential rivals for her affections: a genius athlete and a gorgeous-looking millionaire (with wings)! Perhaps surprisingly (or perhaps not), for a telepath Jean turns out to be as inarticulate as Scott is and it takes them a number of years before they both figure out that they each want to jump the others’ bones.

Age 25: The bone-jumping begins.

A new group of X-Men is recruited, which includes an antisocial, psychotic berserker named Wolverine who: (A) has the hots for Jean, (B) resents anyone in authority (like, say, the leader of the team), and therefore (C) runs him down publicly at every opportunity.

Age 26: Jean dies. (Another aircraft disaster… So much for that “statistically, it’s the safest form of travel” crap!) Scott grieves.

Two minutes later, she is resurrected as a grossly-powerful cosmic entity.

Jean, the grossly-powerful telepathic cosmic entity, has her mind taken over by a third-rate illusionist, turns on Scott and becomes E-e-e-e-vil.

She gets better.

She gets killed again.

Scott meets a clone of Jean (created by an evil scientist), falls in love with her; they marry and have a son.

Age 27: Jean comes back again.

The Jean-clone turns E-e-e-e-vil and tries to kill Jean, Scott and their son.

The Jean-clone dies in battle with Jean and Scott.

Jean and Scott raise Scott’s son, until they have to abandon him by sending him into the future in order to save his life. (Scott probably should not have taken his parents quite so literally as role-models!)

Age 29: Jean dies again.

Age 30: She comes back again.

She dies again.
.
.
.

To heck with whining; frankly, after a life like this, I’m amazed that Scott doesn’t just slit his wrists and be done with it!

I think that the guy has EARNED the right to feel just a little bit put-upon!

Defense Exhibit C: The Accuser
All of this “Cry-Baby Summers” crap started with Wolverine. Perhaps we should look at his background a little more closely.

Wolverine is apparently born in the late 1800s in the Canadian plains. He is a frail, sickly boy, so his father has a girl brought to take care of him and teach him. The attendant, Rose, is a few years older than he, and is a striking redhead. (She looks, in fact, remarkably like the as-yet-unborn Jean Grey will look!) James’s (Wolverine’s) powers first become evident after an altercation between his father and the estate’s handyman, Thomas Logan, who kills the future-Wolverine’s father and is in turn killed by Wolverine as his natural claws extend for the first time. Forced to leave home, with Rose accompanying him, he ends up in a mining camp in the Northwest Territories.

A few years along, an older man wants to marry The-Boy-Now-Known-As-Logan’s “big sister”, Rose. As he’s helping the two get ready to leave, Logan is attacked by the son of his late-father’s late-handyman and, during the fight, Rose is killed. Logan runs off into the woods and more or less disappears for a number of years. His now-active accelerated healing factor allows him to survive almost any wound and illness and seems to retard his aging. Eventually, he is asked by Xavier to join the new set of X-Men, where he takes an instant dislike to Scott and an instant LIKE to Jean.

During this period, we learn that Wolverine appears to have few reliable memories of his life before the last few years and none at all of his first twenty or thirty. He apparently spent time as a Samurai in Japan, fought at Monte Cassino during World War II, got an unbreakable Adamantium sheathing grafted onto his skeleton, led a Canadian super-group called Alpha Flight, was… Wait a minute… “…got an unbreakable Adamantium sheathing grafted onto his skeleton?!!?”

Yeah.

Okay… so now he’s virtually unkillable AND unbreakable, with animal-like senses and a berserker instinct.

True, he has a hefty case of amnesia, and I’m willing to assume that that would not be a fun thing. But here’s the thing:

In the early days of the new X-Men, he FRICKIN’ WHINES ABOUT IT INCESSANTLY!!! HE NEVER BLOODY SHUTS UP!!!

So this is the guy that keeps ragging on Scott Summers about being a whiner: He whinges about his amnesia, he moans about the fact that he’s cursed with abilities which make him as close to immortal as makes no never-mind, he throws deadly tantrums,- ripping things apart with his now-unbreakable claws - whenever he’s frustrated, he has internalized and goes by the name of the man who killed his father, and he’s pissed that he can’t get anywhere with the woman who resembles his surrogate mother, who died 130 years ago! (I wonder if Logan can spell “Oedipal”?)

Frankly, I’d say that Logan shows definite signs of what psychologists refer to as “projection”, where we accuse another person of traits that we don’t want to admit that we see in ourselves.

Either that, or he is just bugged by the fact that Scott is a whole foot taller than he is!

And THIS is the kewl, tough stud that the fanboys are copying when they repeat the “whiner” tag about Cyclops…

I think that it’s time that that little canard was put to rest.

Is it just me...?

2006-07-06T23:15:00.000-05:00

Okay; so, I've been thinking lately... And both of my readers KNOW what that means...

Now, I realize that I can (occasionally) pretend to normalcy, but not often and not for long. And I actually do TRY not to make it blatantly obvious in these mini-rants just how skewed my thinking is... But someties...

See, I was sitting at home on Tuesday last, pondering on the holiday that Our Nation (tm) was celebrating. And I got to thinking about EXACTLY what the day represented to America.

July 4th is the day that we set aside to commemorate the start of eight years of armed insurgency against the then-extant legal government and its supporting military (sent by an overseas superpower), using irregular militias and foreign combatants (with foreign funding, as well).

Kinda makes ya humble and proud, doesn't it?

Now, just for the sake of clarity (for the ironically-challenged) I am NOT saying that the rebels - excuse me: the insurgents - are on the same level as the American rebels - excuse me: Founding Fathers (tm). While the rank and file rebels and the Continental Congress/other instigators may have had different (but overlapping) reasons for wanting the British Crown to back off, they DID (eventually) want them out. On the other hand, it's pretty clear that the Iraqi rebellion is not that cohesive. Yes, the rank and file genuinely seem to want us out - no question. The main differences, as I see it are that:

A - They want ANYONE who isn't exactly like them out, too,
B - They don't CARE about collateral damage/casualties.( Actually, that's not true: they actually seem to ENCOURAGE them, and you can't really say that "they don't care". if they actively APPROVE!), and
C - While the foot soldiers want us out, I'm not convinced that the leaders DO. After all, without someone to rebel against, what are they? They have to go back to their day-jobs as used-camel salesmen.

Here's a test. The Sock Puppet should go on Al Jazeera and tell Iraq: "You want us out? It's easy. All you've gotta do is STOP !@¢*ing SHOOTING at us and blowing things up for six months. If you can do that, then we can declare "peace with honor" and get the hell home and you can go back to doing whatever it is you do. If you can't go six months, then you'll have to admit that it's not actually about us leaving, but that you simply PREFER killing people and creating chaos in your own backyard to actually THINKING about how to solve a problem."

(Okay... Granted, we'll have to dumb it down a good bit so he can actually deliver the lines, but the general idea is there...)

Personally, I have to say that the rebel leaders wouldn't BE ABLE to let things quiet down - having wired up their soldiers (literally, in some cases!) to kill any and all non-(insert name of political party, religious sect, clan, family, etc.), letting things calm down would be political suicide for them. They HAVE to keep their people in a constant state of deprivation and fear, so that they have something to blame on "The Enemy".

Curiously enough, this is the same strategy that the current administration is using at home in an attempt to keep the populace in line. The semi-regular raising and lowering of the Amazing Technicolor Warning System, based on information that is so secret that we can't tell you what it is but is so potentially important that (Trust us!) we have to go to Puce Alert, does nothing but raise the emotional insecurity of the average voter which - they hope - will translate into votes for the Warpublicans in the next election. (...And is it just me, or have they been running those tests of the Emergency Broadcast System WAY more frequently than they used to? And what's with running them on *CABLE* channels?!!? If there is an emergency and the power goes out - HOW THE $#&*^% AM I GOING TO WATCH THE FRICKIN' CARTOON NETWORK SO I CAN GET THE EMERGENCY INSTRUCTIONS!!??! Hello-o-o-o-o!!!)

Closing Thought for Today:
"Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth." -- Albert Einstein

How many times can Ourobouros eat its tail before it disappears up its own cloaca?

2006-06-28T22:57:00.000-05:00

An interesting thing happened today.

Well... Interesting to me, anyway.

Two separate commentaries on popular music came to my attention which dovetailed nicely. The synchronicity of the two commentaries, while not necessarily new (one, in fact, is almost 30 years old!) really whacked me upside the head.

I was listening to my 'Pod while walking the dog this morning and, as usual, had it on a random mix. One of the items that popped up was Frank Zappa's March, 1978 "Drooling Midrange Accountants On Easter Hay". This is a ramble/mini-rant with some keyboards in the background. In it Frank says:

"Once upon a time, a record company had A&R people in it who would take a chance, make a decision, use their gut reaction, sign a group, and see what they could do with it. Okay? That was, whoa, a long time ago. It's not that way anymore. All decisions about who get signed and what happens to the record are made by these drooling little midrange accountants. And everything is based on the numbers games in there. And the taste of the accountants is what is ruling the mass media. It's all just the dollars and cents of exchange. And if you wanna make music that you believe in, the chances of doing it on a major label basis are nil, because they're all so frightened. Everybody's there trying to protect their job. And it's easy-- it's easier to look like a wise executive by saying no to something if it's just the most minutely fringe-oid in terms of content.

No.

The horrible part of it is the artists who are feeding this ecological chain stop making songs they believe in and start making product that they know will be airable. And they change the style of what they're doing to fit within the narrow framework that is the contemporary accepted norm for suitable, radio-sounding music. And anything that comes outside of that norm doesn't go on the air, you don't hear about it, you don't know about it. Right now there's probably hundreds of artists in the United States making great sounds and great music. You'll never hear it. You'll never find out about it."

The sad thing is that it really hasn't gotten any better...

Later today, I was reading Steven Grant's "Permanent Damage" column on the Comic Book Resources website (http://www.comicbookresources.com/columns/?column=10), where, among other things, he was explaining why he wasn't doing music reviews anymore. Part of his comment was:

"I once told Bob Schreck the difference between our generation and our parents' generation is that when they heard the music we were listening to they said, 'Oh, how awful, that isn't music!' and when we hear (current pop) music, we think, 'Y'know, it was better the first time.'"

He goes on:

"(T)hat's pop music, which is almost enforcedly retrograde these days, though occasionally something interesting slips out, like The Killers or The Dresden Dolls or the Black Eyed Peas. But even on the "cutting edge" side, there's very little new material that I hear that has made any significant strides over what was being done 20-25 years ago..."

And it struck me that what these two commentaries put together indicate is that we're currently into the second generation (at least, and possibly the third) of drooling midrange accountants - who at this point ONLY KNOW the drivel-pop that THEY were brought up on - selecting and grooming the drivel-pop performers who only know the crap that the DMAs and their immediate predecessors had selected. The closest thing to something new that has happened in pop music since Zappa recorded his short screedlet is probably Rap and/or Hip-Hop... and has either of them genuinely gone beyond their creative starting points?

...And it's all a vicious, constantly tightening spiral.

Now I suppose that I should point out that I really don't listen to much in the way of Popmusic(tm)... About the only time that I get exposed to anything more than the 10-second drive-by musicking that we get here in the city is if I happen to go into certain stores at the mall.

But I fear that the problem is more widespread than just music. It seems pretty clear to me that movies, television, books, comics... in short, almost any medium/pop culture "art form" is generally populated by, and produced by, people who only know that medium and either don't know or don't care about anything outside of their small area of "expertise" and comfort zone.

And, again, as these people move further into the ranks of the decision makers, I see the problem only getting worse.

Now, I will admit that I have my interests and obsessions; but I like to think (Okay: "I like to HOPE...") that I have a broad-enough RANGE of obsessions that I might stand a chance of not mentally ossifying for at least some while, yet. (For example - keeping it in the music arena - the usual random mix on the 'Pod includes Bix Beiderbecke, Glen Miller, Spike Jones, The Dickies. Reverend Horton Heat, Allan Sherman, The Eurythmics, Leahy, Shameika Copeland, Gogol Bordello, the Pogues, Steeleye Span, Aki Takase, The Go-Gos... and... and... and... - any of which might follow one another or something completely different...)

Don't get me wrong; I'm not trying to brag about how "broad-minded" and "deep" my interests are - anyone who has read this for any length of time KNOWS that I'm not particularly deep (except, perhaps, between the navel and the butt - *sigh*).

It just seems to me that, to paraphrase the famous aphorism; "Those who ignore the lessons of culture are doomed to repeat Pop... endlessly."

Closing Thought for Today:
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher regard those who think alike than those who think differently.” -- Frederick Nietzche

Another one of those "Why is it...?" things.

2006-05-23T22:43:00.000-05:00

Am I the only person annoyed by the use of the term "Judoe-Christian"?

It's not that I have any problem with people lumping two of the three "People of the Book" together, nor do I have any problem with the belief system(s) or the practitioners, so long as they are willing to give me the same consideration. it's the term and its linguistic implications bothers me.

It's the term, itself. It's backwards, you see.

Look, an American citizen may describe hirslf or be described as "Afro-American", "Italian-American", "Gyno-American", or whatever. So the base term, as I see it is "American" with the praenomen being the descriptor of a sub-group to which the person belongs.And, as far as I can think of at the moment, this structure of "descriptor before subject" is pretty universal in English: "deciduous tree", "right-wing nutbar", "one of the Tennessee Clampetts", ad infinitum.

Except for "Judeo-Christian".

In this ONE case the core group is used in the descriptor place and the subgroup is in the base position. Or am I the only one that reads this as "The Jewish sect of the Christian religion"?

The way I'm reading it, grammatically, those people that choose to refer to the presumed religious background of American culture* should be referring to our "Christo-Judean" values. Christianity is, after all, an offshoot of Judaism (or at least, so its Founder is portrayed as believing it).

Or am I wrong on this?

* Side note: Should "American Culture" be included in Georgr Carlin's list on mutually exclusive terms - you know: "Jumbo Shrimp", "American Champagne", etc.?

An ethical debate, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing...

2006-05-21T23:42:00.000-05:00

This is a bit different from my usual screed in that, rather than going on about the stupid things that the neighbors do, or railing against the latest idiocy from the Sock-Puppet-In-Chief, I’m going to ramble on a bit about ethics and obligations owed.

Now the obligation in question is not necessarily a deep and meaningful obligation, but it’s one that I’ve been puzzling over lately, and one for which I don’t really have an answer.

So, I’m throwing the question out for public rumination.. I’d be interested to see if anyone else, preferably a deeper and/or wider thinker than myself picks this up and runs with it. (Paging Akicita…)

Postulated: An artist who uses another artist’s creation in hir own work owes that original creator a debt. This can be a debt of acknowledgement (“A tip of the Hatlo hat to:…”) or a financial debt, as a fee paid to a writer for the rights to make a movie based on hir story.

Question: Does the debt owed potentially (or perhaps even necessarily) include the duty not to make the character(s) act in a manner that the original author would not recognize as hir creation?

The item that’s got me thinking about this is the forthcoming graphic novel “Lost Girls”, by Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie. In the book Dorothy Gale (The Wizard of Oz), Wendy Darling (Peter Pan), and Alice (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass) meet in an Austrian hotel as adults in 1913 - shortly before war breaks out in Europe. They tell each other, in graphic and profusely-illustrated detail, the secret stories of the sexual awakening that each experienced during the course of her adventure. This is apparently going to be, in its final form, more than 300 pages long.

Leaving aside the child-porn-ish aspects, and the question of whether bringing the raincoat brigade into comic book shops is a good or a bad thing, it’s the use of the characters that has me pondering.

Certainly, the book would not resonate so much with its potential audience if it featured three completely original characters telling their tales of adolescent awakening in wholly unique fantasy lands. No; obviously, the choice of heroines was intentional, and meant to provoke a response. Whatever one may say about Alan Moore, and whether or not one always agrees with his decisions, he does not appear to act without some thought aforehand, and to deliberate effect.

Now this is not the first time that Mr. Moore has taken another author’s characters and run with them – to good effect, I might add. Sometimes he creates pastiches of recognizable characters – half of the fun in reading the stories in the “Top 10” comic, set in the city of Neopolis, where EVERYONE has super powers, is recognizing on whom many of the characters are based. In the classic series “Watchmen”, the heroes are pastiches of heroes created for the now-defunct Charlton Comics line in the 1960s. On the other hand, in “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” he acknowledges that his characters are “the real deal”: H. Rider Haggard’s Alan Quartermain, Bram Stoker’s Mina Harker, Jules Verne’s Captain Nemo, and others.

Now here’s where it all gets a bit murky.

When “League” was made into a (stupid but moderately entertaining) movie, Mr. Moore insisted that all mention of his name be removed, as they had not made HIS “League”. And therein lies my problem; with the exception of the “Fiendish Chinese Devil-Doctor”, whose inspiration, Dr. Fu Manchu, was still under copyright by the estate of his creator, Saxe Rohmer, all of the characters that Mr. Moore used were in the public domain. This meant that, while the obligation postulated above – to pay or otherwise acknowledge his debt to the creators of his templates was made moot, the question posed of an obligation to the characters themselves, and the original authors’ conceptions was not.

In essence, the impression given was that making someone else’s character, for example, a laudanum-addicted wreck was acceptable usage, but turning him back into a swashbuckling adventurer was not. (Or naybe it was just the whole Dorian Gray, Tom Sawyer thing that he couldn’t stand…)

(He did the "take my name off; this isn't MY story" thing again with “V for Vendetta”, which was completely his creation with David Lloyd – as far as I’m concerned, it’s their toy and they can do what they want with it.)

“Watchmen”, on the other hand, was an interesting case. Mr. Moore had originally intended to write the story using the Charlton heroes, but when told that in fact DC Comics, the current rights-holder, had plans for the characters he went back and created recognizable surrogates to use in his story. Assuming that this did not change the basic structure of Mr. Moore’s story, this, in the original, would have meant established heroes betraying, raping and killing each other during the course of the series; all, presumably, without input or consideration of the original characters’ creators’ feelings or opinions as to whether their creations would betray, rape, or kill.

Now in the comics industry, where characters are, for the most part, owned by mega- media conglomerates and creative teams on books are routinely, almost promiscuously, swapped around, it is not unusual for continuities and defining characteristics to change in a blink; so we’re sort of used to seeing, for example, Bruce Wayne’s Batman be retconned (RETroactive CONtinuity changed) from millionaire playboy adventurer who jokes with his youthful “chum”, to the near-psychotic (I’m being charitable, here) grim avenger of the night with scarcely a thought for the character, much less for what the original creator might have thought of any of his creation’s later incarnations.

Which brings us back to the original question: What (for want of a better term) moral responsibility does an artist have to someone else’s creation? Is it enough to tell a good story with the character? Or is there an obligation to use the character in a manner that is respectful of who and what that character is to its creator and its fans? Alternatively, when does Rider Haggard’s Alan Quartermain stop being Rider Haggard’s and become Alan Moore’s Alan Quartermain? And if you’re willing to take another writer’s characters and turn them upside down, do you have a moral right to complain when someone does it to one of yours?

Now my gut feeling is that, from an ethical, “do unto others…” “what goes around…” sense, the answer to the last question is no. On the other hand, in a “does this make a good story?”, “Is it art?”, sense, I have to go with Robert Crumb’s Rule of Thumb for artists: “Whatever works!”

So, as you can tell, I come down firmly in the “I don’t know” camp.

The floor is now open for discussion.

Just to show...

2006-05-13T21:45:00.000-05:00

...that I wasn't making it up about the ugly crap in the previous posting...

...Ah-h-h-h... Y'know, for the full effect, you should probably zip past this post and read that one, if you haven't already done so. Go ahead... I'll wait.
.
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...Hmm-hm-hmmmm-hm-hmmmm-hm-hmm-hm-hmmmm...
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.
.

All done? Good. Let's continue.

As I was saying, just in case some of you think that I was exaggerating just how much the crap that I was sent offended my designer's sensibilities, I post for your edification ONE side of the offending flyer:

(Please note - I'm only including one-half of the total ugliness that I received since revealing such crapulosity in its entirety to the untrained viewer could cause blindness, madness, hair on the pal... uh, no, wait... That's something else... Well, in any case, it wouldn't be good for you. Trust me; I'm a trained professional.)

Now, I realize that, as a non-driver, I simply may not havet been exposed to a lot of car-dealerships' direct mail pieces and they might, in fact, ALL be this ugly (in which case, I weep for my people...) but that doesn't change the fact that this is one ugly@$$ piece of trash!

For those of you whom I have not already bored to tears with this diatribe, let me explain my thoughts on graphic design.

Leaving aside the concepts of "good" and "bad" for a moment (Don't worry; we'll come back to them shortly!), I believe that there are two types of graphic design:

1 - Design that is intended for USERS and;
2 - Design that is intended to impress other DESIGNERS.

The intent of the former is to pass on information in the clearest, most readily-comprehensible way possible; the intent of the latter is to show off one's bad@$$ chops and proclaim one's alpha-dogness in the kennel.

I believe that it *IS* possible to do both, but it's generally beyond the skills of 99.9 percent of the designers out there.

(For the sake of full disclosure, I should point out that I include myself in that 99.9%. I'm a solid, meat-and-potatoes cook; I'm not Escoffier!)

In designing for end-users, the designer should be, essentially, invisible. Shoving one's way in between the users and the information that they're hoping to obtain is the cardinal sin for a designer in this case.

In designing in the hopes of impressing other designers, then the FACT of one's existence and influence on the viewing experience IS the information being imparted and gets top billing.

Both of these are fine and valid methods of working - I'm just an end-user designer. Always have been, always will be. Possibly because my initial impetus in graphics was in drawing comics, storytelling seems to be the basis of what I'll call, for want of a better term, my aesthetic. The question that I'm always trying to answer as I work is, "What is the minimum amount of data that is necessary for me to include for the reader to understand the story that I'm telling?" Because if they don't get the story, then I've failed in my job as a communicator. I don't have the quote right in front of me (and, of course, he put it much more succinctly), but Robert Heinlein pointed out in an article on the craft and business of writing that it's perfectly okay to have an ulterior motive in writing a story (aside from the obvious one of paying the mortgage) - you may have a point of view that you want to express, a warning to give, or a philosophy to expound - but if you can't do that while first and foremost entertaining the paying customers, then you're going to be going back to real work pretty darn quickly!

The "good" and "bad" only comes into the equation if the design of your piece doesn't do the the job that it's supposed to do! If it doesn't let the end-user get the information that s/he is looking for as easily as possible, or alternatively doesn't show the rest of the pack just WHY you ARE the (wo)man, then it's bad design. Otherwise, the worst that can be said about it is that it's inappropriate to the task at hand.

The examples that I usually use for the two types of graphic design are:

1 - end-user information - Popular Science
2 - design-mojo demonstration - Wired

If you're in the middle of re-plumbing your bathroom using a Popular Science article, you REALLY don't want to have to hunt for the next step; alternatively, I've never seen Wired Magazine as actually being about presenting information as much as being about the edgy, pushing-the-envelope look and experience.

Now the excrescence that started all of this, really (in mine 'umble opinion) succeeds in neither of these functions... Actually, in all fairness, that's not quite true...

If we assume that the purpose of the flyer is to impart the information: "We've got a metric sh*tload of cars that we need to unload in a Gawdawful hurry and we can't afford the space to tell you anything really useful about all of them, so instead we're going to cram as much randomly-sized disjointed verbiage and as many uselessly small pictures as we possibly can into the limited space that we have available in hopes that you'll be curious or, heck, even confused enough to come out to see what we're trying to sell you," then I will have to admit that it succeeds admirably.

If it has ANY other intent, it fails miserably.

That's my opinion, anyway.

Closing Thought for Today:
"efficiency + elegance = excellence “ -- Torley Wong

Alright! ALRIGHT!! Quitcherbitchin!!!

2006-05-11T21:04:00.000-05:00

To both of my readers - Yes, I've been well aware of how long it's been since my last post.

But the sad fact is that, for the most part, I haven't felt enough bile backing up to inspire me to write and that, after all, is what usually inspires these mini-screeds of mine.

And I'm not sure why that is... Certainly the drivers in my neck of the woods haven't gotten any better at operating or parking their vehicles in the past months. And the Sock Puppet in the White House hasn't gotten any less venal or stupid. Heck; the Vice-President mistaking a 65-year-old, 5' 10" white male for a 6 ounce *BIRD* without having to explain that to anyone who didn't need him to sign their time-sheets every week wasn't enough to get me going. Sadly; that's pretty much so par for the course that I couldn't really get worked up about them.

Sad, really.

But, the other day, an item arrived in the mail that was so... I don't know... I honestly can't find a word that *PRECISELY* describes this letter. Let me show you, and you can decide.

Here's the item in questuin. It looks pretty serious, in that severe, Social Security Administration/IRS/ Federal Bureau of Threatening Leters kind of way.

Looking more closely at the upper left-hand corner, we see the return address block and the big black box:

Hmmm.. boy... official-sounding Section of a Departmnt of a Center... must be big...

And look at the instructions in the boxes... orders for the postmaster in case it can't be delivered, warnings about the penalties for keeping it from going to its proper addressee... Whoah...

And who IS that addressee...?

...Why, it's addressed to "Resident"...

Yes, folks... It's junk mail that WANTS you to feel threatened, so that you'll open it immediately and find out that it's (drumroll, please...!)

A FRICKIN' BOGUS CHECK IN A BADLY DESIGNED ADVERTISING CIRCULAR FOR THE LOCAL SATURN DEALERSHIP!!!

And I honestly don't know which bothers me more: that someone thought that making their target audience feel vaguely threatened by all of the official-looking verbiage on the outside of the advertising piece was a clever marketing ploy, or that the flyer is *SO* incredibly ugly!!!

Frankly, I don't know if this idea came from Saturn Corporate, or was the bright idea of the local dealership but, whichever it was, they should be thanking whatever gods they pray to (Mammon, presumably, at the very least!) that I *DO* have such a limited readership, else this bit of commercial placental ejecta would actually be SEEN by people who might be in the market for a car from a friendly, intelligent, neighborhood dealer - into which category, I hesitate to include ANYONE who thought that this was a good idea!

On he other hand, just to show that thre I have no REAL hard feelings towards Saturn...

Since I *DO* graphic design and advertising for a living, I should tell whomever hired the advertising firm that came up with this putrescence of an ad campaign that they probably have a good case for recovering the money that they spent on it since - unless the job was just given to the boss's brother-in-law or some similar arrangement - the agency presumably claimed that they actually KNEW something about advertising, customer relations, and/or graphic design -- which by all rights should open them up for charges of misrepresentation and breach of contract!!

So there!

ClosingThought for Today:
"Rage is the only quality which has kept me, or anybody I have ever studied, writing columns for newspapers” -- Jimmy Breslin

...How to feel old in an awful hurry...

2005-08-29T21:19:00.000-05:00

Just a quick one to make both of my readers feel really, REALLY old...!

I saw this at JumboJoke.com

Beloit College's Mindset List for the Class of 2009

Most students entering college this fall were born in 1987.

1. Andy Warhol, Liberace, Jackie Gleason, and Lee Marvin have always been dead.
2. They don't remember when "cut and paste" involved scissors.
3. Heart-lung transplants have always been possible.
4. Wayne Gretzky never played for Edmonton.
5. Boston has been working on the "The Big Dig" all their lives.
6. With little need to practice, most of them do not know how to tie a tie.
7. Pay-Per-View television has always been an option.
8. They never had the fun of being thrown into the back of a station wagon with six others.
9. Iran and Iraq have never been at war with each other.
10. They are more familiar with Greg Gumbel than with Bryant Gumbel.

More can be found here:
http://www.jumbojoke.com/000481.html

Yet More Weirdness in My Little Corner of the World...

2005-07-29T21:46:00.000-05:00

Before I post the latest batch of observed weirdnesses, I'd just like to stress that I do NOT go out of my way looking for these. The world is an odd place, if you only look around you.

Case in point: I live on one of the main roads in and out of town, heavily traveled by commuters and commercial vehicles, some of them driven by VERY skilled drivers.

Drivers who can hit a sign that's a good six and a half feet up, and which extends, at most, an inch and a half beyond the other sign on the pole, and never TOUCH that other sign.

This shows a level of skill and nicety of judgement that is just plain impressive.

And, while we're on the subject of trucks (or perhaps this should go into the "Where are they now?" category), have you ever wondered what Porky Pig has been doing since his cartoon career dried up?

...Apparently, he's shilling for a meat packer...

...Frankly, I'm a bit uncomfortable with this but, hey, a pig's gotta eat, y'know? And if it comes down to a choice of being the one ON the truck or the one IN the truck, then - what the heck - it's every pig for himself, if you know what I mean!

Also in the "Where are they now?" category: Have you wondered what ex-Veep Dan Quayle has been doing to keep himself busy?

It would appear that he's now writing point-of-sale signs for CVS pharmacies. (No snarky comments here, just the observation...)

Although, to be fair, at least Dan can do basic arithmetic, which is more than can be said for SOME local merchants!

I've posted before about the odd pricing on some items at the local grocery chain, but this is weak, even for them:

So far, I will grant you, it looks pretty normal; but let's look a bit closer, shall we...?

2 packs for $5 - saving the customer $2.98. So this means that, normally, two packs of paper towels should cost $7.98 (5.00 + 2.98 = 7.98). Following from this, we can see that the price of a six-pack of paper towels must normally be $3.99, since 7.98/2 = 3.99.

And, sure enough, looking at the package we can see that it does, indeed, normally cost...

... uh... $4.49...

No, wait a minute - that can't be right...

um...

...yeah...

I SWEAR I honestly DON'T go out of my way looking for these things... People really ARE that stupid!

... As if the re-election of the Sock Puppet wasn't proof enough of that...

But, then, how can you expect the average voter to recognize what a weasel (Sorry, weasels!) Dubya is, when so much of the mainsttream press is giving him so bloody MANY free rides?

I mean, look at the Karl Rove/Valerie Plame thing... The Sock Puppet went from "I'll fire anyone who revealed an undercover CIA agent's identity" to "I'll fire anyone who is convicted of revealing an undercover CIA agent's identity while riding a unicycle during a hailstorm between the hours of 3:55 and 4:00 PM on the Fourth of July of any Leap Year..." and, as near as I can tell, NO ONE is holding his feet to the fire on this!

Or what about his "proof" that he fulfilled his military service: The best that he could come up with, during the last half of his term of duty was that he was on base at one point to have some dental work done.

Ignoring, for the moment, that this is, apparently, the ONLY thing that he could come up with to prove that he ever went within a hundred miles of his duty-station for the last half of his tour - All he can come up with is that, as the son of one of the richest families in Texas - the poster-boy for self-reliance, small government, and "Welfare is Evil"-Republicanism - he GOT HIS FRIGGIN' TEETH DONE AT THE TAXPAYER"S EXPENSE!??!

AND NOBODY IN THE PRESS IS CALLING HIM ON THIS?!!?

*sigh*

And with that, I'll leave you with this

ClosingThought for Today:
"If you would know what the Lord God thinks of money, you have only to look at those to whom he gives it.” -- Maurice Baring

They're making my brain hurt, again...

2005-06-05T12:14:00.000-05:00

Okay, you've got to understand; I DO NOT go looking for this stuff. The world really IS full of stupid people...!

Case in point:

The most common local grocery chain is called "Market Basket" (alternatively called "Waste Basket" by some ungenerous souls). They're not really that good, but they're just everywhere; as my Dad would say about something, "They're like shit in a barnyard - they're all over the place". In short, they're pretty generally crap, but they're what we have.

Be that as it may; either they count on the stupidity/mental laziness of their customers to convince themselves that they're getting a bargain when they're not, or they are none too bright, themselves; I'm not sure which.

Let's look at one item (I'm not going to mention which one, because I LIKE the price that I pay, and if it's subsidized by stupid people, then that's the penalty that THEY pay for not paying attenbtion in school!): Packaged singly, you an buy 2 for $1.00. Buying them pre-wrapped as a 2-pack, you pay $1.20. And a pre-wrapped 6-pack is $4.50.

Let's look at that again: a 6-pack costs $4.50. buying three 2-packs, gets you six for $3.60. Buying six individual pieces costs $3.00. And I constantly see people in the checkout lines with multiple 6-packs!

Or how about this - A large can of chicken broth:

Let's look at that price sticker a little more closely, shall we...?

"5 for $5.00"... Hmmm... doesn't that work out to... ummm... $1.00 each?!!?

Can't they just SAY $1.00?!!? Or are they assuming that, if they see a "5-fer", the customers will: A - assume that they're getting a bargain, and; B - buy five cans at a time, in order to get the special price?

Are people REALLY that stupid?

Yes... I expect that I know the answer, too... *sigh*
----------

Walking the dog the other morning, I passed this pickup truck and was, I suppose, reassured that my town had no monopoly on stupid people:

(You may not be able to read it, but the license pltate says "Live Free or Die" at the top, so this was apparently owned by a visitor from our friends to the north.)

Looking closer at the hood, we see:

Now this vehicle's owner, apparently believes in security since, besides the slide-bolts on either side of the hood, you can see that there's a padlock. The assumption in my household is that the truck no longer has an ignition switch, and one simply opens the hood andjump-starts it every time.

But let's look just a WEE bit closer at that lock mechanism:

Note that, rather than... oh, say... putting the NUTS inside the hood and grinding down the slot or corners of the bolt-heads (whichever) to foil thieves, the HEADS are well hidden and the NUTS are available to anyone with an adjustable wrench and 30 seconds to kill!

Sometimes I despair...

I'm Ba-a-a-a-a-ack!

2005-05-27T19:54:00.000-05:00

Lawzy me! Things have been hectic around here for a while.

Between the old housemate moving out, everyone coming down with several various strains of cold/flu/lurgi/whatever, and the daughter being in the procsss of moving in here while finishing final projects of her Senior year at art school and dealing with impacted wisdom teeth that she couldn't take the good painkillers for, since she WAS trying to finish projects and graduate...

And that's not counting MY work, and pulling a couple pf all-nighters to provide moral support/serve as dead weight while she was assembling the said final etcs...

And the weather here has been depressingly cold and/or wet for pretty much the entire spring...

*WHOOSH*

But, because some of you (and you know who you are) were FOOLISH enough to ask for it, I'm back with the latest installment in this waste of bandwidth that is my life.

But, hey - if you think I'VE been out of it, check this guy out:

The poor Leprechaun's been passed out on the roof of that bar since St. Patrick's Day!

----------
Now THIS one scares me:

"Embrace the ReMax, Luke... It is... your Destiny..."

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But, as mentioned above, the big news was The Kid finishing stuff up and graduating (Woo-Hoo!)

Below are some shots of Guin and her Degree Project. I happen to think that it's pretty neat! (I'm especially impressed because - while I am pretty good at 2-D artwork, if I do say so myself, as shouldn't - I am almost completely incompetent at 3-D. (In fact, she'll take the power tools away from me if I try to do any home repairs...)

...AND HERE'S THE PAYOFF...!

And, of course, one of the New Graduate with the Proud Mother...

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On a different note - I saw this the last time that I was in Boston. The building is the former Fleet Center, the arena built on the site of the old Boston Garden. I have to say; I like it - it's sick and silly and it does the job.

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Closer to home, the neighbors who use the park across the street from my apartment are still slobs, but at least they have a sense of symmetry...

So that's the news from here. Not really worth the wait, was it?

Later!

It's a Bizarro Day In The Neighborhood...

2005-03-17T22:32:00.000-05:00

I don't suppose that my neighborhood is really any more bizarre than most other neighborhoods...

Wait... Yes I do.

Case in point: We have the friendly corner gunshop in our neighborhood.

But wait...! It's not JUST a gunshop!

"Not JUST a gunshop?" I hear you cry; "Why, what ELSE could a gunshop POSSIBLY sell?"

Why, Fancy Fruit Baskets, what else!??! Presumably the staff does not encourage the students in the pistol course to use the contents of the fruit baskets to re-enact and update the William Tell story...

(I hope...!)

I note that their over-the-sidewalk sign also advertises their educational offerings:

Or, as a friend of mine put it: "'Instructional shooting'? Well, I suppose that that's more polite than saying, 'That'll l'arn 'em!'"

----------

On a different note, I was taking the Snot-Rocket out for a walk so she could take her evening Nixon the other night, and happened to notice this:

I think that there's a line in here, trying to get out, about how stubbornly winter hangs on, here in New England...

Closing thought for today:
"If you haven't found something strange during the day, it hasn't been much of a day” -- John Archibald Wheeler

What a difference 40 years makes!

2005-03-04T00:27:00.000-05:00

Recently, while thinknig about The Sock Puppet, Bechtel, Iraq, and other such light topics, the phrase "Military-Industrial Complex" sprang to mind.

Curious, that...

In any case, I knew that the phrase had been coined by then-President Dwight Eisenhower (or his speechwriters) for his farewell speech to the nation. But I had never actually read or heard the whole speech. Curious to know what else he said, I looked the speech up and read it.

And realized that I could easily be convinced to vote Republican, if the party would just field candidates like this man, rather than the small-souled, greedy bastards that they tend towards, these days.

Don't believe me? Think that it could never happen to you?

Read the speech yourself and then see what you think:
----------

"My fellow Americans:

"Three days from now, after half a century in the service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor.

"This evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen.

"Like every other citizen, I wish the new President, and all who will labor with him, Godspeed. I pray that the coming years will be blessed with peace and prosperity for all.

"Our people expect their President and the Congress to find essential agreement on issues of great moment, the wise resolution of which will better shape the future of the Nation.

"My own relations with the Congress, which began on a remote and tenuous basis when, long ago, a member of the Senate appointed me to West Point, have since ranged to the intimate during the war and immediate post-war period, and, finally, to the mutually interdependent during these past eight years.

"In this final relationship, the Congress and the Administration have, on most vital issues, cooperated well, to serve the national good rather than mere partisanship, and so have assured that the business of the Nation should go forward. So, my official relationship with the Congress ends in a feeling, on my part, of gratitude that we have been able to do so much together.

"We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite these holocausts America is today the strongest, the most influential and most productive nation in the world. Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.

"Throughout America's adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among people and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt both at home and abroad.

"Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings. We face a hostile ideology -- global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. Unhappily the danger is poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle -- with liberty the stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment.

"Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defense; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research -- these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.

"But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs -- balance between the private and the public economy, balance between cost and hoped-for advantage -- balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration.

"The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their government have, in the main, understood these truths and have responded to them well, in the face of stress and threat. But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise. I mention two only.

"A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.

"Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

"Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

"This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

"We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

"Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

"In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

"Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

"The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.

"Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

"It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system -- ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

"Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

"Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.

"Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.

"Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war -- as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years -- I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.

"Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has been made. But so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road.

"So -- in this, my last good night to you as your President -- I thank you for the many opportunities you have given me for public service in war and peace. I trust that in that service you find some things worthy; as for the rest of it, I know you will find ways to improve performance in the future.

"You and I -- my fellow citizens -- need to be strong in our faith that all nations, under God, will reach the goal of peace with justice. May we be ever unswerving in devotion to principle, confident but humble with power, diligent in pursuit of the Nation's great goals.

"To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America's prayerful and continuing aspiration:

"We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love."
-----
So - please - somebody tell me how we went from THAT man, to THIS:

"I'm the commander -- see, I don't need to explain -- I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the President. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation." -- George W. Bush

And with that, I'll wrap this all up with the following;

Closing thought for today:
"There is a great deal of talk about loyalty from the bottom to the top. Loyalty from the top down is even more necessary and much less prevalent” -- Gen. George S. Patton; 'War As I Knew It'

Okay - So I Guess It HAS Been That Long...!

2005-03-01T23:34:00.000-05:00

And a month passes like nothing.

February was a *BUSY* month.

First the city had its annual Winter party - music, drinking, and stupid human tricks - for which I was cranking out promotional stuff before the fact and walking around during the event taking pictures and video to use for NEXT year's promotional stuff.

The following week was spent trying to recover from that and start getting caught up from the work that didn't get done in the run-up to the aforementioned blowout. The following weekend, we spent a day at the annual Boston "Boskone" science fiction convention, wandering and catching up with friends, before driving down to New York to stroll through the Christo installation "The Gates" in Central Park, wander around the city, and get stuck for an extra day because of a snow storm.

The next week I spent trying to do a week's worth of work in three days, FINALLY got a weekend of relaxing planned, only to find out that my housemate is taking a new job in Pennsylvania and I've got to start advertising for, and (hopefully) scheduling interviews with, prospective new roommates.

And we had more snow.

And that about catches us up to date! (*Whew*!)

So how was YOUR month?

And for what it's worth... I know that a lot of people ragged on the installation, but Guin, Skia (my ex-, and Guin's mother) , and I all loved the Gates. What the news reports and reviews didn't go into were the facts that the gates were placed irregularly - you might get a group of three or four, then a gap, then ten of them in a row - and that since they varied in width with the width of the path where they were standing, and they all (IIRC) were vertical, and not canted over regardless of the slope of the path, that they each seemed to have been SPECIFICALLY placed where they were. It was not just "Grab one at random every twenty feet, set it up, and let's go home." This was a carefully thought out work. They were enjoyable to walk through, and looking through the ones on your path and seeing the choices that you could make up ahead, or the ones on the path off to the side that you didn't take, really brought out the relationships between the paths - without the gates, you may see people walking in the distance off to your right, but with the gates, I felt, oddly, MORE connected to those other people.

My only complaint was that the uprights were, apparently, square cross-sectioned plastic tubing over a steel frame. I carry a walking stick whenever I'm out, and I'll often idly rap light poles, mailboxes, etc., as I walk past, to hear what tone they make. The gates didn't ring, they *thunked*, losing points with me for not being audibly interesting, as well as visually interesting.
----------

While we were in New York, we took the tour of the New York branch of Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum. We had a blast! Below are a few of the pictures that we took while there:

Here's Guin showing off some of her work to an obviously-fascinated passer-by:

Here, she and Skia are taking an opportunity to increase some therapist's income:

And I'm taking advantage of an opportunity to do something that I've always wanted to do!

Well, I guess I've given you enough excitement for one day; don't want to overdo it, after all!

Later!

-M-

Closing thought for today:
"Yield to temptation; it may not pass your way again.” -- Robert A. Heinlein

I'm bummed...

2005-02-08T00:24:00.000-05:00

http://www.trektoday.com/news/020205_04.shtml

UPN Cancels 'Star Trek: Enterprise
February 2, 2005 - 8:17 PM

Star Trek: Enterprise will come to an end following the airing of an as yet untitled series finale on May the 13th, 2005.

UPN and Paramount today jointly announced the show's cancellation. "Star Trek has been an important part of UPN's history, and Enterprise has carried on the tradition of its predecessors with great distinction," UPN Entertainment president Dawn Ostroff said. "We'd like to thank Rick Berman, Brannon Braga and an incredibly talented cast for creating an engaging, new dimension to the Star Trek universe on UPN, and we look forward to working with them, and our partners at Paramount Network Television, on a send-off that salutes its contributions to The Network and satisfies its loyal viewers."

The pity of it all is that, now that they had gotten the whole moronic "temporal cold war" plotline out of the way, the stories were actually getting interesting.

Unfortunately, trying to get friends to try watching the series again after a wasted year was too much of an uphill struggle.

Not that I expect it to do any good, but I'm planning to send the following letter to those in charge, to express my discontent.
----------

Tuesday; February 8, 2005

Dear (Person In Nice Suit):

I was saddened and disappointed to read the “Star Trek: Enterprise” has been cancelled.

Not surprised, mind you; but saddened and disappointed.

I fully understand that any television series lives and dies by the ratings, and that Enterprise’s ratings were not good, and that any business manager is loath to throw good money after bad.

On the other hand, as a business manager, you understand the need to consider WHY a property didn’t succeed and avoid making the same mistakes again. The short answer is that the producers of the series neither gave the fans what they wanted, nor gave them anything BETTER than what they wanted.

Let me first preface my comments by pointing out that I am probably NOT the prime demographic for much of current television: I am a 50-year-old, professionally-employed white male. I read extensively, watch TV selectively, and have, quite frankly, reached the age where I feel that I no longer have the time to waste on a book, TV show, movie, or person that doesn’t hold my interest and have something entertaining/worthwhile to offer me. It’s simply a case of “so many (fill in the blank)s, so little time.” But I actually made an exception for Enterprise. Whether it was nostalgia for what Star Trek was, or hope for what it could be, I don’t know. But I kept watching. Actually, I think that I KNOW why I’ve kept watching: through all of the contrived plotlines, through all of the bad science (and bad pseudo-science – for pity’s sake; if you’re going to write techno-babble to get your plot-twists in, at least try to write PLAUSIBLE techno-babble!). The reason was that these were still good, likeable, DECENT people; they were people that I wanted to know, and would have enjoyed going out to have a beer with. Any entertainment presented to me MUST have that, to hold my attention: There must be at least one character with whom I can identify, or to which I can aspire. Enterprise has a half-dozen of them, the flood of so-called “reality” shows have none.

I have spent much of the current television season trying to convince friends and fellow science-fiction fans to give Enterprise another watching; telling them that the episodes this season (with the notable exception of the two season-opener “hangover-from-the-disastrous-third-season-Time-Travelling-Alien-Nazi” episodes) were actually fairly intelligent and were FUN. Unfortunately the bad taste left from the aforementioned disastrous third season was too great for many of them. The third season was neither what the fans wanted – the foundation of the Star Trek universe, nor was it good science fiction - which at least would have been an enjoyable alternative. The sheer dreadfulness of season three, and the resultant low ratings can, I believe, be laid squarely at the feet of Messrs. Rick Berman and Brannon Braga.

To be fair to Messrs. Berman and Braga, they actually appear, finally, to be giving the fans what they were hoping for in the first place; the foundations of the Federation and some marginally intelligent stories along the way. Unfortunately, this appears to be a case of “a day late and a dollar short”. If I thought that it would do any good, I would urge Paramount to:
1: Renew the series WITHOUT the current producers,
2: Get some people who know good, intelligent, and compelling science fiction to write and produce,
3: Get them good production managers to keep them on time and under budget and,
4: Let the viewers see that Star Trek can be good intelligent family fun again.

To paraphrase “Field of Dreams”: If you build it, they will come; if you make it GOOD, they will stay and spend money at the concessions stand!

With the steps outlined above, I believe that Enterprise could overcome the current malaise and become a viable and valuable property and an asset to all of Paramount’s stake-holders. Without taking those steps, either now or with any future incarnations of the Star Trek universe, the franchise is, in my opinion, essentially dead.

And that’s a pity, for both the viewers and for Paramount and its stake-holders.

I thank you for your time and attention to this occasionally rambling letter and am;

Respectfully yours;

Michael Moyle
----------

The current list of recipients include:

Ms Dawn Ostroff
President, Entertainment
United Paramount Network
11800 Wilshire Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90025

Mr. Leslie Moonves
Chairman and CEO
CBS Television
7800 Beverly Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90036

Mr. Leslie Moonves
Chairman and CEO
CBS Broadcasting Inc.
51 West 52nd Street
New York, NY 10019 U.S.A.

Mr. Brad Grey
Chief Executive Officer
Paramount Studios
5555 Melrose Avenue
Hollywood, CA 90038

Mr. Tom Freston
President
Viacom International, Inc.
1515 Broadway
New York, NY, 10036-5794

Mr. Sumner Redstone
Chairman
Viacom International, Inc.
1515 Broadway
New York, NY, 10036-5794

As I said - It probably won't do any good, but it will make me feel a bit better.
----------

So I'm not a "pro"...

2005-01-28T00:01:00.000-05:00

Let's be honest, a blogger with a properly professional attitude would have been cranking out verbiage about the "Blizzard of Ought-Five", and what has now, officially, turned into the snowiest January in Massachusetts' record books.

I'll apologize right now to both of my readers (if they're still checking in) but I don't always feel that I have anything worth your reading, even by MY flexible standards of what I think will be interesting.

Recap: It snowed bigtime, I shoveled 2+ feet of snow off of the sidewalk, then scraped off the result of the (fortunately smaller) followup storm two days later.

Hey - This is New England... snow isn't really news, y' knowwhatImean?

Nor is a week or more of sub-freezing tempertaures. It's annoying, but it's not news.

And it's not really news that so many people DON'T clear their sidewalks, forcing me out into several of the busier streets in town when walking to work, and walking home, and walking the dog.

Now SHE is cranky about the weather and the sorry state of the sidewalks in the neighborhood!

Caper, my 4-year-old Pug, is just not a winter fan. Understandable, really, when you are traversing snowdrifts that are taller than you are, and are bounding from one previous passerby's footprints in the snow to the next, all while looking desperately for a clear patch of ground where you can Bush and take a Nixon. (Pugs seem to be very particular about where they do their thing.)

But I am trying to be more philosophical about the Putzim who don't shovel, or shovel from the driveway to the front door and nothing else, or shovel everything except the last foot to the property line, because they don't want to accidebtally shovel any of the neighbors' snow, or who do the whole length - in a trough of exactly one shovel's-width. ..

See how philosophical I am...? I didn't even mention the ones who shovel to the corner, then don't clear the last two feet to the crosswalk, so that you have to lurch over the two-foot high pile of compcted snow, onto the slushy residue that the snowplows left in the street, because people were parking their cars like complete and utter MORONS, making it almost impossible for the plow-guys to get through... I mean...

...TWO vehicles, almost across the street from each other, and parked DIAGONALLY INTIO THE STREET?!!?

ARE THESE PEOPLE FRACKIN' IDIOTS, OR WHAT??!!!??

...Okay... So I haven't got my "philosophical mode" down, yet...
----------

On that note, I'm reading an excellent book on dealing with the aggravations of urban life:

City Dharma by Arthur Jeon (2004; Harmony Books, New York; ISBN:1-4000-4908-3)

I have difficulties with some of the concepts - I'm not sure that to know all is to forgive all, but I'm willing to consider it as a possibility.

I'll give you two snippets of Jeon's writing, and leave it at that.

"At the core of most religions, sometimes well buried, sometimes hiding in plain sight, is usually a nondual idea. Christ's main teaching of the Golden Rule, 'Love your neighbor as yourself,' is often interpreted as 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.' But this is quite different from 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' This positive command can be literally interpreted: love your neighbor as yourself because that person is a manifestation of consciousness, the same as you. To love him or her as yourself is simply to see this reality, ending the illusion of your isolated identity. This is almost exactly echoed by Buddha in the Dharmmapeda when he says, 'Consider others as yourself.'"

"Psalms 41:1 says, 'Blessed is he who considers the poor.' It doesn't say, 'Blessed is he who gives to the poor.' ... So much about what it means to be human is to have choice, and sometimes offering that choice to a person in need restores his or her sense of humanity."

Side note: It just happened that the two bits that I picked here referred to the Christian Bible. It is NOT a Christian-Zen book. Jeon mentions a number of other religions or philosophies to make his points.

Good reading and food for thought.
----------

Last weekend I was spending Saturday afternoon with Guin in Boston running errands before the storm hit. We were in the Harvard Square subway station and saw in incident to which I'm still not sure how we should have responded.

I blind man was waiting for the same train as we were, and was singing along to the music on his earphones. (Living proof, by the way, that blindness alone does not a Ray Charles make!) Alongside of him was his guide dog. Coming down the platform towards him and us, was a blind woman with HER guide dog.

As she started to pass him, the two dogs greeted each other, as dogs will, and both dogs were scolded by their owners for reacting to the other.

The thing is, I'm not sure if either of the humans involved knew that the other was also blind and that their dogs were simply greeting a "Lodge Brother", as it were. I mean, it was literally the equivalent of the professional courtesy of two people in the same line of work exchanging business cards.

I found myself wondering whether I should go up and explain the situation to them, or not...

In the end, we did nothing, but I'll probably always wonder.

Closing thought for today:
"When things go wrong, don't go wrong with them." -- Anonymous

Fun With Google

2005-01-20T22:42:00.000-05:00

Okay; it's January 20th and the Sock Puppet has been sworn in for four more years of (mis)government that brings new meaning to the term "Bush-league".

But I'm NOT going to go there, today. I've got just LOADS of time to rant about Bush's Bizarro Robin Hood act. ("Me steal money from poor so me can give to rich mans!")

Rather, I'm going to try to mess with Google's head again.

Now anyone who knows me knows I'm a Macintosh Geek and an iPod junkie; I own several of the former and one of the latter.

My 'Pod is a 2nd-generation 10-Gigabyte model, and, with 8.3 GB of music currently on it, I'm not maxed out, but that's only because I cleaned up and archived some of my old stuff. But That 8.3 GB translates (for me) to 2036 songs, totaling 5.1 days' worth of continuous music.

Gotta love it!

When I leave the house in the morning, the 'Pod starts up and goes into a pocket for the walk to work. (Hint for iPod owners who live in wintry climes: If you have an inside shirt or jacket pocket, carry your iPod there, rather than an outside coat pocket, or in your hand. Besides making it harder to steal, keeping the 'Pod warm will increase the length of the battery charge. In an outside pocket in the winter, I get, maybe 5 hours of charge; in a shirt pocket (under a sweater, under a (usually) open leather jacket I can get 7 - 8. And that's with the original, now two-year-old battery and almost daily use!) When I get to work, it gets plugged into the AC adapter and into a pair of speakers. If I'm going out for any length of time it goes back in the pocket.

In short, I'm hooked.

BAD!

Now, usually, I have the 'Pod playing a random playlist that includes... well... 'most anything that you can imagine. Rock&Roll with bagpipes? Got it. Big Band? Reggae? Folk? Blues? Soundtrack? Classical? Hip Hop? All of the above. I don't, currently have the Northern Cree festival singers' great Rockin' the Rez album on my 'Pod, or Puya's amazing Fundamental (Think Motorhead trading riffs with Tito Puente - bloody amazing sound!), but they've both been there.

Peple at work seem to be both fascinated and bemused because they can NEVER know what's going to be playing when they walk into my office. There are a few who ask me whether I own any "normal" musc, and I'll click on something from the Beatles' 1, or Paul Simon's Graceland, or something, but nomally I like being surprised by what pops up.

Occasionally, I'll keep track of, say, the first twenty songs of the day, just for the weird amusement value of it.

And here's where the "messing with Google's head" part comes in. I've already mentioned Macintosh and my iPod, several times, and given a couple of album titles and the groups the did them. Now I'm going to run down today's leadoff twenty, and see what Google decides to push in the advertising bar on the right of the page.

Hey, Messing with Google is just good, clean, geeky fun!

Mike's iPod Twenty for I/20/05
(Actually, today's list is kind of boring, but let's run with it!)

Song Title - Artist - Album Title

The Swagless Swaggie - The Original Bushwhackers & Bullockies Band - The Shearer’s Dream
A Tisket, A Tasket - Ella Fitzgerald - The Jazz Collection: Ksw2 1957
Dawn of the Day - Steeleye Span - Tonight’s the Night… Live
It Ain’t Right - Rod Piazza & the Mighty Flyers - The Essential Collection
Happy Days & Lonely Nights - Charlie Fry And His Million Dollar Pier Orchestra - That’s What I Call Sweet Music
Touch of Grey - Grateful Dead - In the Dark
(Lookin’ for) The Heart of Saturday Night - Tom Waits - The Heart of Saturday Night
Grand Prix - Penelope Houston - Tongue
Carolan’s Concerto - Gordon Bok, Ann Mayo Muir & Ed Tricket - The First Fifteen Years - Volume I
Your Own Worst Enemy - They Might Be Giants - Factory Showroom
’Tain’t What You Do - Julie London - Wild Cool and Swingin' (UltraLounge)
Prairie Lullabye - Leon Redbone - From Branch to Branch
Ricercare À 6 - The Swingle Singers & The Modern Jazz Quartet - Place Vendôme
Drops of Brandy - The Original Bushwhackers & Bullockies Band - The Shearer’s Dream
Investigating Liz - Marco Beltrani - Hellboy – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Sonata #1 in B-Minor - Andante - John Sebastian - John Sebastian Plays Bach
On My Mind the Whole Night Long - George Gershwin - Gershwin Plays Gershwin
Banana de Rustenberg - Spokes Machiyane - Township Jazz & Jive
Strange Meadowlark - The Dave Brubeck Quartet - Time Out
Down by the O-Hi-O - Spike Jones And His City Slickers - Strictly For Music Lovers (Disc 3)

Okay, Google; do yer stuff!

Closing thought for today:
"I asked him to summon up the soul of Jimi Hendrix and requested 'All Along the Watchtower.' You know, the guy's been dead twenty years, but he still hasn't lost his edge!” -- Fox Mulder

Okay... So that's vaguely amusing...

2005-01-18T23:45:00.000-05:00

I post a screed-Lite regarding the inappropriateness of the idea of "supporting the Troops" with a symbol that says "You're an idiot, but we love you anyway". And Google sees the references to the "Cordon Jaune" (Let's see what Google does with THAT!) and proceeds to serve up ads for companies offering to sell you the very same simulated "strips of gold-colored fabric" that I was grumbling about.

Sorry for the circumlocutions above, but if I actually spell out "Y*LL*W R*BB*NS", they'll just run more ads for them.
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Now THIS is just TOO brilliant!

A police exercise with the stuff of mystery
Q: Where’s the blue suitcase with explosives inside?
A: ??

The Associated Press
Updated: 5:38 p.m. ET Dec. 7, 2004

PARIS - Somewhere in the world, there’s a navy blue suitcase with a small pack of explosives tucked in its side pocket.

Four days after police at Charles de Gaulle Airport slipped some plastic explosives into a random passenger’s bag as part of an exercise for sniffer dogs, it is still missing — and authorities are stumped and embarrassed.

You can read the rest of the story here.
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It's really sad when the best thing that you can come up with about the weather is that "tomorrow it's supposed to warm up enough to snow".

*fwetch*
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Closing thought for today:
"How can you be expected to govern a country that has two hundred and forty-six kinds of cheese?” -- Charles DeGaulle

Okay, is it just me...?

2005-01-12T23:48:00.000-05:00

Music-related annoyances...

First off -- Is anyone else annoyed by all of the yellow ribbon paraphernalia that is appearing out there?

Don't get me wrong; while I don't agree with just about ANYTHING that the Sock-Puppet-in-Chief has done, I believe that as long as American troops are fighting overseas, they deserve the best that we can give them. Period.

But, Number 1 - I haven't seen anything that makes me think that the makers of the magnetic-stick-on fake yellow ribbons are donating their proceeds to, say, the USO, the Red Cross, or aid for the GI's families back home, so THEY'RE not really supporting anyone but themselves...

And, Number 2 -- Has anyone who is plastering those fake yellow ribbons around EVER ACTUALLY LISTENED TO THE #^%^&#$&* SONG!??!

The guy on the bus was IN PRISON. He wrote his sweetie a letter that said "I screwed up, big-time. If you're willing to put up with a f*ck-wit like me, tie a yellow, etc.." So the yellow ribbon, here, symbolizes "Yeah, you're a f*ck-wit; but you're MY f*ck-wit!"

So isn't the whole yellow ribbon thing telling the returning troops "Welcome home, moron"?

A suggestion: ditch the yellow ribbons - Red, white, and blue would work just fine and won't send any mixed messages!

Just a thought...
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I Write The Songs

Written by: Bruce Johnston

I've been alive forever, and I wrote the very first song
I put the words and the melodies together
I am music and I write the songs...

So let me get this straight. Barry Manilow didn't write the song, "I Write the Songs"...

That's just SO wrong...
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And that Billy Joel song "Piano Man" has been bothering me for, what, 20 years, now...?

(On the other hand, at least Billy Joel, apparently, ACTUALLY wrote the thing, which puts him one up on Barry Manilow...)

But, again; everytime that I go past a hotel piano bar and hear the thing, I want to go in and slap the listeners upside their collective heads.

Again -- LISTEN TO THE %^$%*()( LYRICS, PEOPLE!!! The singer is going on and on and on about how everyone in the place is a LOSER, EXCEPT HIM! ... And JUST LIKE the rest of them, HE DOESN'T REALIZE THAT HE'S A LOSER, TOO!!!

The whole thing is a paean to drunken oblivion!!!!

Closing thought for today:
"In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man will be hunted down by an angry mob and burned as a heretic." -- Me

Sweet Cheezis...! Just when I was starting to think that things couldn't POSSIBLY get any worse...!

2005-01-09T20:47:00.000-05:00

NEWT GINGRICH OPEN TO PRESIDENTIAL RUN
WASHINGTON (AP) — Newt Gingrich is taking steps toward a potential presidential bid in 2008 with a book criticizing President Bush's policies on Iraq and a tour of early campaign states...

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You can read the rest of this horrifying article here.

(Do yourself a favor: Cover your keyboard with something impermeable before clicking the link.)

As if it isn't bad enough that the Sock Puppet wants to drive the U.S. into a brick wall at 90 miles per hour... Now Mr. Newt "Contract On..." -- excuse me -- "Contract With America" Gingrich is considering the possibilities of kicking it up a notch!!!

Apparently a nation where the top 1% of the population controls 38% of the wealth isn't divided enough. One where the top .01% -- 13,000 families -- have more income than the poorest 20,000,000 families isn't inequitable enough. One where we are actively considering encouraging people to replace part of their Social Security insurance with exactly the sort of stock market speculation that Social Security was designed to avoid isn't insane enough! One where we have taken the wave of world-wide goodwill towards us after the September 11th attacks and squandered it in the three years since -- culminating in our (mis)Administration's ill-advised adventurism in Iraq -- just so that the Sock Puppet could prove that his plums are bigger than his father's -- wasn't disastrous enough!!

NOO-o-o-o-o...

NOW we have to worry about what .THIS... this...

*
*
*

-- click --

*

-- reboot --

****

... I'm sorry... I'm blanking, here...I can't THINK of a word that's low enough to describe how I feel about Gingrich...

The mere act of calling this bottom-feeder a BOTTOM-FEEDER is an insult to every hard-working catfish in the continental United States!!!

I'm actually starting to think that maybe passing that "Let Arnold Run" constitutional amendment wouldn't be a totally moronic idea...!

(At least HE'D have Maria to slap him upside the head every so often!)

Hmmmmm... Maybe that's the Republicans' plan... Float the idea that they're even considering *THINKING ABOUT* letting this loathsome man run for President, and wait for the backlash that will turn Gov. Schwarzenegger (And how many times can I type that before my fingers choose to drop off of my hands under their own volition...?) into the warm and fuzzy alternative...!

... I'm sorry... I've got to quit before that vein throbbing in my forehead explodes...

Closing thought for today:
"Never underestimate the power of human stupidity. "-- Robert A. Heinlein

Just For Grins...

2005-01-07T20:37:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure why, but I've decided to tak' the King's shillin'.

Or at least Google's.

At some point advertisements (allegedly based on the content of my ramblings) wil start appearing on this page, with some minuscule payment coming to me for every clickthrough. I'm, frankly, more interested to see what Google thinks I'm writing about than I am in any measely amount of cash that I might get from this.

It may, in fact, end up with my commenting here on the results as I see them, or as one of you out there passes them on to me, in which case the recursive effect of ads relating to the previously posted ads starting to pop up might, at the very least, prove amusing.

Just to get the ad-wave started, I'm going to mention a currently available book and see how long it takes for a related ad to come back to me.

My daughter (Guin; age 23) and I go to stupid comic book movies together. Last year one of the must-sees was the amazingly-well-done Hellboy. One of her gifts to me this Christmas was the book about the movie Hellboy: The Art of the Movie". Which is one of the best "art of the movie" books that I've seen.

One of the images in it (and at some point I'll get around to hooking up my scanner and include the page in question) is of the cover of a "iHellboy" comic book that appeared briefly in one scene of the movie. Now this was not Hellboy creator Mike Mignola's REAL book, mind you. Rather it was a great pastiche of the 1960s Marvel Comics type, with art in the style of the great Jack Kirby, and the requisite Comics Code Authority stamp in the upper right corner, showing that it had been cleared by the comics industry's self-censorship organization (and I'll probably write a rant on Dr. frederick Wertham, the Code Authority, and censorship in general at some point). The cover was truly a perfect example of the style that it was imitating. There was only one thing wrong with it, which didn't register until I saw it in the book.

The Code was so restrictive that any book with the word "Hell" in the title would NEVER have gotten approved.

... A tiny thing, I know; but of such minutiae are geeky fan-boy compulsions made!

(And, supposedly, shooting on Hellboy II starts this month -- Wheeee I can't wait!!)

Closing thought for today:
"Of all the strange 'crimes' that human beings have legislated out of nothing, 'blasphemy' is the most amazing - with 'obscenity' and 'indecent exposure' fighting it out for second and third place." -- Robert A. Heinlein

An Ode on New England Winter

2005-01-07T01:19:00.000-05:00

(To the tune of "Oh! What a Beautiful Morning!")

There's a bright, icy glaze on the sidewalk!
There's a bright, icy glaze on the sidewalk!
And the cars whip on past
With a cold, slushy blast
And I slipped in a puddle and fell on my ass!

Chorus:
Oh! What a mis'rable morning!
Oh! What a mis'rable day!
I've got a mis'rable feeling
Nothin' is going my wa-a-a-a-ay!
Oh! What a mis'rable day!!!!!

A passing; a beginning...

2005-01-05T21:51:00.000-05:00

I was saddened to see in the news that Will Eisner had died on Monday.

For those unfamiliar with him, Eisner was one of the earliest, and longest-lasting, masters in the art of "Sequential Art" (a term he coined), or the art of the comic book. From the late 1930s until his death, Eisner created superheroes, inspired and mentored other cartoonists, produced instructional materials for the government and industry, and with the publication of A Contract With God (a semi-autobiographical story of tenement life in the depression), created arguably the first graphic novel (another term of his conage).

He is perhaps best known for The Spirit, the adventures (and occasional misadventures) of a two-fisted good-hearted crime fighter in a blue suit, fedora domino mask and gloves. In many ways the Spirit was the role that James Garner would later make his own. The series ran in the 1940s and '50s as a comic book supplement that appeared in many Sunday newspapers. Eisner once defined his target audience for the series as "a 55-year-old who had his wallet stolen on the subway. You can't talk about heartbreak to a kid."

For more on the life of this amazing man, see this article.

At the other end of the emotional scale, I was pleased to find that a book that I first read when it came out six years ago holds up to re-reading.

INVISIBLE WORLD
by Stuart Cohen.
New York : Regan Books, 1998.
ISBN: 0060392274

Andrew Mann is awakened one night by a phone call, telling him that Clayton Smith, his childhood best friend, the friend that had drifted away years before to become a jet-setter and an artist, has committed suicide in Hong Kong.

The next day, while working in the office of his father's Chicago plumbing company, he receives a package from his dead friend with a large sum of money, airline tickets to get to his funeral, and a cryptic note that says, "I've always been your wild card; play me".

Leaving his staid, Midwestern rut, Andy flies to Hong Kong and finds that Clayton has left him a legacy, involving a map - supposedly the brocade map that the Great Khan sent west as a gift for the Pope in the 1400's. But other people want that map, for reasons of their own.

Following his friend's last request, Andy enters a journey of discovery and learns about art, elegance, gangsters, smugglers, his friend and himself, following clues left by Clayton that lead him to Beijing, Inner Mongolia, and beyond into an Invisible World of the spirit.

To most people, I suspect, the world of textile collectors in which Andy finds himself - where centuries-old pieces of fabric are smuggled and sold for fabulous sums - would be as foreign as Inner Mongolia; I know they were to me. But Cohen clearly is of the cult who adores cloth, and he makes the reader truly feel the excitement of the quest. He makes the colllectors as real as he makes Hong Kong and Mongolia. This is Cohen's first book, and an intimidating start; it will be interesting to see whether he can do it again. In any case, I'm going to have to see if he's written anything else.

Closing thought for today:
"In reflecting on our problems, we should include ourselves." -- Shunryu Suzuki

...And So, It Begins.

2005-01-04T00:43:00.000-05:00

Who reads this stuff?

Who WRITES this stuff?

You're about to find out the latter, at least. Perhaps someday I'll find out the former.

This will be a semi-irregular ramble through the worlds of politics, art, books, media, reality, thought, and any number of things that might try masquerading as one of the above. Imagine a round-table discussion between Albert Einstein, Sunryu Suzuki, Harry Truman, John of Patmos, Charles Whitman, and Carrot Top, moderated by Rod Serling. Lord knows where it's going to go, but we'll keep going until we all get bored of it.

Next: The Real Stuff Begins