This is Norman. Do what he says and nobody will get hurt. He's handsome and deadly, like a cross-dressing Gregory Peck wearing half a Zorro mask and Lee Press-On nails. Norman's tough like that, a little too tough for a guy with no functioning testicles, but maybe that's his problem: an inferiority complex. Boy, if he knew I wrote that he'd break a lamp over my head. He's plotting something. I can tell by all that thinking he does when he pretends to sleep. This asshole's destructiveness knows no limit. Last week he stalked and killed a refrigerator. What's next? An armoire?
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
A Metrosexual You Wouldn't Want to Meet in an Alley
This is Norman. Do what he says and nobody will get hurt. He's handsome and deadly, like a cross-dressing Gregory Peck wearing half a Zorro mask and Lee Press-On nails. Norman's tough like that, a little too tough for a guy with no functioning testicles, but maybe that's his problem: an inferiority complex. Boy, if he knew I wrote that he'd break a lamp over my head. He's plotting something. I can tell by all that thinking he does when he pretends to sleep. This asshole's destructiveness knows no limit. Last week he stalked and killed a refrigerator. What's next? An armoire?
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
News Zealand: A Hot Flash from Down Under
My wife is very upset that the government of New Zealand will no longer use her favorite childhood meal to measure food price inflation.
That's right, the delicious cocktail weenie has been removed from the list of 150 items used to track food price trends. Sadly, Statistics New Zealand has also removed from the list condensed milk and frozen cheese cake, once considered their national breakfast.
That's right, the delicious cocktail weenie has been removed from the list of 150 items used to track food price trends. Sadly, Statistics New Zealand has also removed from the list condensed milk and frozen cheese cake, once considered their national breakfast.
How Government Works
I know it's been a month of Tuesdays since I've posted anything here and I'm virtually (and really) talking to myself, but recent events compel me to share with nobody in particular what's been making me miserable of late. That's right, it's the Democrats, most of whom wouldn't be nearly as bad as they actually are if they were merely spineless, toothless, cowardly zombies. New evidence seems to crop up every day that when it comes to hypocrisy, selling out America and the Constitution to their corporate masters and open, unrepentant graft, the "Left" is actually a pretty bold cadre hellbent on giving the GOP a run for its filthy lucre.
This time it's Glenn Greenwald's turn (reporting for Salon in a column reprinted below without anyone's permission) to confirm for me for the millionth time who really runs the country, how much of a joke representative government really is, and why I will never by stock in AT&T. The worst thing about reading such articles is that once you know there's a problem what can you do about it? I just don't know. Without further ado, here's Glenn Greenwald, coming at you from Denver, Colorado, home of the nosebleed:
AT&T thanks Democrats with a lavish party
by Glenn Greenwald
This time it's Glenn Greenwald's turn (reporting for Salon in a column reprinted below without anyone's permission) to confirm for me for the millionth time who really runs the country, how much of a joke representative government really is, and why I will never by stock in AT&T. The worst thing about reading such articles is that once you know there's a problem what can you do about it? I just don't know. Without further ado, here's Glenn Greenwald, coming at you from Denver, Colorado, home of the nosebleed:
AT&T thanks Democrats with a lavish party
by Glenn Greenwald
Last night in Denver, at the Mile High Station -- next to Invesco Stadium, where Barack Obama will address a crowd of 30,000 people on Thursday night -- AT&T threw a lavish, private party for Blue Dog House Democrats, virtually all of whom blindly support whatever legislation the telecom industry demands and who also, specifically, led the way this July in immunizing AT&T and other telecoms from the consequences for their illegal participation in the Bush administration's warrantless spying program. Matt Stoller has one of the listings for the party here.
Armed with full-scale Convention press credentials issued by the DNC, I went -- along with Firedoglake's Jane Hamsher, John Amato, Stoller and others -- in order to cover the event, interview the attendees, and videotape the festivities. There was a wall of private security deployed around the building, and after asking where the press entrance was, we were told by the security officials, after they consulted with event organizers, that the press was barred from the event, and that only those with invitations could enter -- notwithstanding the fact that what was taking place in side was a meeting between one of the nation's largest corporations and the numerous members of the most influential elected faction in Congress. As a result, we stood in front of the entrance and began videotaping and trying to interview the parade of Blue Dog Representatives, AT&T executives, assorted lobbyists and delegates who pulled up in rented limousines, chauffeured cars, and SUVs in order to find out who was attending and why AT&T would be throwing such a lavish party for the Blue Dog members of Congress.
Amazingly, not a single one of the 25-30 people we tried to interview would speak to us about who they were, how they got invited, what the party's purpose was, why they were attending, etc. One attendee said he was with an "energy company," and the other confessed she was affiliated with a "trade association," but that was the full extent of their willingness to describe themselves or this event. It was as though they knew they're part of a filthy and deeply corrupt process and were ashamed of -- or at least eager to conceal -- their involvement in it. After just a few minutes, the private security teams demanded that we leave, and when we refused and continued to stand in front trying to interview the reticent attendees, the Denver Police forced us to move further and further away until finally we were unable to approach any more of the arriving guests.
It was really the perfect symbol for how the Beltway political system functions -- those who dictate the nation's laws (the largest corporations and their lobbyists) cavorting in total secrecy with those who are elected to write those laws (members of Congress), while completely prohibiting the public from having any access to and knowledge of -- let alone involvement in -- what they are doing. And all of this was arranged by the corporation -- AT&T -- that is paying for a substantial part of the Democratic National Convention with millions upon millions of dollars, which just received an extraordinary gift of retroactive amnesty from the Congress controlled by that party, whose logo is splattered throughout the city wherever the DNC logo appears -- virtually attached to it -- all taking place next to the stadium where the Democratic presidential nominee, claiming he will cleanse the Beltway of corporate and lobbying influences, will accept the nomination on Thursday night.
The only other media which even attempted to cover the AT&T/Blue Dog event was Democracy Now -- they were also barred from entering. I was on Democracy Now with Amy Goodman this morning to discuss what happened. They put together a 5-minute video montage, including our efforts to enter the event and interview the guests, which they broadcast before my segment. The video and my segment can be seen and/or heard here -- it begins at the 1:00 mark. A transcript will be posted shortly.
Jane Hamsher also filmed some of what transpired, and Salon has created our own video of last night, including the efforts by the private security teams and Denver Police to prevent us from standing on public property to interview the arriving members of Congress and AT&T executives and lobbyists. That will be posted shortly. There's nothing unusual about this event -- other than that it was more forcibly private than most and just a tad more brazenly sleazy. The democracy-themed stagecraft inside the Convention is for public television consumption, but secret little events of this sort are why people are really here. Just as is true in Washington, this is where -- and how and by whom -- the business of our Government is conducted.Saturday, July 26, 2008
Will You Scientists Ever Learn?
A long time is a lot shorter than you thought
You hear a lot of know-it-alls these days talking about how this or that happened "in the blink of an eye in geologic time." For example, earlier this year, a pack of latte-drinking French anthropologists reported that they determined the age of some fossil junk they'd found under a rock in some really poor country to be as old as 7.2 million years. This, they contended, marked the discovery of our oldest ancestors, the first hominids to say "chimpanzees can bite me" before gathering their things and walking across the savanna, unlike their idiot cousins who could not gather anything because they needed all their wits about them for walking on all-fours, the dumb fucks.
Anyway, I hope those French-loving French scientists will have a great time on the Antiques Road Show finding out how much an australopithecene femur would be worth if it were put on auction today. That's not the point. The issue is that one day I'm going to be watching a dumbed-down television program (if you can imagine) about human origins in which the producers and writers will force Liev Schreiber to say, "7.2 million years might be an unimaginable amount of time to me and you, but to the Earth and French anthropologists, why, it's just a blink of an eye."
Is it, professor knows-a-lot? Do seven million years really add up to a geological blink of an eye, Mr. I-have-a-Phd-but-drive-a-19-year-old-hatchback? Because, let's face it, any time you science people want to impress on us nose-picking plebes the vast magnitude of a particular amount of time, your measurement of choice is always the solitary "blink of an eye." This is true whether you're talking about the last ice age that ended 10,000 years ago or the K-T event that killed the dinosaurs (and almost everything else) 65 million years ago.
That is quite a versatile yardstick, isn't it, Mr. I-wear-a-white-lab-coat-not-to-protect-me-from-chemicals-
but-to-cover-a-pizza-stain-I-got-eating-lunch-two-days-ago?
Well, I've got news that's going to knock your knee-high socks right off your studious legs. It's going to change the way we look at geology and time. And blinking. It will make string theory look like monism, and monism look like string cheese and string cheese look like the string section of an all-kazoo orchestra. I have, namely, discovered exactly how long a blink of an eye is in geologic time.
Who's holding the lazer-pointer now, Dr. I-have-no-idea-what-this-asshole-is-talking-about? (If you said me, you're correct.)
Let me explain, and try to follow the bouncing decimal point, if you can. See, the Googles says it takes me anywheres from 100 to 150 milliseconds to blink. That's a blink of an eye in geologic time. But it's also pretty quick when measured against the 75.29 years or 23,759,309,600 seconds that the CIA has given me to live. To find out exactly what that equivalent would be in Earth history, I compared ratios expressed as equatable fractions, dividing a human blink by my life expectancy, while dividing a geologic blink (x) by the current estimated age of the earth: 4.55 billion years or 54,600,000,000 months.
This is the same as saying ".15 seconds is to 23,759,309,600 seconds as x months is to 54,600,000,000 months."
The result was, to say the least, astonishing, if not flat-out wrong. Nevertheless, numbers don't lie, unless they're in big trouble, so according to my math, a blink of the eye in Earth's time is nowhere near 65 million years, or 7 million years, or even 10,000 years. It is, instead, precisely 10 days, 7 hours and 39 minutes.
Isn't that fantastic, Prof. I-surfed-away-from-this-site-ten-minutes-ago? You see how much better it is when our words actually mean something? After all, when we speak with greater precision, we make what we say that much more excruciating to our audience. Why should we smart people be the only ones to suffer?
And just imagine how much smarter we smart people would feel if Liev Schreiber, in narrating a documentary about the last ice age, were to read in his script "15,000 years ago might seem to you like a blink of an eye in geological terms, but to the earth, it's more like a day, so don't you feel stupid?"
Now imagine what he could do with that australopithecus script: "7.2 million years is a heck of long time, isn't it? You bet it's a long time. It's a really really long time. What did you think I was going to say, 'to the Earth, it's just about a year and two months?' You know what? I'm done entertaining you. I'm Liev Schreiber. I was in the remake of The Omen."
And finally, here's what he would say in a Discovery Channel special about dinosaurs: "I bet you're the kind of person who plays along with the contestants when you watch Jeopardy and you think that just because you get a few answers right, faster than the contestants, you would just kill on Jeopardy. But you would be wrong for at least three reasons I can think off the top of my head. First, the pressure on the contestants to respond is much higher than the pressure on you while you're lying on your couch, and that pressure has an impact on response times. Secondly, you're stoned, so you're most pressing concern for the next half-hour will be how to get the cheeze puff dust off your fingers. And lastly, you would have trouble distinguishing a noun from a verb on Wheel of Fortune. What makes you think you could even get past the door on Jeopardy?"
You hear a lot of know-it-alls these days talking about how this or that happened "in the blink of an eye in geologic time." For example, earlier this year, a pack of latte-drinking French anthropologists reported that they determined the age of some fossil junk they'd found under a rock in some really poor country to be as old as 7.2 million years. This, they contended, marked the discovery of our oldest ancestors, the first hominids to say "chimpanzees can bite me" before gathering their things and walking across the savanna, unlike their idiot cousins who could not gather anything because they needed all their wits about them for walking on all-fours, the dumb fucks.
Anyway, I hope those French-loving French scientists will have a great time on the Antiques Road Show finding out how much an australopithecene femur would be worth if it were put on auction today. That's not the point. The issue is that one day I'm going to be watching a dumbed-down television program (if you can imagine) about human origins in which the producers and writers will force Liev Schreiber to say, "7.2 million years might be an unimaginable amount of time to me and you, but to the Earth and French anthropologists, why, it's just a blink of an eye."
Is it, professor knows-a-lot? Do seven million years really add up to a geological blink of an eye, Mr. I-have-a-Phd-but-drive-a-19-year-old-hatchback? Because, let's face it, any time you science people want to impress on us nose-picking plebes the vast magnitude of a particular amount of time, your measurement of choice is always the solitary "blink of an eye." This is true whether you're talking about the last ice age that ended 10,000 years ago or the K-T event that killed the dinosaurs (and almost everything else) 65 million years ago.
That is quite a versatile yardstick, isn't it, Mr. I-wear-a-white-lab-coat-not-to-protect-me-from-chemicals-
but-to-cover-a-pizza-stain-I-got-eating-lunch-two-days-ago?
Well, I've got news that's going to knock your knee-high socks right off your studious legs. It's going to change the way we look at geology and time. And blinking. It will make string theory look like monism, and monism look like string cheese and string cheese look like the string section of an all-kazoo orchestra. I have, namely, discovered exactly how long a blink of an eye is in geologic time.
Who's holding the lazer-pointer now, Dr. I-have-no-idea-what-this-asshole-is-talking-about? (If you said me, you're correct.)
Let me explain, and try to follow the bouncing decimal point, if you can. See, the Googles says it takes me anywheres from 100 to 150 milliseconds to blink. That's a blink of an eye in geologic time. But it's also pretty quick when measured against the 75.29 years or 23,759,309,600 seconds that the CIA has given me to live. To find out exactly what that equivalent would be in Earth history, I compared ratios expressed as equatable fractions, dividing a human blink by my life expectancy, while dividing a geologic blink (x) by the current estimated age of the earth: 4.55 billion years or 54,600,000,000 months.
This is the same as saying ".15 seconds is to 23,759,309,600 seconds as x months is to 54,600,000,000 months."
The result was, to say the least, astonishing, if not flat-out wrong. Nevertheless, numbers don't lie, unless they're in big trouble, so according to my math, a blink of the eye in Earth's time is nowhere near 65 million years, or 7 million years, or even 10,000 years. It is, instead, precisely 10 days, 7 hours and 39 minutes.
Isn't that fantastic, Prof. I-surfed-away-from-this-site-ten-minutes-ago? You see how much better it is when our words actually mean something? After all, when we speak with greater precision, we make what we say that much more excruciating to our audience. Why should we smart people be the only ones to suffer?
And just imagine how much smarter we smart people would feel if Liev Schreiber, in narrating a documentary about the last ice age, were to read in his script "15,000 years ago might seem to you like a blink of an eye in geological terms, but to the earth, it's more like a day, so don't you feel stupid?"
Now imagine what he could do with that australopithecus script: "7.2 million years is a heck of long time, isn't it? You bet it's a long time. It's a really really long time. What did you think I was going to say, 'to the Earth, it's just about a year and two months?' You know what? I'm done entertaining you. I'm Liev Schreiber. I was in the remake of The Omen."
And finally, here's what he would say in a Discovery Channel special about dinosaurs: "I bet you're the kind of person who plays along with the contestants when you watch Jeopardy and you think that just because you get a few answers right, faster than the contestants, you would just kill on Jeopardy. But you would be wrong for at least three reasons I can think off the top of my head. First, the pressure on the contestants to respond is much higher than the pressure on you while you're lying on your couch, and that pressure has an impact on response times. Secondly, you're stoned, so you're most pressing concern for the next half-hour will be how to get the cheeze puff dust off your fingers. And lastly, you would have trouble distinguishing a noun from a verb on Wheel of Fortune. What makes you think you could even get past the door on Jeopardy?"
Friday, July 25, 2008
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Time on My Hands...
...will be time spent with you looking at uncredited pictures from other people's Websites touting their diorama- and model-building skills. This piece to the left is based on Robert A. Heinlein's novel, Starship Troopers. The detail and craftsmanship impress and depress me. Well, that's shooting fish in a barrel. You see, (cue violins) I was diagnosed several months ago with the worst disease to plague mankind since the Spanish Flu epidemic. Yes, I suffer from Dysthymic Disorder, also known as "being alive" or simply, "Irish."I wanted to kill myself when I found out I was depressed. And I was appalled when I learned first-hand just how little our society pays attention to my suffering. Did you know the government spends billions of dollars every year on research into things like cancer, but not one penny on why I don't like going to work after a three-day weekend? I was as outraged as you are, no doubt, but unlike you, I decided to do something about it.
Dysthymix is the result. It calls attention to a plight that effects so many people, for all I know, but more than that: it calls attention to me, and if it's true what they say, that what excites the writer excites the reader, then you must be on the edge of your seat by now, like I am, wondering what I'll say next.
My blog will save your life. You see, around the time that I received my terrible diagnosis, I also gave up smoking. I found I no longer had the attention or focus to work on my usual fiction. In a manner of speaking, I wouldn't have even thought to start Dysthymix.com if I hadn't given up cigarettes, so ironically, quitting smoking may turn out to be the best thing to happen to me after all. Because when I realized I couldn't concentrate on writing my serious pornographic short stories anymore, I discovered the composition and verse you read in my periodic "Poems Worth (a) Shit" series. But my favorite thing of all is my whimsical musing, which includes, as of today, some entertaining, yet vital insight into scale-models and dioramas.
The scene depicted in the picture below is part of a relatively large diorama at the Artillery Ridge campground in Gettysburg, PA near the site of that self-titled Civil War battle fought from July 1 to July 3, 1863. Artillery Ridge is a place where you can sleep in a tent, ride horses and have a history lesson crammed down your throat while you attempt to enjoy your vacation. Artillery Ridge brags that it's "the closest campground to the battlefield!
!!" and features a diorama, "800 square feet of model display!" with "Roughly 20,000 hand painted soldiers, horses, buildings, etc!" and "a bird's eye view of the battle in its entirety!" not to mention an embarrassment of riches in exclamation points.Setting aside the spatial-temporal paradox of instantly viewing, in its entirety, a battle that was fought over the course of three days, I really think this idea has wings. Artillery Ridge makes history fun again!* And realistic too. I can almost smell the putrification of 50,000 decomposing bits of cannon fodder of the profiteering merchant bankers and plantation-owning slavers. Although, that might just be my upper lip. Anyway, I digress. History isn't about analysis. In the case of this diorama, it's about neutering carnage by the miniaturization process, which either transforms horror into hobby-horse or, considering the diorama's exquisite attention to uniforms, troop movements and pickets, solemnifies death and destruction in its reliquary echo of the battlefield to which it refers. Or it's a way to get some free air conditioning for a few minutes in preparation for the short, but nevertheless excruciating trek to the visitor's air conditioned SUV in the parking lot.
Editor's note: Today's blog is dedicated to my sister. Happy Birthday Jessica!
*Exclamation mark courtesy of Artillery Ridge.
Saturday, July 5, 2008
W Stands for Women
Seeing those fireworks last night got me to wondering how people in other countries celebrate July 4th. But then I realized, with all the pyrotechnics we export to the world, it's pretty clear that for some blessed people, it's July 4th every day. The thought brings tears to the eyes, like so many cannisters of mustard gas dropped on a Kurdish village with the technical assistance and tactical blessing of the U.S. Government.
But Independence Day isn't only about bragging! It's also about a different kind of fireworks, the stuff of romantic conquest, the kind that President Bush induces in the leading ladies of the world. Check out my three-picture commemorative album of the Lothario in Chief in action:
Just look at the Prez here sweet-talking New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark back in March, 2007. "We talked about the South Pacific, and I praised the prime minister on her leadership in these difficult issues," Bush said. I bet it really impressed Clark that Bush was even aware of those "difficult issues," especially how come the toilets go the wrong way when you flush them down there. The Prime Minister was knocked off her feet as you can plainly see.
And who will ever forget our Smooth Operator charming the pants off Filipino President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo just one month ago. "I want to tell you how proud I am to be the President of a nation...in which there’s a lot of Philippine-Americans," President Exlax cooed. "They love America and they love their heritage. And I reminded the President that I am reminded of the great talent of the — of our Philippine-Americans when I eat dinner at the White House..And the chef is a great person and a really good cook, by the way, Madam President." Oh, how President Arroyo's knees fluttered, how her heart buckled. "Thank you," she said, then spent the next two hours in the White House kitchen cooking up some Adobo before fetching the president his slippers. Bush, what a dawg.
Bush's strongest suit in the romance division has to be the classic "I give a great massage" maneuver. It works every time. What chance did German Chancellor Angela Merkel have at the July, 2006 G-8 summit when Bush showed the world that, yes, he DOES have opposable thumbs, and he's not afraid to use them. Bush explained his gesture in a press conference. "It's important for you to understand we're really trying to figure out how to work together to 'solve problems,'" he said, adding, "I understand I may have the honor of slicing the pig." Nobody could be certain if he was referring to a state dinner scheduled for that evening, or the Chancellor herself, and if it were the Chancellor, what exactly he meant by "slicing the pig."
But Independence Day isn't only about bragging! It's also about a different kind of fireworks, the stuff of romantic conquest, the kind that President Bush induces in the leading ladies of the world. Check out my three-picture commemorative album of the Lothario in Chief in action:
Just look at the Prez here sweet-talking New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark back in March, 2007. "We talked about the South Pacific, and I praised the prime minister on her leadership in these difficult issues," Bush said. I bet it really impressed Clark that Bush was even aware of those "difficult issues," especially how come the toilets go the wrong way when you flush them down there. The Prime Minister was knocked off her feet as you can plainly see.
And who will ever forget our Smooth Operator charming the pants off Filipino President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo just one month ago. "I want to tell you how proud I am to be the President of a nation...in which there’s a lot of Philippine-Americans," President Exlax cooed. "They love America and they love their heritage. And I reminded the President that I am reminded of the great talent of the — of our Philippine-Americans when I eat dinner at the White House..And the chef is a great person and a really good cook, by the way, Madam President." Oh, how President Arroyo's knees fluttered, how her heart buckled. "Thank you," she said, then spent the next two hours in the White House kitchen cooking up some Adobo before fetching the president his slippers. Bush, what a dawg.
Bush's strongest suit in the romance division has to be the classic "I give a great massage" maneuver. It works every time. What chance did German Chancellor Angela Merkel have at the July, 2006 G-8 summit when Bush showed the world that, yes, he DOES have opposable thumbs, and he's not afraid to use them. Bush explained his gesture in a press conference. "It's important for you to understand we're really trying to figure out how to work together to 'solve problems,'" he said, adding, "I understand I may have the honor of slicing the pig." Nobody could be certain if he was referring to a state dinner scheduled for that evening, or the Chancellor herself, and if it were the Chancellor, what exactly he meant by "slicing the pig."
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