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revelations

No, it's not the End Times or anything. But I had some laundry issues that reached critical mass. One pair of clean underwear left. No clean towels. No clean dish towels. So I go to the laundromat, take up a whole row of washers, and do 8 loads of laundry. But what do I come home to?

This.

A closest that's... well, basically full already.

And I ask myself... what am I doing with all these clothes? The issue is not that there is a set of clothes here. The issue is that there is a whole other set of clothes over there that I just finished washing. And I'm just one dude. And I'm not even fashion-conscious.

Too many, too many.

I counted 17 pairs of jeans, but only 4 or 5 make it into the regular rotation, some too small, some un-presentable to decent folk. And don't get me started on the number of T-shirts. What you see here is only the remainder. I suspect there are Aleph-0 ("al-eff-naught") of them - infinite in number, but countably so. Not because they're interesting, but just because they've accumulated.

I'm feeling a purging coming on.

It's time to thin the herd. Lot of that going on in other places... I'm wondering why I have 2 shelves of fiction paperbacks that are already read... I'm not likely to re-read them any time soon, and the library has so many wonderful other books available, right?

And what do I need with 21 coffee mugs? I'm one person. And I'm annoyed that I don't have enough cupboard space, but it seems that I'm the cause of my own problems.

Slowly, slowly... the realization, she comes.

superglue, dammit.

Had a little "bagel incident" this morning, cutting a bagel the dangerous way, and slicing my finger a little bit. Nothing bad, just a deep papercut kind of thing that won't stop bleeding, but in the worst place - right on a bendy spot. So with a band-aid I go, but over the course of the day, the flexing results in needing 3 band-aid replacements. Annoying.

By the time I get home from the laundry adventure, I'm fed the fuck up. I've heard you can use Super Glue/Krazy Glue as a medical adhesive ("bonds skin immediately" and "non-toxic") for things like this, so I give it a try - hold the cut closed, a drop on the top, and POW! it's all good. No sting, no waiting, no fuss, no muss. Waterproof, secure, perfecto.

I am here to testify, people: it works. When you try it, you will become a believer.

the bumper sticker I want to see...

My kid's art was censored for obscenity
at Springton High School

wishful thinking, downtowning

Another grand debate of downtowns - a meta-issue, if you will. It should come as no surprise that I'm a fan of downtowns. Cities. Urban. Busy, doing... there-ness. Over the holidays in Evanston, the new fresh (well, to me) development... buildings rising to 15, 20, 25 stories downtown where once it was rare to be more than 10. You can see the in-vogue intentionality of the downtown planning in place - the mixed use, the "wedding cake" architecture to keep streets and pedestrian areas "at human scale".

But I wonder to myself... do I really see the connections and community that dense urban downtowns promise? Sure, there's activity, and more people - but are those people actually connecting to each other? Cafes strewn with singly-occupied tables. But all that just seems to be like Apple and Dell swooped in and shat out a bunch of laptops with people hunched behind them.

Apartment buildings, condos, etc. etc. tightly clustered together, but do people actually know their neighbors? I'm wondering how much of this is wishful thinking, how much of it actually happens, and how long it will take to really know one way or the other. Some of the streets I walked down seemed pretty sterile, even in the midst of the Christmas Shopping Season. I don't think you can Manufacture Community.

And my cynical brain is wondering how many of the cutesy shops are going to survive the recession, what with the disappearance of the almighty consumers, and the tightening of belts and all. Debating how much we really need artisan handcrafted dog bowls and fair trade organic vegan chew toys.

not the kind of transit I'm in favor of

that bacon thing sorta happened for me

No, not a grand revelation. Not a sudden overwhelming falling in love. Really, it was more of a falling out of love with bacon. Not that I was ever in it, per say.

It's just that I found out through adventures the other day... I thought I'd try my hand at making Candied Bacon, and what I found out is that it's just not as dreamy as one would think. I went for it a couple different ways, but in the end, even the best result (which ended up looking exactly beautiful like it does in the picture) was sticky and greasy at the same time, didn't develop a hard candy shell, and just was not really fulfilling expectations. And after it all, I has a bunch of bacon, and I really had no enthusiasm for it. It was there, salty and snacky, but I had no real connection to it. I ate it because it was there, not because I cared very much for it.

Sure, bacon is funny. And bacon mania has been sweeping the land. But I'm starting to fall into the bacon backlash category. It's just really not that big of a thing for me. I'm not going so far as to say that it's jumped the shark or anything, because there are plenty of fine people that have it as a part of their identity. But for me, I guess I've just... moved on.

It was there before me, it will be there after me, it doesn't need me to survive.

And this has nothing to do with the fact that I'm more curious about Zen-type stuff than Hindu-type stuff. Really, I swear.

HAL says...

HAL9000: "I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do." (Clarke, by way of Kubrick, by way of Quotegeek)

I punch the scrabble board into Quackle and ask it to analyze... apparently, it is pulling CPU resources across dimensional boundaries and unfolding space and time in the process. Either that, or Apple fucked up and doesn't know what 100% means. (oh wait... is this what they mean by "giving 110%"? Damn, that's some hard-working software)


And just... for the record for anyone I might be playing an online game of Scrabble with now or in the future, I swear (cross my heart and hope to endo) that I commit my play before I consult Quackle or anything else. Really, I swear. I just want to know what I'm missing. I can quit any time, I just like the taste.

it makes me greedy and lazy

This wave of virtual information that is immediately accessible and constantly on - free WiFi, Wikipedia, Google, video on demand in a browser window... it's so one-sided. Conditioning myself subconsciously to expect instantaneous results. That every whim can be indulged with a click of a mouse and instant response (if not instant satisfaction). If only it went the other way as easily. That the idea, the project, the result were instantly translated from a want to reality, through the power of a fingertip. No effort, no thought, no struggle, no work.

From the mouth of Sir Ben Kinglsey in The House of Sand and Fog:

Do you understand? Do not feel bad. Americans they do not deserve what they have. They have the eyes of small children who are forever looking for the next source of distraction, entertainment, sweet taste in the mouth.

ah yes... to recalibrate reference, to re-set expectation. Re-see priorities and make conscious choices. This is my hope. It's what I want for a New Year's present for myself.

vaporlock

So long without a post, I feel like I've abandoned some...thing. Some idea. Some what. Well, there were these big notions that felt like huge essays, and the formidableness, formidability, formidity, form of them got in the way of saying anything." That mountain is sooo high to climb, I can't possibly finish it today, so I might as well not even start now." Yes, this is problematic thinking. Whatever.

Expect musings ... on the question of very large people in very small places (obesity, airlines, and the "rights" of everyone involved). ... on the problem of vision and utility (how abstract desire gets in the way of effective results, and how effective results gets in the way of abstract desire) ... on the question of "peace vs. annihilation" (and how we take a pinch of each to create equilibrium and structure, just like the chickens and gorillas).
But in the meantime, just remember... no matter how fringey and immune to counter-culture shock you think you are, the person walking down the street with the pink mohawk will always catch your eye and prove that there's always someone fringier. (this would be the equivalent of "no matter how badass you think you are, there is always someone out there who can kick your ass" OR "if you think you're a hot-shit fast bike racer winning races all the time - upgrade a category and then think again")

it... comes in cans!

oh, delicious...

traveling leftovers

In the airport on the way back from California...

The Bizarro-World effect of hearing "If I were a man, I would wear a tie with the Constitution on it" in that weird everything-sounds-like-a-question sorority girl voice coming from a very caffeinated 20something woman talking to her friends. Hear it in your head "If... like... I was a man, I would, like, TOTALLY wear a tie, with, like, the Constitution all OVER it". I'm happy that young people embrace the Constitution and such, but it's surely weird to hear that in such a voice.
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And on the TV at the gate a little while later, Wolf Blitzer interviewing people on his jumbo-tron regarding the financial implosion and layoffs in the auto industry: "What jobs are safe?"

My question for Blitzer - exactly what kind of question is that? I mean seriously... there is no such thing as job security. And it's not like people are going to change careers based on today's CNN broadcast, so really the question and answer don't inform, theey just instill fear that the people in jobs not listed *aren't* safe. But since they can't do anything about it in the moment, all they can do is tune in to the next Blizter broadcast to find out, with breathless anticipation, whether the next danger has passed. Vicious cycle, indeed.
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On the plane - they're charging $1 for coffee, $2 for bottled water/soda, and $7 for cocktails... at what point does someone realize that the lack of sales (no one was buying anything from the refreshment cart) means that simply carrying the weight of the cart and containers of beverage on the plane is a money-losing proposition? That is, the amount of fuel that is required to keep that extra 50-100 lbs aloft in flight costs more than the profit from the sales from the cart? Just give it up... clearly people can do without tiny portions of non-food, so just give it up. I'd rather have the ability to walk to the bathroom down an aisle not blocked by a cart than have the option to buy a $2 coke.

puke

In another fascinating entry from the "so what if _____ ..." file:

If police/military use nausea-inducing incapacitation as a method of crowd control/non-lethal weaponry/chemical agent ... would it be possible to take anti-nausea meds first, and then not be affected by the nausea inducement? Like, say, if you're the protest-ey anarchist type, inclined to march in the streets and not disperse and that kind of thing. If you're expecting to get nausea-gassed, will anti-nausea drugs work as a prophylactic?

speechless

Went to the Re-Use Center yesterday to see if there were any diamonds-in-the-rough for travel luggage... picked up a couple random things, but found this in one of the pockets of a bag:


Somewhere in the back of my mind, there's a teenager who won't stop giggling. ("heh... they said 'bone' ")

well, there's yer problem, right there.

Came home to a funny burnt plastic smell the other day. Everything was still on, no fuses blown, couldn't really find anything. Not until days later, shuffling things on the shelf and bumping cables that the IKEA Sansa lights went out. Hmm... what do we have here? Ah, a burnt stub falls out of the transformer.

Great, just fucking awesome. That lump on the end of the wire? That was the white nylon-ish screw terminal - you can see the other one still intact. It burnt itself up, and still kept working. It doesn't creep me out that it burnt, it creeps me out that whatever caused it to burn would still be powered up, and supplying current to the lights, and potentially continuing to heat things.

Fucking IKEA. Shiny things, cheap prices... this is what I get for it.

After the house fire years ago, it took a while to start trusting consumer electronics again. This, well, this makes me leery all over again. I'm not going to flee to the woods or anything, but... damn.

death to the infidel

Ok, I'll admit it, it's out of perverse curiosity. That's the best reason I can come up with. I do this every now and then... knowing it's propaganda, I figured I'd see what people are spewing these days. Sometimes I'll turn on the radio late at night when driving through the bible belt, other times I'll wish I could get those guys in the bow ties to sell me a copy of The Final Call.

But this time, it was something that arrived along with all the other crap-vertisements in my mailbox, at some point weeks or months ago. A DVD - Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West.

So I watched the DVD. The parallels are really quite striking... between the rhetoric in Obsession, and the rhetoric of the Religious Right. Heck, between the rhetoric that Obsession deries, and the way they decry it:

From Obsession: "If you want to get people to fight, you have make them think there's a threat and they're in danger." hunh... no kidding. So... how is what they're (arbitrary "they") doing different from what you're doing? It's all rhetoric of fear to me. Es ist mir Wurst. ("it's sausage to me" - German phrase meaning: enh. whatever. same difference.)

This, along with the montage earlier that plays the "Tuesday morning, World Trade Center, NYC.... Thursday morning, Madrid train bombing... Thursday afternoon, London bombing... (some other day of the week) Beslan School - 200 children killed" What bugs me most? That the Beslan thing was so not a religious terrorist attack, but a nationalist seperatist group, and the deaths were caused by the Russian security forces and their misuse of tranquilizer gas during the standoff.

They compare the propaganda and global domination aspirations to Nazi Germany. They even interview a former Hitler Youth guy (now in his 70s) who, after montage of thronging masses at a rally, says "Now can you imagine: we were enlightened people, and we fell for this. Why wouldn't muslims fall for this." Nice one, buddy. "enlightened people"? Apparently you're not so enlightened, given that you seem to be a bigoted prick who considers himself superior to anyone who isn't like him. No surprise you were in the Hitler Youth.

The filmmakers hype up the way that mullahs preach about the divine blow to the enemies of Islam, and how eventually Islam will conquer the world. Hunh. Sounds a lot like what I saw in Jesus Camp.

More "death to the infidel", just this time, it's whitey screaming it from the rooftops calling for Jesus to conquer the world. More of the same, more of the same.

I look back on the time I spent watching this crap and wonder why I do it. I knew what kind of crap it was, and I watched it anyway. I guess I've got it out of my system now, but perverse curiosity has it's way with me every now and then.

arrested

How do you get arrested for resisting arrest? A bit paradoxical, isn't it? I sincerely hope that it all started as for some other reason, and the suspect was charged with resisting arrest...

votes

There's nothing but economic gloom and doom in the news - it's almost like the election has taken 2nd place in the headlines... As the election draws nigh, I seek refuge in the darker, less serious, more snarky aspects of it all - sort of a Politique Noir? Ever seen the bumper sticker "Cthulu for President - why choose the lesser evil?" Well I'm thinking... so if election law says that you can't display campaign propaganda within 100ft of a polling place - what about sarcastic campaigns for imaginary creatures? I mean, he/she/it isn't even on the ballot, and it's not like you can just write them in on a presidential race. So would campaign propaganda for a candidate that isn't on the ballot be permitted? Enh. I don't even have a T-shirt or button, so I guess it's a moot point.

But in the voting world, I stopped by the library to catch a screening of Election Day at the library. Call me jaded, but I had a hard time engaging it. So consciously lukewarm. Yes, voting is good. Yes, there were fucked-up problems at polling places in 2004. Yes, voter turn out is on the rise. And? Well, it didn't draw me in to have anything to discuss in the discussion afterwards.

But the one fun thing was that since I was in my car, I had to park, and seeing as how the lot across from the downtown library (William and Fifth) is open for business now, I thought I'd give it a try. While the voices ("please take your ticket") are far too loud, the asphalt surface is this cool permeable asphalt stuff that rainwater runs through. Cool, hunh?

Yup, asphalt was the most exciting thing of the evening so far. Bread in the oven, we'll see how that goes. Nowhere to go but up.

huntfest

Family came to visit last weekend and wanted to check out some local attractions. One on the list included Cabela's down in Dundee. I'd never been there, but have heard about it, and as one who isn't averse to shooting, I figured it would be like a big outdoorsy hardware store with lots of gadgets. That it was, sure, but everything there is for sit-down outdoors stuff. Seriously - outdoors activities that involve a lot of sitting and not much moving. Deer stands, boats, ATVs, fishing poles, that kind of stuff.

Almost all the clothing is cotton, which means if you sweat, you'll freeze your ass off. Very little technical clothing - mostly just big bulky stuff.

I was puzzled by how all the stuffed animal carcasses are posed. They're all weird dioramas of rage and conflict - emotion in the animal kingdom. Even the scavengers (vultures) posed to pick at a carcass are assaulting the carcass. Kind of weird. Sure, there's rage in the human world, but what is the message? As a Cabela's customer, am I supposed to want to buy a gun and shoot the water buffalo? Or the lions? Both? It's the question of whom I identify with in the scene, to watch the harsh brutal nature of predators/prey and just let the scene play out, or to intervene and shoot something.

argh

Okeedoke... just this one hope:

If I never ever, ever, ever ... ever see the phrase "Keep insert-name-of-municipality-here Funky", my life will be all the more better off.

Ok, I'm gonna go and co-opt some Youth Culture now for my own nefarious purposes.

Sheesh. People these days.