Symbiosis, or fractals on movies and music

The other night on one of those "Behind the Music" shows, to which I'm unapologetically addicted and will only turn away from when my wife mumbles a sour wish that I preferred sports (I'm missing the sports gene entirely - I can see why cats and dogs chase balls, but I have no idea why people do, or care to watch other people chase them), I discovered that Aerosmith wrote the lyrics to "Walk This Way" after they saw that Marty Feldman gag in Young Frankenstein. How cool is that?!

I get extreme jollies from that kind of stuff. As a kid, when other kids were sorting baseball cards or reading stats on some football team, I was devouring the The Harmony Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rock, which included Pete Frame's marvelous rock family trees (the third page on this Amazon "Look Inside" sample shows one). The Rock Family Trees traced which members were in which bands for specific albums and tours, and were festooned with little rock trivia gems among the branches. Through these things some interesting details come out, such as the Eagles, Poco, Jackson Browne, Joe Walsh, and Linda Ronstadt were more or less one big band behind the scenes, as were Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers.

I am the Cliff Claven of rock trivia.

So, the other day I was grooving along to the Flaming Lip's Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (like someone said in the comments of another blog recently, it's like audio crack), and I wondered why "pink" robots? Well, in two great sci-fi movies, The Matrix and Bladerunner, the robots were pink, mostly. (And in The Matrix they weren't technically robots, but software bots, so let's not quibble.) (And I think they're always pink because robots equate to slaves, and having someone black in those roles would probably too close to the bone for many.) Thus, I concluded, those movies are probably the influence or source inspiration for Yoshimi. I listened closely to the lyrics after that revelation, and I'm pretty sure I'm right. (If you follow the link above, you can preview the entire album and the lyrics on their site. What do you think? Is Yoshimi the red-headed step-child of Bladerunner or what?)

That got all up in my process, so I wondered about other albums that were probably inspired by movies, other than the obvious Heartlight ("Turn on your heartlight!" -- {full body shudder}) by Neil Diamond, his ode to E.T The Extraterrestrial. Went pouring through my copious CD racks and nothing stood out at me. The only other one I thought of was White Zombie's "More Human than Human", which was probably also inspired by the plight of the androids in Bladerunner.

TLD: "More Human than Human" is a great song, but I don't own that White Zombie album, because after I had a look at my brother-in-law's copy, I decided I didn't want to give my money to someone who would include a picture of a nun about to have sex with the devil in the cover art. Some folks claim it's just cartoon satanism, done for the shock value, don't get your undies in a bunch already. No. It just shows how utterly some people misunderstand the religious experience. Could anyone find humor or satire in that same graphic if the nun were replaced by a picture of their mother? I doubt it. MHTH is still a great song though. Steal it off the web somewhere. I recently noticed that you can hear either pudenda slapping together or the bed creaking during the sounds of ecstasy in the intro before that great guitar riff explodes, making it yet another song I can't play around the house anymore for fear of having to explain it to my young daughter who misses nothing. ;)

So, I went the other direction and tried to think of movies that had come from songs. That was easier. R.E.M.'s "It's the End of the World as We Know It" inspired Independence Day, and appears front and center in the movie.

David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust persona and songs inspired The Man Who Fell to Earth, starring David Bowie. It has a scene where the aliens make love, and it looks like someone slipped some acid into the coffee one morning at the dairy processing plant and everyone became ballerinas in the holding tanks for a short, wasted while. That visual makes you glad they didn't provide one for the mating ritual Kevin Spacy character's Prot describes in K-PAX where the mating participants feel like they've been kicked in the balls and have fallen into a cesspool rotten with floating dead skunks, or something like that. Sounds like fun, eh?

Demolition Man with Sylvester Stallone came from the song of the same name by the Police. What a great near miss of a sci-fi flick. It would have been great except for the fact that Stallone was in his "I get a cool car out of the deal" phase. I think for something like four of his movies in a row there was THE SCENE where Stallone meets, drives in on, or blows up a totally kewl car, dude. In Demolition Man, Stallone finds a cherried-out, freshly waxed rod in the underground habitrail of the good guys who are so poor they can't afford to bathe or buy Top Ramen. But the rest of the movie is a hoot. One of the best scenes has Stallone carrying an eight-year-old girl away from the smoking wreckage of a building, and a stupid reporter trails along beside him, asking this question: "How can you justify destroying a seven-million-dollar mini-mall to rescue a girl whose ransom was only $25,000?" To which the little girl responds, "Fuck you, lady!" I fall off the couch howling every time. (Oddly, it's not as funny when Diane Sawyer asks a question of the same caliber while interviewing the Dixie Chicks, for some reason.)

Finally, it hit me.

Superman. The all-time winner for cross-pollination. Comics. Movies. Novels. Songs. Frequent Seinfeld in-joke. Poems. Meme. Archetype. Center of many atheist philosophies. One of the five cornerstones of American culture that have become universal along with Star Trek, Star Wars, The Wizard of Oz (the movie, not the books), and Gone with the Wind. You make a reference to any of these anywhere in the world and everyone will get it. I made a CD recently of rock/pop songs called / that are about / that mention Superman, and I was able to fill the entire 70 minutes. My fave is the recent "Superman" by Five for Fighting. Men weren't meant to ride with clouds between their knees, indeed.

Thank you for joining me in this little Cliff Claven geek-out fanboy moment.

Mawwidge, that sacwed awangement...

TLD:When I started, I didn't mean for this post to balloon to standard Steven Den Beste length. Most humble apologies.

So there's been some talk because some guy in Washington - I don't care to go hunt down his name, suffice to say he's some Republican wingnut (surprise!) - who said that homosexuality is bad, and then said that incest and bigamy and polygamy and other things that comprise basic plot points of nearly every MTV series or "The Sopranos" are bad, too.

Well, anymore, seems we don't agree on what is wheat and what is chaff. The reality is that people pretty much have to sort that out for themselves, and hope they don't catch anything or do anything that haunts them later in the wee hours when the demons come out to play. (One of the borders you pass over from early adulthood (read "still a kid") to real adulthood is you abandon "I'll try anything once" and embrace "Ok, I don't need to experience EVERYthing ... ick." I think for a lot of kids these days it will be when they either try a "threesome" or "experiment" with same-gender sex only to discover they prefer the opposite gender for that particular activity.)

But, besides the issue of making those choices for yourself in the privacy of your own life (though the current administration would have it otherwise, see below), there are the legal issues concerning what we as a society want to drag into the legal arena and what we don't. And, further, there are two sides to that: civil and religious.

Let's get the religious one out of the way, since it's more or less moot. If the laws of a religion say it's wrong, not accepted, don't do it, don't even ask, then the discussion is more or less over. Yes, the pomo weenies out there will complain that it's not fair and doesn't Jehova/God/Allah love everyone and if He does, how come He doesn't want Floyd to marry Bruce? (Not that you'll catch anyone who's gone down the intestinal tube of postmodernism believing in a deity.) Like it or not, things are a little more cut and dried regarding marriage issues within most religions, and that's just the way it is. Some would say that's harsh; others think there's a good reason behind it. You know how you stand on that issue. So there you have it.

The civil issue is much more complex. Essentially, we can do anything we want in the civil arena when it comes to making laws. We could legalize dying bunnies Easter-egg day-glo colors and renting them out to bestiality buffs. (Which reminds me of a sick, terrible old joke - vegans turn away now: Q: "Why do you wrap your hamster in duct tape?" A: "So it doesn't explode when you fuck it.").

There are no compelling legal or logical reasons why there should not be civil gay marriage. (Imagine stringing together that phrase about fifty years ago with the old meanings of those words; everyone would agree that marriages should be gay and civil, of course!) There's really nothing more to say than that. However, there may be societal reasons against it derived from historical experience (I'll get to that later). The same goes for polygamy (both kinds!: polyandry - a babe with lots of dudes or, polygyny - a dude with lots of babes), or hell, group marriage, inclusive of any number of mix-and-match genders and orientations, thereby extending the original definition of the military term "clusterfuck". Really, if we legalize gay marriage but not polygamy and/or group marriage, how do we justify that? If we are going to revisit what's allowed in a civil marriage, we should throw the doors open and get it all over with; or reject it as a society, stay with what we have now, and move on. You pick which side you're on; I don't care. Just don't require that I explain any of it to my little daughter (and the new one on the way) until she's old enough.

I can imagine divorce lawyers across the land spazzing out and flopping unconscious onto their desk blotters out of sheer glee overload if wide open marriage were to become legal.

Of course incest and cheating should still be illegal because people with tails, three eyes, retardation, or bullet holes in them tend to have extremely troublesome lives - not that Bob & Ted & Carol & Alice wouldn't have enormous friction on household chore assignments, much less deciding on a restaurant.

And I think it goes without saying that children should be protected from the world of adult sexuality, period. If you think sex with children is a debatable topic, I suggest you go fuck a hamster; see instructions above.

Now the fun part! We skate from the available alternatives to how we arrived where we are now, in relation to history.

(Note: for a lot of the rest of this post, I'm in "thinking out loud" mode, for what it's worth.)

For some reason, most societies have abandoned polygamy. Some cultures still practice polygamy, but let's examine the list: some Arabian sub-groups, some African tribes, and some Mormons. If I haven't caused an aneurysm in my pomo audience (assuming I have one) yet, I just might now. Are any of these cultures representative of how you would like to live? If so, grab a passport, get your ticket, get your inoculations, and rock on! However, the rest of us, as a society, have agreed that this tribe of spouses thing just doesn't fit with our current understanding of interpersonal needs, stable family dynamics, and what's best for bringing up well-adjusted children*. Why? Polygamy was about wealth and power and real estate and worker bees, not loving relationships, romance, kinky sex, or loving families where everyone was valued (our current most popular reason for marrying). Which situation do you think is a better formula for happiness? Power and real estate, or a loving family where you are unique and loved and are not just glorified help.

*Yes yes yes, the polygamists say the kids turn out just fine, and we all know children are resilient and can thrive in a lot of whacked environments - just look at all the wingnuts who have children - but isn't our goal as a society to try for the best arrangements for everyone's mutual benefits? Your answer to that question is your answer to the question of polygamy.

The Bible allowed polygamy, but it was primarily to allow the taking in of a widowed relative's wife so she wouldn't starve. And there were strict laws about taking extra wives for the hell of it (I chose my words carefully, there). You had to be wealthy enough to do it, and you had to respect the pecking order and honor of the wives. About the only person who really benefited from the arrangement was wife number one, who got to be the boss of the rest of the wives. However, as our societies and our views of personal rights and needs have progressed, not a single Judeo-Christian society has kept the tradition of polygamy because we've replaced it with a better view of our responsibility to one another and an individual's worth.

TLD: An almost but not quite related issue is the concept of romantic love. I remember somewhere in one of my literature classes a prof said that the conception of romantic love was a relatively recent occurrence, beginning about the time of the troubadours. At the time, like most students, I just put that in my notes and let it pass, but now that I've got some experience on me, I realize that is utter horseshit. (There is a difference between horseshit and bullshit, but I've already taken enough of your time, here). The Song of Solomon in the Bible speaks, quite eloquently, of romantic love, and it predates the troubadours by centuries. Regardless of how authentic you feel the stories of the Bible are, there is no arguing about its age. Besides, the troubadours existed only in European society, and nearly every society on earth has myths and stories about romantic love. The Odyssey anyone? Further, one of the common things all human societies share is marriage. It exists or existed in every single society we know about. I think that implies a lot.

There has never been an example of gay marriage in all of the historical record of the world. Gay relationships and trysts abound, but a formalized, legal relationship have never existed as far as we know. Why? Well, (pause - deep breath - gotta break eggs to make omelets) homosexuality was primarily viewed as a sexual activity and not a civil rights issue or even a relationship classification. Romulus boffed Remus because, well, he thought he had a cute little hairy ass, not because he wanted to pick out a china pattern. With male homosexuality, there weren't power or wealth issues. Children don't result from gay sex, so that wasn't an issue, either. The issues were roughly the same with female homosexuality, though the power element was different, of course. It was thought to be about sex (even if love and attachment were involved) and not about the reasons people married in those societies, as marriage wasn't viewed as a required component of a romatic or sexual relationship.

I'm not saying that homosexuality being morphed into a civil rights issue in our age is a good thing or a bad thing; that just comes down to personal opinion, and I'm not really concerned with what yours is, nor should you be concerned with what mine is. In our age, with our different views on what marriage is, we are told by gay activists that "it's not just about sex". So, anymore, apparently it isn't.

Up to now in this windy oration, since two consenting adults are involved, the issue of gay marriage isn't really thorny, because we aren't dealing with the complexity that polygamy/group marriage can bring, and it's, in theory, about love. If it stayed that simple - two shiny happy people holding hands and skipping along humming "Just the Two of Us" - then I think the debate would be over. However, a larger issue is that marriage typically implies children. Since other people are involved, particularly non-consenting non-adults, it gets complex. This is, again, when we face questions on what kind of society do we want to have and/or create?

Do single parents make good parents? Typically, yes. Do gay parents make good parents? Typically, yes. Do ________ make good parents? As long as you're not filling in that blank with something that doesn't fit, like "pedophile" or "serial killer" or "a family of gorillas", then the answer is the same: typically, yes. However, what has proven to be the best situation within which to raise children? A mommy and a daddy. It's just a fact. That doesn't mean we should prevent single parenthood, gay parenthood, or what have you, but should we put things in place that will purposely cause less-than-optimum situations? That's not a question I can answer for you, and I'm not sure I've completely answered it for myself.

There is the issue that most gay people don't have children because of the obvious. If they have them, they either have the children from a previous heterosexual marriage, or they adopt (if it's allowed where they live). Of course lesbians can do the turkey-baster thing if they've got a pliant Birkenstock-wearing male who's willing to have a go with Rosie and, uh, hand over the result. Or, heck, they can just go fill out some paperwork at a sperm donor clinic and hit the stirrups. Either way, we are not talking about a huge demographic here, so the whole "impact on society" is moot, perhaps.

I think the final question, then, that we need to answer, is how will opening up marriage to be something other than, or in addition to, the contract and commitment between two heterosexual people, a man and a woman, affect society? The biggest question to be answered is how will it affect children's lives? Do we want those affects? Do we put the individual ahead of society or society ahead of the individual? Typically, those decisions have been made considering the two, with the individual's rights being the dominant factor. But here, we have an individual who can choose and one who can't. Yet we don't want to go down the road of involving the law in who can conceive kids and who can't.

Having talked out loud about it here (at length - sorry), it seems that, if we're going to be American about it, we are going to have to open marriage up to whoever wants to take the tax hit.

So, perhaps the thing we should agree upon beforehand is how we behave towards others who might be in a marriage arrangement (or not) that we personally don't agree with (presuming we disagree, that is). If I don't want to explain the situation with Bob & Ted & Carol & Alice next door to may child, allow me that parenting choice without any red-faced, spittle-flecked ranting about my being a close-minded bigot, and I'll grant you the same courtesy. If you don't want to present a heterosexual male/female couple as the norm for families to your kids, that's just fine with me. You even have enough children's books and a swath of PBS shows that will bolster your case to your kids. If my religion (or yours) says that gay people can't be married in the eyes of God, then accept that and don't mock my religion or expect me to disown it on that one basis alone (hint: it's about bigger issues than that). If you are going to have a group marriage orgy on your deck, at least put up some screens or something. See the theme here? In other words, let's be respectful and civil about each other's choices, even if we disagree, and agree to live and let live. Whattaya say? By the way, I know a great photographer if you need one.

The Poor Man weighed in on this topic, which got me to thinking about it, and he's much smarter than I, so go read his post and make sure you check out the comments. I'm not sure where some of the commenters were pointing their little red wagons, but maybe you will.

A Note on Punctuation

Grammar snobs may have noticed that I sometimes put my punctuation outside of my quote marks: "like this". Which is wrong wrong wrong. Strunk and White would red-pencil me within an inch of my sanity if they were alive.

But here's why I do that: I make my living writing technical documents. Nearly everything we put in a technical document is a variable or some thing that must be completely literal; it must contain no less and no more than what appears between the quotes. So, I've gotten into the habit of always putting the periods, commas, and semicolons outside of quotes. In typical non-technical writing, quotes are employed for much the same reason - the name of a song, scare quotes for being snotty in a flame war, and so on - with the sole exception of the words some one is saying, or actual quotes of dialogue. Since nearly everything except actual quotes (of what someone said) are like a technical term in form, and since the technical term entities in quotes typically do not have punctuation in their own forms by themselves - such as a title on the cover of a book - it's only logical that the punctuation not found in the term should lie outside the quotes. The only place I think punctuation inside quotes makes sense is when you are using punctuation within a quote (a representation of a statement or dialogue) itself. Yes, it's not proper current accepted style, but I think as computers take over, it will be. I'm on that freaking bleeding edge, baby!

That's also sorta the same reason I don't use the word "whom" properly. Languages are living evolving things, especially American English, and there are many dead words and grammar forms. "Whom", except in formal business communication, is at the intersection of dead words and abandoned grammar forms. It's going to be buried right next to "thee".

You heard it here first.

Canary in a Coalmine

Warning: Gloom, Despair, and Agony on Me post ahead. Surf away if you desire happiness and light.

To my friends and family I've been squawking a long time about our government's steady erosion of our civil rights, and our protections from entities more powerful than us. If you don't have civil rights, you have nothing, because nothing really belongs to you (such as your house, your privacy, your life). For example, if the government can take your house and money for suspicion of a crime, as they can with civil asset forfeiture - brought to us by the drug war but steadily expanded since - then at any given time you are vulnerable to anyone and everyone who has power over you or even merely dislikes you. Simply put, if the government can take all you own simply due to a rumor, then do you really have any civil rights or do you really own anything? Answer for those of you in the cheap seats: No.

The government, exploiting the terrorist attacks on our country by non-Americans, foisted the PATRIOT Act upon us, giving them further right to spy upon citizens, tap our phones if they simply feel like it, come into our houses without our knowledge or even a judge's consent, and they can even arrest and hold us secretly without due cause, bail, or a trial. Well over half of the Constitution is now completely irrelevant. (The only useful section of the PATRIOT Act was the new ability to tap all of a suspect's phones - mobile, landline, etc. That ONE part made sense, as long as the previous protections regarding the tapping of a citizen's phone were in place, which they're not anymore.)

Also, there have been other, smaller recent "privacy" acts. When I went to pick up a prescription recently, I had to sign a piece of paper showing that I had read and "consented to" the new privacy legislation which essentially allows any corporation, insurance agency (including about any private person who would claim to have some need for it), or the government to get all the information on which prescriptions I get. And, I had to specifically ask for a copy of the thing I was supposed to read and consent to; they expected me to sign without reading it. Not that it mattered. The simple math is that if I had not signed away my rights, I would have been unable to get my prescriptions. So, not only do I have to pee in a cup in front of a nurse (I had to do this once with a female nurse in the room to insure I wasn't cheating) to prove to my employer that I'm not doing anything illegal on my own time (and, of course, alerting their insurance carrier to any potential life-threatening - read "expensive" - diseases), I now have to let everyone who wants to know what I take to heal or deal with any diseases for infirmities. Is anyone else getting freaked about this shit besides me? (Was I the only one who saw "Gattica" as a realistic prediction of our future?)

Though it's not directly related to civil rights, part of the equation is the infamous "deregulation" of industry, especially media outlets. This, so far, has brought you soaring cable bills and the ruin of popular radio since media giants, like Clear Channel, now own most of the radio stations, and thus can control the content of radio across the nation. This is small potatoes against the gutting of environmental laws, and other regulations that keep companies from poisoning, firing, or otherwise killing you. Still, once we had laws which regulated media outlets because they were recognized as immensely powerful forces in influencing public opinion. In response to the realities of WWII and concerns about propaganda being fed to Americans, laws were passed that forbade Germany or Japan (and perhaps it was any foreign media company) to own radio stations or TV stations for fear they could be used for anti-American propaganda. This was a good idea. I think those laws are gone now. And, yet, who could have imagined the surrealistic situation in which we find ourselves where the Dixie Chicks say something bad about the President and are immediately banned from the airwaves because most of them are controlled by cronies of the President? Didn't any of these bozos have to take the history classes where we learned about McCarthyism and other abuses of/by the state that I did? (Even the freakin' spellchecker in Word knows the term "McCarthyism".) I've read blogs recently that say things like a media owner's suppression of opinions they don't like isn't "un-Democratic," it is simply their exercising their right to free speech by not allowing others to have it. Dear God!

The "Right to Work" act in Colorado, and a few other states - brought to you by "Big Business that Cares!" (Motto: "Fuck You! Have Some Cake!") - essentially strips away any and all claims one might have against an employer for unfair practices. The only law left in place on the side of the employee in Colorado is that you can sue to be paid for documented hours worked, and that's it. If you are fired or laid off in Colorado in a way that is illegal most other places, you are primarily introduced to the concept of "tough shit". Lawyers say they'll take your money if that's what you want, but don't expect a win. Example: My wife got laid-off this last December (the favorite month for layoffs as it allows accounting to adjust the year's books to make profits look better, and the side benefit of suicides cuts down on those requests for aid from the government), and as she was getting the "heave ho" notification, her replacements were being trained in not 5 feet from her. In most states, a lay-off means there's not enough work, so the company can get "relief" by letting folks go for no other reason than financial ones. Thus, training new workers to replace the old ones is illegal. But not in Colorado and other states with the "Right to Work" act on their books.

Now lest you think I'm some sort of commie pinko socialist, let me divest you of that notion. I think Capitalism works just fine, thank you. However, I do agree with most of the legislation that FDR and other intelligent leaders introduced after the country nearly went belly up for good after the Great Depression, a lot of which was caused by the very situation our Republican leaders are trying to restore. The average working guy/gal needs some protection against huge conglomerates that would prefer to be able to use us like Kleenex. There has to be balance. Allow layoffs, but then enforce the laws when a company is just trying to finagle the bottom line by sacrificing people's livelihoods. Keep the government out of our lives and keep their damned hands off our property, like the Constitution says.

Anyway, let's recap; so far we have:
- Civil Asset Forfeiture -- Allows the government to take any and all of your possessions and money via simple suspicion of illegal acts.
- PATRIOT Act (with sequel in the works) -- Destroys most of the Constitution, allowing you to be spied upon without proper controls, and then arrested and held secretly without legal recourse.
- Various "Privacy" Acts -- Meaning you have none. And pee in this cup while you're at it; you look like a Democrat.
- "Deregulation" of media -- Providing the environment where you can learn the latest opinion you must espouse to avoid running across any of the above list, unless someone feels like fucking with your life anyway.
- Right to Work -- 75 hours a week with no overtime, unless your employer needs to balance the books because they've run things badly or illegally, and your paycheck will come after the lawsuit and after you've lost your house and you can only rent a flat in Pottserville, and of course since your company owns Pottersville, your rent will be subtracted from the check.

And now, to top it all off, the current wingnut Republicans are continuing their gutting of America by trying to remove laws concerning overtime and by changing when a company can decide to pay you for work you've done. Short version, they want all overtime gone, they want to replace it with "comp time", and if you still want overtime pay rather than comp time, the company can decide to pay you up to a year or so later, all that time earning interest on your money they've held back from you. (See the Molly Ivins' article below for details on "Consider the Family Time and Workplace Flexibility Act" (Senate version) and the "Family Time Flexibility Act" (House version).)

Is there an explanation for this other than it's just COMPLETELY FUCKING EVIL?

TLD: Notice how almost all legislation anymore is named the exact opposite of what the true intent of the laws are to be?

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Note: I've included the whole article because www.creators.com doesn't provide permanent links to articles. Nonetheless: here's a link to Molly Ivins' current articles: http://www.creators.com/opinion_show.cfm?columnsName=miv

Molly Ivins
RELEASE: THURSDAY, APRIL 24, 2003, AND THEREAFTER

AUSTIN, Texas -- Boy, there is no shortage of creatively terrible ideas from the Republican Party these days. Those folks are just full of notions about how to make people's lives worse -- one horrible idea after another bursting out like popcorn -- and all of them with these sickeningly cute names attached to them.

Consider the Family Time and Workplace Flexibility Act (Senate version) and the Family Time Flexibility Act (House version). The Bush administration is leading the charge with proposed new rules that will erode the 40-hour workweek and affect more than 80 million workers now protected by the Fair Labor Standards Act.

To hear the Republicans tell it, you'd think these were family-friendly bills, something like Clinton's Family Leave Act, designed to help you balance the difficult combined demands of work and family. With such a smarm of butter over their visages do the Republicans go on about the joys of "flexibility" and "freedom of choice" that you would have to read the bills for maybe 30 seconds before figuring out they're about repealing the 40-hour workweek and ending overtime.

As The American Prospect magazine notes, when Republicans talk about "flexibility," it means letting business do whatever it wants without standards, mandates or worker and consumer rights. Ever since FDR's New Deal, working overtime gets you time-and-a-half in money, which has the happy effect of holding the work week down to 40 hours -- or at least preventing it from ballooning grossly.

The proposed Bush rules, which the two Republican bills codify and expand, would:

-- Exclude previously protected workers who were entitled to overtime by reclassifying them as managers. Companies are already using this ploy where they can get away with it. Say you're frying burgers on the night shift at McDonald's, making overtime, and suddenly -- congratulations -- you're the assistant night manager, with no raise and no overtime.

-- Eliminate certain middle-income workers from overtime protections by adding an income limit, above which workers no longer qualify for overtime. You like that? You make too much to earn overtime.

-- Remove overtime protection from large numbers of workers in aerospace, defense, health care, high tech and other industries.

Pay attention, this one is coming right out of your paycheck.

Big Bidness is lobbying hard on these bills. If you work overtime to pay your bills, look out. The trick is, employers get to substitute comp time for overtime, and the employers get the right to decide when -- or even if -- a worker gets to take his or her comp time. The legislation provides no meaningful protection against employers requiring workers to take time off instead of cash and no protection against employers assigning overtime only to workers who agree to take time instead of cash. Everybody gets screwed on this one, except the bosses. Isn't it lovely?

The proposed rules changes and the Republican bills provide a strong financial incentive for employers to lengthen the workweek, on top of an already staggering load. By 1999, in one decade, the average work year had expanded by 184 hours, according to Kevin Phillips' book "Wealth and Democracy."

He writes, "The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the typical American works 350 hours more per year than the typical European, the equivalent of nine work weeks."

The bills give employers a new right to delay paying any wages for overtime work for as long as 13 months. According to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, under the new bills an employee who works overtime hours in a given week might not receive any pay or time off for that work until more than a year later, at the employer's discretion.

"Without receiving interest or security, the employees in essence lend their overtime pay to the employers in the hope of getting back some time later as paid time off," the report states. "Employees' overtime compensation is put at risk of loss in the event of business failure and closure, bankruptcy or fraud. Furthermore, employees get no guarantee of time off when they want or need it."

The EPI explains why Big Bidness loves these bills: "A company with 200,000 FLSA-covered employees might get 160 free hours at $7 an hour from each of them (160 hours is the maximum allowed under the bills). That's the equivalent of $224 million that the company wouldn't have to pay its workers for up to a year after the worker has earned it. Considering that, under normal circumstances, the employer might have to pay 6 percent interest for a commercial loan of this magnitude, it could save $13 million by relying on comp time to ‘borrow' from its employees instead."

The slick marketing and smoke on this one are a wonder to behold. We're being told that private sector workers will get the same "benefit" of comp time as public employees. Wow, keen, except the government has no profit motive for pushing comp time instead of overtime. Boy, does this stink.

To find out more about Molly Ivins and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2003 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC. Originally Published on Thursday April 24, 2003

Open Sez-me

James Lileks has a rumination (scroll down) on the cyclical geek reveille call for a new paradigm in computer interfaces. "We've got to come up with something better than the desktop" is the mantra. I agree with him that the desktop is just fine, thank you. Most other suggestions make you wonder if the presenter eats spaghetti with a spoon.

My only quibble is he wants for the day when we can talk to our computers, ala Star Trek. I think that would just be a mess. The formalized language you would have to use to address a computer would be harder to learn than using menus and buttons - and you'd sound like Spock with aphasia. Offices would sound like a Tourette's convention at echo canyon. No one could use the words "fuck" (men's most common choice) or "baby" (women's favorite) as a password because it would unlock half of the PCs in a 5-cubicle area. And since most operating systems get twitchy when you simply flip rapidly between windows, cutting, pasting and typing away, imagine what would happen if you were in the middle of dictating something, and the toddler approached the dog with a sharp stick and a lighter. "Sweetheart! What are you doing! Put that down! Owie! Where'd you get that?! Leave Muffin alone. Fire hurts! Stick hurts! Come back here! You're going to get a time out young lady! I'll paddle your behind! Watch out for the...oh DAMMIT! [large thunk and much loud crying in background] HONEY!" You'd come back to discover your computer had blown the hell up, reformatted the hard drive, or patchily transcribed the whole episode and emailed it to your boss. And forever afterward, your boss would be haunted by a mental picture of you dressed up in an all-leather hooded fetish suit, replete with zippers, suspended only from your nipple piercings while your spouse tortures you with hot wax and pointy things.

The sheer technical feat of teaching a computer when to listen to you, when to ignore you, and to be able to tell the difference between a command and content would be on the same scale as training cats to swim in formation. Theoretically it's possible, but is it likely it will ever happen? No, we're pretty much stuck with the keyboard for good.

TLD: This reminds me of a true story. I once managed a group of content editors for a text-searchable computer product (think of Google on CD). The workforce was mostly young men and women, fresh out of college or jail, because it was scut work, and most people moved on within a year to find something more meaningful to do, like bagging groceries or taking tickets at a movie theatre. Once, probably while in a boredom trance, one of the guys accidentally pasted a letter he was writing to a buddy into the middle of one of our regulatory documents. It was one of those mid-twenties crisis, is this all there is, I could stand to get laid more, we got sooo wasted last Saturday, kinds of epistles; we've all written and read them at one time or another. Cut to a couple months later, one of our sales folks was giving a demo, happened to get a search hit on one of words in this letter, and pulls it up to show the potential customer. There, in the middle of all this boring govt. regulatory text about blood clotting agents or something there is something like this: "I just don't know what to do with my life. I know! I want to dance!" I was the guy's boss at the time, so I had the onerous task of pointing out his error to him, admonishing him to be careful, and face the sheer mortification and embarrassment the guy went through. The look on his face conjured the image, to me, of an agoraphobic acrophobe standing at the open door of a skydiving plane, staring down the full 15,000 feet to the drop site, his pants and underwear flapping around his ankles, while that really hot girl he has a crush on is pointing at him (or "little him") and laughing. I tried to help us both get past it with a little levity, but I've never perfected crushing a beer can against my forehead, and to explain why I had my head bandaged for a couple weeks always lead to the earlier story. (OK, I made up the part about crushing the beer can; I think in reality I told him he could mail the CD to his buddy rather than the letter, and instruct him to search on "angst".) Anyway, he quit inside of a couple months, I think. Oh well. Sometimes you gotta cut ties, put out the thumb, and cross a state line to catch up again with your dignity.

"This house is clean"

Once in a while, I really enjoy starting with a clean hard drive filled with nothing but zeros, creating the perfect boot floppy, loading the OS, throwing on the apps, and then restoring the media thangs I like: pictures, docs, wallpaper, sounds, internet bookmarks, porn favorites. And then comes the configuring. Get it all just right. It's like a Zen thing, raking water-ripple circles onto the clean, white pebbles, placing larger stones where they think they should go. Or it's like spring cleaning, getting the stale air and dust out of the house. Trading blue screens for clean windows and blue sky. Pausing only for the upload of an occasional sip of beer and the obligatory download. Out with the old, in with the new. (And don't forget to clean up all the garbage files that Windows makes whilst forming itself.) Defrag. 'Tis a thing of beauty. 'Tis a thing of joy.

I've done it in Windows 3.0 through 98 (I refuse to move up to the new versions of Windows that allow Microsoft to check on your configuration and require you enter the registry key every time you fiddle with the devices. Microsoft will wise up about that someday, but only after Macs and/or Linux have thoroughly mopped up their ambivalent market share), hitting on NT along the way occasionally (NT is a total pain in the ass due to security and account management stuff - it's much like dating someone after they've had a messy breakup), reveling in the clean and pretty Macintosh experience, and finally lurching and tripping through Linux. (I did VAX/VMS way back when, but I finally tossed out those doorstop/childbooster manuals about 5 years ago when it was clear only crusty legacy systems and the military still use it). I've seen 'em all. They all hold special places in my memory. Some made me a better man, some were simply lessons on what to avoid in the future. To all the girls I've loved before.

The order in which you load the applications is key, because, much like the politics involved regarding how women run their households (see digression below), you have to load the applications starting with the least important and ending with the big dogs who will run the show, because applications, as they load, associate themselves to the file types they open, so the bosses come last. Determining this order is often as much fun as putting together the guest list for a huge barbeque and beer bash. You gotta get the charmers, the blowhards, the wallflowers and social butterflies balanced just right so the party rocks on until the last person drops or dawn arrives, whichever comes first.

TLD: Ever notice the tension between women who have to share a house or apartment with another woman? My wife and I are of the opinion the woman sets the rhythm and the tone of the household, determines what happens and when, decides where things are placed, so when you get two women in the same house for any length of time, let's say a mom-in-law visits for a week, there is invariably tension as they try to merge their calendars or, more likely, obliquely battle for dominance. Lesser mortals (for those of you in the cheap seats, that would be husbands and children) are wise to just stay the hell out of the way, not take sides, and when summoned for dispute management, respond in non-committal mumbles while furtively edging towards the nearest exit.

After everything's loaded, you have to go through and open each application, because most of them have some last-minute annoyance they spring on you, such as a registration key or some addlepated wizard that's supposed to help your grandma send email (she'll end up calling you for help, instead), and you don't want these things leaping into your path when you think of that perfect opening sentence for your next opus. Then comes the time to configure Word just the way it must be. I always need to add the thesaurus button (hey, Sting uses a rhyming dictionary, I'm gonna use the thes.), throw on buttons for hiding spelling and grammar errors, add the obligatory "paste special" button so I don't have to fight with whatever formatting some programmer thought was worth saving or not, and tell clippy to fuck off for good.

Finally, the moment has arrived for the final reboot wherein one revels in the speed, the lack of error messages, and the playing of the latest startup sound - I'm partial to the THX surround sound filling-rattler, myself. Then close it all down, because it's two A.M., and soon your wife will come hunting for you just to make sure you haven't choked on a pretzel or something.

eefn'

It's funny how sometimes the attic door on my memory seems to have come open in the night and one of the toys falls out while I'm taking a shower or brushing my teeth.

This morning I woke up with an old Mac Davis song called "Poor Boy Boogie" stuck in my head. I haven't heard that thing since prior to puberty. It was on the album that had his big hit "Don't Get Hooked on Me" where he warned young conquests that he would use them like Kleenex.

Mac Davis had a variety show for a while - remember those? Sonny and Cher, Carol Burnette, and Bobby Goldsboro (of "Honey" fame: "See the tree, how big it's grown, but yet it hasn't been so long it...wasn't big" ... "And Honey, I miss you, 'cause you'd help me rhyme..."). My mom thought Mac was something else because he shook his hips in a particular way when he sang, so we had the album and watched his show every week. After the Mac Davis show was the time to hit mom with requests for candy or a new toy because she wasn't on her game for a good couple hours following his hip thing.

Once in a while Mac would introduce the audience to the wonders of "eefing" or "eefn'". This is a form of scat-singing/boom-beat box vocal percussion that sounds like someone has a ping pong ball lodged at their epiglottis and is tragically trapped in indecision about either swallowing it or horking it up, thus making gasping, squeaking, "eefing" sounds, all while rhythmically slapping their knee and chest with one hand. Another way of trying to visualize it is it's kinda like Bobby McFerrin having an epileptic fit in the middle of "Thinkin' About Your Body".

"Poor Boy Boogie" was the "Stairway to Heaven" of eefin' songs. "Poor Boy Boogie" went something like this (if I recall correctly):

Po' boy don't need 'lectronics to make no rock 'n' roll
Po' boy got boogie woogie bubblin' in his soul
Po' boy got rhythm
Po' boy got blues
Po' boy got boogie woogie right down in his shoes

(...this middle part of the song must've been stored in one of those brain cells I killed in college, but eventually Mac worked up to the "eefing" part of the song...)

Now do your thang on the jug and the jews harp!
I'm gonna blow this old harpoon!
Now give me something to eef with!
Now add some funky old guitar!

At this point in the song, Mac would eef for a while.

I think next time they are blasting disturbing noises and songs at someone in a hostage situation, trying to wear them down, they should pull out "Poor Boy Boogie". It would take a strong man or woman to withstand that sucker at a few hundred decibels over and over.

By the way, if you think this is all a figment of my imagination, here's another story about Mac Davis and his effin' prowess that I discovered while researching how to spell "eef".

TLD: In an example of sheer, full-blown synchronicity, Dooce's post for today is about songs that stick in your head. Ain't that something?

(FYI, I get my sound links from CD Universe because it's the only place I've found that offers samples of all the songs on a CD since Amazon engulfed CDnow (the other guys who let you hear it all) like a big web amoeba.)

Oy. Evangelism. Oy.

Does anybody but an evangelist enjoy evangelism?

I have always been resistant to any kind of evangelism, for probably the same reasons most people are. I don't like to be told I've got to embrace this GREAT NEW THING that's going to IMPROVE MY LIFE. I also loathe the ersatz empathy and "caring" that all evangelists employ, outside of fundamentalist atheist evangelists, of course; fundie atheists tend to enjoy shaming their prospective converts. Christian fundies tell ya you're going to hell if you don't accept what they offer, laced with all the fake concern they can muster without a permit, and atheist fundies tell ya you're stupid and always will be until you join their mission to save the world from itself and embrace the great nothingness. Hey, guys, I gave at the office. Can't'cha see my "No Soliciting" sign there? Heck, "Blind Date" is on and I'm missing it. G'way.

Nonetheless, there we were, my wife and I, at a recent ultrasound because my wife is pregnant with what we hope will be our second child. We've had a couple early-term miscarriages as many couples do, and so during the ultrasound, my wife was answering some questions about those - pretty standard procedure. Of course, my wife expressed sadness at our previous losses, and then, suddenly, there we were, in the middle of an evangelism moment. This one was unique in two ways: 1) it was our first "live" Buddhist evangelism event (we'd seen Richard "gerbil boy" Gere on TV, of course), 2) the ultrasound wasn't over, and at this early stage in the game, ultrasounds are vaginal, so my poor wife had a wand the size of a cheerleading baton planted in her privates. The woman sat there and expounded on how the ego attaches to things and the only way to happiness (outside of the obvious immediate but ignored concern of having the wand removed, evidently) was to not allow our ego to attach to things, such as sadness over the loss of a potential child. Picture the tableaux in your mind for full effect: wife in stirrups with intrusive wand being held by evangelist; evangelist in full conversion mode; wife and I striving to keep our faces as blank and pleasant as possible to facilitate fast escape. It made telemarketing and pornographic email spam seem benign.

One time some Christian evangelists came to my door because my wife and I had stupidly put our address on a pew card when we were looking for a new church after we'd moved. This old guy didn't say a word; he just put the card and a pen in my hand and turned away. That should've been a clue, I guess. Anyway, so I open the door to these two forlorn souls: a man and a woman who were agonizingly shy, blatantly single, and clearly so uncomfortable about having to go and "witness" together - most probably because that was the most time they'd ever spent alone in the presence of the opposite sex - that they were both on the verge of either passing out, or dropping and fucking on the hallway carpet just to get past the tension. I invited them in once they announced their intentions and clearly would not leave until I entertained them for a moment. They robotically started in on "Have you heard the Good News of the Lord" or some other evangelistic cliché, and I raised a hand to interrupt. A full 20 seconds later, as they ground down to a halt, I explained that I was already a Christian, so they could save themselves some time and energy. They stared at me for at least a full minute, both through glasses so thick their irises looked tiny Indian beads in a glass bowl, and then started up again, more or less where they'd halted, as if I'd pressed "pause" on a CD player. So I held up my hand again, repeated my information, then did a little nutshell summary of the Apostle's Creed just to let them know I meant business and wasn't a Unitarian or anything. This only made them start over from the beginning. So I just surfed with it, path of least resistance and all that. Well, unfortunately, my wife chose that moment to come home from work. So they started all over again, even though they were very near the end of their script. Believe it or not, they were shocked, SHOCKED! when we announced yet again as we lead them to the door that we were already Christians, so conversion wasn't an option.

Needless to say, we never darkened the door of that church again. And, we haven't filled in a pew card since. However, we have a few more ultrasound sessions. Maybe I'll take along a Quarter-Pounder with cheese the next time as a subtle message...

Just so you know

The four funniest moves ever made are (not in any particular order):

- Young Frankenstein
- Airplane!
- Raising Arizona
- The Emperor's New Groove

I'm a Conservative Har Har!

And, a big "Yeah, right" to boot.


Where do you fall on the liberal - conservative political spectrum? (United States)
brought to you by Quizilla

(Via, The Poor Man)

Pfffft!

Look, my political views are all over the road. The only thing that comes remotely close to labeling my views is "Libertarian Democrat," with all the contradictions that implies. True or pure Libertarianism is unworkable for a society such as ours. If the world were made of many tiny peaceful nations, all say only 200 miles wide by 200 miles high, and no one was insane or evil, and if it weren't stacked against having children so much, then libertarianism would have a chance. I'm a Democrat for the most part, but the loony left makes that embarrassing sometimes. Simply put, I believe in public education, universally available health care (whether it's private or govt., I don't care, just let everyone in), support of the infrastructure, a strong military, a balance between monopolies and overreaching unions (meaning we should have neither), and a government that's committed to individual rights and privacy. Our biggest shames right now are the Patriot Act, civil asset forfeiture, and the drug war.

The quiz didn't even ask about education. I think public education should be available, for free (through taxes, of course), up through the graduate/vocational degree level, meaning a bachelor's degree or a certification in some field. After that, yer on yer own. Gradual school will be paid for by those who so choose.

And vouchers. Gad. Feh. What a horrible, horrible idea. Let's hope that the fact that it's been voted down every single time it's been offered via the vote (as it should be) will limit or stop the spread of this wing-nut cancer. If "deregulation" of big business, particularly energy and radio, has been a good thing, I've yet to meet one person outside of the owner of a corporation who thinks so. Vouchers are just a tax scam, plain and simple. Very rich people* want their school taxes back to subsidize keeping their kids away from the riff-raff, knowing full well no one else will gain admittance to their private schools and the taxes removed from the public education coffers will make things worse. I do not want my tax dollars going to a private school, particularly a religious one. (Keep in mind I'm a Christian.) You just watch, if vouchers actually get implemented universally, the next phase will be, "I don't have kids, I should get my taxes back." And if you believe in vouchers, don't come whining to me what that last step happens. Hard-core, righty wingnuts simply do not believe in public education. They want folks kept stupid and impressionable. Lack of education helps in that effort.

(* I have nothing against the rich like some liberals do. They throw great parties, for one. I'm happy folks have achieved wealth, and hope I will someday, too; even though I am very wealthy judging by international standards. However, public education is a public contract as far as I'm concerned; and anyone, particularly anyone with money, who wants to pay for less than their share of the roads, schools, and other public institutions is a moldy little schmuck who deserves to be trapped on a long, substance-free road trip with Ralph Nader in a Geo Metro (since Corvairs are all but extinct), through the mountains, with nothing but, "You're a mean one, Mr. Grinch," playing incessantly on the stereo.)

About the most right-wing thought I have is that someone needs to go through the ranks of the NEA and expunge the Marxists and the Identity Politics goons. We need that agency, but it's got to be about educating kids in the basics, not getting them on-board early with the loony left's politics.

I'm increasingly of the opinion that our American government at this moment is about as far from "the will of the people" as it can get. I don't share the loony-left's idea that we are on the verge of fascism, or the wing-nut that it's all the liberal's fault and if we would just let them privatize everything and let them run things, we'd be OK. It's been an especially scary decade after the wing-nuts got away with using millions of our tax dollars attempting to hound a competent, popular president out of office via trumped-up scandals (and finally succeeding with a perjury trap), and then having the supreme court install their party's candidate during a tainted election. Scary stuff. Our media downplayed that hell out of that, but it gave the rest of the world (and quite of few of us here in the states) a big case of the willies. If America can have an election manipulated to that extent, where one party cares more about winning than letting the voters decide, then it points to how fragile things really are. It's like finding out dad is really Tony Soprano, to an extent. (That's just an example folks; Bush is not a crook, k? Cheney is, though.)

I think the world's current view and negative reaction to our war in Iraq has more to do with our current situation regarding our "leaders" than it does with the war and the intentions behind it itself. They (portions of the international media) are wrong whey they try to compare Saddam, a truly evil man, and Bush as two sides of the same coin; that's just misguided propaganda. Bush is not evil, and I think the administration's reasons for getting into this war are genuine and honorable (meaning they really do want to stop Saddam before he can nuke someone, like us). But the boys running America right now have been waiting for this kind of chance since the Nixon administration, and it's disconcerting to see what they are doing now that they've gotten the chance. We will have a lot to answer for once all the abuses Ashcroft has committed come to the surface; he'll probably end up indicted over something.

I sometimes wonder how long it's going to take to get America back once they're out of office. It seems to take about 7 years to recover from a bad president and administration.

And, of course, the world will not care that we managed to prevent Saddam from nuking someone, which he surely would have. There will be another resounding lack of thanks, but we're used to that, aren't we?

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Thank you 2Blowhards!

A big thanks to the praise and linkage from the always captivating, knowers-of-all-things-worth-knowing 2Blowhards, Michael and Friedrich! I hope that the daring souls who hop over here find something to enjoy. Or at least something annoying enough to justify the voyage. Hello!

why

Andy Rooney moment:Why is it that people who put bumper stickers that offer positive, life-affirming advice, such as "Respect Life" and "Visualize World Peace," are typically, to a person, consummate assholes? Or is this question redundant because anyone presumptive enough to preach via a sticky paper placard from the back of their car, guaranteeing a captive audience in traffic, is by obvious extension an asshole? I'm stuck on a Mobius strip here, I think.

Hell Yeah!

Via the venerable Redwood Dragon

The man who tries to make the flag an object of a single party is a greater traitor to that flag than any man who fires at it. - Lloyd George

I second that emotion. And cube it. Aw heck, let's throw an infinity sign into the equation, too.

Post-modern Pooh, or the real reason Christopher Robin married his first cousin.

After the Perfect Snowstorm abated here in the Denver metro area, we, the family, more than a bit stir crazy after being stuck inside the house for four days, decided to see a movie. About the only thing showing that was appropriate for a six year old was the new Pooh, Piglet's Big Movie, so off we went, sliding and scraping through the drifts in the mommy-van. I don't think I'm giving away the ending by stating right up front that every attempt at a new Disney Pooh cartoon since the original has been an abysmal failure, each offering more pathetic than the last. That trend remains solidly hell-bent for new depths of woe, afterburners firing, possibly setting a new benchmark on suckatude for a series franchise.

Yet, before the lights dimmed, I had hope.

It starts with Pooh, Tigger, Rabbit and Eeyore helping in a plan to steal honey from some bees. Piglet wanders up and wants to help, but is either ignored or told he's too small to help. So right away we accomplish two things at once: 1) establish the Pooh characters as essentially cruel little bastards, which goes against everything established in the original Pooh, 2) we are in the PBS braindead zone where every cartoon is about some supposed REAL ISSUE small children have, and presented in a way completely contrary to how a real child who wasn't "challenged" would handle it. You could look across the faces of all the little kids in the theatre, and they'd be frowning with frustration at the stupidity and meanness of the characters, laced with slight doubt that anyone could really be this stupid, so there must be something else here they're missing.

Piglet actually saves the plan when it goes wrong, is yet again ignored or insulted, and so wanders off to contemplate being small and wanting to be needed (in other words, he begins nursing some major co-dependence issues that will doom him to dating nothing but emotionally damaged Pigletettes for the rest of his life). The rest of the crew finally notices Piglet is not around and takes his picture book where he records memories, thinking that if they follow the pictures in order, they will find Piglet. I don't have the energy to go into a rant about how farged up and ickily post-modern THAT is. And try to explain to a logical six year old why someone would think it's a good idea to follow pictures of past events to find someone lost now. By the way, they end up completely destroying this little scrapbook of Piglet's during a fight. In addition, they work in a shameless plug for the last Pooh movie where everyone dresses up like Tigger so he won't feel "left out" - Pooh does Identity Politics! ...grumble grumble grumble...

The rest of the movie is flashbacks based on Piglet's pictures. The first story is about how - and you might be tempted to think I'm exaggerating for effect here, but I'm not - Kanga and Roo first move into the Hundred Acre Wood and Rabbit decides they are evil and dangerous so he plots to kidnap Roo to convince Kanga to leave. Let's get back to REAL ISSUES small children have... one of them is being very afraid of being taken away from their parents, particularly being kidnapped by a mean stranger.

{Heavy sigh}

I began the mental preparation to answer my child's questions on that whole clusterfandango. At least it filled time while I was trying to ignore the screen.

In the midst of dealing with a plot seemingly contrived by Quentin Tarantino's autistic brother, a "sweet" Carly Simon song starts. I want to like it because I like her old stuff, but...this...is...agony! My God! I've heard lovey-dovey, church camp, stoner folk songs composed by earnest but tone-deaf kids who were further challenged by the unexpected harmonics created by the braces on their teeth who have stumbled upon better tunes. John Belushi smashing the guitar against the frat house wall wouldn't be enough to expunge those turgid notes from my ears. She even does that thing I do that prompted a voice instructor to suggest that I should perhaps find other ways to express myself musically in the middle of my second lesson: she hit some low note on the scale, and then swang upwards, hitting every sharp and flat along the way, voice cracking a couple times. I wouldn't be surprised to find that the recording producer had burst into flames at that moment. There are 7 new Carly Simon songs in this opus.

And it just gets worse and worse until Pooh and Piglet seemingly fall to their deaths in a massive waterfall while entombed in a rotten log. After a full minute of the remaining characters holding their heads down in what I presume was mourning, Rabbit lifts his head and says, "And I didn't get a chance to tell Piglet how I felt about him." !!! Who cares that they just fell to their freakin' DEATHS! It's all about Rabbit's FEELINGS!

At this point, my daughter turned to me and asked me if I was OK. I do suppose seeing my eyes bulging out that far while every vein in my neck and face were straining in full relief via the reflected light from the screen might have been alarming.

Of course Pooh and Piglet made it out of the log before it fell, but then another Carly Simon song starts, and we cut out of the cartoon to a music video of Carly herself, holding a guitar but not playing it as she sings. You can just smell the dismay of the children by this point, and we leave.

On the way back home, I ask my daughter what she thought of the movie and I quote, "I'm surprised they thought that was a good movie to put into theaters."

Bless her heart!

P.S. The real Christopher Robin really did marry his first cousin. I imagine that will be covered in the next Pooh movie: Christopher Robin Falls Down a Very Big Hole, directed by Woody Allen or Roman Polanski, no doubt.

Conspiracy Theory

A few posts ago, I tried to include a picture of a scary octopus I found in a children's book my daughter had checked out from the library.

It pulled up here, there, and everywhere in Mozilla (my browser of choice these days - it's a solid piece of work, and I support the open source girls and boys when I can, plus it works as good as and often better than MS IE). But, alas and of course, Microsoft's Internet Explorer wouldn't load the picture. It wouldn't open a new browser window if I merely linked directly to the graphic. No, I had to create a whole new frickin' page over at geocities/yahoo and link to that for IE to deign to show it. Why is that? It might be something geocities/yahoo does, but if that were entirely the case, why did it work in Mozilla?

I sometimes wonder if Bill and the boys and girls meet in dark, secure rooms lined with Jolt Cola cans and brainstorm how they can fark with the customers this time. (Popup hell, anyone?) It's funny how they behave initially and offer the coolest stuff until they perceive they've got a captive audience. Then bam! out come the ropes and the sand-infused jar of Vaseline. (They did get caught sending alternate style sheets from their sites out to non-MS browsers so they'd look messed up.)

The day edges nearer when I will switch completely from Microsoft products, I think. My last Microsoft love is Word, but with enough abuse, love fades. There is also the ongoing sin of Powerpoint to consider. (Teachers are using it in classes now, heaven forbid. Just one more thing to add to the list of questions to the new teacher: "No green party stuff, no DARE stuff, no NOW stuff, no NEA "self-esteem" stuff, no Creationist stuff, no GLAAD stuff, and no Powerpoint, right?") I've read in the tech mags that the next version of Windows and Office won't be backwards compatible, won't store Word documents in a transportable format, and everyone's work will be stored out on the web in Microsoft servers. (Was that a Microsoft logo I saw on Neo's pod?) The day that happens, pull any and all stock out of Microsoft, because they will be, like, so over.

I don't even load the Netscape browser on PCs anymore - it's just a waste of space. I mean, it commits all the sins of IE, but offers none of the niceties.

I used the Opera browser for a while, but the interface is so user-vicious it just screams "developer designed." As super scary smart as most programmers/developers are, they suck at interface design. It must be a savant thing where they can drop awesome data-crunching code like Raymond/Dustin can count a box of toothpicks before it hits the floor, but if you try to suggest a svelte, uncluttered screen that does what it looks like it should do, they start screaming about buying their undies only at K-mart. Just look at most Linux GUIs (Graphical User Interface) for proof. My favorite is the modem software that will "load" the modem and turn it on but not dial; you have to specifically ask it to dial. After you ask it to dial, it won't handshake with the other system it encounters; no, you have to ask it to do that, too. Once you ask, teeth clenched, to handshake, it sits there waiting for you to OK the actual transfer of data! By then, only the uber-geeks haven't booted over into Windows to get their damn email.

But, at least those wonky interfaces are honest and as guileless as inbred petstore puppies. It gives me the creeps when Microsoft stuff refuses to work like it should. What is it doing behind my back, anyway? I just know it's ratting me out to THE MAN, even though there's nothing to rat me out for. If it could, it would probably try to come on to my wife behind my back.

Hmmm...

Excuse me, I need to go talk to my wife...

Update: It seems Microsoft does keep offering my wife unsolicited "downloads." Those bastards.

Wrong

By two days.

Still, the sentiment remains the same.

Godspeed everyone.

Warday

Well, this is probably it. The day we start dropping bombs. And, hey, Happy St. Patrick's day. May the Lord protect those caught in harm's way.

... tone switch ... kind of ...

I'm not typically a fan of the grotesque. I think it is characteristically the result of too much navel gazing, meaning not enough walks in the sunshine or laughing it up with friends. It is an affliction of the spoiled, in two senses of the term: spoiled by having too much, or spoiled (ruined) by extensive trauma. Only the latter has an excuse.

Sometimes though, grotesquery is the wrapper for beauty. Think of David Lynch's better films, Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive, and The Elephant Man, and I think you might see what I'm getting at.

Joe Sorren's grotesques have an odd sort of beauty. Make sure you hit the archives, too. (Via Dooce.com)

Jest tryin' t'he'p

I've noticed a new fad amongst blogs is to put up an automatic babel fish translator.

I'm typically not one to join fads. Like most men, I have the same clothing and hairstyle I arrived at somewhere in my twenties because, well, they work.

However, in the spirit of the times, I'd like to offer The Dialectizer. It does sorta the same thing as the babel fish, but funnier.

Behold: Third Level Digresshun, dialectitized.

Nightmare fuel

Click to open

"O is for an Octopus changing lightbulbs in the chandelier," says the text for this picture in a children's book called "Alphabeasts" by Wallace Edwards.

This is a clear example of someone doing children's book who doesn't have a child. Two other graphics in "the nightmare before bedtime" are a bat flying around with a large hammer (who the hell knows what THAT'S supposed to mean) licking an ice cream cone, and a big, hairy tarantula crawling out of an upended vase - both rendered as realistically (hammer notwithstanding) as the octopus, here.

If this guy did have children, the violent nightly screams of his children emerging from nightmares would shock some sense into him. He'd draw a Bunny, an Ox, and a freakin Triceratops respectively for those parts of the alphabet. And thereafter his wife would remind him, no doubt weekly, of that time he frightened the children with his creepy drawings from that book.

Instead, he thanks his mom profusely in the dedication, which of course renders the scene of a very patient, elderly mom who would like her grown son to get the hell out of the house, and maybe even date for mercy's sake, holding his latest opus in her wrinkled hands, with a puzzled but carefully pleasant look on her face, saying, "Yes, dear, it's very nice. Yes, it looks very much like an octopus!" while he gases up at her with that sweet little hopeful look he had when he was offering her doodie from his diaper as a toddler. All the while she's assuming the thing would never get published (with a heavy inner sigh), and thus sensitive little minds wouldn't have to face the horror she's grasping, so why be honest? In order for the thing to get past a publisher, mom must have done what Forrest Gump's mom did to get him into school.

The fact that the big, greasy thing is hanging from above, its suckers making little popping and sucking sounds as it feels up the light fixture, unscrewing highly pressurized bulbs that explode like glass grenades, is enough of an image to give anyone the fantods. Crimeny.

It should be noted: I believe James Lileks coined the term "nightmare fuel" on his wonderful site. I'd not read it before I saw it there, and have seen it many times since. Due to the fact that every single blogger on the web reads Lileks, I'm pretty sure he's the guy.

Disclaimers or Full Disclosure or "What the hell?"

It may seem incongruous that I offer suggestions on children's books, followed by posts on Capt. Kirk doing space chicks and Bono of U2 singing about his boner. Well, I view most of the web as a place for adults, adults communicating with one another. Thus, I will write like an adult and broach adult topics. I do not and will not allow children on the web unsupervised. When MPC (most precious child) does get to use the web, she's confined to kid, reference, science, and merchant sites. She will never have a computer in her room. All computers will be in the common room.

Filters will never work entirely and p0rn spam is ubiquitous. We really need some laws at the federal level halting pornographic email spam. It wouldn't be as difficult as some make it out to be, as in "define pornography first," which is nearly impossible. No, there is a practical approach. The law could be that no unsolicited nude pictures or any email containing any term from a specific list of words for body parts and sex - not including non-obscene, informational terms like "breasts," "penis," etc. - could be sent via email; the penalty for doing so being threat of fines and prison, which would include "ass poundings" as described in Office Space. The key term is "unsolicited" so that friends mailing friends dirty/fun stuff would still be OK. Just this morning I accidentally opened up a p0rn spam with a large, full-color picture of active boinking. The "from" name was someone I know, so I was pretty pissed when it turned out to be hard-core p0rn, because not only did I open it at work - a firing offense - but now the p0rn meisters have my email and IP address from the graphics that loaded, so I will now be inundated from that site. Those bastards.

I am also a Christian, so some other Christians will no doubt question my use of various vulgarities. From my understanding of the Bible, it doesn't have anything to say directly about what we currently call "profanity," a.k.a. cussing. There are a lot of general things about living a pure life, keeping your thoughts pure and so on, which are all good goals. I maintain that cussing, discussing sex, telling blue jokes and such aren't necessarily impure, and depend on context. Am I having pure thoughts when, ahem, "knowing" my wife?

I have a buddy who can say "fuck you" with such affection, it feels as if he had used the other word commonly associated to that particular deed (that being "love" for those of you in the cheap seats). Intent behind words is much more important than the words themselves. If I tell a dirty joke I've read on the net to my wife, is that really bad? I don't think so.

That doesn't mean I'll walk around talking, or writing, like a Quentin Tarantino character all the time. But once in a while I'll be crude, because crude can be fun. Harmless fun. We are here to have fun. To fart around, as Kurt Vonnegut puts it.

True story: Once a charming, wonderful Catholic Priest was telling me a story, and at one point he'd used the term "move it over a blond" as his instruction on how far to nudge a board he was trying to nail down. After the story, I asked what he meant, and he said, "Oh ... well ... YOU know, um, a pubic hair from a brunette is thicker in circumference than one from a blonde, and a red-head's is the thinnest of all." So he meant move it about two pixels instead of one or three. "Oh," I said, in response. And immediately made my escape so I could laugh myself silly. I think even that Priest would agree that crude is often fun, and not a sin.

The commandment "do not take the Lord's name in vain" is actually about claiming to believe in God or to belong to God when neither is true. In other words, don't pretend to believe in God if you don't. Lip service is not welcome. It can also mean don't curse someone in the name of God - that's a big no no. But, it's not about cussing, damnit.

Though, using the names of, titles, or references to God, Jesus, Mary, etc. is disrespectful - to say the least - and a sin. I do avoid using names and terms for God and other holy people, with the sad exception being a habit I can't break where I tend to bellow Jesus' name and title when drastically startled. Much like that fabulous moment in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where King Arthur bellows the same when a bunny bites a knight's head off - mind you he does this whilst on a search for the Holy Grail. (I don't think a lot of folks get that joke during the movie.) However, besides asking forgiveness, I justify it in that if the thing that startled me were to actually kill me, I would be saying Jesus' name as I met him. Hopefully he'll find that amusing and not make me do some time in fundie heaven.

The freshest of up-to-now tips

Here's a must-read article concerning the upcoming war: Our World-Historical Gamble

Norman Mailer's recent article "Only in America" in the "New York Review of Books" is a good companion piece to the above.

It's about that?

Music has always been a visceral experience for me. If reincarnation were real, somewhere in my atman past I'd have been one of those rats that followed the Pied Piper to a mysterious death. I think I even have a touch of synesthesia because some songs can evoke strong smells, intense memories, and sometimes even visual artifacts. Who needs drugs when you have natural trails, eh?

Music sometimes overwhelms me such that I don't notice all the elements of a particular song until maybe the 100th time through - sometimes even years later. Here are some songs that I was shocked, SHOCKED to discover what they were about many listenings later.

Semi-charmed Life by Third Eye Blind
A guy gets whacked on meth, does a booty call, falls asleep on top (and inside) of her after he pops, and then laments the fact that she drops him like a hot rock. The first few times I heard it, whilst grooving on the tune and not paying close attention to the words, I thought it was about a guy wanting something better for his life. I didn't really listen to the lyrics until the radio started playing the censored version, where they bleep out "crystal meth," making me wonder what they had to bleep.

Sledgehammer by Peter Gabriel
A song about fucking. The video threw me off on this one. It dawned on me later when a bunch of us were hanging out at the drive-in waiting for the show to start, and I heard the lyrics whilst a little drunk and the haze of booze cleared it up for me. I blurted out, "This is about screwing!" and one of the girls, after a pause, said, "Well, duh." Yes. Duh, indeed.

Second Hand News by Fleetwood Mac
From the monster bitter-divorce-and-breakup-album everyone in the English-speaking world has heard at least a few times. To this day, it's one of the first albums most people above a certain age buy when they upgrade their player; it was just released in a cool surround version for DVD players. The song is about what it appears to be, a vicious breakup. But it has a nasty twist - it's also about masturbation - kind of a spin on "go fuck yourself" - i.e. - "go fuck yourself by yourself." Near the end, there's even an orgasmic three symbol shot to drive the point home. "Let me lay down in the tall grass and let me do my stuff."

Elevation by U2
The best band in the world, and a Christian band at that, finally writes a really sexual song. Wow. The concept so boggled me that I thought this was a spiritual song for a while. It can still double as one, but I really think it's all about the horizontal bop, the beast with two backs, wink wink nudge nudge:

I need you to elevate me here,
At the corner of your lips
As the orbit of your hips
Eclipse, you elevate my ... SOUL!
I've got no self-control
Been living like a mole
Now going down, excavation

And what guy hasn't felt like this at some point: "Maybe you could educate my mind ... Explain all these controls." The submarine sounds (a phallus gliding through the water) throughout are a cute touch.

Lovable by Elvis Costello
He's calling her a slut! I almost put this on a mix tape for a girlfriend! (All guys are Rob Gordon (John Cusack) in High Fidelity to some extent.) "It's going around town, you're so lovable... The toast of the town and the talk of the bedroom." And the line "As you lie there so lifelike below me," well...words fail.

More than Words by Extreme and
End of the Innocence by Don Henley
Both very sweet-sounding songs, but the guys are just making sneaky, skanky bids for fourth base here. "More than Words" is the gambit teenage boys with boners have used since the dawn of time: "If you loved me, you'd show me." "End of the Innocence" visits a discrete level of evil; he's preying on a girl whose parents are in the middle of divorce, other things are falling apart in her life, she's vulnerable - he even taunts her to "offer up her best defense" - and to top it off, he even tells her it's a one-nighter. Wham bam, thankyou ma'am! Henley's "Dirty Laundry" was his first reaction in song to getting busted for having nekkid underage girls floating around stoned in his pool; this is the "prequel" about how he got them there in the first place. "We've been poisoned by these fairy tales." Do tell, Don.

Breakout by the Foo Fighters
It's intriguing that the current savior of rock and roll, the great Dave Grohl, was the drummer in the band with the previous savior of rock and roll. This hilarious song is about getting zits from stress, not breaking free of something, as I first thought. "I don't wanna look like that." Scream along with Dave at the end of the song, "BREAKOUUUUUUT! ... BREAKOUUUUUUT!" It helps clear the skin. Promise.

Some Kinda Wonderful by Sky
You probably haven't heard this song (check out the sample). It's done by a Canadian act that hasn't broken in the states, yet. However, it's such a sticky-sweet wad of pure bubblegum, it is surprising the pop stations didn't squeeze this in between Britney and the various iterations of the new Monkees. It comes off as your standard "my girl is the best" pop staple. However, "My Girl" and the nearly identically monikered "Some Kind of Wonderful" don't contain the lyrics, "You can call me baby if you let me hold your soul," and "the eyes are kinda freaky, and the horns are there to stay." She's a little devil, that one.

Sample and Hold by Neil Young
Queue the Sesame Street song "One of these things is not like the others." I got this one first time out, but I have secret knowledge that enabled my revelations, which I will share with you now. Please use discretion in dissemination. The song is about ordering a robot woman to "sample and hold." Tee hee. But, "sample and hold" is the basic mechanism for the generation of all synthesizer music; a tone is created by something, a chip or analogue oscillator, and the synth samples that sound and holds it to create a note when you push one of the keys. This and other songs on the Trans album are created entirely with synthesizers, including Neil Young's "singing." This project resulted from his trying to find ways for his children, who have cerebral palsy, to communicate easily. "Transformer Man" on the same album is a love song to his son. Neil discovered that his son could control model trains, and that it gave him a feeling of control over something, so the song is about his little boy, the Transformer Man.

What songs have surprised you?

Scary movie.

I went to see The Ring alone in the theatres (it's on DVD now). It was the middle of a cold day. I was feeling kinda achy, a little crabby, definitely not in a mood to be shaken up. I thought the movie would be a typical modern horror film, not very scary, perhaps with a goopy monster and a couple soundtrack-induced "boo" moments - the thunderous note that augments a surprise on the screen.

It starts out creepily enough. Which is nice. So many movies can't do "creepy" it seems. Then the first shock came, replete with the "boo" note. Scared the hell out of me. I jumped. I think I snorted, too. I got goose bumps all over, which are even more unpleasant on a cold, achy day. Had I been holding my drink, I would have popped it, geysering it onto the people two rows down from me (which reminds me of another story*). My fight-or-flight mechanism had returned a vote of full confidence to beat feet to a warm, well-lighted place, preferably somewhere they serve beer. I seriously considered leaving the movie - a first since I was seven years old and a Harryhausen animated monster came a little close to those things that chased me in those nightmares where you run in slow-motion terror as the beast's claws touch your neck. Besides, my wife lives for these moments of sheer spazitude "well developed flight response" of mine, so why not share this with her? Well, after consulting my pride's thoughts on the matter, I stayed. I haven't had that much fun being frightened to death in a long time. Go. Rent it this weekend.

Yeah, yeah, we all have those mutant friends which no movie scares - they will say it's only funny. Well, they used to pick the wings off flies, too, so let's not use their psyche as a yardstick for anything, k? The results are messy when someone considers Tyler Durden a role model.

*Another story: I had a girlfriend in high school who reflexively threw an entire large coke at the screen during Jaws when the head floated out of the hull-hole at Richard Dreyfuss. It broke open and showered the eight rows in front of us, which nearly caused a full-fledged panicked dash for the exits theatre tragedy. Imagine: you are confronted with one of the scariest things ever seen on the screen to date, it's an underwater scene in THE shark movie, and suddenly a wave of cold fluid splashes across the back of your head. The wave of people scurrying for the aisle looked like the result of that childhood science class experiment where you cover the surface of a pot of water with pepper and then touch the surface with a bar of soap. Nearly everyone got to the aisle before their "wait a minute" sanity check kicked in and reminded them they were in a theatre, and not in scuba gear. My girl friend just waved at them with that smile of hers, and this was back before common courtesy died its ugly public death, so they just waved back and sat down. When we went to "Raiders of the Lost Ark," she was the only one laughing at German dialog (her dad had fled Nazi Germany), so we got some odd looks, then, too. We didn't last beyond that year - nothing to do with the movies, though. She became a black belt in Tai Quon Do, has two kids and a hubby, in case you're curious.

If you're not in the mood for a good scare, see About a Boy. THE best movie released last year, end of discussion.

I love the movies. I really do.

34% Geek.

Found via the Poor Man.

You are 34% geek

You are a geek liaison, which means you go both ways. You can hang out with normal people or you can hang out with geeks which means you often have geeks as friends and/or have a job where you have to mediate between geeks and normal people. This is an important role and one of which you should be proud. In fact, you can make a good deal of money as a translator. Normal: Tell our geek we need him to work this weekend. You [to Geek]: We need more than that, Scotty. You'll have to stay until you can squeeze more outta them engines! Geek [to You]: I'm givin' her all she's got, Captain, but we need more dilithium crystals! You [to Normal]: He wants to know if he gets overtime.

Take the Polygeek Quiz at Thudfactor.com

This is funny, because I make my living doing just that.

However, I think my actual geek quotient might be a couple ticks higher because I made a Winamp skin once. That's geeky.

Don't you know there's a war on?

Yes, I do. However, I have nothing to add to the dialogue that isn't already being said, and said much better than I could.

Personally, I am ambivalent about the war. Saddam is a bad son-of-a-bitch. He needs to go if he's gonna get nukes. However, this will most likely be the first time that America has initiated a war outside of its borders. I say "most likely" because I read an article recently (can't find the URL now) that put forth the theory that in the Mexican-American war and the Vietnam war, we taunted the other side until they shot at us, and so we didn't fire the first shot, but having been shot at were free to "defend" ourselves. I don't know if this is true or not. The fact still remains this will be the first time we have clearly attacked a nation that did not attack us or one of our allies, first.

So, I don't like that idea. I think we as a nation will "pay" for that for a while, but if someone like Saddam gets nukes - which, by the way, has probably happened in North Korea - it will be a scarier world than it was during the cold war. Russia had a good reason not to start a nuclear war - they had as much to lose as we did. But Iraq's and North Korea's "leaders" just don't view the world that way. They don't care what their nation has to lose; it's all about ego and what's in it for them personally. As long as they can get somewhere where the radiation can't hurt them, in their mind, they've succeeded.

It's a lose-lose thing, seemingly.

Sometimes a cloud's silver lining is toxic.