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  • Awakening the Xanga Dead

    (Or: “Hey Lazarus, whassup?!” )
         As a service to Xanga Inc.  for their inexplicably-frequent placement of my posts on the Front Page, I am doing this:
    Awakening the dead, (since water-into wine has lost some of its initial shock value.)
    How it’s done:
    Make a cup of strong coffee.
    Think about your Xanga experience and its historical track. Folks who commented your every post and vice versa then went mysteriously AWOL. Things happen quickly on line, and yesterday’s Presence is today’s Ghost-ship, and at the speed of light.
    Read your archived posts and comments, starting from the Beginning. Yes, the ones about your bout with the Spanish Flu and Woodrow Wilson’s impossible dream. Pix of your first ‘horse-less carriage’, whatever.
    Click on the comments from your Lost Beloveds. One of several things may happen:

    1) Site shut down by Owner: My sympathies. You’re out of luck on these. but at least they found the body; an intentional suicide, and not a nagging ‘Lost at Sea’ where loved-ones will forever wonder whether perhaps he succeeded in swimming to an island and is there, fashioning a Swiss-Family-User_Name thatched-hut of a Life.  Back to Options

    2) The sweetie-pie’s site is still in place, but the last entry is from Dec 6, 1941: “Off to
    Hawaii: Hope they gotz WIFI at Pearl Harbor Club-Med”. What to do?: Find a nice reply-able comment from this ‘Lazarus’ on one of your old posts. Click ‘Reply’ and ‘warn’ the tourist, with 20-20 hindsight, of Yamamoto’s less-than-benign intentions.
    No, seriously, since mebbe, jus’ mebbe, your Reply will show up in is/her email, tell the
    vagabond how much you miss your interaction. A message in a bottle, but then, what else do you do with an empty bottle?

    3) The Xangan is still posting: ‘Obama to Cain: ‘thanks for being there.’, but has for some
    reason ceased to put you on the front-burner of his stove-life. Oh well. Read the last half-dozen posts, try to ‘grok’ where your friend’s life has led him/her, and, if appropriate, leave a short comment to the effect that ‘I miss your mouse…’ or words to that effect. No harm in trying.

    4) One more possibility is that the lost seeker has perhaps dumbly opted to move to another blog platform. He/she announces, with the glowing optimism typical of fools rushing in: ‘I’ve moved to ‘Bugger.com’ or some other loser site like that. Do this: Go to the new site, spend as long as needed to determine conclusively that the guy shot himself in his blogging foot. Not too difficult a challenge: Sites attempting to compete with Xanga are almost always sad, cold, lonesome, horizontally-flawed, or otherwise disastrous. Remind the guy of his ‘glory-daze’ on Xanga, and plead with him/her to return to The World. Then wait. You’ve done all you can do.

    I’ve been dedicating an hour or so each night to this pursuit. I’ll up-date this post if I have
    interesting results to announce. Blogging, with its skewed ‘Yes, but what have you written TODAY, sucker?’ ephemerality, shouldn’t have to suffer from the sadness of not even being asked that question by folks who were the light of your life only a couple heartbeats ago.
    You can also check those subs near the bottom of your Subs List. you might have missed their
    final post where they volunteered for the simulated Mission to Jupiter. That would explain
    everything. Good Hunting.

  • Eclipse! Ok, let’s discuss ‘Counter-intuitive’

        Never thought I’d get to where understanding the silly Moon taxed my mental resources with no hope of a refund.
    This picture is what we see (saw) an hour ago from Israel, at 6:04 PM Local time. So far so good.

    So how much is that in US dollars? Oops, wrong conversion.
    We are two hours ‘ahead’ of Greenwich, England, the self-styled ‘Prime Meridian.
    Now that doesn’t mean we just ‘decided’ to set our clocks 2 hours ‘ahead’ (‘later‘ on the clock, or you could say: ‘things happen earlier for us) No, our Geo-Reality precedes that of the UK by 2 hours: sunrise, sun-set, things like that which can’t be construed as ‘simultaneous on the entire planet.’
    Stuff like the Kennedy assassination happened, conversely, at the same ‘world-time’ everywhere, so even though it was 12:30  in Dallas, it was already 7:30 PM here in the Holy Land.

    And now it gets worse: From the Moon-view, ‘up’ there at, say, the center of the disc visible to Earthlings, there is a ‘Solar’ eclipse happening. The Earth passes in between the Moon and its light-source, the Sun. And the time it takes for the Earth to ‘transit’ the Sun is the length of
    the eclipse. As we watch from the Earth, we are seeing the Moon-people going through their Solar Eclipse, so to speak, gawking at us through welding helmets. The event takes a certain length of time, and happens ‘at the same time’ (roughly) on the entire Earth. But like with JFK, it happens ‘early evening’ in Israel, but ‘some other time’ at other locations on the globe.
    So far so clear, but that’s where my trouble starts.
    Eclipse in Alaska
    (It just now ended here, by the way.(6:40-ish PM)

    And what ‘time’ is it in Alaska? Good Question. I usually take 7 hours ‘off’ our
    time/reality first, to get to Pennsylvania, my second home, ‘over’ there in Eastern Standard Time. They are GMT minus 5, and so our 7 PM is their PA noon. Saturday noon. (Don’t forget that.) Then another 3 time zones gets you to California, and one further jump and we’re in Anchorage, a good place to tie up the boat for a second. And so ‘right now’ it is 8 AM in Alaska.  Early Saturday morning. The Sun’s been up for a couple hours, and so they can’t see the Moon too cool.
    So how come the news reports say that folks in Alaska can see the eclipse? Well, they just did,
    but they saw it from its beginning, before their sunrise, on their early Saturday morning, and
    possibly missed the very end. Hope they have a fun Saturday. Ours is like, over already. Dark and stupid outside, chickens roosting in the trees already.
            Not sure I figured it out. Feels like there’s something missing…
    Oh maybe that my camera cost a hundred dollars. That’s 377 shekels. Weighs about 200 grams, I’d say, a little less than a half a pound. In Alaska. Where Christmas is loudly on the way. While here, if you search hard, you can find a little piece on the back page of the paper saying it happened. Again? The 27th? I can never remember the date.

  • Grading Art?? Get Serious. Here’s the Straight Dope

          My 7th grade Art teacher, ‘Mr. Feigele’ we called him, but not to his face; wish I could remember his name, But he was young enough then  to maybe be reading this after a mere 50 years, so I won’t mention it.

        Anyway, my first ‘Project’, was ‘a descriptive’ drawing, shading not mandatory’.
    Slyly trying to’suck-up’(sorry) I turned in this:

     

    Ok, the cheap trick worked! Only 12 years old and I already know how to manipulate the endocrine system. He gaily affixed an A to my ‘ANATOMY’ submittal. Great.
      But even way back then, your Dear Xangan was alert to ‘odd letter coincidences’. After discussing it with my Mom; (“Vell, I vouldn’t know nuthin’ a-bout that!”) I decided to throw a small monkey-wrench into the workings, and for the next assignment turned in this little joke:

    Feeling full of youthful righteous jism, I marched into his office the minute I got the grade on it:
    “So what’s my grade here, an ‘A’ or a ‘B’?

    “Well, a ‘B’ and an ‘A‘, on ‘BANDANA’, Solberg.” he explained, laying his pipe on his desk to, you know, indicate that there might be more to the story.
    My suspicions were pretty much confirmed; I needed only to ‘test’ his competence. I mean, this guy in his silly beret, feigning a romance with the French teacher to cover his tracks…

    “A ‘B’ for the shameful rip off of Magritte, huh?” I suggested.
    “Who’s Magritte?” Feigele asked, failing my little  exam, then added:
    “No, the ‘B’s for the chick.  What’s she got to do with a bandana?“

    ” I dunno, I just thought she added to the… ambiance.” I said, and left, more convinced than ever of his… um…well…

         So the next week I decided to go for the gold, frankinsense and myrrh. I mean, this imposter was obviously just taking my titles and using ‘em to grade me. The piece came out a bit irreverent, but here goes:

     

    Oy, looks like he didn’t take it too well? But a ‘D’? All curiosity aside, I do need to get into law school after this school-daze hell is over. If only to hang out with Lena and OBL, among others I hadn’t yet met.
    So I marched into the dude’s office, got his attention, then:
    “A ‘D’, or a ‘TI’ on my worshipful ‘ADORATION’?!” I shouted, falsetto voce.

    “Listen, punk,” he growled, losing his temper, “you an’ me’s gonna have a rocky relationship if you insist on being that ‘iconoclastic‘!”
    Ok, he had me in a corner. Hmmm…WTF does ‘iconoclastic’ mean?
    “I didn’t even look at it.” he confessed.
    “Aha, ‘TI/DL’. You-uns critics’s got this shorthand down, huh?” I managed, before a speedy exit to the library and Webster’s.
    One hour later:
    ‘Iconoclastic’! Moi?  He’s the lazy pervert who oughta be hammering rocks on Devil’s Island for his Sin.  It’s in the damn Bible, for god’s sake!

    Oh well. As my exceptionally to-die-for Readers know quite well, childhood is a learning experience, and one in which we little victims fight a losing cause more often than not against
    the Ensconced Powers.  I give up.

    Or maybe not? For the Final Project, I turned in an ‘Academic paper’. Called it ‘Famous Lost ‘Found-Art’. Just the title gave me wet linguistic dreams. Borrowed my dad’s WW II Kodak, and shot a scene of a rooster and a hen you know,  ‘getting it on’ which looked so much like the famous V-J Day kiss in New York that Eisenstaedt woulda creamed his jeans for the negatives. (sorry, photo lost)
    And what did ‘Francois-the Bird-man’ have to say about my footnoted opus?
    Yeah, you guessed it: Scribbled a half-hearted, half-legible ‘C’ in the upper right corner.
    It all made sense now, the System . ‘A ‘C’… a ‘demi’ ‘C’ on my Academic treatise. I should have known.
    Yes some of my teachers were and still remain ‘demi-gods. ‘Feigele, unfortunately, ain’t one of ‘em.


    Wu: Not bad, for a planaria worm. Or a snail. They also do ‘found-art’. On the sidewalk, you know.
    Me: Hmm.. So I guess ‘You tower above..‘ is kinda out of the question here?

  • Pig & Swan Song

    Out on the Lawn, the Swans greet the Dawn… and yawn…
    Juan and Vaughn hit ‘Pause’ on ‘Private Benjamin’, and step outside to greet the morning.
    “Here comes the Sun.” Vaughn observes.
    “How original!” Juan, snidely. The two aren’t getting on.

    Across the Line, the Swine Dine… and whine:
    “That pine-cone is mine!” grunts Kline.
    “Fine, I ate eight, you ate nine, Kline. You’re ‘un-sound’, boar.”
    The pigs are at odds.

    The day continues to break.
    The Loons will Soon be Doin’ what Loons do days(?)
    I haven’t a clue.
    Hum a few bars, maybe I’ll name that tune.

    Vaughn on the porch with his Chesterfields
    Tough and Lean, like a Scene from James Dean.
    “What’s this all about?” Juan, prosaic unto death.
    “I don’t know. Whadya got?” Vaughn says that a lot.

    Up the Lane, barely Sane, drives the Dane
    “Me’n the Pope are engaged!” he shouts, over the engine noise.
    “And here’s proof.” He hands Juan a yellowed newspaper.
    “Niels Bohr kneels. Bores Holy See!” It screams.
    “Think the wedding’s off.” Vaughn tosses a butt on the lawn.

    Unwisely left aLone, the gardner has Sown a row of Doane’s Pills.
    “They’re good for the liver.” he defends his choice.
    “But Carter’s are perennial, you dunce!” Bohr, still screaming.
    “Go bite a piano bench!” Gardner shouts. They disagree. Probably

    “I’m gone.” says Juan. “I do believe I’ve… had enough.”
    “Great. With any Luck you can Suck off a Duck.” Vaughn just has to throw that out.
    Both swans and swine feel the tension as the pair dissolves
    Bohr and Gardner drag the VCR out onto the porch, press ‘Resume’
    Goldie’s still not sure she’s in the right army.

    Wu: “That one’s about acid. Obviously.”
    Me: I never said that. My kid brought this picture home from Kindergarten. Swans and Pigs.
    Wu: Right…

  • Into the Vowels of Hades and back with my Persephone

         We walk on doggedly (*arf arf!*)… ruthlessly (‘Me ‘n Ruthie was just, you know, a fling, Persie’), into the smog of hell…

     Some Guy named Fawkes down on the corner is selling fox-tail hats, but I’m sure they’re fakes. I ain’t buyin’.

    Klaus Fuchs asks me if I can fix up his fax with Cyrillic support. Needs it in a hurry. Got some pix to fax, he explains. I tell him ‘no habla’.

    A toothless old hockey-player pecks me on the shoulder; he’s hawking ‘Six-packs of pucks’; picks out one out to show me:
    “Only used once!” he claims.
    “And why was that?” I counter, “Use it again and we’ll talk.”
    He tosses it into the air and catches the thing in his fox-tail hat.
    “Nice trick.” I tell him. “See ya.”

    A girl at a new restaurant enticed us into having a taste of their fare; tossed salad and toast.
    “Just as a test, no promises.” I told her. Fellow passes me on the way out, runs into the alley, pokes his finger down his throat and pukes. We pretend it didn’t happen.

    Almost stepping in it, a kid from the party next door, all tuxed out, come in and begs  to use my phone. He types for like ten minutes, it seems, then tosses me a quarter.
    “Excuse me, text is taxed.” I protested. Dug in his pocket and handed me two pennies. “Keep the change.” he says. I did.

    As we left, a black street-cat hissed at the dark-as-night dishwasher, in its haste to heist a tossed-out tuna from the dumpster. Do Eritreans dislike cats, here in their host country? Is the feeling mutual? Hard to tell.

    A gust of stale air from beyond the grave blows out of an open hostel door with a ‘Closed’ sign on it, dangling by one screw. Yeah, I read about that; a guest was goosed by a ghost there two weeks ago.

    ‘Lust, after loused-up lost love’ is apparently the drawing-card of Massage-o-rama, lest there be any doubt. Last I heard, women’s rights groups were posting an on-line list of the putatively
    strait-laced ‘johns’…along with a mug-shot of the guy who leased the joint. They have loosed the fateful lightning of a terribly-swift sword, at the very least. Suddenly my joints ache.

    The coast homeward is now clear, marred only by passing-by a big-screen TV public display of disaffection. Passers-by were thrilled to the Star-Sikh, who alternately kissed or cussed the low-cost extras, depending on caste.

    We click heels three times and ascend skyward, blindfolds firmly in place.
    “Whew, we made it, Persie-dear. Now to post about it on Xanga.”
    “Can’t it wait till Spring?” she pleads.
    Just like a woman.

  • Please Circle the ‘best’ Xanga-Metaphor (below)

         Ok, Metaphors ain’t everyone’s cup of tea, or cat’s meow, or whatever. Most folks are aware of the form; evoking a comparison to some similar thingie in an effort to better understand both. 
         But  humanity seems to be divided between suckers like me who get all wet over a perfect metaphor on the one hand, and the (less fortunate?) who relate to the form with neither ketchup nor relish. As if someone were forcing them to buy a set of paste-on deer antlers and wear ‘em around the clock. They just don’t see this fashion-choice as  ‘necessary’ or ‘productive’.  Un-metaphorically speaking.

        Oh well, let’s get right to the punch line. A mix of drinks for everyone, although do feel free to discreetly add from your own hip-flask.


    A: Xanga: A Room full of Friends.

    Might as well start on an optimistic foot. Those for whom this shoe fits need walk no further.
    Yes, on a good day Xanga is a hoppin’ public/private party. Your Subs compete to be the first to comment and complement your entry. Thrilling conversations ensue among them and with You, the host with the most. You pride yourself on your exquisite taste in choosing the classiest Names in town. But…
    “But?” There’s a ‘butt’?“  Yes, two, actually. First, 90% of the invited guests didn’t show up, not that you’d have had Pop Tarts enough to feed ‘em, but still. And then, after everyone’s left, and your beloved post is just an archive called ‘Previous’, you find out that, hey, lots of your missing friends are secretly ‘dead’. Or ‘dormant’. Sad. They were, many of them, stars of previous galas, and you reflect on Life’s transient nature. Till the next bash.

    Xanga: Pissing into the Ocean.

    You post and piss and moan till ‘it’ falls off… and the chilly waters don’t warm up even one degree, Kelvin, do they? (Well, at least I call you by your real name, buddy. That’s something.)
    One of my seriously-admired Xangans here jumped overboard a year ago, and swam off to the deserted Isle of Blogger. There he posts heart-breakingly cogent Acts of God almost daily, to virtually zero applause. Average Comments/Post is in the 0.03 range. I’m trying to remedy that single-handedly, as well as offering my private plane to extricate him from Solitary, but he claims he gets lots of ‘hits’ there.
    I don’t know, when I piss in a puddle, I like to see something happen. Frogs diving for cover, whatever. Blogging without feedback is like sex with no-one else there to be a ‘witness’, so to speak. I guess you could do it in the road though? Attracting attention is our next Metaphor.

    Xanga: Pushing on a Rope.

    You write what you consider attractive, clever, and endearing posts. Good for you. Now just throw the lasso out into the blog-o-dome. Shit, it got snagged on a spammer. Or fell ‘just this much’ short of a whole herd of prime beef on the hoof. That’s when you sadly remember what yer daddy taught you: ‘Ya cain’t push on a string, son’.
    Sure, you can Comment the cattle to death, hoping they’ll be shamed into returning the favor. Or Pulse about the post. Or Plugz about the Pulse about the Post. All this feels somehow undignified though. In a perfect home on the range, the cows would trample your site in a feeding frenzy, and you’d be lassoing two or three at once on each toss. But yeah, Daddy wuz right. Ropes are for pulling.

    Xanga: Dear Diary: Yes, it’s me again.

    Anyone who needs to re-introduce herself to her own diary every morning likely has some self-identity issues. But that’s not the point here. For many, Xanga is a Diary, but with a plus.
    A diary read not only by your Mom , ever since she found out where you hide it, but also by friends and strangers. And secretly you’re dying to know what they really think of you. That’s why the persona you create skews all over the map: ‘Lemme try this on, and see if anyone bites, barks, or coos.’ There’s also the ‘fun‘ of “Oh no, I said too much.” Frantic early-morning ‘Delete Post’s, check Footprints. At least it’s exciting. Dramatic even.

    Xanga: The World is a Battlefield

    You basically despise most of the human race. Wish them dead, if by suicide “Site shut down at the owner’s request” or murder: “This Site has been terminated for violation of Xanga’s Terms of Service.” Your nightly battles include pot-shots: “You suck!!”, skirmishes: Reply to reply to reply until both sides are calling the other really awful names, Block-ades, and HUGE FONT attacks naming Names. And you just love it. The smell of Napalm. All this and world war II. So there’s that metaphor.

    Xanga: Marketing for its own sake.

    I find this one, oddly, the hardest to wrap my poor innocent mind around. I see the MGM lion bellowing and underneath him: ‘Analytics Gratia Analytics’.  Content plays second fiddle, if its notes are heard at all. Yesterday Dan, The-Illogical Caffein ‘succeeded’ in getting a hundred Xangans to say Nigger, Spic, Kike, and whatever else they could think of. One dear Reader, Comment 107 or so, asked “So what’s next: “What’s your favorite child to rape?’ Bless her heart for trying but to the Marketeer it’s just another Page View and two more e-props.
    A Junior version of the disease is the Front-Page entries which merely plead: “20 more Comments and Ten Recs till my next post. Thanks, guys!!” 

    This sad Game Metaphor kinda brings us to the burial-plot of the Xanga dream; to facilitate thoughtful interaction between friends and friends-once-strangers.
    Thanks so much for reading, and as the title says, one of these templates might be familiar to you. On a good day, I pick the first option. Party Hearty. (Oops, ‘heartily’)

  • Google Translate: Not exactly Babel, but still ‘fishy’

    “Quine can simply not translate this sentence accurately.”

    That’s my test text. A bit recursive, but Google feels no pain, not to worry.
    (I used to love to Xanga-search the keyword {NOTHING} just to see the ads read: “We offer a full line of Nothing products!” or “What does Jesus say about nothing?” (I think He’s agin’ it, although I didn’t click the link.)


    Anyway, in the olde Babel-Fish days, one was never sure whether the programme had been written to be intentionally ridiculous, or just worked out that way.
    Let’s try today’s modern version: Google translate:

    Hebrew comes out as:

    Kinda intelligible. The flaws are as follows:
    1) the word for ‘accurately’ is here rendered as the adjective form, not the adverbial.
    2) And it reads as: ‘…to translate this. Then adds ‘sentence’. We have a distinct form for ‘this sentence’, but it’s nowhere to be found. (Interestingly, the ‘simply can’t, dammit!’ feeling (mentioned below) is loud and clear, ha.)

    Spanish:
    “Quine no puede limitarse a traducir esta frase exacta.”

    I’ll count on @Roadkill_Spatula , (anyone else is also invited) to pick this one apart. The thought is there, but it sure don’t sound too lyrical.

    French:
    “Quine ne peut tout simplement pas traduire cette phrase exacte.”

    Once again, word-order ‘feels’ flawed. @elgan, among anyone else, is invited to critique this one.


    Perhaps the problem is that when I say: ‘simply cannot’ I mean it as an expression of my
    exasperation. (And not as a descriptor of the difficulty of the process in principle)

    We could re-phrase the test-text as: ‘Quine can’t translate this sentence at all.’ But even -‘at all’-  is a problematic idiom. I’ll bet German translates it as ‘bei alles’ or something dumb like that. Let’s try it:

    German:
    “Quine nicht übersetzen kann diese Satz überhaupt.”

    Well golly gee. Only the word-order is screwed-up. German likes the verbs at the end.. to put.

    Let’s try this same simpler sentence in Hebrew now:
    Hebrew:

    Well, a bit more faithful, but still errors grievous enough to get you kicked out of first grade.

    Ok, enough man-over-machine gloating. But one last test, just for fun. The round-robin ‘gossip’ routine:

    Source text: “Why does your mother wear pink underwear?”

    to Spanish:

    ¿Por qué su madre, usar ropa interior de color rosa?

    Thence to French:

    “Pourquoi était sa mère, en utilisant des sous-vêtements roses?”

    Thence to German:

    “”Warum war seine Mutter, mit rosa Unterwäsche?”

    And back to ‘English. Hold your breath, guys:

    “Why was his mother, with pink underwear?”

    I’m not certain I understand the Question. In fact, it’s just a sentence fragment. And Google nicely changed the subject; from its own Mom, to some other sucker‘s lascivious maternal tramp.
    Enough for now…. Caveat emptor, y’all.

    Wu: “Why was his mother, in pink underwear, straddling a dead Pakistani on the couch”
    Me: WTF?
    Wu: IDK, that’s what it returns in Urdu.
    Me: I were you, I’d update my anti-virus…

  • “STRATA MAR ANAPOLIS SILO-PANARAMA TARTS”

         The first thing I thought when I saw this headline in ‘The Mirror’ was “It’s ‘Annapolis‘  duh!” And then ‘Panarama’? Where’s the Mirror’s copy editor, out sleeping in A TOYOTA?
    But I was, it turns out, too hasty. A quick read of the story and I understood everything. Or at least the facts…

    The idiosyncratic Maryland-based snack-food magnate, Ferris Wheeler, long known for seeking out the most obscure niche markets imaginable, is apparently adjusting his sights on the anarexic crowd. (And I dearly wish I’d been a little bird in the potted palms when he announced this move  in the board-room. Bet there was some heavy eye-rolling…
    Or perhaps not?
    An un-named source quoted him as having gushed: “I’ve always been infatuated by thin pop-tarts.” and a well-rounded applause ensued from his hand-picked staff, all gratefully employed.
    “Yes, the thinner the better.” cooed the Product-Development team leader.

    It was Franny the Staff Artist, frustrated with merely tweaking logos after four years studying Commercial Design at U-Del, who suggested embossing picturesque pastoral scenes on the ‘food’ itself.
    “Can we do that?” Ferris queried his Cook.
    “Yeah, we can do that.” the apron-clad worker was quick to answer.
    “With, like, scenes from Baltimore harbor?” Frances pressed him, her dream hanging on the answer.
    The cook thought a second. Then:
    “Actually, be better if the main lines were vertical, and set slightly down into the dough. It’d make cutting ‘em into tiny slices lots easier on the end-user.”
    Frances smiled. “Well that’s a bas relief!”
    Ferris winked his agreement.
    So all that was left was the paperwork. The new offering would belong to the existing ‘Ana-polis’ line of thin-spo snacks, already doing a creditable business in mainly convenience stores.
    But a Reader expecting a happy ending here needs to read the Rest of the Story. I mean, the ‘Mirror’, like any other trade-rag, doesn’t run with ‘Man Bites Pop-Tart.’ Nah, this story was
    above the fold solely for its ‘Pop-tart Bites Man‘, angle.
    The gnashing of teeth started when the first proof-sheets came in from the photographer. Nice clear shots of rural Maryland, silos mainly, for their vertical lines, as instructed.
    Jose in Mouldings took one look and scowled:
    “It’s called ‘aspect-ratio’ you fool.” he chastised the poor ‘camera-driver’. “Ever seen a pop-tart?”
    “Well, not up close…” the photographer tried to distance himself from…um.. ‘junk-food’

    “Well, they’re 5X13. Your shots are all, like, 3X4. You want me to ‘stretch to fit’, Luther?”
    Luther didn’t need to think long:
    “No way Jose! You ever saw a silo as wide at it was high?”
    “Not up close!” Jose, mocking the photographer’s earlier tone.

    And so ‘Panarama’ was born. Out of the snafu, and into the package art and the long kitchen conveyor-belts. The photo was simply repeated lengthwise, with subtle changes introduced to mask the workaround.
    And why ‘Panarama’? Well, a quick call to the company attorney, followed-up as usual by 5 minutes on Google (just to check the guy’s work) and it was clear that ‘Panorama’ was ‘taken’. And Ferris had no stomach for a repeat of the ‘Tasty-Crumbs’ alias ‘Tasty-Krums’ recall fiasco.

        But we’re still missing the final back-breaking camel-straw here, to re-mint a cliche.
    Layers, it all came down to layers. The triple-strata structure of the product, no matter how elegantly finessed, fought tooth-and-jowl till the bitter end against the bas-relief indentations. By the fifth test-market trial run it was clear that self-respecting anarexics have no appetite for re-assembling the photos on fragmented food products they barely wanted to eat in the first place.

    And so the Mirror did get it right:
    “STRATA MAR ANAPOLIS SILO-PANARAMA TARTS“

  • An Afterlife? WTF!

         It just occurred to me that The Godless such as myself will be treated  to an Interesting Surprise at least, if Life-after-Death turns out to be in fact a real feature of this vale of tears.
    While folks who lived their entire lives merely assuming and anticipating the Eternal Un-moveable Feast will, by contrast, only be able to cluck, “Well of course. Whoever doubted it?”
    And then I suppose the only relevant follow-up question is: ‘What ambient temperature awaits us infidels?’
    For if we too are escorted briskly into the Main Dining Hall whose plastic-slip-cover-ed folding tables over-flow with potato salad and chicken casserole, under the loving out-stretched Arms of the King of Kings, and maybe his Mom, we shall have, not only the prospect of a warm meal after our final dwindling years on Social Security pasta or hospital IV nutrition to smile about, but also the oddly-gratifying perk of having bet on the Wrong Horse and still doubling our money.

         Of course some from the deodorized  Safe-bet crowd were dearly hoping we’d pay for our Sins-of-Unbelief in vats of super-heated oil for Time Im-memoriam. This will make for some uncomfortable seating arrangements:
    “So, what church did you go to?”
    “Um.. I didn’t. Could you pass the salt please.”
    *looks around the Room*     ‘Security?!‘

    On the other hand, the scene amid the Flames of Hell may be equally conflicted, as those such as I scream:
    “F*ck this, man. I never even stepped on an ant! Why me?”, and the church-going philanderers, wife-beaters, and serial tax-cheaters search frantically and in vain, again, for     ‘Security?


    ‘Blaze’ Pascal wagered roughly:
    1)  “If I bet on ‘This earthly life is all she wrote’, and I’m right, I win, factually, but I won’t be around anymore to spend the bucks when I die. No fun there…”

    2)   “But if I bet on an Eternal Life awaiting me, there’s two(2) possible outcomes:

    2a)  Either I was wrong; I get dead, the lights go out, and I’ll never know about it, or:

    2b)  I was right! dammit, there was an Afterlife! In which I’ll either:

    2ba  ….play my out-of-tune harp forever and ever, amen… Or:

    2bb)  ….watch my gonads saute in lard for eons. Not the perfect career-choice, but at least I’ll be able to gloat to the other deep-fries: “Told ya so!”

    Whew. Based on all that, Pascal advised Men to go with the Hunting Grounds, happy or not.

    I think someone found a fatal flaw in the ointment of his reasoning, but I’ll have to Google it.
    ….while there’s still Time.

  • I Blame Sweden

         I am, as we speak, suffering through another of my week-long Xanga blackouts. Every site in the world comes up except for Xanga. (Yes, Outer Mongolian yak-prices dot com? No problem: 138 milliseconds to page-load, and I decide to wait until Dec 1 to sell my herd. So at least there’s that…
    But Xanga? It’s a total mystery, and the Forums (Forae?) have only helped me to rule out just
    about everything. Except Alien Conspiracy. Here are the details:

    1) The handy {trace-route} utility in Windows Ms-Dos reveals that, (as is the case every time
    this happens), my Request-to-Connect makes it to     one specific Swedish server and dies, timed-out. by {216.151.179.238} (URL of the Beast?)
    2) And so there’s really not much to be discovered by checking my computer’s ‘Hosts’ file in
    Windows/System32/drivers/etc. Clean; the only hand-entered entry is for Meebo. Same ‘no-help’ for flushing the DNS Cache; it’s clean as a Dubai toilet-bowl also.

    3) I can access Xanga through a Free Web-Proxy site somewhere in Texas, although it mysteriously (so far) refuses to let me invoke the Reply-to-Comment function. So telling Roadkill Spats that ‘TIMID’ is an -id word we somehow overlooked is impossible by regular channels. Oh, and I can’t post Entries through a proxy either.

    4) Ok, I checked ‘Search my site’, for any derogatory mention of Sweden. Bingo, in a comment years ago I ‘did’ hint that “Norway’s got everything Sweden’s got… except a good neighbor.” A little Norse humour. Get over it; the damn Quislings are probably just jealous.

    5) So, seriously, what could cause this un-explainable crib-death-on-15th-hop internet-connectivity quirk? If Xanga were black-listed by an irate WIFI neighbor, my Request shouldn’t make it past their own router, and if it’s the State of Israel’s doing, ditto, or at least at the gateway-server in Haifa.

    6) So I’m left with only suspicions; some blonde anti-semite in the IT-Dep’t at this lonely
    frost-bitten Scandinavian server farm is personally tossing my packets into the bit-bucket?

    7) What to do? Well, IKEA of course comes to mind. And yeah, I do have the usual ton of screws left over from all my friends who’ve begged me over the years to ‘Put the damn thing together for me!” Maybe if I send ‘em back to Sweden? Along with a nice apology for the Count Bernadotte hit from the ’40s. Hey Shamir done it, not me. My people begged him to think twice.
    Damn. Shamir shot my Xanga!

    Wu: So, how the hell did you just post this?
    Me: Ha, as soon as I sent MelFamy the text and my password, Xanga came back mysteriously. I was gonna ask  him to post it for me. Wait, maybe he did… and I’m secretly him? We do have a bunch of good stuff in common. Cue the Twilight Zone Theme Music.