December 9, 2012

  • First-World Palindrome Problems

    Back in the USA and the first thing I see is The Rats.
       No, not pet-rats, or pest-rats- --' Task-rats™'.
    Now, living in one of the least 'banana' of the 'republics' in the third-world Middle East,  how could I not have even 'heard' of this revolution?


    Quick previous 'duh' moment:
        On one of my earlier trips, years ago, I noticed that something mysteriously called an 'SUV' was quite the controversy. And since I'd 'tuned in late', as it were, neither the papers:
    (USA Today: 'So what does the man-in the street think of SUVs?
     A: Dingbat 1: "I'm fer 'em, a hunderd percent!"
    Numbskull 2: "I'm against 'em. big time!)...
     nor the TV, the 'babbling fireplace' in the terminal hall offered a clue.
    I threw down the airport  paper and watched CNN for a few minutes; A panel show. 'Pro and Con' something'. Yeah, 'something'. Can you believe that after ten minutes I still had no idea what a SUV WAS? Really. No one thought to define it to a newbie. Heard stuff like "My wife has one and she loves it! followed by "They're ruining the environment!"
    No help there. In the end a counter-girl in a quickee-mart explained it all, patiently, but with a hint of 'What else don't you-uns know about?' on her sweet face.
    There were no rats doing unskilled labour in those days, otherwise I'd have had an excuse to prolong the conversation.


    Forward to 2012: Rats. they're everywhere.
    Loading docks, excavations, industrial assembly, mail-sorting, perimeter security, 'loss management' at all the major chains. Genetically engineered and repeatedly cross-bred for the task, hence the generic 'Task-Rats'. Re-gened, and with their pleasure-centers hard-wired to implanted chips, they just never give up, and a typical model, working in say, earth-moving, will dig to China before even thinking of taking a break, unless switched off.
    My buddy Roy Starkey, who works at the Holtwood electricity generating plant down on the river told me over a non-descript American beer that 'they gone over to treadmill-rats year or so ago, after the perimeter-guard rats proved 'emselves."

    We finished the other 5 beers while he answered some, not all of my questions. I mean, this ain't like some SUV story; it's a downright revolting. oops, I meant 'revolution'.
    I'd parked my trusty '91 subaru in the airplane hangar almost out of gas while I was gone, so my initiation to the brave new first world wasn't long in coming:
        The instructions on the pump said something like 'Place the cash in the tray near the base of the pump. Your attendant will ring you up and turn on the pump presently.'
    I did as told, half expecting the furry little vermin to grab the dough and run like hell to buy a bag of crack. (One of the pejoratives I've heard them called is 'crack-rats', probably from their zombie-like single-mindedness.)
    But seconds later, after he'd (she'd) crawled through a little hole in the office, the pump sprang to life. I shook my head and laughed a little. No longer a virgin to the new order, huh?

    Yet the smell. Ya can't not notice it. Not a rat smell, mind you, more like...um...phenolic resin.
    I mentioned this to Starkey, who knew just what i was talking about.
    "Yeah, we don't go near 'em much without the masks, but they don't work. Who knows?"
        Well I know. Now. After considerable legwork.
    See, the rats do something very unexpected, at least by their developers at Hamlin Solutions®, the giant G-E firm who still holds the patents on the critters, and stands to be the world's next Microsoft, some say.
    I say the next Thalidomide. What Hamlin is obviously not going to broadcast (in fact, they vehemently deny it) is that the rats do what's called 'ghosting'. Take trace volatiles from, in this case, the implant chip's packaging and synthesize them in their musk glands, then release them when worried or upset for any reason. And that's what I smelled at the gas station as the rat sensed my reticence to feed a fifty to a rodent(!)
    Internal documents leaked from Hamlin call the bug 'Aroma-ghosting'. 'Aroma' is better used for a pot of fresh coffee. In the rat's case we're talking 'carcinogenic fumes'. A colleague of mine working at the little-known New York Dep't of Development in White Plains was on a rare leave in PA and we met in the parking lot of Dunkin'Donuts, just to be safe. He'd quickly changed the conversation when I'd called him at work, so I knew something was up.
    "Roger, {not his real name} what's the bottom line on this, you know, the furries?" I asked him.
    He looked over each shoulder then kinda hung his head:
    "OK SIR, the headline'll read: 'TASK-RATS DO 'GHOST-AROMA: NYDOD."
    If anyone knew the truth it was Roger, it turned out. They'd had five of 'em working in mail-processing, returned three after jumping bureaucratic hoops with Hamlin, and claimed the other two had died. Yes, they have an excellent forensics lab at the institute.
        I immediately thought of Starkey, wearing his useless dust-mask. Hoping his model was somehow immune to the bug, I asked Roger about the treadmill version:
     "DO DYNAMO RATS?" I inquired, shaking.
    He nodded sadly.
    "OH GOD! STARK'S AT RISK!" was all I could get out.

    I finished my coffee, or what didn't spill in my lap, at speeds exceeding... well... on my way to Stark's house.
    "Rats!"   I cursed as the hot coffee tried to emasculate me. Are we allowed to say that these days?


    OK SIR, TASK-RATS DO 'GHOST-AROMA': NYDOD... "DO DYNAMO RATS?"... "OH GOD! STARK'S AT RISK!"



    Wu: big tail, small dog.
    Me: Oh no! Not you again. Who bought you a ticket?

November 20, 2012

  • OMG, I MANI TWIT THEEZ DAYZ!

         Sure you do. I'm so thrilled you found a format as wide and deep as your thought processes. And excuse me for reading it as 'I'M A NITWIT...'
        Seriously, I have a feeling lately much like back when we snuck into movies in the middle of the screening. At a certain point someone would say 'I think this is where we came in.' and we'd know it was probably time to exit.
         The same could apply to on-line communication. From an early start limited by band-width and other tech issues, messages via the net evolved to the stage of thoughtful full replies. Letters which addressed each point in sequence. Obviously composed by someone sitting at a human-sized keyboard, a PC you could set a cup of coffee on, and a quiet environment.
         I'm not sure who started the current degenerative rot. SMS, IM, Xanga Pulse(?)
    No, it was probably Twitter, along with wrist-phones Buck Rodgers would never have accepted. Twitter, with no sense of shame, calling today's pronouncements 'Tweets'. Yeah, that's what I'd call 'em too, but as a pejorative, a curse-word.
    And I get all too many e-mails which just drip 'composed and sent by pecking at a small piece of plastic and silicon.'
    When I was more active on Morse Code, we had heartfelt conversations from all over the globe, even within the limits of 30 words per minute and interference a couple hundred cycles per second on either side of us. I'm very much for a return to that medium, but what do I know?
        No, the main 'insult' is to the richness of expression. Were I to attempt to condense this post, for example, into 138 sleazy characters, I'd have to, like, mebbe keep the title, add 'SUX, HUH?' and then check if there was room to add 'DAD WUZ RITE!"
        My father, bless his memory, tolerated several attempts by his children to bring him into the 'real world' of e-mail. Born in 1919, he had this thing for ink on paper... as a signifier that something real had been said by someone. Among us kids, I may have gotten as close as 'progress' allowed by patiently showing him how to at least print out each message. Something to hold in his hand. He then wrote the reply long-hand, and likely fretted over the loss of character as he laboriously translated the text into bits and bytes. Nowadays I assume that there are services where one can send a facsimile of the 'original', with all its potent curlicues. A market awaits.
         I myself have learned to depend on the 'Delete' button, instead of hand-crossing-out     'scumbag' in favor of 'my esteemed colleague'.
    At any rate, I do feel I've been witness to the idiotization of the means of communication, and it may be time to sneak out of the theatre, leaving the plastic stars to tweet each other in vapid peace.
    'I HAZ MANI TWITS', they twitter, and frankly, my dears 'I DNT GVE A DAM'       

October 29, 2012

  • It's official: Palindromes promote mental health!

          Yes, folks... depending on how you define that slippery term...
    Personally, I use the process of remembering each middle-of-the-night discovery... later, in the grim light of dawn, as a finger on the memory pulse. With practice one grows more adept, and the very same neurons will then help you to remember like, your name, where you live, kids?, marital status, stuff like that there...

    And the second benefit is developing of talents for creating cover stories. This will help the palindromist at work, even if he doesn't do cloak and dagger/ spy vs spy for a side income.
        
    Like just now for instance: Fell asleep for an hour between checking power outages in PA, created a phrase but upon awakening I remembered only that, like, 'it had an 'X' in it?' Sick feeling, I'll tell you. But five minutes of acquired persistence and it all came back:

    BAN ON EXTRA CATNIP-A PINT, A CART, XENON A-B.

    Now comes the fun part; see, when I was growing up as a lad in pastorale Gleneld in Wales, I got used to hearing the herb-seller calling out his wares. Every Friday morning he plodded down our street with his tired old mare and cart. And for some obscure reason he also sold bottles of compressed gases. Helium, Nitrogen, Propane, whatever the market could support. My Momma used to buy a tuppence worth of thyme, cumin, and basil, and the old guy usually threw in a sprig of fresh catnip for our old tabby.
    So I guess it was '78, maybe later, the year of the Big storm and the start of the Troubles, that the government stepped in, as is their wont. Forced the old cart-vendor to keep records, to justify every farthing, guinea, whatever.
       He did just what I would have done in the situation; turned to drink. Luckily his horse knew the way, to carry the sleigh, but still. And the only gas they forgot to list in the Regulations was Xenon. What anyone used it for I never learned. Nor what the 'A-B' stood for.

         But anyway, I wouldn't have remembered this elusive memory from my childhood had I not discovered the palindrome which explains it all. I feel so very sane at this moment. Why is everyone staring at me?

October 15, 2012

  • Seven Queasy Pieces

    1)  Holy AGNUS DEI! NED DENIED SUNGA!
    Well 'Ned', (if that's your real name), we'll just see now if the Head Office lets you keep those purple robes... and the 10% you probably siphon off from the take in airport lobbies.
    Most readers have probably encountered one of our ilk somewhere in the world. While waiting to check-in you've watched our emissaries quietly and tactfully approaching travelers in a attempt to spread our message of world peace, universal love, whatever. Yes, the purple hat with the ball on top is a familiar sight for frequent fliers.
    Sure, there are cracks in our castle, the usual dirty laundry as befits any major religion; genital mutilation, the odd suicide bombing from a disturbed lone wolf. But still, underneath it all, Sunga is our supreme leader, and we don't take kindly to any disparagment of his/her Name.
    And so this 'Ned', whoever, shall get what's coming to him, the traitorous infidel! The only question is whether stoning preceeds beheading, or the converse. I'm on the fence on that issue. Hey, I got family to protect.


    2) So what's the deal with one of my favorite restaurants: the famed 'KAYAK SALAD LAB' in Red Deer, Alberta? Hell, I used to drive up there almost every weekend, 4000 miles each way but worth every penny for their vegetarian cuisine.So I check their site yesterday and suprise! They've abandoned the veggie ship, pissed on sustainable photosynthesis, and now feature, god-forbid, "Yak-on-a-slab". Yeah, even the name has changed, to 'That BALD ALASKA YAK Place.' Sorry, cannibals, you won't see my face in the crowd anymore. Nice while it lasted.


    3) Meanwhile I sit here in my Minivan, in turmoil, in the Twenty-nine Palms(CA) Mega-Zone parking lot, there behind the petting zoo, trying to put it back together:A MAN, A PALM, A LLAMA, A MALL... A LAPANAM? Nah... try again, Johnny...


    4) Back home only to discover that my neighbor must've bought another dog while I was gone. A little chihuahua, a quarter the size of 'Adi', their trusty Shepherd. They call the newbie 'ED',
    and apparently, nothing's too good for the little rat. "ED IS A PET'S DOG. GOD, STEP ASIDE!" my neighbor shouted at me there on the sidewalk. Well yeah, glad yer dog's got a dog of his own.


    5) Meanwhile, Montana's infamous and bizarre 'Bazaar Czar', Jules Fafner, suffered perhaps his final upset, as one more town has voted to ban his 'happenings' from their city limits. Fafner is now rumoured to be considering abandoning the Jules Family holdings, perhaps as early as March 15th this year. Said the small-town god-father: "First Helena, then Billings, and now I lost Butte to boot."
    His terse email to the Butte town fathers: "ET TU, BUTTE?" went unanswered, or appreciated, as of press time.


    6) In the graphics world, specifically military/patriotic posters, 'ROTC ART' has as its theme on-campus this year 'TRACTOR!!', featuring strangely reminiscent Soviet realism-style drawings of young, bold, (and white) schoolboys eye-ing the Homeland's Farmalls. That look in their eyes; scary, I'd call it.


    7) And finally, the Mars Rover's destination, one of them, is a crater called 'Glenelg', named after a small town  in Maryland, USA. Oddly, a town in Wales decided, a scant couple hundred years ago, to name itself after the crater on Mars. Or the town in Maryland. Copycats.
    Wu: Hmm, every story here has an element of forwards/backwards text. Was that accidental?
    Me: Ever tell you how much I appreciate your finding the smoke and mirrors in my stage act?
    Wu: Hey, I try to be helpful.

October 3, 2012

  • Was ENOLA gay? Guess we'll just have to Google it, right?

         An activity best done while wide awake, or at least not, as I learned, while sound asleep and dreaming.
    Look, anyone coming to my Israeli site here to  get a feel for the question 'Will there be a War?' will find me continuing life as if 'No', (except for maybe stockpiling a couple day's fresh water and beer.) Achmi Blow-job MacMud would, on the other hand, be well-advised to pile up rocks in the backyard (flint works well) in the off chance his ugly skeleton isn't incinerated to the last molecule and he needs a knife to 'clean-and-dress' rat carcasses among the Stone-Age rubble.
         Yup, the whole deal puts me in mind of the 'Enola Gay' and Hiroshima. So much so, that falling asleep, I continued, as is my wont, to investigate the various pertinent(?) details in depth.
    "Hmmm," I snored to myself, "I'll have to just Wiki that name, Enola, and bingo, I'll have a definitive answer."
           One of the first search results was the OED, the Oxford English Dictionary online, and just as I was about to click on it, the voices started. Yes, again. Some British dude, intent on making me feel young and stupid, droning on and on: "Righto, chum. The OED and all that rot!"
    So hey, when the voices are that adamant, and with me in my weakened state, I gave him a chance to lay out his alternative data source. He suggested an oddball site, on page 7 of the search results: "humane_god.net" I could already hear the barkings from the web-site at that point, but I plunged onward, as only dreamers do.
    So far I had: ENOLA? OED? OR HUMANE GOD.NET? ROT? OR....I knew as soon as I clicked on the site, like the igno-second when you stupidly download a virus, that I was in trouble.

    I was transported to some stinking horse-fly-infested Texas stadium, where, sitting on sweltering bleachers, I watched teams of dogs, a dozen or so, maybe a few less, do just awful thing to each other, two against one, against the clock. Hoses, bags, yelping victims, some obscure point system, none of it made any sense. And at a certain point, luckily, I emerged from the nightmare long enough to realize that I was the only spectator, indeed the only non-canine, in the whole dream/nightmare. As in, 'yeah, I can just leave, click out, and go to OED like I wanted to in the first place.' That felt empowering. And that's just what I did.

         It's sad, ain't it, how much the digital wet dream has skewed our consciousnesses? Damn, I used to dream, not too many decades ago, about real stuff: muskrats, me, running through the corn rows. finding long-lost pots of gold, or nubile females just aching to be full-filled. Nowadays it's all virtual battles between virtual data banks. How far we've fallen.
         At any rate, I did manage to discover how the awful palin-virus snuck into my cerebellum. Reversing the above letters, I 'read the writing on the wall', so to speak: 'TEN DOG ENAMUH RODEO, ALONE.'
    A more careful and alert dreamer might have noticed. I didn't, but I am, as a result, considering cutting down on spicy, thought-provoking foods before bedtime.

September 30, 2012

  • One Two Many Horses: JS Reviews "Fifty Sheds of Neigh"

         Only if you've been living away in a manger could you possibly have failed to notice this best-seller, by the author of  'One, Two, Many commas'. That short volume, on punctuation, of all things, was a delight to read; I learned how to use the semi-colon from it, kinda.
    And so I was primed when I heard that "Fifty Sheds of Neigh", also by Dewey Pferde, had taken win, place, and show on the NYT Book Review list. And, I was intrigued by the mixed reviews it got; Deborah Friedman slammed it, calling the book  '...50 grades of hay for a Horse with no Name!', whatever that's supposed to imply. Reviewers, you know. But now that I've dragged my carcass through all 634 pages I kinda have to agree with her. Yeah, 'one two many horses', in fact 49, mebbe 50 too many.

        The story opens by describing E.Questrian Grue, a filthy-rich pretentious heir and refrigerator magnate who has purchased a long rectangular gentleman's horse-farm out along Highway 51, and soon builds separate quarters for each of his filly flings, aquired one at a time. Being used to having his way, he initially specifies 'hearse-racing' as the business description, thus avoiding the bothersome intrusion of Dep't of Agriculture inspectors. At a local watering hole one night, where he is schmoozing the town's zoning officer, he overhears talk of a drop-dead gorgeous filly, and buys her on the spot, sight-unseen, and decidedly drunk.

        And so into this unstable stable trots 'Miss Anesthesia', a lithe two-year old filly with three
    wins already at Pimlico under her saddle and a summer place at Hialeah. They meet cute, of course, and have sex until morning in a chapter-long episode which had the book banned in Florida for a spell. (they called the pair 'promiscuous.)
        On awakening, Grue changes Anasthesia's name, calling it 'lacking feeling', to an unpronounceable word, the name for the Great Auk in Maori. The stable-hands soon call her 'Miss Auk-word', which leads to some tense moments.
     By this time  he's had 50 sheds erected. Miss Auk insists on being housed in the one nearest to Questy's heart. This necessitates moving each of the other horses  one building down the line, an effort which consumes another perhaps 129 pages, sort of an 'Arabian Nights' aside, with vignettes of horses vying for the right to stay where they were, at the expense of their
    'neigh'-bors.
        And so on. And so on. And so damned on. They fight, they make up, they make out, another name make-over: (Missy Auk demands and wins the right to be called 'The Horse formerly known as Anesthesia.' This after 'Black Beauty' was a no-go since she is a roan, and 'Sleeping Beauty', while clever and referential, has lethargic connotations in racing circles.


    Ok, you probably want to know whether to buy the book. Or download it, after I've kindled your curiosity.
    Well, you can't. It doesn't exist. I made it all up and I'm sorry. Probably a little fuzzy kitten getting run over by a dump-truck right now, as we speak, and it's all my fault. But you guessed that.     Plus I hated it anyway. Nothing racy-harnessy here, folks. Moby Dick was hotter.

September 29, 2012

  • Yeah, um, I'd like to try on a hat. 'Tin Foil?' Yeah, how'd ya guess?

          Sorry folks but this is dead serious, as opposed to my usual confusing blend of truth and fiction.
    The strangest, most unexplainable thing just happened a few hours ago and I'm still in shock. Read on.
    Today. Saturday morning. Wide awake at 7AM and taking a short drive to the nearby gas station for cigs. The only place allowed to be open on Shabbat. I get to the traffic circle and suddenly HEAR A VOICE inside the car. I hit the brakes and look around for maybe a cop with a megaphone. No one in sight.
    I check the radio, even though the head is disconnected and I only ever used it once. Nothing happening there. Finally I check whether my phone, a cheap little bare-bones Nokia, is in my pocket. Yes. So maybe it accidentally dialed someone? Well, the display does say '7', since I'd forgotten to lock the keyboard.
    And then I quickly recalled what the VOICE had said. Half Hebrew (Something like 'hai'ag'ta et ha-mispar- ('You dialed the number..')  followed by the plain-english word 'Seven'. That word I remembered as clearly as the nose on my face.
    I checked the call history, hands shaking. No dialed #s, no incoming, no missed, nothing. Yet the Phone had TALKED TO ME!
    There is no voice program on this phone; it barely makes calls. So, as they say, WTF???

    Ok, here are the options, as far-fetched as they sound, but in the absence of any other explanation:

    1) The phone does secretly have an 'Easter Egg' voice routine which runs only after one dials '7' and leaves the phone unattended for an hour? I tried to reconstruct that, and no voices were heard.
    2) The phone just decided to call someone 'off the record', someone who correctly guessed(?) that I had accidentally dialed a '7'? possible, but unlikely.
    3) And now the scary part, hence the title. I simply hallucinated the VOICE. It sure didn't sound like a delusion, and I have no history (till now) of hearing phantoms while wide awake and alert. But I guess millions of other(?) sufferers also will swear that the voices they hear, telling them off-the-wall stuff like 'Vote Republican!' are REAL. I know mine was real.
        So how to make it happen again, or make it stop. Or at least know the truth about it? I'm at a loss, which is of course why I turn to the putative sane readers of Xanga.
    Folks, this has nothing to do, nothing at all, with my seeing little oddly-dressed ladies wearing hats, out of the corner of my eye, three times a day at least. That one's nailed down; Bonet's Syndrome, caused by the holes in my field of vision, and the boredom of visual-processing neurons somewhere deep in my battle-scared brain.
    But at least the ladies don't tell me what number I dialed in error on my phone.
    Do I need help? And what kind of a metallic-foil hat goes well with my outfits this fall? Maybe they put the tin in the lining? Anyone know?

September 28, 2012

  • Mitt's toast... but so am I

         My washer broke, and the only ones I can find for sale here say 'Coloreds' or 'Whites' Right on the front. What's the deal with that? I'd thought we were past this ignoble phase.
    The sales boy wasn't much help:
    "You don't have any, like 'integrated' machines?" I asked him, in a hushed tone.
    "Sure don't, sir, not in this aisle." he looked pensively across the store floor at the over-and-under appliances section, where they put you only after the 'Trainee' badge wears out, or something. Pensive, but not from man's inhumanity to man, I surmised.
    "But I can put coloreds and whites in the same load, can't I... if nobody's watching?" I pressed him.
    "Wouldn't advise it." was all he said.
    "Why not?" I was determined to get to the root causes of racism here.
    "They bleed." he informed me.
    "Who bleeds?"
    "The coloureds. And they run. You'll have a mess. But hey, it's your life."


    All this made me think of those laws, what the hell were they called, in the South, from shortly after the Civil War until Brown vs Board of Education and the Johnson era Equal Rights Laws. Damn, what was the name? It's like, a guy's name, and short. Like 'Jack Buck' or something. Don't tell me, It'll come to me in the shower. In a week or so. Why do these memory gaps happen so often? First it was the bass-player from the Jefferson Airplane I couldn't come up with, and now this 'John Blow' or whoever he was. I'd do lousy in a Presidential debate, is all I'm thinking. I'd be up there, all noble and statuesque, and start a sentence like "Efforts by the Republican party to deny Americans the right to vote are beginning to sound like...um...like those...you know... Damn! 'Chopped Liver Laws'?? I give up."

    Anyway, do your part folks. Don't buy a washer from James Krowe Ltd. Together we can make a difference.

September 22, 2012

  • Let's all lern to write 'Wright' right... and other triple threats

         Someone called Edward Albee a 'playright' and of course I had to intervene in my kind and tactful style here on Xanga:
    "Your wrong, bonehead. Its 'PLAY-WRITE!!"
    He took it well, and replied: "Yeah, and the Right Brothers had the write stuff, huh? Fuck off, you little Nazi."
    Well I'll be Albee's public defender! Sensitive much these days?
    So I vowed to dedicate my life to spelling, after a brief sojurn to gaze at the gays and straights in the straits of Hormuz, wherever that is.


    Ok, the vacation did wonders for my attitude. they're there on their Xangas,  and I'm here at my command centre, high, above the fray.


    But least I got back in time to  defend my buddy, at the corner store, we'll call him 'T', an' he's bravely marketing a new line of tea coolers. Some jerk was ridiculing them, sayin' stuff
    like "Wow, I seen goat piss this exact same color, man."
    I told him sharply "Don't you tease 'T's teas, goat-boy!" Ha, that put him in his place.


    Meanwhile Fay, a female Iron-man competitor (Iron-woman?) is working on a fearsome new approach, screaming all kind of curses at her opponents, to psych 'em out. Still, we're talking iron-men here, so I doubt we'll see Fay's phase faze the competition.

    Like most home bakers, you've probably noticed that the wild deer eating from your bread-pans set out on the window-sill to rise seem to get groggy from the treat. Yes, a recent study has confirmed gluten's soporific effect on ungulates. So watch those doughs. Does doze after eating 'em, and are then often ravished by opportunistic bucks in rut.


    Moe, of Three Stooges fame, has been signed to portray Mose Allison in a bio-flick on the jazz
    musician's life and times. Said the casting head: 'A bunch of good candidates, but Moe's Mose mows down the competition like a weed-whacker on meth!"

    Not to spoil the suspense, but in the film 'The Vote', after three excruciating hours of
    'watching-paint-dry' class drama (!), the dumb-ass Partition Petition is defeated by a narrow
    margin, and you can  go home already and eat all the popcorn you 'care for' in peace, on your own blessed couch, in your underwear.
    Two thumbs down: Spoiler: As everyone by now knows, 'No's nose out 'Yea's by a narrow margin!" Not including the ten bucks you blew finding that out.


    Edgar Allen Poe is often thought of as a morose schitso, frantically eying the heavens for that
    damn Raven. Well, grainy photographs from his brief Italian vacation seem to tell a different
    story; the author strutting his stuff on the river banks, flexing his muscles like a defiant
    Mister America contender. An explanation proffered by his biographer: 'The Po River's pollution is anathema to most avian species, and the waters may have contained chemicals which affect the brain's mood centers. Note to self: Check out Poe's pose. Po's influence and effluents need further study."


    The fraternity brothers were all seated on lines of impromptu folding lawn-chairs. Such is campus life among white males in the no-tse-tse-fly zone. Every silly Greek letter had sent its
    contingent, but Tappa Kappa Rho was clearly in the majority. Something to do with Admissions and Alumni. So when the President, in mortar-board and gown-over-jeans, asked, begged, for a standing ovation, 'Rho's rows rose, proudly, in unison, like mushrooms after a heavy rain. Ya get what ya pay for.


    Ribbons were awarded, in primary colours, at the close of last week's raucous 'Loudest-speakers' contest in Twenty-nine Palms, (CA). As expected, Boris 'Bo' Jungles walked away, albeit deaf as a doorknob, with all the First Place bows. Bo's Bose XJ-9000's were just too 'decibels much?' for the Altecs and Jentsens of the also-rans.


    Sadness. A heart-breakingly sincere experiment in urban gardening in Compton (CA) has ended, for now. Private donors had contributed implements and irrigation equipment for the cause, and local charities had enlisted the sweat-equity and participation of shelters for the abused, the hungry, the broken-spirited, in a commendable project. Reality intervened in the form of Norteno/Sudeno gang strife, with four 'homies' taken to local hospitals within hours of the formal opening fete.
    Said one gang-ster:
    "Ho's, hoes, and a hose. Fuck that sh*t!"
    Well, you can lead a horse's ass to water...


    And speaking of Compton scattering, Caltech researcher Raymond Blumentod, working primarily in his basement, has developed, sources are hinting, a prototype of a theoretical concentrated high-energy photon beam. Basically an X-ray gun, the device utilizes interactions between energized electrons and photons, and I'll spare you the equations. Said one senior professor at Stanford we spoke to: "Ray's rays raise the spectre of death-rays from the grave, and thus have potentially grave consequences for the defense community." At press time, thankfully, no You Tube videos detailing the process had yet been posted.


    Despite brave efforts, the Netherlands is still in a virtual tie against the encroachment of its
    habitable land by the cold waters of the North Sea. Jorgen Higgenbottham, a seasoned veteran of decades of engineering projects with whom we spoke, however, projects an up-beat never-say-die attitude. "Anyone working in this field sees seas seize land year after year, much like your American 'pioneers' discovering' and conquering the West."
    I didn't respond per se to the implied critique of US manifest destiny expansionism, only
    suggested that he buy a hat with a few more feathers.


    The portable toilet bizness is apparently a tough racket. To wit: Louis Firecan's novel start-up
    in Essex-on-Avon, Westminstershire, UK. Funded in part by a grant from the Ministry of
    Sanitation, his facilities feature built-in year-round heaters powered by solar cells, and a
    unique footwear-conditining station, developed by the firm Shoehorne Ltd. The gadget, operating quietly while one 'does his business', gently expands the shoes, insuring a comfortable and 'loose' fit upon retrieval. The 'rest-stops' thus provide two of  the three most sought after amenities among his target niche market. Still, 'Lou's Loos' lose a sobering three million Euros a year, according to public records. Perhaps the third 'amenity's inclusion will be a game-changer, if and when it happens.

September 21, 2012

  • Free speech, OK. Just don't diss The Bird!

         Like over a thousand other adherents in over three countries (ok, 4), I am a devout believer in a little-known religion which evolved from S. American animism. Our truth was revealed by the Prophetess Edna, an Andean Albatross who was half bird and half God incarnate. Her Insights were dictated by her brother, since she had a stutter, much like Moses before her. And He in turn also had a disability, a less than world-class wingspan of only 3.06 meters. (19 foot 11 and 13/32 inches, for those of you stuck outside of the metric system, nose frozen to the window-pane)
    Be that as it may, we regard their Wisdom as the Holy Truth. 'The Bird is the Word' as we chant five times a day. And the day-to-day affairs of the Flock are currently being handled by Edna's great-great-grandson, Shorty III, The One and Only One-foot Prince, (aka The 12 inch Ruler.) It was in Cuzco, April 8, 1978 that he presided over my own initiation, 'The Giving of the Bird', where I received my very own albatross necklace, which I wear around my neck around the clock.
    All this is to explain our legitimate outrage these past few weeks, on the heels of an otherwise innocuous study by McGull University biologist Alfred Weiskopf, which mapped a large part of the albatross genome. And though the term 'junk DNA' has fallen onto hard times lately, Weiskopf, who's apparently lost his fix on Polaris, none-the-less insisted in the Journal article on calling our Prophetess's double helix 'blase'. We could have overlooked that un-couth snub were it not for the piling-ons of a gang of washed-up Canadian potato-head You-Tubers, who this week uploaded a scurrillous video involving a naked albatross, under the provocative caption:
    ANDES ALBATROSS/ S-S-SORTA BLASE DNA? The back-handed insult over Edna's speech defect, the insinuations, yes, it's incendiary to say the least. Defenses of Free Speech are a dime-a dozen in the lib-press; to wit Jim Riston's op-ed in the Times yesterday entitled 'Don't like what you see in the mirror? Deal with it, pigeon-breath!" is only one example.
    Our people are currently weighing the options, and not ruling out the role of refined hydro-carbons in the defense of The Bird's Holy Honor. One needs to draw a line somewhere. We have the Bird, they got what, The Canadian Goose. Yeah, deal wid it.