Friday, January 30, 2004
Remember Those Little
Old Photo-Booths?
...just fooling around with the 'LIVE' video-still option on my new little Pencam. But I'd better write something soon, as this is getting boring and self-obsessed (you know, like a blog should be):
Listening to: The Bad Plus;How's that for bloggish?
Mood: Taciturn;
I had such a lousy day today...
~
1/30/2004 10:17:00 PM
Monday, January 26, 2004
Blue Carps Everywhere
Evidently it's a popular tattoo, as well as a recurring motif here. Meme meme meme chose. I find it particularly compelling and beautiful.
(Image stored on my new favorite storage space PhotoBucket. 100MBs free! Nice guy too.)
~
1/26/2004 03:59:00 PM
Sunday, January 25, 2004
Just Corporate Criminals
Playin' with Tanks...
I've been sick this weekend, so I've succumbed to flipping channels when my eyes and brain are too tired to read. And I came across an old '80s video, the Call, "The Walls Came Down." I remembered it had a great punchline, so I listened through till the end:
I don't think there are any RussiansNot too shabby: they figured out the "corporate government" thing back in '83. Some people are still blind to it today, and others are purposely blind, unwilling to take off the rose-colored glasses and see the real face of the current father-figure they've elected. And others just don't care, or are cashing in on the deal.
And there ain't no Yanks
Just corporate criminals
Playin' with tanks
But they've been calling it the "Military Industrial Complex" for a long time now . . . No political science degree required to figure that one out.
~
1/25/2004 04:27:00 PM
Friday, January 23, 2004
Poor Me
I'm tired today, I have a bit of a respiratory infection, and I'm rewriting a short story. So, nothing new from me today. Here, go play with:
THIS
-and-
THIS;
Shinichiro Sato's box7box is brilliant!
-via monju_bosatsu's post at MeFi.
~
1/23/2004 11:42:00 AM
Thursday, January 22, 2004
Today is a Very Big Day
January 22, 2004: Anniversaries...
____________________________
Happy Birthday, Bob!
Robert E Howard was born on this day in 1906. Howard ruled the pulp magazines of the '20s and '30s, along with people like HP Lovecraft (with whom he often corresponded), Seabury Quinn, and others. Weird Tales remains their most famous stomping ground.
Howard is best known as the creator of Conan, but few people know the Conan he created. The resourceful, brainy, noble-savage of Howard's stories, who spoke several languages (picked up in his travels), commanded troops as a general, sailed the seas as a buccaneer, and ended up as a king, whose wits saved him on many more occasions than his brawn, who could track enemies through the brush like a panther and then catnap by the side of a trail waiting for his prey... this Conan has been eclipsed by the muscle-bound, dull-witted, uncharismatic Ah-nold Schwarzenegger. More's the pity, as Howard's stories were full of an undefinable brilliance that his true fans appreciate, but that will never be properly expressed by film or the current spate of pastiches written by authors other than The Man.
Howard wrote in many genres besides the "sword and sorcery" genre he is credited with spawning. He wrote westerns, mysteries, and others, including a proliferation of boxing stories that are filled with humor and wit. Many of these are being resurrected by companies like Cross Plains Comics and Wandering Star Publications, as well as Howard scholars like REHupa and Rusty Burke, and independent publishers such as Paul Herman (who rescues Howard's work from the obscurity of the public domain, in volumes such as Waterfront Fists.) The film The Whole Wide World, with Vincent D'Onofrio and Renee Zellweger, based on the book One Who Walked Alone by Novalyne Price Ellis, chronicles some of Howard's life.
On a personal note, I started reading Howard soon after I learned to read. In many ways, he "taught" me to write and, along with Harlan Ellison (whom I read voraciously after Howard), he rubbed off on me and will never wash off. I'm grateful for this, and I'll never be stuffy enough to deny my roots. Bob Howard, his writing and his life, will always be special to me.
Happy birthday, Bob, and Cheers to you! Today finds Bob Howard somewhere south of Valhalla, or perhaps in Tir-na n'Og, having brunch with Lovecraft, then shadowboxing on his way to the gym to spar, perhaps with Arthur Conan-Doyle.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Happy Chinese New Year!
Now Put Down That Broom...
It is the Year of the Monkey, starting today!
Sweeping or dusting should not be done on New Year's Day for fear that good fortune will be swept away . . .J-List is a company that exports all things Japanese, mostly toys and videos, and mostly to the U.S. The owner is an American with a Japanese wife and family. He also sends out periodic e-mails detailing Japanese life from the perspective of a foreigner (baka gaijin!) living in Japan. Highlights from yesterday's e-mail include:
Negative terms and the word "four" (Ssu), which sounds like the word for death, are not to be uttered . . .
On New Year's Day, we are not supposed to wash our hair because it would mean we would have washed away good luck for the New Year . . .
Japan is an interesting country, often being pulled this way or that by various outside influences. Japanese people go to a Shinto Shrine to pray on New Year's Day, turn to Buddhism for death-related customs such as funerals, have Christian weddings, and import customs like Valentine's Day and Christmas just to balance things out. Japanese can be quite superstitious, and many people here pay attention to their horoscope using the Western astrological system, although more tend to follow to the Buddhist system of lucky and unlucky days -- when getting married or taking delivery of a new car, for example, you always make sure to do it on the "lucky" day, called Taian. Japanese are also very big on using feng shui to improve the flow of energy in environments.[the last Fire Horse year], which caused the birth rate to plunge in that year -- very silly. Interesting, no? Anyway, Happy New Year to you! I'll have no trouble avoiding sweeping today, or on most other days...
Since Japan used the Chinese calendar until 1873, they also maintain some elements from that system, such as animal years . . But there's an unfortunate Japanese superstition surrounding women born in the year of the horse when the element fire is dominant . . . Females born in this year, called Hinoeuma-no-onna or Fire Horse Women, are supposed to be un-tamable, shrew-like women who devour men, and there is subtle discrimination against them, especially by older Japanese. Eager to spare girl-children the pain of this superstition, many couples avoided having children in
~~~~~~~~~~~~
He's Had Monsters in his Head
For Two Years Now
Actually, thankfully, most of the monsters escape Andy Bell's head onto the pages of his website (and onto t-shirts and prints and such, too.) Andy has been publishing a monster-a-day for two years now on his website the CREATURES in my head (Go there! Go now! Hit the 'random' button, again and again! Hee hee, it's fun!) I wish I had Andy's compulsive, daily creativity, not to mention his work ethic (or is it some form of bizarre mania? ...or maybe he just channels these buggers from another dimension?)
-image copyright Andy Bell, used without permission.
(Okay, so Andy's anniversary was yesterday. Sue me.)
Congrats, Andy.
Like I said:
My monstuhs ahhh getting ressstlesss...~~~~~~~~~~~~
-B. Karloff
Thought for the Day:
Every hollow has its favorite sound...Kinda Taoist, isn't it?
Every corner has its favorite clown.
-Liz Phair
~~~~~~~~~~~~
~
1/22/2004 01:15:00 PM
Tuesday, January 20, 2004
Return of the Blue Carp
Okay, a while back here I threw out this Blue Carp thing. But I had actually thought of that a long time ago. Recycle and reuse is my motto, and I don't just mean cans-n-bottles.
One upon a time I had dared my friend Matt Sturges to start a short-story with the phrase "The blue carp swam slowly, steadily through the air toward my face." I prognosticated that the story would be a wild success and would launch his ultimate fame as a writer. In fact, I was in fully-caffeinated weirdness mode, and I threw Matt an e-mail fortune cookie/dare that went something like this:
"Use this sentence and all will be well with you. Many people will read your beautiful words and all will know peace within their lifetimes. "
Here is what Matt tossed off:
"The blue carp swam slowly, steadily through the air toward my face."Brilliant! ...and I'm convinced he really did just toss that off.
It wasn't the first biomimetic synthion I'd seen, but certainly the most bizarre, the most elegantly pointless. As I watched, its sleek, smooth edges morphed into straight lines; it grew thinner, less variegated. After a few moments, it had become an origami carp, carefully folded out of blue onion paper. With a slight pinging sound, it fell out of its suspension field and I caught it in my outstretched hand.
I unfolded it gently, careful not to tear the paper. Inside was a date and a time, and the words "You Are Invited!" written in shimmering silver script which, upon closer inspection, revealed itself to be composed of hundreds of millimeter-wide minnows, idling back and forth beneath the paper's surface.
With the tip of my finger, I dashed a quick x next to the RSVP line (the "ink" appeared dark black); as soon as I did so, the paper folded itself in ways too surreal to be understood, and vanished.
Jane and her parties.
But here's what Mattster had to say when I begged him to continue:
"As for the carp, I'd love to continue in that vein, but the world already has one Neal Stephenson. Doesn't need another. Hoo."
Matt Sturges. He never takes advice.
~
1/20/2004 12:08:00 PM
Saturday, January 17, 2004
Michelangelo Does Porn
I drove past a porn shop today. In its window stood a headless, armless, nearly legless male mannequin barely hiding an enormous bulge in a tiny red g-string, the passion-red of Valentine's Day chocolate boxes and heart-shaped cards. He stood there proudly like Michelangelo's David, beheaded, be-armed, and be-legged, but still somehow aroused, sporting a huge erection. I couldn't help but wonder if a man might buy the g-string to wear, or if a woman (or man), smitten with lust, might walk into the shop and ask to buy the entire thing. It could happen.
A porn shop clerk must have some real stories to tell...
~
1/17/2004 12:47:00 PM
Thursday, January 15, 2004
Tigers, Cliffs, Strawberries, and Crickets
I think I was very young when I first heard the Zen parable about the tiger, the cliff, and the strawberry. I don't remember it exactly, but it goes something like this:
A tiger chases a man over a cliff, but the man manages catch to hold of a root. So he's hanging there, with danger above him and a deadly fall below, and his arms are getting tired. And he notices a strawberry, a perfect strawberry, growing out of the cliff near him.
So what does he do? He eats the strawberry.
When I was young and I first heard this, I really didn't get it. I thought it was some sort of bravado, some part of a macho warrior's code. Like, this brave fellow is caught between danger and death, but he's cool, so he casually munches on a strawberry while the tiger growls above him and the deadly drop looms below.
But, as we get older, parables and maxims come back to us as we experience new situations, and often a light shines and they suddenly make sense.
The parable of the strawberry makes sense to me now, not in any macho way, but because it has finally occurred to me: What else is there for the man to do, but enjoy that strawberry? He'd be a fool not to. He can worry all he likes about the tiger and about the strength draining from his arms, but what good will it really do?
Every day we are all in the same situation as that man. We face uncertainty in life, while the certainty of death waits for us down the road like a fall from an unavoidable cliff. And what else is there to do but enjoy life in the meantime?
It just makes sense.
I think the reason the parable of the strawberry has suddenly returned to me is because I have been experiencing a newfound balance in my life. For the first time in years, I am on solid ground, appreciating each day as it comes. Somehow I have finally learned to differentiate between the things I can change and the things over which I am powerless.
I have realized that situations that made me distraught in the past did so not because they were terrible or earth-shattering, but because I refused to admit my own helplessness to help myself, and often my helplessness to help others . . . and because I blamed myself for anything that went wrong in my life no matter what the circumstances.
We all naturally blame ourselves for situations that don't turn out the way we want. It is a part of our basic, subconscious psychology. We're wired that way. As children we first learn that we are rewarded when we are good and punished when we are bad. This psychology stays with us, in the back of our minds, all our lives, to the point that we often flagellate ourselves when bad things happen to us, even when these things are not our faults. If bad things happen to us, we feel we are bad. Guilt/shame/blame, the ugly trio. And some people chase fortune and "success" and a stereotypical "good life," merely to prove to themselves that they are good.
But, as they say, bad things happen to good people. The rain falls on everyone, it does not differentiate. Bad luck and sadness are equal-opportunity employers. It's not our fault when things go badly.
I have learned that the true mental drama of going through a bad situation is not usually the fact that what happened was so terrible, but rather the fact that we subconsciously blame ourselves, and so become depressed, and look for ways that we might have done things differently, reviewing the situation and living in the past as our self-esteem plummets and our fear of the future grows.
But that's silly, isn't it?
Nevermind the events that have made me realize this in my own life, but the result is that I'm living in the moment again. Appreciating the basic fact of being alive. When I step outside in the morning, the air smells good to me, the fact that the ground supports me seems somehow a blessing, and a bird passing overhead causes me a brief moment of awe and fascination.
And this is the true point: Life itself, just simple life, should be enjoyable, in and of itself. When we live so much in the past and the future that the present has no meaning, we have lost our lives in the most basic sense.
I had a friend who spent some time at a Zen retreat with a monk as an advisor and close friend. The monk told her that, if we were truly in touch with our senses, if we were truly living in the present moment, we would cry every time we heard a cricket chirp, thinking of, experiencing, that small and simple creature producing such beautiful sound by simply rubbing together its wings. I don't know that I'll ever achieve that kind of sensitivity. But I do intend to enjoy that strawberry.
~
1/15/2004 12:32:00 PM
Wednesday, January 14, 2004
Interlude: Blogging vs Writing,
Why I Like William Gibson,
and My New "Career Path" (hah!)
Sometimes I wonder about blogging, if it's really good writing practice, or if it gets in the way of formal writing such as short-stories and novels. I suppose I subscribe to the theory that it's good to write anything, and you never know where that anything might take you. Which is why I'm writing this entry; I have nothing clever to say, but I'll talk about myself today. I wish I had comments installed, though, as I'd love some feedback write now. Um, right now.
First, though, here is what William Gibson had to say about writing versus blogging, this when he took his current break from his own blog to write a new novel:
...if I'm still blogging, I'm definitely still on vacation. I've always known, somehow, that it would get in the way of writing fiction, and that I wouldn't want to be trying to do both at once. The image that comes most readily to mind is that of a kettle failing to boil because the lid's been left off.I like that metaphor.
But I'm blogging anyway. If, in a few months, I'm deep into that novel I'm planning, maybe I'll disappear for a while. If I do, be glad for me...
Some people have noticed that I'm on a big William Gibson kick lately, and here is why: He is brilliant. A true genius. He coined the term "cyberspace" and wrote about the Internet in '81, before it existed. Hydrogen-powered vehicles, too, turned up in his stories before '83. Gibson's fiction is roughly "sci-fi," but always has something to say about human society, even the human soul. And the "hard" edge to his sci-fi prognosticates like HG Wells, as I have mentioned.
But, possibly most impressive to me, Gibson is a consummate, innovative stylist, always growing and moving forward. Sometimes I just like to look at his sentence structures, the poetry of Neuromancer, the way he uses an occasional slightly unnecessary comma so well in All Tomorow's Parties, and the fruition of his use of sentence fragments in Idoru.
And I'm learning so much about what fiction can do from Gibson. His characterization is brilliant in what it implies; from what little he dished out about the character Case in Neuromancer, I imagined every detail of Case's past, even his childhood, automatically. Sometimes what you provoke in the imagination of the reader is much more important than what you spell out; it's a process of interaction between reader and writer, after all. And his characters' simple thoughts, feelings, and perceptions, their inner life, in All Tomorrow's Parties, were so damned compelling! Exciting! ...contrary to my own instinct to make things happen, physically, constantly, throughout a story, which is a great technique in pulp adventure or a page-turner, but often limiting elsewhere.
I put off reading Gibson for far too long, mostly because I wasn't fond of the "cyberpunk" sub-genre he spawned, although Gibson himself has admitted he's not happy with the direction it has taken. And I abhorred the hordes of trendy, über-hip (hipper-than-thou!) little goth-techno-punk poseurs who worship Gibson as the Messiah (so why would I want to read their Bible?) But that was time wasted...
Okay, then, enough of Gibson.
I dropped out of my online business degree program recently; I'm not sure if I'll go back. I wrote so very little while I was attending classes, I was so drained of creativity. I'm technically into my junior year of college, but I recently learned even these "accelerated" courses might have taken me 1&1/2 years to finish... with a Business Degree (Aaaagh!) And the courses were painful. Painfully boring, really just a painful bunch of BS, but incredibly painfully time-consuming, though it was simple to learn absolutely nothing (and occasionally tough to learn anything) and get an 'A' (and straight-As I received.) (Okay, I'll admit, I did have a couple of innovative teachers who made the material somehow interesting, informative and fun.)
SO!: there was very little intellectual stimulation, just ash grey fields of knee-deep boredom stretching to the horizon, like shambling across an unending post-holocaust landscape of the mind. Unbearable. But, I did dredge up some useful knowledge out of the experience, although most of it could be summed up by the Peter Principle. I have a better grasp of the business and corporate environment that shapes so much of the world's culture now, so perhaps now I am better prepared to someday ridicule it the way it deserves. I do have that short story, a kind of hybrid influenced by Blade Runner meets Office Space, that I've fleshed out but never written... (And, hey, much of Gibson's future centers around humanity evolving or devolving into a multinational corporate hive mind...)
So now I'm working my boring job, and reading and writing like I haven't for ages. But what do I do next? Okay, laugh at me (and some of my friends will laugh at me, or perhaps sneer just a bit), but I'm thinking of trade schools. I want to finish my degree someday, and I have an amazing variety of liberal arts courses under my belt (something of a classical education covering Humanities, Philosophy, Art, Architecture, Languages, English, etc etc), but right now I need a job that has results I can see, that pays me well, that I can leave behind at the end of the day, that has a guaranteed demand. Plumbers, for example, will always be needed, and the field might just be less overstaffed and competitive right now than IT (especially given the latest trend of constant IT Department cuts...)
I think I'd like being a plumber. But, I'm probably headed towards computers or electronics... or IT. Maybe even HVAC, heh! I need a pay increase soon, as well as the ability to find a job when I eventually move out of Ohio. Hey, it's a stop-gap-measure, for now.
Ohhhhh, for the days when lighthouses needed live-in keepers... Every writer dreams of that job.
Anyone have suggestions? E-mail me. I love interaction, and need to enable comments here soon. I'm also a pretty nice guy. Thanks.
Thought for the day: I'd rather be alone than be somewhere where people don't get me...
~
1/14/2004 02:05:00 PM
Monday, January 12, 2004
Well, They (at AskMe) Asked
What did they call Canadian Geese before Confederation?They called them geese. Although people walking across fields covered in goose-poo called them all kinds of things. But if my dog, who has some disgusting residual racial-memory foraging instincts, were to refer to that same goose-poo, she would call geese "The providers of one of my favorite snacks."
~
1/12/2004 11:59:00 AM
Sunday, January 11, 2004
No Time This Time
Someone on MetaFilter (actually it was the wonderful new AskMe) asked a question about the nature of time, and I spewed my usual comments (for anyone interested):
Time doesn't exist, except as a measurement of change. It's just a yardstick, a tape measure of sorts. If nothing changed, there would be no need for the concept of time, and no perception of the 'passing of time.'I guess what I mean is that time is a concept in the mind, and the experience of 'time passing' is a perception of consciousness.
That is all.
But, wait... what if some sort of basic consciousness is a part of everything, of the very fabric of existence and reality..?
Whoa, nevermind. I'm sticking with my first statement.
~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1/11/2004 03:02:00 PM
It's Cold (Continued)
Friday night the temperature dropped down to single digits and the wind howled. Saturday morning, several nails could be seen sticking out of the back porch. The freezing wood had contracted, condensed, and squeezed the nails half way out of their holes.
Later that day I went out to knock the snow off the bushes in front. Otherwise the heavy drifts weigh down the branches, which bend permanently and stay that way in the spring, leaving the four-foot bushes at half their height, spread out on the ground like poorly trained, grotesque mockeries of bonsai.
~
1/11/2004 11:37:00 AM
Saturday, January 10, 2004
More (Overheard) Dialogue, Revised
A while back I posted some (one-sided) dialogue from a phone conversation I overheard in the cubicle kennels:
Well, he's never going to leave his kids...Well, I recently overheard some more of the same conversation/continued, and I had it all wrong to begin with.
So, what are you going to say to him..?
Ahhh, just cry a lot...
I had assumed that it might be a woman involved with a married man who would never leave his kids (and wife) for her. The woman-to-woman advice of "Ahhh, just cry a lot..." was the real punchline, for me.
Actually, though, the situation was quite the opposite, with the woman holding all the cards: She has a husband who is going from job to job, making little effort, lazing about the house while she supports him. She has finally given him an ultimatum: Shape up, or I'm leaving with the kids. And from now on, when you're out of work, you will be doing the cooking, shopping, cleaning, laundry, and errands...
I hope that wasn't sexist of me. Actually, I like the new version quite better.
~
1/10/2004 11:51:00 AM
Friday, January 09, 2004
More Dialogue Overheard
in the Cubicle Cattle Pens:
One of my friends has been downsized so many times that at one point she was collecting salary from her current job and two severences, all at the same time...And that is the state of the economy...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The State of Politics
From Governor Ah-nold's State of the State Address:
I am a salesman by nature. If I can sell tickets to my movies like 'Red Sonja' or 'Last Action Hero,' you know I can sell just about anything. Cah-lee-fornia is the easiest sell I've ever had.Yes, but is it the brilliance of the salesman, or the idiocy of the consumers?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The State of the State of Ohio:
It's Cold
From an e-mail to my friend Teresa:
How is that weather in Greece? The white Xmas here was nice, but you can have our snow, I'm tired of it. It has been in the teens lately, which is bitter even for an animal like me. Hands begin to feel the frostbitten sting in a matter of minutes outside. Doggy and I have not walked for days. Two blankets are not enough at night, and the heat bill is still enormous. The cats sleep in my bed more often, and closer to me than usual. I don't know how animals survive; I see horses milling around, their thick hides unbothered by the wind. But the deer have disappeared; I imagine them huddled together against the cold, possibly in the shelter of a stand of evergreens. The raccoons and skunks and muskrats are missing too, surely sleeping in burrows, living off stores of body fat. But the chipmunks are asleep in their tunnels on deep beds of sunflower seeds; they have been known to horde as much as a bushel in their dens. A half-dozen squirrels mass on my back porch each morning, waiting and staring anxiously until I put out their daily seeds, eating them quickly before the birds lessen their take.
It's cold.
~
1/09/2004 09:50:00 AM
Thursday, January 08, 2004
More Dialogue
A snippet of a personal phone conversation, between a woman and a female friend, overheard at a certain cubicle hive:
Well, he's never going to leave his kids...Whoa. Doesn't that just paint an entire huge picture, most of which you really don't want to imagine?
So, what are you going to say to him..?
Ahhh, just cry a lot...
~
1/08/2004 12:08:00 AM
Wednesday, January 07, 2004
Gratitude
I have come to the conclusion that we are all always in debt to someone, but all that is ever truly owed is gratitude.
~
1/07/2004 11:18:00 AM
Monday, January 05, 2004
Le Mariage de
Kathy Torrance had watched his face, as he watched the screen. " 'Babed out' yet, Laney? Allergic reaction to cute? First symptoms are a sort of underlying irritation, a resentment, a vague but persistent feeling that you're being gotten at, taken advantage of . . ."
. . ."You haven't told me what I'm looking for."
"Anything that might be of interest to Slitscan. Which is to say, Laney, anything that might be of interest to Slitscan's audience. Which is best visualized as a vicious, lazy, profoundly ignorant, perpetually hungry organism craving the warm god-flesh of the anointed. Personally I like to imagine something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It's covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth, Laney, only genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote. Or by voting in presidential elections."
-William Gibson, from Idoru.
I think I was thinking of something, but what's left to say now except "That's Entertainment"?
~
1/05/2004 10:02:00 AM
Thursday, January 01, 2004
1/01/2004 03:46:00 PM
