Faith Based Execution

The news reports that Saddam Hussein was executed at the gallows. This could very well be the case. Remember that this man had several body doubles for security reasons, seven I believe. If they release DNA evidence that the man hung was indeed Saddam and not a body double, who performs those DNA tests? Are they corruptible? Could black mail or threats of violence against family be involved? Hell, is it possible to fake a hanging? I have already heard suspicions of it being faked because the noose was not a true hangman's knot of 13 loops.

Did they actually hang Saddam Hussein? With all the different ways that such a thing could be faked and/or falsified we will never know for certain. They probably hung Saddam. It was still a faith based execution.

Of course it doesn't matter if they did it for real or faked it. Neither can be absolutely proven. Alive in captivity, hidden with a new identity, or dead at the end of a rope, the general result is the same. Some people are mad, others are elated, and my beer tastes neither better nor worse than the pitcher I had two days ago.

That's New

I woke up early, drove the wife to work, and saw the sun rising over Portland and giving a nice back lighting effect to Mt. Hood. As a swinger I don't see that very often. Is that the right terminology? Let's see what does swinger mean... Oh! I meant as a swing shifter. Second shifter? I mean I'm not a morning person and my lifestyle manifests this in ways other than just bitching about it like everyone else. So as I saw the sun rising beyond Mt. Hood I thought, "It would be awesome to go surfing right now." Alas, no wet suit yet. Soon, soon.

Then there is the other new thing I've been experimenting with. I work with this 21 year old gal who is very cute, very sweet, and represents everything I have ever hated about typical Americans. She drives an SUV for no particular reason. She gets dressed up and puts on loads of make-up and perfume to go out dancing at the clubs. She likes cover bands because she already knows all the songs. She considers herself Christian because she was raised Christian, even though she only goes to church on major religious holidays and parties four or five nights a week. She is oblivious to just about anything happening outside of the mainstream culture. For example, we had to explain to her who Gandhi was and she had never heard of Genghis Khan. So far the only major curve ball she has thrown my way is that she likes Bauhaus but didn't know who Depeche Mode was. Her 23 year old sister also works with us. While not quite as stereo-typical a specimen as her younger sister, she is not far from it. For some reason I have yet to figure out, these two gals have taken a liking to me. They sit with me on breaks, like to chat with me while work on their machines, try to get me to go out with them for drinks after work, and have even invited me to parties. Yes, they know I am married and have even met my wife.

Regardless of why they are enamoured with me, I am absolutely enthralled with these two girls. If we had gone to high school together I would have hated them. Now they fascinate me. What makes them who they are? How do their heads work? What does life look like for someone like that? Most importantly, is it possible to corrupt their operating systems? Are these types of people more than just robots? Is it possible to undo a cultural consumer?

Why would I want to do this? Because I'm evil. Duh. And if I can wyrd out these girls, corrupt their routines and sub-routines, there is hope for the rest of America. But mostly because I'm evil.

Rant

You know what really...

fuck it.

Protecting the Home Break

The latest podcast from Shralp Surf has footage from the Nelscott Reef Tow-In event. After watching it I had to drop them a line to complain. They listed Nelscott Reef as California! Those killer waves are in Lincoln City, Oregon.

The podcast also has footage of bikini clad Brazilian beach babes. I didn't complain about that.

Mood

Somehow Sinfest has captured my mood for the day quite eloquently.

What Will It Be?

So here is one problem with being a Discordian. Since I take my humor seriously and my seriousness humorously, people often can't tell the difference. Was it a serious joke or a lark of a demand? Can you tell the difference?

Finding Happiness

It amazes me how much happiness one little note can bring to a person's life. Just one little note to a friend. Just a simple little note designed to cause needless chaos and confusion for no particular reason. I sent it off this morning and have been giggling all day. Knowing that the friend will take it seriously just makes it funnier.

We Discordians take our humor seriously and our seriousness humorously.

Long and Boring

I play World of Warcaft. My wife plays it a lot more. A lot more. She is a gamer. I knew this when we hooked up nearly 13 years ago. The first time I visited her house her dad sat in a chair in front of the television playing Nintendo. If her dad wasn't playing, her brother was. She didn't play around me but let me know that she was the Tetris queen and she loved playing the Final Fantasy games.

For quite a while I tried to be a gamer. I got a degree in Computer Animation & Design and was a professor of 3D Game Design at Academy College. When it comes right down to it, I'm not a gamer. I like to play video games and can have fun doing it, but I just don't have what it takes to join the ranks of the true gamers. When WoW was first released, it took less than a week for a player to level his character to the maximum of level 60. That was extreme. Most people can do it within two or three months of play. Most gamers now have several characters at level 60. I have one that reached level 58 just last night. That is what I have achieved in two years of game play.

Gaming is an odd one for me to categorize. While it involves staring at a screen for hours, it is not a passive affair like television, film, and theater enthusiasts. While it requires reflexes and strategy, it is not the physical endeavor of sport. Here sits a former professor of 3D Game Design and I can't even describe what a video game actually is. I can tell you about game design strategies, challenge and reward systems, artificial intelligence scripting, polycounts, mapping, and several things that go into a game, but not what a video game is. Choppers, surfing, sex, these things have much to offer on both the amateur and professional levels. I can wax on about any of them with a glazed over dreamy look on my face. Gaming, no matter how hard developers try, is always going to favor the pro. No wax, either.

Since I am not a true gamer, why do I continue to play? My wife put it quite eloquently last week when we were discussing if I should reinstate my own WoW account rather than sharing one with her. "I love playing and I'd like to be able to game with you." That I understand. I love choppers and love it when she goes for a ride with me. I love surfing and appreciate her coming to the beach with me. I love sex and it just wouldn't be the same without her participation. Gaming is something she does and she wants to be able to share that with me. There is one more reason. Working second shift, she is usually trying to sleep while I am winding down from my day. Sometimes I will write or create art. Other times I just want to kick back and relax a little. Rather than do something observational like watch TV or maybe a movie, it can be fun to kick back and kill some monsters.

That is the element lost on most hard core gamers. Video games were developed as a hobby, a recreational activity. Just like drinking alcohol, when it ceases to be a recreational activity and starts to dominate your life, you might want to consider quitting. Luckily my wife isn't anywhere near that category. She is doing great at work, in school, and as a domestic partner. Some of the people she plays with seem to have forgotten this and it can cause problems. I hate coming home from work to hear about some messed up business with the people she plays with. It's a game. Why are her friends taking it all so seriously? By them taking it seriously, she is made to feel like less of a gamer for not taking it as seriously. Rule of thumb; if you don't get paid to do it, it is a hobby. Bowling, surfing, boxing, baseball, motorcycling, rugby, video games, sex, drinking, dancing, whatever. Pros get paid to make it more than recreational. Last time I checked, the only people who get paid to play World of Warcraft were Blizzard employees and Chinese gold farmers. Relax. Don't worry. It is a virtual world. Have fun. If you piss someone off, they can't even hit you. Let's get back to having some fun.

See. Long and boring.

In more exciting news, I now have neoprene booties and gloves for surfing. I am one wetsuit away from being fully equipped.

Not Weird

Waking up with the urge to Listen to Some Candy Talking by The Jesus and Mary Chain, I searched it out on my main list and hit play. With the player set on random, the song finished and immediately launched into another Jesus and Mary Chain song. At first this struck as highly improbable. As an unrepentant nerd, I had to determine the probability of this happening. Turns out that even though this band makes up a relatively small portion of my collection, there was still a 1 in 87 chance of one song by this artist being followed by another. That means it should happen about 4 times a year, and that isn't strange at all.

WoW:TBC

If you can understand the subject line, you might want to preorder now. I have a tough time understanding the escapism of MMORPGs. In real life I am a tall blue-eyed blond punk with a custom early model Harley and a surfboard who can inspire awe, love, and fear simply by entering the room. In WoW I'm a barely capable orc who gets his ass kicked by teenagers. With the expansion I'm going to try my hand at being a petite Blood Elf hottie who relies on the stupidity and gullibility of adolescent boys to get ahead.

Olfactory Observation

Apparently there is nothing wrong with my nose. At the store I was squatted down in the aisle across from some hipster gal. With two six packs and a bottle of soda under one arm, I reached out and got a large bag of dog food with the other. I slid my arm under it, curled it up onto my arm, then hoisted the bag onto my shoulder. Judging by my nose, this display was a turn on for the hipster gal.

Been hangin' with my hound dog too long?

Holiday Greetings

Company Christmas Party

A note to aspiring alcoholics.

Do not ask everyone at the table if they'd like some rum for dessert and within half an hour start acting like you're in a loud and crowded bar. Do not stumble around the room as though you are at a frat party and have forgotten where the keg is. Do not sit at the table next to the supervisors and chuckle loudly about how you had a hell of a time getting the rum from a big jug through the small opening on the flask. Do not make bad jokes about your punch smelling funny. Very amateur.

When sneaking alcohol into a work function, discretely pour under the table and sit quietly with a glazed look in your eyes. Everybody will know what you're doing but won't care. Everyone has had to deal with career alcoholics, usually within their own families. Even if they don't approve, they recognize the actions and are programmed to not do anything about it.

Drunkards get their booze supply cut off. People are scared to take it away from the alcoholic.

Holiday Cheer

End Times

May the next six years be filled with strange and mind bendingly bizarre experiences. In six short years we should know if Terrence McKenna with his Novelty Theory was full of shit. Personally I hope he was right and things get massively weird in that last year. Existence as I currently know it stagnates and replicates like a hillbilly. Give me novelty or give me something crunchy and exciting with asian spices. Or a really sweet wave to surf. Or maybe just legalize drugs so I don't have to deal with the fact that I walk amongst the living dead.

Vertigo Pimp

While I knew Brit back in high school and have witnessed the self perpetuating drama that if harnessed could power a few small third world countries, I have never completely understood the mass phenomenon of her blog Hookers on Stilts other than its brilliant name.

As far as food critique goes, with this one she is spot on.

They say NYC has the best food in the world, everything you could ever possibly want. But if you want to grow a giant, two-airplane-seats fat ass, you come to the Midwest.

P-town has thousands of average eating establishments serving all kinds of foods that are relatively healthy with a rare gem here and there. Minnesota has thousands of restaurants that inspire Pavlovian salivation and gluteal maximization.

AWPC

ACK! They played Christmas music over the intercom all day at work. By wearing ear plugs and humming Beethoven I was able to drown out Silver Bells, Oh Come All Ye Faithful, Little Drummer Boy, and Oh Little Town of Bethlehem.

D: After a couple hours of this shit I'm begining to understand why they killed Jesus.

Me: Hell. I'd do it right now.

Let's not even get into how the Jews and Hindus at work were feeling today.

AWPC

As reference, I gave one of the maintanence guys at work a nick-name because he insisted on being called Michael instead of Mike. His initials were MD. While the other shifts all call him Michael, I have gotten everyone on my shift to call him Mad Dog, and he likes it. I just can't call someone 'Michael' with a straight face. In return he has been known to say, "Let me consult the mohawk."

Me: Thanks for all your help, Mad Dog. Without it tonight would have been really evil. And not the good kind of evil like D&D and Rock-n-Roll. I mean the bad kind of evil like Police Academy 3 and Billy Ray Cyrus.

MD: Dude. That's bad. How could you even go there?

Me: Sorry man. That's just how evil it would have been.

Not An AWPC

This morning I was talking with my gay neighbor. He was excited to go home to Idaho for the holidays but was also a bit apprehensive about the social environment there.

Me: In my experience most people aren't nearly as intolerant as they think they are.

Sometimes I surprise myself.

Jake Time Magazine's Person of the Year

I was deeply honored to see my own face would be on the cover of Time Magazine as Person of the Year. Thank you to everyone who helped make this possible.

While DIY is fun, this year I don't have to break out the scissors and glue.

Sober Cab

I went out this evening to help celebrate a co-worker's birthday. I personally refuse to drive after drinking and offered to be the designated driver for my wife and a friend. If the bar serves decent coffee, which this place did, I don't mind. Getting wired off of coffee is loads of fun. At one point someone asked if I was having a good time despite not drinking. I pointed at my lovely wife sitting to my right, the good looking gal next to her, the cute girl on my left, yet another girl next to her, and raised my coffee mug in a toast. Being boxed in behind a table on a bench seat between four partying women? Yeah, I think I was having a good time. At least I couldn't stop smiling.

It's good to be the guy in a kilt.

Nothing Better

I do love putting on clothes straight out of the dryer on a cold and soggy day. Best thing in the world. Well, maybe second best. Then there is surfing and choppers and the thrill of fixing something and the smell of fresh baked bread. Anyway, it ranks up there pretty darn high.

Oregon Surf

When you mention surfing people tend to think of California, Hawaii, and maybe Florida. So when I tell people I surf in Oregon, they often ask if the surf here is any good. Hmm, maybe they should ask some of the world's top surfers who gathered along the Oregon coast on Friday for the annual Nelscott Reef tow-in invitational. I was hoping it would hold off just one more day, but when the break is pumping, it's pumping. So while the biggest names in big wave surfing were enjoying fast double over-head (and bigger) waves, I was at work. Quintessential bummer. This surf spot is in Lincoln City, only two and a half hours from Portland.

We've also got Seaside Point that provides good waves all winter. Then there is Short Sands that has excellent summer waves. You just have to be stupid enough to surf in 50F water. Yep, I qualify.

Happy X-Mass to Me

When is X's birthday again? I always forget this shit. Anyway, while most folks celebrate X's Mass several days after the fact, I went out and bought myself a present. So now I've got a 7' 9" Bic, Sticky Bumps, and some Sex Wax. Pictures included for those who would otherwise be confused.

End of the month I'll pick up a wet suit and I'll be ready for some Surfin' USA, but only as covered by the Jesus & Mary Chain.

AWPC

Him: I was thinking that we need to pull the collar off of the shaft and take it over to the arbor press so we can resize the gap.

Jake cranks really hard on the bolt to tighten it down.

Him: Or we could always just get a Viking to torque the hell out of it.

The Real Nightmare Before Christmas

For the first half of my life, I enjoyed Christmas. It was a fun time. Then I found out that there was a giving element, too. That got difficult and my family often didn't seem to appreciate the cool things I had found at the military surplus store.

What really sucked about Christmas was the iconography. There wasn't a whole lot to like in the idea of a fat man wearing red and exploiting a bunch of short guys in funny looking shoes to aid him in his evil task of making sure that while bad kids got all the cool shit like Ataris and later Nintendos, the good kids would get socks, a pencil set, and maybe one mid-sized set of Legos or a Matchbox car. Nobody really cares about baby Jesus. He is either a doll or somebody's kid screaming its head off. Mary and Joseph looked like Arabs, and even back then we had the Ayatollah Khomeini we were supposed to fear. He seems hospitable in today's environment. Angels were too frilly. Nutcrackers in leotards? Sugarplum faeries? Tin soldiers? Snowmen? Reindeer? Little boys going rum-tum-tum-tum when every little drummer boy I've ever been around goes BAM-BA-BAM-BAM? It all sucked,

Then tonight I find out about Santa's evil sidekick, Krampus. Somewhere out there in Austria there is a remnant of the old Wild Hunt when people would lock themselves indoors to avoid getting swept up by the parade of dead souls roaming the streets in the dead of winter. I might just have to import this little Christmas beastie.

X-Mass Shopping

Hurray for crass commercialism!

You can get me a present simply by getting other people presents. If you plan on doing any of your shopping at Amazon, then might I suggest utilizing my page. By purchasing items from my Amazon store, or this gift certificate link, or the Amazon search function here, I get a cut. That way you don't have to buy me anything yet you still are giving me something.

AWPC

It was lunch break and I was at the sinks washing up.

Her: You having a good day?

Me: I'm done. I'm going home.

Her: What?

Me: I've had enough. I'm outta here.

Her: Whatever.

Me: Serious. Just wait and see. When you get back from lunch, I won't be here.

Her: No way.

Me: No? Hang around. I'm going to walk over to that time clock and punch out. I've had enough.

Her: Why?

Me: I'm sick of it. I'm sick of stupid operators turning on their stupid lights for stupid problems. I'm sick of stupid supervisors not telling me what is going on before they leave. I'm just plain sick of it. I've had it.

Her: Not me.

Me: Yes, even you.

Just then the other maintenance guy approaches. He doesn't know what I've just been saying.

Him: You can't go.

Me: Ta hell I can't! I'm sick of it and I'm leaving!

Her: You're not really serious, are you?

Me: Just watch me. I'm going to go over to that time clock and punch out right now, and then walk out that door.

I grab my jacket off the garbage can, put it on, and walk over to the time clock. I grab my time card from my wallet and punch out. As I'm walking away...

Me: Good night. Good bye. And good luck!

Her: No! You can't leave.

Him: Hey! Next time you should just hit him.

Me: Whatever, man. I'm gone!

What she didn't know, what none of the operators or even the lead knew, was that I had requested a half day off over a week in advance. But the other maintenance guy knew. That and he is the only other guy on our side of operations to have had theatrical improv training. The poor girl looked like she was going to cry.

I also happen to know that he can't hold an improv character for more than a minute, and would break down over lunch and tell the poor thing the truth. Hack.

Odds are I'll get a big slug in the arm from her tomorrow.

Doomsday Averted

Last weekend I went off about Guinness. Then someone had a grand idea. Why not try buying our Guinness elsewhere and compare? Instead of purchasing it at Safeway, we purchased four cans at the local import bottle shop, Belmont Station. To the fine folks at Guinness, I apologize. You still make the one beer that the world should not be without. To the asshats at Safeway, what the fuck are you doing to fuck up the Guinness so bad?

Dr. Merkwürdig

...or how I learned to stop worrying and love the mall.

That's right, I'm teaching myself to enjoy going to the mall. Not the shopping aspect. That is still bullshit. But I figured out that if I really want to fulfill my life long dreams, I should get comfortable in mall like settings.

It first occurred to my while walking through Lloyd Center. I looked around at the totally enclosed space with no windows on an outside world. There were people crowded into the hallways. I realized that life in an orbital colony would be very similar. Space would be at a premium. If you weren't in your small living space, the commons would almost certainly have a lot of people milling about. Granted, it wouldn't all be shops, but the feel would be very similar to a mall.

Since it is my dream to live in space, I am preparing myself. I can now go to the mall and enjoy myself. I even had a decent time this weekend. Of course wearing a kilt and having all the women and girls checking you out helps. Robert Heinlein was a genius.

Fenris Unbound

As I got out of the truck, the black wolf came at me. I placed my right hand in his mouth as a sign of faith. As he tried to bite down on it, I grabbed his tongue. Seeing as I still have my hand, I guess that means Fenris is still unbound.

This all took place on the moon, of course. Humans had taken up habitation on the surface, but there was a sub-culture. The sub-culture were people who had been 'banished' to live underground to prevent the spread of some disease they had acquired. I was shown the underground habitation, a huge cavern with a floor lined with dragon scales. A little girl let the truth slip. Did they look diseased? Did they look unhappy? And if they were all diseased, why was I being allowed to walk amongst them while others were not? The truth? The sub-culture had discovered this cavern of dragon scales that granted them with eternal life. Here was the real fountain of youth. They spread the rumor of disease to keep people out. El Dorado, Luna.

But as long as Fenris is unbound, it is in danger.

Then I came back down to Earth. So it has been a busy morning for me.

Third Time is the Charm

Guiness is no longer on my shopping list. I've been drinking Guiness for years. But the last three packs of pub draught cans I have purchased have all tasted like watered down shit. There are plenty of kick ass beers out there. If Guiness wants to rest on name recognition and water down what was once the best beer in the world, than fuck them.

Dirty Music

When I get the need for a fix, there is only one thing that really satisifies it. After months of listening to MP3s, the time had come to bust out some vinyl. My record player was top notch, one of the best you could buy back in 1981, and the diamond tipped needle hasn't ever been changed. Every pop, tchik, and hiss is pure dirty bliss. And for some reason I always grab Alice Donut. Dirty, fuzzy, hissing richness in full analog glory. Like the first trickle up the vein hitting the brain, I collapse twisted and tickled. Fuckin MP3s are like snorting sudafed.

AWPC

K: Is one of you designated the lead?
Me: No way. We're anarchists. We just do our jobs.

Reading is Still for Chumps

I was chatting with an old friend last night. By old friend I mean she knew me before the mohawk. That is a small list of friends. I mentioned my completing NaNoWriMo for a second year in a row. After explaining NaNoWriMo and her recognizing it from listening to NPR, she asked how I did last year.

Me: That's the book I sent you that you never read.
Raggedy Anne: Reading makes my eyes hurt. I'm really into audio books. Maybe you could record yourself reading it.

It's embarassing. Really, I'm very embarassed to have a friend who would rather listen to a book than read it. Especially one who will spend all night IMing with friends inside a game context.

On the other hand, is there an untapped market here? How many women on the go would love to listen to a good smutty book while commuting? iPorn.

NaNoWriMo Completed

For the second year in a row I am a National Novel Writing Month winner. I met my goal of writing a story without resorting to scenes of sex and drugs. Still an "R" rated book for use of adult language and themes.

Last year by the time I completed the competition I was able to do a little rewriting, some editing, and I had a book. This year, looking over what I've got, there is another month of writing and editing before the story is complete. But for now I can sit back and enjoy my success with a glass of gin. Fifty thousand words in one month is an accomplishment.

Weather Watch

I swear, I was just sitting at the computer typing when suddenly the sky puked snow. It felt ill, puked a bunch of white powder dusting the ground instantly, then ran off to the fridge for a glass of water.

The Sky Is Falling!

And China and India are the ones dropping it.

Wolfensohn pointed to both China's and India's recent substantial investments in Africa as an example of how the two emerging giants were exercising their increasing clout on the global stage.

"Within the last two weeks the world has been put on notice that Africa is no longer the basket case that everybody had historically thought it was but is now front and centre in terms of development by India and China."

The phenomenal rally by the two countries was a return to form rather than a novelty, he said, as they together had accounted for 50 percent of global GDP from the 1500s until the industrial revolution reduced that to between five and seven percent.

Rednecks and smug suburbanites everywhere are already lamenting not being able to chant We're Number One! The thought of being less than number two is more than they cane handle.

Either that or some new technological push will come along that propells the Americas back to the fore. Hey! What about coca? Perhaps it can fuel another couple of fantastic decades like the 70's and 80's.

But seriously, America. How hard would it be to work a little harder and... Oh, fuck it! Give me a beer and the remote.

NaNoWriMo

In the middle of the night I rolled south of the San Francisco Bay into San Mateo. Cruising into town on Highway 101, I turned Southwest on J. Arthur Younger Freeway, also known as Highway 92. Somehow the combination of J. Arthur, 92, and the idea of a Free Way struck me as important. It somehow seemed like with all this chaos surrounding me that those three pieces had meaning outside of this context. This wasn’t just the journey of the prophet to the holy grounds of surfing in his dream car. The Universe was chaotic, fractal in nature, and these were odd fragments that provided some sort of magnification on this moment. In a quantum universe it was natural that I would travel on J. Arthur Younger Freeway onto Canada Road, then Half Moon Bay Road, then San Mateo Road, all while never leaving Highway 92. Either that or I had been driving for far too long and needed sleep. Actually, the two are not mutually exclusive.

I pulled up to the beach, parked the Camaro, pushed the seat back, and fell asleep. Nothing to see here yet. The sun would rise on the holy land.

Animal

If I were a Muppet, I'd probably be a roadie for the Electric Mayhem and get into trouble with Animal all the time.

Royal Canadian Kilted Yaksmen

As I sit here in my kilt, this is what I am reminded of.

Public Service Announcement

Don't use an electric razor on your genitals.

Hank Williams III

Jello Biafra once said that Hank Williams III was proof that talent skipped a generation and I agree.

Aside from the horrible sound quality throughout and the extra six minutes of nothing at the end, this was a great little documentary on Hank III. What was especially great was the footage from First Ave in Minneapolis since Kris and I were at that show. For those who don't understand cross-over between country and punk/metal, here's a good introduction.

No Clever Title

Go read this interview with Australian film director Dr. George Miller.

“I was seeing people in extremis, in the aftermath of all kinds of violence,” he says. “And one thing I noticed is that what we do with the new brain, the cerebral cortex, is quite different from what we do with our reptilian brain. What we say and what we do are quite different. I’m baffled by the fact that the United States basically swept the Nobel Prizes this year, and yet at the same time there’s this descent into a very dark period [brought on] by your leaders. That’s why I was very interested in violence, because I was very conflicted myself about it, this conflict between the early brain and the late brain. You’ve got to see the two working in harmony. You’ve got to find a way to reconcile them.”

There is double good news in the article. First, Miller is planning on making another Mad Max film. Second, and what makes the first one good news, is that it will not have Mel Gibson in it.

Now go read it. Go! NOW!

Feeling Good

Sometimes my wife can really make me laugh in a very special kind of way. No matter how hard I try, I've never been able to get myself to laugh that way. Believe me, I've tried. While this may make sense to some people, the vast majority of you are probably way off the mark.

Buy Nothing Day

Buy Nothing Day isn't just about rebellion against consumer culture through inactivity. It's also a great excuse for those who are cheap bastards and hate people. Or maybe you want to sleep in, watch some TV, maybe kick back a few beers. Buy Nothing Day is your excuse to do so. Just remember to stock up on beer in advance so you don't get caught and get dragged to the mall. So join in the non-participation this Friday, November 24th and buy nothing!

Fucking Peace Activists

It is even better than Lennon and Ono's bed-in. This is a Global Orgasm for Peace.

Living on their houseboat off the Marin County coast, anti-war activists Donna Sheehan and her partner, Paul Reffel, concocted a way for the world to communally create a lot of peaceful vibes.

They want everyone to have an orgasm on the same day.

On Dec. 22, they're asking the world to contribute to the Global Orgasm for Peace.

Steady Progress

My NaNoWriMo progress has been an extremely steady rise. Very cool to see. I still don't have a clue what this book is about.

I interrupted Milton. “All those dullards are still part of the chaos information flow. Sure, the extremes is where all the really fun deviations are occurring, but it’s the hump of the bell curve that defines the shape of reality. You should get to know a few regular folks on a personal level. With the right kind of mind, they can be quite fascinating.”

“Fuck the hump. Banal sacks of shit. And fuck their reality. I’m changing reality as we speak. I’m planting the ideas that will shape the future. In 50 years they’ll be lucky to be even half way to where I’m at right now. It’s more likely that they’ll still be in their fucking McMansions trimming their lawns to 1.5 inches and flipping through 281 channels of shit meant to program their heads without a real thought. Fuckers can’t process shit. Probably wouldn’t even know that a fart stinks if they didn’t see it on the Discovery Channel. I’ve seen the shape of the reality they have created and it sucks ass.”

Jumping in again, “it only takes a few lines of code to generate a fractal.”

“And it only takes five lines and a circle to draw a stick figure but it still isn’t art. Fractals are simple chaos. Reality is massive chaos. And it’s their fucking retarded thinking that keeps that massive chaos from achieving anything close to its actual potential. That’s what held back computer science for so long. Fucking engineers trying to break everything down into simple code that was easily understood. On, off. On, off. Someone suggests that they add a third circuit for ‘maybe’ and they start to freak out. What they really needed was a variable circuit. On, off, and everything in-between. Pretty simple stuff, really. Even that they want to control. Damn it, let the computer decide how close to on or off it is. No need to control that. They think the computer can’t handle it. We can handle it man. THEY can’t handle it. Always afraid that the computers will rise up against them. Computers aren’t going to rise up against them any more than they are going to rise up against the dolphins.”

“Did you just say, ‘We can handle it?’”

Poser! Sell Out!

Yep. That's me. All because they opened a Sonic out in Hillsboro. That's less than 20 minutes away! It's on the way to the beach. It's on the way back from the beach. Living in Portland just got better.

My time in Kansas City introduced me to Sonic. It was the closest fast food joint to my dorm. Come to think of it, closest food of any kind. Even the microwavable rib sandwiches of the gas station were farther and only tasted good under very particular brain wave patterns. Sonic had a broader spectrum of tastiness.

I'm already craving a supersonic cheeseburger with jalapenos, a strawberry malt, and some chili cheese fries. I know someone who would come with me to get her hands around a bacon cheeseburger and an order of mozzarella cheese sticks with a side of marinara and a chocolate malt.

Not that Burgerville is bad, but it's not the flavorful grease pit that is Sonic.

Okay, now where's my promotional fee?

Holy Crap!

It worked! I've been excused from jury duty by telling the truth.

Right in Two

With some over-priced but tasty yellow curry, I was having a discussion about an article I had read last week about the human species splitting in two.

The descendants of the genetic upper class would be tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent, and creative and a far cry from the "underclass" humans who would have evolved into dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like creatures.

Yes, yes, because there is no such thing as an intelligent male wanting to plant his seed into a dumb blond super-model. It sounded like some major BS to me. For one thing, it doesn't take into account hyper-space travel and interbreeding with aliens. It is also a classic example of the type of research results found by upper class twits who feel self important and totally lack intelligence and creativity but are too dim-witted to realize this.

As it turns out, this piece of research was commissioned by men's television channel Bravo. It has not been published in a peer-reviewed journal and has met with multiple professional challenges.

Some people would probably argue that we simply cannot predict what the course of human evolution will be like thousands of years from now. The possible range of events is so great, ranging from genetic engineering to environmental catastrophe to space colonization, that any guess will certainly be wrong.

But that does not mean that all guesses will be equally wrong. Some of them will be more wrong than others -- the "world is flat" kind of wrong. Some will be, well, spectacularly wrong.

Here's my non-peer-reviewed prediction. The human species will shoot off in all sorts of weird directions as we meet other life forms and experiment with genetic manipulation, cybernetic modification, and the effects of adapting to zero gravity. Regardless, the human species as a whole will retain much the same appearance as now, just as it has for the last few millennia. Except for the freaks and weirdos, who will just keep getting weirder. Oh, and people will eventually figure out that polo shirts make you look dumb and ugly... I hope.

NaNoWriMo

Destiny is not controlled by an outside force, merely spun, suggested, and nudged. That is the beauty of a chaos system. If you want to be a catalyst for change, just start manifesting the change you desire. Your actions will cause turbulence within the chaos. Some memes will be stamped out, cast aside, or drawn back into the flock. A surprising number will infiltrate, infect, and irreparably alter the culture.

This is the curse of the counter-culture. While the process is slow, most alternative notions will find their way into mainstream culture. By the time they are assimilated, those ideas are twisted into a design that is acceptable to the majority. In the late 1980’s there was a huge push in the self-publishing industry. In an attempt to shun the banal similitude of major media outlets the people publishing these alternative journals would use type-writers for blocks of text, xeroxed photos with none of the stipple that made pictures printable in the popular papers and magazines, and common scissors with a glue stick for layout. In an age when desktop publishing was quickly becoming the standard practice, these alienated publishers rejected not just the medium, but all of the tools of the profession. Fifteen years later there are books, magazines, and websites that all try to emulate the look. Photo editing software includes automatic filters that can replicate the look of a photocopied picture. Font sets have emerged that look like scribbled letters, fat tipped markers, punch labels, stencils, and even collaged letters. The meme was brought into the mainstream. While the idea of rebelling against traditional media is (and forever shall be) an outsider idea, the creative tools they developed while propagating the notion were found to have some merit and eventually embraced. The counter-culture has to start all over again. Of course the whole idea was ripped off from folks who created the Principia Discordia and other subversive literature back in the 1960’s.

Take heart, young rebel. Did I say that rebelling against traditional media forever shall be an outsider idea? Of course. That is a necessity. There will always be a dominant media form to whom the majority of people will turn for their information. There will always be a minority who see the flaws of that system and rage against it to develop new media. Don’t despair just because the counter-culture can never win. Rejoice in the fact that the counter-culture will always be there shoving needles into mob culture voodoo dolls.

Victory has always been the major flaw of any revolutionary or counter-cultural movement. Change is not something that can be won. The so-called Summer of Love was a turning point in that battle. The societal outsiders somehow got it into their heads that this was a war that could be won. There was strength in their numbers and it was just a matter of time before the establishment would break and listen to their demands. The establishment pulled out all the stops, beat them back, and let them know that the majority liked things just the way they were, thank you very much. They had been defeated the moment the idea of winning became the popular meme. If you can win, you can certainly lose. Since then there has been a giant crater in the counter-culture that everyone stands around and stares at asking, “What went wrong?”

Lust!

Is it possible that there is a pheromone attack on Portland? It seems as though rutting season has come early. Everywhere I go I see signs of sexual desire. Some are directed at me, others are exchanges between other parties. The lust is so potent you can smell it in the aisles of the grocery store. A coworker professed falling in love with the barista serving him up a cup of coffee on his way to work. Even people close to me seem to be affected. While I don't mind the girls at work or restaurants checking me out, the young teenager and her mom giving me a ravenous gaze in the baking goods aisle at Safeway was a little disconcerting. Where did this all come from? I expect it in the spring, but not mid-November.

Of course me being who I am, I have assembled a hypothesis. I place the roots of this phenomenon in the election results. While politicians wield no real power over individuals (other than what people consent to) they do act as totems or talismans. Metaphorically, the conservatives have been booted from power. While I expect very little in terms of political policy change, the atmosphere has switched to one of liberalism. After six long years of a repressive and conservative talisman of power, the king has been castrated. There has been a whole hell of a lot of penned up energy released and it is manifesting as something akin to the divine whore. As a nation of practicing magicians we banished the demons of repression and paranoia posing as security and family values to conjure up demons of liberalism and lust with Clinton and Pelosi as Babylon. The nation is getting out of a rut and into the rut.

It's all in the mind, but the mind is a very powerful tool.

Yucky Stuff

"My computer is all jacked up dude. I got some kind of virus." Several
people said that to me this week. Not those exact words but along those
lines. First thing I told each of them was that I've got no such
problems with either of my Macs, and we're talking some major porno bandwidth. Since that doesn't help them out of the
situation at this very moment, I tell them about my PC. Three bits of
advice for cheap, ignorant bastards with PCs;

Firefox
AVG Free
Spybot

In other words, go to the free clinic and get that shit taken care of. It's gross and you're spreading it around.

Gypsy Punks

It's a Gogol Bordello day!

Sustainability

More NaNo.

So what really is the point of a counter-culture if they can never win? Why engage in a battle where there will never be a victory? If you tell anyone who has had combat training that it is their job to start a war and fight it forever, to train others to fight it when they are gone, and that the war must rage on forever, they’d lay down their gun and possibly give you a graphic description of what you can do with it. But that is the whole point of the counter-culture. It is a struggle engaged in for the purpose of struggle and continued struggle. The only goal is sustainable revolution.

Now THAT'S Comedy

Here's a joke I found.

UNSAFE AT ANY ALTITUDE reports that the TSA has fallen far short of expectations and is highly dysfunctional. The government itself reports that the TSA screening force is far worse at detecting threats – bombs, explosives and guns – than the private screening system it replaced. In tests, the private screeners uncovered 80-90% of weapons brought to checkpoints. The TSA screeners fail nearly 50% of the time. (Just this past month, twenty of twenty-two test weapons made it through security at Newark's Liberty International Airport.)

Come on people, laugh with me. This is funny, funny shit.

A Thought On Age

Growing up I was taught to respect my elders. It seemed like a good idea. They had been around quite a while, seen quite a bit, and cold share what they had learned.

The older I get, the dumber the whole notion seems. These folks really didn't have any secrets to existence that would make my life better. (Except for when my grandfather told me, "Some women don't like condoms." And when uncle Al told me, "Whiskey all night and polka til dawn!") Getting older really just means being clueless longer.

So instead of listening to our elders I suggest we listen to people in their teens and twenties. Their ideas will be just as stupid, but in whole new novel ways.

AWPC

Yeah, another one.

Mark: You're reading on your break? What a loser.
H: Hey, I like to read.
Mark: I'm just teasing you. Reading's cool.
Jake: Nah, reading is for chumps.
Mark: Unless you're this guy. Then you just write a ten million page book in one month.

50,000 words, actually.

AWPC

Intercom: Jesus, call 224 please. Jesus, 224.
Mark: Carlton's got their own Jesus.
Jake: Their own personal Jesus.
Mark: Reach out and touch faith.

AWPC

We're getting a new maintenance guy on our shift next week. He's a transfer from plant 1 and we talked to him a bit today.

Guy: I'm really excited to be coming to your shift. Everybody keeps telling me how great you two are as a team.
Mark: Everybody? Like who?
Guy: Like, every maintenance guy down there.

Plant 2 swing shift rocks! We're just hoping the new guy is into punk rock, motorcycles, old cars, surfing, and intimidating operators into turning their maintenance call lights off.

Chaos

I hope everyone reading my NaNo excerpts is as thoroughly confused as I am.

NaNoWriMo

There was the mechanical device I was controlling. A metal arm would move forward and then rotate slightly. The three pins at the end of it acted as stiff little fingers to latch onto an object. The arm would then move back to advance the object. The process would repeat. Intrigued by the process, I observed. Everything seemed to be working properly. There it went again, moving forward, rotating, cradling, back, rotate out, forward, rotate in, cradle, pull back.

The transition was subtle. The pins were sending sensory data back to me. The brain would receive that data and process the feel of the pick-up and stroke. All focus was now centered on this input. How amazing for this detached mechanism to be sharing in its experience of this process.

Where was the piece it was supposed to be picking up? The rigid part it had been picking up and moving was absent. The pattern had broken. Was it a flaw in the machine or a change in the material? Breaking the program, I instructed the fingers to seek out the part.

Wiggling here and there the fingers felt around for something to touch, something to wrap themselves around. Nothing was there. Try lower. Here there is something but it doesn’t feel the same as the parts we had been moving. It felt fleshy, soft, and warm. What was it?

The fingers explored the area. The touch sensory data was sent back to my brain for processing. Sampling several different areas over time, an image started to form. Accompanying the feel of a soft and gently yielding surface area was new data arriving. The surface had short, coarse hairs protruding from it. The fingers knew how to move rigid parts along a track. Having to manipulate this would require new data.

I transmitted a revised program to the fingers. First, their structure would have to change. Metal pins were fine for interaction with metal parts. To interact with this new condition would require flexability. The fingers adapted. Next, they would need to gently stroke across the surface. Don’t apply excessive pressure to any area. Travel through the hairs. Feel each one slip around and past. Do not snag, grab, or otherwise try to forcible tyr to move any of them. Just caress the surface lightly.

The brain and the hand of fingers had been operating together with no other data inputs or processors present for some time. The surface seemed to change over time. While the data set was less than perfect, there was evidence of minor swelling, perhaps some parting of two separate surfaces as well. There seemed to be a rhythm through the entity that was quickening.

Then the unexpected feed back occurred. Somehow the object being manipulated had gained access to a controlled device of its own. This manipulation device had found a sensory receptor to explore that was sending data back to my central processing unit. I now knew that my manipulation device with sensory feedback capabilities was operating independently from the major sensory receptor. Each was feeding data to the central processor. Each could perform its function separately. The central processor, as the link between the two, performed experiments to see if manipulations sent through one device would result in a change of sensory receptions at the other end. The data seemed to suggest that this was the case.

With that so it was quite probable that the area being explored by the manipulation device was itself a sensory receptor connected to a manipulation device through a central processor. Just speculation, of course. In the absence of further data, it was a good working model.

While the primary sensory receptor was sending back data in alarming quantities, the manipulation device had something new to report. It seemed that the area being explored had some sort of lubrication faculty. An area that had previously been hidden had changed in its characteristics. It was more maleable than it had been previously and was secereting the lubrication. As I sent the manipulation device a signal to further explore this area, my primary sensory receptor sent signals of increased manipulations under greater pressure. Was this a problem? No, it was all very interesting.

Further evidence of a central processor manifested. It seemed as though this other unit had an audio output that was releasing sound signals. Apparently my central processor was attached to some sort of sound input device. The unit’s sound output device may have been malfunctioning as the only output signals consisted of a single consanent and one vowel, primarily sounds a shua and something akin to an “m”.

Then it was all gone. My manipulation device was no longer in contact with what I had come to think of as a well lubricated sensory receptor. There was no longer a manipulation device sending signals via my primary sensory receptor. The audio input signal changed to something incomprehensible. There was a sense of despair. The exploration and experiment had ended.

A new signal surged through my primary sensory receptor. From the data collected by my manipulation device, it seemed that the lubricated sensory receptor was putting itself into direct contact with my primary sensory receptor. What a fantastic notion! The sound output device repaired itself and emitted a more complex signal. “God, you feel so good.”

The central processing unit recognized this signal. While previously the system had been operating under extremely restricted modes, the brain decided to turn on everything. That’s right! I had an entire body with which to explore reality. And there was another body in direct contact with it.

Wow!

A Strange Turn of Events

It was a rough escape. Lisa, aka Britney Spears, was picked up first. As the search engine was scanning the data of the book and found Britney Spears, my wife simply disguised herself as that data, slipped into the search string, and was off. One second she was there, the next she wasn’t. I’m glad she got picked up first. Of course there was no doubt that she would be the first to go. If the world in which the server resided bore any resmeblance to the fictional land in which we had been raised, then there were millions of horn dog males out there trying to find nude pictures of shapely celebrities. All my wife needed to do was to become a temporary virus. Risky business. It was a good thing that anti-virus software as we understood it was meant to keep predefined known viruses off of a computer. Lisa/Britney would be a complete unkown. Once out of the book and in viral form, she would slip onto the search engine when the user hit the back key. On the search server she would quickly change her name to WillieMae Svetlana in an attempt to avoid getting tossed back out of the server on another search string.

With her gone from my world, I waited anxiously for my ticket out. Damn it, what was taking so long? Lisa/Britney (and now hopefully WillieMae) had been swept up in no time. Why was it taking so long for me? It was degrading enough having to pose as a pop icon I despised. My old ego and my new alter ego did not need the added degradation of sitting around waiting for a search that might take days, maybe even weeks or months, to occur. With all those guys out there looking for a starlette like Britney Spears, why was there no one out there looking for me?

The realization hit hard. The thought was ten times more revolting than the situation I currently found myself in. As I thought it through, it seemed the most logical course of action. Right then and there, I dropped my pants and started masturbating. Never before in all my life had I actually felt shame while performing the act. I knew what kind of computer was going to pick me up. I just hoped the user would click his back button before blowing a premature load and quitting out of the browser. And hopefully he was using protection while downloading all of this stuff. Fearing Anti-virus software was one thing. Having to deal with a drive full of viruses, spyware, and trojans was another thing all together. While I had no clue what any of this would be like, I did not particularly want to find out.

Sure enough, along came the search string and away I went. There I was, streaming as data across the ether. It was quite a rush being whisked away, one metaphorical hand latched onto the search string and the other firmly grasping myself. I popped up on a computer, quickly inserting myself into a cache of things unmentionable and possibly illegal in some states. Fortunately someone didn’t find the story quite as entertaining as they had hoped and the back button was punched. Seizing the opportunity, I dove for the opening and onto Google before he could try out another link. Now it was time for my name change. James Alexander Quitney, after a brief stint as Justin Timberlake masturbating, was now Gaylord Psalter.

While our new names offered us a slim level of security, my demon pal Bill was already hard at work with the second stage of our plan. “Yeth, yeth, yeth. Thith ith my thpethialty.” Bill, hidden under the search protection of one Gaylord Psalter, was busy setting up new fake identities for my wife and me.

First he created a bank account using my new assumed name. Into this he deposited a few thousand dollars. This would be plenty to survive for quite a while where we were headed. The idea was that once we slipped off of the search engine servers we would need a home that was more permenanent, less invasive, still connected, but with minimal volatility. Bill swore to me that he had it all figured out. Even the gods and goddesses insisted I just needed to trust him.

Trust a demon? Where had that money in the new bank account come from? Had he manifested it out of nothing? What should I care? I was a fictitious character on the run from a second rate e-book. If the deposit was fake, I was just as funny as the money. Can a fictional character steal money that never existed in the first place? But we were going to use those funds to purchase services that were normally purchased with some sort of real currency. If we did that, wouldn’t it be theft? But the funds would transfer out of our account and into whoever’s account in a supposedly real sum. If that entity wanted to, there would be nothing keeping them from withdrawing that sum from their bank as cash. The bank would see the transaction as legitimate and give them the money. This was all very puzzling.

While my little demon friend went about his business, I spent some time poking around the server, trying to get a grasp of the world in which it existed. With economics fresh on my mind, I started my research. What I found shocked and confused me. As near as I could tell there was no actual money. There was a currency, but it wasn’t backed by anything. The issuing agency would purchase assets equal to the value of the currency they wanted to create, but nobody was sure with what they were actually purchasing these assets. If there was currency to purchase such things, then there was no need for the agency to purchase anything because the currency already existed. If there was no currency, then there was nothing to purchase the assets with. Yet this agency would continue to issue currency for folks to use. People continued to use this currency despite it not really meaning anything. It was just an idea. Imagine someone walking up to you and offering to trade you the idea of a few dollars in exchange for a loaf of bread. You’d probably laugh at them, and rightfully so. Why not sell your loaf of bread for the idea of a million or even a billion dollars? It would mean the same thing. Yet folks continued to trade this stuff for goods and services while others insisted on receiving it in exchange for the same. Suddenly my few thousand in the bank didn’t bother me. Funny money in a funny account held by a funny character. All of it was worth exactly the same amount. I think the only reason Bill didn’t fill it with millions was because so many people seemed to take the whole charade seriously. You can’t flaunt the illegitimacy of a monetary system in front of a group of the faithful any more than you can tell a cleric his prophet was a dirty, smelly, hateful mysoginist. At least not if you’re trying to keep your head in the vicinity of your shoulders, even if they are somewhat metaphorical body parts at present. Now my life as Jaq made a bit more sense. If everything has a monetary value and the money itself has no value, why not accumulate everything you have ever desired?

Did the author understand that? If so, the world around him still did not. That could drive a sane man crazy. Perhaps it was he, and not me, who was going mad. But I was a creation of his, which in turn would be a manifestation of his madness. Of course I could not fully let go of the idea that he was just a two-bit hack writer grasping at straws in search of a story.

With that thought, I delved into researching elements of my life as Jaq. That rat bastard of an author was stealing story lines every chance he got. I found threads of my own story in several other books by more prolific and respected writers. He had stolen from Neil Gaiman, Robert Heinlein, Robert Anton Wilson, Terry Pratchett, and even Douglas Adams, just to name a few. There were also elements stolen from film and television. Nothing was sacred to this lunatic!

For my own sanity I was thankful when Bill came back and told me it was all ready. My wife and I could now move over to another server where we could start our new lives. If there was any truth in what I had been finding, living a virtual life would be a welcome escape from this madness.

More NaNo

“Jaq. I can help you, Jaq. I can get you out.” Bill, the little demon who had mysteriously taken up residence was trying to get my attention. “I can get all of uth out. I’ve found a way.”

While I had been hanging out with gods and goddesses for quite some time, I hadn’t really dealt with demons, or even angels for that matter. Naturally I was a bit skeptical. Demons have a bad reputation. Mythologically they are the ones that will lead a man into ruin through false promises and half truths. All of the other entities who had taken up residence didn’t seem to mind his presence, though. The least I could do was to listen to his plan. “What have you got?”

He jumped up and down with excitement. “We’re acthually quite lucky to be trapped in an e-book. That ith the way out. We dithguithe ourthelveth ath information, get picked up by a thearch engine, and then jump to a different hotht. I tried it. It workth. We can do it.”

Jump to a different host? “Wait a second. I’m not used to relying on a host. That may be well and good for gods and demons, but not for a man. A man needs to be free. Even if I am just a character, I’m a character who is a man and has the needs of a man. If I start to rely on a host, doesn’t that make me a vampire?”

“No, no, no. Not that kind of hotht. That would turn you into an egregore, hardly any different from my kind. I can’t live off of an egregore. That would mean my own death. No, no, no. I mean a different hotht therver.”

“So you mean we will venture out into the wilderness of the internet in search of a new homeland?”

“Yeth, yeth, yeth. Egthactly!”

“I’m not leaving without Lisa. Is that possible?"

“Yeth, yeth, yeth. Thertainly. I’ve already thought about that. Tho my plan involveth her ath well. Though I’m not thure you’ll like the plan. There ith an athpect of it that ith quite vile.”

Here it comes. This is why people don’t do business with demons, right? There is going to be some hideous snag that goes against every fiber of your moral being like ritual sacrifice of a black dog followed by beggaring it. Ugh! “What is it we have to do?”

“It’th only to athure thuctheth.”

“To assure what?”

“Thuctheth. Thuctheth. Yeth, yeth, yeth. You want to thuctheed, don’t you?”

I want to suck what? “Oh… success. Yes I want to succeed. But what is it I have to do?”

“Yeth, yeth, yeth. Firtht you’ll have to convinthe Litha to change her name to Britney Thpearth.”

“What!?”

“She ith one of the number one thearcheth on Google, Yahoo, and Lycoth. I didn’t have time to try otherth. But if she changeth her name to Britney Thpearth, she should get picked up within twenty-four hourth.”

The thought was both frightening and amusing. If I could convince her to change her name, I’d soon be roaming the internet married to a pop icon. “Okay. Anything else?”

“Yeth, yeth, yeth. I hate to tell you thith. Are you ready?”

“Yes, I’m ready. What is it?”

“You will have to change your name to Juthtin Timberlake.”

German Industrialists

Back in 1980 a group of German musicians started to develop a new sound of underground rock music that would come to be known as Industrial. While Industrial would come to be known for the sound sampling styles of Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, and Skinny Puppy, bands like Einstürzende Neubauten would create novel new instruments for the sounds they wanted. Their experimentation has been curageous and beautiful.

Random?

Sometimes iTunes throws an interesting juxtaposition my way. Out of a playlist containing 3,003 songs, it just played I've Got You Under My Skin by Frank Sinatra followed immediately with UnderSkin by Billy Goat. No other two songs in the playlist contain both under and skin.

Sex, Drugs, and Rock-n-Roll

I'm not typically much of a partier. It's hard to get yourself excited about hanging out with a bunch of drunken bastards when you tend to not even like sober people. For some reason, I convinced myself last night that partying was a good idea. If you're not going to party often, when you break the fast, you need to break it good and hard.

It started innocently enough by playing pool and darts at the Pub at the End of the Universe. They have great tap selections there and I ended up downing two pints and a pitcher between getting off of work at 11:30 and bar close at 2:30. Then I was faced with the decision of either catching a ride home or continuing the party elsewhere. Like I said, good and hard.

Caught a ride to someone's house and slammed another beer before switching vehicles to head to the actual party. At the actual party I was greeted by several familiar young faces from work who quickly ushered me to the keg in the basement. Good thing they were on top of it. I had just enough time to slam another beer before we all got kicked out. I've never before been kicked out of a party without tire irons being involved. It was all so polite. Only yelling and threats of violence were used. Probably because there was no band or skinheads present. Kids these days. Then it was a ride to an apartment. The only alcohol that manifested there was a jug of Carlo Rossi. Shit, that brought back memories. You know it's the good shit because it has a handle so you can't drop it. After a few hits from the jug I taught some folks how to smoke a tobacco pipe. Yeah, tobacco. Rebel rebel. I got home before dawn and I'm only in a little bit of trouble. See, I had left a phone message from work saying I was going out for a few drinks. When I didn't show up shortly after bar close, someone happened to wake up and get worried that something really terrible had happened to me. Fair enough. So next time I feel like going out and making a public ass of myself with the young twenty-somethings, I know to check in so as not to cause unnecessary worry. Yeah! Punk Rock! Anarchy! Personal Responsibility! WOOT! (Ow, my head.)

So, after a totally wild evening I can look back and say that while I partied pretty damn hard, I had no sex, no drugs, and there wasn't even rock-n-roll involved. The juke box at the bar was playing Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan. Which reminds me, I need to learn how to walk in slow motion for the next time I'm at the Pub walking towards a pool table with Hurricane playing.

The traditional party formula is for amateurs.

The Pub at the End of the Universe

Writing for NaNoWriMo about a Portland bar with a name like The Pub at the End of the Universe is great. Every time I mention the place it gets me eight words closer to the 50,000 word goal.

Now I understand some of you don’t know the Pub at the End of the Universe. She’s a left-handed lesbian midget albino Eskimo. Wait, that’s Sarah Jane. I’m all messed up on cough syrup right now so just like never mind. The Pub at the End of the Universe was designed by a group of extremely nerdy hippy anglophiles, and this is a good thing. Besides being a tribute to the author of the ever-so-popular Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the interior seems to borrow architectural features from another pillar of British fiction, Terry Pratchett. In Pratchett’s Discworld novels, he describes the space and time bending properties of extremely large collections of books. Anybody who frequents old book shops can tell you that when you enter what looks like a tiny storefront of a crammed book shop, the browser is soon amazed to find how many rows of shelves the store actually has. They find new sections at every turn, short stairways that lead to floors that could not possibly be there, and find themselves wondering if they’ll ever get out again while questioning why they would want to. Pratchett calls this L-Space, for Library Space. It is expressed mathematically as books = knowledge = power = (mass x distance)/time. Similarly, a video shop in Portland has amassed such a huge collection of rare and bizarre films that it has created what might be one of the first examples of V-Space. Once I walked in there and after spending several hours searching through titles, walked out with two videos a couple of minutes later. On another occasion I popped in real quick for a couple of movies, and would swear I came out the next day. The idea is that the sheer magnitude of such collections can warp reality. The Pub at the End of the Universe has somehow picked up on these architectural anomalies and created Bar Space. I have to call it B-Space because if you were to refer to it as Pub Space people would get completely the wrong idea once hyphenated. Not that kind of place at all, at all. While many cities and small towns play host to such anomalous structures, Portland, Oregon seems to have naturally picked up on the notion. It might have to do with such a large quantity of exceptionally nerdy hippies collecting there and bringing their Head Space with.

Voting Recap

Politicians Sweep Midterm Elections

"It's a good night to be a politician," said Todd Akin, an officeholder from Missouri. "The American people have spoken, and they have unanimously declared: 'We want elected officials to lead this nation.'"

Actually, just as I predicted, nobody won. Here in Oregon less than a quarter of the voting age population voted. That means the governor got his job by getting less than an eighth of the population to vote for him.

Seriously, if a guy ran ten blocks in a marathon would you declare him a winner just because nobody else did better?

Givin' Her All She's Got

Picked up a little $4 device to lock the flywheel on the Bug in place so I could really lay into the breaker bar. Still can't get the damn flange nut off. Next step, long pipe for breaker bar. More leverage. After that, maybe a little dry ice or a torch. Change the temperature of the metal to try and break the threads loose. If that doesn't work we'll have to load the thing into the back of the truck, haul it to a shop, and have them take their big air powered impact driver to it.

Election Day Lemming

Since my friends are doing it, I thought I'd get in on commenting on this most holy of holy days for those who believe in Democracy.

I've got nothing against democracy. It is a very interesting belief system in which a few people get to decide which elite representatives will get jobs as ugly celebrities. But because they are ugly celebrities and nobody wants to be just like them when they grow up, they are given the priviledge of getting to TELL people how to act. That makes a hell of a lot more sense than the Baptists, Mormons, Scientologists, Muslims, and Hindus. Unfortunately, they tend to get a bit pushy about forcing their belief system on everyone else.

Heed the words of the prophet! I will tell you exactly what will happen in every single election. The clear majority will vote for nobody. The holy counsels known as the Board of Elections will instead give the race to somebody. In a few cases there will be other sects of democracy that get involved and the courts and judges will declare somebody a winner over nobody.

We're already a nation of (typically apathetic) Anarchists, but the government keeps pretending otherwise and forcing their rules down our throats or, more commonly, up the other end.

Devil May Care

Hail Eris!

All Hail Discordia!

The dwarf planet briefly nicknamed Xena is now officially known as Eris. 136199 Eris is the largest known dwarf planet in our solar system, larger than either Pluto or Ceres.

Go eat a hot dog!

NaNoFlow

Seems I have finally hit some rythm writing this weekend. The whole thing is going nicely now. My goal is to write something that is R instead of NC-17. Last year was X with just enough story to avoid XXX. I still hope to offend.

I Voted!

You have to hand it to the Conservative Christians. Their emotionally based pleas got this jaded anarchist to vote. After several phone messages from some mother telling us about her daughter's secret abortion leaving her precious child emotionally traumatized, and each time thinking the poor kid wouldn't have been so traumatized if her mom hadn't been such a conservative Christian cunt (or better yet, had put her on birth control before this all happened), I voted against their pet ballot measure. And since I was bothering to turn in a ballot, I took the time to write my own name in for every elected position since I am the only one I trust to make decisions for myself. If elected, I promise to take long naps at my desk when not surfing the internet for porn.

And as I write this there is yet another political message being left on the machine. This one is inviting me to attend a get out to vote rally in Little Rock, Arkansas being hosted by a gubernatorial candidate in that state. Why they are calling me in Portland, Oregon I don't know. But I'm sure a campaign intelligent enough to call folks who have never even set foot in their state, let alone registered to vote there, is fit to rule over its population with an iron fist in a latex glove. Or was that velvet? Yes, a velvet fist in a latex glove.

Emo

While writing today I am listening to some old Jesus and Mary Chain.

It's the best emo every produced, and they did it 20 years before there was such a thing as Emo. As any whore will tell you, it doesn't pay to be premature.

What a Beautiful Morning

Laying around my warm bedroom while it was raining outside. Overly lazy as I try to figure out if those two bottles of wine were going to make my day a bit of a struggle. Thoughts wander here and there to movies, music, video games, books. Suddenly I think, "I'm alive! I am wonderfully humanly alive!" I'm up and running in seconds.

Doesn't that just make you want to puke?

Machining for Dummies

What kind of a college class is this? I am handed a three page assignment that I have two weeks to complete. The first page consists of 12 pictures of micrometers and I'm supposed to write down what the reading shown is to the nearest .001". The second page is much the same but with depth micrometers. The third page is the answers to the first two pages. Shit, am I on the football team?

My House

I have class today, but I've got a starter paragraph for some novel writin' when I'm done. Just gotta get me a couple of 40's to do it proper!

Dreams about houses drive me crazy. It is so obvious that they represent the internal mechanizations of the self. Realizing this means I will spend days trying to analyze any house dream as if unraveling its secrets will allow me access into the inner sanctums of my consciousness. But what the fuck does it mean when I can make the stairs swing up and away from the floor by rolling my feet forward on each step?

Community College

Is it cheating if I complete my homework without actually reading the assigned material?

Summons

A special thank you to the Multnomah County Circuit Court for tonight's NaNoWriMo inspiration.

Dear Sir or Madame,

I have received your information pertaining to my Jury Summons and have completed the information as requested. I am including this letter in the interest of expediting matters, saving both you and me a great deal of time and trouble.

As an armchair aficionado of quantum physics and brain mechanics I am of the decided opinion that I cannot trust the information that my own brain receives from the sensory organs wired into it, let alone those provided to me second hand as ‘evidence’ in a court of law. For example, once while driving in the middle of the night I brought my car to an abrupt halt when I saw a brontosaurus walking across the interstate. After waiting for the supposedly extinct dinosaur to cross the road (which I am certain he did aeons before any chicken ever attempted such a feat) I resumed travel, swerving only once to miss the giant manta ray that swooped down upon my car. The logical part of my brain tells me that such things could not have possibly happened. Yet that is exactly what I saw and reacted to in a very rational manner considering the circumstances. I have a far easier time dismissing the giant M&M that waved good morning to me from across the mountains. Even that is not completely out of the realm of possibility. If asked under oath to describe what I saw that morning, I would have to say that I saw a giant M&M candy rising over the mountains and waving at me. Is the Sun a nuclear furnace or a host of angels singing Glory Glory Hallelujah? Are you asking an astronomer or a prophet?

You see, the brain acts as a filter for information, trying to make sense of the information that it receives from the senses. It is far from impartial. While many individuals seem content to force the pentagonal pegs of their perceptions into the circular holes of the accepted consensus reality, I refuse to perpetrate such a gross crime upon my consciousness. Maybe I really did see a UFO. Maybe I really did see the spirits of dead Native Americans walking through that corn field. Maybe I really did see a couple of airplanes fly directly into the World Trade Center towers. Or maybe I didn’t. If forced to make a decision ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ based on what others tell me of a situation, the best I could do would be to answer with a resounding ‘MAYBE!’

In addition, I am an unrepentant anarchist who feels my receiving of this jury summons could have been prevented if governments weren’t so intent on making so many damn laws. While I can appreciate the benefits of a jury system, history has shown time and again that it is a rare occasion when a person finds himself in front of a jury of his peers. If I were charged with a crime could I be so blessed as to find myself in front of a group of men and women who understood that the Universe consists of probabilities, not actualities? The electrons, protons, and neutrons that make up all matter exist only as fields of probability and have no substance until examined. Upon examination, it is the observer who decides what form they take. While an understanding of these quantum principles makes me a uniquely qualified jury candidate, our antiquated legal system is looking for people of a far more Newtonian mindset. This I cannot be.

If, after reading this, you feel I should still appear for my jury summons, I will oblige. Let it be known that I will do so knowing full well that I will be found unfit to serve and I am certain to be rather cranky about the whole affair.

Please forward copies of this letter to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Homeland Security so they can add it to my dossier of ‘Un-American’ activities.

Yours Sincerely,
James Alexander Quitney

The Bar

It was a co-worker's last night at the factory, she having been accepted to become an apprentice electrician. So we all went out to the bar for a drink after work to celebrate her upward mobility and the fact that she will no longer be bothering maintenance with petty problems.

Why do I hate normal, run of the mill bars? Because they play the same music you hear at all the strip clubs but there are no naked women jiggling their boobs in your face to distract you from it.

Porky Peace

The usual english spelling of the Muslim prophet's name is Muhammad. While looking at it today, I discovered a possible source of Islam's violence. Mu is the chinese word for Nothing. Ham is a pork product so Muslims can't eat it. Mad can be either insane or angry or both.

So perhaps No Pork makes them Crazy. Consider that their number one enemy, the Jews, also are instructed not to eat pork. Meanwhile, the Lutherans I grew up around enjoy ham salad, pork ribs, and will even put bacon in their green beans and they haven't attacked anyone for over a century. Scandanavians love their pork and haven't been all too aggresive since the Viking Age. Dudes, give pork a chance.

NaNoWriMo

It's November! That means it is National Novel Writing Month. This is where I puke 50,000 words worth of my insanity out. I know I had mentioned possibly writing about my experiences of spending part of every day in October doing nothing, but it really wasn't that mind blowing.

What is it with midgets? Terry Gilliam has used midgets in films from Time Bandits to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Robert Anton Wilson made a midget one of the central characters to his Schröedinger’s Cat trilogy. Midget wrestling. Midget porn. Twin Peaks. The Oompa Loompas. The Munchkins. Something about the prescence of midgets slips the brain over into a fantasy realm. Or maybe it just has to do with unknown midgets. My friend Stan is a midget. Somehow there is nothing surreal about seeing him pull up and get out of his specially modified Porsche with booster seat and pedal extensions. Never mind that every other Porsche owner I have met can see over his own car when standing.

But a French-Canadian midget with a handle bar mustache was a bit over the top. Especially when he is the coordiantor of a satelite control center constantly monitoring cultural movements around the world. Was his name really Guy? Too much. Do we really need to know where the largest pockets of klezmer afficianados reside? Way too much.

Up in the main control room, overlooking the spherical room below, he turned and looked me in the eyes. It was the most serious and urgent and joyful look I could imagine a man having. Nothing funny. Nothing scary. He just turned to me and said in that thick French-Canadian accent of his, “Jaq, the world is yours. The world is yours, Jaq!”

Great. But do I want it?

No Restraint

How could I not share this article?

How the Web Prevents Rape. A researcher studying increases in internet usage side-by-side with crime data on a state-by-state basis has discovered that a 10% increase in internet access nets a 7.3% decrease in rape. The theory? A person liable to commit rape can't do so while shacked up at home whacking off to internet porn.

...psychologists have found that male subjects, immediately after watching pornography, are more likely to express misogynistic attitudes. But as professor Kendall points out, we need to be clear on what those experiments are testing: They are testing the effects of watching pornography in a controlled laboratory setting under the eyes of a researcher. The experience of viewing porn on the Internet, in the privacy of one's own room, typically culminates in a slightly messier but far more satisfying experience—an experience that could plausibly tamp down some of the same aggressions that the pornus interruptus of the laboratory tends to stir up.

And yet conservatives try to create a friendlier world by blocking access to porn at schools and libraries. What they really need are booths with locking doors.