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.