The Golden Dirigible

cognitive dissonance

2009-06-17T11:41:00.001-07:00

Thought I'd just about given up this site but there is way too much to talk about. Just now I'm learning about Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple. In an effort to see both sides I checked out a book opposing him and a book that justifies him.

At this point I am reading "Snake Dance," the book by the woman who is trying to justify Jim Jones and the various things he did. I feel for her, I really do: she had a difficult childhood, was always lonely and had problems forming close relationships. So of course when she met the Peoples Temple she felt for the first time in her life as though she belonged. She says Jim Jones loved her. She loved him back so strongly that she's trying to defend & explain him even now. This book was published in 1997. "Six Years with God," which tears down Jim Jones, came out in 1979, one year after the mass suicide in Guyana. The two women who wrote these books are very different, even though they were both females and both on the Planning Commitee. Jeannie Mills (SYWG) tends to be down-to-earth and alternates self-skewering amusement with weary lament. When she was taken in, she says so and explains why and what really was going on. "I found out later that..." And she's horribly honest even about the things she did for the Cause that ranged from "situational ethics" to letting her own child be beaten with 75 strokes for some minor offense and then having to sign a document saying that she'd asked for Jones to punish her daughter that way. No, she didn't think it was right, not even at the time, but this honesty about what she was brainwashed and bullied into doing somehow makes her more credible when she explains the terrible things Jones did to other people as well. Mills posits that Jones was the ultimate hypocrite because for all the long, tedious last sermon about dying with dignity and how life was a vale of sorrow, he didn't drink the kool-aid with his followers. He never meant to die. He had vast amounts of money and property squirreled away, and why do that if he were going to commit suicide? He's dead because someone finally shot him. Here are parts of it if you want to hear his creepy drony voice.

Laurie Efrein (SD) has a style that is more poetic. It'd be great if she were writing something with elves in it (her first paragraph deals with being a child of Neptune), but raises doubts when she's explaining history. She deals more with how various events related to her and her feelings than with telling what was going on globally within the Peoples Temple. It'd still be historically useful (after all, Anne Frank's diary was extremely personal) if she didn't gloss over so many things; if Jim Jones' paranoia had not led her to believe that the Peoples Temple really was taken down by a vast government conspiracy; if she did not explain earnestly that Jones only had relations with so many men/women 1) because they were begging him for it 2) to protect other men/women from having to deal with them 3) because he was a tremendous giver, just like her, and felt he had to give so much of himself to others.

Whoa.

I'm not saying SN isn't at all useful. Quite the opposite. It is psychologically fascinating. If you want to find out the way most members of the Peoples Temple thought about Jim Jones and what was going on in his church, read "Snake Dance." Cognitive dissonance happens before your eyes, on the page, as Efrein allows herself to question or express outrage for a moment but then rationalizes for half a page. She doesn't explain the cognitive dissonance she felt then-- it happens as she's writing "now." You can tell the difference between that and "It sounds unbelievable, but I explained it away at the time by saying..." You might want to read Mills' SYWG first to get a more objective sense of what actually happened. Through Mills' eyes you can see this cognitive dissonance from a few feet away as Jones punishes someone by beating or humiliating them, and they're screaming or crying one minute and thanking him the next, and by the time they get home they're explaining to others why they needed punishment. If I'd read SN first I would have been really confused as Efrein vacillates from one side of her argument to the other. So fascinating. I especially enjoy how, by reading these two books, you can see exactly the same events related from two different viewpoints, so vastly different in fact that unless you're paying attention you wouldn't know Mills and Efrain are referring to the same thing.

The man was a sociopath. Poor vulnerable Efrein has the sort of mind he attracted. She herself claims that "they killed off hope" when "they," the vast conspiracy, killed Jones. She says the government drove him and the people of Jonestown to suicide. She says Jones didn't die by kool-aid because the government shot him. She rants against Jeannie Mills' book for slandering Jones' name. Neither she nor Mills went to Guyana. Mills was heartbroken over the tragedy and relieved that the monster was dead. On the other hand, the greatest example of Efrain's cognitive dissonace is when she was listening to recordings of the mass suicide: "I wanted to die with everyone, I wanted to be there with everyone, I wanted to stand with everyone, and suddenly now I wanted Christa, the terrified little girl, to live."

I don't know if Efrein will ever be at peace with herself. Here is her website if you want to see. Don't bother her or yell at her. She's been bothered enough.

periphery

2009-03-27T13:25:00.001-07:00

For some people, Superman is the superhero to end all superheroes. Yet he's never been more than a periphery to me. Perhaps it is because I have a difficulties relating to those with godlike powers and nothing to counter them.

Once you get past the amazement of "it's a bird, it's a plane," Superman is rather boring. Sure, things happen around him, but rarely to him: the audience thrills as he approaches villains who we know will not be able to harm him. The audience is secure and so is Superman. He has it under control before it has even begun. That is a happening, not a story. Stories happen when things get out of hand. Really, there are only three stories about Superman. These are "kryptonite," "reverse-Superman," and "coming to terms with his powers on earth." Every Superman story is a variation on those three.

Ship's Pool

2009-03-24T12:35:00.000-07:00

Pleasure cruises, especially in Europe and most especially British ones, used to play a game called “ship’s pool.” This is quite different from the stunt “ship’s mast,” which involves hanging onto the hood of a speeding car while someone else drives.

“Ship’s pool” is a form of gambling in which the passengers bet on how many miles will be traveled that day. First the captain confers with his officers and estimates the number of miles he expects to travel. That night, this number, 10 numbers above, and 10 numbers below it are auctioned off among the passengers. The money from the auction makes up the pool, and whoever holds the winning ticket gets the whole thing, usually minus a small percent for orphans or hospitals or what have you.

Only one person can hold any one ticket. Remember, the captain’s estimate is just that. Anything could happen during the day to affect the outcome. To this end they also auction off “low field” and “high field.” These tickets cover any number below and above the 10 numbers surrounding the captain’s estimate. A “field” ticket seems like a much better value because it covers so many numbers, but is also more risky.

Anyway that is how to play “ship’s pool.” I do not typically do this on the Golden Dirigible, because the traveling conditions are almost as chaotic as they are at the Kafka Airport.

Prague's Franz Kafka International Named World's Most Alienating Airport

Freudian Stupidity

2009-03-02T11:22:00.001-08:00

Sigmund Freud: he had little to no proof of anything he said, basically made up a global theory based on a few case studies of an extremely limited population. Yet somehow he tapped into something the people of the time really wanted to hear but didn't want to admit they wanted to hear it. It was essentially pop-psychology. No substance, but a great hook. And now most professional psychologist/psychiatrists wish we could forget about him, but he's firmly entrenched in our field. Even now, when movies want a stock psychologist character, it's a guy with a germanic accent.

Cooking Segment?

2009-02-28T21:46:00.000-08:00

Yeah, I know, two in one day, but if I don't do this now I'm going to forget about it because my brain is like a sparkler. Once it burns past something there's no going back. Here is a segment of Late Night with Conan O'Brien. Chef Ramsay is on, and for some reason Norm MacDonald is there too. Ramsay takes himself way too seriously, wants to kill them both but has to laugh because he *is* a professional, but he picks on Norm MacDonald and then gets really PO'd when Norm makes fun of him. I've watched this 3 or 4 times and still laugh out loud.

You Don't Love Me Yet - analysis

2009-02-28T13:37:00.000-08:00

Ran out of library books on Friday, so re-read Jon Lethem's You Don't Love Me Yet. His new-ish book revolves around a female bassist in a struggling rock-band who works in a living-art piece, a call center for complaints-- complaints about any and everything. One complainer calls every day and they fall in love. Meanwhile, the lead singer works at a zoo. He "rescues" a depressed kangaroo and takes her home to his house. That works out about as well as you'd expect. His reasoning always struck me as a little odd, though: "Back at the zoo, she liked me. She relied on me to cheer her up. But now that she's here, she associates me with the zoo." He can't do anything for her.

I always wondered about that. Today I was finally able to tease the book apart. See, the Complainer and the bass-player fall in love, they finally meet, their worlds collide, but he falls out of love with her pretty quickly. Why? She used to be something apart from the rest of his life. He relied on her to cheer him up. Now he associates her with everything else. He ends up joining the band, which doesn't help. Everything in a band has its place, and this band is even more fragile than most. Their guitarist is their songwriter (and the most "fragile," spacey character in the book) and even if someone else has suggestions for songs, they have to furtively give them to him without letting the others know. The guitarist is not a credit-hog, nor would he get upset if the others knew. The others would get upset, because he is the songwriter. The band is very delicate. So the Complainer joining up not only tips the balance of the relationship with the guitarist, it also irreparably skews the band.

The book jacket calls it a story about the relationship between art and love. I think it's more about the balance of our loves and worlds.

RiYue being a Sword

2009-02-26T10:08:00.000-08:00

Candles of various heights and shapes decked the mantel. Incense smoke drifted up from the holder I’d made from sea-glass. There were a couple of peaches next to the candles. I took one, pressed my nose against it, and inhaled. I’d already eaten food offered to idols/spirits/ancestors; To make a long story short, Grandma (owner of Grandma Thai Restaurant down the block) gave me a piece of fruit from her little shrine after she made me soup the way she’d make it in Thailand and to her surprise I happily slurped it up with chopsticks and without my mouth catching on fire. So it wasn’t like that particular Biblical sin was anything new and anyway I’d put the peaches there in the first place. It was my mantel, and the spirit inside the sword perched there was my friend… or used to be. I didn’t worship him. The stuff was there to let him know I remembered him. That made the whole thing more snackish then mystic or profane. Besides, the only other munchies in the house was ice cream and I don’t need to eat that. Why do I even have it in the house?

“RiYue, better speak up if you want your ancestral peach,” I said aloud. No response from the sword. I stuck my tongue out at it. No response except from my own reflection in the shiny black sheathe. The reflection was distorted, dominated by a mass of red curls streaked with black, and a flash of pink tongue. I shrugged as if the whole thing didn’t matter all that much and lay across the couch with a book and the peach. Nothing happened except the usual: Borges’s Labyrinth stories are just as mind-blowing the second and third time around. At length I closed my eyes to imagine myself as an intrepid Librarian exploring his infinite library; a spiral of hexagons divided by a mirror reflecting infinity back on itself. If there are an infinite number of books, why then, the answer to any question must be there. Yet the chances of finding it must be zero. When I jerked awake it first seemed that I’d imagined the Library a little too well. The shelves around me were heavy wooden things, built to stand in the same place for generations-- not the comparatively flimsy things an apartment-dweller must be content with. There were big golden statues scattered about; thin Buddhas, dragons with curving snouts, figures with many arms. Slow, languorous sitar music drifted in from another room. The shelves reached up to the rafters of the ceiling, and all their available space was taken up by books. These too were old, bound with leather or the beaded skin of other animals. Less than a tenth of the gold-leaf titles were in English. The letters gleamed in the soft light of a globe hanging somewhere high above. I was reaching for one of the books when a noise from the next room startled me. Was there a Librarian here who could direct me?

I peeked through a doorway between two massive bookshelves and found that I was not in a library after all. The next room had no books at all on the shelves. They were stocked instead with many jars and shiny things which under other circumstances would have had my undivided attention. Someone stood in the middle of the room with his back to me-- all I could see was a many-folded robe far too rich for a Librarian, massive shoulders supporting a strangely-shaped head. Even from the back I could see a peculiarly long, fan-like moustache. The figure was standing in front of a big, tarnished mirror in frame so busy with carvings that I could not tell what the whole thing was meant to be. The glass did not reflect the room: I was stunned to see my own living room there. There was the couch, there was Labyrinths fallen to the carpet and myself half-fallen after it. Am I the only person who has succeeded at looking into the mirror and seeing what I look like asleep? And if I was asleep, what was I doing here?

Unexplained ice cream I can deal with. This, however, required some answers.
I was about to step out from behind the door and clear my throat when the figure in the middle of the room turned to pluck a jar made of carved jade off of the shelves. It happened quickly but there could be no denying what he was. What I’d mistaken for a moustache was a fan of whiskers. The hand on the jade jar was huge (the jar was the size of a quart of milk), and covered with short, fine fur. The nails were long, pointed, and lacquered in red and black. Those shoulders were massive because they supported the shaggy, striped head of a tiger.

A rakshasa, I thought. A malevolent spirit, or demon if you want to put a fine Americanized point on it. Languidly the spirit removed the cap from the bottle and threw the contents onto the surface of the mirror. The thick greenish liquid spread until it had coated the glass, and the air grew thick the way it does before a thunderstorm. Rakshasa are shape-shifting demons. The older ones can look like practically anything, although they seem pretty comfortable as tiger-men. They are typically Indian in origin but they hang around the Himalayas too. They are all diabolically intelligent, but not usually not this rich or powerful. There would be a highly unusual rakshasa looking into my living room, not that I could even handle a regular one myself. I shuddered. Shape-shifting demons never had honorable intentions where sleepy women were concerned.

The rakshasa held up its curled fingers and twisted them as if pulling something. Its nails and rings glittered. I braced myself (small good that would do) but quickly realized that the tiger-spirit was paying no attention to me at all. Its focus was just above the couch-- the katana on the mantle.

BlackPool F.C.

2009-02-24T14:51:00.000-08:00

I hate tedious quizzes with a passion. Nobody needs to know "100 things about me." This, however, is really cool and so far has strangely suited everyone who has done it. I got BlackPool F.C. with "Epaulet I Could Have Worn." Here's how it goes.

1 - Go to "wikipedia." Hit “random”or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:RandomThe first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to "Random quotations"or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

3 - Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7daysThird picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4 - Use photoshop or similar to put it all together.

5 - Hey, let me know what you got.

credit for all this goes to Holly, AKA "Bat Baby."

silence

2009-02-23T14:48:00.000-08:00

This morning I took the Dirigible back in time to Persia, 360 A.D., for the Persians worshipped Silence. We could do with more of that.

yippie!

2009-02-21T23:07:00.000-08:00

Everybody I love you!

My research paper, the one I spent the better part of a month writing, has piqued the curiosity of the Director of Graduate Admissions and he wants to speak with me. Am not worried about the discussion (I wrote the thing, I ought to be able to explain it) as much as dressing for it. You can't wander around campus in jeans and grungy sneakers until it's too late for them to change their mind about you. Am not good at girly clothes, still less with hair. Hair bothers me. Always has. Your Golden Dirigible correspondent once razed her own hair to 1/8 of an inch because it was getting out of hand. It has this abominable habit of growing, however, is at chin length, and requires "doing." Well... part of it is chin-length... one side is a little longer than the other... am not sure how it got to this state of affairs...

Certa...?

2009-02-17T20:45:00.000-08:00

Most people have heard the saying, "I believe it because it is absurd." This is an erroneous quote. The original saying comes from Tertullian, who wrote "Certa est, quia impossibile est." This translates to "It is certain because it is absurd." His own beliefs were not the issue at hand. He was talking about something else: the embarrassing matter of Jesus Christ having to be born, with all the squishy, messy processes that implies. The fact that the Son of God would subject himself to this and that the apostles would offer that, of all explanations, for how he came to be here, was "certain because it is absurd" according to Tertullian. And now you see that not only is the above a misquote, but also it is usually taken out of context.

Cochliomyia hominivorax

2009-02-12T08:29:00.000-08:00

Cochliomyia hominivorax, or screw-worm, is one of those things that should never have been invented. To put this politely: it lives up to its Latin name. The English name screw-worm is said to come either from its screw-like appearance or from the way it “screws” itself into flesh. The US has been free of screw-worms since 1966, but recent reports by Purdue and UC Davis, among others, say that screw-worm-flies are making a comeback. They are about twice as big as bottle-flies. They are a bright, shiny blue-green with orange eyes.

Really, the whole Calliphoridae family is dubious. The common blowfly is known for spreading disease and infestation due to its penchant for feeding on decaying meat. This insect was almost single-handedly responsible for the myth of “spontaneous generation,” in which meat was thought to spawn maggots which spawned flies. However, the many families of blowflies can be helpful if used correctly. The green bottle-fly (Lucilia sericata) can be used to clean wounds because their maggots only eat dead tissue and leave the live tissue alone. Maggots are also useful in diabetic extremities, burns, and battlefield wounds and is known as maggot therapy, debridement or more recently biosurgery. Biosurgery sounds like a space-age name for something which has been going on since the Mayans and Aborigines. It is also much less likely to freak out a patient.

Cochliomyia hominivorax is never useful. Ever. This is because it will eat live tissue, and eat it at a fantastic rate. Screw-worm myiasis can kill a fully-grown cow in a week (sometimes less), for a screw-worm-fly can lay 400 eggs in a sitting and the eggs can hatch in 12 hours. Transformation into new flies takes 7 days at 80F, more at lower temperatures. You can imagine what they would do to a person. A man is devoured by screw-worms in Matthew Pearl’s The Dante Club, but fortunately people are rarely helpless enough to allow massive infestation to take place; the man in Dante Club was tied up. It is rare but it does happen, especially outside the US. These nasty creatures can grow to half an inch long and have tearing hooks in their mouths. They also have toxic saliva, which does not help. They typically go for open wounds, but even a tiny wound caused by a tick bite can attract them. In some cases they will lay their eggs in a navel. If the infested creature (or person) is lucky they will be killed by infection pretty quickly. If not they have to wait for the worms to hit a major organ.

Weirdly, infestation in birds is rare.

During the 1930s and 1940s, screw-worm flies were present throughout the year in Texas, Florida, Arizona and California. During the summer they moved into the central United States. The sterile fly program (started in 1959) has done a good job of keeping migratory flies out of the country, but they still occasionally find their way in via the transport of infested animals. Cochliomyia hominivorax can survive anywhere where there is no freezing weather, though it is currently a threat only in Texas.

For more information on insects, watch Tom Waits's "The Army Ants" found here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBkyaJqQ-50

calibrated for doom - or doom calibration, if you will

2009-02-06T10:24:00.000-08:00

By now most of my constant readers know that for a while I worked in a funeral home / cemetery. This was very educational in that I learned that death is an industry and how to avoid the Death Industry at all costs -- and that "all costs" is usually 1/10th the cost of not avoiding it.

What you may not know is that I've also worked in a calibration lab.

What is a calibration lab? Hospitals, the military, the government, airports, gas/electric companies etc have equipment to measure things or to make sure that things conform to a certain standard. Calibration labs are where the measuring equipment itself gets measured for accuracy. Unfortunately, this falls into the same category as the Death Industry and I'll tell you why...

Calibration labs sound like a good idea, especially when you see the picture they show new employees of a flaming airplane and the words "improperly calibrated" beneath it. They try to tell you that we watch the watchers. What they do not tell you is that when a calibration test is very complicated, the techs often edit the numbers to come out right, especially if they're on site and want to get back to the lab. Not all of them do this, but I happen to know several at a major lab that do. This lab calibrates equipment for businesses all over the US. How the do you think that plane was flying around with improper calibration in the first place?

The sad thing is that calibration costs hundreds and even thousands of dollars. Not per year-- per calibration. And every single measurement piece in a company must be calibrated according to law. The bills are astronomical. I know because I kept the books for a whole lab. Of course a regular US citizen doesn't have much equipment to be calibrated but I'll bet you've gone to a hospital or flown in an airplane or paid an electricity bill in your lifetime, so yes, you are paying for this largely meaningless ritual. And don't even get me started about the postage you're paying to overnight 50-pound packages every day.

Largely meaningless? Yes. Because who watches the watcher who watches the watcher (ie, who calibrates the calibration lab's equipment)? The calibration lab. Yep. They calibrate their own stuff using the same equipment they use for everything else. One hand washes the other. Does this sound like a good idea to you? Doesn't it sounds like hospitals etc could save a lot of money by cutting out the middleman?

To be fair, the labs do some useful work on things like Fluke multimeters that (while they're good little machines) often slide out of kilter and must be put back every few months. But most stuff, like those big, clunky Tektronix oscilloscopes, is either running 100% or so broken even the repair lab throws its hands in the air and calls it a loss. Not always, but a lot of the time.

All this will sound like I am arguing against Safety, which is probably how this ridiculous business got started in the first place. Someone raised their hand and said that (in addition to certain companies making scads of money) this would provide that intangible commodity, Safety. Problem is that like so many other things, this massive amount of effort and paperwork and postage serves only to promote the idea of Safety. Planes crash, patients die, electrical transformers blow up. Most of the time, all calibration labs do is provide a piece of paper saying they would not. Q.E.D.

useful pawnshops

2009-01-23T21:22:00.000-08:00

If somehow you have come into possession of an item which is not technically yours, and would like to have it as a souvenier or need it for a magic potion or keep it for any number of reasons, but don't want to deal with potential "where'd you get that" repercussions, here is how:

Find someone who doesn't know you, have that person pawn it. When it isn't redeemed, buy it back. You can then prove you bought it if ever you have to, and that'll satisfy most people.

But for pete's sake use common sense. This trick is not going to work if they have a lot of reason to suspect you in the first place. It's a failsafe, not a get out of jail free card.

I've been noticing it more & more lately

2009-01-13T22:24:00.001-08:00

Why do you want to be like me?

Or should I be asking, Why do you insist I'm like you?

Do you want to follow my flight-pattern, or do you believe I am fulfilling things you foreshadowed?

ranch

2009-01-12T23:09:00.000-08:00

It happened, as was bound to happen. I've decided to start a moth ranch. They'll be fed on old socks at first-- carefully selected old socks to make them grow big enough to carry a person. Naysayers have told me that a moth's flight pattern is so crazy that no one will want to ride one. I put it to you that wild moths fly that way because they don't know any better. Of course I'll train them from yearlings onward to obey signals from a rider via specially designed moth-reins (patent pending). That way people can come in and buy moths for themselves. All they'll need to do is put a big branch in their garage and their moth can live there. By that time, of course, feeding them on socks will be impractical. Instead they'll be fed old towels.

There are many advantages to riding a moth. No more need for cars, for one thing. That means no more highways to build, no more traffic, and no more worrying about oil scarcity or pollution from exhaust. Also there will be no worrying about terrorists hijacking planes since people can fly their own moth anywhere they wish to go-- so no long lines at the airport, no more retarded security practices, and no stopovers. I recommend you reserve your moth today. When the first batch of giant moths reaches maturity, people will be clamoring for them.

Guilt - Islam

2009-01-06T10:40:00.000-08:00

Hide your body

Hide the body

Hide the bodies?

You hide behind a curtain

We hide behind a curtain

Hide across the ocean

Hide behind fear of labels:

racism

intolerance

ignorance

Hide behind cultural

divide

This one thing we have in common, sister:

We both hide our guilt.

polar bear

2009-01-01T15:33:00.000-08:00

Lately I realized that the vast majority of my decisions in life fall under one of two headings. Either I wanted someone to get off my case, or I was bored.

The decision to take the "Seattle Polar Bear Plunge" is in the latter category. One day I was bored and decided it would be a great idea to charge into the frigid water of Lake Washington at noon to celebrate the new year. Yes, people do this. Crowds of them. Google it if you don't believe me.

So this morning I picked up my fabulous friend Derb and let her know where we were going (Lake Washington) and why. She was surprised but happy to offer moral support. There are many people who arrive in costume or goofy outfits, so I decked myself out in a bathing suit, short-shorts, knee socks with flowers on them, canvas sneakers (because I'm not going into a city lake barefoot) & a hat with flowers sticking out of the brim. It didn't hold a candle to the person in a gorilla suit & hot-pink bathing suit on top of that (or perhaps it was actually a female gorilla in bathing attire?) but it was the best I could come up with. Derb's moral support included holding my hat so it wouldn't get lost in the excitement. "My friend is crazy," she remarked aloud to other hat-holders. So of course after that I could not afford to express any doubt or reluctance even when faced with a lake full of blue-gray waves.

I joined the crowd hastily peeling off their outer layers of clothing and assembling on the shore, where a lady with a microphone was counting down. "10... 9... 8..." And then suddenly all of us were charging into the water with assorted squeals, yelps and whoops. In order to get the "cold badge o' courage" (a patch with a polar bear on it) a person needs to get out to their neck, so while I was out there I took a few extra bounds & dunked my head. Why not, right? Of course, my lack of foresight was remarkable in that once I stopped running, swooshed myself around so I faced toward land and had a few seconds to realize how cold I was, it was time to start *swimming* back, because if you're out beyond your depth, your feet don't touch the frigging bottom. And when you're that cold, your limbs are not thrilled when they are asked to work in concert.

"Hm," I thought, "If I drown they'll have to send someone to get me out. That'll be embarassing."

With this motivation, my arms got with the program and soon my feet touched the gravel. For some reason after plunging into cold water a person's body wants to breathe in & keep breathing in, even when it doesn't need to. Fortunately one of the useful things learned in a boxing gym was how to make your lungs behave even when they're trying to rebel. However, my lack of foresight reared its head again upon discovering that I'd forgotten to bring a towel. Fortunately we discovered a blanket in the back of the car, so I used that to dry off. I have my cold badge o' courage, too. Can't decide if I want to put in on my hoodie or my guitar case.

The Outsider

2008-12-31T09:54:00.000-08:00

Have also been reading "The Outsider" by Colin Wilson. This book is a journey into the conscious and subconscious of various Outsiders in literature, including Steppenwolf, Raskolnikov, Siddhartha, Fox and others. Most of the time I know where Wilson and his Outsiders are coming from. They have a difficult time relating to the mostly-tiresome conversations of others while at the same time are sent reeling by the root of a tree and the fact that it exists. Sometimes I even had to smile because "Yes, I've felt that way but never put it into words so neatly."

My main criticism of Wilson is that he takes an exclusively male perspective. You realize, constant readers, that I wouldn't even bring it up if he simply took a male viewpoint, because after all Wilson is a man. However he seems to make a conscious effort to exclude females by saying over and over again that, in the consciousness of many Outsiders, the thing to do with a woman is to simply grab her and rape her. Brava. He also proudly tells readers that females are much less victims of the abstract than males are.

While I found "The Outsider" useful in many ways, I have to wonder-- has anyone written a non-chauvanist book about those people who stand on the outside of society, either looking in or gazing toward outer space?

books

2008-12-28T21:42:00.000-08:00

Books checked out from the library this morning:

Run Run Run by Jack Hoffman and Daniel Simon.

Steal This Dream by Larry Sloman.

Rabbit Redux by John Updike.

Rabbit at Rest also by John Updike.

eimi by e.e. cummings. Started reading this one first. This is Cummings' diary of his trip to the USSR. This man spent three months in French internment camp during WWI for refusing to say he hated Germans, yet while his contemporaries were heralding the USSR as the next step in mankind's evolution, Cummings had the presence of mind to see that no good would come of it. Written in his signature style, it is full of dry humor and brilliant description.

If you get your hands on some whole dried lavender blossoms you can make a tea by putting them in a mug and pouring boiling water over them. Let steep 3 minutes. The water will turn a smoky color and there might be a ring of green around the top. It's ok, that's just essence of lavender. Stir the green in, scoop the floating blossoms out (because they make it very hard to drink) and sweeten with honey. Tastes unusual and completely poleaxes you. Seriously, don't plan on driving or transacting any important business for at least 3 hours after drinking.

There is nothing like drinking a mug of lavender tea and reading Cummings.

disraeli gears

2008-12-26T11:59:00.000-08:00

Certain tests will ask you questions having to do with gears. They'll have an illustration with fifteen gears turning clockwise and counterclockwise and ask which way the final gear turns. The ASFAB does this, as do certain IQ tests and the GED... at least it did back when I was 16.

Rather than waste time considering each and every gear, all you have to remember is that if there is an even-numbered amount of gears, the final one will spin the opposite way to the first. If there is an odd number of gears, the final gear will spin the same way as the first.

To wit: First gear clockwise, second gear counter-clockwise, third gear clockwise. See? It doesn't matter if there are two, three, or 161 gears in the sequence.

That ought to save you enough time for a few deep breaths before moving on to the reading portion, where you'll have to analyze that tired passage from "The Shell Seekers."

Crisp

2008-12-20T20:46:00.001-08:00

I do like rice crispies

just remembered it now

I would not keep rice crispy secrets from you.

famous faces (and that's it)

2008-12-19T09:57:00.000-08:00

If my head were disembodied, I would not be able to put the sole of my foot on the crown of my head. I would have neither feet, nor legs, nor shoulders for that matter. So of course I started thinking about famous disembodied heads.

Colonel Sanders was a disembodied head for a long time, but recently they gave him a bust and a red apron so it looked as if the Southern colonel were in the kitchen.

Oz the Great and Terrible. If you pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, then Oz is a disembodied head.

One of my all-time favorite disembodied heads: the horse-head from "The Godfather."

Jambi from "PeeWee's Playhouse." His Mecha-Lecha chant has made it into pop-culture: there is a reference to it in a Homestar Runner webcomic and in Weird Al Yankovic's song "Pretty Fly (for a Rabbi)."

Unicron's head, which floats menacingly about causing mischief even after he was killed by the Autobots and their sparkly Matrix.

Another of my favorites, Medusa's head with its snakey locks. It had the power to turn men to stone even after she died. Rather like a handgun; dangerous if you screw around and end up on the wrong end of it, but useful in a pinch.

That's about it for the disembodied heads. Let me know, Constant Readers, if you think of any more.

not because I say so...

2008-12-18T11:42:00.000-08:00

Just because you or I or a lot of people like something, this does not make it good. This includes art, books, literature, clothes, you name it. In fact, most of what "a lot of people" like becomes embarrassing 10-20 years later; of course, 30 years later it somehow comes back into fashion. Styles from the 1980s are cropping up all over the place now, come back from the abyss to which I thought we'd all agreed to cast them. Poor highschool kids, they don't know any better then the teenagers in the real 80s did. Of course, in the real 80s, a lot of kids were dressing like they did in the 1950s.

I'm not going to criticize the '80s any more. That has already been done in abundance by funnier people than me.

Instead I'm going to say that it's important to know the difference between something you like and something that's good. If you like something... bands like Creed/Nickelback/Puddle of Mud/Hair of the Dog/Stone Temple Pilots/Three Doors Down, for instance... fine. You have as much right to enjoy their music as I have to enjoy the Republic Tigers. However, those bands are posers backed commercially by a lot of old white guys with wads of cash, BUT THAT DOES NOT MEAN YOU CANNOT ENJOY THEM. Just don't try to say they're truly great, and bear in mind that 20 years from now people will be laughing at them.

My guilty pleasures don't include Creed or any clones of them, however I will admit to Placebo's "Pure Morning" and Harvey Danger's "Flagpole Sitta." They're stupid songs. I like them anyway. I also like obnoxious pop-rap... Huey, RichBoy, Trick Daddy... but it's just a lot of bass-heavy music to hit a speed-bag to.

Things can be good even though you don't like them. Maybe you can't stand the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay or the photography of Mapplethorp. That doesn't make them any less beautiful. FYI use discretion if you look up Mapplethorp. His stuff is not for everyone but after looking at it for a few minutes, black-and-white seems perfect and pictures in color seem overblown.

Anyway all I'm saying is that it is important to know the difference between your own likes and dislikes and what is really great art, or music, or what have you.

Chronos

2008-12-17T02:28:00.001-08:00

As new readers may or may not be aware, I happen to possess a golden dirigible that can travel both time and space. I call this vessel the C'est la Vie. Those interested in background can find it here: http://attitudesong.spaces.live.com/

One nice thing about having a golden dirigible is that I never have to wait for the train.

Even so, time is still a problem. Even on Earth, just one planet, they have different ways of measuring it. In the US they have standard and military time. Then of course there are time zones, of which there are an inordinate number. On the other side of the planet, in China, they do not have time zones. I guess the US takes up more time than China, which is odd because they have fewer people. The Aborigines of Australia (nice bunch if you can go back a few hundred years and visit them) have no word for "yesterday" or "tomorrow." It's always "now." This is amazingly sensible, and I'll explain why.

When travelling through space, time does not pass at a consistent pace. Oh, sure, if you confine yourself to Earth and its moon the difference isn't terribly noticable because you're within almost the same distance of the local sun-star. This is like spending your whole life in the same county, though. Once you get to other planets, time does all kinds of things. Get into other solar systems and you can forget this notion of "Standard Earth Time."

You could try to argue that I could still arrange things according to 12-hour days. This too is nigh-impossible to keep track of. See, gravity is essentially a side-effect of time. When time itself encounters a dense object, it slows down; gravity is time-sludge. But stars vary even more in density than human beings vary in weight, so in each solar system you encounter a different time. Thus "12 hours" means one thing if you're orbitting Betelgeuse than it does Rigel. Factor in the different planets' ways of measuring and you're lucky if you don't turn 150 years old by the time you're done. The best strategy is to ignore all this nonsense and proceed at your own pace. Keep your own time if you want to. I used to, but now I sleep when I'm tired, eat when I'm hungry, and spend the rest of my time writing or messing around with different ways to tune my guitar, which always has 12 strings no matter how many hours in a day.

Don't be a slave to Chronos. It's a dangerous passtime indeed. In the universes next door to this one, it's always "now."

at last

2008-12-16T15:19:00.000-08:00

My seventeen-page research paper is done!

*The Yippies are/were a group of radicals who enjoy low-key to elaborate mischief, bright colors, and plays on words. Alliteration and multiple meanings are much admired. The term came about when they started messing about with poltix and it was insisted that their party needed an official name. Their leader, the crazy, brilliant, idealist Abbie Hoffman, was peeved because he didn't want an officious anything and why should you have to be a member to an ongoing party? So he picked the deliberately silly name. It's a pun on "hippie," as well as a cry of merriment, plus a spin on the Native American spirit Coyote, who liked fun and tricks too. If someone says something really clever, they say "Yippie!" because it sounds like a coyote barking. Abbie Hoffman, the original Yippie, hunted justice with such enthusiasm that the people who were supposed to hunt it got jealous and decided to hunt him, instead. Poor Coyote.... I mean... Abbie.

**my paper has nothing to do with Yippies. I just like to say that if I'm happy or someone says something clever...

important salmon

2008-12-14T15:25:00.000-08:00

If you have occasion to catch and eat an important salmon, make sure it is the Salmon of Knowledge, not the Salmon of Doubt.