The Wisdom in Drink

post new years blues

2009-01-12T17:37:00.002-05:00

i don't buy into the whole new years resolutions bullshit but every time the reality of the new year starts to settle in (around mid january) i sit down and make a list of at least 20 ways i can do something marketable in the new year that's different than what i did the year before.

legal things

its easy to do what you WANT to create, but its important to keep the money coming in more than the money going out. this year seemed a little harder, took a little longer than most years. in the middle of a depressed economy its hard to imagine what might make money.

but the list is done.

i have sources of income right now, of course, but i hate to rely on anything concrete. things always change, and are changing. that's why i call it the Fuckit List.

no, i just came up with that actually.

Che Part 1

2008-12-31T15:40:00.002-05:00

"I am not Christ or a philanthropist, old lady, I am all the contrary of a Christ.... I fight for the things I believe in, with all the weapons at my disposal and try to leave the other man dead so that I don't get nailed to a cross or any other place."

it doesn't matter if you agree with his philosophy or not, you have to admire the man. someone who fought for what they believed in even though it wouldn't have had an impact directly on his own country, his own life if he had stayed in argentina as a doctor. yes, he was a communist obviously misguided and a product of the place he was raised and the people he associated with. none of that should matter to the example he set.

they commendingly stay far away from making him into a superhero and they delve into (a little, maybe not enough) the complexities of the good/bad of what the rebels are doing.

when it was over, for me, the movie did such a a great job of making che into a real person, with real flaws, that it drove home the fact that "ordinary" people can make a difference. afterwards i felt energized, still do.

we did a back to back of motorcycle diaries then che part 1 and within this context it isn't hard to understand how even communism must be better than the utter poverty rampant around them. yes, the movie presents che's arguments against the USA but it does it in a non-judgemental way. the characters speak what we know they spoke, they feel how we think they probably felt, but it isn't SHOWN to be true. at least not in part 1. the US is not the big bad villain of this movie. its not propoganda, at least not anti-american propoganda.

it does sometimes gets bogged down in the endless series of towns in cuba as they make their way through the island. che parts 1 and 2 together will be over 5 hours long so i'm not sure why this 2 hour part 1 should feel padded but it does. i was grateful for the flash-forwards we get of him visiting the US that are interspersed thoughout the narrative. it breaks up the endless new towns well.

i forgot it was del torro somewhere early on which is rare for me and even the subtitles doesn't bog it down. the person i watched it with isn't very used to subtitles but they didn't seem to bother her.

i think it comes out in general release at the end of the month.

blindess review

2008-12-06T12:12:00.000-05:00

we watched the movie Blindness last night. i wanted to do nothing, no social interaction and no writing, and this was the closest i could come to that. it was an interesting movie, disturbing. i can't really say it was GOOD but it was worth seeing.

the premise is a slow building disease of some sort causes people to go blind. thinking its contagious and can be contained, they start putting the newly blind in an old hospital to quarantine them. one woman can still see but pretends she can't to stay with her husband and help him in the hospital.

its sort of lord of the flies meets the happening (that shitty M Night movie), with all the good and bad associated with both.

not ready..... yet

2008-10-29T20:47:00.000-04:00

i haven't been watching many commercials since i get all the shows i want to watch commercial free and i don't have cable, only getting one decent station in over-the-air high def and that's fox. i live in new york city and there probably is maybe even less political commercials than normal. so maybe this commercial has been running a lot and i just didn't know.

i tuned into the barracomercial and right after that a mccain commercial comes on talking about how inexeperienced obama is (forgetting that palin is even less experienced), interpsersed with images of poor people for some reason and at the end of all that the announcer says "obama, not ready..... yet"

what is this supposed to make us think of? it immediately evoked for me the idea that this is mccain's last chance, but obama might have more chances in the future. it made me think how sad john mccain is to be taking this angle and it even underscored how OLD he is.

i'm taking the day off next week, heading to pennsylvania on monday night to hang out at the voting booth and vote on tuesday.

never seem to find the time....

2008-10-22T12:29:00.000-04:00

i'm busier these days and its hard to split between the three areas you need to devote time to: creating, experiencing and maintaining relationships. its been my experience that you need all three to reach full potential.

lately i've been drawn inward, working on too many projects at the same time and ignoring the last two categories.

i've spent time with friends but only when they come to visit, which is usually only my good friends really. and i'm working in the background with a movie on or something even then. so i apologize to the people i've ignored and social plans i;ve backed out of.

i'll actually venture out and work from a coffee shop for a few hours today, i think.

the debate a wash?

2008-09-26T22:50:00.003-04:00

i don't feel any different about either candidate after this debate. the two undecided people watching with me claim to still be undecided, the republican with me is still against obama.

as an obama supporter, i was worried that he might blow it and he didn't so that was a relief.

i like when they addressed each other, as lehrar tried to do again and again, but mccain was less comfortable with that. lehrar did ok but the questions left too much room for ambiguity.

mccain seemed to be hitting talking points more often, especially at the end when he claimed obama wasn't able to admit to being wrong about the surge even though a half hour before he said that obama recently HAD admitted it. trying somehow to tag obama to bush was WAY out there. he was also handling the questions like an outsider. but he's had 30 years to try and change things and he hasn't. he now has to be seen as part of the problem with things, not as a solution.

obama seemed too much on the defensive. he felt he had to address every utterance of "naive" and it began to appear painfully obvious. also his overly correct pronounciation of every silly name in this world was obvious. it felt faked.

i read not too long ago that the debates were timed to not coincide with jewish holidays. so why was this one held on a friday night?

have to turn this crap off, only fox comes in in HD over my rabbit ears.

i hate palin's lower lip

2008-09-04T21:07:00.006-04:00

i watched a little bit of palin's speech last night, in a bar eating chicken wings and drinking beer (which i hardly ever do).

i don't agree with most of her views but she's cute. by the far the cutest candidate of the four. that bottom lip quiver just has to go though. she needs a good speech coach. the slutty duaghter is a plus - we need more of that in the white house since the twins are gone. if she's in, there is enough time for all the kids (beside the down syndrome one), to get knocked up.

while i don't think her being an out-of-touch mother or being inexperienced matters (bush was experienced, look where it got us) i do have a big problem with hypocrisy. well, hell, jon stewart says it much better than i do.

questioning her qualifications, while i dont' think it matters, shouldn't be considered sexist. that's just silly. if it was some goofy inbred chump who no one ever heard of mayor of the smallest city in the country with goofy names for his kids and some of them teen, pregnant & unwed, marrying rednecks or retarded, this wouldn't even be an issue. he'd be plastered to the wall running away like eagleton after a good shocking.

i'm still not convinced palin is in it for the long hall. every day something else is coming out about her. she attended 5 collges in 6 years is the newest. add that with alaskan seceeding, the oil ties, pork barrel projects despite them pretending she's a reformer, ties to ted stevens and whatever will come tomorrow and the day after that. EDIT - now we find out she improperly got hold of records in that ethics probe.

i'm not counting her support of creationism or the anti-abortion stances, since they're considered pluses by some people out there. not by me though, of course.

i didn't watch a minute of the democrat's infomercial and i won't watch another minute of the republican's. but after a day of the best insults they could hurl at the guy in front of thousands of fat cats trying to dance, obama said this in an interview: "i've been called worse on the basketball court."

now that's a classy response

'what puts the Ape in "apricot"?'

2008-08-27T15:36:00.001-04:00

there's a project that i have a soft spot for but i've been working on it slowly. its been difficult to secure the necessary interviews. i don't even know, at this point, what form it will take - book, extended article - no idea.

today, just an hour ago, i was sitting in a coffee shop near my apartment and a person walks in whom i've been trying to figure out how to approach (having failed with others) for a while now.

to put it in perspective, imagine if you were writing a book on interracial marriages where the man kills his wife and OJ Simpson walks in to order a coffee*. its THAT important.

and stupidly i just sat there trying to figure out how to open a conversation, how to approach (even worse was that she is a very beautiful woman). scared, i was actually fucking scared. and i let it whimper out and she walked out of the coffee shop.

i berated myself, packed up my little laptop and prepared to just call myself stupid for days letting an opportunity like this go right by.

and when i walked outside there she was sitting off to the side out of sight.

redemption. we talked a bit and i explained, in broad terms, what i was trying to accomplish and how it wouldn't mean anything without involving her. we exchanged email addresses and i left feeling good about myself again.

* ok, if you believe OJ is innocent lets say you're wiring a book about men framed for killing their wives or whatever

new assignment

2008-08-16T10:48:00.003-04:00

she's not a very good actress but this pic looks great. i'm in. i'm going to ghost write it for a woman in my life, and work in why she thinks *i* should be there too.

wait a minute... you get to pick the other person right? or will woody allen pop out of the closet?

the gunner's dream

2008-08-14T18:04:00.000-04:00

"in the corner of some foreign field,
the gunner sleeps tonight.
what's done is done
we cannot just write off his final scene
take heed of the dream...
take head...."
pink floyd
the gunner's dream

dedicated my old friend who died a week ago. the paper listed no cause of death saying only "died at home."

he was a crazy man who took a lot of chances, living life to the fullest. he had a brain tumor and multiple old body injuries. he was an insatiable pain-killer popper, mad chemist, gun dealer and ex-pilot.

we used to make pipe bombs and explode them in cemetaries when we were kids. and with an absence of any other explanation, i'd like to believe he died mixing up a killer batch of something in his basement.

but i fear the worst.

out of town this weekend

2008-08-05T17:30:00.001-04:00

it looks like i will be in boston this weekend, maybs thursday maybe friday not sure yet.

my friend found out his mother is in fact not dead, but living in boston. i know, i know not THAT much different. in true soap opera fashion who he thuoght was his mother and who had died when he was young actually wasn't.

so i'm accompanying him just to make sure he goes to meet her but i won't be meeting her myself. got enough drama in my life, don't need any more domestics. how long i stay will depend on what i can find to do up there. my goal is to get him there and that's where it ends for me.

i'm going to try and stay in a hotel midtown somewhere. i'm trying to remember where i stayed last time i was there, which was years ago.

so if someone wants to get a drink or something, let me know.

the new chant "anyone but hussein obama"

2008-07-21T20:45:00.001-04:00

yes, things are looking pretty bleak for republicans this time around. the roles are reversed from the last election (anyone but bush) and they're now near desperation of chanting 'anyone but barrack hussein obama' (note use of middle name in desperate attempt to try to scare people).

the iraqi prime minister agrees with obama's 16 month withdrawal plans.

mccain doesn't know where iraq is located:

"“It’s a serious situation, but there’s a lot of things we need to do. We have a lot of work to do and I’m afraid that it’s a very hard struggle, particularly given the situation on the Iraq-Pakistan border.”"

obama leads mccain 69-21 for single women voters

now mccain's amateur essay wasn't published by the new york times. go to the drudge report to read it and you'll understand why. its just a political commercial and says nothing about what mccain will do.

"No one favors a permanent U.S. presence, as Senator Obama charges."

100 years is as close to permanent as i can possibly imagine. this was what mccain had to say before he flipped and flopped around the issue.

here's the most ridiculous part of it:

"I am also dismayed that he never talks about winning the war—only of ending it."

someone tell mccain we won the war years ago. there was even a big Mission Accomplished poster up there. the war is over, has been for a long time. this is occupation now. this is something OTHER than a winning/losing situation. you can't lose something you've already won, long ago. surely if you can sit down with the prime minister (of a government we support) and discuss pulling troops out then it can't ever be considered a "loss".

i admit i don't know what this is, but it seems mccain can't tell us either. otherwise his essay would be about his plans for iraq and it would have been published in the times.

dark knight

2008-07-18T05:03:00.001-04:00

back from the dark night movie. man, it was great fun. i won't stick any spoilers here but it was a fun ride. heath ledger, gary oldman were great. gyllanhall was better than katie but just barely.

the story was exciting and the interplay between the joker and batman much like the comics; you can tell the nolan brothers are fans.

the only cringe-worthy moments are when they try to go along with real-world technology instead of sticking to make-believe.

after a point, you're not sure WHERE the story is going. literally anything can happen and of the plot twists the only one that doesn't work is the BIGGEST and that's because of the trailers. many people won't spot it. the two people i went with didn't so you might be ok.

the dark night joker prologue i talked about seeing in high def a couple days ago actually is the first few minutes of the movie. since i saw it in HD on my wide screen tv with surround sound (the clip was 5.1) it put me in a unique position of direct comparison between, for the first time, a top-of-the-line video transfer vs a movie theatre experience. usually i'll see a dvd (or blu-ray now) months after i've seen the movie in the theatre.

disappointingly, both the sound and the video were BETTER on my mid-level home theatre setup. i saw dark knight at the AMC 25 in times square.

so while i might have gone again, i think i'll wait it out now.

i'm voting republican

2008-06-15T10:40:00.000-04:00

funny shit

still kicking

2008-06-07T09:44:00.001-04:00

i'm writing again, back to the routine. i think this break of a week or so has been good for me. maybe i'll do it once every couple months to clear my mind. take a week off, dissappear, recharge.

i'm fully recovered but when i went back to the doctor yesterday it turns out my symptoms since i last saw him didn't match up to what he originally thought.

so i'm not sure if going to him and getting medication etc, had any effect at all. peace of mind? after around $130 (even with the good insurance i have) i'm not sure.

after i told him what had happened this is how the exchange went:

"that's impossible"
"really? then what the hell was it?"
he shrugged. "who knows."

maybe i need a new specialist....

this is the end (maybe)

2008-05-28T16:10:00.001-04:00

its become painfully apparent to me that life is fragile. we're always on the edge of death. no big deal, i'm ready to die and i'm not afraid but i thought i'd take this opportunity to say goodbye in advance. i'd like to say there was so much more i wanted to do in life but it isn't true, i have no more goals. through short sightedness or amazing ability (probably the former) i've achieved every goal i've ever had.

true, there is more to experience but i'm not sure i want to or need to. like raise a family, but i loathe to think of bringing children into this world right now. be rich and famous but really that doesn't mean much and certainly doesn't mean increased happiness. leave a mark, but i find individual, personal enrichment much more satisfying.

i'm happier than i've ever been in my life. my family and friends have been incredible, supportive and forgiving. a person couldn't ask for more. i've been blessed with more beautiful, supportive, loving women than i ever deserved. i may not have said it but i loved every single one.

i could be dead tomorrow. my doctor thinks its possible anyway.

i said that to a friend today.
me: "i might be dead tomorrow. anything you want to say to me?"
her: "nah, i'll leave a comment on your myspace page"

the future is here.

mankind is kept alive by bestial acts (waits)

2008-05-24T13:20:00.000-04:00

"i'm not pregnant"

that's what i got as a text message on my cell phone a few days ago. believe me, the explanation isn't nearly as interesting as you might imagine, so i'll leave it up to your imaginations.

what a joyous message it could be for some people. for other people it means hours of arguments and assurances and paranoia-stroking and tears.

it also happens to be almost exactly the number of characters my cell phone displays in the list of text messages, all you can of see of one before you have to hit "view" to see more of the message. but there wasn't more to this one, oh no. it was enough.

girls, if you find this text message on you boyfriend/husband's phone or email subject, is there ANYTHING at all he can say that you'd believe?

stay in school

2008-05-07T11:19:00.000-04:00

i recently read a transcript of obama talking about grand theft auto iv. i have to say the comments are hopeful. i think he takes the logical, well-thought out position rather than the knee-jerk republican (and clinton) positions:

I was just catching the news this morning about Grand Theft Auto, this video game, which is gonna break all records and make goo-gobs of money for whoever designed it. Now, this isn’t intended for kids, although I promise you there are kids who are playing it, but these video games are raising our kids…

Across the board, middle-class, upper-class, working-class kids, they’re spending a huge amount of their time not on their studies, but on entertainment.

And so part of our job is going to have to be to inspire the entire country to say, ‘How are we giving our kids a thirst for knowledge?’ And turning off the TV set, and getting them to be engaged and interested, like their future really does matter on how well they do in school.”

i really think its a matter of age. obama was in his 20s during the video game craze of the 80s. i'm sure he has played a few in his younger years and i think he's got a handle of just how "bad" they really are.

the disctractions kids have today, and that they get lost in, are a symptom not a cause. drugs, teen alcohol abuse, video games, promiscuity - they all have the same source.

its nice to see a politician NOT pandering to the family values crowd.

client number 9

2008-03-10T18:11:00.000-04:00

i've taken some shit today for being a vocal spitzer supporter. emails, phone calls, etc. i did say i thought he'd be a good president some day. i admired the worke he's done as a prosecutor.

and this is where my problem with him lies. i don't care that governor spitzer paid for some over-priced whores. i don't think getting your penis wet with a little strange has any effect on his job. he's a democrat, not a holy republican crusader.

but i DO care that former attorney general spitzer has done it. the hypocrisy of putting people behind bars and then committing some high level crimes yourself can't be forgiven.

i don't even think prostitution should be illegal, but it is. and so an attorney general should NOT be doing it.

for him to come out and apologize they must have some hardcore evidence against him.

he's a lot dumber than i would have thought. its a sad day. why not set up women in apartments in D.C. and NYC? does it have to be a whore? i guess whore is a kind of fetish for some people.

bravo to the danish

2008-02-13T13:00:00.002-05:00

i'm going to eat a danish today in celebration. bravo! they reprinted the muhammed cartoons after one of the cartoonists was the victim of a conspiracy to kill him.

i notice the bbc news article didn't have the same level of balls.

here it is though:

-------------

Danish Muhammad cartoon reprinted
Protesters burn a Danish flag in Pakistan in February
The row saw Danish flags being burnt in Muslim states
Danish newspapers have reprinted one of several caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad which sparked violent protests across the Muslim world two years ago.

They say they wanted to show their commitment to freedom of speech after an alleged plot to kill one of the cartoonists behind the drawings.

Three suspects were held in Denmark on Tuesday "to prevent a murder linked to terrorism", officials said.

The cartoons were originally published by Jyllands-Posten in September 2005.

Danish embassies were attacked around the world and dozens died in riots that followed.

'Defiant'

Jyllands-Posten and many other major newspapers - including Politiken and Berlingske Tidende - reprinted the caricature in their Wednesday editions.

Kurt Westergaard (15/09/2006)
I have turned fear into anger and resentment
Kurt Westergaard
Cartoonist

The cartoon depicts Muhammad wearing a turban shaped like a bomb with a lit fuse.

The editors say no-one should feel their life is threatened because of a drawing.

"We are doing this to document what is at stake in this case, and to unambiguously back and support the freedom of speech that we as a newspaper will always defend," Berlingske Tidende said.

The cartoon was also broadcast on national television, and even newspapers that were originally against the publication of the caricatures are now backing the campaign to defend freedom of speech, the BBC's Thomas Buch-Andersen in Copenhagen says.

One Danish tabloid published all 12 drawings, the Associated Press news agency reported.

'Deeply shaken'

On Tuesday, the head of the Danish Security and Intelligence Service (Pet), Jakob Sharf, said its operatives had carried out pre-dawn raids in the Aarhus region.

The three suspects - two Tunisians and a Dane of Moroccan origin - had been detained "after lengthy surveillance", he added.

The Danish citizen will be released pending further investigation, while the Tunisians will be held until they are expelled from the country.

Map

The Pet did not identify the target of the alleged plot, but the online edition of Jyllands-Posten said its cartoonist, Kurt Westergaard, was the focus.

The newspaper, based in Aarhus, said Mr Westergaard, 73, and his 66-year-old wife, Gitte, had been under police protection for the past three months.

In a statement on Jyllands-Posten's website, Mr Westergaard said: "Of course I fear for my life when the police intelligence service say that some people have concrete plans to kill me.

"But I have turned fear into anger and resentment."

The editor of Jyllands-Posten, Carsten Juste, said he and his staff had been "deeply shaken" by the news.

"We'd become more or less used to death threats and bomb threats since the cartoons, but it's the first time that we've heard about actual murder plans - that's new," he said.

Muslim anger

The BBC's Thomas Buch-Andersen in Copenhagen says the arrests have stunned people in Denmark, where the furore over the cartoons was thought to have passed.

Mr Westergaard was one of 12 artists behind the drawings but he was responsible for what was considered the most controversial of the pictures.

The cartoons were later reprinted by more than 50 newspapers, triggering a wave of protests in parts of the Muslim world.

The demonstrations culminated a year ago with the torching of Danish diplomatic offices in Damascus and Beirut and dozens of deaths in Nigeria, Libya and Pakistan.

conventional problems

2008-01-29T20:18:00.000-05:00

my source for press credentials for the republican national convention couldn't come through for me. and now time is running out to apply. if you are someone, or know someone in a relatively well known publication, please contact me.

ideally it won't be a reactionary one.

i'm not interested in starting trouble and i have no agenda for the event. it just looks like it will be an interesting convention.

----------------
from the web site:

Freelance Journalists

Freelance writers, photographers and broadcast production personnel may only be accredited if assigned by a credible news organization for the purpose of covering the convention. The application must be made by the editor, news director or executive of said publication or production on the freelancer's behalf to the proper Gallery office. Example: A freelancer's request for a weekly magazine would be submitted to the Periodical Press Galleries.

privacy?

2008-01-15T03:23:00.001-05:00

i think its a good idea to assume that anything you write or search for online will be seen by someone. everything online is permanent too. it'll be floating around a decade from now.

----------------

US drafting plan to allow government access to any email or Web search
RAW STORY
Published: Monday January 14, 2008

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National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell is drawing up plans for cyberspace spying that would make the current debate on warrantless wiretaps look like a "walk in the park," according to an interview published in the New Yorker's print edition today.

Debate on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act "will be a walk in the park compared to this," McConnell said. "this is going to be a goat rope on the Hill. My prediction is that we're going to screw around with this until something horrendous happens."

The article, which profiles the 65-year-old former admiral appointed by President George W. Bush in January 2007 to oversee all of America's intelligence agencies, was not published on the New Yorker's Web site.

McConnell is developing a Cyber-Security Policy, still in the draft stage, which will closely police Internet activity.

"Ed Giorgio, who is working with McConnell on the plan, said that would mean giving the government the autority to examine the content of any e-mail, file transfer or Web search," author Lawrence Wright pens.

"Google has records that could help in a cyber-investigation, he said," Wright adds. "Giorgio warned me, 'We have a saying in this business: 'Privacy and security are a zero-sum game.'"

A zero-sum game is one in which gains by one side come at the expense of the other. In other words -- McConnell's aide believes greater security can only come at privacy's expense.

McConnell has been an advocate for computer-network defense, which has previously not been the province of any intelligence agency.

According to a 2007 conversation in the Oval Office, McConnell told President Bush, "If the 9/11 perpetrators had focused on a single US bank through cyber-attack and it had been successful, it would have an order of magnitude greater impact on the US economy."

Bush turned to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, asking him if it was true; Paulson said that it was. Bush then asked to McConnell to come up with a network security strategy.

"One proposal of McConnell's Cyber-Security Policy, which is still in the draft stage, is to reduce the access points between government computers and the Internet from two thousand to fifty," Wright notes. "He claimed that cyber-theft account for as much as a hundred billion dollars in annual losses to the American economy. 'The real problem is the perpetrator who doesn't care about stealing—he just wants to destroy.'"

The infrastructure to tap into Americans' email and web search history may already be in place.

In November, a former technician at AT&T alleged that the telecom forwarded virtually all of its Internet traffic into a "secret room" to facilitate government spying.

Whistleblower Mark Klein said that a copy of all Internet traffic passing over AT&T lines was copied into a locked room at the company's San Francisco office -- to which only employees with National Security Agency clearance had access -- via a cable splitting device.

"My job was to connect circuits into the splitter device which was hard-wired to the secret room," Klein. said "And effectively, the splitter copied the entire data stream of those Internet cables into the secret room -- and we're talking about phone conversations, email web browsing, everything that goes across the Internet."

"As a technician, I had the engineering wiring documents, which told me how the splitter was wired to the secret room," Klein continued. "And so I know that whatever went across those cables was copied and the entire data stream was copied."

According to Klein, that information included Internet activity about Americans.

"We're talking about domestic traffic as well as international traffic," Klein said. Previous Bush administration claims that only international communications were being intercepted aren't accurate, he added.

"I know the physical equipment, and I know that statement is not true," he added. "It involves millions of communications, a lot of it domestic communications that they're copying wholesale."

another day

2008-01-01T14:59:00.001-05:00

fuck resolutions, new starts, etc. its enough to have to remember the new digit in the year on the rent checks.

i "celebrated" by turning off the tv and watching movies with a friend.

atonement was great and really unexpected since i had no idea what it was about - it was on a list of movies to watch out for from my brother. the acting was all great, the plot interesting and probably the only legitimate use of non-linear story telling i've seen in a long time.

next up, to cleanse the palate, was ricky gervais' new stand up dvd Fame. i loved Animals and Politics but this one was about 20% new stuff (which was brilliant) and the rest jokes we heard before from american comedians decades ago. i mean come on ruminations on "going commando"? jesus, that was old when friends did it a decade ago. and a hell of a lot of incomprehensible english-only stuff about obscure "famous" people. the jokes were meaningless to me and believe me i watch a lot of british television. but when he hit it was hillarious as ever.

charlie wilson's war next. i really like this movie for some reason. a lot of anachronistic stuff (it supposedly took place in the ealry 1980's) but i think it worked here as seeing all those funny clothes and bad hair would have taken us out of it. tom hanks was good and so was that fat guy in every movie these days. and really everyone else was too. i thought i knew about the events of the russian/afghan war but i guess i didn't. giulianni gets a name check as an over zelous prosecutor (name only) which i don't think was necessary given the time. even though it was true it felt out of place

the gay guys down stairs were oddly quiet this year which i guess means they went somewhere else for new years celebrations this year.

by the time CWW was over the ball had long dropped.

new paradigms

2007-12-30T12:17:00.000-05:00

it figures it would take a writer's strike to shake things up and come to with this already pretty old idea. of course as long as everyone involved is making money and the people are poised in their comfortable chairs at a certain time on a certain day like robots, why change?

i hope these side plans go through. i'd like to see what people come up with.

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Hollywood writers threaten internet breakaway

· Plan to circumvent studios as strike deadlock goes on
· Talkshows due back on air without key creative staff

Dan Glaister in Los Angeles
Saturday December 29, 2007
The Guardian

Forget Warner Brothers, Universal and Disney. Say goodnight and good luck to CBS, NBC and Fox. The Hollywood studio model is about to be turned upside down.

Leading film and TV writers, accompanied by actors, directors and Silicon Valley investors, are poised to announce the creation of new ventures aimed at bypassing the studios.

"It's a whole new model to bring content directly to the masses," said screenwriter Aaron Mendelsohn. "We're gathering together a team of A-list TV and film writers, along with their A-list equivalent from Silicon Valley."

Article continues

Mendelsohn is not alone. Seven groups are thought to be working on forming companies to challenge the dominance of the studios. The new companies plan to create programmes and films and distribute them on the internet, circumventing the old model of big studios owned by even bigger parent companies churning out content and controlling when and where it is seen.

The developments come as the screenwriters' strike shows no sign of a resolution. A report presented last week to a city council committee estimated that the strike would cost Los Angeles between $380m and $2.5bn.

As the two sides in the dispute - the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers - trade insults, one perhaps unintended consequence of the standoff is that the people who make the programmes and films have seen that they can get their message out without the help of the studios.

"The strike videos confirmed that you can create content directly for the internet and find an audience," said director and writer George Hickenlooper, who has made a series of short films in support of the writers. Those films, under the title Speechless, featured big stars and attracted big audiences on the internet.

Some big TV names are already subtly shifting the way their programmes are made. Worldwide Pants, talkshow host David Letterman's production company, is in talks with the union to allow it to return to screens with a script in early January. Other late-nighters are expected to return - some without writers - in the first week of the new year. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is due back a week later, again without writers.

But doing a heavily scripted show with no script is the least of Stewart's worries. He is hosting the Oscars in February, an event that could fall foul of the strike. The Golden Globes, in mid-January, are already shrouded in doubt, with writers promising to picket the red carpet. Will nominated stars such as George Clooney dare to cross a picket line? Will the event be cancelled? What about the parties?

The irony for the writers involved in setting up the new ventures is that at the core of the current dispute is the question of how to reimburse writers for work distributed on the internet. The studios say it is still too early to say if the internet will generate income to be shared with the writers. The writers counter that the studios crow to Wall Street about the profits to be made from the digital sector.

"The internet is a place where they can't maintain control," Hickenlooper said. "They are trying to introduce an old-school control-orientated way of thinking into a system that rejects and repels that tradition of control."

The hi-tech community, he notes, is more comfortable with the notion of relinquishing control over its investments. "They really believe in the free and open-source software movement; a sharing, egalitarian system."

The notion of the creatives taking control of the means of production is not a new one to Hollywood. United Artists started, as its name suggests, as just that: an effort by Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, DW Griffith and Douglas Fairbanks. But that ended in rancour and disorganisation, and the vision was eventually swallowed up by a series of corporate mergers.

step outside

2007-12-29T06:12:00.000-05:00

what is it with people that fuels the need to go from talking to violence? and when you ask someone to "step outside" why do you not expect immediate violence? asked that only a fool would actually go outside.

when you ask someone to step outside you are asking to be immediately hit. period. a smart man would just distract you and lunge.

so next time you think about asking that you better be damned sure the man you're dealing with is a pussy, because you are. if you care enough about what they're saying to fight them, do it without announcing your intentions.

"step outside" = threatening

i generally don't fight these days and i never make the leap from talking / violence myself. fighting is easier when you have nothing to lose. i'm not against violence as a principle, though - sometimes its necessary, even beneficial.

its not the last refuge, blah blah blah. men are men. a dog has to have a few fleas or he forgets he's a dog.

and i forget who said that.

Benazir Bhutto video

2007-12-28T03:45:00.000-05:00

i'm still in shock. this video really shows what was lost. if you think this only matters to pakistan and the people there, you're delusional.

bitter pill

2007-12-17T11:47:00.000-05:00

found this ad in the new issue of mad magazine. its sad that this really doesn't count much as satire these days.

just like dylan's mister jones

2007-12-14T17:58:00.000-05:00

i'm missing a friend's birthday party as i type this. there are some days i don't feel like doing anything remotely social. but i AM going to see another friend's gig in a couple hours - its just a few blocks from my apartment.

maybe it'll kick me up and i'll head to the party afterwards, who knows.

watched I'm Not There last night with a friend. we had mixed impressions of it. i thought it was interesting but disjointed; she wanted to turn it off after 15 minutes.

Todd Haynes and Oren Moverman must have had some heavy drugs running when they wrote the thing. its interesting to use different actors/actresses to represent character changes (each with different names!) - maybe even better in a tight story that spans so many changes - but some of the choices are a little odd; a black child, a woman (blanchett, probably the best acting perfomance) and a shitty actor (richard gere playing billy the kid/dylanesquely i guess).

heath ledger and christian bale were both better portrayals.

absolutely hillarious and way way too short is david cross as alan ginsburg lasting only about 5 minutes.

i recognized most of the settings/time period changes but that's probably only because i'm a fan. we both were. i have no idea what someone who doesn't know much about dylan would make of this movie.

you'd know something was happening but you wouldn't know what it was.

still its a hell of a lot better than seeing him live these days.

dealing

2007-12-08T08:18:00.000-05:00

i walked over the williamsburg bridge today just to clear my head. the key to happiness is to learn to deal with parting with whatever or whomever you value. its best to start doing that while you still have them, it, whatever.

but that isn't always possible.

i have a problem in my life with not wanting to burden friends with my issues. most people can't just listen; they need to offer advice. or they feel the need to share their own stories of similar problems. and even the sincere ones, the ones who just listen and maybe shoulder part of it on themselves - i know what that feels like. so i just don't do it.

learn to live without what you think you need, none of it will matter

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[11:38] Her: what stage of grief do you think i'm in?
[11:39] Me: i don't fully subscibe to the kubler-ross stages, but its close enough for generalizes situations i guess. but it varies too much
[11:39] Me: d
[11:39] Her: ya but those are really meant for someone that is dying isnt it?
[11:39] Her: i think there are several grief stages
[11:39] Her: different theories
[11:40] Me: close personal grief
[11:40] Me: but it coul dbe loss of a job too
[11:40] Me: life changing stuff
[11:40] Her: ah
[11:40] Me: all the ones i've seen have been variations on the k-r ones
[11:40] Me: subsitituting 2 stages into 1 to get a different count
{note: even that fuck doctor phil did this trick}
[11:40] Me: sht like that
[11:41] Me: but the more general it goes the closer i see it as true
[11:41] Me: but then its less useful
[11:41] Me: there was a woman, remes or something, that got it down to 3
[11:41] Me: generalized from k-r
[11:41] Me: and it seems to fit better for all situations, but then again its less important
[11:42] Me: once it [psychology in general] got away from the mystical view of beaur and freud it got less useful because these theories try to fit everything into a mold
[11:42] Me: those early guys understood it was all open ended because they didn't have anyone before
[11:43] Me: everything was new
[11:43] Me: but its like the stock market, once you fit things into a pattern and the system becomes aware of the pattern, it becomes part of the system and not useful
[11:44] Me: thats why philosophies in the early stages call the most enlightened those that reach the same results without being part of the philosophy's club
[11:44] Me: even bhudism started like that
[11:44] Me: but they lost it somewhere
[11:45] Me: you couldn't be considered a budha unless you got to that level of belief without being aware of bhudism
[11:45] Me: it encouraged new ideas to be fed into the systems
[11:45] Me: based on the circumstances of the day
[11:46] Me: you wouldn't have bhudist monks wearing robes from a hundred years ago, for example
[11:46] Me: hundreds of years ago
[11:47] Me: and since its about the brain and the brain is trying to analyze it, i don't think psy will ever be anything concretee enough to be anything but philosophy
[11:47] Me: its why, i think, we have to rely on drugs more and more
[11:48] Me: seld medicated or otherwise ;-)
[11:48] Me: did you fall asleep? hja ha ha
[11:48] Her: no, working
[11:48] Me: my idea of a higher learning school
[11:48] Me: would be something with an emphasis on observance and theory building
[11:49] Me: rather than on leanring what others came up with first
[11:50] Me: i'm happy that people like mary shelly had the idea that long ago even if its not strictly in science
[11:50] Her: agreed
[11:51] Me: but anyway, with you and i, i think [the] acceptance [stage] is never that far away

maybe i spoke too soon....

i can't think of kubler-ross without thinking of the lenny bruce monologue anyway.

old and gay

2007-12-01T17:24:00.001-05:00

i was sitting in a bar this afternoon with a man my age, moe, who looks like he came in from the mountain; full beard and winter hat, full plastic bags around his stool.

two girls came in still wearing the club clothes from the night before. no bra, baggys top with ever the hint of exposed sideboobs. one was a flight attendant, the other, sally, was a student.

my friend moe pulled out his wallet to buy another drink, exposing the little green card the cleaners gave to him so he could get his clothes again.

"oh my god!" sally said, noticing it. "you have a Magic Cleaners paper. we must be neighbors!"

"well, i'm getting evicted."

"me too, i had to move to the lower east side. its better anyway. the only people over there are old gay men." she squinted her eyes at him. "no offense."

he went from happily trying to catch a glimpse of side-boob to getting publicly dumledored in a bar.

"speaking of gay" i said and took the opportunity to unveil my new anti-drug campaign ads: too much to go into now, but the idea is that any drug you're taking, particularly coke, has a good chance of having been smuggled in the country in someone's ass.

sure it was seperated by a thin rubber layer but is that really enough?

full recovery

2007-11-10T08:28:00.000-05:00

i spent tuesday helping out a family member in an election. i enjoyed myself, standing outside the one of the polls trying to get people to write-in his name.

a lot of great people were involved and helped out, and no matter how it all works out 1/3 of the people who voted wrote him in. that's pretty amazing.

the votes are still being counted because of some old-style ballot bullshit.

it was fun but i'm not used to it. i've been sitting on my ass for the last 8 years. it took me a few days to recover fully.

einstein's brain

2007-11-01T12:52:00.001-04:00

in a bar the other day i met a woman, a cute cougar, and the daughter of the man who took einstein's brain after he died and kept it for almost 50 years.

call me a skeptic, but i looked into the story and it all checks out.

it came up that i am a writer and she launched into her dislike of the journalist who pitched an article about the whole thing and wrote something completely different in the end. now they're making a movie about the family.

so anyway, looking into this i found something interesting that supports a theory i've heard about intelligence. einstein's brain had a damaged area from an accident that probably happened in childhood since he recovered from it, obviously.

the theory is that "odd" intelligence comes from a childhood brain injury. the idea is the brain in the growing child has to make new pathways to cover the damaged area allowing for different abilities, maybe different types of learning.

a pathologist that worked next to einstein at princeton, his daughter must be some pretty good intelligence stock, right?

36-24-36

2007-10-19T13:05:00.000-04:00

this morning i had two heaping bowls of lucky charms, whole milk, and a little debbi snack cake. i almost went for that third bowl but that woudl have opened a new box. its always down to either no milk and a half box of cereal or no cereal and a half container of rotting milk. its very difficult, living alone, to keep the stocks in line.

i say this as a shitty preface to a review of the play i went to last night with my brother: 36-24-36.

or as it should be called The Misperception Monologues.

its a very personal, emotional study of each woman's (and one man's, not pictured) battle with eating disorders. the plot, running intermittently throughout the two hours, is centered around a painter's death from self-starvation (good) puncutated with monolgues from each of the women getting personal, facing the audience, about what they've gone through (great) and a half dozen or so comedy sketches usually skewering the media/weight-loss industry mixed in (not so great).

the interspersed comedy is maybe needed in this, to break up an otherwise bleak and emotionally draining two hours, but it was the weakest part of the play. its hard to not be taken out of the moment when the woman up there laughing and shrieking was functioning a minute before as an inner voice solemnly inducing another woman to do number three* in the bathroom.

the moments when the women turn and address the audience, leaving for a minute the scene they're in, are honest and they individually, each on its own, make the play stand out from other common fare.

i wish i could single out the actors but one of the major criticisms i have about it is that the names are never really mentioned in the context of the play so i'm not really sure which one was which. luckily they were all great: erin o'connell, candice holdorf, ann malinowsky, danielle tafeen, stephanie schweitzer and gavin bellour.

i almost broke down and shed a tear during one of them, and i think it was danielle taffeen's monologue. it concerned her worry of a sister going through what she had already gone through. the emotion was real, the feelings carried and i was touched (and i'm not gay).

the main plotline is honest and touching and the actress, Naomi Mcdougall Jones, plays the part perfectly. if you've ever known a woman in this position you'll feel deeply the connections here. you'll see your friend suffering in the eyes and voice of the jones. if you haven't dealt with this topic you may think its a bit overly dramatic, but it isn't. its truthful.

it also shows us men that our ideas of running in and rescuing a woman from this is a fantasy. you'll feel the results of us saying , as i have in the past, "but you're so skinny" and "you look like you lost weight" or "you're NOT fat"

there are no excuses made here, no external causes listed. there's no great friends and lovers riding in on horses to save the day. each of the performers are very clear about it: they got themselves into that position and only they individually can get themselves out.

as a friend, as a lover, as a man i can't do anything really to help but be supportive. its drilled into my head over the two hours. so the only uplifting thing about the ending is when you realize you're watching a play written and acted mostly by people who have successfully beaten the disorder.

and that's enough.

if this ever gets a permanent spot, and god damn it it should, bring your girlfriend you female friends along and be there when they cry. cry yourself, it might even get you laid.

but be careful.

i was sitting in a bar holding the playbook afterwards. the bartender's a friend of mine, cute and skinny.

"you have to check out this play with me when its on again" i hander her the booklet.

she looked at the picture above on the front, a bunch of cute girls in robes and her eyes twinkled. she smiled.

"its about eating disorders" i said.

she frowned then and handed it back to me. "why do you think *I* have to see it?" she demanded.

i talked my way out of it but it should be a lesson to you.

(*) thanks to James Morss for the term

new projector

2007-10-06T01:29:00.001-04:00

as the offices was shut down, everyone scavenged around for whatever they could grab. all i wanted, all took, was an old (but working) projector. its even got an S-Video input.

i hooked it up to see how it looks in the dark and its not bad, if a little loud.

now i'm trying to figure out what to do with it. a couple musician friends have already expressed interest in going back to the rudimentary light show days, and that'd be cool. its a heavy fucking thing to carry around though.

it was a good day - beautiful weather and i got a lot of editing work done in my favorite tea shop - Sympathy for the Kettle, in the east village.

pirate housewives

2007-10-05T08:41:00.000-04:00

Jammie Thomas lost her case against the RIAA for file sharing. she had "only" 1700 songs available; which actually isn't a lot. i have 40,000 mp3s on my tv computer (none of them being shared).

my friend, a professional clown who i keep on retainer, is being sued for torrenting a movie. that's the catch with bit torrents - you can't download without uploading (making available) the files yourself. thomas probably didn't use torrents so this avenue of litigation might be still open.

i don't use bit torrents (except for the grey area of live recording bootlegs from bands. the groups i use take something down immediately if its released legally) or anything like the old kazaa. in fact i really don't like P2P at all.

but the lawyers for thomas had an interesting comment for the press:

"The laws were written for pirates, guys pressing scores of DVDs," Cohn said. "I think this judgment is a clear indication that damages for copyright laws need to be adjusted to reflect today's reality. A mom in her home isn't the same as a pirate, but the copyright law doesn't see any difference."

i don't see much of a difference. a housewife sitting on her computer hosting files can do as much damage as a man pressing "scores" of dvds. i'd say thomas has the capability, and probably has done it, of loosing a lot more than "scores".

imagine if the guy selling dvd's on canal street accepted swaps of dvds he didn't have instead of money. that's essentially what thomas did. i don't see anythhing changing in terms of damages to the copyright owners.

a housewife can be a pirate just as easily these days, thanks to fast internet speeds.

new day

2007-10-01T08:50:00.001-04:00

the dumbo art festival was fun. i realize now i should have gone both days and not just sunday afternoon. there just wasn't enough time to see all that was there. hell i didn't even leave the building that heap's stuff was in.

and DUMBO is a different area than the last time i was there. it was changing anyway but now its mini-williamsburg.

there was a sad, sickly looking elephant on the street "painting" with his trunk. a couple younger women had ripped apart a TimeOut NY magazine to come up with makeshift signs protesting it.

it was all just really sad.

note to self: if you ever open a bar, don't let the bouncers down shots and coke up on shift. does that really need to be said? i guess it does.

DUMBO Art Festival

2007-09-30T08:25:00.000-04:00

today i'm going to the DUMBO art festival. my friend Joe Heaps has some stuff in one of the sites there - i'm particularly looking forward to trying desperately to look up the skirts of 4 foot by 8 foot cheerleader paintings.

but i can't wait to see the other artists too. i've never been. and god damn it, i don't do enough cultural stuff. time to change that. i know, i've said that before.

but this time it'll be different i swear. eh, probably not.

my home phone was down for a week so i used the cell phone more than normal - the result is, after more than a month, i've had to refill the money on the phone; it was down to $7.

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Dumbo Art weekend... open studios
Hey everybody,

This weekend, Saturday 29th and Sunday 30th, I'll be showing some
paintings and drawings in lovely DUMBO, Brooklyn.

I'll be in Robert Bean's Studio, 68 Jay Street, # 611... from around
12 to 6 each day.

If you need a four foot by eight foot oil painting of cheerleaders,
you are in luck! There's one available.

There will also be some smaller works available... and some etchings to boot. Prices will be low as
I would like to get rid of these things.

Come on by and say hi, if you have a chance. The DUMBO Art festival
can get pretty lively.

Thanks,

Joe Heaps Nelson

P.S. Take the "F" train to York Street, and mosey on down the hill one
block... it's the giant red building.
-----------------------------------------------------------

Art Under the Bridge Festival
September 28 - 30, 2007

The Story of the Art Under the Bridge Festival and the story of Dumbo the neighborhood are inextricably contingent and both a phenomenon: each came out of nowhere. Born of a manufacturing wasteland in the late nineteen-nineties, both the Festival and neighborhood have evolved together. Each has been instrumental in shaping the other.

Since 1997, the annual Art Under the Bridge Festival has given Dumbo its indelible cultural cachet, while the waterfront's post-industrial topography and extraordinary diversity of sites continue to inspire artists to create new public art works each year.

None of the above would be possible without the support of the artists who live/work here and the local residential and business community. From all at Dumbo Arts Center, we thank you for your good wit and goodwill, tolerance and enduring support, without which the Art Under the Bridge Festival would not be possible. To our visitors and patrons, we thank you for coming and urge you by way of the visual arts to explore an extraordinary neighborhood and by way of an extraordinary neighborhood to explore the visual arts.

- Breda Kennedy, Executive Director

one more

2007-09-24T09:33:00.000-04:00

i already have two laptops, but i'm probably going to buy this one when its available. the link takes you to a buy 2 to get 1 deal that starts in november. you can sign up for a reminder with your email.

i really think its a good idea and it has the potential to really change the world, in the long run. like a lot of good things people try to do it might come back and bite us in the ass, but its worth a try.

we need to instill the capitalist spirit in these developing countries. give them something that they can live for instead of hoping to get a few virgins when they die (or whatever local religious nut customs dictate).

ps - my phone is still having problems (i'm on someone's wireless net) so use my cell if you need to reach me.

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'$100 laptop' to sell to public
By Jonathan Fildes
Science and technology reporter, BBC News

Students at a school in Nigeria

Computer enthusiasts in the developed world will soon be able to get their hands on the so-called "$100 laptop".

The organisation behind the project has launched the "give one, get one" scheme that will allow US residents to purchase two laptops for $399 (£198).

One laptop will be sent to the buyer whilst a child in the developing world will receive the second machine

The G1G1 scheme, as it is known, will offer the laptops for just two weeks, starting on the 12 November.

The offer to the general public comes after the project's founder admitted that concrete orders from the governments of developing nations had not always followed verbal agreements

Nicholas Negroponte told the New York Times: "I have to some degree underestimated the difference between shaking the hand of a head of state and having a cheque written.

"And yes, it has been a disappointment."

Walter Bender, head of software development at One Laptop per Child (OLPC), told the BBC News website: "From day one there's been a lot of interest expressed in having some way of people in the developed world participate in the programme."

Price hike

The XO laptop has been developed to be used by children and is as low cost, durable and simple to use as possible.

It packs several innovations including a sunlight readable display so that it can be used outside. It has no moving parts, can be powered by solar, foot-pump or pull-string powered chargers and is housed in a waterproof case.

The machine's price has recently increased from $176 (£88) to $188 (£93) although the eventual aim is to sell the machines for $100 (£50).

Governments can buy the green and white machines in lots of 250,000.

In July, hardware suppliers were given the green light to ramp-up production of all of the components needed to build the low-cost machines.

The decision suggested that the organisation had met or surpassed the three million orders it need to make production viable.

The names of the governments that have purchased the first lots of machines have not been released.

Developing whirl

But, according to OLPC, there has also been huge interest in the XO laptop from individuals in the developed world.

"I don't know how many times people have added an entry in our wiki saying 'how do I get one?' or 'I'd gladly pay one for a child if I could get one'," said Mr Bender.

Schoolchildren with $100 laptop, AP
The laptop was designed to be used in developing countries
The organisation has previously hinted that they were considering selling the laptop on a give one get one basis, but not this early.

In January this year, Michalis Bletsas, chief connectivity officer for the project, told the BBC news website that OLPC was hoping to sell the laptop to the public "next year".

Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of OLPC, has also previously said: "Many commercial schemes have been considered and proposed that may surface in 2008 or beyond, one of which is 'buy 2 and get 1'."

According to Mr Bender, OLPC see several advantages to offering laptops to the developed world.

"There's going to be a lot more people able to contribute content, software development and support," said Mr Bender.

But primarily, he said, it was a way of extending the laptop project to countries that cannot afford to participate.

"We see it as a way of kick-starting the programme in the least developed countries."

Early adopter

The first countries to receive the donated laptops will be Cambodia, Afghanistan, Rwanda and Haiti.

Other least developed countries (LDC), as defined by the UN, will be able to bid to join the scheme.

The laptops will go on sale for two weeks through the xogiving.org website.

They will only be available for two weeks to ensure OLPC can meet demand and so that machines are not diverted away from countries that have already placed orders.

Although the exact number of laptops available through the G1G1 scheme has not been revealed, Mr Bender said that the "first 25,000" people that purchase one should receive it before the end of the year.

Others will receive their machines in the first quarter of 2008.

Mr Bender said that if it proves successful, the organisation would consider extending the scheme.

"Our motivation is helping kids learn and giving them an opportunity to participate in the laptop programme so whatever will advance that cause we will do," he said.

"This is something we are going to try and if it looks like it is an effective tool we will do more of it."

vegetarianism?

2007-09-21T17:36:00.001-04:00

i had dinner last night with a friend and i began to understand why people are vegetarians. for those of you that are, you might not want to read on further....

we ate at a restaurant on the lower east side that i've walked by a hundred times but i never for a second wanted to eat there. one of the many bar/restaurants that litter the area, it looked like mediocre food and poor service.

i was still sick, barely, but worn out and spacey. she was drunk and, as it turned out later, edged with a seething anger.

"i'm going to have some of your chicken wings. i can't wait."

i couldn't keep the weariness out of my voice. "no way," i said, pretending to care. "you're not breaking your diet on my watch." but i didn't care at all really; it was my third meal in three hours and she wasn't fat at all.

"there's no carbs in chicken wings! none!"

she ordered a steak salad, well done, and when the food came she attacked it with her fingers, drunk and slumped over in the chair. it was fascinating in a childish way, watching her grabbing and ripping the steak like an animal, tossing pieces she didn't want to eat off to the side, her long hair getting in the way sometimes as she swatted it back angrily.

it was still bloody and she had asked for well-done but she ate it anyway, ripping the uncooked pieces away and tossing them aside too. the blood dripped from her fingers, running down to her knuckle.

at one point with a grunt she pulled a piece of gristle from her mouth, tossing it on the plate half-eaten.

i could only manage four tiny chicken wings. she finished the rest.

after everything was only bones and tossed steak pieces still bloody, she went back and took our chicken wing bones and cleaned them of all meat.

after all that she stopped, looked up at me - while we ate neither of us said a word - shrugged and then started eating the tossed away pieces of bloody steak. every time she picked up a piece she looked at me first and said "if i eat this i won't get sick will i?" and i reassured her every time and told her no even though i really didn't know if she would or not. maybe right now she's puking or shitting uncontrollably in the bathroom in her apartment.

i spent hours toying with being a vegetarian. but its all behind me now.

not enough press

2007-09-19T02:50:00.001-04:00

not enough press
this is something i havent' heard much about. and it needs to be talked about more.

an attorney from florida, John Atchison, has been accused of flying to detroit to have sex with a five year old. a five year old! five years! the really sickening thing is the dialogue he had with the undercover cop posing as a mom:

According to the complaint, Atchison assured the Sheriff's deputy posing as the child's mother that he would not hurt the 5-year-oldbecause he goes "slow and easy" and "I've done it plenty."

jesus, if this is true the guy should be tortured before being killed. string him up in the middle of his home town, no doubt where he's done it "plenty".

the blogs i've read about this are focusing on the fact he's a republican, but since he isn't a politician and he isn't in any sort of lawmaking capacity, i don't see how the party he's registered as has anything to do with this.

the man's a sick, twisted sociopath who should spend years suffering if this is true, we don't really need to tack on republican to that too, do we?

-------------------------

Feds: Prosecutor Sought Sex With Girl, 5

Tuesday September 18, 2007 1:31 AM

By DAVID N. GOODMAN

Associated Press Writer

DETROIT (AP) - An assistant U.S. attorney from Florida was arrested in an Internet sting operation after flying to Michigan to have sex with a 5-year-old girl, authorities said Monday.

John D.R. Atchison, 53, was arrested Sunday at Detroit Metropolitan Airport after several weeks of Internet conversations between the prosecutor and a detective posing as the mother of a 5-year-old girl, authorities say.

``There wasn't much reaction from him at all,'' Macomb County Sheriff Mark Hackel said. Atchison was cooperative with authorities, he said.

He was charged with using interstate communication to entice a minor to have sexual contact and traveling across state lines with the intent of engaging in illicit sexual contact. If convicted of both charges, he faces up to 40 years in prison.

According to court records, Atchison initiated an online chat Aug. 29 with an undercover officer posing as a mother interested in letting men have sex with her daughter.

At one point, Atchison said: ``I'm always gentle and loving; not to worry; no damage ever; no rough stuff ever ever,'' according to an affidavit filed in court.
Atchison, of Gulf Breeze, Fla., is a prosecutor for the U.S. attorney's office for northern Florida, based in Tallahassee. He requested a court-appointed lawyer at his hearing Monday.

the war is over

2007-09-16T21:28:00.000-04:00

watching the petraeus hearings, i'm sure of only one thing.

i'm tired of people in politics framing this as a win/lose war. the war is over: WE WON. we routed the Iraqi army, we marched in without trouble and we toppled their government. the army did its job, the soldiers were exceptional against the iraq army. the war is over.

that was four years ago.

after that it became something else. now we're occupying. think of it like this: the iraqi war / the iraqi occupation.

we won the war but there's really no way to "win" an occupation. the good news is you can't "lose" an occupation either.

forget win or lose, we won, the question now becomes do we continue occupying or not? we've given it four years and little progress. ok, maybe we needed more troops in there to get results. i'm willing to concede that point.

but at this point what do we gain? i'm not convinced that an iraqi democracy will be any safer for us after we pull out (and that's the key point here) than a iranian controlled iraq or a fractured iraq or an iraq in civil war.

terrorists seem to be able to thrive in a democracy as much, maybe more so, than a dictatorship.

and then there's this revelation from the questioning:

After a few more questions, Graham turned to Crocker and confronted him with a surprising question: "What's the difference between a dysfunctional government and a failed state?"

Crocker replied: "In a parliamentary democratic system such as Iraq has, there is a mechanism for the removal of governments that people get tired of. Parliament can simply vote no confidence."

that's pretty scary. in fact it seems to me looking back through time that the safest iraq we could have is one with a ruthless puppet dictator that we set up and provide with a way to subjugate the masses. someone who it will take a lot to get rid of, not some puppet we set up that can be voted out as soon as we leave.

maybe that's where this is all headed, i don't know.

when the election finally comes around i won't be voting for a candidate based anything on the iraq occupation, ending it or not. i'll be voting for a candidate that won't get us involved in another iraq. period.

can we get back to the war on terror now? enough of this iraq nonsense. its been nothing more than a costly diversion that, if anything, has helped recruit terrorists.

leave the ungrateful swine in the sand.

oh be joyful premiere - thursday and saturday - FREE

2007-09-05T10:29:00.000-04:00

come out and see a funny television pilot tomorrow or saturday afternoon..... really what more needs to be said? its really funny, its independently made, its FREE and its less than a half hour long.

and i'm not in it nor was i involved in making it. no worries there.

you can reserve tickets online - for the people coming with me on saturday, i already got us 10 tix.

i can;'t think of anything else to say so i'll quote some song lyrics....

ah screw it.

---------------------------

"Oh! Be Joyful!" at the New York Televison Festival

Oh! Be Joyful!
Screens as part of the
The New York Television Festival
@ New World Stages
340 W. 50th Street (bet. 8th &9th Ave.)
Thursday, September 6th 3:15pm
&
Saturday September 8th 2:00pm
Admission: FREE!!!

NYTVF Website here

stein on craig

2007-09-03T16:13:00.000-04:00

ben stein is a little confused. at the heart of the matter is the general hypocrisy in the middle of the modern republican party. its the ultimate in political pandering that a gay senator is so in bed with the religious right that he's denying his own sexual preference and voting against gay rights.

if craig was a democrat, it'd be no big deal because democrats support gay rights - maybe not as much as they should, true but they still do. this story would have gone away but for the hypocrisy that people love to hate; the holier-than-the-man-in-the-stall-next-to-him senator brought down.

stein is right about one thing for sure: the republican party is full of weak politicians at the top. their last routing made them sheepish. imagine if they had joined in craig;s defense? what a great signal it would send.

but no, craig is gay and must be jettisoned. good riddance.

craig would best serve his party, gay rights and the political world in general if he just hanged himself quietly one morning. resignation is too light for him.

or is it rehab time?

------------------
Ben Stein Says Craig Was Lynched Twice

Commentator Says GOP Senator Was Set-Up By "Stalinist" Police, And Then Tossed Overboard By Own Party

(CBS) Sunday Morning commentator Ben Stein has a few words for the Minneapolis police's behavior in the arrest of Sen. Larry Craig, and for the Republican leadership's response - and they're not very flattering.

The whole story of Senator Larry Craig, the Republican of Idaho who announced his resignation yesterday, is a nightmare of out-of-control police and weak politicians.

Senator Craig has been the innocent victim of a set-up by the evil-minded police of Minneapolis-St. Paul that Stalin would have admired.

Here's the deal: Senator Craig went into a men's room at the Twin Cities airport. He entered a lavatory stall. He tapped his foot. He may or may not have reached his hand down under the lavatory partition to pick up a piece of paper or to make a signal.

That's it. That's the whole thing. There was no sex act of any kind.

So the policeman who happened to be in the next stall walks Senator Craig off, starts bullying him, accusing him of lying and, implicitly, threatens to ruin Senator Craig's career.

ALL FOR A MAN TAPPING HIS FOOT IN A PUBLIC BATHROOM.

This is insane.

If a police officer can wreck a man's career over this trifle, then we might as well not have a Constitution or a Bill of Rights.

Look, I spend a lot of time in Idaho. These are good people. I can readily see why a Senator from there would quietly plead guilty to a small charge rather than risk a public fight - even though the police seem to have wrecked Craig's career anyway.

What I don't understand is why the GOP is tossing Senator Craig overboard as if he were a terrorist.

Even if it turns Senator Craig is gay, so what? Barney Frank is gay and he's one of the best members of the Congress. There are lots of fine gay public servants.

Senator Craig has been the victim of a police lynching. A party that believes in individual rights should be rallying to his defense, not making him walk the plank.

Shame on the GOP leadership, and utter disgrace to the airport police and their thug behavior.

These are security people in airports. Hello! An airport? Don't they have anything better to do?

© MMVII, CBS Interactive, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

purple prose

2007-09-03T09:37:00.001-04:00

was watching the last episode of Californication - it still captures my attention with the hot babes, the nudity, the writing and duchovny (in that order, sadly). the last scene of the show reminded me of something i hadnt heard since college: purple prose.

people used to throw that term around in literary circles down there (which i quickly grew tired of) without any kind of realization of where it came from. they used it as overly flowery, exaggerated descriptions but the reality is a little more complicated.

from Ars Poetica, where horace coined (sort of) the term:

Often, one or two purple patches are stitched onto works that have begun in high seriousness, and that profess important themes, so that they sparkle far and wide; as when the grove and altar of Diana and the circling of swiftly flowing waters through the pleasant fields or the Rhine river or the rainbow are described. But this was not the place for such embellishments. And perhaps you know how to draw a cypress tree. What does that matter if you have been paid to paint a desperate sailor swimming away from a shipwreck? You started out to make a wine-jar. Why, as the wheel turns, does it end up as a pitcher? In short, let the work be anything you like, but let it at least be one, single thing.

purple dye was very expensve in those days, only the rich wore it. horace isn't saying purple is bad, just the fake purple patches that the poorer people used to stitch into their non-purple clothes to make them appear more purple.

in other words the prose should follow: only "rich" subjects should have purple; then it won't appear patched in.

in the devils' den

2007-08-19T09:03:00.001-04:00

i did it yesterday, i sold out. as soon as i walked in i knew it was wrong but i did it anyway. the girl behind the counter was slow and dumb with a fake smile painted on but tears constantly in her eyes. she KNEW what she was pushing was wrong but she had to do it anyway.

i felt sick as we hammered out the details. the place was packed and i kept getting bumped and nudged.

i left the place unnerved, like my life had changed irrevocably in that hour i spent inside.

yes, i got a prepaid cellphone.

i made one call to test it outside the story and its been turned off ever since

cooking and farmers marketds

2007-08-17T16:51:00.000-04:00

i've been cooking a lot more since i lost my office. italian i can do but it has to be good and it takes me a long time. stir fry is quick and easy. i made chicken with asparagus, green and red pepers, onion, fresh garlic and spinach, maybe some broccoli. throw some soy sauce and terryaki in there, it comes out good.

plus rice steamed in the new rice steamer.

for you vegetarians out there, i'm trying to find a good way to spruce up just veggie dish, perhaps without using soy and teriyaki. i do a saute with just veggies and it comes out a little bland for me. anyone offer up some suggestions?

today i bought all the vegetables from the union square farmers market. all fresh and all so much cheaper than the stores. i bought potatoes, cucumber, green peppers and onion - it cost me $2.20. i was quite surprised.

i'm getting everything from there from now on.

only the dumb ones

2007-08-06T12:13:00.000-04:00

this story is hillarious and only shows that people like dateline are only catching the really dumb criminals - doing a nice job of weeding out the field.

i like how this article makes a reference to the predator tv show. very funny.

serves NBC right for sending my clown friend a threatening copyright infringement letter for using torrents (i warned him though).

---------------------

Undercover hack rumbled by hackers

An undercover NBC reporter was chased by scores of 'geek paparazzi' after being outed at a hacking conference in Las Vegas
Jonathan Richards

An NBC reporter dicovered what it was like to be pursued by the 'geek paparazzi' after she tried unsuccessfully to go undercover at a hackers conference.

Michelle Madigan, a reporter with Dateline, was apparently hoping to get one of the delegates at DefCon to confess to having committed a crime while being filmed on a hidden camera. But her cover was blown when she unwittingly confided her plans to a DefCon insider, resulting in scores of hackers and other reporters pursuing her through the conference car park armed with video cameras.

A clip of the incident, in which Ms Madigan is chased by a group of breathless hackers and other reporters, has now been watched more than 300,000 times on YouTube.

DefCon is an annual convention for hackers in Las Vegas which has strict rules preventing reporters from filming attendees without their consent.

The conference is known to be attended by federal law enforcement agencies such as the FBI so that their operatives, who go undercover, can learn about the latest techniques of computer criminals.

Accordingly to a report on Wired.com, Ms Madigan was attempting to out just such as federal agent, when the chair of one session last Friday announced that the room was going to play a game of 'Spot the Undercover Reporter'.

"There's one in here right now," Jeff Moss, DefCon's founder said.

Realising that her photo was about to be displayed on a projector and that her plan had been foiled, Ms Madigan leapt up and moved swiftly towards the door, with, according to one report, more than 100 delegates in pursuit.

A YouTube video of the incident shows her racing hurriedly towards her car, much in the manner of a subject on one of Dateline''s own series, To Catch a Predator.

One of her band in pursuit is heard to say: 'You must feel a bit like Lindsay Lohan," at which point another responds: "I don't know. Lindsay Lohan's pretty smart."

Ms Madigan was reportedly asked four times whether she would like to register for the conference as a reporter, but declined, electing instead to attend as a regular delegate.

An NBC spokesman was not immediately available for comment.

dreams

2007-07-29T10:30:00.001-04:00

i usually don't dream much, sleeping only 4-5 hours a day.

but this morning i dreamt this morning of an entire, long, rambling comedy movie and i wasn't even in it. i was woken up before the ending by a wrong number and i stayed there, in bed, the answering machine beeping every 15 seconds, trying to stay in that half-asleep state, going over the whole thing. every scene, every attempt at a joke, every funny situation and even the editing technique chosen ( i've never tried editing in a serious way), i judged as if i was going to seriously review it.

but in the end i disregarded the whole thing. well, i'll probably use bits and pieces of it, dialogue maybe, somewhere but the whole of it was like those early 90's chevy chase films trying to keep his career afloat. totally forgettable.

the amount of work that had to be done to reproduce it would be just as much as starting something from scratch.

my neighbor is a model

2007-07-12T16:46:00.000-04:00

she isn't one of those typical models, all skin and bones. she does her best to hide that fact, dress down and such but yesterday it suddenly poured and flooded the streets.

when it rains hard like that its a struggle for me to keep the window open while i'm writing. i have to clean the water off the screen by flicking it so it doesn't blow inside and wet my computer, lcd tv, sound system and monitor.

the rain started slowing down as i was doing it for the last time when the model neighbor came running from the subway in a little sundress that was totally soaked through. the running didn't help (or hurt, depening on pov), as one boob popped out of the top just as she near enough for a bird's eye view from me, looking like dork above her thwacking my window screen, mouth open, eyes wide, stopped in mid-thwack.

she giggled and kept running not even bothering to put it back in.

she's sitting outside right now talking on her cell phone draped in her doorway in the la femme nikita pose. somehow i'd forgotten about the boob incident until i saw her in the doorway.

here's a visual, except my neighbor's dress is shorter:

interesting - can't WAIT

2007-07-12T16:45:00.000-04:00

got this letter in the mail today. it could not have come at a better time. i had no idea i had a relative named andrew! my response is below.

----------

BARRISTER DAVID WONG
NO. 24, JALAN MELAKA RAYA 31,
TAMAN MELAKA RAYA
MALAYSIA
TEL: +60 12 2442893
Email:barr_dwong@hotmail.co.uk

I am David Wong, an attorney at law. A deceased client of mine, by name Mr. Andrew XXXXXX, who here in after shall be referred to as my client, died as the result of a heart-related condition on the 11 November 2001. His heart condition was due to the death of all the members of his family in the Gulf Air Flight Crashes in Persian Gulf Near Bahrain Aired August 23, 2000 - 2:50 p.m. ET as reported on:http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0008/23/bn.08.html

I have contacted you to assist in distributing the money left behind by my client before it is confiscated or declared unserviceable by the bank where this deposit valued at Nineteen million dollars (US$19 million dollars) is lodged. This bank has issued me a notice to contact the next of kin, or the account will be confiscated.

My proposition to you is to seek your consent to present you as the next-of-kin and beneficiary of my named client, since you have the same last name, so that the proceeds of this account can be paid to you. Then we can share the amount on a mutually agreed-upon percentage. All legal documents to back up your claim as my client's next-of-kin will be provided. All I require is your honest cooperation to enable us see this transaction through.

This will be executed under a legitimate arrangement that will protect you from many breach of the law. If this business proposition offends your moral values,do accept my apology. I must use this opportunity to implore you to exercise the utmost indulgence to keep this matter extraordinary confidential, whatever your decision, while I await your prompt response.Please contact me at once to indicate your interest. I will like you to acknowledge the receipt of this e-mail as soon as possible via my private EMAIL barr_dwong@hotmail.co.uk) and treat with absolute confidentiality and sincerity. I look forward to your quick reply.

Best regards,
David Wong
Attorney at Law
------------
Dear David,

This email could not have come at a better time. I sincerely miss Andy and was very worried about him. I really had no idea he was even in the persian gulf. I didn't have the heart to read the CNN transcript - I'm sure it will be too painful to imagine Andy in this terrible tragedy. I'm going to send a letter to the rest of the family to update them right after i finish this email.

Unfortunately i don't have any money to contact you or fly over there or anything (that's why these millions will be GREAT!) and indeed the power is set to be off in two days.

Maybe you can wire me some money so we can get the ball rolling on this? Anything at all would be appreciated but i need at least $400 for electicity and rent.

Thank you so much for acting on Andrew's behalf.

----------------

live earth

2007-07-10T13:13:00.000-04:00

somehow i didn't even know about this live earth event. i don't read newspapers (get all my news online) and i don't watch commercials on tv (get all my television episodes commercial free) so i guess i'm out of touch. in fact after a while of not watching advertisements, they can be very jarring when you're forced to see one.

now i get all my ads in product placement only. like that car commercial disguised as a transformers movie.

so ok, i didn't know about this live earth thing. the first i heard about it was when i was looking for some new music bootlegs to get and came across Roger Waters at Live Earth from just a few days ago.

its a shame of course that it couldn't be Pink Floyd again like live 8 but i think he did a pretty good job. it was at giant stadium, something roger would normally be against - and maybe that was why the opening song in the flesh was lyrics free.

my source was Bravo with an annoying watermark and the balls to fucking edit out in the rudest way possible (just sound dropout) the SHIT in the do-goody-good bullshit line in Money. why the fuck is shit still not allowed? completely ridiculous. hopefully britain's feed is not edited.

its admirable that they try to raise awareness, but most people will have already forgotten about it replaced by the pursuit of their next fix (happiness), the next lay (life) who's going to drive in their drinking group (liberty) and how to keep their job or get a raise (the american way).

i've walked the streets of this city with a "clear" head and witnessed the genetic mutants that have managed to copulate their way to prominence. and this is the best i've seen you'll need electric dog collars and a carrot on a stick to get them to change the general course of their meandering.

so i don't know if there's anything we can do to stop this downward slide or if the human race is even worth saving (there will be a small % still around no matter what, and maybe the better ones, i have enough faith for that), but if you DO believe either one you better damn well forget about the rat race you're in and do something.

when the shit hits the fan, the biggest losers will be the people who have built up a lot of material things that they want to cling to. houses, cars, land, wealth, etc etc. most of it is hanging by a thread anyway and it could all come crashing down (has done so in the past). oddly those are the people seeming to care the least. part of the lure of wealth is the illusion of security.

even a small change in climate could throw everything into chaos. something that, on some days, i'm not sure is a bad thing.

so in the end i guess its better to go down fighting even if you're inevitably going to go down. burying your head in the sand just means you won't see it coming.

2007-06-30T11:36:00.001-04:00

this is the sort of over-the-top but innocent looking change that will lead to a lot of trouble down the road. with vague wording, the police can arrest people who are taking pictures of things that might be embarassing to them.

i might not have been able to take this picture, during the RNC convention when the police "raided" union square.

write to the mayor and tell him how terrible an idea you think this is.

--------------

June 29, 2007
City May Seek Permit and Insurance for Many Kinds of Public Photography
By RAY RIVERA

Some tourists, amateur photographers, even would-be filmmakers hoping to make it big on YouTube could soon be forced to obtain a city permit and $1 million in liability insurance before taking pictures or filming on city property, including sidewalks.

New rules being considered by the Mayor's Office of Film, Theater and Broadcasting would require any group of two or more people who want to use a camera in a single public location for more than a half hour to get a city permit and insurance.

The same requirements would apply to any group of five or more people who plan to use a tripod in a public location for more than 10 minutes, including the time it takes to set up the equipment.

Julianne Cho, assistant commissioner of the film office, said the rules were not intended to apply to families on vacation or amateur filmmakers or photographers.

Nevertheless, the New York Civil Liberties Union says the proposed rules, as strictly interpreted, could have that effect. The group also warns that the rules set the stage for selective and perhaps discriminatory enforcement by police.

"These rules will apply to a huge range of casual photography and filming, including tourists taking snapshots and people making short videos for YouTube," said Christopher Dunn, the group's associate legal director.

Mr. Dunn suggested that the city deliberately kept the language vague, and that as a result police would have broad discretion in enforcing the rules. In a letter sent to the film office this week, Mr. Dunn said the proposed rules would potentially apply to tourists in places like Times Square, Rockefeller Center or ground zero, "where people routinely congregate for more than half an hour and photograph or film."

The rule could also apply to people waiting in line to enter the Empire State Building or other tourist attractions.

The rules define a "single site" as any area within 100 feet of where filming begins. Under the rules, the two or more people would not actually have to be filming, but could simply be holding an ordinary camera and talking to each other.

The rules are intended to set standards for professional filmmakers and photographers, said Ms. Cho, assistant commissioner of the film office, but the language of the draft makes no such distinction.

"While the permitting scheme does not distinguish between commercial and other types of filming, we anticipate that these rules will have minimal, if any, impact on tourists and recreational photographers, including those that use tripods," Ms. Cho said in an e-mail response to questions.

Mr. Dunn said that the civil liberties union asked repeatedly for such a distinction in negotiations on the rules but that city officials refused, ostensibly to avoid creating loopholes that could be exploited by professional filmmakers and photographers.

City officials would not confirm that yesterday. But Mark W. Muschenheim, a lawyer with the city's law department, which helped draft the rules, said, "There are few instances, if any, where the casual tourist would be affected."

The film office held a public hearing on the proposed rules yesterday, but no one attended. The only written comments the department received were from the civil liberties group, Ms. Cho said.

Ms. Cho said the office expected to publish a final version of the rules at the end of July. They would go into effect a month later.

The permits would be free and applications could be obtained online, Ms. Cho said. The draft rules say the office could take up to 30 days to issue a permit, but Ms. Cho said she expected that most would be issued within 24 hours.

Mr. Dunn says that in addition to the rules being overreaching, they would also create enforcement problems.

"Your everyday person out there with a camcorder is never going to know about the rules," Mr. Dunn said. "It completely opens the door to discriminatory enforcement of the permit requirements, and that is of enormous concern to us because the people who are going to get pointed out are the people who have dark skin or who are shooting in certain locations."

The rules were promulgated as a result of just such a case, Mr. Dunn said.

In May 2005, Rakesh Sharma, an Indian documentary filmmaker, was using a hand-held video camera in Midtown Manhattan when he was detained for several hours and questioned by police.

During his detention, Mr. Sharma was told he was required to have a permit to film on city property. According to a lawsuit, Mr. Sharma sought information about how permits were granted and who was required to have one but found there were no written guidelines. Nonetheless, the film office told him he was required to have a permit, but when he applied, the office refused to grant him one and would not give him a written explanation of its refusal.

As part of a settlement reached in April, the film office agreed to establish written rules for issuing permits. Mr. Sharma could not be reached for comment yesterday.

Mr. Dunn said most of the new rules were reasonable. Notably, someone using a hand-held video camera, as Mr. Sharma was doing, would no longer have to get a permit.

reign over me (review)

2007-06-25T21:29:00.000-04:00

its a pretty good song. not the best on the album quadorephia, in my opinion, but still pretty damn good.

but i want to talk about the movie, reign over me. i guess i missed it when it was out in theatres. generally, sandler movies go beneath my radar. so....

lets get the bias out of the way: the last adam sandler movie i liked at all was.... hell, looking over his imdb listing i can't think of a single one i wanna watch again. its all whishper whisper whisper, twiddly thumbs, mumble mumble mumble YELL YELL YELL. and as far as tearjerkers, i refuse to watch titanic and only recently watched an edited version of pearl harbor that has all romantic backstory removed. it STILL sucked. and, 9-11 movies, i refuse to watch the airplane one (has to be ALL fiction) and can't even stand the stills from the nicholas cage one (looks like all slow motion with lots of falling papers).

but reign over me was the first movie in a long time that brought tears to my eyes. yes, its sappy and the standard template for emotional feedback (in the guitar sense, not the survey sense) is dripping from it. but somehow it works. it worked for us. well, the person i watched it with probably cried during The Queen, but more importantly, RoM worked for me.

i did the manly thing and looked away, pretended there was somehting in my eye, etc etc so the woman i was watching with didn't have to start questioning lesbianity - but yeah, i "teared up". right where, i guess, we were supposed to. it had 3 tissue moments for us - and not the usual type, the porn didn't come on until later. the quick shots of the kids and sandler's wife seemed to generate the most eye drippings and gasps next to me. done for that effect, no doubt.

don cheadle was good, subtle and the surprise is so was adam sandler. saffrom burrows played some crazy nympho that wants nothing more than to blow cheadle, and even she was good. klein was annoying, chomping up things trying to make his part feel bigger like an old baloon. donald sotherland's part was small and that's how the old him works best, i think. small parts.

i laughed out loud a few times, too. not that many and none from sandler's "humor".

it was a decent "character" script and keeping sandler in check has to be all down to the director, mike binder, who also plays sandler's manager or something. some annoying fuck that goes nowhere in the film.

if there's any criticism (besides the usual tear jerking shit, if you can't handle that) its that cheadle acts, and is, whiter than i am. you quickly forget he's a black man. which is a shame because it has some Half Moon type moments in it. but with cheadle its like No Moon cookie.

it comes out on dvd at the end of july, i think.

Sicko

2007-06-23T01:32:00.001-04:00

we watched the new michael moore movie, Sicko, tonight. this one wasn't really anything new to me, but the presentation was good. it benefitted from not being critical of any one politician or party - even hillary gets hers for abandoning health care reform.

the implications of adopting the socialized health care systems shown in Sicko (which probably would NOT include having to wait, or not being able to choose your doctor) are a little scary: higher taxes (scary only if you ignore complex economic theory) and possibly less skilled doctors (some sort of drafting from the unemployed will be needed).

the movie does a good job of driving home the shortcomings of this system. the insurance companies trying to pay less seems logical but when you see the real results of their choices on the people denied, its still startling.

a few days ago a friend's grandmother got pneumonia and now they determined she'll need permanent care. she will end up losing her house and everything else in her name because its thousands of dollars A DAY. so the message in this movie hits home.

the second half focuses on getting 9/11 workers some health care. i don't see this as being that different to the main theme just because they're heroes. yes, its kind of interesting that people in cuba have what a lot of americans don't, but it feels done for shock value here. and hell, it worked so who am i to say.

its not as political (in a party vs party sense) as farenheit 9/11. if some of the stuff in Sicko doesn't bother you, you've swallowed the kool aid and there's no hope for you at all.

cleaning house

2007-06-22T18:44:00.000-04:00

i;ve been so busy, working on the script and cleaning, shredding and tossing stuff out - today was the first time in a few days that i left the apartment. it turns out i've been cleaning in reverse chronological order. today, the last of it basically, i found a hat i bought the first time i went to new orleans - something like 15 years ago! had throw it out, though....

and this:

my first PDA and one of the first ever: the Wizard from Sharp. the OZ 7000. released in 1988, for fuck sake. i wonder if this baby still works? all i need is a couple CR2082 lithium batteries. they still make them...

sorry i've been slow on email responses, returned calls, drunken visits, bar arguments, etc etc.

you probably don't even know when it happens

2007-06-12T09:17:00.000-04:00

what's left to say about the sopranos? arguments are going on all over, so right there its a success. but if it was the shittiest episode in the history of tv, people would still be talking about it.

personally, i saw the last two episodes as an apology. david chase making up for the "glorifying mob life" comments. and it was like a rich man's fantasy. the people who have to watch what they do every second, even with lots of money (or because of it) waxing about how bad off these guys who actually live life, do whatever the fuck they want, how bad their life must really, really be.

watching the second half of the show, you feel the stress that chase thinks tony would be having - you're waiting to see if tony will get shot, or arrested, if paulie will be revealed as a rat (the cat thinks so) or if one of the kids will die, etc etc

compare it to the similar ending of the godfather 1. all the enemies are dead and all michael has to worry about now is the relationship with his wife. michael lost his humanity mid way through, but the end was about closing the door on his wife. but when tony is all done, when all his enemies are gone or neutralized, he still has to worry about 4 or 5 different groups of people who might want him to come to harm even if he's just sitting down to eat onion rings in a diner with his family. and to get to that point, he had to hide out in a little house for weeks. his wife and kids had to live at a house that wasn't their own. oh, the humanity. imagine chase's rich friends sitting around in horror at the little bed he had to sleep on.

below is the real horror of the sopranos finale. other writers considering how to end their respective shows based on the sopranos ending.

------------------------------------------

TV Writers Were Also Watching 'Sopranos'

After he completed the final episode of "The Sopranos," David Chase told publicity executives at HBO that he was leaving for France and would not take any calls asking him to comment about the ending of his classic television series.

He also said that he had instructed all of his writers and producers to turn down any requests for information about the decisions that had gone into shaping the show's last chapter.

The reason for his resistance became clear on Sunday night when "The Sopranos" ended, not with a moment of final summation, but with a literal blank. The reaction to the stunning last shot of an empty screen has been a mix of outrage among some fans at being left sitting on the edges of their seats, where they had been perched for much of the show's last batch of episodes, and awe among others who have always regarded the show as the most ambitious and unconventional of television series.

Included in the latter group were many people in the same line of work as Mr. Chase, storytellers in the entertainment business.

Damon Lindelof, one of the creators of the ABC hit show "Lost," another series whose viewers have high expectations about quality, said: "I've seen every episode of the series. I thought the ending was letter-perfect."

Like millions of other viewers, Mr. Lindelof said he was initially taken aback by the quick cut to a blank screen and thought his cable had gone out at that crucial moment. He even checked his TiVo machine and saw that it was still running several minutes beyond the end. When he checked the scene again, he said, he noted "the scene cut off right as Meadow is coming through the door and right at the word 'stop' in the Journey song."

He said: "My heart started beating. It had been racing throughout the last scene. Afterward I went to bed and lay next to my wife, awake, thinking about it for the next two hours. And I just thought it was great. It did everything well that 'Godfather III' did not do well."

In an e-mail message sent right after the final scene, Doug Ellin, the creator of another HBO hit series, "Entourage," said: "The show just ended, and I'm speechless. I'm sure there is going to be a lot of heated discussion, but that's David Chase's genius. It's what made 'The Sopranos' different from anything that's ever been on TV. It invented a whole new approach to storytelling that isn't afraid to leave things open-ended, and now the biggest open story line in the history of television."

For David Shore, creator of the Fox hit "House," one of the best touches was Mr. Chase's own refusal to discuss the ending. Mr. Shore said: "Obviously he wants us to speculate on what it all means. Obviously that's what we're all doing."

David Milch, who has created highly regarded dramas like "NYPD Blue" and "Deadwood," said: "It was a question of loyalty to viewer expectations, as against loyalty to the internal coherence of the materials. Mr. Chase's position was loyalty to the internal dynamics of the materials and the characters."

Comedy writers also said they were impressed with Mr. Chase's choices. Chuck Lorre, who created and leads the CBS hit comedy "Two and a Half Men," emerged from screening the final episode and said with a laugh, "This is what you get when you let a writer do whatever he wants."

But he added that he was saying that with admiration. "People just finished watching that show and immediately talked about it for a half-hour," Mr. Lorre said. "That's just wonderful. What more could you want as a writer?"

If any shows feel special pressure from the attention "The Sopranos" finale is receiving, it is current series looking down the road at their expected finales, even if long in the future.

Tim Kring, the creator of this year's NBC hit "Heroes," said, "I have to admit that as soon as it ended, I immediately went there. I don't have an ending for the series yet. I put myself years in the future thinking about what you do when you have viewers with these sorts of expectations. And I think you just have to be true to what you were originally trying to say."

Mr. Kring said he had only come back to "The Sopranos" this season, anticipating the buildup to the ending, and he said he found "the storytelling in the finale a bit disjointed, so that you lost the cause and effect of some scenes." But he said he admired the choices Mr. Chase had made to be true to the nature of his series. "This was a show that always did everything its own way," Mr. Kring said.

For the producers of "Lost," who have declared an official finale in three more seasons, the conclusion of "The Sopranos" carried special weight. "There was immediate blowback for me," said Carlton Cuse, Mr. Lindelof's creative partner on the show. "A sense of fear ran through my veins, thinking that we are going to be in this position," he said, adding, "we know the end is coming in 48 short episodes."

He had admitted to some initial frustration with the ending of "The Sopranos." "But it settled well with me," Mr. Cuse said. "In that blank screen, there was a certain kind of purity in the choice Chase made to make it the fulcrum of the ending."

Mr. Lindelof said that as daunting as it is to think of the expectations of ending a popular piece of entertainment, there was also a bit of benefit. "If you feel that everybody is going to hate it anyway, no matter what you do," he said, "there's a certain liberation in writing it."

new purchases

2007-06-03T19:12:00.001-04:00

i just bought a shredder and a floor mat for my computer desk at the apartment. the shredder comes in two pieces: the actual shredding apparatus and a basket to catch the paper. and yet there was a full 15 pages of instructions. the first thing i did was shred the instruction booklet.

recent events have made me nervous about a) identity theft. i mean, shit, who wouldn't want to be me? and b) throwing away bad shit along with my mail, forever implicating me with whatever's in there.

i alwsays thought they were silly, but now i believe everyone should get a shredder. every household anyway. you don't need any crazy heavy duty one. there's one at staples for $20 after a rebate.

carrying both on the train and in the rain was no picnic. now i'm rolling around on my new mat, listening to a little pink floyd on the stereo and gleefully shredding my junk mail. it all seems worth it.

so what?

2007-06-02T10:40:00.001-04:00

a few months ago i condemned tyra banks for her "so what" campaign encouraging women to be unhealthy and to keep consuming. now she's lost 30 pounds in a few months. anyone really believe there was no surgery involved in this?

"so what?" huh? these women who followed her shit, kept eating all kinds of crap because tyra was big too - they should be turning off their tv sets now. all it took was a few pictures in tabloids.

tyra, you should be ashamed of yourself.

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Tyra Banks Sheds 30 Pounds in Five Months

Retired supermodel Tyra Banks has lost 30 pounds (13.6 kilograms) in five months after photographs of her beachwear left her in tears on her U.S. TV talk show.

Banks insisted the shots of her in a bikini during a winter break were just taken from a bad angle as she launched a 'So what' campaign on her TV show and urged the tabloids to stop poking fun at stars' weight loss and weight gain.

At one point she broke down on her show, stating, "With all the self-esteem my mom instilled in me, the criticism still hurts."

But the terrible photographs forced Banks to take action - and, after months spent eating right and exercising, she has dropped 30 pounds, according to Life & Style magazine.

An insider tells the publication, "She's eating healthy foods,but they're ones she likes, so she's more apt to maintain her diet."

And she's completely revamped the food that's available to her and guests backstage at her show.

Marcellas Reynolds, a frequent guest on The Tyra Banks Show, adds, "The craft-service table is now entirely absent of junk food and carbs. All you see are lean turkey sandwiches and loads of fresh-cut veggies and fruit."

perfect candidate fo rminister

2007-06-02T10:26:00.000-04:00

its hard to believe that people actually believe this. personally, i blame the church and everyone who has spread this shit ever since jesus died in vain. maybe these over-the-top religious nuts shouldn't be allowed to procreate? will it have to come to that at some point?

at least it'll help stop the spread of this disease of the spirit.

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Mom: Satan to blame for microwaved baby
08:49 PM CDT on Saturday, May 19, 2007
By TJ Aulds / KHOU.com

GALVESTON -- “That was not my husband; my husband is a wonderful father. Satan was working through his weaknesses,” said Eva Marie Mauldin, the 20-year-old mother of the 2-month old who was severely burned after her father placed her in a hotel room microwave in Galveston two weeks ago.

In an exclusive interview with 11 News, Eva Mauldin said her husband Joshua is “not the monster people are making him out to be.”

She blames the devil and some form of a demonic possession of her husband for what happened.

KHOU.com

Eva Mauldin

“I believe Satan works through our weaknesses. Satan attacked (Joshua) through his weaknesses,” said Eva Marie.

In the case of her 19-year-old husband, his weaknesses is a mental disability that she said he has tried to get help for to no avail. She said Joshua had sought treatment for the undisclosed mental illness, but that he was unable to find the help he needed.

What she said he did find was a calling to the ministry. She met her husband in a church back home in Arkansas.

Mrs. Mauldin said she and her husband had come to Galveston because they had been called to minister. She called the island “a den of sin.”

That call to ministry she said was seen as a “threat” by Satan.

“Satan saw my husband as a threat. Satan attacked him because he saw (Joshua) as a threat,” said Mrs. Mauldin.

The Arkansas native said she was sure most people would hear her comments and consider her "crazy.”

Nevertheless, she insists that she and her husband are Christians who came to Galveston on behalf of God only to be confronted by the devil.

Mauldin said her husband told her that on the day he placed their daughter Ana Marie into the microwave he, “saw what he was doing, but couldn’t stop himself.”

“He was crying the whole time, and when he finally came out of it he took her out of the microwave and tried to fix her,” said Mauldin. “When I came back to the room, he was screaming and crying.”

Mauldin said reports that her husband told police he placed the little girl in the microwave because he was stressed are not accurate.

“He would never do anything to hurt her. He loves her,” she said. “When she cries he is the one who comforts her. When she is sick, he is the one that takes her to the doctor.”

Again, she insists his actions were not because of stress, but rather Satan preying upon his mental illness.

“This was Satan fighting him because he was a threat,” she insisted.

While Joshua Mauldin’s mother has returned to Arkansas, Eva Marie Mauldin remains in Galveston hoping to be reunited with her daughter even as officials with Children’s Protective Services have move to have her and Joshua’s parental rights severed.

She even set up a MySpace page “Joshua Mauldin is not a Monster” in hopes of defending her husband and making pleas for people to help her.

“I had nothing to do with what happened, then (will you) help me get a job and a place to live that is good enough for my daughter,” she wrote.

Thus far, help has been hard to find. She said she too has been tainted by what happened even though she was not in the room at the time.

She said her Galveston landlord, after finding out who she was, told her to move out by the end of the month and that calls to local agencies seeking help in finding a job and housing have been unsuccessful.

“I am angry at the way I have been treated,” she said. “I wasn’t even there. I am upset. I am alone down here and nobody is willing to help me.”

While Joshua Mauldin has been charged with child endangerment, Eva Marie has not been charged with any crime.

Even in the cyber world, Mauldin’s comments on the situation have been met with cynicism.

Some comment that she should leave her husband, to which she answered:

"He has problems and I don't believe in condemning someone who is not like everybody else. He is sorry for what he has done and I know that the Joshua I married loved Ana very much and would never hurt her,” she wrote.

“He tried to get help before this happened. It’s not his fault they didn't treat him correctly.”

A custody hearing for Ana Marie is scheduled for later this week in a Galveston district court.

the sudden rain

2007-05-27T23:18:00.001-04:00

i'm sitting here at my computer, the sudden rain outside my window not helping the heat AT ALL and wondering when my friends are coiming back. i sent them on a three hour tour. a three hour tour of manhattan . the weather started getting rough, the tiny ship was tossed - etc etc.

that was almost 4 hours ago

i hope they aren't stranded on some island somewhere. i have no illusions that the two of them can survive.....

more than he deserved

2007-05-26T14:27:00.001-04:00

"it's a pity that there isn't a hell for [rev. falwell] to go to"
Chris Hitchens

a quiet death in his office is much more than the reverend jerry falwell deserved. the world is a little brighter a place with him gone. read with me and laugh as Ralph Hitchison tears apart hannity & colmes, ralph reed, jerry falwell and the absurdity of these talk shows i general.

i'm sure they regeretted having this man on their show whem it was all over with.

a good read for a transcript.

-----------------------

This is a partial transcript from "Hannity & Colmes," May 16, 2007, that has been edited for clarity.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JERRY FALWELL: Throwing God off successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this, because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad.

I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make an alternative lifestyle — the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who tried to secularize America — I point the finger in their face and say you helped this happen.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ALAN COLMES, CO-HOST: That was Reverend Jerry Falwell on "Hannity & Colmes" back in 2004. The controversial televangelist was a polarizing figure emboldening conservative Christians while alienating many liberals. But there's no question about the impacting legacy Falwell leaves behind.

Joining us now is Republican strategist Ralph Reed and author of "God is Not Great", columnist Christopher Hitchens, who made news last night with his harsh critique of the reverend. Christopher, let me start with you here and talk about the things you've said which — obviously, we know where you stand on religion. We know where you stand on Reverend Falwell. By being so angry about what his legacy was and is, are you not hurting his family and others who may have no dog in that hunt, but who would just like a few moments to celebrate his life and have some peace?

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS, AUTHOR, "GOD IS NOT GREAT": Well, I don't care whether his family's feelings are hurt or not. But if they are, they can take comfort from the extraordinary piety and stupidity, and generally speaking, uniformity of the coverage of the man's death.

It is, after all, said — was said by the supposed Jesus of Nazareth to his followers that they must expect to be mocked for their beliefs, because their beliefs will appear to many people to be ridiculous, if not worse than that. And that they are to take it for granted that they will be ridiculed.

That's true of, I think, of the most devout and serious and thoughtful Christian. But for a vulgar fraud and crook like the Reverend Falwell, it's an obligation to say what one thinks about him, or be left off the air and have people like yourselves broadcasting only piety.

COLMES: I'm not broadcasting only piety. I've got my radio show. And now we're having you on here to talk about your view. What else is being said?

HITCHENS: You're having me on and then arguing that maybe it's bad taste to have me on. I don't think...

COLMES: I thought it was a legitimate question, because I think people are worried...

HITCHENS: I've answered the question. What's the next one?

COLMES: Now we will move on to Ralph Reed now that you have answered that question. Ralph, does Christopher Hitchens have a point? It is a free speech issue. He was a polarizing figure, Reverend Falwell was. And there are many people, maybe not all of them feeling as strongly as Christopher Hitchens, but who feel that Reverend Falwell was, indeed, a polarizing figure. He said things that offended many Americans.

RALPH REED, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Well you know, look, any time Alan, that you are an agent of change, the way Dr. Falwell was, who had the kind of impact that he had on American religion, on our culture, and on our politics — he was one of the most important historical figures of the last 50 years in each of those areas, ending the self-imposed exile of evangelicals from civic and cultural engagement.

And I think transforming them into one of the most important and vibrant and energetic constituencies in the entire electorate. No one does that, liberal or conservative, Republican, Democrat, of any faith, and not stir controversy. It's just my belief, as an American, not as a conservative, not as somebody of any particular denominational background or faith, but just as an American in terms of elevating our civility of our discourse, that when somebody dies that we ought to show a measure of respect and appreciation for their family and for their loved ones and for those who are grieving right now. And our thoughts and prayers ought to be with them, regardless of whether we agreed with Dr. Falwell or not.

SEAN HANNITY, CO-HOST: Christopher Hitchens...

HITCHENS: Oh, come on, play the world's smallest violin. Listen, he established a business, a racket, in my opinion. He was a religious businessman in the same way as Mr. Ralph Reed is a religious entrepreneur. He's left the business to his children. It's a hereditary job. Let that console them. You can't have me on and say that I have to say I'm terribly sorry he's dead.

HANNITY: Hey, Christopher.

HITCHENS: One reason you can't ask me to do that is because I am not. I think we have been rid of an extremely dangerous demagogue who lived by hatred of others, and prejudice, and who committed treason by saying that the United States deserved the attack upon it and its civil society of September of 2001 by other religious nut cases like himself.

HANNITY: He profoundly and repeatedly apologized. And I'm sure you're perfect.

HITCHENS: No, he did not enough.

HANNITY: I'm sure you're perfect in your life and that you've never made any mistakes.

HITCHENS: I've never committed treason like that. I don't believe in the sincerity of his apology.

HANNITY: Let's look at the thoughtlessness and the mean-spiritedness of your very remarks that you made about Reverend Falwell.

HITCHENS: By all means.

HANNITY: You think it's a pity that there isn't a hell for him to go to, you said.

HITCHENS: Yes, I do.

HANNITY: On his death, you write, "The discovery of the carcass of Reverend Falwell on the floor of his obscure office is, you know, almost zero significance except for perhaps two categories of people," et cetera. You also say the evil he did will live after him.

HITCHENS: Yes.

HANNITY: I knew Reverend Falwell, Christopher. I know the good work that this man has done.

HITCHENS: Tell me about it.

HANNITY: Well...

HITCHENS: Takes a lot to make me cry.

HANNITY: I know you think you're the smartest guy in the room, but you sound like a jackass when you attack his family like this. But I know...

HITCHENS: I didn't attack his family. Excuse me.

HANNITY: ... what he did for unwed mothers. I know what he did for alcoholics. I know what he did for drug addicts.

HITCHENS: Excuse me, sir.

HANNITY: Yes.

HITCHENS: I did not attack his family. And no fair-minded viewer of yours will say it. I'm not going to be conscripted to say that it's my job, when you invite me on to discuss this man, first to say how sorry I am for him and his family. That isn't what I feel. You no doubt, as a Christian or whatever you are, require hypocrisy of people. And so you're asking me...

HANNITY: I'm not asking — no, but I am asking for human decency. And if you don't think it has an impact on his family to use even the phrases tonight that he's vulgar, a fraud and a crook. And then to say that...

HITCHENS: Am I supposed to conceal my — you asked me on.

HANNITY: I think you are incredibly mean, incredibly selfish and thoughtless.

HITCHENS: You invited me, sir, to give my opinion of the departed. I give it to you, and you say, well, might that not upset his family. I said it while he was alive. That might have upset his family, too.

HANNITY: Will you give the opinion about that? You give the opinion about him. And I'm giving you the opinion about you and the thoughtlessness of your remarks here. And I'm really calling for any human decency that you may have in your pseudo-intellectually — mind of yours.

Watch "Hannity & Colmes" weeknights at 9 p.m. ET!

Copy: Content and Programming Copyright 2007 Fox News Network, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Transcription Copyright 2007 Voxant, Inc. (www.voxant.com), which takes sole responsibility for the accuracy of the transcription. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No license is granted to the user of this material except for the user's personal or internal use and, in such case, only one copy may be printed, nor shall user use any material for commercial purposes or in any fashion that may infringe upon Fox News Network, LLC'S and Voxant, Inc.'s copyrights or other proprietary rights or interests in the material. This is not a legal transcript for purposes of litigation

Mistakes were (Almost) Made

2007-05-25T07:27:00.000-04:00

had a lot of fun at joe heap's show last night. a crazy cast of characters lined the place with wooly mammoths and cheerleaders overlooking everything. the place was full and at first i thought a lot were just locals. so i sat near the door for a bit and watched as almost everyone who came, on their way in first looked up to the walls and smiled.

i was sitting with a nice mix of an artist, a musician, 2 film makers and a physicist.

but we stayed too long, i think. after a few hours locals started coming in and somebody in our group started playing pool with two of them - a father and his son and their "body guard".

a drunken blond kept interrupting the games and taking shots, ratcheting up an already tense game of people taking things too seriously. at one point i was laying out exactly how to take the bodyguard out of the equation. he was fat and slow but big.

the possible bad outcomes were avoided, narrowly, though - and almost sadly in a way. it would have been a nice footnote to joe's show.

joe's art show

2007-05-16T18:28:00.001-04:00

check out this art show next week, on the 24th. joe's a good guy and a friend of mine. this should be interesting. maybe i'll see you there.

------------------

"MISTAKES WERE MADE"

Thursday May 24

at 40 C

(eponymously located at 40 Avenue C, between 3rd and 4th)

"MISTAKES WERE MADE"

a show of paintings by Joe Heaps Nelson

Opening Thursday, 8 to 11 pm

With open bar from 9 to 10, just to sweeten the pot

featuring some classic cheerleader joints

and multiple never before seen prehistoric fauna and humor pieces

meeting women in nyc

2007-05-16T17:36:00.000-04:00

people tell me all the time how hard it is to meet women in this city, in new york city. really, though, it couldn't be easier. it just seems that people here just put up automatic defenses that you have to get past. they put up walls. the best thing to do is pretend the walls aren't even there. once in a while a woman will ignore an opening comment of mine but most of the time they'll come back, apologetic.

i was on the train platform, on my way back to my apartment an hour ago, when a cute girl with a fresh face and long blond hair stands next to me. it was a sudden rain storm up above so she reached into her bag and pulled out a Mets baseball cap to cover her wet hair. it was so cute, putting her hair in a pony tail getting ready to put the hat on.

"are you sure you want to wear that mets hat?" i said, smiling.

she looked at me with narrowed eyes for a second but smiled. "oh, definately. why are you a yankees fan?"

and that was it. we spent a few minutes discussing something i knew nothng about, really: baseball until the train came.

ok, true, where you go from there is up to you. you could fuck it up easily but her wall is down at that point. her city defenses are laid bare and that should be enough.

bodies

2007-05-14T22:35:00.000-04:00

had an old friend and his wife visiting this saturday. i took them to see bodies, the exhibit at the south street sea port. i wasn't sure what to expect, i guess. some parts of it were like a freak show exhibit (complete with fetuses in jars) but some of it was just amazingly insighful. especially the exhibits of the circulatory system.

you read about biology in text books, but nothing can drive it home like a dead plasticized chinese political prisoner seperated bone from body, playing tug of war with his own skeleton.*

the human body is so obviously over complicated and complex that the whole exhibit just passively proves the evolutionary process. nothing this complex would have been intelligently designed.

go see it if you can. you will be amazed, disgusted and enlightened all at once.

"please do not touch the bodies," the door attendant reminds us.

"shit, i'm leaving. that's the only reason i came here." not even a smile.

*the fact that they might not have given their consent to be displayed is the one really disturbing thing about the exhibit. unfortunately it was always in the back of my mind when i went through it.

instilling materialism

2007-05-12T09:20:00.001-04:00

yesterday on the subway i heard an interesting conversation between what you would think, just by looking at them and being down wind, were two homeless people. i don't have the time to transcribe it all right now but the basic theme was that a third friend of theirs recently got his cell phone and every couple minutes he would take it out of his pocket, open it up and then close it and put it back in his pocket again. they both reminisced about the first time they had their own cell phones.

they then went on talk about thier ipods.

if the cell phone/ipod culture has leaked down into the lowest strata of the economy, what the indians call the untouchable masses because they have nothing to lose, this is a major coup for the elite.

twenty years ago you could drop out, take to the rails, whatever and not have anything to worry about. today you have to keep your cell phone. you have a bill. a monthly bill and ipods without a computer. you now have stuff you have to worry about losing. you have to hold a job, an address for bills to come.

cell phones are slowing becoming identity. soon you'll need one to do any business, to even socialize. how much longer before we're automatically issued a phone number? before its required on applications with the government, to start bank accounts, or to get paid?

and maybe i can say that because i still don't have one. i'd like to think that even if i did get one, if i had to, i still wouldn't be on it all the time, wouldn't answer it at all.

but who knows, maybe i'd be just another fuckhead opening and closing my phone every few minutes, amazed at the technology.

------------------------

wait a minute, isn't this what revelations was about? on your "wrist or your forehead" or both? the exact quote is

"And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six."

666 everyone thinks. but maybe its a phone number: 600 60 06. quick google search reveals this as:

CHANGXIN JIAPU POST & TELECOMMUNICATION ZHI BUREAU
JiaPu Village, ChangXin County, HuZhou, Zhejiang
Phone: 0572-6006006
Fax: 0572-6006454
Contact: Xueyuan, ZHANG

should have known the chinese were involved somehow. damn, i wish i believed in that stuff, just to make life a little more interesting.

3 new things

2007-05-07T01:44:00.000-04:00

tonight i got away from the computer, from work, and watched/listened to three new things with a friend. i'll tackle them in reverse order.....

this week's sopranos was much better and nice to see a familiar face make an appearance for the first time, finally. AJ is coming along and christopher is in flux. should be an interesting couple episodes.

spiderman 3 was pretty good. some of it was really painful but it was a fun action flick. you've got to suspend your disbelief in incredible amounts, though and you have to sit through a lot of bad dancing scenes.

the new bjork album is growing on me. now i wish i had gotten tickets to see her at msg. i saw her a few years ago at rado city and it was fun.

-----------

i wonder if this story needs any more setup than this? it reminds me of what lenny bruce (i know, different type of comic) did towards the end, reading court transcripts.

video of arab woman

2007-05-04T08:18:00.000-04:00

i'm probaly just jumping on the pile here, i'm a little late hearing about it, but this video is great. i'm looking for a transcript of it but in the meantime, spend a few minutes and take a listen.

its obviously been edited to keep it one sided, so don't get caught up in that. but what she's saying makes sense.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1296126090432829344

here's one....

---------------------------

Wafa Sultan: The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions, or a clash of civilizations. It is a clash between two opposites, between two eras. It is a clash between a mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages and another mentality that belongs to the 21st century. It is a clash between civilization and backwardness, between the civilized and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality. It is a clash between freedom and oppression, between democracy and dictatorship. It is a clash between human rights, on the one hand, and the violation of these rights, on other hand. It is a clash between those who treat women like beasts, and those who treat them like human beings. What we see today is not a clash of civilizations. Civilizations do not clash, but compete.

[...]

Host: I understand from your words that what is happening today is a clash between the culture of the West, and the backwardness and ignorance of the Muslims?

Wafa Sultan: Yes, that is what I mean.

[...]

Host: Who came up with the concept of a clash of civilizations? Was it not Samuel Huntington? It was not Bin Laden. I would like to discuss this issue, if you don't mind...

Wafa Sultan: The Muslims are the ones who began using this expression. The Muslims are the ones who began the clash of civilizations. The Prophet of Islam said: "I was ordered to fight the people until they believe in Allah and His Messenger." When the Muslims divided the people into Muslims and non-Muslims, and called to fight the others until they believe in what they themselves believe, they started this clash, and began this war. In order to stop this war, they must reexamine their Islamic books and curricula, which are full of calls for takfir and fighting the infidels.

My colleague has said that he never offends other people's beliefs. What civilization on the face of this earth allows him to call other people by names that they did not choose for themselves? Once, he calls them Ahl Al-Dhimma, another time he calls them the "People of the Book," and yet another time he compares them to apes and pigs, or he calls the Christians "those who incur Allah's wrath." Who told you that they are "People of the Book"? They are not the People of the Book, they are people of many books. All the useful scientific books that you have today are theirs, the fruit of their free and creative thinking. What gives you the right to call them "those who incur Allah's wrath," or "those who have gone astray," and then come here and say that your religion commands you to refrain from offending the beliefs of others?

I am not a Christian, a Muslim, or a Jew. I am a secular human being. I do not believe in the supernatural, but I respect others' right to believe in it.

Dr. Ibrahim Al-Khouli: Are you a heretic?

Wafa Sultan: You can say whatever you like. I am a secular human being who does not believe in the supernatural...

Dr. Ibrahim Al-Khouli: If you are a heretic, there is no point in rebuking you, since you have blasphemed against Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran...

Wafa Sultan: These are personal matters that do not concern you.

[...]

Wafa Sultan: Brother, you can believe in stones, as long as you don't throw them at me. You are free to worship whoever you want, but other people's beliefs are not your concern, whether they believe that the Messiah is God, son of Mary, or that Satan is God, son of Mary. Let people have their beliefs.

[...]

Wafa Sultan: The Jews have come from the tragedy (of the Holocaust), and forced the world to respect them, with their knowledge, not with their terror, with their work, not their crying and yelling. Humanity owes most of the discoveries and science of the 19th and 20th centuries to Jewish scientists. 15 million people, scattered throughout the world, united and won their rights through work and knowledge. We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant. We have not seen a single Jew destroy a church. We have not seen a single Jew protest by killing people. The Muslims have turned three Buddha statues into rubble. We have not seen a single Buddhist burn down a Mosque, kill a Muslim, or burn down an embassy. Only the Muslims defend their beliefs by burning down churches, killing people, and destroying embassies. This path will not yield any results. The Muslims must ask themselves what they can do for humankind, before they demand that humankind respect them.

i still don't understand....

2007-04-29T07:55:00.000-04:00

why anyone with a built-in excuse would want to give it up, but choice is good. once again, bravo spitzer.

---------

Spitzer Introduces Same-Sex Marriage Bill in N.Y.

Friday Apr 27, 2007

(Source:AFP Getty Images)
New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer introduced a bill in the state Legislature April 27 to legalize same-sex marriage.

"This legislation would create equal legal protection and responsibilities for all individuals who seek to marry or have their marriage protected in the state of New York," Spitzer said in a statement. "Strong, stable families are the cornerstones of our society. The responsibilities inherent in the institution of marriage benefit those individuals and society as a whole."

Same-sex marriage advocates praised Spitzer. "Today is a watershed moment in our community’s struggle to win the freedom to marry in New York," said Alan Van Capelle, executive director of the Empire State Pride Agenda, New York’s largest gay rights organization

According to Newsday, Senate Republican Majority Leader Joseph Bruno declared that he is still opposed to same-sex marriage. Noting a host of other recent Spitzer proposals, Bruno said, "This governor has his priorities wrong."

Bruno said that given the fatal shooting of a state trooperearlier in the week, Spitzer should be worried more about bringing back the death penalty for those who kill police officers and creating jobs.

Bruno’s continued opposition effectively blocks the measure from moving ahead in the state Legislature for now.

State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver has so far declined to announce a position on the issue of gay marriage.

Spitzer is thus far the most prominent New York Democrat to support same-sex marriage. U.S. Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Charles Schumer have said they instead favor civil unions.

campus stalkers

2007-04-24T02:25:00.001-04:00

a week after this virginia tech craziness, i finally remember an incident at a college campus i was attending too many years ago. maybe its because we just took some pictures on the campus over the weekend.

there was a guy hanging around there, sort of followed the same mold. a loner , wouldn't answer anyone, wouldn't talk to anyone and no one ever really saw him in a class.

i was dating a woman who went there too, and two days in a row during lunch, in two different areas we saw the guy hanging around too. something didn't feel right and i talked to one of the campus security rent-a-cops about whether he actually went to school there. well, they got a little overzealous and stopped the guy the next day.

when they searched him they found a knife and a list of half a dozen women on campus, their phone numbers and their home addresses. my girlfriend was one of the women on the list.

i remember the security guard was so scared he was shaking.

we never saw the guy again after that, but it felt like something was narrowly avoided. then again, who knows what he's done since then. close calls don't usually stop these psychopaths.

wedding weekend

2007-04-24T00:06:00.000-04:00

well, i'm back in town and partially recovered. had a lot of fun at the wedding. maybe some pics soon of me in a tux, when i get em. the limo was prepared with a full bottle of jack daniels just for me, which was well needed.

i had bigger cufflinks than the other guys (long story) so i told one of the more gullible guys that the tux fitter (who seemed a little bit litl) chose one of the guys and gave him a smaller cufflink. sure enough when we compared, his was the smaller one. "why would he do that? why me?" i told him i guess he'd find out when he returned the tux.

another friend got married this weekend that i had to miss, in florida. he rented a boat for it and they went out a few miles for the reception.

but anyone that knows me knows that i'm against all this bullshit ritual stuff. i did it, i participated because this was a great friend of mine and i've known him for fifteen years. he's one of the few people in this world i trust completely.

its a whole different experience when you're up there involved in the thing. all i had to do was stand there and look official but its still nothing more than getting people to feel power, to make people think that a god is the one "allowing" the people to be married.

for a while, maybe, it might keep the marriage together because you feel like all these people were there at the beginning, like you're letting them down if it fails. like you're letting god down.

its a centuries-old game of power conservation, but it works.

einstein's bee quote

2007-04-16T00:43:00.000-04:00

yes, its a scary and disturbing idea: the bees are abandoning their hives and no other bees will take it over. the queens die alone. this is going to have a profound effect on the cycle, no question. but somone somewhere decided to make it more "interesting" and apocalyptic by attributing this quote to enstein:

"if the bees dissapear, men will have only 4 years left to live"

except that no one can find the original source for this quote. it doesn't show up anywhere before a 2002 article in the washington post that describes some stall at a garden festival dedicated to showing how great bees are.

so while it would surely be a catasrophe if we can't save the bees, slapping einstein's name on a quote doesn't make it any more probably that we'll all be dead in 4 years.

hey, i'm all for the chaos to come but let's keep our heads for now.

79 Interview with Douqlas Adams

2007-04-03T12:47:00.000-04:00

the magazine Darker Matter has an old, "lost" interview with science fiction / comedy writer douglas adams. its from 1979 but well worth reading if you're into writing or hitchiker's guide or even doctor who (which he was script editor for).

http://www.darkermatter.com/issue1/douglas_adams.php

-----------------------------------------

Douglas Adams: The First and Last Tapes
By Ian Shircore

Almost 28 years ago, a young (27) and still overdrawn Douglas Adams was poised on the brink of fame. The first radio series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy had been released ("Escaped," was more the word, according to Douglas) and largely ignored in a late night slot on BBC Radio 4. It had then been repeated at a less perverse time, gathering listeners and momentum as the six episodes unfolded. But the books, the second radio series, the TV show and the long, long-delayed movie version were still to come.

Douglas Adams had done a handful of short interview pieces, most of which had just pinched his jokes and ignored his opinions. But when freelance reporter Ian Shircore got the chance to spend several hours with him under cover of an unlikely feature for Penthouse magazine, Adams found himself with half a day to ruminate, pontificate and smoke too many cigarettes in the cluttered office where he was earning a crust as script editor for the Tom Baker-era Dr Who. Apart from the few column inches Penthouse was able to accommodate, these tapes, from 1979, have lain unpublished ever since. They are being released now, in three parts, to mark the first issue of Darker Matter, the online magazine that brings you the best new SF short stories from around the world.

Thirty years on from its creation, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is still among the best known science fiction writing in the English language. Look at the ratings – still there, way up among the Amazon bestsellers in both SF and comedy lists, and right there alongside upstart Booker Prizewinners and other ephemeral froth in the literary rankings. Yet if Douglas Adams was destined to become the 20th century's greatest popular SF writer, it wasn't clear to him in the early days. He wasn't even sure if he was keen on the genre. When asked if he liked science fiction, he'd give one of his typically thoughtful answers:

"Well, yes and no. I like the aspects of it which turn the telescope round, by letting you stand so far outside things and see them from a totally different perspective. That's what I try to do in Hitchhiker's, and that's what I think the best science fiction does. Science fiction that's just about people wandering around in space ships shooting each other with ray guns is very dull. I like it when it enables you to do fairly radical reinterpretations of human experience, just to show all the different interpretations that can be put on apparently fairly simple and commonplace events. That I find fun."

So who did he read with relish, in these formative, creative years? And what made an author special for him? He could almost have been describing his own work as he paid his spontaneous tribute to the effortless, fertile genius of Kurt Vonnegut.

"Tom Stoppard. Otherwise, Tolstoy I love. Solzhenitsyn. Kurt Vonnegut, who I think is absolutely superb. I've read The Sirens of Titan six times now, and it gets better every time. He is an influence, I must own up. Sirens of Titan is just one of those books – you read it through the first time and you think it's very loosely, casually written. You think the fact that everything suddenly makes such good sense at the end is almost accidental. And then you read it a few more times, simultaneously finding out more about writing yourself, and you realise what an absolute tour de force it was, making something as beautifully honed as that appear so casual."

"The SF writers I like best are the ones who are funny, and there are not many of them." And the others, the usual suspects? Did he read Asimov, Arthur C Clarke and the rest?

"I have done. The SF writers I like best are the ones who are funny, and there are not many of them. Robert Sheckley. He's a very, very funny writer. He's also a stylist. Very few science fiction writers write English well. Robert Sheckley can.

"So Sheckley... and another guy I'm very fond of is Stanislav Lem, a Polish writer who has been superbly translated into English. That's doubly impressive because it's a very densely verbal style, with lots of word play. Translating it into English must have been extraordinarily difficult, and in many cases it's been very well done."

Douglas had spent some time after university trying to sell the idea of science fiction comedy. People were happy enough to talk to him, as he had obvious potential as a comic writer and had established useful connections with various members of the Monty Python team. He even found himself writing with Graham Chapman for a period of 18 months or so, mainly on a bunch of projects that failed to see the light of day. But life was not without its frustrations.

"When I was working with Graham, a key figure in the Python team, I thought 'This is the Big Break.' But it turned out not to be. And I kept trying to sell the idea of a science fiction comedy, but no-one was interested. You could go along to a comedy producer and say 'This is science fiction' and he'd say 'This is drama – take it to a drama producer.' So you'd take it to a drama producer and he'd say 'Take it to a comedy producer.' Then Graham Chapman and I were commissioned by [Beatles drummer] Ringo Starr, of all people, to write a one-hour US TV special for him. That was SF comedy. But it never got made in the end, which was a shame, because there was some nice stuff in there."

Then came the Big Break, Mk 2. The Robert Stigwood Organisation, which had had huge hits with Grease and Saturday Night Fever, commissioned a film treatment from Chapman and Adams.

"It was another film idea based on science fiction. But they eventually stopped that project because, as they said, 'We don't think there's a market for science fiction films.' As it turned out, that was about 12 months before Star Wars." "I'd finally given up on the idea of science fiction comedy, simply because no-one was interested."

In the end, after Douglas had spent a few nervous weeks working as a bodyguard for rich Arabs staying in Mayfair hotels ("You had to open doors and wear a suit and if anyone came with a gun or grenade, you'd run away"), he got the chance to write a single sketch for an obscure radio comedy show, The Burkiss Way. It went well, and the producer, Simon Brett, asked if he had any ideas for a series.

"I'd finally given up on the idea of science fiction comedy, simply because no-one was interested. But then Simon Brett suggested the idea to me. 'I'd like to do an SF comedy, and I think you might be the guy to do it.' And I sort of fell out of my chair."

The Red Sea had parted, and Douglas had the opportunity he had been waiting for.

"It was a couple of days after that that the title came. I had quite a lot of separate plots in my mind, each of which involved the end of the world, so we thought we were going to do six independent half hour stories, each ending with the end of the world. The thing was going to be called The Ends of the Earth, or something. Then I suddenly remembered what had struck me six years previously – but I hadn't done anything about it and hadn't even remembered in the intervening time – which was when I had been hitchhiking around Europe, when I was a student or just before I went up to Cambridge, I had this book called The Hitchhiker's Guide to Europe. And I remember wandering into a campsite in Innsbruck late one night, being not entirely sober, and the stars were all out and I just remember thinking at that time 'Somebody should write a hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy.'

"But being congenitally unable to see a good idea when it was staring me in the face, I didn't do anything about it for another six years. Anyway, then I did a treatment, describing what the show was going to be about, and it took a while for that to go through the [BBC] system. By this stage, I'd gone back and lived at home with my parents in Dorset. And then the BBC came back and said 'OK, write a first episode.' So I wrote a first episode, and that also took a while to go through, and then they came back and said 'Yes, OK. Go ahead and make it.'"

Click to hear a short segment of this interview. There was no practice round. That first episode was the actual first episode, complete with bulldozers, Vogons, Ford Prefect, "Lucky escape for Arsenal", and, of course, the end of the Earth. The reaction was, for a surprisingly long time, silence.

"We made it, and then that more or less coincided with the summer period at the BBC, where, in order for anything to get approved, you have to wait for people to come back from whichever beach they're lying on. So that took a long time. While I was kicking my heels, I sent in my pilot episode to the then script editor of Doctor Who, Robert Holmes, who said 'Yes, yes. Like this. Come round and see us.' So we discussed ideas for a bit, and I eventually got commissioned to write four Dr Who episodes. It took a long time to reach that decision, and then, after all this period of nothing happening, I was suddenly commissioned to write four Dr Whos and the next five Hitchhikers all at once."

By the summer of 1979, the first radio series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy had been broadcast twice on BBC Radio 4 and this extraordinary mixture of science fiction, comedy and intriguingly speculative ideas was slowly becoming a cult hit.

The proof that it was a genuine cult was the fact that its author, Douglas Adams, was hard up, needing work and fairly happy to grab the lifeline of a script editor's job working on Dr Who. The proof that it was a hit hadn't quite arrived yet. Indeed, when freelance journalist Ian Shircore lined up this interview with Adams and tried to get the press interested, the only taker he could find was Penthouse magazine, which eventually printed a few paragraphs and a couple of quotes. Since then, the cassettes of this leisurely three-hour interview have been lost in the back of a cupboard. When the lost tapes resurfaced a few weeks ago, these unpublished insights from one of the 20th century's top SF writers seemed ideal for the launch of Darker Matter. The interview material is being published in three parts, with the emphasis in this second section on Douglas's crusade against patronizing comedy conventions, his disillusionment with Dr Who and the multimedia vision that put him 20 years ahead of his time.

By his own account, Douglas Adams started young in comedy. He claimed it began in the maternity hospital in Cambridge, where he brought unexpected joy into the lives of the nursing staff.

'Apparently I was a very strange-shaped baby. The nurse carried me down the ward with a towel wrapped round my loins saying "Look, Gandhi" – and the rest of the world has just taken its cue from that ever since.'

But the path from innate talent to wealth, fame and universal acclaim was not entirely straightforward. At the time of this early interview, the Hitchhiker's phenomenon was only just beginning to show signs of gathering momentum. Douglas was starting to reap the rewards of success, albeit on a modest scale – lashing out to buy a £33,000 apartment in North London, with the help of a £20,000 mortgage, and indulging his dreams of life in the fast lane with the purchase of a modestly sporty MGB tourer.

He still needed an income, though, and working as Dr Who's script editor, in a BBC office at White City, had turned out to be more of a compromise than he had hoped. He'd been a fan of the good Doctor since he was 11 and had been keen to make his mark on the show, both by writing (he'd written four episodes) and through his script editing work. In the event, his time spent with Dr Who had left him disillusioned.

'I was told: "We want you, Douglas, because of the specific things you'll be able to bring to the programme," which I have been systematically not been allowed to do. 'This season of Dr Who will look just like any other season – and I feel very disappointed about that.'

'It's too big a thing for any one person to change. It's like a big raft in the middle of a lake, and you're trying to move it by swimming. This season of Dr Who will look just like any other season – and I feel very disappointed about that.'

But if he wasn't able to bend Dr Who to his will, Douglas was about to taste the kind of success in his own right that usually only happens in dreams. Within a few months, the first book, the long-playing record and the second radio series were to turn Hitchhiker's into a mainstream hit and make him a household name. Even more importantly, this success would prove he was right to follow his own beliefs, rather than trying to work within accepted broadcasting formats and supposedly commercial formulae.

'People always make this totally artificial distinction between what is commercial and what is good. They quote that maxim "Nobody ever lost money underestimating the public's taste" and I think that's very wrongheaded. I like to believe the audience is actually intelligent, because it's made up of other people like yourself.

'People don't like to have their intelligence insulted. If you do something with sufficient enthusiasm and put enough into it, people are bound to respond, unless your judgement is totally cock-eyed.'

After a lot of disappointments and false starts, Douglas had finally found his voice and his destiny when he stopped trying to follow other people's guidelines and started writing what he himself would have been surprised and delighted to find coming out of his radio.

'I thought "What would I really like to hear? What would excite me? Well, let's write it, because nobody else is doing anything that excites me, apart from the Pythons."

'If The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy makes money, I shall enjoy that. But what I'll enjoy most is having proved that you don't have to underestimate people. I don't like the notion that you set yourself up as saying "This is what people like, therefore this is what we'll do." That's patronizing.

'I just want to kill the idea that you have to be bland to appeal to your market.' 'I just want to kill the idea that you have to be bland to appeal to your market, though I know a lot of the BBC old guard still regard Hitchhiker's as a momentary aberration, a fluke, and not really what radio comedy ought to be about.

'People kept saying to me when I was writing, "This is terribly esoteric. You'll only get half a dozen people listening to it. Shove in a few jokes."'

Douglas claimed there were actually very few jokes in Hitchhiker's, in terms of conventional gags and one-liners. But trying to write something that made up its own rules as it went along was always going to be unnerving.

'In the very first episode, while I was writing it, I kept thinking "There ought to be a joke in here, because I've gone three pages without a joke." I knew I was trying to do something different, but you keep on looking for the odd thing you recognise.'

Douglas explained the problem with conventional 'jokes' with an example from a scene in the first episode of the radio series, where Arthur Dent comes out with an obvious, punning gag line (Ford: 'How do you feel?' Arthur: 'Like a military academy – bits of me keep passing out.'). That won an immediate laugh from the cast and crew on the first take, but enthusiasm waned after the first few hearings.

Click to hear a short segment of this interview. There was a far better joke elsewhere in the scene, and that took time to grow on people (Arthur: 'Where are we?' Ford: 'We're safe.' Arthur: 'Oh good.' Ford: 'We're in a small galley cabin in one of the spacecraft of a Vogon constructor fleet.' Arthur: 'Ah. This is obviously some strange meaning of the word "safe" that I wasn't previously aware of.') This is perfect Douglas Adams humour, rooted in language, character and the sheer control of tone and pacing that makes Hitchhiker's a genuine classic of modern literature.

At the time of this interview, Douglas had been juggling the day job with writing the first book, editing the first four 30-minute radio episodes to squeeze them onto four 22-minute sides of double LP record, developing ideas for the second radio series and trying to think about the TV version.

'It's been a terrible tussle. All these different media demand the story goes in different directions – and this is getting me into all sorts of problems. When the second series is finished and in the can and I get down to the second book, the plot may actually diverge quite widely from one medium to another. At the moment, the radio show generates the material and then I sit down and try to write a book and make sense of the material.'

As Douglas Adams peered ahead in 1979 into the multimedia future he correctly foresaw for his work, he was probably the first major artist to take a full-on multi-channel approach. And he already had an acute sense of the different dynamics of these different media.

'We're doing the telly next year, but I haven't got very far with that yet. We'll start serious thinking about how we're going to do it at the end of this year. It's very important that it looks as extraordinary as it sounded, and it mustn't look like Dr Who or Blake's Seven. All I have is a very vague visual sense about it, in the way that I started out with a vague audio sense about how Hitchhiker's should be. We've got to work that through.

'And I think a film will have to be totally different again. Moving from radio to television, you can take most of the words with you. When you move on to the big screen, you have to start leaving some of the words behind and filling the gap visually, because film is primarily a visual medium. It becomes a different thing. I wasn't certain that could be done until I saw the stage show.

'That was very different. It was fairly ramshackle, because it was put together on no budget at all, very, very fast. It was done by Ken Campbell who is totally wonderful. He's not interested in doing anything that's possible to do – the possible doesn't interest him. The show was 90 minutes long and based on three hours of material, so a lot of the words went, but it still worked. It was a totally different thing from the radio, but it worked very well. So it made me think "We can do this on film."'

In fact, of course, the film version saw many false dawns before finally reaching the screen in 2005, four years after Douglas's untimely death. But his original vision of radio, books, records, TV and film, all built round carefully adapted and redeveloped versions of the Hitchhiker's saga, has largely come to pass. The opera and ballet versions are surely on their way, sooner or later.

For Douglas, the infinite possibilities and the practical difficulties of getting material written and meeting deadlines sat uncomfortably alongside each other.

'Occasionally, I get a glimpse and think "This can go on for ever." And then I get bogged down on the very next sentence.' 'Occasionally, I get a glimpse and think "This can go on for ever – it'll be terrific." And then I get bogged down on the very next sentence.

'Tennessee Williams would get up in the morning and sit by his pool all day, armed with two bottles of Old Granddad, marinating in the sun until 11pm, when he'd suddenly write furiously for 25 minutes. He said his whole life was dedicated to doing anything he could to get rid of those 12 hours a day when he didn't do anything at all. I understand that. I find the business of getting up in the morning and going to the typewriter absolutely awful.

'And when the idea comes, I often can't remember where it came from. I remember very little about writing the first series of Hitchhiker's. It's almost as if someone else wrote it.'

a free weekend

2007-04-01T15:11:00.000-04:00

this was the last weekend that i'll be in town for over a month. i struggled to make NO plans this weekend. i just wanted to have no agenda. so far its worked out. yesterday i had dinner with a friend, spur of the moment, and when i got home a new, as yet unreleased, album was waiting for me of a band i'm going to see live soon. i just walked around the city listening to it on headphones.

i have to avoid friends and family today. i don't feel like putting on or seeing through any april fools jokes. i've been a victim of some pretty good ones in the past.

------------------
Ten of the best April Fool's Day hoaxes: US museum
Mar 29 01:46 AM US/Eastern

From television revealing that spaghetti grows on trees to advertisements for the left-handed burger, the tradition of April Fool's Day stories in the media has a weird and wonderful history.

Here are 10 of the top April Fool's Day pranks ever pulled off, as judged by the San Diego-based Museum of Hoaxes for their notoriety, absurdity, and number of people duped.

-- In 1957, a BBC television show announced that thanks to a mild winter and the virtual elimination of the spaghetti weevil, Swiss farmers were enjoying a bumper spaghetti crop. Footage of Swiss farmers pulling strands of spaghetti from trees prompted a barrage of calls from people wanting to know how to grow their own spaghetti at home.

-- In 1985, Sports Illustrated magazine published a story that a rookie baseball pitcher who could reportedly throw a ball at 270 kilometers per hour (168 miles per hour) was set to join the New York Mets. Finch was said to have mastered his skill -- pitching significantly faster than anyone else has ever managed -- in a Tibetan monastery. Mets fans' celebrations were short-lived.

-- Sweden in 1962 had only one television channel, which broadcast in black and white. The station's technical expert appeared on the news to announce that thanks to a newly developed technology, viewers could convert their existing sets to receive color pictures by pulling a nylon stocking over the screen. In fact, they had to wait until 1970.

-- In 1996, American fast-food chain Taco Bell announced that it had bought Philadelphia's Liberty Bell, a historic symbol of American independence, from the federal government and was renaming it the Taco Liberty Bell.

Outraged citizens called to express their anger before Taco Bell revealed the hoax. Then-White House press secretary Mike McCurry was asked about the sale and said the Lincoln Memorial in Washington had also been sold and was to be renamed the Ford Lincoln Mercury Memorial after the automotive giant.

-- In 1977, British newspaper The Guardian published a seven-page supplement for the 10th anniversary of San Serriffe, a small republic located in the Indian Ocean consisting of several semicolon-shaped islands. A series of articles described the geography and culture of the two main islands, named Upper Caisse and Lower Caisse.

-- In 1992, US National Public Radio announced that Richard Nixon was running for president again. His new campaign slogan was, "I didn't do anything wrong, and I won't do it again." They even had clips of Nixon announcing his candidacy. Listeners flooded the show with calls expressing their outrage. Nixon's voice actually turned out to be that of impersonator Rich Little.

-- In 1998, a newsletter titled New Mexicans for Science and Reason carried an article that the state of Alabama had voted to change the value of pi from 3.14159 to the "Biblical value" of 3.0.

-- Burger King, another American fast-food chain, published a full-page advertisement in USA Today in 1998 announcing the introduction of the "Left-Handed Whopper," specially designed for the 32 million left-handed Americans. According to the advertisement, the new burger included the same ingredients as the original, but the condiments were rotated 180 degrees. The chain said it received thousands of requests for the new burger, as well as orders for the original "right-handed" version.

-- Discover Magazine announced in 1995 that a highly respected biologist, Aprile Pazzo (Italian for April Fool), had discovered a new species in Antarctica: the hotheaded naked ice borer. The creatures were described as having bony plates on their heads that became burning hot, allowing the animals to bore through ice at high speed -- a technique they used to hunt penguins.

-- Noted British astronomer Patrick Moore announced on the radio in 1976 that at 9:47 am, a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event, in which Pluto would pass behind Jupiter, would cause a gravitational alignment that would reduce the Earth's gravity. Moore told listeners that if they jumped in the air at the exact moment of the planetary alignment, they would experience a floating sensation. Hundreds of people called in to report feeling the sensation.

Copyright AFP 2005, AFP stories and photos shall not be published, broadcast, rewritten for broadcast or publication or redistributed directly or indirectly in any medium

i take it back! i take it back!

2007-03-30T18:27:00.000-04:00

I guess the best that i could do now
is pretend that i done nothing wrong.
-- Bright Eyes

its with a shaky hand that i type this entry.....

i was lying on the couch, listening to music when the phone rang just a few minutes ago.

"hello?"

"i thought i was dreaming," it was my brother.

"what?"

"i thought i was dreaming. do you have any idea what oprah's new book club book is?"

"the secret?" i asked.

"i don't know what that is. so no."

"well, i guess i'm not up to speed with that shit."

"i thought i was dreaming when i heard it this morning: the road by cormac mccarthy"

a book that i've recommended to people before. fuck.

this is the demon that brought the world the evil Doctor Phil (who later turned against his master). and now i'm recommending books that show up later on her fucking book club list for angry, bored housewives to read. Shit, i apologize to everyone who i've talked about this book to.

either oprah is less evil than i thought or i'm becoming like oprah. this is one of those small revelations that end up life-altering.

fuck.

virgin art critic

2007-03-24T19:42:00.001-04:00

today was all about art. i went to a gallery with a 25 year old virgin who's probably gay. we went to see a friend who recently survived a battle with cancer. she had a painting in a art protest collection near the piers.

virgin: "are you sure you wanna go? it will probably be really bad."

me: "why do you think that? we haven't seen anything she's done."

"she doesn't LOOK like an artist, you know?"

"what does that have to do with anything? you can't tell from looking at someone how good they are."

"but you know if she doesn't LOOK like on, she's probably bad."

"do i look like a writer?"

"no! ha ha ha haha."

"very funny."

virgin: "i'm going to make her cry. she survived cancer and now i'm going to make her cry. i'm going to tell her the truth about her shitty art."

.......

it was actually great and without a doubt her's was the best one in the place. even the virgin had to admit that. when he faced her he just couldn't say anything about the piece, never mind make her cry.

sometimes its difficult to admit when you're wrong, but its a sign of enlightenment.

cyber-punks

2007-03-18T21:19:00.000-04:00

its interesting that some people are comparing sony's new "Playstation Home" (or, the earlier one, Second Life's) idea to william gibson's decades old vision of what cyberspace would be like.

.... I say his cyberspace because the term did not exist before 1982, when Gibson first used it in his novels. The equivalent of a website in Gibson's novels is always described as a physical place, yet surreal and manmade.

In Gibson's 1996 novel, Idoru, large portions of the book takes place in personal cyberspaces. A primary character, Chia, spends almost all of her time listening to music in her virtual room as an avatar. Sound familiar? It should, because it's exactly the roadmap Phil Harrison lined up for the PlayStation Home.

its even more interesting that an author can respond to this sort of thing as soon as its out there.

But as Gully Jimson says, in The Horse's Mouth, "It wasn't the vision I had."

Neither is Second Life.

Chia and her buds build their treehouses in corporate ghost sites. That's the difference. Interstitial. Gotta be interstitial.

Call me when you get it worked out. I'll be on eBay.

you tell em bill. what he means is that chia and her kind would never subscribe to a service that allows her to build her little bunker. its all about hiding out in a little unused section, overlooked.

i happen to believe, though, that this is the first step in realizing his vision. along with the the Wii and the virtual maps like Alpha World being made and awaiting some further enhancements in virtual rality simulations.

we'll get there some day.

discussions

2007-03-16T12:00:00.000-04:00

a painter, a musician and a writer walk into a bar.....

(i'm implied in the picture, since i took it.)

it happens every once in a while and its always at least entertaining. after listening to our divergent philisophical bents, the bartender, while the others were smoking outside, said to me. "you guys are such a strange crew."

no question there.

life's little tests

2007-03-15T14:06:00.001-04:00

people think that life tests only come in giant-sized packages. satan tempting jesus in the garden of gethsemane on the eve of crucifixion types of tests. can i live without this person? will i run into the burning building to save a child? the types of things that alter life's course significantly.

but really there are a bunch of little tests we face every day that go unnoticed. taken together, they involve more life course change then the big ones. they're just more gradual and work with other little ones.

i was sitting in a bar with a friend (surprising, i know).he was just finishing up his beer when he turned to me and said "I'm going to prove to myself that i can come here, have just this one beer and go home"

the bartender was at the other end of the bar, out of earshot.

"that's good," i said. "sometimes you need to do that."

"i just need to know i can"

i was about to reply with something no doubt witty and wise when the bartender dropped another full beer in front of him and walked away. she hadn't heard what we were talking about she didn't know she was part of a test.

he looked down at the beer and then up at me. he didn't take a drink.

"this is it, man" i said. "push the beer away."

"but i didn't ask for it!"

"so what. its still a test of your convictions. you KNOW its a test and we're sitting here right on the balance between passing it or not."

he looked down at his beer again. "i didn't order it but i'm not going to waste it"

"you said to me "i need to prove it to myself". here's your chance."

in a movie there would be a long drawn out pause, filled with poignant close-ups as he wrestled with the decision. but that doens't happen in real life, not often. the moment passed quickly as he took a sip. he said, as i stood up to leave, "i'm not going to waste it"

"its over. the focal point passed. let's not talk about it again."

so what?

2007-03-14T10:46:00.000-04:00

tyra banks had fat people come up on stage and announce "i'm 300 pounds - so what?" i'm all for the anti-social message she's trying to deliver here: "who cares what you think?' but there are some serious health reasons why you should be concerned with weight beyond a certain amount.

tyra of course is helping the food industry with the crap they're shovelling to our children and our more oblivious adults. "i give 3 times more money to the food industry than the person next to me. so what?"

now we're getting some scientific indication that obesity is largely based on diet and not lack of exercise. the article below describes a study being unfunded in the UK that is seeing these results.

thank you tyra for doing your part to increase obesity in this country. "i'm a corporate shill and a whore for my sponsors. so what?"

----------------

BBC NEWS
Obesity study 'needs more funds'
By Adam Brimelow
BBC News, health correspondent

Campaigners want ministers to back a groundbreaking study into childhood obesity which is on the brink of collapse through lack of funding.

The EarlyBird programme in Plymouth has won acclaim after tracking the development of hundreds of children.

Its findings fundamentally challenge the government's strategy to prevent obesity by raising activity levels.

Ministers say there has never been a commitment to long-term funding, as the research budget is stretched.

Researchers taking part in the study, based at Derriford Hospital, are painstakingly mapping the development of more than 300 children from across the social spectrum.

The aim is to find out more about what lies behind diabetes and obesity.

Every year the children are fitted with accelerometers, which record activity over the course of a week.

They are worn around the waist like pedometers, measuring movement ten times a second.

Findings 'startling'

This gives the researchers a comprehensive picture of just how energetic they are - from the moment they get up until time for bed.

The findings are startling. Take two children on the study - both healthy.

Government would very much like to focus on physical activity, don't you think?
Professor Philip James
International Obesity Task Force

Stephanie Chapman, 11, loves long-distance running at a local track with her friends.

She said: "I think it's really good because you can really come on, you've got to do it.

"You can hear them in the distance and when you come back again they're going well done Stephanie! It's really like Wow! I can do this!"

But Chloe Harris, nine, is much more into singing than sports.

"After a while my legs always begin to hurt, and so do my arms, and things, and also they tire me out and I lose my breath quite a lot."

But the researchers have found that when you look at overall activity levels across the week, Chloe does more than Stephanie.

Professor Terence Wilkin, the programme director, said the amount of exercise children get was genetically set, and had nothing to do with access to sports facilities.

"Those children who had little opportunity at school to undertake activity were bouncing around after school whereas those who'd had a lot of opportunity during the course of the school day settled down, and did relatively little," he said.

"The most important thing (was) if you added the in-school activity to the out-of-school activity, they were exactly the same."

That is not the only surprise. Professor Wilkin said children's activity levels had no bearing on their body mass index - their risk of obesity.

"Even looking over a period of years, because we repeat these measures year by year in these children, we have been unable to show any relationship between the physical activity that a child undertakes and his BMI."

Food industry

If true, these findings cast serious doubts on the government's strategy to halt the increase in childhood obesity by the end of the decade, largely by encouraging physical activity.

Professor Wilkin said it was based on unproven prejudice - that today's children do not exercise as much as previous generations.

His work is widely respected and has produced more than 30 papers in peer-reviewed journals.

But despite local donations and private backing the study is in financial crisis, and his team say ministers have refused to meet them.

Professor Philip James, from the International Obesity Task Force, said it was much easier for the government to concentrate on promoting sport rather than taking on the food industry.

"This is the biggest manufacturing sector in the whole of Europe. It's bigger than the defence industry.

"It has enormous political and strategic power. Government would very much like to focus on physical activity, don't you think?"

Budget pressures

Professor James says it is vital that the EarlyBird Study continues its work as the children move on through adolescence.

In a statement the Public Health Minister Caroline Flint said: "Given the immediacy of the target to reduce obesity, the Department's Obesity Programme team is under pressure to identify effective interventions to tackle the problem, and cannot commit its resources to supporting longitudinal studies such as EarlyBird, which lends itself to long-term research funding from a suitable funding body.

"There are huge demands on a finite research and development budget, and most work is funded through competitive tendering exercises."

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/health/6442293.stm

Published: 2007/03/13 06:53:12 GMT

© BBC MMVII

jesus, son of joseph

2007-03-10T12:13:00.001-05:00

i finally got around to watching the documentary about jesus' family tomb. at time it feels like an infomercial, the main people are so bad and they're trying to oversell so much. they would have done better to just stand on the facts: a tomb was uncovered with the names on the caskets (ossuaries) of "jesus, son of joseph", a greek version of "mary", someone called "mariamne mara" (a disciple is named such in the acts of philips) with genetically no relation to the family, one with some weird spelling of "mathew", one with "james, son of joseph" and a child's one incribed with "judah son of jesus".

forget about mariamne possibly being mary magdeline or any of that sensational stuff. these names found in a cave over 2000 years old, all related to what we do know about jesus family (including brothers), i'd say its pretty likely that it is at least supposed to be jesus' tomb.

which leaves you christians with only two possibilities:
1) none of this is true and those crazy jews are at it again
2) it's a forgery dating from shortly after jesus was crucified

yes, some of these are common names but whats the chances of all of these common names being related? i'm on board. if i ever get over there, i will consider the reburial site and the original tomb site (in the middle of an apartment complex) as historical sites.

/.\

sociopaths

2007-03-07T16:45:00.000-05:00

i've come to a realization: i should only hang out with other anti-social people. i've been quietly struggling with that lesson for years. the problem is when extra-social people and anti-social people (i made the first one up, but god damn it, its time) get together, the anti-social one usually becomes EVEN MORE anti-social while the extra-social one ends up running away, eventually, when custom dictates. by that time, they end up disoriented and angry. if only they were anti-social enough to run away as soon as they wanted to.

i'll go into more detail later on what i think anti-social really is. but let me say its basic pre-requisite: not caring how people judge you.

it has nothing to do with going or not going to parties. but the more a party has, the more interesting the party will be.

sociopaths give anti-social people a bad name. more on that later.

---------------

nothing whatsoever to do with the above statement, i present a picture from around twelve hours ago. we're drunk and brandishing fake knives. mine is a retractable one and joe has a knife in his head. its hard to see in the shadowsn.

blindly doing good

2007-03-05T22:15:00.000-05:00

"its the difference between wrong and right.
but Billy said,
Both those words are dead"
VU

five years ago a friend of mine decided she would do a good "blind" deed. really there's nothing worse than blinding doing what you think is a good thing for someone. four years ago, every time we wanted bagels went to the same little bagel cart (one of those boxes on the corner) and she became friends with the muslim woman who worked inside there. she served up a good bagel and was always quick to tell you which ones were fresh or not. you were always assured of a good bagel if you listened to her.

one day she was in a dilemma. the government was taking her kids away from her if she didn't go and prove she was a good mother with some references. so my friend, having NEVER seen those children, what shape they were in, how happy they were, nothing. she signed something saying how great a mother this cart worker was BASED SOLELY ON HER PUTTING BAGELS TOGETHER WELL. boys and girls, slinging bagels (or drinks for that matter) doesn't a good mother make. she could have been feeding those kids paint chips, who knows.

this morning, five years later, i bought some bagels for a business meeting. the woman wasn't there. it was the same cart, the same little trinkets but some man was in her place. i bought a few bagels from him anyway and impuslively i asked

"what happened to the girl who's usually here?"

"my wife? she has to do something with our kids."

five years after my friend did her good, blind, deed it comes back to bite me in the ass: the bagels sucked. they were stale. so much for karma. if they had taken her kids away she would have been there this morning and the business meeting would have gone MUCH better.

now i need to find a backup bagel provider.

-------------

check out joe heaps nelson's contest painting and vote it a 10:
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/showdown/index.php?showpic=2035

check out the other art there too. good stuff.

bright eyes and real boobs

2007-03-03T19:48:00.000-05:00

went to see bright eyes at the bowery ballroom last night. good show. some of the songs were great, particularly the first one, but some of them i could have skipped. that;s how it goes i guess. i drank with oberst once, in a bar in the east village. nice guy, very quiet.

i just got back a few minutes ago from a stip club here in williamsburg. it was a reconnaisance mission to see if it would be fitting to bring some women there later tonight. interesting place, but too much out of the way. i could see the area being a little dangerous for women after midnight. the dancers were all "real" women, which of course has its pros and cons. if you want the perfect-sized, scuplted, fake-boob body look somewhere else. $4 beers and a cute bartender (hotter than any of the dancers) were plusses. and not much harassment. the place is called Pumps.

but no, i wouldn't recommend taking the women.

evolution and ID

2007-02-26T14:38:00.000-05:00

there is a good article in scientific american with the unnecessarily provacative title 15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense. i've been involved in a discussion of evolution versus intelligent design in another forum that's lasted months. the rational ID'ists allow for evolution and whatever else might come about from science by stating that evolution IS the intelligent design. i've yet to talk to anyone in person who had that point of view.

if that's true, it really dossn't belong in a debate about evolutuion in the first place and in no way can replace it. it's like saying intelligent design replaces the theory of gravity. while its true some intelligent deity may have designed gravity, it can't replace it being taught in schools. no one in there right mind would argue that there's no gravity, that god chooses which apples to allow to fall on what scientists' head. one day evolution will be just as accepted.

but in the meantime...

--------------------------------

15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense
Opponents of evolution want to make a place for creationism by tearing down real science, but their arguments don't hold up
By John Rennie

When Charles Darwin introduced the theory of evolution through natural selection 143 years ago, the scientists of the day argued over it fiercely, but the massing evidence from paleontology, genetics, zoology, molecular biology and other fields gradually established evolution's truth beyond reasonable doubt. Today that battle has been won everywhere--except in the public imagination.

Embarrassingly, in the 21st century, in the most scientifically advanced nation the world has ever known, creationists can still persuade politicians, judges and ordinary citizens that evolution is a flawed, poorly supported fantasy. They lobby for creationist ideas such as "intelligent design" to be taught as alternatives to evolution in science classrooms. As this article goes to press, the Ohio Board of Education is debating whether to mandate such a change. Some antievolutionists, such as Philip E. Johnson, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley and author of Darwin on Trial, admit that they intend for intelligent-design theory to serve as a "wedge" for reopening science classrooms to discussions of God.

Besieged teachers and others may increasingly find themselves on the spot to defend evolution and refute creationism. The arguments that creationists use are typically specious and based on misunderstandings of (or outright lies about) evolution, but the number and diversity of the objections can put even well-informed people at a disadvantage.

To help with answering them, the following list rebuts some of the most common "scientific" arguments raised against evolution. It also directs readers to further sources for information and explains why creation science has no place in the classroom.

1. Evolution is only a theory. It is not a fact or a scientific law.

Many people learned in elementary school that a theory falls in the middle of a hierarchy of certainty--above a mere hypothesis but below a law. Scientists do not use the terms that way, however. According to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), a scientific theory is "a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses." No amount of validation changes a theory into a law, which is a descriptive generalization about nature. So when scientists talk about the theory of evolution--or the atomic theory or the theory of relativity, for that matter--they are not expressing reservations about its truth.

Image no longer available. The full versions of this and other articles from the print edition--including all graphics and sidebars--are available for purchase at Scientific American Digital.
GALÁPAGOS FINCHES show adaptive beak shapes.

In addition to the theory of evolution, meaning the idea of descent with modification, one may also speak of the fact of evolution. The NAS defines a fact as "an observation that has been repeatedly confirmed and for all practical purposes is accepted as 'true.'" The fossil record and abundant other evidence testify that organisms have evolved through time. Although no one observed those transformations, the indirect evidence is clear, unambiguous and compelling.

All sciences frequently rely on indirect evidence. Physicists cannot see subatomic particles directly, for instance, so they verify their existence by watching for telltale tracks that the particles leave in cloud chambers. The absence of direct observation does not make physicists' conclusions less certain.

2. Natural selection is based on circular reasoning: the fittest are those who survive, and those who survive are deemed fittest.

"Survival of the fittest" is a conversational way to describe natural selection, but a more technical description speaks of differential rates of survival and reproduction. That is, rather than labeling species as more or less fit, one can describe how many offspring they are likely to leave under given circumstances. Drop a fast-breeding pair of small-beaked finches and a slower-breeding pair of large-beaked finches onto an island full of food seeds. Within a few generations the fast breeders may control more of the food resources. Yet if large beaks more easily crush seeds, the advantage may tip to the slow breeders. In a pioneering study of finches on the Galápagos Islands, Peter R. Grant of Princeton University observed these kinds of population shifts in the wild [see his article "Natural Selection and Darwin's Finches"; Scientific American, October 1991].

The key is that adaptive fitness can be defined without reference to survival: large beaks are better adapted for crushing seeds, irrespective of whether that trait has survival value under the circumstances.

3. Evolution is unscientific, because it is not testable or falsifiable. It makes claims about events that were not observed and can never be re-created.

This blanket dismissal of evolution ignores important distinctions that divide the field into at least two broad areas: microevolution and macroevolution. Microevolution looks at changes within species over time--changes that may be preludes to speciation, the origin of new species. Macroevolution studies how taxonomic groups above the level of species change. Its evidence draws frequently from the fossil record and DNA comparisons to reconstruct how various organisms may be related.
These days even most creationists acknowledge that microevolution has been upheld by tests in the laboratory (as in studies of cells, plants and fruit flies) and in the field (as in Grant's studies of evolving beak shapes among Galápagos finches). Natural selection and other mechanisms--such as chromosomal changes, symbiosis and hybridization--can drive profound changes in populations over time.

The historical nature of macroevolutionary study involves inference from fossils and DNA rather than direct observation. Yet in the historical sciences (which include astronomy, geology and archaeology, as well as evolutionary biology), hypotheses can still be tested by checking whether they accord with physical evidence and whether they lead to verifiable predictions about future discoveries. For instance, evolution implies that between the earliest-known ancestors of humans (roughly five million years old) and the appearance of anatomically modern humans (about 100,000 years ago), one should find a succession of hominid creatures with features progressively less apelike and more modern, which is indeed what the fossil record shows. But one should not--and does not--find modern human fossils embedded in strata from the Jurassic period (144 million years ago). Evolutionary biology routinely makes predictions far more refined and precise than this, and researchers test them constantly.
Evolution could be disproved in other ways, too. If we could document the spontaneous generation of just one complex life-form from inanimate matter, then at least a few creatures seen in the fossil record might have originated this way. If superintelligent aliens appeared and claimed credit for creating life on earth (or even particular species), the purely evolutionary explanation would be cast in doubt. But no one has yet produced such evidence.

It should be noted that the idea of falsifiability as the defining characteristic of science originated with philosopher Karl Popper in the 1930s. More recent elaborations on his thinking have expanded the narrowest interpretation of his principle precisely because it would eliminate too many branches of clearly scientific endeavor.

4. Increasingly, scientists doubt the truth of evolution.

No evidence suggests that evolution is losing adherents. Pick up any issue of a peer-reviewed biological journal, and you will find articles that support and extend evolutionary studies or that embrace evolution as a fundamental concept.

Conversely, serious scientific publications disputing evolution are all but nonexistent. In the mid-1990s George W. Gilchrist of the University of Washington surveyed thousands of journals in the primary literature, seeking articles on intelligent design or creation science. Among those hundreds of thousands of scientific reports, he found none. In the past two years, surveys done independently by Barbara Forrest of Southeastern Louisiana University and Lawrence M. Krauss of Case Western Reserve University have been similarly fruitless.

Creationists retort that a closed-minded scientific community rejects their evidence. Yet according to the editors of Nature, Science and other leading journals, few antievolution manuscripts are even submitted. Some antievolution authors have published papers in serious journals. Those papers, however, rarely attack evolution directly or advance creationist arguments; at best, they identify certain evolutionary problems as unsolved and difficult (which no one disputes). In short, creationists are not giving the scientific world good reason to take them seriously.

5. The disagreements among even evolutionary biologists show how little solid science supports evolution.

Evolutionary biologists passionately debate diverse topics: how speciation happens, the rates of evolutionary change, the ancestral relationships of birds and dinosaurs, whether Neandertals were a species apart from modern humans, and much more. These disputes are like those found in all other branches of science. Acceptance of evolution as a factual occurrence and a guiding principle is nonetheless universal in biology.

Unfortunately, dishonest creationists have shown a willingness to take scientists' comments out of context to exaggerate and distort the disagreements. Anyone acquainted with the works of paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard University knows that in addition to co-authoring the punctuated-equilibrium model, Gould was one of the most eloquent defenders and articulators of evolution. (Punctuated equilibrium explains patterns in the fossil record by suggesting that most evolutionary changes occur within geologically brief intervals--which may nonetheless amount to hundreds of generations.) Yet creationists delight in dissecting out phrases from Gould's voluminous prose to make him sound as though he had doubted evolution, and they present punctuated equilibrium as though it allows new species to materialize overnight or birds to be born from reptile eggs.

When confronted with a quotation from a scientific authority that seems to question evolution, insist on seeing the statement in context. Almost invariably, the attack on evolution will prove illusory.

6. If humans descended from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?

This surprisingly common argument reflects several levels of ignorance about evolution. The first mistake is that evolution does not teach that humans descended from monkeys; it states that both have a common ancestor.

The deeper error is that this objection is tantamount to asking, "If children descended from adults, why are there still adults?" New species evolve by splintering off from established ones, when populations of organisms become isolated from the main branch of their family and acquire sufficient differences to remain forever distinct. The parent species may survive indefinitely thereafter, or it may become extinct.

7. Evolution cannot explain how life first appeared on earth.

The origin of life remains very much a mystery, but biochemists have learned about how primitive nucleic acids, amino acids and other building blocks of life could have formed and organized themselves into self-replicating, self-sustaining units, laying the foundation for cellular biochemistry. Astrochemical analyses hint that quantities of these compounds might have originated in space and fallen to earth in comets, a scenario that may solve the problem of how those constituents arose under the conditions that prevailed when our planet was young.

Creationists sometimes try to invalidate all of evolution by pointing to science's current inability to explain the origin of life. But even if life on earth turned out to have a nonevolutionary origin (for instance, if aliens introduced the first cells billions of years ago), evolution since then would be robustly confirmed by countless microevolutionary and macroevolutionary studies.

8. Mathematically, it is inconceivable that anything as complex as a protein, let alone a living cell or a human, could spring up by chance.

Chance plays a part in evolution (for example, in the random mutations that can give rise to new traits), but evolution does not depend on chance to create organisms, proteins or other entities. Quite the opposite: natural selection, the principal known mechanism of evolution, harnesses nonrandom change by preserving "desirable" (adaptive) features and eliminating "undesirable" (nonadaptive) ones. As long as the forces of selection stay constant, natural selection can push evolution in one direction and produce sophisticated structures in surprisingly short times.

As an analogy, consider the 13-letter sequence "TOBEORNOTTOBE." Those hypothetical million monkeys, each pecking out one phrase a second, could take as long as 78,800 years to find it among the 2613 sequences of that length. But in the 1980s Richard Hardison of Glendale College wrote a computer program that generated phrases randomly while preserving the positions of individual letters that happened to be correctly placed (in effect, selecting for phrases more like Hamlet's). On average, the program re-created the phrase in just 336 iterations, less than 90 seconds. Even more amazing, it could reconstruct Shakespeare's entire play in just four and a half days.

9. The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that systems must become more disordered over time. Living cells therefore could not have evolved from inanimate chemicals, and multicellular life could not have evolved from protozoa.

This argument derives from a misunderstanding of the Second Law. If it were valid, mineral crystals and snowflakes would also be impossible, because they, too, are complex structures that form spontaneously from disordered parts.

The Second Law actually states that the total entropy of a closed system (one that no energy or matter leaves or enters) cannot decrease. Entropy is a physical concept often casually described as disorder, but it differs significantly from the conversational use of the word.

More important, however, the Second Law permits parts of a system to decrease in entropy as long as other parts experience an offsetting increase. Thus, our planet as a whole can grow more complex because the sun pours heat and light onto it, and the greater entropy associated with the sun's nuclear fusion more than rebalances the scales. Simple organisms can fuel their rise toward complexity by consuming other forms of life and nonliving materials.

10. Mutations are essential to evolution theory, but mutations can only eliminate traits. They cannot produce new features.

CLOSE-UP of a bacterial flagellum.

On the contrary, biology has catalogued many traits produced by point mutations (changes at precise positions in an organism's DNA)--bacterial resistance to antibiotics, for example.

Mutations that arise in the homeobox (Hox) family of development-regulating genes in animals can also have complex effects. Hox genes direct where legs, wings, antennae and body segments should grow. In fruit flies, for instance, the mutation called Antennapedia causes legs to sprout where antennae should grow. These abnormal limbs are not functional, but their existence demonstrates that genetic mistakes can produce complex structures, which natural selection can then test for possible uses.

Moreover, molecular biology has discovered mechanisms for genetic change that go beyond point mutations, and these expand the ways in which new traits can appear. Functional modules within genes can be spliced together in novel ways. Whole genes can be accidentally duplicated in an organism's DNA, and the duplicates are free to mutate into genes for new, complex features. Comparisons of the DNA from a wide variety of organisms indicate that this is how the globin family of blood proteins evolved over millions of years.

11. Natural selection might explain microevolution, but it cannot explain the origin of new species and higher orders of life.

Evolutionary biologists have written extensively about how natural selection could produce new species. For instance, in the model called allopatry, developed by Ernst Mayr of Harvard University, if a population of organisms were isolated from the rest of its species by geographical boundaries, it might be subjected to different selective pressures. Changes would accumulate in the isolated population. If those changes became so significant that the splinter group could not or routinely would not breed with the original stock, then the splinter group would be reproductively isolated and on its way toward becoming a new species.

Natural selection is the best studied of the evolutionary mechanisms, but biologists are open to other possibilities as well. Biologists are constantly assessing the potential of unusual genetic mechanisms for causing speciation or for producing complex features in organisms. Lynn Margulis of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and others have persuasively argued that some cellular organelles, such as the energy-generating mitochondria, evolved through the symbiotic merger of ancient organisms. Thus, science welcomes the possibility of evolution resulting from forces beyond natural selection. Yet those forces must be natural; they cannot be attributed to the actions of mysterious creative intelligences whose existence, in scientific terms, is unproved.

12. Nobody has ever seen a new species evolve.

Speciation is probably fairly rare and in many cases might take centuries. Furthermore, recognizing a new species during a formative stage can be difficult, because biologists sometimes disagree about how best to define a species. The most widely used definition, Mayr's Biological Species Concept, recognizes a species as a distinct community of reproductively isolated populations--sets of organisms that normally do not or cannot breed outside their community. In practice, this standard can be difficult to apply to organisms isolated by distance or terrain or to plants (and, of course, fossils do not breed). Biologists therefore usually use organisms' physical and behavioral traits as clues to their species membership.

Nevertheless, the scientific literature does contain reports of apparent speciation events in plants, insects and worms. In most of these experiments, researchers subjected organisms to various types of selection--for anatomical differences, mating behaviors, habitat preferences and other traits--and found that they had created populations of organisms that did not breed with outsiders. For example, William R. Rice of the University of New Mexico and George W. Salt of the University of California at Davis demonstrated that if they sorted a group of fruit flies by their preference for certain environments and bred those flies separately over 35 generations, the resulting flies would refuse to breed with those from a very different environment.

13. Evolutionists cannot point to any transitional fossils--creatures that are half reptile and half bird, for instance.

Actually, paleontologists know of many detailed examples of fossils intermediate in form between various taxonomic groups. One of the most famous fossils of all time is Archaeopteryx, which combines feathers and skeletal structures peculiar to birds with features of dinosaurs. A flock's worth of other feathered fossil species, some more avian and some less, has also been found. A sequence of fossils spans the evolution of modern horses from the tiny Eohippus. Whales had four-legged ancestors that walked on land, and creatures known as Ambulocetus and Rodhocetus helped to make that transition [see "The Mammals That Conquered the Seas," by Kate Wong; Scientific American, May]. Fossil seashells trace the evolution of various mollusks through millions of years. Perhaps 20 or more hominids (not all of them our ancestors) fill the gap between Lucy the australopithecine and modern humans.

Creationists, though, dismiss these fossil studies. They argue that Archaeopteryx is not a missing link between reptiles and birds--it is just an extinct bird with reptilian features. They want evolutionists to produce a weird, chimeric monster that cannot be classified as belonging to any known group. Even if a creationist does accept a fossil as transitional between two species, he or she may then insist on seeing other fossils intermediate between it and the first two. These frustrating requests can proceed ad infinitum and place an unreasonable burden on the always incomplete fossil record.

Nevertheless, evolutionists can cite further supportive evidence from molecular biology. All organisms share most of the same genes, but as evolution predicts, the structures of these genes and their products diverge among species, in keeping with their evolutionary relationships. Geneticists speak of the "molecular clock" that records the passage of time. These molecular data also show how various organisms are transitional within evolution.

14. Living things have fantastically intricate features--at the anatomical, cellular and molecular levels--that could not function if they were any less complex or sophisticated. The only prudent conclusion is that they are the products of intelligent design, not evolution.

This "argument from design" is the backbone of most recent attacks on evolution, but it is also one of the oldest. In 1802 theologian William Paley wrote that if one finds a pocket watch in a field, the most reasonable conclusion is that someone dropped it, not that natural forces created it there. By analogy, Paley argued, the complex structures of living things must be the handiwork of direct, divine invention. Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species as an answer to Paley: he explained how natural forces of selection, acting on inherited features, could gradually shape the evolution of ornate organic structures.

Generations of creationists have tried to counter Darwin by citing the example of the eye as a structure that could not have evolved. The eye's ability to provide vision depends on the perfect arrangement of its parts, these critics say. Natural selection could thus never favor the transitional forms needed during the eye's evolution--what good is half an eye? Anticipating this criticism, Darwin suggested that even "incomplete" eyes might confer benefits (such as helping creatures orient toward light) and thereby survive for further evolutionary refinement. Biology has vindicated Darwin: researchers have identified primitive eyes and light-sensing organs throughout the animal kingdom and have even tracked the evolutionary history of eyes through comparative genetics. (It now appears that in various families of organisms, eyes have evolved independently.)
Today's intelligent-design advocates are more sophisticated than their predecessors, but their arguments and goals are not fundamentally different. They criticize evolution by trying to demonstrate that it could not account for life as we know it and then insist that the only tenable alternative is that life was designed by an unidentified intelligence.

15. Recent discoveries prove that even at the microscopic level, life has a quality of complexity that could not have come about through evolution.

"Irreducible complexity" is the battle cry of Michael J. Behe of Lehigh University, author of Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution. As a household example of irreducible complexity, Behe chooses the mousetrap--a machine that could not function if any of its pieces were missing and whose pieces have no value except as parts of the whole. What is true of the mousetrap, he says, is even truer of the bacterial flagellum, a whiplike cellular organelle used for propulsion that operates like an outboard motor. The proteins that make up a flagellum are uncannily arranged into motor components, a universal joint and other structures like those that a human engineer might specify. The possibility that this intricate array could have arisen through evolutionary modification is virtually nil, Behe argues, and that bespeaks intelligent design. He makes similar points about the blood's clotting mechanism and other molecular systems.

Yet evolutionary biologists have answers to these objections. First, there exist flagellae with forms simpler than the one that Behe cites, so it is not necessary for all those components to be present for a flagellum to work. The sophisticated components of this flagellum all have precedents elsewhere in nature, as described by Kenneth R. Miller of Brown University and others. In fact, the entire flagellum assembly is extremely similar to an organelle that Yersinia pestis, the bubonic plague bacterium, uses to inject toxins into cells.

The key is that the flagellum's component structures, which Behe suggests have no value apart from their role in propulsion, can serve multiple functions that would have helped favor their evolution. The final evolution of the flagellum might then have involved only the novel recombination of sophisticated parts that initially evolved for other purposes. Similarly, the blood-clotting system seems to involve the modification and elaboration of proteins that were originally used in digestion, according to studies by Russell F. Doolittle of the University of California at San Diego. So some of the complexity that Behe calls proof of intelligent design is not irreducible at all.

Complexity of a different kind--"specified complexity"--is the cornerstone of the intelligent-design arguments of William A. Dembski of Baylor University in his books The Design Inference and No Free Lunch. Essentially his argument is that living things are complex in a way that undirected, random processes could never produce. The only logical conclusion, Dembski asserts, in an echo of Paley 200 years ago, is that some superhuman intelligence created and shaped life.

Dembski's argument contains several holes. It is wrong to insinuate that the field of explanations consists only of random processes or designing intelligences. Researchers into nonlinear systems and cellular automata at the Santa Fe Institute and elsewhere have demonstrated that simple, undirected processes can yield extraordinarily complex patterns. Some of the complexity seen in organisms may therefore emerge through natural phenomena that we as yet barely understand. But that is far different from saying that the complexity could not have arisen naturally.

"Creation science" is a contradiction in terms. A central tenet of modern science is methodological naturalism--it seeks to explain the universe purely in terms of observed or testable natural mechanisms. Thus, physics describes the atomic nucleus with specific concepts governing matter and energy, and it tests those descriptions experimentally. Physicists introduce new particles, such as quarks, to flesh out their theories only when data show that the previous descriptions cannot adequately explain observed phenomena. The new particles do not have arbitrary properties, moreover--their definitions are tightly constrained, because the new particles must fit within the existing framework of physics.
..>..>
Image no longer available. The full versions of this and other articles from the print edition--including all graphics and sidebars--are available for purchase at Scientific American Digital.
A broadcast version of this article will air June 26 on National Geographic Today, a program on the National Geographic Channel. Please check your local listings
In contrast, intelligent-design theorists invoke shadowy entities that conveniently have whatever unconstrained abilities are needed to solve the mystery at hand. Rather than expanding scientific inquiry, such answers shut it down. (How does one disprove the existence of omnipotent intelligences?)

Intelligent design offers few answers. For instance, when and how did a designing intelligence intervene in life's history? By creating the first DNA? The first cell? The first human? Was every species designed, or just a few early ones? Proponents of intelligent-design theory frequently decline to be pinned down on these points. They do not even make real attempts to reconcile their disparate ideas about intelligent design. Instead they pursue argument by exclusion--that is, they belittle evolutionary explanations as far-fetched or incomplete and then imply that only design-based alternatives remain.

Logically, this is misleading: even if one naturalistic explanation is flawed, it does not mean that all are. Moreover, it does not make one intelligent-design theory more reasonable than another. Listeners are essentially left to fill in the blanks for themselves, and some will undoubtedly do so by substituting their religious beliefs for scientific ideas.

Time and again, science has shown that methodological naturalism can push back ignorance, finding increasingly detailed and informative answers to mysteries that once seemed impenetrable: the nature of light, the causes of disease, how the brain works. Evolution is doing the same with the riddle of how the living world took shape. Creationism, by any name, adds nothing of intellectual value to the effort.
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MORE TO EXPLORE:
Other resources for defending evolution

tuesdays

2007-02-14T12:00:00.000-05:00

last week i reported gettng slapped by lesbians, last night i was punched by a gay iraq war veteran. i really have no excuse for why i didn't fight the guy after that. he'd been going down the bar the whole night begging people to fight him. he even tried to pick a fight with a large black woman who claimed i stole her chair.

but i didn't fight back. i just stopped the blood dripping from my lip and i told him "i won't fight you, you punch like a pussy. what's the point?" that seemed to diffuse things and he apologized. it was seconds later that he was ejected from the bar. really what IS the point fighting someone who wants badly to fight? its some sort of repressed homoerotic thing (even though he was earnestly out of the closet).

and i've been content lately. it sucks. need to get an edge back.

a british man sat down next to me after the guy was thrown out.

"i don't think its homosexual repression."
"really? why not?"
"he admitted to having sex with men."
"that doesn't mean there isn't anything to repress."
"yeah, but that's a pretty big step"
"true, but there still might be some unadmitted sexual fetish stuff. just like if you're an admitted heterosexual you still might be masking that fact that you need pain to get off. i'm sure it happens on both sides of the spectrum."

i'm sitting here drinknig coffee, eating a bagel and wondering myself why i didn't fight.

at least my lip isn't swollen. it IS valentine's day, after all. hope everyone has a good one.

screenings

2007-02-10T10:40:00.000-05:00

last night i went to what sounds like the longest screening in the world (if you go by the flyers the film maker put up):

10 weeks
10 movies
a Retrospective.

sounds like 20 hours of viewing.

i think he should have added, at the end, (60 minutes).

it was great, much better than i expected. you can see the whole series of ten at the site amplecatnap.com. i avoided watching them online even though they've been up for weeks. i hate the low resolution quality restrictions of any online video.

the film maker, michael, played me in a movie once and we're planning filming a "making of" documentary of the 10 movies in 10 weeks (running time currently 10 seconds) with me playing HIM for a change, bringing it full fucking circle. we may film a reproduction of the screening last night where he can again play me.

his reaction to the idea? running off and hyperventilating. i think i can pull it off though.

at my feet

2007-01-08T00:29:00.001-05:00

we left the bar in the pouring rain. there were six of us and the cab could only fit five and even that, snugly. so i opted to walk in the rain. i don't mind. it's refreshing and after a certain level of wetness, you don't really get any wetter. simple saturation.

i was at that saturation point and two blocks away from the subway stop when a cab pulled up right in front of me. the door opened and a girl climbed out. late twenties, dark hair; cute. she took one step and as the cab pulled away she fell on her face on the slippery sidewalk right in front of me.

are you ok? its not every day a beautiful woman falls at my feet.

she looked up at me, smiling. where have you been?

what? i know i've never met her before.

i mean, where have you been all my life. uh, hi.

ah, she was drunk. where are you going? i'll walk you home. grab my arm.

she did and hesitated for a second, staring up at me with glazed eyes, the rain beating down on us both. she glanced up in the rain, looked up 1st avenue and sighed.

i'm... i live right here. i'm going home. she motioned to a dirty little doorway to our right.

we both hesitated there for a second in the rain, looking at each other, smiling. i definately would have forged ahead but she was drunk. so we just said our goodbyes, and let a fleeting moment in the rain run its course. i made sure she got inside the outer door at least.

i was still smiling walking down the steps into the subway.

soft core cheese

2007-01-07T20:31:00.001-05:00

i don't know, i'm trying to watch this apocalypto and all i see is a bunch of actresses tits-out running around dressed like natives. and hey, on that level, i like it.

i just wish i could shut off the subtitles.

but seriously, best foreign language? come on.....

------------

http://www.newswire.co.nz/main/viewstory.aspx?storyid=353767&catid=3008

Gibson Film Causes Ratings Rethink

..
Italy may change the way films are rated after its cinema review board ruled that Mel Gibson's graphic epic Apocalypto was suitable for all ages.

A consumer group has begun a legal attempt to change the certificate so under-14s do not see its violence.

Culture minister Francesco Rutelli said he would look on Monday at the current system, which was "now 45-years-old and no longer suited to current times".

Apocalypto depicts the decline of a Mayan kingdom and features violent scenes of human sacrifice.

Censors in the United Kingdom have rated the film 18 and countries including Germany, Poland and Hungary have also considered it unsuitable for those aged 17 and below. Viewers in France must be at least 12.

The film entered the North American box office chart at number one and has earned a Golden Globe nomination for best foreign-language film.

meeting gerold ford

2007-01-05T19:22:00.001-05:00

one day years ago i met gerald ford. now that the old bugger is dead, i can tell this story. seemed like he was already dead back then.....

it was in a little bodega type store in a building on park avenue. every morning i'd stop in and get some coffee, maybe a bagel. there was a midget that worked there (still does) behind the counter standing on boxes stacked two high so he could reach the keys. he was iranian or something, some muslim midget safely pre-911.

he never said much. but when you put your stuff up on the counter he'd look it over, add it all up and say "that's it?". it didn't matter if you had 1 thing or 10, he'd always say it and it sounded like "eet" in his muslim accent.

i never did find out if he was retarded or just uncommunicative. no one ever really answered the guy. i never saw anyone reach into his pocket and say "oh yeah, this too" after getting asked but it never stopped him.

one day i saw him dressed in a little tuxedo carrying flowers after the place was closed.

so anyway, on that particular day some bigshot real-estate guy (rudin i think) had died and somewhere on the penthouse floor they were having a wake. a lot of bigshots were wandering around.

i was picking out the bagel i was going to have when i see a skittish frat-boy type come in wearing sunglasses, dark clothes and a military haircut holding something against his ear. he rushes straight to the back of the store, the far corner, after glancing quickly at me.

the midget disappeared from view. he popped up on another set of boxes further along the counter, trying to see what the guy was doing. but then two more of them came in, looking identical, confusing the hell out of the midget. he looked at me, eyes narrowed, and i just shrugged, turning back to my bagel.

then some old man shuffled in. tall and slow moving. he very slowly made his way over to the gum. i recognized him but i'm sure the midget hadn't. it was president ford. he was very close to the gum rack, looking around for that special one i guess, almost blind and near-death.

i finally picked out my bagel just as ford has chosen his gum and got in line behind him. president ford placed his little pack of chewing gum on the counter.

the midget picked it up, looked for the price and said "that's eet?"

ford looked at him, looked down at the boxes he was standing on, back up to his face and said "yes, son, that is indeed it."

the road

2007-01-04T21:52:00.000-05:00

in the middle of reading cormac mcarthy's the road. great book, good solid sparse writing. its enoughto interrrupt my working to keep going back to it. blood median was good, but this is better.

the beginning was a little trying but once it starts running, you won't put it down.

i haven't finished it, but really it doesn't matter. anyone writing should read this book.

the new year

2007-01-01T09:34:00.001-05:00

ever since i posted asking for "new" ideas for new years eve, and the responses started gfetting just worse and worse, i knew i just wanted to do nothing this year. over the last few days i knew i didn't want to go to a party and i knew i didn't want any over-priced club-y type place especially with the extended weekend crowd wandering the streets.

the introspective mood that i value for writing, the non-communicative, inward looking (some might say brooding) non-social attitude that helps me stay focused to write doesn't make for a particularly good party guest.

so i had dinner over a good friend's house, which i think is a great way to ring in the new year. then i had to meet up with another friend for a promised drink since i wasn't going to her party.

but what happened was a party sort of sprouted around the dinner and before i knew it, a little bit before midnight, i found myself at a full new years eve party.

my attitude hadn't changed, and too my quality as a guest, though....

if he had said to me "come over my house we're having 20 people over for new years eve" i would have bowed out. just like i did with a couple other ones. they were nice, creative people, for the most part. it was a nice time. i just wish i'd been in a more party mood to meet them all.

i probably should have gotten drunker....

been too long

2006-12-05T21:11:00.000-05:00

i was sitting down, drinking some tea tonight. just chillin, with a friend, meeting new people, telling stories. it's been way too long since i did that last, just relaxed over a cup of tea or coffee. lately, if i've been in a cafe its been to write. i think i'm going to force myself to do it more often.

i went through a period, couple years ago, when i was trying to get up a nice collection of pink floyd bootlegs. on some music forums, i'd do a search to see if anyone had anything i didn't have. one day i came across someone's post bemoaning the loss of his copy of mono mix piper at the gates of dawn, which i have. so i sent a copy to him.

tonight, when he introudced himself, i realized he was sitting across from me.

back to work....

bar chatter

2006-11-29T10:33:00.001-05:00

some loser in the bar yesterday, paniced when the police were outside and went in the bathroom to finish off his coke. when he came back out he thought one of the people sitting at the bar was takling about him. with his coke-balls he tried to shit-talk.

as we all know, those who talk don't do. but one funny thing came out of it all.

coked up loser: what the fuck were you saying about me?
patron: you're being belligerent now
coked up lsoer: belligerent?!? i speak english very well!

you can't write that shit.

i am a sex addict

2006-11-29T10:29:00.000-05:00

well, it's true. but then again aren't all men? but really i'm telling you to rent or (preferably) buy the movie I am a Sex Addict.

it's a highly truthful, autobiographical and troubling look at a man's sexual history, the women he's hurt, prosititutes, porn stars - this movie has everything. director/writer/star Caveh Zahedi is very brave to put this out and a lot of people are probably going to think it's not true.

in the meantime, while you're waiting for your copy to arrive, read a great interview with zehedi here.

casino royale review

2006-11-18T05:22:00.000-05:00

let me start by saying i'm a big fan of the original james bond books. on her majesty's secret service was the closest one to the book in the series, though from russia with love is pretty close.

the books had a few things the movies never dealt with. in particular character development and (semi) believability. at least i was able to suspend my disbelief reading them. i was young when i read the books, back in the days before video cassette recorders and some of them i read even before there was an HBO. hard as it is to believe now, i read some of the books before i'd seen the movies based on them.

i really started to dislike the james bond movies with diamonds are forever and didn't like much about them again until pierce brosnan. even those later movies were only marginally better because brosnan was a better james bond.

my prior list of james bond favorite actors:

george lazanby
sean connery
pierce brosnan
timothy dalton
roger moore
(woody allen)
barry nelson (last only because he's americanized)

oh, straight to the point already: this was the best james bond movie in a long time and craig is the best bond.

it followed very closely the book and only added stuff to it (mostly in the beginning). still some ridiculous stunt-type action sequences, of course, but they were still entertaining and edge-of-your-seat suspenseful.

bond in this one is a killer; dark, arrogant, edgy and angry. he just gotten his 00 status and he's out to break it in.

the girl is the best bond girl in the history of the movies as well. sexy, smart, believable. of course the main woman in the book was designed to be less fanciful: she's an accountant that works for the service. but you can believe she's a woman that a younger, less mature bond would fall in love with. in fact all the women (and the sex scenes) in this movie are pretty hot. well, all except M. lol.

the villains are all great too.

this is a total reboot of the james bond series and a welcome one. we learn about a lot of bond's motivation in future adventures. he gets his 007 status, his car, his drink (plus the reason he always drinks it) and his hatred of women in this movie. i've read reviews saying this is a more politcally correct, less mysoginistic bond but they're missing the point. this movie explains WHY bond is like he is. it takes place in a world before he becomes that way. his last line to M goes a long way to explaining it.

the good: best characterization, most believable bond-girl, simpler storyline.

the bad: the title sequence sucked so bad i worried about the movie. at two and a half hours, it seemed to drag on a little at times. people will think its ended three times before it really does. could be an advertisement for cell phones - incessant use of cell phones and text messaging, enough to pull me out of the movie at times. ridiculous action sequences, and the poison scene was laughable.

the only cop out i could see was that they cut down a bit on the torture sequence. it takes him a long time to recover from it but the last we see he's being his usual, witty self just before the torture ends. it was uncomfortable enough, as a man, believe me, but just a hint of time passing would have been enough.

it was a fun movie. go see it.

2006-11-10T15:45:00.000-05:00

amidst all the changes taking place in congress with a deomcrat win, one in particular shuold stand out for people reading this.

its' f rom the article What the Deomcrats' Win means for Tech.

the good news:

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat set to be the next House Majority Leader, has also been a strong supporter of more Net neutrality regulations. Pelosi said in June that "without Net Neutrality, the current experience that Internet users enjoy today is in jeopardy."

but in terms of policy, it could down to subcommittees:

One question worrying Washington insiders is who will be the next chairman of key subcommittees, such as one dealing with writing copyright laws.

[...]

If Boucher gets the nod as chairman, a broadcast flag becomes far less likely and changes to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's "anti-circumvention" sections become politically feasible. "He would be a big boost to our efforts to allow innovation to develop," said Art Brodsky of Public Knowledge, an advocacy group that has opposed content providers on many digital copyright bills.

If Rep. Howard Berman, however, gets the job, the recording industry and motion picture industry will have a staunch ally as subcommittee chairman. Berman, a Hollywood Democrat, has sponsored legislation in the past that would let copyright holders legally hack into peer-to-peer networks. (Berman currently is the subcommittee's top Democrat, but there's speculation that he'd take a different chairmanship.)

i'm really on the fence abuot this one. i'm not one for peer-to-peer networks. i think it's slow and too many unknowns involved. but i really don't like the idea of a broadcast flag. i'd be all for keeping pirated stuff more underground (i'll still be able to get it) but the flag isn't a good idea, imo. it'll make it more difficult to, for example, distribute a movie in HD on your own.

now is a good time to hit up your local democrat house representative abuot the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property. make your voices heard. stop the broadcast flag.

the senate too!

2006-11-08T23:03:00.001-05:00

that's it. the senate has changed as well. allen is reported to have graciously not wanted to drag this out. he's probably just as fed up with the republicans as the rest of america.

the house, the senate, a majority of governors and, trailing on these wins, a bunch of local governments all wins for democrats.

if pelosi was being truthful about transparancy, the senate should follow suit. let's have a totally transparent congress. that;s what we need now. let's see the republicans try and fight that issue. search in the corners and get out in the open every brewing scandal that's been kept hidden for the last few years. every foly and every delay needs to be routed out.

i've been celebrating with a few close friends tonight. my republican friends, some of them at least, have shown their heads and they've all, to a one, claimed its what they wanted. they ALL wanted the republicans to lose, apparently. some of them are claiming that only liberal republicans have lost, despite the likes of santorum, one of the most conservative republicans, losing. arnold is basically running on a democrat platform or he would have lost as well. i know for a lot of them its just defense mechanism kicking in and they can be excused.

the republicans now have to choose their path now: either continue be a party of the religious right or be a conservative party again and get back to conservative principles.

it's been a great day.

hell yeah!

2006-11-08T08:08:00.001-05:00

it was a nice thing to wake up to: republicans all across the country on all levels of government, have suffered defeats.state legislators, governorships, the house of representatives and at least a severely divided senate. if the republicans keep control of the senate, we'll see why we really need the fillibuster now.

interesting that some local bills have also been affected, like the south dakota abortion ban repeal.

i can't wait to see how they try to spin this.

there's definately a clear message for bush here: GET US OUT OF IRAQ

now the democrats just have to stay together and focused. i'd like to immediately see some corruption reform.

small victories

2006-11-07T23:30:00.001-05:00

even though the results are just coming in, and the end result is still up in the air, there are a couple of unexpected things (at least to me) to be happy about tonight: Ohio has a new governor out to clean up the corruption and santorum from pennsylvania is OUT. crist in florida, if he wins, will be becuase he refused to show up with the bushes.

i'm exhausted and going to bed early. we'll see what tomorrow brings.