That Scott Adams is such a card

Did you see this Dilbert strip?

http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/2009-05-10/

I laughed uproariously, then got seriously depressed. Then laughed again. Then moped again. Thanks, Dad, for sending this to me and ruining my day.

On the plus side: garden car!

Oh boy! Jury duty!

First things first: Mr. T just had jury duty as well!

Next things next: Last week, through this past Monday, I had jury duty on an attempted murder case. I was only a juror alternate, which meant I couldn't sit in the room with the deliberating jury, but I agreed with their verdict of Not Guilty -- there simply wasn't enough evidence. Crazy thing? The verdict was decided in TWENTY MINUTES. Now, that's what I call efficient. Crazy, but efficient.

To quote from an email I just sent about this: I learned a lot about

- LA gangs (I won't mention any in particular, because I don't want to get shot)

- LA gang graffiti ("NELA" = "Northeast LA", for example. It's also popular to spray your "E"s as backward "3"s)

- LA gang clothing (if you see young guys in LA wearing sports jerseys with T logos on them, be they for the Texas Rangers or other, walk away VERY QUICKLY)

- GSR tests (GSR = Gun Shot Residue. Apparently the test is BS once a person washes their hands.)

Also, when a threatening, gang-type person asks you "Where you from?", they really mean "What's your gang?" and will most likely shoot you if you give a wrong answer.

Ha ha! Isn't Los Angeles exciting and dynamic?

raging against the machine only works if the machine can be disassembled

The Big Takeover, by Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone Magazine (April 2, 2009 issue).

In eight pages, Matt Taibbi explains what I've felt in my bones but couldn't articulate for months, mainly because I didn't have all the details spelled out for me until now.

I've had people tell me our government is a joke, a shill for the finance megacorporations which truly control us. I figured that just meant purchasing a few lobbyists, which I actually think is okay -- congresspeople can always choose to ignore them -- but now that I know the true scope of things (if Taibbi can be believed), I want to hide under my bed in the fetal position waiting for Armageddon.

Gordon Gecko, Wall Street: "The richest one percent of this country owns half our country's wealth, five trillion dollars. One third of that comes from hard work, two thirds comes from inheritance, interest on interest accumulating to widows and idiot sons and what I do, stock and real estate speculation. It's bullshit. You got ninety percent of the American public out there with little or no net worth. I create nothing. I own. We make the rules, pal. The news, war, peace, famine, upheaval, the price per paper clip. We pick that rabbit out of the hat while everybody sits out there wondering how the hell we did it. Now you're not naive enough to think we're living in a democracy, are you buddy? It's the free market. And you're a part of it."

It's not just posturing, the governmental power which Wall Street owns is real. They install their own (e.g. Paulson, Geithner) in our government, in order for Wall Street to be 'regulated' by its palsy-walsy brethren, but I wasn't aware of the true powerlessness of our nation until now. And AIG didn't even have a CFO or Chief Risk-Assessment Officer during the worst of this shitstorm!

Truly, we are in the grip of the world's most frat-boyish gang of thugs:

The bonuses are a nice comic touch highlighting one of the more outrageous tangents of the bailout age, namely the fact that, even with the planet in flames, some members of the Wall Street class can't even get used to the tragedy of having to fly coach. "These people need their trips to Baja, their spa treatments, their hand jobs," says an official involved in the AIG bailout, a serious look on his face, apparently not even half-kidding. "They don't function well without them."

None of this is terribly surprising, and I'm equally furious that we live in a civilization where this sort of thing is -- well, unsurprising. It's all like a "Simpsons" episode gone especially mad. I haven't been this angry since I last watched The Corporation.

Geithner is a joke.

The Treasury Dept., and specifically the Office of Thrift Supervision, is a joke.

The Glass-Steagall Act (the second one) is a joke, thanks to Senator Gramm, Representative Leach, and Representative Bliley. (Tangent: Gramm's wife was on the board of directors for Enron, but Leach supported legislation regarding the use of soy ink by the federal government -- plus he's pro-choice and in favor of stem cell research. How did someone like Leach get mixed up in all this?)

The Fed rules our world in order to benefit a few hundred financial assholes who own us, and they don't have to answer to anybody, least of all Congress.

Silly me! I actually believed that crap like 'voting' and 'paying taxes' meant something to the future of this republic!

This reminds me of one of my all-time favorite comic strips:



I need to go punch holes in some walls now, and then run through the streets shrieking about how soylent green is people. That, or I'll be getting some groceries at Trader Joe's; I'm far easier to soothe when I'm chock full of lunch and have a stocked fridge.

BASTARDS BASTARDS BASTARDS. AND THERE'S NOTHING WE CAN DO TO CHANGE THIS. Geithner will never chop up companies like AIG to make them more manageable. There will be no legislation passed with any real regulatory teeth. We're all either Gordon Gecko, or we're slaves to a system which is not built to help us.

INSERT FORMLESS SCREAM HERE.

dancing about architecture

Thanks to Parlophone, and to Jamie for pointing me in the right direction. Bonus: I now understand the term "jackanory."

Because it's wreckable, alright? [a YouTube essay]

Are we ruled by an oligarchy of banks? Is our government too close to the banks to properly regulate them? Do we need to chop up a few of the companies which were "too big to fail?" Bill Moyers & Simon Johnson have a very interesting chat about this.

Which tangentially reminds me of this:



But more importantly, there's this:



And this:



What will be the future of our awesome republic?



Do I really want Kevin Costner to be my mailman?

Monday linkyloo

Happy first of October! Back when I lived in Chatham, NJ, I had a math teacher in seventh grade named Mrs. Licato who made a pretty big impression on me. Amongst other pearls of wisdom, she told us that on the morning of every first of the month, we should chant "Bunny bunny, bunny bunny, bunny bunny," and then make a wish, all before getting out of bed or speaking to another person. Then the wish would presumably come true. I did this for years, which just goes to show how desperate I was for the world to be that easily magical. And, by the end of every month, my wish would entirely fail to be realized. Darn that Mrs. Licato!

She was a terrific math teacher, though.


The Daily Journal: Car wreck saves choking driver's life Crazygreat.

The New York Sun: Students Know Less After 4 College Years Sadly, this doesn't surprise me in the least. I think it probably applies to me, too.

Slate.com: Alan Greenspan discovers that human beings are...irrational! To quote Greenspan: "[T]he human race, no matter how one defines it, is not smart enough to do better." Most interesting, and again, hardly surprising.

International Herald Tribune: In the shadow of horror, SS guardians frolic A sizable chunk of my family perished in the camps, and the ability of the SS to compartmentalize their jobs in their lives like this is something I've discussed with my parents quite a bit. Most interesting.

The New Yorker: Cool for School Former members of Blue Man Group have started their own nursery school, and it. totally. rocks.

Dr. Randy Pausch, Dream Factory on Legs

Neatorama: The Last Lecture This is my gift to you, dear (jaded) reader.

Pausch is a professor at Carnegie Mellon who has changed so many people's lives for the better, it's just staggering. And he's hilarious and ridiculously likable and dealing with pancreatic cancer. Instead of dwelling on the pathos of his situation, though, he gives an hour-and-a-half-long lecture about his childhood dreams, and about the fantastic twists and turns in his life which enabled him to realize those dreams. And then he talks about bringing other people's dreams to life, in terms of virtual reality and gaming and so forth (his areas of expertise). Just a ridiculous amount of incredibleness in one person.

I guess what's really stuck with me since I last watched his lecture a few days ago is his sense of perspective. This guy has clarity like you wouldn't believe, his heart's in the right place, and he makes things happen. He's really become my role model, in addition to my parents.

This isn't my typical linkyloo; this guy's standing alone in his own entry, because he really deserves all your attention. If you don't come away from his lecture a changed human, then...I don't know what. You probably drown kittens for fun, punch little old ladies, and rip out the final pages of murder mysteries in bookstores.

If you want to find out more about him, check out his site. He's all "Pshaw, I'm nuthin' special," but don't let him fool you. He's wily that way.

bombs and body wash

It's easy for me to forget that there's anything worth blogging about beyond media crap...until I read this:

"The day before yesterday at midnight , I was awaked by a limelight , I put my head under the pillow , and waited to hear the sound of explosion ,( I know that the light speed is faster than the sound in few seconds ), but I kept waiting , and I didn't hear anything , then I realized that it is a projector light of the police on national guards and not a bombing car !!!."

This is from livesstrong.blogspot.com, a blog written by a 14-year-old girl in Mosul, Iraq. 'Sunshine' (her nickname) wants to be an engineer, her mom's a dentist, and life, when it's not being directly threatened, seems to hold a lot of hope for her. Still, it's pretty heartbreaking when she's talking about her grandparents, and then this pops up:

"I was checking my E-mails , and I found an offline message from my grandma says " yesterday your grandpa went to the market , and while he was shopping, the US soldiers started to walk in the street , they were many , your grandpa asked a soldier gently whether he can depart , and do you know what the soldier answered ? he said "shut up". ! grandpa turned to another soldier and asked him the same question " son , can I go of please ?- and the soldier replied " we are leaving, in a moment ".

" I chatted with grandma I was so angry , that soldier's attitude ,affected my respect to the military so badly, because the soldiers should represent their country's ethics and leave a good impression , this bad soldier was so impolite and rude , I told my grandma ( relax grandma , the soldier's parents didn't behave him well , that's in case he has parents , I am sure that he lives in a box under the bridge ,and he is blessed to sleep in a tank ! ) and I still mean what I said , my grandpa is very educated wise respectful man , and he is loved by everyone, , my grandpa is a civil engineer , studied in USA , he traveled round the world because he worked for the "Arab organization for the industrial development" , that soldier SHOULDN'T talk to grandpa like that."

Damn straight. Granted, it's hard to maintain ethics/composure when you haven't been granted proper resources or a furlough in a horribly long time, but there's still no excuse for a soldier to say "Shut up" to somebody's grocery-shopping grandpa. The nerve.

Meanwhile, as all of this is going in Iraq, I'm busily surfing the web and reading about Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty. I'm not sure why Dove's putting so much money into charity work—is it

a) charity junk is tax deductible?
b) coming across as 'fresh,' 'real,' and 'caring' will dramatically improve sales?
c) both a and b?

Or perhaps

d) I am a cynical jerk, and the folks at Dove really care about improving women's self-esteem?

As long as this ultimately brings about constructive change in this world, who am I to complain? It's not like I'm cowering under my bed, waiting for the bombs to hit me. I think I need to go to bed now.

I would like a muffin, and other pirate-related matters

For those of you who've been living in a cave up until now, the 19th is Talk Like A Pirate Day, and Wikipedia has a pretty comprehensive entry on this. In order to get into the proper spirit, one ought to familiarize one's self with the pirate lexicon:

Talk Like a Pirate Day - The Five A's (performed by the guys who actually invented Talk Like A Pirate Day)


Since no pirate-related holiday is complete without a theme song, here ya go:

Talk Like a Pirate Day - "I'm a Pirate" song (good, rousing chorus; best sung with a tankard of ale in your hand and three hundred of your closest friends)


And for no good reason, other than a few shining moments of pure, mindless entertainment (Arr! Pirates!):

Pirate Practice




The music for the above video is "The Worst Pirate Song" by Ceann.

And now for some depressing piracy news: voting for our nation's President on a Diebold machine is officially hackable idiocy. Arr! What a great way to pollute the memory of pirates everywhere! Diebold-hacking f---ers. If they exist, I will hunt them down, and kick them with my peg leg. Hard.

I hate sheep II: electric boogaloo

So, Famima!! (exclamation marks NOT mine) just opened a couple of blocks away from me, and I was leery. What, I wondered, do we need with a yuppie 7-11? I could tell, even just walking briskly by, that they had ENTIRE SHELF CASES devoted to nothing but water in pretty glass bottles, which seemed a tad ridiculous.

But! I am now a convert. I walked in, expecting overpriced Italian food to go, and instead discovered that it's a Japanese convenience store that rocks. No, wait, it doesn't just rock, it RAWKS. Imagine being able to purchase, in one location, the following: terrific spicy tuna hand rolls for $2, trendy German stationery, random American DVDs (I bought Birth, haven't watched it yet), condoms, enough varieties of bottled tea to take a bath in, Japanese dishwashing liquid, and Korean bulgogi bento boxes. If only they stocked issues of S-Cawaii, I would never have to shop anywhere else. Huzzah! I feel a little embarrassed that I'm the Famima!! target demographic, but what the hey—if the shoe fits etc.

Here's where the sheep come in. I went to the counter with my hand roll, bottle of green/white tea (ooh, two in one!), and the aforementioned DVD. As the guy was ringing me up, I asked if they were ever going to carry Japanese movies.

"Probably not," was his reply, "but we get enough Asian customers dropping by that we probably should."

"Forget them, I would watch Japanese movies!" was my impassioned response.

This was where the conversation turned a little ugly. The guy was clearly shocked that an American would voluntarily watch anything un-American, and he regarded me carefully, obviously trying to figure me out. I hate when people do that.

"It's not like there are any Japanese movies worth watching though, right?" he pointed out. "I mean, maybe Godzilla, right?"

Don't punch him don't punch him don't punch him.

"ARE YOU CRAZY?!" I said. "There are some INCREDIBLE Japanese films out there! Don't tell me you haven't seen any!"

He shrugged, noncommittal. Don't punch him don't punch him.

"Do you speak Japanese?" he asked.

"No—but you don't need to speak Japanese to enjoy Japanese films!" Idiot. I'll bet he has Dumb & Dumber sitting on his DVD rack at home.

"Then how do you get Japanese movies?"

I confess, I couldn't keep the sarcastic edge out of my voice. "I read subtitles."

He raised his eyebrows in reply, and I knew exactly what those eyebrows were saying.

"You don't watch movies with subtitles, do you?" I asked.

Mr. Dumb & Dumber shrugged. "Sometimes," he said. "Not really my thing."

Don't punch him don't punch him don't—

"You're missing out on a lot," I called over my shoulder. "Try checking it out sometime."

I'm still seething. I still really want to go back to Famima!!, but I may have to whap Mr. Dumb & Dumber with an issue of Non-No next time.

Of course, it didn't help my anger levels any that I watched The Corporation when I got home. Awesome movie, angering message. It makes me want to march through the streets with the righteously indignant masses, bar codes taped over our mouths as we rally against privatization and so forth. Did you know that water—including rain water!—was privatized in Bolivia, costing up to a quarter of each person's annual income? It took rioting in the streets, one death and many, many maimings before the government and the Bechtel Corp. finally backed down. I wish all the oil in the world vanished tomorrow, and that we had a much safer alternative already in place. I wish every television set could be smashed in the streets. I want to kick unethical marketers in the shins with very pointy shoes.

Maybe I'm not really cut out for the world o' media. Of course, I could try dismantling the system from the inside, rebuilding it into something more socially conscious. And then I'd shoot a Coca-Cola commercial, because we all need to pay our bills.

things that make me go 'hooah!

Note: the Ze Frank link now works! Fabuloso!

This made my day. And Ze Frank is my hero; this guy rocks like a geologist. Yeah. And hey, while you're at it, surfing like the surf maniac you know you are, view these government reels of nuclear bomb tests. Hooah!