Dogster.com

I love this website. It's like Friendster? But if you have a dog? You can sign your dog up for it and oh then the dog has its own webpage so delightful.

The best thing about Dogster is that it offers us a chilling glimpse at the future state of the internet. Already about one tenth of the dogs on this site are dead. The text on the website is supposed to be from the point of view of the dogs themselves so cute but when they die you end up with a page of perky exclamation point-heavy text written by a dead dog. In a few more years you are going to have to wade through virtual dog corpses to find the lonely survivors. There ought to be congressional legislation that says, when you die, you're out of the dog club.

But this is the future people. The internet is young, but in 50 years there are going to be so many broken-down pages, at sites just like this one whose owners died years ago but the comment spam lives on. Or maybe the widow of the original owner keeps updating the website and telling the commenters that no her husband is still dead. There are a million more excellent things about Dogster.com but I will leave you to figure them out yourself because I respect your intelligence. There is also catster.com if your tastes run that way but how derivative can you get.

"Hi everyone!!! I am Zeus Yu. I am 10 years old. I am so happy and pls to have my mama (eve n' our family) as my owner. My tumor problem is on my "right axilla-brachial plexus" (its a round cell tumor) called "Malignant Histicocythosis". My whole family is very concern about my health, but I really have the willpower to live as a normal happy son. I am happy to meet anyone on the site who can help my mama with my tumor problems."

A Sentence I Am Looking Forward to Hearing for the First Time Sometime Before the Next Elections

"You can't spell liberal without libel"

Seriously why haven't I heard this yet?

What I Saw Today

I saw a normal looking woman, walking around the sidewalk with her two babies. Only they weren't babies. They were big and horribly orange and motionless. They had huge heads and sad expressions and absolutely no hair. She was carrying one, and one was in a stroller but they were identical. They moved enough that I knew they were alive but not enough that I would think they were humans. I think the father was a gigantic plastic person from Mars. She did not seem bothered by the situation even at all. I guess she loves her alien spouse.

How to Make a Balloon Evil and Alive

First blow up a balloon, as full as you can get it. If you blow it up too full it will be evil, but no longer alive. Then set it aside for a few weeks. Try not to jostle it too much in that time. After it is mostly deflated, you can pick it up again. Spoo-ooky. The only conclusion? It is trying to kill you but lacks the strength. This is so much fun to do it is a shame it requires so much preparation.

Cats

I never heard tom cats singing or fighting before. They do it in the alley behind where I live. I kind of like it. It's the sound of caring. When a cat is shrieking you know he is really engrossed in his ideas. Cats mostly exemplify not caring to me so it's nice to see that they can get worked up about something. At least the gentlemen cats. Lady cats I'm not so sure. They mostly just hang around and wiggle their tails.

Trivial Pursuit

Have you played Trivial Pursuit? You are in for a treat. If your game of Trivial Pursuit is like mine it will end up with everyone landing in an exasperated way on the orange spaces and making up humorous fake sports answers until eventually they get a question about how many bottles of Champagne in a magnum or something like that designed to make the game not impossible for people like me. But I know your game of Trivial Pursuit is not like mine because you are a well rounded man or lady of the world and can accept the orange questions, and even the pink questions, with equanimity.

It doesn't really matter of course, whether you are incapable of answering the questions. The most thrilling part of Trivial Pursuit is finding a Wrong Question. The makers of Trivial Pursuit salt their game pretty heavily with these because they know that nothing feels smarter than feeling smarter than the makers of Trivial Pursuit. Because they are philanthropic in spirit I am able to present to you a Few Bad Trivial Pursuit Questions:

"Which class of animals is oldest and most numerous?"

"What is Columbo's first name?"

"What is the highest mountain in the world not in a mountain range?" This is so vague.

"What vegetable are broccoli and cauliflower most closely related to?"

"Who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1942?" Answer on the card: Nobody.

Some Fun Anti-Social Livestock Behavior

Egg Eating. Chickens, being chickens, are unfamiliar with anatomy. They do not realize certain facts about themselves and their loved ones. Your average chicken is not born with the knowledge that her own eggs are edible. If a chicken sees enough broken eggs though her tiny chicken mind gears up. Chickens love to eat egg yolks as who doesn't, and once they learn that eggs break, there is no stopping them. Try to kill any chicken who eats an egg because she will do it again and spread her bad habit to the other hens. Maybe off her in front of the other chickens to make an example?

Beehive Robbing. Okay this is my favorite antisocial animal behavior. If you are a beekeeper, apparently your bees will sometimes get this antisocial tic. Instead of going out and foraging for nectar themselves, in an area understandably dense with bees, the bees of one hive will just break into a neighboring hive and steal their honey. This is full of parallels to human etc. and even better this is not a learned behavior. It can be bred into or out of bee strains. Oh if it were only so easy in mankind. Insects are like tiny robots that are better than us in every way.

Sheep Escapism. I just read about this one. Stiles are a favorite topic of mine and maybe I will write about them later. A simple kind of stile, for when an arbitrarily wide road needs to pass through a fence, is just a deep ditch, with steel bars running perpendicular to the roadbed. The cars can drive over them like going over railroad tracks. Of course hoofed animals can't balance on the narrow bars, and thus can't cross. Outstanding. I cannot think of a good substitute for this kind of baffle.

Some sheep, however, have learned to cross these stiles by lying on their backs and lurching like a very happy dog until they have worked themselves over. Needless to say, they can learn this behavior from one another, and once one sheep has figured it out it becomes impossible to keep them in their meadow. I can only imagine the frustration of a sheep farmer who has already lost so much business to New Zealand and now this.

Monetary Value of My Senses, Part Four: Touch

This will definitely be the hardest entry in Monetary Value of My Senses yet. All the other senses are well-defined. There is no confusion about what is seeing and what is not. Touch, however, kind of shades off at the ends. Is the sense of hunger a kind of tactile sense? How about balance? We will split vaguely touchy senses into two groups. This, part four, will be senses that are definitely in the "touch" category. The next installment will be for more somatic senses. Here we go.

1) Sense of heat and cold. I like this sense. Do you know why? Because it doesn't really work. Not at the extremes. Have you ever turned on the hot water tap and thought you were turning on the cold water tap? Then you stuck your hand in and thought my but the cold water is cold today. Then ouch. This is actually most fun when it happens to other people.

For less extreme temperature differences I really don't see the use of this sense. I know it is cold if I am shivering. I know it is hot if I am sweating. Unless I am in danger of frostbite, heatstroke, hypothermia or "prickly heat" I don't really want to know whether I am hot or cold. Being hot is uncomfortable and being cold is very uncomfortable.

I could do without this sense if I had one of those really good thermometers. The kind that don't break when you drop them, because man do I drop things a lot. They make some pretty good thermometers these days, right? On the other hand, as with all of these tactile senses, being without them would be truly weird. I don't like cold sweats and warm shivers as it is, and a lifetime of them would be a little nightmarish. $5 million

2) Sense of pain. Oo boy. Pain is really bad as we all know. It is what the honeybees rely on, and the grizzly bears in their own way. It is kind of important, though. We all read those tragic stories about the little children who can't feel pain and have to be constantly watched lest they go to bed askew or jab themselves with pins or something. I think you can read that in Parade Magazine about once every 4 weeks.

You never read articles about adults like that. Either these people all die young, or they all get used to it and lead fulfilling lives. I feel like it would be much easier to adapt to painlessness if I were already an adult when it happened. I already know what not to do. I am not sure what you do about cutting off your own circulation while you're asleep, but I am sure there is a solution there to be found, somewhere.

And come on. Living a life without pain would be awesome. You know it. I know it. It is a little unnerving to have dental surgery and receive novocaine injections and watch the needle go into your gums deeper deeper and still not hurt -- but none of us wants to do without the novocaine. My sense of pain is worth negative 1 million dollars to me; it is a liability.

3) Sensitivity to pressure. This is the main one, the sense whereby we can tell that we are touching things. Can you imagine an inability to sense when you are touching something? I guess it would be like if your foot fell asleep? But really badly? And no tingling? And instead of your foot, your whole body? I can't imagine what that would be like. Not at all. I guess it would be a little like being one of those huge fat men who spends his whole life in bed? Because you're not getting much done outside of bed without this sense no sir. Still this is too weird to imagine. Any number I could throw out would be a wild guess. Um a hundred million dollars?

4) Ability to sense the alignment of my limbs in space. Is this a real sense? I'm going to throw it in here because this section is looking a little thin and anyway I am sure you are dying to know how much my ability to pick my nose is worth to me. The answer? 20 million dollars. Happy?

Postsecret.com

I know this is a cultural phenomenon. I am imagining that it is really popular among the people who own glass angels and say "thank you so much."

First of all a lot of those aren't secrets. I count at least 8 this week that are not secrets. This man receives thousands of submissions a week and he chooses the ones that are more like vague aphorisms. "We could have saved/each other." is not a secret. It is what a glass angel person would write as the last line of her novel.

Second, this guy needs to stop running the postcards that have clearly had lines flake off in the postal system. None like that this week (I hope) but you have seen them I am sure. Is he trying to make a point? Did those postcards come with a hundred dollar bill taped to them for preferential treatment? Why would you run a clearly nonsensical postcard? I *really* hope he is not trying to make some fortune cookie point about mankind.

"I secretly love/hate my close friend/relative/self and it {doesn't} upset{s} me."

I just saved you precious minutes each week.

Named Dances

What happened to these? They used to name dances, right? Like the Monkey and the Electric Slide? And then they stopped. I guess the Macarena was the last one? I didn't hear about any particular dances after that. Do people still dance in certain ways? Do they just recycle the old dances? Has the mine of dancing been worked out? I doubt it. Do people just make up dances and not refer to them by names? Do they just talk about "that dance where you do so and so and so?" Why is that a better method. Are people just expected to make up their own new dance each time they come to the floor? Or does everyone have his own personal catalog of dances and has no need to name them -- he just knows what they are. Maybe people do name dances, but I'm just not in the loop. I doubt that though. I don't like the new music but at least I know what it's *called*. Do people still dance? I kind of thought they did. But what do I know. I don't dance.

How to be a Moral Philosopher

1) Draw all your hang-ups, preferences, prejudices, likes, cultural biases and cranky contrarianisms at random on a large sheet of paper. The good ones go in black pencil and the bad ones go in red pencil.

2) Draw a wobbly circle around the moral preferences leaving in the black ones and leaving out the red ones. This line is your moral theory.

4) Tell everyone your line is a perfect circle and it's their lines that are wobbly.

3) Be sure to leave out one black one or leave in one red one. This will become your "issue". If you write about it enough you will get tenure.

Adhesive Tape

I want to be serious for a moment.

Do any of you out there know which tape, available to the general public, sticks best when wet?

I don't.

How to Get out of Bed

If you are like me this is the hardest part of your day. Nothing can be harder than leaving a warm soft flat place for a cold hard upright one where anything can happen and nothing good. It doesn't even help to have an Important Appointment early in the morning. When I wake up at 6 AM my thoughts are disordered and the important appointment never seems as important as going back to sleep. The number of Pressing Engagements I have skipped rather than get out of bed is really awful.

I have tried just everything. I have tried setting the alarm an hour early, taking a caffeine pill and resetting the alarm. That doesn't work. It just makes my heart palpitate as I sleep which is kind of neat (try it sometime) but does not actually wake me up.

I have tried ditto but with cold pills (pseudoephedrine) which actually does wake me up and make me anxious to take on the day. I would actually recommend this if you have a really important once-a-month affair to wake up for. Cold pills do not work every day. Believe it or not, you can get tolerant to them. I have been there and back, and I am here to warn you.

Setting the alarm early and hitting the snooze button continuously for an hour or so is not a good idea. I used to think it was a good idea, to ease into the day, but it is not. It gives you an hour to do nothing but to reflect on how bad your life is.

Until now I thought the easiest way to get up was to set your alarm as late as possible, and get up every day in a panic, hurry through all your morning routines as fast as possible and then rush out the door. I guess that works but it results in not shaving because you don't have the time. And bad habits like that.

But now I have the solution to the problem of getting up in the morning. It works on any two people who are sleeping in the same bed. (to my single readers I am sorry that I made you read this far hopefully) When the alarm goes off, person X literally forces person Y out of bed. Pushes him onto the floor if necessary. It works best of there are no couches or chairs around for Y to drag himself to pitifully. Y can try to get back into bed but X must not let him.

Y can then go splash cold water in his face, or do whatever else wakes him up. When he is fully wide awake, and not before, he comes back to the bed and drags X out. He does not let X get back in bed, or lie down anywhere else. Sooner or later, X will liven up, and X & Y can start their respective days.

Most of the burden in this strategy is on Y not to leave the bedroom and just curl up on the floor, which would be catastrophic. Y is definitely the keystone in this two stone arch, so maybe Y should be better at getting up in the morning than X. Also it is important that X and Y are both not violent or very nasty people, since this plan does involve shoving and wrenching and it would be too bad if somebody took it personally.

Those warnings aside, I really think this is it. I am so excited.

Musical Chairs

Nobody plays musical chairs any more. Do people under the age of 8 even play it any more? I certainly haven't seen them playing it and they wouldn't appreciate it if they did. Why are more adults not playing musical chairs? There's nothing about it that's inherently juvenile. And lots of adults play even simpler games. If people are willing to spend hours playing Klondike alone, or this, they should certainly be willing to play a round of musical chairs.

I think the reason musical chairs has been cast as a children's game is that it requires a lot of players. Small children frequently hang around together all day, often under the supervision of a referee (or "teacher") and seldom have any very good ideas of what they'd rather do instead. It is very hard however, to bring together more than half a dozen adults with the same goals in mind. They all have their own ideas of what would be more fun, believe me. And six people is not nearly enough for a good game of musical chairs.

I think that a really good game of musical chairs would involve at least two dozen people. Then you can wind up with actual confusion among the two or three people who are still standing about where the last chairs are. Just imagine. Good times. Of course, musical chairs would be that much more fun with hundreds, or even thousands of people -- but it will never happen.

Serious Bar Problem

If you are wondering how I could have neglected such a serious complaint for so long I can only say that there are so many little complaints sloshing around in my mind that the really big ones never surface but just sog up down there.

What I am talking about,of course, is the volume in bars. The appeal of bars is obvious to everyone and is the same as coffee shops viz. they do the same thing you can do cheaper at home but they have better decorating sense. Also they carry dodgy liquors like Chartreuse in case you want to try it but you are afraid to spend 40 dollars on a bottle. Please note that they don't actually do that last one, but don't let me get sidetracked into little buoyant complaints.

Sometimes I like music and if it is a piece I really like, sometimes I might like to hear it at painful volumes. But this is when I am alone. When I am in a bar I am not alone (I am not a loser). When I am not alone I usually like to be able to hear other people talk, and always like to be able to hear myself talk. In short, there is no such thing as a bar where this is possible. I can hear people in a bar as well as if I had earplugs in my ears and also the earplugs were really loud.

I recognize that a lot of this is my fault. I have very bad hearing in a crowd. I could never be a bartender for that reason if nothing else. Also I do not like music as much as most people, and never like the music they play in bars.

But that does not explain why everyone I talk to says the music in bars is too loud. That does not explain why there are no bars in the city that have music less than medium-loud. Is there no market in a city of millions for a bar that doesn't play music at all? If there is, nobody has told me about it, which I suppose would make sense considering.

I would go to a bar like that. Think how nice that would be. Extra points if the patrons are encouraged to keep their voices down. Double bonus points if they served margaritas. Wouldn't you go to a bar like that?

Cigarette Challenge

Yes this is different from the last cigarette game. I played that game tonight but this is a completely different game. This is a game of virtue and -- potentially -- embarassment. Naturally I cannot play this game.

This game begins the same as the last one. Find a group of people who are smoking cigarettes. It is better if they are strangers. Ask someone for a cigarette. The odds are remarkably good that you will get one. Don't let them light it for you. Thank them very politely and put it in your pocket. Then go find a bum. Offer the bum your cigarette. Bums all smoke and cigarettes are very expensive so you will please the bum very much.

Isn't that a nice thing to do? Possible variations for extra points include substituting joints for cigarettes, or actually smoking while doing this. Alternatively, hang on to the cigarette just in case you need it for something. People ask me for cigarettes all the time and it might be nice to have something to give them. I cannot see a downside to having a cigarette on hand at all times.

Getting Drunk in the Afternoon

I am in favor of this. Let me count the reasons.

1) Getting drunk.

2) The number of days you don't have anything else to do during the daytime is exactly equal to the number of times you can drink in the evenings because you don't have something important the next day. Scientific fact.

3) If you drink early enough in the afternoon, you can get falling-down drunk by 5, sober up in the evening, and drink your water or orange juice as you feel the need for it. If you drink at night you are either going to drink too much water before you go to bed and feel sick from it, or not drink enough and wake up parched. Then you can go to bed well-nourished and sober and on top of the world.

4) If you are drunk by 5, then you are in a good position to watch prime-time TV which is definitely improved by being sloshed. As always I recommend Dr. Phil. If TV does not appeal to you, there are lots of other things to do at 5 PM e.g. play football. Conversely, the entertainment options at 1 AM are basically limited to watching people throw up.

5) If you are awake at 2 AM then you are probably also going to be sleepy. If you are also drunk you are likely to get into fights or crying fits or whatever anti-social behavior is most like you. People do not shine when they are sleepy. However, people are usually at their most wide awake at 4 PM and you will definitely be bright-eyed and in a position to impress your fellow boozers then.

The only argument against drinking in the afternoon I can see is that it makes you look like an alcoholic. People will assume that if you drink in the afternoon, it is the precursor to more drinking in the evening etc. If you explain your (my) reasoning to your friends, and don't care what strangers think though, I don't see why this should bother you.

Cuban Cigars

I am sure that you, the well informed citizen of the United States that you are, already knew that it was illegal for you to buy Cuban cigars in your own country. Perhaps you noticed that they were never for sale in the finer cigar shops of your larger cities? Or perhaps you followed the scandal of noted conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh, who supposedly bought Cuban cigars through back channels.

What I am sure you did not know, and I am sure of this becuase I did not know it myself, is that it is illegal for you to ever buy Cuban cigars. According to a new State Department regulation, you as a US citizen cannot buy Cuban cigars in Canda or Mexico or Cuba, even though you are outside of US jurisdicition. Can the United States regulate the behavior of its citizens abroad? I would not have thought so but perhaps not for any very good reasons. This seems like a pretty mean-spirited and unenforceable law.

Civil Liberties Advice From Dr. Phil

• Check their bedrooms.
  Good places to look for drugs: under mattresses, under dressers, under cabinets, or even attached to the back of the drawers. Brandon's favorite place was in his closet, inside pockets of clothes and jeans he never wore
• Check your child's vehicle after a Friday or Saturday night.
  If they were smoking in their vehicle, you can usually smell a strange odor coming out of it. Check for small pieces of joints — green leaf-like particles or seeds on the floorboards or seats. Look for white pasty substances on CDs, CD cases, dashboards, pictures, or mirrors, that they might be doing drugs off of.
  
• Look through their pockets, purses, wallets and backpacks.
  Ask for permission, but if they're mad that you're looking through their stuff, it may be because they have something to hide.
• Give your kids a random drug test.
  Make sure it's after a weekend.
• Develop an open, strong and trusting relationship with your child, one without judgment.

That was the actual order they were in on Dr. Phil's website. I am not making that last one up.

What You Should Be Reading

You should be reading Kaylen's newsletter, although I am sure you are anyway without my prompt. It has some of the vague impersonal quality I try for, but she writes better than I do. Plus it is published sporadically so it is that much more of a treat when it does happen. An-n-nd it has actual Web Design which is something I cannot do. I know you will love it.

Trophies

Does anyone else think that trophies are not worth winning these days? They mostly look like this on the left. (Look at the melancholy expression on that guy. He doesn't want that trophy.)

One word: Ugly. Why aren't trophies shaped like giant cups any more? At least then you had an inexplicable reference to something that has nothing to do with victory. These little emblems of the sport that the winner is successful in (snowmobiling in this case) on top of a wooden lump are just so awful. The ones on the fake marble pillars are even better (worse). If I am going to win something I either want the cup or a cash prize.

Actually I think these modern trophies are just an answer to the ancient question, "how can we get the most congratulating done at the lowest possible price." No wonder those trophies reflect badly on the people who get them.

How to Make a Sandwich

It's not as easy as it looks. If you have ever had a great idea for a sandwich that did not work out you will understand me. Let's take a look at some of the more problematic sandwich ingredients.

Lettuce: All I can say about this one is don't put it on a sandwich if you can do without it. Nothing sticks to lettuce, and its crinkly slightly oily leaves guarantee that whatever you put on it will slide off. I am not sure if it is worse to have a sauce like mustard dripping off your lettuce leaves, or a more solid sandwich ingredient like onions. If you put something wet on it then the juice will cascade off the lettuce and down your arm.

If you absolutely have to use lettuce, try to put it on the bottom of your sandwich, on top of mayonnaise or something sticky, and below something large and dry and cohesive like sliced meat. And anyway lettuce doesn't taste like anything but of course you knew *that* before you tried to make the sandwich. If you want something tasteless and cold and wet on your sandwich I would recommend cucumbers since they are better than lettuce in every way.

Onions: It is not often recognized how hard it is to eat onions on a sandwich. First, the circular shape of onion slices does not lend itself to a sandwich that isn't exactly the same shape as the onion, and it is hard to arrange them such that each region of the sandwich has approximately the same amount of onion. Often you wind up overlapping the slices. Then it is guaranteed that they will slide off one another because they are wet and gooey and there is a lot of compression when you eat a sandwich.

Don't put onions on mayonnaise or mustard or they will slide out of your sandwich. Don't put onions on anything hard or they will pop out if you bite on them wrong. If you really want raw onions on your sandwich you can either embed them in something thick (marmite? butter? mashed avocado?) like bricks in mortar or put them on top of an open-faced sandwich. A better option is to use minced garlic. Alternatively, you could fry the onions and use them like any normal garnish item (pickles, peppers, etc.), but that might be too much work for a sandwich.

Meat: Meat choice for a sandwich is kind of tricky. You don't want anything too juicy, although if it is juicy like a hamburger, try to make sure that the hamburger patty is narrower than the bun, and directly above the bottom bun. Otherwise you will get meat all up your sleeve. Also make sure the bottom bun is thick enough. It never is when you buy a hamburger. (I always get better results turning the hamburger upside down and using the big top bun as a bottom.)

The trouble of course is that if the meat is not too drippy it is probably too dry. Do not put turkey on a sandwich or anywhere else near your mouth. Ditto the kind of roast beef you are likely to put on a sandwich. Most kinds of Italian salami are too leathery to eat on a sandwich easily. If you try to eat them you will pull the whole slice right out of the middle of the sandwich on the first bite. Unless you have better teeth than I do.

Good sandwich meat includes German or other soft salami, chicken (dark if possible), fish if it is arranged so that it doesn't matter if it falls apart, bacon that is not very well done, almost any kind of pork, and most organ meat. Sausages are just about the perfect meat, if you have bread that can accomodate them.

Bread: Bread can do several annoying things in a sandwich. It might crumble, leaving you with two impossible-to-hold little sandwiches. It might soak through really quickly and cover your hands with mayonnaise or meat drippings. It might repel all moisture and soak your hands some other way. It might be too hard to bite through which will spray your sandwich ingredients out laterally. Or it might be too soft and have the exact same effect. Probably a very light, fluffy, hamburger bun type roll is your best choice in general. If you want a chewier piece of bread that is your decision and I support you in it, but you are bound for trouble. Try not to use mayonnaise or avocados in that case.

Garnishes: Cheese, pickles, olives and peppers all behave basically the same in a sandwich. They slide around a lot, so try to stick them in something viscous, like mustard. Otherwise, they are soft and mostly dry, so go nuts. Tomatoes are unpleasant to eat in sandwiches. They give off a lot of water which has to go somewhere. Either put them directly above bread, get used to a drippy sandwich, or substitute ketchup. Avocados are useful because they can double as a very thick sauce if you mush them up before hand (recommended). Place awkward sandwich items in them. Don't use them with hard bread or they will squish outward very quickly.

Sauces: Mayonnaise, mustard, and ketchup are the main sauces you will probably want to use. Vinegar can be nice if you use very small amounts but it won't stick to anything but bread and it will make that soggy. Oil too. Try to soak them into the top slice of bread before you assemble the sandwich. If you are using mayonnaise try to put it on the bottom, as it tends to drip. Be sure the bread is absorbant. Mustard and ketchup, depending on the brand, can probably go higher in the sandwich. Try not to put one sauce directly on top of another. That just looks cheap.

If You Want to Start a Nougat Company

Don't bother, because the best name is already taken.

Nougamax

They have no internet presence so you are just going to have to take my word on this one.

Tarring and Feathering

Leaving aside the obvious question (who thought *this* would be the most appropriate mid-level mob punishment? Why not just punch the guy a lot?) what happens after somebody is tarred and feathered? He is sent out of town, or put in the stocks, and then what? I suppose the feathers flake off over time, but I am having a hard time picturing the tar coming off.

Would the victim go into a store and buy a dozen bottles of turpentine with the money he didn't have? Does turpentine dissolve tar? Would he need acetone or petroleum ether or something that hadn't been invented yet? Will the tar peel off if you give it a few weeks? What would it feel like peeling off tar? What would he do in the mean time? Would he stop being sticky after a little while as he got a fine coating of dust? Or would he continuously stick to everything until all the tar was gone?

I guess I just do not know enough about tar and feathers.

Some Fun Facts

The location of the tallest tree in the world is kept secret from the people, for fear that they will bother it.

Giraffes sleep only 20 minutes per day.

They make candy out of tar.

I didn't have any more context or comment on these facts. I just wanted to tell them to you because I love you.

Dreadlocks

I can't seem to grow dreadlocks. Not that I am trying, but isn't this something that just happens to everyone who doesn't wash his hair enough? The internet says so in no uncertain terms. Not to upset you, but I don't think I wash my hair enough. With soap about once every two weeks and with plain water once every 3 days. How much less would I have to wash it to stand a decent chance of growing dreadlocks? Not that I want to, of course.

I would like to feel them though. I don't know anybody with dreadlocks and my mind is racing as I think about what they must feel like. Like dead little puppies is my guess. The closest I ever got to knowing someone with dreadlocks was feeling up a puli once. I don't want dreadlocks but I do want one of those.

Monetary Value of My Senses, Part Three: Hearing

I know you have been reading this series with interest and wondering when I am going to get to your favorite sense. Probably most of you have been thinking that I don't value my senses enough. I am sure that if I got letters that is what they would say and they would be kind of pitying. I don't get letters however probably because all of you are too shy to write in and tell me that you were moved to poetic grief when I told you how little my sense of smell meant to me.

Well we are down to the last two "main" senses so perhaps you can work up the courage to write something like "you would give up the ability to ever hear a Beethoven sonata again for mere mercenary reasons! Oh boor." I would appreciate that. So on with the article.

1) Hearing-based depth perception. Can people do this? I seem to recall hearing somewhere that people can do this. Apparently it has something to do with our having two ears? And it's why the skin on the outside of our ears is crinkled like it is? It seems like people should be able to do this. So let's assume you can triangulate with the two ears to tell from where a sound is coming.

Well maybe you can. All I know is that whenever the doorbell rings I startle and look around like a bomb went off in my head. Eventually I realize that was the doorbell, look in that direction, and calm down. This happens all the time. And I cannot pick people out of a crowd when they are shouting my name. I have to look around and see whose mouth is moving. I guess I can tell whether a sound is coming from the left or the right. Upon reflection. But that might just be an illusion. I would sell this "sense" for $100. You can buy a lot with a hundred dollars if you shop around.

2) That subwoofer thing where you "hear" with your general nerves. That's cool, I guess. It feels gratifyingly like a massage. It lets you know when an explosion is going on (as if you didn't know otherwise). But does any good music really happen in such low frequencies? No. $200,000.

3) General hearing. I thought about it for a long time but I guess you can't break hearing down any more than this*. It's the best distal sense, more useful than scent, and far less grating than vision. You would not expect someone who writes a blog, can't talk on the telephone, and isn't very good at any aspect of the "music" thing to say so but I value it very highly. A world of deafness would be very pathetic. I like to whistle to myself. And I wouldn't even be able to hear myself talk. How disconcerting that would be. A little like being a ghost. One hundred million dollars for the lot.**

*We will talk about inner-ear-balance stuff later on.

** I am aware of the decreasing marginal utility of actual money. I am aware that for such large figures as this the value of money is non-linear. Please consider dollars in this case to refer to abstract units of value rather than actual George Washington dollars. Thus a trillion dollars would be exactly twice as valuable to me as 500 billion dollars, even though a trillion dollar bills would only be slightly more valuable than 500 billion dollar bills.

Converse Question!

Why don't Montblanc and other purveyors of fine writing instruments to the people who need them least make a fantasy ball-point pen?

Oh just imagine how elegant that would be with the black laquer and solid iridium ball and other wonderful features. It could be inlaid with gold in the pattern of ancient Hungarian designs. I think ball point pens can be made with interchangeable cartidges. And *evidently* people really like ball point pens. So why is this product not being sold?

It is like we as a society have decided that there are ball point pen people and fountain pen people. Fountain pens are for rich people and ball point pens are for single mothers and junkies (KIDS: Make a coke straw out of a ball point casing!). Even a Communist revolution won't help matters because once all the fountain pen people are sent to Alaska ball points will become the official state pen nib. The next Zinoviev will sign his confession with a BIC.

I Have a Gripe

Fountain pens have been around for a thousand years and fountain-type pens have been around even longer. Their writing looks better than anything else, they are easier to control than ball-points and they are absolutely necessary for calligraphy. So why is it impossible to buy a fountain pen without looking like an unbelievable jackass?

I know it is not hard to make a fountain pen. I know all you need is a little reservoir and a little split steel nib. I know how it's done. It is way easier than making a ball-point pen. Why doesn't Bic make fountain pens? Is all the metal required just enough to make them unprofitable? Do people really not like to write with fountain pens (unthinkable)?

Is everyone writing on airplanes all the time because that is the only reason the ball point pen was invented in the first place? Is everyone creeped-out by the idea of using a fountain pen with a soft plastic body? I am a little. But still it just goes to show how a capitalist system can lead to me not getting what I want.

That was my gripe.

Graffiti Innovation

A new trend in graffiti that I like very much is the HELLO: MY NAME IS stickers. The kind that people wear at conventions and cocktail parties given by dorks (in my imagination). You just write your "tag" on the sticker, write a hundred at a time if you feel like it, in your ghetto study, and go out into the city and stick them to lampposts or parking meters or walls or just anything. It is so efficient, so cheap, and so easy to clean up after. Graffiti for a new era. Do they do this in your city? I am so glad that I noticed.

I am Unsuccessful

I have a really hard time telling men from women. In an average day I probably mistake a dozen men for women or vice-versa. (that is, I get confused 24 times.)

It seems like this is something people should just be able to do. Do most other people have this problem?

Painkiller Enigma

Why do they still sell ibuprofen, naproxen, aspirin and all the other over-the-counter painkillers? They all work exactly the same way, don't they? (with the obvious exception of acetaminophen which I am willing to excuse.)

If I ran a drug store I would carry only one. But which one is best? Now I wish I had paid closer attention to all those Aleve ads that show the "caplet" dissolving and pouring out life-giving teal etc. and then express, in graph form, just how much longer lasting they are than their competitors. But if Aleve is really the king of drugs, why are we still selling aspirin? Is it for the traditional crowd?

Personally I just think the OTC drug companies do it to confuse us. There are almost never any new OTC drugs and it gets hard to advertise them in creative new ways all the time ("Tylenol: you've been peripherally aware of it for over 50 years"). If, once and for all, there was a comparison of their products on the merits, all but one would be practically forced out of the market. After all, they all do the same thing, but someone does it best.

Rather than take that risk that something they don't have the patent on is really the best, the drug compaines have decided to obscure the truth and keep competing in the same old byzantine marketplace, relying on customers' idiosyncratic drug preferences -- I'm an aspirin man myself -- to guarantee a certain market share for each. I say it's time to smash this semi-cartel. Which NSAID is really the best?

Nutritionism

It is one of the main things wrong with American society and nobody seems to notice.

Nutritionism is the belief that it matters what you eat. More specifically, the belief that it matters what young healthy people eat at particular meals. I am not disputing that it is necessary to get enough calories to sustain life, enough of the essential amino acids, and enough vitamins and minerals that we all know we should be getting, although that amount is much much less than the government and media tell us.

How many people have scurvy? Or rickets? The government tells us the average person has a Vitamin E deficiency, but "poor transmission of nerve impulses, muscle weakness, and degeneration of the retina that can cause blindness" are not everyday sights. Dietary vitamin K deficiency is "very rare". Most Americans don't consume half as much potassium as they say we should, but who has hypokalemia? The problem is not that you are not getting enough fiber. The problem is that you have unrealistic expectations.

You can live a very long time just putting any old thing in your mouth and what is more important, you will no longer upset me.

Vietnamese Coffee

I know what you are tired of. You are tired of going to a Vietnamese restaurant and ordering a glass of Vietnamese coffee for two dollars which has approximately a thimblefull of actual coffee in it.

What you ought to do is make your own. "But Alex," you say, "I don't have one of those Vietnamese showerhead coffeepot things! I have no idea where to get one either as Asian cooking tools are notoriously hard to find!" Did you know that those are actually completely unnecessary? Did you know that you can make perfectly good coffee with Western tools? You did not think of that because you are locked into ethnocentric thinking.

Now that I have broken your mental block you can probably figure out how to make Vietnamese coffee without any further hints. If you are like me you will drink enough to make yourself sick (caffeinism) so maybe it is just as well that you had not unlocked the secret of Vietnamese coffee until now.

Cola websites

I am not a good web designer. And even if I were, I would not make me a popular web designer. Why? Now I know why I cannot make a webpage. There is something about cola that impairs the internet-aesthetic sense.

Coca-Cola
Pepsi-Cola
R. C. Cola

Solomon never had to decide anything so hard as which of these websites was the worst. R. C. Cola definitely gets credit for having their website in Hebrew. I can't seem to find a Roman alphabet version.

Did you know that categories like "music" and "sports" are legitimate categories of a cola website? How many people who are not working at Coca-Cola Co. have a Coca-Cola screensaver? At least on the "games" page they level with you: "Nobody likes to drink a Coca-Cola with too much ice." Amen.

Pepsi's website has a "games" section too. You can take the Personality Challenge. Be careful! It may just be a ruse to get you to buy Pepsi. Also you can watch Pepsi's Flash animation cartoon. It may make you sad that people are devoting their careers to making this stuff, but bear in mind that they are not working very hard. I like to think of the people at Pepsico checking the Coke website obsessively, worried that there might be an e-card gap.

The really awful part is that I am probably the first person who does not work for a soda company ever to see these sites. Why would you go to a cola website? They don't have any useful information and they don't let you order cola over the internet. I'm voting Communist in the next election.

Thousands are in Mental Institutions Because of Caffeine

While this man roams free.

On a related note have I suddenly become senstive to caffeine? I went 20 years not noticing anything but an upset stomach and cold sweats from 8 cans of Red Bull (Ingredients: watermelon juice, tonic water, Fresca) and now it's one Coke and I am lit up like a Christmas tree. Does that happen to anybody else?

Monetary Value of My Senses, Part Two: Smell & Taste

Okay okay smell is the weak sister of the five main senses. I am sure that if you asked people which of their five senses they would lose if they had to get rid of one, half would choose smell. (The other half would dispute the premise of the question and get mad when you tried to make them to choose anyway.)

In general I agree. Smell is not too useful unless you have a job designing perfume which all smells like musk anyway or maybe you are a bloodhound. I'm grouping it with taste here because everyone knows that smell and taste and closely linked (though not as close as everyone thinks). Also both installments would be pretty thin if I did them separately.

1) Pheromone detection. Yes noses do this with a special organ that you can see if you have a flashlight and at least two mirrors and three hands. I have to confess I do not know what the value of pheromones is. I am pretty sure they are a big hoax put out by the perfume companies. Even if they are not I am not sure how well they work. I don't seem to myself like a very pheromonal person. I would probably miss them when they were gone. $10,000.

2) Normal scent detection. The old story. Some things smell nice. Some things smell just terrible. Most things don't smell like much at all. If we couldn't smell, the world would be so much less appetizing, but we eat too much anyway. Also there would be less nostalgia in the world if we couldn't smell but that is OK with me.

Still, it is one of the "major" senses and there are a lot cultural references to it. If I sold my sense of smell, I would get a tear in my eye whenever anybody mentioned roses. $100,00o, some of which I would spend on ammonia to put in water balloons and throw at people who think they are so great because they can still smell.

3) The 4 "traditional" tastes. I do not believe in umami. These are the tastes that happen at your taste buds. I am not sure how much we really ought to appreciate them. Yes everyone likes sweets and salty things now and then but I think that our appreciation of them comes not so much from the taste buds as from some hormonal thing that happens once they are in our intestines. I don't think that should count as a sense. Considered as mere tongue stimulation though I think they are overrated.

Sweets are usually cloying, salty things make my mouth bleed, sour things are refreshing but also painful in large quantities (SCIENCE CORNER -- touch both leads of a battery to your tongue. Ouch!). Bitter things are just nasty.

If you want, we can also include in this category spicy hot, astringent (is this ever desirable in food) and menthol-tasting things. My opinion is the same about all of them: Tasting -- that is, the actual satisfying part of eating -- is a thing that happens mostly in the back of the nose and in the stomach.

Which is not to say that my taste buds are something I would just give away. They lend a lot of context to what we eat. If you have ever made a cake and added lots of vanilla but forgotten to put in the sugar then you were baking the taste equivalent of a William Faulkner novel and were probably just as bemused when you tried to eat it. I would sell my traditional sense of taste for $2 million.

4) Mouthfeel. I am including this here rather than in the "touch" section because that one is going be crowded as it is. Anyway mouthfeel is pretty intimately involved with eating. I get ulcers in my mouth sometimes and have to take benzocaine to relieve the pain.

I realize that the result is not complete numbness of the mouth (more like every surface has an inch of wool on it) but since *complete* loss of feeling in the mouth would be too wrapped up in issues of body awareness. Let's assume that loss of mouthfeel is just like taking too much anaesthetic.

When that happens, it feels like every meal is a meal of socks. $1 million.

5) Nasal tasting. If you have gotten this far you know my opinion. This is where the magic happens. This is basically why people buy cookbooks. Losing this sense would be like having the worst cold in the world. At least without it alcohol wouldn't taste so biting and cough syrup wouldn't taste so acrid. (Question: How is accompanying a drug that offends sense #3 with a syrup that offends senses #4 and 5 a good idea?)

I would want $5 million for this particular sense, enough to drink myself under the table every night of my life ten times over.

6) The whole apparatus. Taste and smell just aren't that important unless you're eating, or thinking about eating. I don't particularly like about 4/5 of what I eat and even less of what I smell, and I get by okay. And as these are particularly useless senses, I probably wouldn't even miss them much after a little while. $20 million to spend on the other three senses.

A Website You Should be Reading

That website, of course, is Urban Dictionary.

What is great about Urban Dictionary? Everyone who is taking his time to define new sexual terms and words that express how stoned the person defining them is (Answer: very) thinks this is the best possible use of his time and literary talents.

Bonus fact: It is.

What's the Matter with Canada?

As you may know, parts of Canada are not thickly populated. Maybe you will notice what I mean when you see this map of Churchill riding that has 74,000 people and takes up about 3/4 of the province. Why is this part of a province? Canada was not always this way. Canada used to look like this:



Does anybody live in the parts of Ontario or Quebec that were not incorporated in 1867? No. Why did they expand those provinces? The 1867 map is very pretty to look at. I bet it had to do with mining rights and provincial chauvinism. Shame on you Canada.

I realize that Western Canada is a little more thickly settled now and that perhaps it was a good idea to organize Alberta etc.

But honestly did they have to be so big? Those trapezoidal spaces are really ugly. The northern plains provinces could have been left as part of the Northwest Territory. It wouldn't have been a tragedy. Did you know that people in Canadian territories have the vote? Now that's a sweet deal.

A Political Mystery

I like to think, when I am feeling especially proud, that I know what it takes to be a good presidential candidate. You usually have to be a senator, governor, vice president or victorious general. You have to have a voting record that is defensible in front of the nation, not too liberal or conservative or scattershot. You probably should be popular among your own constituents.

If you have those requirements, it seems like, the money and consultants should follow. What else is there, after all? But then how does it happen that some people like Joseph Biden, George Allen, Tom Vilsack and Mike Huckabee can't get their names out of the papers, while seemingly good people like Daniel Inouye, Chuck Grassley, Brad Henry and Dirk Kempthorne can't get theirs in?

And if you think you can find something wrong with those four people that prevents their even being considered for president (and remember what kind of people we've nominated before) there are dozens of other sitting senators and governors. And that's not even counting the former governors and non-politicians who I don't need to say have made up so many of our primary candidates in the past.

Don't tell me it's because all these hundreds of people don't really want to be president. Everyone wants to be president, especially politicians. And even if they haven't publicly stated that they want to be president -- neither has anybody else, and that includes Hillary Clinton. So what is going on?

Important Question

Is it something only English people do, to be unable to pronounce R's? I have never heard of an American who could not do that but English people who cannot are thick on the ground e.g. Roy Jenkins. It also seems to turn up a lot in English comedy. Consider The Life of Brian.


Surely there is no anatomical reason behind this. Is it a psychological tic that affects these people? Beaten in their childhood with rhotive phonemes?

The Best Serial Killer Name

Brace yourself...

Monetary Value of My Senses, Part One: Sight

Suppose Superman came up to you tomorrow and offered you a lump sum of money for one of your senses. He would give you so many dollars and in exchange you would lose your sense of taste or hearing. No pain, no disfigurement, just the loss of sense.

A nice thing to say about myself (if you were interested) is how much each of my senses is worth to me. Let's start with the sense-category of sight.

I say category because although all seeing is done by the eyes, there are really a bunch of separable operations that take place when we look:

1) Depth perception. Depth perception is a tricky one. You take it for granted until you cover one eye. Then eveything looks like Citizen Kane but all of a sudden you are walking into chairs.

The trouble is that traditional stereo-optic depth perception is not the last word. We also have size cues to determine how far away something is, and I am not sure that counts as a sense. Even if it does I am not sure I would sell it. I don't have a good idea of what life would be like without the ability to compare objects' perceived size to their ideal size. So let's stick to traditional depth perception.

In this wicked world there may be obstacles to avoid but we can do that by walking gingerly. There aren't too many predators to outrun any more, and everything does look kind of cool when it's all flat. So I could let my depth perception go for $50,000.

2) Peripheral vision. Scientists say that our peripheral vision is much worse than we think it is, that we can't even distinguish color with it. Apparently we just "fill in" (or ignore) our peripheral vision and focus on anything we want to really see in the true sense of the word. All we really use it for, as I understand, is detecting motion.

So without peripheral vision I couldn't catch a baseball or drive a car. Surprise surprise I couldn't do those things anyway. And I would probably get used to how annoying it was after a few weeks (Like looking into a coupla goddamn paper towel rolls I would say). $20,000, enough to buy the car I won't be using.

3) Color vision. Okay I will be the first to admit color is beautiful. The washed-out color is half the reason I hated those Lord of the Rings movies. And flowers wouldn't be the same in grayscale. Still, black-and-white movies can be more interesting than their color counterparts. (Citizen Kane got to be a great movie without engaging many of our senses didn't it?) And the lovely colors of the world are almost offset by the mauves and hunter-jacket oranges.

And on a pure utility level color cues don't help much. That medium-bright apple-shaped thing you see is almost certainly an apple whether it is green or gold. The traffic light on top is "stop" and the one on bottom is "go". I would sell my color vision for $400,000.

4) Night vision. Night vision is the worst. Longtime readers of my blog will remember that I fantasize about perfectly dark rooms. This would be ten times easier to achieve if I did not have those pupils and irises making me sensitive to the smallest fraction of a lumen. Just when you think you've sealed out all the light, you adjust to the darkness and it's the same thing all over again.

Still I guess that night vision is sometimes useful like if you are trying to find your way through a haunted forest at night or maybe you have been sealed in a dungeon and need to find the passageway out. Adventure game stuff. Who does that in real life? Still you never know. My night vision is worth about $0 to me. I could take it or leave it.

5) Overall vision, i.e. not being blind. I don't have much esteem for the sense of sight as most people I guess. I'm with Hellen Keller. I'd rather be blind than deaf. The only things I would have problems with are lurching into furniture and reading. And I would probably learn where the furniture was after a little while.

I gather that when you go blind, your visual cortex rededicates itself to interpreting Braille, which is otherwise very difficult to learn. Would that happen if I sold my sense of sight to Superman? If so, 5 million dollars. If not, 20 million. In unmarked bills.

Five Hundred Years Ago This Would Have Been More Significant

The most important national politicians today have more daughters than sons. The most important ones of all have only daughters. For instance:

John McCain (if you don't count his wife's children which he "adopted")
Al Gore
George Allen
Nancy Pelosi
Steny Hoyer (no sons)
Newt Gingrich (no sons)
John Boehner (no sons) -- beat heavily sonned Matt Blunt in an upset for House Majority Leader
Russ Feingold (no sons)
John Kerry (no sons)
Mr. & Senator Clinton (no sons)
Dick Cheney (no sons)
George Bush (no sons)

The only notable exceptions, Bill Frist and Dennis Hastert, have only sons. Coincidentally, both are often viewed as incapable of controlling their respective caucases.

The only explanation I can think of is that politicians without sons are less likely to be embarassed by their children's behavior (e.g. Duke Cunningham).

Look for 2008 to be a contest between Russ Feingold and Newt Gingrich. You heard it here first.

I Did Forget One

I stayed up all night once just reading about Scientology. I was all alone and if I had been more emotionally vulnerable I might be a weird cultist even now. Instead I found this diagram that is the Pilgrim's Progress of Scientology except instead of allegory it uses awesome Scientology words like "straightwire" and "unexistence."

I like the red-on-white color scheme. Click on the picture for a huge version. I want one printed on card paper for a poster.

Be sure to check the "Awareness Characteristics" running in a column down the middle for a treat. Notice that sadism is better than masochism. Both are better than elation. I think that tells us all we need to know about Scientology.

Did I Miss Any

Here are some major world religions in order of how willing I would be to join them, provided I could get myself to believe in any religion:

Islam
Catholicism
Judaism
Eastern Orthodox
Shintoism
Protestantism (non evangelical)
Hinduism
Confucianism
Protestantism (evangelical)
Buddhism (what is Buddhism seriously people)

Watersheds!

Excellent!

My personal favorites are the Columbia watershed and the Niger watershed. But really they are all good in their own way. Are there any political boundaries that are also watershed boundaries? There used to be back in the days of colonialism when you could just walk up to the mouth of the Mississippi and claim the whole watershed of that river for your sovereign. I don't think any of those borders lasted though.

Side note: Why isn't the Mississippi river called the Louisiana river? That would make so much more sense, for political, historical, cultural and geographic reasons wouldn't it?

How do these things even happen

Did you used to think that migraines were things you got? That "migraine" referred to a kind of headache? No more.

"Someone" has decided that from now on migraine is a disease you have like typhoid or malaria. Did you know that had happened?

This is such a subtle shift that you have to wonder what happened. Clearly someone first had the idea to talk about migraines like that, but why? And he convinced other people that they should follow along, but how?

Doesn't that sound awkward? Clearly there are no social pressures against language that makes us sound like caveman pathologists. Maybe the opposite. Maybe the intention is to make pathologists seem like savants who never mastered basic English but can nevertheless understand the most intractable diseases. I can see the appeal in that to some people.

Honestly folks I am frightened that my language could change out from under me and I might never have noticed.

While we are on the subject be sure to buy an Adolescent Migraine Awareness BBQ Apron. It comes with such exciting features as ugly design and uselessness.

Oh Brave New World That Has Such People in it.

This is part two in a two-part series on how popular dystopian novels are, in fact, completely dumb. The series has two parts because there are only two popular dystopian novels. Aren't there?

There are two things that upset me about "Brave New World". First and most importantly is the author's winking assertion (surely it is understood among us smarties he says) that this is not a very nice world at all. When I read this book it is like somebody taking me to the art gallery and showing me a lovely painting and asking me to agree that I would rather hang myself than have it in my living room.

The world depicted in this novel is a very nice world -- almost an ideal world -- and I will never understand why it upsets people. Oh the people of this world are venal and naive and helpless. Why should we care? The author admits that the government has no malicious plans. It only wants you to be happy. Is there some kind of autonomy fetish among the readers of this book? Does it really bother people when the government gives them free drugs and a good job?

That brings me to my second gripe. Huxley's way to show us how bad his Brave New World really is is to bring in a man from outside it, John the Savage. How inconsistent is that? In order to demonstrate to us what an unhappy place this would be to live (and by live he can only mean be born, raised and die) he makes us look at the world from the point of view of a man who spent the first twenty-odd years of his life living somewhere else.

You might as well try to convince me that Greenland is a bad place by filming a documentary about a Libyan forced to live there. Of course he's going to hate it. That's not the point. The point is how it would be if we were brought up there. And with the exception of Bernard Marx (who feels differently from the rest of his Brave New Worlders solely because it is convenient for the story plus some lame excuse involving birth defects) the people who were born in BNW and have lived there all their lives seem to love it. Who are we to deny that? Especially since it is explicitly stipulated by the author?

This is a problem that is common to all social engineering fiction. The whole idea of science fiction is to show us a world and make us feel like we live there. But we can't really feel like we live there unless we have been indoctrinated along with them. As it is we have no right to suppose that we know what is better for the residents of BNW than they do.

Incidentally this is a problem with Nineteen Eighty-Four as well. Are we supposed to assume that there is something about Winston Smith, our proxy in this book, that makes him incapable of interalizing Party doctrine? Why would you write a book about the one malcontent in a society? If you are trying to really describe Oceania or BNW wouldn't it make more sense to focus on someone more representative? Sure a book about Lenina Crowne would be very boring but at least it would not be pernicious.

How you can tell there is no justice

The guy who made this is less well known than your favorite entertainer. How can people say we live in a just world. Gandhi never did so much for you unless you live in India and even then doubtful.

It is really hard to get a margarita

Have you tried?

Have you succeed?

No you haven't.

It is really hard to get a margarita.

In which I have trouble

Other people clearly do not have the same priorities as me. How else can you explain the fact that every bathroom in the world has a window in it? It's not like I am going to choose the bathroom window to look out of if I feel claustrophobic. I will look off the balcony or actually go outside. I am not helpless. I do not need windows everywhere.

Windows in the bathroom are a hideous blight. The bathroom should be the one place where it is possible to be completely dark. If there are windows, even at night, even during a new moon, then the ambient light gets in while I am trying to take a bath. The starlight and street lamps and car headlights and such. I hate them.

Is it so much to ask to take a bath in the pitch darkness? No it is not. In fact there is not anything better than taking a bath or shower-bath in total darkness. But I am thwarted by bad thoughtless architects who think that people would live in glass cages if they could afford it. Probably most of them would too. Other people do not want the right things.

I Love Big Brother

Can somebody explain Nineteen Eighty-Four to me please?

Am I missing something or did George Orwell write a dopey book?

First the question of what he was trying to do in writing this book. He wasn't just trying to entertain us, tell us a funny story about a crazy mixed up world where ignorance is strength, was he? If so why all the dumb stuff? I am going to assume that he wasn't just trying to brighten our day. He wanted to teach us.

But teach us what? What is the lesson of Nineteen Eighty-Four? Is the lesson that a totalitarian government can make its people believe anything it tells them -- not merely parrot it back but really belive it?

I sure hope not. That is the most absurd obviously false thesis I ever heard. If people think Oceania is at war with Eurasia they are *not* going to mindlessly change their opinion merely because government mouthpieces start telling them that Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. At least, human people won't. Unless Orwell is writing a farce, he might want to try having realistic characters. And I don't want to hear any whining about the Iraq-Al Qaeda disconnect or Soviet show trials. That is not at all the same thing. You should know better.

Was Orwell trying to tell us something about institutional memory being the actual past? He tells us several times that when all records of what supposedly "actually" happened are destroyed and all that's left is the government's account that the government's story of the past becomes real. Once again does anybody seriously believe that? Big Brother does not control the past in any real sense at all and I don't think you disagree. Maybe Orwell is merely saying something like "if there are no records to challenge you you can lie all you want and get away with it!"

I honestly do not know what to think. Either I am missing the point in a big way or this book has gotten to be one of the most famous and influential in the world by saying facile things like "it can happen here" and "governments lie." Help me out kids.

I Want to Talk to You About Ducts

People aren't upset enough about ceilings. Look at your ceiling at home as you read this. Is it pretty? Is it plaster? I bet it's nice -- inoffensive. By contrast I can barely stand to look up in a public building. The walls are sometimes drowned in beauty and even the floors usually get a carpet or tile or something. But ceilings suck.

This is probably due to some universal fire code that dictates that every few inches has to be a new sprinkler or ventilation grate or something. If you have to have a duct snaking through your restaurant how can you have a nice ceiling? There are three basic strategies for coping with this mess:

1) Pretend you are a warehouse. This happens in the big-box stores and I have seen it tried in some other places. Basically it is not having a ceiling. Just let all your struts and trusses and ducts and pipes hang out and paint everything in (invariably drippy) white paint. Not bad if you really do want to project "WAREHOUSE" to your customers so I guess it works in Home Depot. Do not do this anywhere else.

2) The Brazil method. Make the ducts part of your decor. Have a normal ceiling, but with nothing above it. The ducts all stick out and run all over the place. Paint them popular colors like brownish-gold or scarlet. This is what medium-classy restaurants like to do especially if they are trying to appeal to a young crowd. It can look... not *nice* but at least presentable. But what it says to me is, "this person is taking the easy way out. This person is trying to get me to think he had a great decoration idea. This person thinks I am stupider than him." Plus like all transgressive-seeming design it will appear risible in ten years.

3) Those tiles. You know those tiles. They are white with inexplicable holes in them and when you touch them they lift up off their pale grey plastic ribs and spit dust at you and I think they are made of compressed sawdust. They are everywhere. Those tiles are unspeakably ugly. WHO THOUGHT THAT WOULD BE A GOOD IDEA.

I really can't think of any other legal alternatives. All are beastly. Maybe do like #2 but run the ducts along the floor just to give the ceiling a rest? Can you do that? I bet you can't.

This is a real problem.

State Names

Why don't you already know the origin of your state name? If you ever need to in the future I have provided you with a map.



Red = Spanish
Yellow = French
Blue = English
Green = Native

Miscellaneous facts: "Arizona" might be derived from a native word but I would prefer to think that it is from Spanish "arida zona". Likewise "Oregon" might be French but probably not?

"Pennsylvania" is in some weird Latin pidgin but it was named by an Englishman so it goes in the English column.

"Idaho" is actually a nonsense word but made up by an English speaker so it also counts as English.

Rhode Island was named after Rhodes by a European, but that doesn't involve any particular language, so we will go with the English origin of "Island" as a tiebreaker.

I am not sure who named Indiana. It refers to Indians -- but in what language? The internet is silent. It sounds like weird 18th century English though.

The shorter a state name is the harder you have to work to find out where it is from. I guess they think people will be more interested in "Pennsylvania" than "Iowa".

Two movies that I think should be made

Are there already any movies out there that are told from a schizophrenic's point of view? I don't mean just about a schizophrenic like A Beautiful Mind or anything like that. I mean movies in which we see the world through psychotic eyes, are lead to believe what the paranoid main character believes, hear his "voices" in narration etc. Of course we would not definitely find out that we were watching an insane man until the end, if then.

It might be hard to do, but worth it. I don't think it has been tried before? Does Pi count? The main character in that was insane but were Jews and Wall Street really persecuting him? Or was it all in his head? I think the movie inclines a little too far in the first direction.

Also they should make a MacGyver movie. I don't think Richard Dean Anderson has anything better to do these days. I would definitely go see that. It's not like he's too old. Harrison Ford is making another Indiana Jones movie. Now that's dumb.

Cigarette Party

I think if you ever go to a bar a fun game for you to play is this. Find a table near you where people are smoking cigarettes. Then blow at them and try to get their cigarettes to flare up. Try to make sure nobody notices you doing it, either. Really, isn't blowing on their cigarettes about as much interaction as you need with strangers?

End-of-round bonus points if you get the cigarette to burn down to the filter. Blowing out their cigarette might be good for some extra points too.

Really you are going to have to come up with your own scoring system for this game if you are that interested. But I wouldn't be if I were you.

Today

Today I saw a girl wearing a hijab, a medium-heavy jacket, stripey tights and high boots. I think some kind of compromise was made with someone. She looked like she was having fun for what that was worth.

Everyone has more fun than me, no matter what they wear.

Dr. Phil

Dr. Phil the TV psychologist has really tiny eyes. This is in a fine tradtion of overbearing Southerners having tiny eyes but Dr. Phil also has a big mustache. So unlike George Bush or Jerry Falwell we can do a comparison. How many of Dr. Phil's eyes will fit in his mustache?



Four eyes will fit into Dr. Phil's mustache, depending on how he turns his head.

Have you noticed that nine-tenths of the problems on Dr. Phil wouldn't have happened if the people involved weren't ugly? The women are like piles of leaves that have learned how to complain and the men are all beard magnets.

I was disturbed today.

They print serial numbers directly onto the eggs. I assume those are serial numbers. This one is a jaunty magenta color and says :

JN07B QC
1130 116

Maybe they are expiration dates. Maybe they mean something to the egg inspector because they don't mean much to me. How can this be a good idea? That is the kind of idea that makes people want to vote Republican. Things didn't used to be like this. No sir.

A game I know you will enjoy

http://www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/g3/cats.htm

This game could only be described as "nice." I like the music.

I think all the games on this guy's website would be good games to play if you had a bad day at work or were trying to kick your heroin addiction.

This game will make you smile and you will stop playing it after five minutes.

Play some of the other games. Don't you feel better?

UPDATE: This one is even sweeter, simpler and more anodyne. Be sure to play to the end! Awesome.

Some Self-serving Medical Websites

Are you impotent?
Are you manic-depressive?
Are you too nervous?
Are you too shy?
Are you depressed?

Every drug website has one of these. Most of them call them "quizzes". Maybe that's intended to make them seem more fun. Quizzes aren't fun though. At best the word is fun. These are not quizzes.

There don't seem to be any quizzes for schizophrenia. I guess those people just know.

You might also want to play this game. I think the idea is to make insomniacs break down. They are already fragile from not sleeping and if you make them think much more about the sleep they're not having they might just crumble altogether. Maybe remember this marketing technique for later.

Bad Country Design

Can somebody please tell me how they let so many states cluster around the Southern Indiana - Northern Arkansas area? I realize that some of that had to happen because of the way the rivers all seem to flow into one another at once there, and because of the Missouri Compromise but it just looks like poor planning. Aliens looking at a map of the US would think that our capital was somewhere in that area. Honestly I think they would be on to something. It would look much better there than huddled up with the other cities on the Eastern seaboard. How about St. Louis? Did you know that as many people live north of St. Louis as south, and west of St. Louis as east? Or maybe the capital could be on that non-contiguous part of Kentucky. I also found out today that there are no roads from Kentucky into Missouri. I am your source for Lower Midwest news.

Four Flags Over New Jersey

"Six Flags Over Texas" is an intriguing concept in amusement park naming. That we should care how many countries have owned the state that the park is in. What are they trying to tell us? Texas is particularly desirable? Texas is not desirable.

Still it is a nice idea. How many flags were over some of our other favorite states?



I am counting the Republic of Hawaii, Russian, Swedish and Dutch settlement (they found themselves in some unexpected places) and the maximum claims of the French and Spanish even though you know they never actually set foot in North Dakota. I am counting states that were even partly owned by a country.

I am not counting Indian claims because I don't think that would be true to the spirit of Six Flags. I am also not counting Confederate claims that were not backed up by state conventions because I think they would have wanted it that way.

I think the most interesting fact here is that no Indian territory was actually stolen originally by the US. Every inch of the United States was previously owned by some other country. I guess that just makes us a fence in the theft of cultural heritage?

New Moon

A fun game is to try to describe what a new moon is. You win if you don't describe something that is actually:

A) A lunar eclipse

B) Something that can only be seen at noon

C) Something that can only be seen if you can look *through* the Earth

The internet does not win. I don't know what a new moon is yet.