If I remember correctly, Laurie Anderson wrote this song as a result of a near-death experience, when she fell ill while climbing a mountain in the Himalayas. Her Sherpa porter had to carry her down the mountain, and he talked to her all the way down, trying to keep her conscious so that she wouldn't slip into unconsciousness and die. His voice was a tightrope made of sound, to which she clung to life.
Thursday night is supposed to be the big shopping night in Swiss towns. This is because most shops in non-tourist areas are only open from 9 to 5, and never on Sundays (and sometimes not even on Saturdays). This doesn't leave a working person much time to actually shop. Ergo, Thursday nights, many shops stay open until 8 or 9.
Except the ONE shop that I needed to visit, to buy something for a friend who wants a particular thing from here. Only I don't even know if it's the right shop that he remembers from being here a decade ago, and then, on top of that, I don't even know if they still have the same item. As if I would recognize it when I saw it (I haven't seen the original item which now needs replacement, so I'm sure I would just get the wrong thing anyway).
I got there at 7:00, which is the earliest I got out of work all week, and they had closed at 6:00. Fuckers.
I finished my Sales/Inventory class early, and it went very well. Now I'm going shopping. Then to eat. Somewhere in there, I need to call my darling wife.
Tomorrow I putter with the students, going through scenarios, answering oddball questions, keying edits. Then I rail to Zurich, then Saturday I fly home.
I am tired.
Okay, I heard this song a few days ago from a friend, and I can't get it out of my head. Argh. I like the combination of the singer's voice (very supple yet entertainingly screamy), the heavy beat, the crunchy guitars, and of course the nice smooth backing synths in the verses.
I also especially like the vampire-gravedigging drill team routine at about 1:53. They know how to have fun with a video... they don't take themselves seriously.
I haven't seen snow in a year. And there's a nice soft blanket of it all over Fribourg, Switzerland. Sure, the streets are a slushy mess, but the rooftops and the trees and grass are covered. It's lovely.
I wish I'd brought a heavier coat. Oh well, at least I have a hat and gloves and a thick hoodie and an umbrella. I'm set.
Much has been written about Obama's longtime association with the radical communist Bill Ayers, who blew up government buildings and killed people in the 1960s and 1970s. Much has also been written about his recent comment about redistributing wealth, which is a central tenet of communism.
But I thought this was an interesting article, summing up Obama's Marxist history.
America was founded on capitalism, especially after the failure of communism at Plymouth Colony in the early 1600s. Communism has been proven to be a failure in other countries, especially Russia and China and Vietnam, and even Israel's farming collectives. All of those countries have been forced to embrace capitalism in some shape or form, even if, in some cases, it is only state-run capitalism.
No one is motivated to work for someone else's benefit. It goes against the evolutionary programming of humans. If someone gets a free ride, they will always milk it for all it's worth. That's why President Clinton was forced to reform welfare, and to cut off benefits after a certain length of time being on welfare, because otherwise, people will happily accept handouts forever, and will never stand on their own. And that's inherently unfair to the people who aren't so lazy, who do like to work, and who want to keep the fruits of their own labors.
Obama likes communism because he has never suffered under a communist system. He looks at communism as an academic theory that could actually work if we only try. He can't fathom why it would fail, either. In his mind, it's some kind of magic antidote to the racial and social injustices that he perceives in American society.
I work for my money. I don't intend to share it. It's my choice if I give it to someone to help them, but when Obama says that he intends to take it and give it to less-fortunate people, that just removes any incentive for me to work. Why should I work if other people don't have to? Why should I bother to try to succeed if other people don't have to?
A vote for Obama is a vote for communism. Obama doesn't know his history, and hasn't learned that communism doesn't work. I hope the American people don't vote to help him learn at America's expense, because everyone will suffer. And collective suffering is about the only consistent benefit of communism.
This is one of the coolest songs. I always like multitracked vocals, with different phrases overlaying each other, each contributing meaning to the song. I also like the cuckoo clock in this song. At least, I think it's a cuckoo clock, interspersed with computer sounds from the 1950s and 1960s.
The Roomba vacuum-cleaner robot is cool too. I know people who have them. They are little more than a self-guided Dustbuster, though. I think it would be cool to rig one with an explosive payload, and have it navigate itself to the target. It's so innocuous, no one would suspect a little Roomba of being dangerous.
Who knows, maybe I just gave someone an idea. Whoops. Sorry. Then again, it's probably already been done on TV or in a movie that I haven't seen. That's what I'll do - blame Hollywood.
robotics - a science
tried in some factories
functions and adaptability
its own terminology
auto-industry production
economic development
engineering technology
robotics - a science
Frankenstein's monster
My darling wife found a camera on the beach recently. It's a nice camera, a Kodak 8.2 megapixel, a little beat up but still fairly new, and it had a thousand pictures on it of a plump mother and her pudgy son. We feel badly because we would like to return it, because those pictures are someone's history.
(Rule #1 - write out a sheet that says "THIS CAMERA BELONGS TO:" and put your name and phone number and email on it, and take a picture of it. Always leave that picture on your camera, so that if it's lost, at least someone who's honest has a way to find you.)
So I put up a sign at the beach with my phone number, and I also posted an ad on Craiglist in the Lost & Found section. I created a separate email for it, so I wouldn't get spammed in my regular email account.
Only I can't remember the fucking password. So there's no way I can check it to see if someone replied. And no one has called from the sign at the beach.
I guess I didn't REALLY want the camera's owner to call me and claim it. Because, after all, it is a really nice camera, and I could use it, knocking around when I travel. I was going to take it to Switzerland, actually, but my darling wife correctly pointed out that the way the universe usually works for me, I would probably lose the camera in Switzerland, or it would be stolen, and then the owner WOULD call, and then I would have to explain how I once had her camera, only now I've lost it, and then I would have to pay her for it.
Seriously. The universe does this to me a lot. There's no point in giving it an opportunity to fuck me over, because it definitely will. So I left the camera at home. And because of that, the owner won't call, and I will get to keep it.
Such are the convoluted causal relationships in my life. It gets very annoying sometimes.
A different crowd this week - Customer Service. I'm speaking too fast for the Italians, so I need to slow down. Typically, Customer Service people want to know LOTS of detail because they get every crackpot scenario in the book thrown at them. It's interesting because I learn a lot about the business, and they learn from each other.
I like teaching Customer Service people the most, because they have the most interesting problems.
Journalist Michael Malone weeps for the state of journalism in America today. But he blames the editors for letting media bias get so bad.
I don't.
I blame the editors AND the journalists who write for the editors. I blame them, AND the fat cat industrialists who own the media companies.
Media long ago stopped being about telling the truth about anything, and became a product. A product to be pooped out in great steaming piles every day, and shoveled down the collective gullet of the unthinking, uncaring public. Reporters decided that they could use the media to promote their own political agendas. Editors let them do that, and even encouraged it. And the media companies said to themselves, "whatever - it's just a product."
There's plenty of blame to go around. But it really doesn't matter. After all, the American car companies in Detroit stopped making cars that people wanted, decades ago. More and more people turned away from American cars, and bought foreign-made cars. Now, all of a sudden, the American car companies are about to go bankrupt, because thanks to the gasoline price spikes, the number of buyers has dwindled to a point where Detroit can no longer avoid the issue. The American car companies are headed for bankruptcy, and they deserve it.
Likewise, the number of people who consume American media is dwindling every year. The New York Times' stock price has tumbled precipitously in the past few years. Long ago, the major media companies (television, radio, and newspapers) turned away from journalism, which is about telling the truth about whatever's happening in the world, and they decided they would make a product instead. Only, it's a product that nobody wants, and that's why the media companies are hurting. The current political election's rampant media bias is merely an acceleration toward a profitability precipice from which there is no return.
American mass media is dying, and there's plenty of blame to go around. But it doesn't matter. Because in the end, all that matters is that they die. As they should.
If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the precipitate.
— Henry J. Tillman
Today my client and I went out into the Swiss countryside, by train to Interlaken, and then by cogwheel train to Grindelwald, and then by cablecar to First (a tall mountain which is popular with skiiers in the winter and with parasailers in the summer). I got some amazing pictures. And I saw quite a lot of cows.
Switzerland has a truly startling number of cows. If it weren't for the farmers' continuing efforts to pick up millions of tons of cow manure and to sell it in town as fertilizer, the mountains of the aforementioned cow manure would be higher than the Alps.
Ever see pictures of the Swiss countryside? (You will, eventually, here.) What they don't tell you is, the view is beautiful, but the smell of cowshit is pervasive.
Many of the cows wear bells around their necks. It's kind of the rule, you see. Swiss cows are pets, and therefore many of the cows wear bells the size of coffee cans, both as decoration and (I suppose) so that the owner knows where the cow is. (Or where a cow is. Who knows which cow is which? I don't think they can really tell, by the sound of the bell.) The bells tinkle continuously as the cows graze. I'm sure each cow is deaf in the tonal range of the bell that it wears, because it's always ringing and dinging and banging and clunking, and the cow can't escape it unless they stop moving.
A herd of cows makes quite a lot of noise. You can hear them a long way away, down the valleys and across the streams and up the rills and ridges and mountains. Clink-clank. Clinkity-clank.
It's very picturesque, very quaint, and eventually very annoying.
Nevertheless, Switzerland is beautiful, the people are nice, the cities are clean, the air is mostly breathable (upwind of the cows), and I'm quite lucky to be here. I am here for another week. Then I will go home, sort through all my pictures, and put up the better ones here, after I show them to my darling wife, who deserves to see them first, since she has patiently put up with me being so long away.
Meanwhile, my travel today reminds me of a song, a song which has a nice jumpy beat, a song which (here) is set to a video montage of the great dancer Fred Astaire for some reason.
Tensions seem to be running high regarding the coming election. Interestingly, it's mostly women who seem to be upset.
The results of the election won't matter much. Nothing will really change to any appreciable degree. That's why I don't get worked up about it. I do what I can, but I'm not particularly engaged, because the results don't matter.
Some people will be furious at the election results, others will be ecstatic.
All of them will be disappointed when nothing changes.
I taught more than 40 hours this week, about 9 hours a day, with only short breaks and a half hour for lunch. But the students gave me high ratings and my client boss is pleased, so I am happy.
Tomorrow several of us go to Interlochen, at the foot of the Swiss Alps. I expect to get some good pictures there, if all goes well. I may even download some from my camera and post them at some point.
Today is the birthday of one of my best friends. He is oooooooold. Older than me. I haven't seen him in awhile. I miss him.
I mentioned recently that we hoped we could get a new handyman, Jeff (our neighbor's new boyfriend), to help us with our garage renovation.
Nope. We set two or three appointments for him to come over and evaluate the job to be done. Each time, he set an appointment time, then called back a few hours later to cancel it. He's not serious about doing the work, we think. That's the problem with most handymen in Florida - they are, on the whole, completely unreliable.
I think it is because in Florida, handymen generally do that kind of work because they can't get any other kind of work. They can't get any other kind of work because they are ill-suited for jobs that require real responsibility and basic business etiquette, like showing up on time, or returning phone calls, or honoring contracts. I think handymen in more Northerly climes are more likely to be conscientious, on time, and to be generally more diligent and honorable. This is because if they don't perform, they are more likely to starve or freeze to death. Your average slumming handyman in Florida can sleep outside year round, and only has to throw a line in the ocean to catch a fish, or pick some fruit off of a tree in order to survive. So their sense of urgency to stave off hunger or to find shelter is quite diminished.
This also explains why few, if any, nations in tropical zones have ever risen to become a world power. Their people, by and large, are genetically and historically unmotivated to achieve great things, because they are not propelled by fear of death in a hostile environment. So says Guns, Germs and Steel, a terrific book that pulls no punches in explaining, in scientific terms, what everyone already knows but probably never thought to ask why.
Orson Scott Card tells it like it is - the media lies, lies, lies all the time. I studied Soviet propaganda extensively as part of my political science degree. Today's "journalism" in America is shockingly reminiscent of Soviet-era propaganda.
My darling wife, a long-time fan of "The Today Show" on NBC, told me that she has given up watching it, because it's so relentlessly biased in favor of liberals and their ridiculous memes. That really surprised me, because she looooves "The Today Show." She said she's given up reading the newspaper too. Now she watches "Home and Garden TV" and "Turner Classic Movies" channel, and that's it.
I wonder how many other millions of Americans are turning away from the media? I certainly hope it's enough to make a difference on Election Day.
It's Wednesday and I'm still kicking. We are thrashing through the material. The students are very kind to me, and being very patient with my difficulty in understanding their various accents. They are from:
After a two-hour delay with system problems (logging on from a foreign country caused the server to reject the machine IDs it was suddenly seeing), I am teaching. It's going well - they have not killed me yet.
As a general rule, I don't talk to people on the plane. The plane is my quiet time. Overseas flights are an extended quiet time.
Unfortunately, my seatmate didn't know this. He struck up a conversation. I was waiting for him to let it drop after a few moments, but he seemed interested to continue, so I let him. He turned out to be a very nice man named Christian, a professor at two different universities in Zurich and someplace else. He was born in Bern, where I am staying for two weeks, so he told me lots about it. We discussed landfills and solid waste disposal (his field, he was coming back from hosting a conference in Mexico City which was poorly attended because half of the people canceled at the last minute with the lousy economy), we discussed nuclear power and nuclear waste disposal (Switzerland gets 60% of its power from hydroelectricity, and 40% from nuclear), we discussed immigration and its effects on crime and societal disorder, we discussed the geegaws in the Skymall magazine... we had lots to talk about. We chatted for a few hours, then fell asleep.
When we landed in Zurich, I had already told him my train travel plans, so he helped me get a "half-tax" tourist train pass, good for a month, that saves you 50% on all train travel. A fantastic deal at 150-ish CHF (Swiss francs). He helped me get a passport photo, explained what I needed to the travel agent (you can't buy them at the SBB train ticket windows) and got me all set up. Meanwhile his wife Bridget and his two kids (5 and 10) came down to fetch him from the station and to surprise him. I thanked Bridget for letting me borrow her husband for a few minutes, and told her he'd been a delightful traveling companion.
A very nice man, and a very pleasant conversation. It was an easy flight.
I like the use of the old Speak & Spell toy in this song.
Babies
Mother
Hospital
Scissors
Creature
Judgment
Butcher
Engineer
I like it.
Off to Switzerland tomorrow, for work. Land of mountains, alpenhorns, lederhosen, funny hats, chocolate, numbered bank accounts, stolen Nazi gold, and a government-issued assault rifle in every household.
I may take some pictures. And buy some chocolate for my darling wife, although I certainly could get it cheaper at home.
When you try and try to get something done, and nothing seems to happen, the universe is blocking you. You are not meant to do that thing. It's important to recognize that, and then to stop and listen, to try to figure out what you ARE supposed to do.
We have tried and tried to get hold of our plumber and our electrician to begin work on our garage renovation project. It's been two weeks, and after repeated calls, no answer.
We were stumped on what to do next, because we didn't trust anyone else to do the work.
Then our neighbor began dating a guy who just happens to do plumbing and electrical work. We will meet him tomorrow, we hope.
Perhaps things will start to move, now.
This song was recorded at the Stanlow Oil Refinery in Cheshire, England. That's the metallic pounding beat of the song. I like it. "So restrained, she turns away... Stanlow."
Eternally
This field remains
Stanlow
No heart or head or mind
No season could erase
We set you down
To care for us
Stanlow
A vision fading fast
A million hearts to one
But so restrained
She turns away
Stanlow
I've seen her face in every day
The same routine along the way
Tonight in the rain
Alone
And then again it been so long
Since one single promise kept
All to say to
Reason
We wanted a heart
To say what we want to
A morning comes just as it left
A warmer feeling seldom owned
And tonight
All I see
Alone
And as she turned we always knew
That her heart was never there
I was nearly rear-ended by a new Chevy SUV the other day. She came roaring up behind me and swerved around me, cut back in front of me, and kept going. She was weaving pretty badly, and almost rolled it when she brushed the curb at 55 miles per hour. She seemed drunk to me. The SUV already had sideswiped someone, because there was body damage all along the right side of the truck. And it was a brand-new truck.
I reached for the phone and dialed the highway patrol to report her. She turned where I was going, so I kept following her. Just as the operator answered the phone and I was describing the truck and where it was, the truck turned into the Wal-Mart. I told the operator where the truck was going, and the operator said "We can't do anything if they're stopped in a parking lot."
Just then, the truck veered into a parking space right next to a parked sheriff's cruiser. The woman got out of the SUV, all smiles, and threw herself into the arms of the deputy who was getting out of the cruiser. Clearly he was waiting there for her.
"Never mind," I told the operator. "She just stopped next to a sheriff's deputy. She's his problem now." The operator laughed and rang off.
I didn't bother to stop to tell the deputy about the woman's driving. It was clear that they knew each other, and if I accused her of bad behavior and he wasn't inclined to do anything about it, it would probably just cause trouble for me.
I found the whole situation to be annoying.
I think the hotel balcony where they're looking over the railing at the beginning of the video is the same balcony that appears on the cover of the Beatles greatest hits albums (1962-66, and 1967-70). I could be wrong. But it looks awful similar.
I like his voice. It's very supple and jazzy, and he has a great range. Plus I like the raunchy guitar. And the opening synthesizer noise sounds like it was taken from one of those early '80s video arcade games.
Apparently this song was used in commercials for the TV show "Burn Notice," but I haven't noticed. I don't watch that show, though I probably should. I have enough trouble keeping up with "Chuck" and "Bones" and "Big Bang Theory."
I actually talked to a human at the resource center. He was out of signs, he said, but he should have more tomorrow. Meanwhile, he said, go to this particular intersection, and there's people handing out tons of signs.
I went there immediately. Nobody was there.
These guys are fucking morons.
One of my favorite ABBA tunes. I like the angelic harmonies of the women's voices, and the backing bass synthesizer during the chorus. And I really like Ola Brunkert's drumming - the drums are mixed very "dry" and very up-close, so the beat is really powerful yet it doesn't overpower the song.
I really like the a capella verse at 3:22, no drums at all, just their voices and the bass synth.
This video has enough flashing lights in it to set off any epileptic's seizures. But I like it anyway.
I did not realize that the circus performers were part of the video. A still shot from this video appears on the back of the LP cover, I think, or on the sleeve inside, I can't remember. I never saw any of their videos, though - they were made way before MTV, primarily as a substitute for touring, because Agnetha, the blonde, was phobic about touring and crowds.
There's a resource center near me that keeps changing their hours. I have been by there twice to pick up some materials, and they're always closed. It's really annoying. I understand that they're probably unpaid volunteers, but please. Nothing says "I don't give a shit about my cause" like failing to staff your fucking office.
I didn't realize this was Timbaland and One Republic (whoever they are). I hear this song on the PA in the grocery store, meaning it must be quite over and done with now, but it's a catchy vocal hook. I could never understand what they were saying. "It's too late to 'pologize." Huh. It's not often that the title of the song is not even pronounced correctly in the song. I guess that makes the song special.
I was on the firing line with my friend Bob and three other guys, shooting trap. We were three shots into our first set of 25 shots.
I had noticed that the forearm on my semi-automatic shotgun was loose. I'm used to having a loose forearm on a pump-action shotgun, because it has to be a bit loose and wiggly in order to move. It didn't occur to me that I was not, in fact, shooting my pump shotgun this day.
I pulled the trigger. Bam! went the gun. Piff! went the clay pigeon, bursting into a dozen pieces as my pellets hit it. Fwingggg! went the end-cap off the forearm of my gun, and I watched in bemusement as a gray blur of springs and other important gun parts went sailing gaily downrange.
It took me a minute to realize what had happened. I'm sure I turned bright red. I know I said some colorful things, which of course caused the voice-activated trap to throw another clay target downrange.
I set my gun down on the grass with the action open and stepped back. The others noticed and asked me what was wrong, and I pointed to the hole in the end of the magazine under the barrel, where no hole normally ought to be.
The others set down their guns, and one of them turned off the trap thrower so that we wouldn't be hit by a clay target if it decided to launch while we were out there in front of it. And we all formed a line abreast and paced forward downrange, scanning the ground. No luck, though. I pointed out the angle at which the magazine spring had departed at high speed, and we searched that area thoroughly. But if the spring hit the ground end-on, it could have bounced and gone several dozen meters further, much further than we felt safe to investigate, since other trap stations were still firing to our left and right.
The range master, Shelley, came over and asked what we were up to. I had to explain it all over again, which was doubly annoying because (a.) I had never met her before, and (b.) I felt really stupid explaining my idiocy to a woman. You'd think I'd be used to it, being married. Perhaps it's simply because I didn't already know Shelley. Shelley was good-natured and assisted in the search, but also turned up nothing.
I thanked the group, apologized for my poor maintenance of my firearm, and we resumed shooting. My gun still worked, since in trap, you only load one shell at a time directly into the chamber, and it was my magazine which had decided to render itself inoperable today. Had we been shooting skeet, I would have been sunk, since skeet requires two shells per turn, and therefore it requires a functioning magazine.
We finished our set, and went back to the waiting area, where I had an audience of perhaps ten people, all of whom studiously avoided ribbing me about my stupidity, for which I was grateful.
Today I talked at length with Ed at Remington. I said I needed to order some parts, and when I listed them for him, he laughed and asked, "Lost them in the water, did you?" (thinking I am a duck hunter). "Nope," I said, "but we never did find them in the weeds." He knew exactly what had happened. I felt better, because it seems that it happens to a lot of people. I ordered $29 worth of parts, including some other pieces which he deemed probably needed replacing, seeing as how my gun is nearly 40 years old. He also talked me through how to disassemble it much more completely than I have had the courage to do so far, and now I feel more prepared to maintain it properly.
It was an annoying lesson, a humiliating lesson, at the range yesterday. But I will take a wrench with me to the range next time, and make sure there no loose bits on my gun, before I pull the trigger.
I always liked "Home Movies," even though the wiggly, buzzy artwork makes my eyeballs itch.
Coach McGuirk is a scream.
I heard this song once, in 1996, on the car radio. I never heard it again. I knew it was The Creatures, but that was it. Finally I found it.
It's so bouncy and silly. I like it. Siouxsie Sioux is a hoot and a half.
I forgot that this song had as much repetition as it does. But it's still fun.
I don't watch "Dirty Jobs" on Discovery Channel, but I read that this song used to be the theme song for the show, was pulled due to a legal problem with using the song, then reinstated. Lawyers are so much fun.
We care a lot about disasters, fires, floods and killer bees
We care a lot about the NASA shuttle falling in the sea
We care a lot about starvation and the food that Live Aid bought
We care a lot about disease, baby Rock, Hudson, rock, yeah!
We care a lot about the gamblers and the pushers and the geeks
We care a lot about the crack and smack and whack that hits the street
We care a lot about the welfare of all the boys and girls
We care a lot about you people cause we're out to save the world
YEAH!
And it's a dirty job but someone's gotta do it
We care a lot about the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines
We care a lot about the SF, NY and LAPD
We care a lot about you people, we care a lot about your guns
We care a lot about the wars you're fighting, gee that looks like fun!
We care a lot about the Garbage Pail Kids, they never lie
We care a lot about Transformers cause there's more than meets the eye
We care a lot about the little things, the bigger things we top
We care a lot about you people yeah you bet we care a lot,
YEAH!
Well, its a dirty job but someone's gotta do it
And it's a dirty song but someone's gotta sing it
Not because my night vision is bad, or because I get tired, but mainly because I find it unhealthy to be alone with my thoughts for long periods at night. They always drift into things that are not useful to think about. I always think the worst of myself, that I'm loathsome, ugly, pompous, annoying, or any number of unpleasant qualities. I find myself wondering why I have no friends, why I'm always alone, and what (if anything) my life amounts to.
And then I force myself to remember that I DO have friends, that I am often in the company of others, that people do love me, that I am not such a loathsome repellent creature as I think. I make myself remember that it's merely my programming talking, the ghostly mocking echoes of the past, of abuse suffered aeons ago at the hands of hateful children who instinctively attacked anything that didn't look like them, or talk like them, or think like them.
Painful lessons, hidden scars. But I believe that people are the sum of their wounds, wounds inflicted by others for the greater purpose of learning about ourselves. A person might hit me out of hate or fear, but it's my choice what I do with that sensory input, and how I internalize it. The wounds that we receive from others are not important, and although they shape our future thought patterns and behavior, it is more important what we DO with the lessons that those wounds taught us. And that's why we must become more than the sum of our wounds.
I learned not to make fun of people. I learned how to be empathetic toward others, even if their suffering is brought on by their own actions. I learned how to listen to people, and not to make jokes to defuse the dramatic tension of a deep, revealing conversation. I learned how to reflect back to people the light that they shine to me, to tell them that they are appreciated for who they are and what they do.
People appreciate me, people like to be with me. I am loved, and I know this because they tell me so. If I am alone for long periods of time, it's because I have chosen a life and a career path that ensures that I am alone. And I know, though I would not like to admit it, that I find human contact to be tiring. A short conversation, or a few hours spent in someone's company, is enough human contact for me for a day or three. The flaws that I see in myself and in my life are my own fault, and I have the power to change them, if only I can find the strength.
I'm starting with my own programming, the echoes from ages ago that tell me that I am ugly, stupid, weird, not good enough. I must choose not to listen to those echoes. Especially at night.
It always arrives so quickly. Today is the last day at this client's site. We are wrapping up our pilot run of training, and it has been much easier than I feared. Our "students" (the Subject Matter Experts who gave us all our information) have been very kind and have provided lots of useful information to make our training materials better, and to improve how we teach the classes.
But today is my last day here in this city. Luckily I saw my family no less than three times in the past month, to make up for the decade that I didn't see them. It's been nice to see them. They love me, for some reason. I certainly have not been particularly lovable. I am grateful for their kindness.
I will have to clean out my desk. I will recycle a ream or two of papers, and take home the all-important signoff sheets that indicate the client approved our work.
Next week, I work at home to key some edits for this client, and then I go over to Switzerland to teach at their European headquarters for two weeks. (The Hong Kong trip has been cancelled for now, due to lack of demand. Everyone's in year-end crunch mode over there.) Then I'm back for a week to rest, and then probably back in Switzerland for two weeks more. Then I'm done, for this client. I will take the rest of the year off to work on my house.
It's shocking how fast it's been. This was a short project, to be sure, but its shortness just accentuates how quickly time passes. I only got here yesterday, it seems. I was stressing about training, not five minutes ago. And here we are, almost done.
This client has been good to me. I am very lucky. As long as my clients are not as bad as the homebuilder who set a new gold standard for horribleness, I am happy.
Craiglist is a fun place to find weird ads from strange people. But now there's a new use for Craigslist - to aid in committing crimes.
I think it's hilarious, especially the robber's getaway vehicle.
This probably has to be the worst example of lip-synching I've seen in at least a week. The star filter on the camera does funny things to Adam's plate armor - it reminds me of the Cylons from the old "Battlestar Galactica" TV series.
I am not familiar with this version - I have only heard the remix from "Antics In the Forbidden Zone," which is a bit better.
We went to the store where our nephew's ex-girlfriend works, because they were having a sale. We haven't seen her since she broke up with our nephew a month or two ago.
There she was, behind the counter.
"Hi!" we waved. She avoided looking at us, and turned and walked away.
We smiled knowingly at each other. We'd spent a lot of time listening to her problems, trying to help her, being supportive. We'd never been anything but helpful and loving toward her.
We know it's not anything about us that makes her avoid us. It's about her, and her own embarrassment.
Whatever.
Free-fall is so much fun. In vacuum, but not so much fun on Wall Street. It's down 40 percent from its all-time high a year ago. In the crash of 1929, it lost 89% of its value, so we're nowhere near that yet. All the same, I'm forcing myself not to check the value of my retirement accounts, because it will just annoy me. I have decades to go before I retire, and the market always goes up in the long term. If the planet isn't a smoking cinder by the time I retire, I will be happy. A retirement account would just be icing on the cake.
Free-fall. Wheeeee!
So AIG executives threw themselves a $440,000 party at a California resort recently, just days after the House passed the $85 billion bailout for AIG.
I think that's wrong. I think we need to send some Reconciliation Auditors to explain it to them. With a bullet.
The lyrics for this song make me laugh. 311 used to have such fire, such verve. But as with all bands, once they stopped being broke and hungry, they lost their edge, and now they make reggae-style Muzak. It's the way of all things in the music world.
(Let him in. Bobby you be quiet out there)
yeah
don't fear mere words cuz if it takes a word to ruin ya
you should have already heard you're finished through
and soon ya see that stifling sentences
is so much more suspicious
much worse could come of that
so much more delicious
to the dastardly basturdly plans of little mice and men
ugly rears its head and speaks from now and then
people love to disagree so avoid the endless bout
make no attempt to try and suss the stupid out
but of the racist institutions simple minds belong
not happy just being human, no wish to get along
little people need exclusions sucker groups to throng
it makes them feel special it makes them feel strong
now I got a clique but it's more like a family
not an ethnic trip more like an ethic see
I write the rhyme today tell it to you later
whether we're coming in wack or what it's a waste to be a hater
Graffiti bombs-from the palms-love is so strong
can't be stopped too long for the night it will come
shaped in the form of Mars that stone afar
ghetto cool oh well now you feel the spell
the color rocks the bell, the king of swing rise to the top
the rhythm possessed in ya and it don't stop
the mise is broken, the demon locin'
dropping the bomb and all that is left is the smokin'
cloakin' chokin, the lyrics are spoken
infrared vision scopin' condition
now breakin' 'em all to pieces like a sly rap bandit
with a fly Lui-Kang kick in Mortal Kombat and I land it
so get your own back when I jam it
cold and hearing about you rhyme style been outmoded
the dopest flow upon the planet dope is the word the bro
throw up on the down low god dammit
You juice your fucking friends like Dracula
but when we kick you out you're just brokula
you left a big surprise from Pacific Bell
called all your relatives and your friends in Hell
now let me tell you something, you fucking piece of shit
you'll never have no money, now tell me was it worth it?
you leave a trail of lies that's why you keep moving
we won't come after you we'd only end up provin
in the end revenge send ends to the defendant
I know that statement's true, I wear it like a pendant
I know you'll hear this song and so I think it's funny
the name is _______ ______, thief of trust and money
Like Captain Picard we come hard in light years
our star has long bust but now reappears
in your sky at night rising and immense
eyes you see ourselves in the shine of it
and so passing under the dome of the great sky
beware we are the stars Holmes that you ruled by
where death reborn into the world is a gift
so the future with no voice of its own will uplift
all is gone, all is calm y'all,
all is gone, all is calm y'all,
all is gone, all is calm y'all,
all is gone, all is calm y'all
all is gone, all is calm y'all, (set wrecked in L.A. y'all)
all is gone, all is calm y'all, (In the Wetlands of New York)
all is gone, all is calm y'all, (Atlanta and Phoenix)
all is gone, all is calm y'all (Portland, Lincoln and N.O.)
At the hotel where I am staying, there is a litter of feral kittens living in the storm sewer in the corner of the parking lot. The parking lot is always empty over there in the corner, and when it's dark, around 9 or 10 at night, the kittens come up out of the sewer to play. They scamper and romp and scurry, running around the parking lot, but never straying far from their hiding place. They chase the crickets that come out at night... stalking them, pouncing, letting the crickets get away, then pouncing again.
It's fun to watch such youthful exuberance.
Last night it poured rain, bucketsful coming down out of the sodden black sky. I worried about the kittens, and wondered where they go when it rains, and the rushing water flows down into the sewer. Were they huddled up on a ledge down there? Trying to balance on the curved wall of the underground pipe as the savage stormwater surged past them? Do they come out and hide under the bushes until the rain stops? I don't know.
But they're there again tonight, playing in the now-dry parking lot. I wish I could capture them and take them home and neuter them, and socialize and domesticate them. But I can't.
I hope they survive.
One of these days, after I finish collecting all the old Genesis albums, I will circle round and pick up some Gordon Lightfoot. He was all over the radio when I first arrived here. You seldom hear a baritone like his in a singer. Most of them are tenors, which is fine for the most part, but once in a while, you just want to hear a manly voice.
I didn't realize he was Canadian. He was born in the backwoods of Ontario. Interesting.
...so I'm just listening. And Obama sounds like a nitwit. He IS "green behind the ears," as he says. McCain is coming off quite well, I think, much better than Obama. I wish I had started counting Obama's "uh"s and "um"s from the beginning of the debate. It's up in the hundreds by now. For God's sake, doesn't he have a speech coach? Perhaps not.
Tom Brokaw is soooo old. Wow. When did THAT happen? Of course, I stopped watching prime-time news back in the 1980s when the networks' political bias became obvious to me. So I haven't watched the anchors aging. I didn't see when Tom Brokaw's hair went white. I didn't notice when Peter Jennings died of lung cancer. I heard about Dan Rather getting canned over the fake Bush National Guard memos a few years ago. Didn't care about that really. Network news is irrelevant, and it has been for the last 20 years at least. I would argue it's been irrelevant since the 1968 Tet Offensive, when the networks (most notably CBS' Walter Cronkite) declared that the US had lost the war, even though North Vietnam suffered casualty rates of 90% or more (a staggering defeat). I arrived on Earth during that time, but didn't pay attention much to those events. In hindsight, of course, Vietnam was the beginning of the end for the American mass media. The media antics that you see today are just the twitching death throes of an enormous beast that has long since ceased to breathe.
I'm keying edits. I may have to shut off the TV entirely, or I'll wind up accidentally typing some of that bullshit verbage into my documents. I hate it when that happens.
Donna came over to get my darling wife yesterday. She had spotted our neighbor Ron, face down in the ditch in front of his house. Last month it was Ron's wife, face down in the yard, unable to get up. This month it was Ron.
Together Donna and my wife went over and tried to get him up. Although he is only 70, he seldom leaves his easy chair in his house, and therefore he has no strength, no muscle tone, and no stamina. And apparently he was trying to trim the weeds in his ditch, wielding his weedeater in one hand and his cane in the other, when he fell. He had passed out from the sheer exertion.
Donna and my wife worked and worked to lever his unconscious weight up out of the ditch. He came to, enough to try to stand, but he was unable to bear his own weight. They half-walked, half-dragged him to his front door and into his house. His elderly, even-more-frail wife fluttered ineffectually at them, saying "oh, oh, oh!" and being no help at all. They dragged him to his chair and dropped him. Then they left.
Ron is a poster child for what happens when you're old, and you don't exercise at all and you don't go outside. He and his wife really need to be in a nursing home, but they are too poor to afford it.
It's sad. One of these days, one of them will fall down and won't be able to get up, and no one will be around to help.
I need to make sure that never happens to us.
Petra Marklund of Sweden is "September." This tune has that typical soulless, minor-key northern European beat. Can't say I like the video but I kinda like the song. I think I like the tinkly backing keyboard against her strong vocal line. Something about it, I like. Not crazy about it, though. But it's better than most of the new shit that's on the radio. Which IS shit, in case you had a doubt.
The EPA says that a generic human life is worth $7,220,000 (recently devalued).
I heard a figure last week on the radio that something like 40,000 Wall Street bankers and brokers could lose their jobs in this economic chaos, which was brought on in part by silliness like mortgage-backed securities and credit default swaps.
Now, let's assume for the sake of argument that there are perhaps 10 percent of those soon-to-be-jobless bankers and brokers who are considered to be upper management, and who are also directly responsible for the current shambles of the credit markets and the collapse of the financial house of cards. (We're excluding the people in the government, like Democrat Representative and House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-MA) and Democrat Senator and Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, and ex-government people like former President Jimmy Carter, whose administration helped create the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, which forced banks to make loans to uncreditworthy customers and which spawned the subprime mortage. We can get to those people later.)
So. Four thousand high-powered management types who created this mess. Let's just say.
Four thousand times $7.22 million dollars equals $28,880,000,000, or almost $29 billion dollars. That's the sum of the estimated value of the lives of those four thousand people. That's only slightly more than the pork that was included with the bailout bill.
That's a small amount of money to exchange for the lives of the people who caused this crisis. As taxpayers, I think we're entitled to buy them outright. And then liquidate them, so to speak. Not so much as an object lesson to others, but merely to set an example, to make a statement. To indicate that failure on a scale of this magnitude is not acceptable. And, of course, to keep them from making the same mistakes again. It just wouldn't do, you see, to let them do it again. We bailed them out. It doesn't mean that they can keep breathing.
Using tactics developed under Attorney General Janet Reno, squads of heavily-armed Reconciliation Auditors would fan out across the cities and towns of New York and New Jersey, kicking in the doors of the guilty bankers and brokers, and summarily executing them on the spot with a well-aimed bullet between the eyes from a silenced .45 automatic pistol. (If the workload proves to be too great, the government will subcontract the job to the local Mafia, but only if the required paperwork is turned in, and the bodies are supplied as proof of services performed.)
"Here's your receipt, ma'am." The lead Auditor pulls a pink carbonless form from the breast pocket of his black body armor. It is signed in triplicate by the local Resolution Trust Corporation assistant deputy regional manager. The Auditor proffers it to the grieving wife who is standing over the slumped body of her husband in the front hallway of their mansion.
"Your husband's life was bought and paid for by the taxpayers. We're here to collect." She stares at him, but she cannot see his eyes through the black night-vision goggles he wears over his balaclava. Gently, he takes her hand, presses the folded receipt into it, and closes her fingers over it.
Wordlessly she watches as the other Auditors zip up the banker's cooling body in a bag, lug it down the garden path and dump it into the back of the shiny black Step-Van, which is already laden with 20 other bodies collected from the same neighborhood.
"Have a nice day," calls the Auditor, as the rest of the squad climbs into the back of the Step-Van and it purrs away from the curb, off to make another collection.
The taxpayers have paid for the lives of these people already. It's time to collect.
I never knew who this was until I saw it on my XM receiver. I always liked this 1971 tune, though. No doubt it inspired such groups as Air Supply, later.
So they passed the $700+ billion bailout on Friday. I am quite disappointed that so many of our legislators would be panicked into doing something that will ultimately have no effect except to waste the money.
Now they're arguing about how to implement the bailout. Any time they talk about creating a new government agency, that's a bad thing, because once a bureaucracy is created, it's almost impossible to destroy it. They want to buy up all the foreclosed houses from the banks. That's great. Then what? The houses will still sit there, rotting, value decreasing from neglect. No one is going to maintain them. Few people will buy them, except a few fat cats with government connections who will wind up buying thousands of houses at a time, for a song. If they can, they'll bulldoze them and build McMansions or shopping centers. If they can't do that, they'll be slumlords, until such time as they can sell them for a profit.
And of course the markets are not responding well to the bailout. Just like I said, it won't do any good. A year from now, we'll be right where we are today, except we'll have squandered more than a trillion dollars. Where will the money have gone? No one will be able to explain. It will vanish into a million little cracks and crevices in the government and in banks and brokerages, and no one will be able to show quite how it did any good.
I will work to vote out the morons in Congress who did this.
Sigh.
This week I am teaching my first "live" class in three years. I have taught other classes, of course, but in the past three years, the software market has moved full-tilt toward Web Based Training (WBT) simulations, which are self-contained, moving images of the system, not the real thing. The nice thing about WBT is that while it takes a long time to build, after it's built, there's no maintenance at all to it. The bad thing about WBT is that it reduces the role of the trainer to being a proctor, standing guard over the students and being prepared to answer questions, but not actually teaching as such. It makes a trainer go soft.
This week, I will be teaching on a live system. And it will be interesting, because I will be teaching my bosses, the very people who fed me the information in the first place. The goal is to see how the classes go, and to see if we missed anything that still needs to be added to the curriculum.
Not many people are expected to show up. It will be a high-speed script read, like for a play. Everyone will stand around and read from the script, but nobody will be in costume, and we won't worry too much about choreography.
Two weeks from now in Switzerland and Hong Kong, we'll do it for real, with real students. So I'd better practice now, and work the bugs out of the system data, before I fall on my face overseas.
I love this 1987 hit, especially the syncopated Indian tabla drum which makes it hard to find the beat when the song begins. I like tunes like that, which is why I like Freur's "Doot Doot" (featured a few months ago here).
Plus Gloria has the smoothest, most beautiful voice of almost any 80s and 90s singer. But I think I most like the beautiful melody, and the wistful topic of the song.
I remember when her tour bus flipped over on an icy road in ... Tennessee? And she broke her back. She was in a bad way for more than a year. But she bounced back from that pretty well.
Jess didn't pass. We laughed ourselves silly. His bid was 2.5 times what we were willing to pay. But he was VERY helpful and very professional. If we win the lottery, we'll hire him.
One of the definitions of underemployment is when a person is not fully occupied at work, and has less than a fulltime job to do.
That would describe one of the consultants near me. He's a very knowledgeable programmer, and his politics are almost as militant as mine (hard to believe, I'm sure). But he does not have enough to do. And so he's often over in my cube, asking me if I'd heard about this news flash or that political atrocity in Washington. "Mmmhmm," I nod, keeping my eyes on my work and my hands typing, telling him via body language that he needs to be getting back to work. Sadly, he is not very observant of body language.
I'm sure my client is paying him a lot of money to do what he's doing, and perhaps he's superbly efficient (as I can be when I feel like it), and he can get 40 hours of a normal person's work done in 20 hours. But it still looks bad to be socializing and goofing off, especially when you're a consultant.
Now he's watching TV on his laptop. I find that especially annoying. For fuck's sake, use earphones. And why don't you get some work done while you're at it, dammit!
We have a laugh test for evaluating bids that we get from contractors who want to work on our house. If we don't burst out laughing when we see the total dollar amount on the bid, we'll consider hiring him.
Few people pass the laugh test.
Tomorrow Jess is coming to present a bid on remodeling our garage. I wanted to make it into a secret laboratory, where I can conduct my research projects in peace (such as whether an unwatched boiling pot of water, which falls in the forest, takes longer to make a noise, or even whether it makes a noise at all). But no, my darling wife wants a laundry room and storage room.
We'll see if Jess passes the laugh test.
I bet you couldn't go another day without hearing this classic. Nope. I'm here to inflict it upon you.
Apparently it has words. I did not know that.
And of course, here's Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark (OMD) with their take on it.
The US Senate passed their version of the bailout bill last night, 74 to 25, with Ted Kennedy (D-Massachussetts) not voting. Oddly enough, the Democrat senator for my state voted No, and the Republican senator (who is notoriously liberal) voted Yes. I will remind the Republican that this will be his last term in the Senate.
Even more pathetically, both Obama AND McCain voted for the bill. (Either way in November's election, you are screwed.) ;-)
Now it's back to the House where they will vote tomorrow on the Senate's bill. Their email server and phone switchboard buckled on Monday with emails and phone calls from the public running 1000 to 1 against the bailout. This time, the Senate added a bunch of things to make the bailout seem more attractive:
All of that is just window-dressing. They are still trying to spend money we don't have, adding to the $10.03 trillion dollars of national debt (almost $33,000 per person) already outstanding. The bailout would add something like another $3,000 of debt per person.
It's ridiculous. And lowering taxes on top of it is just going to drive the value of the dollar further down via inflation. Spending money that doesn't exist, for a bailout that even some Congressmen admit won't help the average person who can't pay their mortgage (which is what started the whole crisis in the first place).
Oh well. I will do what I can to encourage my representative to stop this foolishness in the House.
A year from now, we will all look back and laugh. Probably because it will be obvious by then that the bailout had no effect other than to make the nation's economic woes worse, while making bankers and brokers and Congressmen who helped cause the problem, even more rich.
Now, I'm not one to get in the way of someone who's really determined to kill himself. After all, it's his life to surrender. And I might get his stuff.
But I would never goad a fellow entity into suicide. The stain upon my soul would be indelible.
Apparently some soulless Brits aren't too concerned, though.
Watch this video from Iowahawk. You will laugh your ass off. At least, I did. I bet you didn't see these clips reported on national television, did you? (Sure, it's more of a video mashup, but even so, it's clear that B.O. isn't as articulate as people like to pretend.)
http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2008/09/hey-barack.html
For more hilarity, read his satire on the whole Sarah-Palin-being-disinvited-from-the-big-Jewish-protest-at-the-UN-against-Iran-President-Mahmoud-Ahmadinejad-because-Hillary-Clinton-was-going-to-be-there-too. I missed that little tempest in a teapot when it happened, it came and went so quickly. I like Iowahawk's take on it, though.
And, of course, read his reinvention of "A Clockwork Orange," which was an interesting 1960s projection of the dismal, violent future of British society. Here, he's spoofing Obama's call for his supporters to confront his political opponents.
For more than a year, the media has been moaning that we're in a recession. This, despite the fact that a recession is where the economy contracts (negative growth) instead of expanding. At no time so far in recent history has the economy shrunk instead of expanding. Growth has quickened, growth has slowed (resulting in negative RATE of growth, but still it grew), but it has not actually stopped growing and shrank instead.
So all this time, the media was basically lying. But, fear not, a "real" recession is coming! ;-)
See why you can't believe what you see, hear and read in the media? So much of it is complete bullshit. And I would argue, and some would agree (for example, here and here and here), that the media helped to push the economy into a recession.
This is why I believe censorship would be a good thing for the mass media. They've demonstrated that they are unable to control themselves with respect to spreading their own opinions without regard for the facts, so someone else will have to control them. Mass media technology is too dangerous of a weapon to allow the idiots who control it now to continue to control it. I don't believe in free speech for idiots, not when that speech can go so far with so little effort. Blogs are one thing - few people read them. (Aren't you special?) Television and radio and newspapers, though they are dying mediums, are another. They are still too influential to allow their content to be unregulated, at least when it comes to the damage that they can do to the economy. It's one thing to disseminate facts. It's another thing to disseminate opinion that is stated as fact, and which is never identified as mere opinion. For example, in a better, censored world, The New York Times would have to be so heavily filtered, it would be easier to simply shut it down... or reduce it to a four-page broadsheet. What a delightful thought.
Anyway. Who would censor the media? I'm not volunteering. I don't have the stomach to wade through such crap on a constant basis every day. Perhaps some sort of a jury pool system, where average citizens are picked on a monthly rotation to serve on a censor board for their area. "Grand censor" pools would control the national media output, using representatives from each of the major markets. Stories (there's a reason why journalist call them "stories," you know) would have to be vetted by a censor before being released. "Facts" stated without verifiable attribution would be removed.
I imagine that many journalists would simply quit in frustration, rather than have their opinions so regularly and consistently filtered out. Deprived of free, unfettered use of their toy (their media megaphone), they would have to find other work. Maybe on the Obama campaign.
Not that what you read here isn't bullshit as well, of course. I have no illusions.
