Parking My Brain

Am I weird, or is it just part of being alive that every so often you just feel a little "crummy", just different in a way that you don't like, not always for any particular reason, or at least not for ones you are really aware of or can figure out?

Headache, tummy ache, these all take a variety of forms.

For me, it's often triggered by either working too hard without rest and/or not taking adequate sustenance. Or maybe gamma rays.

It's weird, but the job I have now is the only one I haven't really gotten paid more that a pittance to do, but I find that I work harder and longer there than any job I've ever had. Maybe it's because I'm pretty much only doing things I find enjoyable in some way. I'm not sure why I find them enjoyable, many or most of them are rote, brainless computer chores.

Go to a web page, download something. Take that and open it in an "editor" of whatever kind, and do obvious, simple things that are mostly a version of another common task. You might do 7 things, but they are versions of the same 2-3 things. Enter metadata, and save the files. Yaaaawwwwwnnnnn........

But I go in 10:30-11 I'd go earlier, and one day a week I show up at 7, but mostly I aim for parking "sweet spots" in time: parking is VERY tight I got a mean note on my car today for having parked "too close" to another. Imagine taking the time to write a note like this. People sound all bitter and threatening ("I wrote down your license number!"), but no one seems to get to the point of what THEY would've done. I mean, how many people are there that plan to go someplace and do something--usually with people depending on you--get there, drive around, and can only find one spot, but it's really TIGHT...so they just go home? I have calculated the exact number, and it is NONE.

"Your car was VERY CLOSE and COULD HAVE damaged my car..." Really? How? Might my car just get an impulse and lash out? 

I am definitely one of the most thoughtful parkers you'll ever find, because I think a lot about how I place my car. For example, I try to position my car so that another might be able to fit, whereas clearly many people just pull in and split, bisecting a giant space, depriving you of a space where you might have wiggled in. People aren't thinking on this level, but I'll get to that.

On he other hand, I am also one the the most skillful parkers you'll ever encounter. I have parked in spaces so small that I took photos to impress people. I drive a 98 4runner, not the bulkiest nor the most nimble car, and I've parked it in spaces that measured considerably less than a foot longer than the car itself! I checked because a folded-in-half dollar bill (6" long) would not fit in either the gap in front or behind my car! In person, it doesn't even seem possible.

This close job freaked me out so much I actually went back down (elevator down, walk a block and a half, and back, not just peeking) to check on it, as if there were anything else I could have, or should have, done. It was almost as if I had aligned it and just pushed it straight sideways into the spot, it was crazy. But I felt a little BAD about the position I put others into.

I thought, "will people be angry?" And if they are, so what? I have something I have to do and I need to leave my car someplace. If I got it in, then the others almost certainly could've gotten theirs out, even if it took some maneuvering. 

And I think that if makes people mad, it's too bad. You take your car in public, you can leave it in any legal spot it fits in. Have you ever heard it said that you must make sure there is a foot in front and in back of your car? Have you ever seen anyone MEASURE? Of course not. A "place" is where your car will fit, that's all.

It's not usually a problem because overwhelmingly I find people have a very poor conception of how big their cars actually are, and mostly need at least double the required space to do ANYTHING. I don't get it. Parallel parking is a necessary and common evil, why wouldn't you pay attention on trying to be GOOD at it? I do...I visualize approach path and angle, imagine where my rear wheel is compared to the curb so that I can turn at the exact right moment, etc. Mostly, I just back in, and my car is perfectly positioned, about an inch from the curb. I'm that good, but in get a lot of practice. There may be parallel parkers as good as me, but not better.

So today this person was so irate, she wrote me a pissy note. (I mostly don't see guys doing this for some reason, perhaps because it's kind of humiliating.) When I first left I checked, and she had a solid three or more feet in front of her to get out. I figured she could just have driven straight out. But maybe someone came later, and then parked right on her front bumper. Ok, I would have felt angry too. But it's a rough and tumble world out there, what with car bombs, kidnapping school girls, beheading journalists...and challenging parking, well...it can get vexing! Sometimes you just have to CLENCH.

I liked the way s/he (could've been a guy) made sure to mention they had my license number so that in the FUTURE, well...I'd clearly be FUCKED! "Your Honor, on this date I made a note that this same car was also...parked DANGEROUSLY close. What if a CHILD...." Really? The knowledge that a stranger has my license plate and a memory of my bumper being close but not touching his...how will I sleep tonight? "So...what got YOU into Gitmo...?"

But best of all to me is the idea that people somehow think that their cars will remain pristine and untouched by any vehicle or object FOREVER. Just how does that sound in court?

"I believe, You Honor, this resulted in a SCUFF on my...BUMPER!"

"Um..." The learned justice interrupts, "...on your...WHAT?! 'Bump-er'? Doesn't the very word logically parse to declaring a designed function of...BUMPING?!"

"Court finds against plaintiff and assesses a fine for clearly having been intoxicated while driving, otherwise such stupidity could never be explained!"

My car is COVERED with dings, some of which I put there myself, but most not. If you are walking up to your car, and the person in the car next to you gets out and lightly, carefully dings your door while getting out, there is but one single, solitary acceptably gracious response: a smile! 

One person is thinking, "Oops, I was trying, sorry, hopefully it's not noticeable..." And the other is thinking, "hey, it's a CAR! That you took effort gratifies me. Go forth from this point and don't let this incident diminish from your overall joie d'vivre in even a theoretical way!"

When I bought my last car (this very one), I made good and sure that it was covered in thick metal and paint, and even maybe some strips, thinking that, along with safety, comfort and economy (and coolness), small impacts would then have fairly trivial effect.

You know what you call a person who is fretful about a ding in the paint of their car? A DICK.

It was dark when I read the note, and I felt physically crummy from pushing myself too hard at my free job. I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to convince people that working with me is one thing that they'd rather do above all others. And it mostly works. Some mornings a staffer will walk by and say, "Oh thank goodness--you're here! I've got some recordings or tasks and I'm always glad to see that YOU are here, because I know you'll do them right."

I am the guy who takes almost suspicious care in whatever I am asked to do. I suggest things--in a gentle and deferential way--to help others produce something they'll be just a little happier with. I record people reading promos, and I direct them..."that was great, but what if you put just a little more on the word 'today'..." and demonstrate...and usually they say, "oh yeah, definitely, lets do it again."

I'm surprising good at little things most people don't think you can be good at. I'm good at promos. I might have been a great actor, but the hassle!

Of course, this all comes at a significant personal price. There is a clinical term in psychology, "perfectionism". It doesn't mean that you think that what you do tends to be more perfect, it means that you have a certain constant low-level awareness of the requirement of doing everything PERFECTLY. Walking. Breathing. Picking something up. And more complicated things, but really, absolutely, everything.

The huge problem is that the definition of "perfection" carries a connotation of unreachability. It's Xeno's Paradox: each shot can be twice as close, but theoretical perfection is definitively ruled out.

You wouldn't BELIEVE my suicide plans, Dan describes them as my "design projects".

It makes for a somewhat torturous life, and if think that all of us have suffered from it considerably more than most others. But it's not really volitional. It's the ultimate perverse defect. But it's best to be aware of it, to remember to cut yourself the slack you need to survive. 

So I read the note, felt a little anger, a touch of what I'd say in return (they write everything but their name and number on the note, so THEY get to vent, but your humanity is NULLIFIED because you can say nothing). Then I thought, "at least it wasn't a ticket!"

When I got home I felt crummy and didn't know what to do. Too late to eat, watching a show would worsen my headache...I took some pill I had handy, and just lied down. 

I tried to find a position, overall attitude, position of limbs, not too much pressure on anything, making smaller and smaller adjustments. And when I found a physical spot I could accept, I kept doing...something. Thinking in a certain way, trying to see what firing patterns of my brain felt less crummy, and finding microscopic but detectable improvements.

And then a little physical adjustment, and then the whole process, to approach that feeling where it just doesn't psychically GOUGE me. And it gets a tiny bit better, but never fully "better". ("Better" and "better": one of the greatest defects of English. Larry David did a great bit on "Curb" where he made a bet with his acupuncturist about feeling "better". The guy was of course a savvy Asian, and laid the trap perfectly. "So Mr David, are you feeling better?"

Larry admitted that yes, he was feeling a bit better.

The acupuncturist declares, "I win--you owe me $5000!" And the scene closes with Larry fretting in his classic way, "better, not BETTER! There's a difference! I feel better than I did, but not as if my problem had been eliminated, not ALL better." Grrrr...

As you immediately sensed, because I know you to be particularly insightful that way, I only started writing this once I felt "better" enough, the fact that I'm willing to write is a sign of feeling better. Still don't feel BETTER better though.

While all better is best better is still always better than not BETTER better.

But the REAL notion that kicked me off was the thought of what I was actually DOING, lying there, trying to feel less crummy. It had to be SOMETHING. But it's like detecting a neutrino, or Higg's. (It's always good to say "Higg's" when appropriate because it certainly establishes you as someone of great knowledge and fine discernment. And leaving off "boson" is kind of like referring to Scorsese as "Marty"--it's important, but a little ordinary to people like US.)

I was lying on my side, shifting my arms so there wasn't too much weight on my right wrist, and then trying to find the greatest amount of STILLNESS I could, and focus on THAT. is the smallest thing I can feel seeming like even less? Oh no...that's a little worse, maybe 1/1000th the width of a Higg's worse, but it's the wrong direction.

When you're just lying there, focusing, tuning, trying to find all the ways you can control, and how to nudge them, what is it exactly that you are doing? In that astonishing web of impulses flashing across your brain, a weird, gooey muck in your skull, something is happening, you are finding the controls, and figuring out how to nuance them, like the perfect cello performance: you know it's better, but you can't ever really say how.

Parking my brain.

Changed my mind about "Girls"

Not about girls, "Girls". I still have no idea what girls are. But that is a different, long, dangling essay I will resist penetrating this one with.

Girls. "Penetrating". Ha.

After a brief fascination, I decided to HATE the trendy HBO series "Girls", but, running short of things to watch I decided to give it another chance and found that actually, it's quite interesting and well-written television. 

For awhile I was put off by the "girls in your face" attitude, and the fact that all the characters are such "characters". Look! Girls go for a grungy fuck just like guys! And she's cashing in on it!

Some things I still don't like, it's a personal thing but I don't like seeing the dumpy little Lena Dunham naked or having sex. And it used to bother me that she wrote episodes that had people describing her as "beautiful" when she's really just a kind of stubby, dumpy little chick. 

But then I grew up a little and remembered that most of the time people are beautiful in context--surely very few of the women I've been intimate with would be generally described by strangers as "beautiful" (sorry, ladies, but I also don't imagine me people generally saying "now THERE'S a handsome fella!" about me), but they seemed much more attractive to me at certain times.

Some of the writing seems artificial and arbitrary, but then, it's art; there is no requirement for full "realism" even when SOME of the aspects are fairly realistic. Each scene really seems like a little play unto itself, everything starts and stops on just the right note. And as weird as they are, the characters are engaging. Even Chris O'Dowd, brilliant comic actor of "The IT Crowd" fame) does a great job in a recurring comic/dramatic role as a kind of puzzled outsider who manages to penetrate the youngster crowd he's aged out of.

I still hate Dunham's bruise-like tattoos though. She looks like she slept naked in the black and white funny papers. That tattoos have gained such universal popularity is one of the great tragedies of modern culture. Thank god it didn't happen in the Renaissance!

Unfortunately for those of you without HBO, it is not part of the Amazon Prime HBO collection, although you CAN purchase it on Amazon, and maybe iTunes, I don't know, I never use iTunes.

Another TV note while I'm at it: HBO's "Boardwalk Empire". Critically acclaimed, unquestionably beautifully done period piece with lush cinematography and exquisite attention to detail, about a time and place that is surely fascinating...I just can't get into. I tried, I want to. 

It has nothing to do with the bizarrely inappropriate opening sequence featuring strange fuzz-tone rock guitar for a show about the 1920s, trying to make the whole show seem like an acid flashback. The problem is Steve  Buscemi, the star.

Buscemi is a GREAT character actor who is fantastic in even the worst stuff you see him in, he always makes it better.

But the thing is...he's a SIDEKICK. In everything he's a fantastic sidekick character to someone else, and no one can do it like him. And maybe there are starring roles that would work for him. But to me, seeing him as a mob boss...he just doesn't have it. He has no mass, no "central" presence, like James Gandolfini in "Sopranos". I hate using the word "gravitas"--I even hate people who use it--but he lacks it, and the role requires it.

If he played the secondary character next to the boss who it turned out REALLY ran things, I would totally buy into it. But every time I see him trying to pass himself off as the boss I think of him as a kid playing dress up, walking around in daddy's shoes. 

He's not immature, he has a very world-weary sense he can call on. I know other people don't feel this way. But no matter how good you are as an actor, that doesn't necessarily mean you can play ANYTHING.

And to ME, Buscemi just can't pull this off, and it makes me sad, because I love him.

The lucky thing for those that disagree is that the show IS available on Amazon Prime, so if you pay the monthly fee, you can watch it, in the one amazing gift HBO gave the world.

But honestly, if you haven't watched every single "Sopranos" yet, why is your TV even ON?

And if you get full HBO/hbogo, watch "Girls".

Plan Your Cause of Death

People always seem far too focused on determining ways to lessen certain causes of death than is logical.

If you exercise a lot maybe you'll avoid heart disease, but that just means you're going to die of cancer or Alzheimer's. 

Please do correct me, but aren't we all going to die of something? If so, wouldnt the smartest strategy be to determine the most personally noxious form of death and do everything you can to die of something else FIRST?

Maybe eating a lot of fat will make my heart fail more quickly....in that case, GOOD! I'd rather get fat and die of a heart attack than slowly loose my sense of who I am or slowly perish as excruciatingly painful cancer cells multiply in my body.

According to Apple and all the new arbiters of what we are supposed to be interested in, "Health" is the next "killer app". 

Lets get a start on picking and living to actively pursue dying from what we each consider to be the least objectionable way of dying we can.

Starting tomorrow: no more seatbelts while I'm texting at the wheel, slurping a giant mocha with extra whip!

The Law Against Being a Creep

You have to hand it to reality that we now have a high-profile conflict between guys named "Sterling" and "Silver".

If you're not aware, Sterling owns the NBA team the LA Clippers. ("Silver" is NBA commissioner Adam Silver, who is leading the persecution of Sterling as owner of an NBA team. But that's as far as this joke goes, so you can forget it now.) There's a big controversy because he was apparently caught on tape in a telephone call to his girlfriend in which he expresses some pretty creepy racist sentiments. None of them are really threatening or inflammatory, he merely says he objects to his girlfriend publicly being involved with blacks. He didn't say they, or her, should be beaten up, or even hassled.

With the "tinder box" ideological climate of this country right now, and the increasing realization that racism is still a very serious problem, not even close to being "solved" as many seem to assume.

So the NBA IMMEDIATELY jumped up this guy's ass and slapped a lifetime ban from the NBA on him (he not only isn't allowed to control or interact with his own team in any way, he's not even allowed to ATTEND a game).

I hate racism probably more than the average American, but the other issues surrounding this I think are very troubling and worth far more attention than they are getting now, which is approximately NONE, even by the liberal media and action groups like the ACLU.

FIRST...in a country where people are increasingly riled up and sensitive about personal surveillance, why isn't anybody saying, "Where did this recording come from?" Since we have to allow neo-Nazis to march in Skokie to demonstrate our complete commitment to free speech, why is nobody standing up and saying, "This guy is very clearly a racist pig. [He's been caught being racist before.] But why is someone recording his private phone conversations and leaking them to the press? What happened to his fundamental right to privacy?"

You have to hate this guy, but the right to privacy isn't content-based, it's ABSOLUTE. Even if he were caught making threats (eg: "if those darkies don't move out of my apartment building I'll try to see that they start getting hassled by the cops more often" or, "someone should burn them out!") the issue would still be worrisome: EXACTLY HOW IS SOMEONE RECORDING PRIVATE PHONE CONVERSATIONS? It is expressly illegal to do this, yet since this Sterling guy is so reviled, all concern for his civil rights seems to have vanished.

But according to the fundamental American perspective on rights and law, if someone is allowed to record HIS phone calls, then someone might also be allowed to record MINE. The actual content of the call is irrelevant, unless law enforcement had probable cause to get a wire-tap warrant on this guy, which is clearly not the case or we would have been told.

The right to privacy is the right to privacy, and fundamentally the NBA should have said, "we don't like this one bit, especially since most of our players are black. But in truth we don't feel we have a legal or ethical basis on which to proceed. This information was acquired ILLEGALLY and, as such, we shouldn't know it, and therefore must act as if we DONT know it."

And as if that's not troubling enough, there's the issue of punishing someone for unpleasant ideas. Again, no one wants to stand up and defend this racist asshole in any way, but although racism is discouraged in this country and certain functional expressions of racism are prohibited by law (eg: you cannot deny someone housing or a job based on race), simply HOLDING racist opinions, or even just expressing them personally, most certainly CANNOT be considered basis for punitive actions against someone.

Again, it goes to a fundamental American principle: if we allow this guy to be persecuted for having certain (admittedly noxious) opinions, then who is to say that maybe someday someone will decide that one of YOUR opinions is "unacceptable" and move to strip you of your right to access, control, or even own the personal property you own.

"I really don't like the way Sally said maybe we shouldn't have gone to war in Iraq, so maybe we should take her car away."

Obviously the analogy isn't perfect, but it's close enough. This man Sterling is very clearly being attacked by the dreaded "Thought Police". If you are like me and sick of people excusing racism on the grounds that seeking to limit it amounts to "political correctness gone mad", well I hate to say it, but this is undeniably a case of political correctness gone mad.

By illegally taping this guy's private conversations and then upholding punishment against him just for holding an obnoxious opinion, we are acting just like the people that we condemn.

This is one of the best tests of the genuine commitment Americans have to the right to privacy and the right to hold unpopular opinions without risking serious harassment that we've seen in some time, and we are very obviously FAILING the test.

There are thousands of self-professed white supremacists--why are we not allowing them to be persecuted?

Some people call an "exception" based on the idea that the NBA is a private organization, not a public or government one, and they have the right to discriminate in any way they see fit.

Really? If it came out that they made black players use separate, inferior locker room facilities there would be a huge outcry--and there should be.

As a corollary, no organization should be allowed to act to deprive someone of their own legal property because they don't like his opinions--it's just WRONG.

It's EASY to follow your ideals as long as you agree with what they support or protect. The REAL test is when you find the other person's views sickening.

Decades back, against considerable complaint and outcry, the authorities admitted that they were obligated to allow neo-Nazis to march in a highly-Jewish suburb, and even to use the police to protect their right of free expression from private threats.

But it seems like today we no longer have the capacity or understanding to truly stand by our most important ideals. As bad as a racist owner of a basketball team is, the people rising to support action against him are worse.

I Love It When...

I love it when...people say, "pneumonic device"!

What is this, an air-powered memory aid?

Why don't people have better mnemonic devices for remembering how to say "mnemonic device"?

Whenever I head somebody say "pneumonic device", I always think that their head must be full of air.

"Nuh-monic", not "noo-monic." It's not all that hard.

Wouldn't it be great if people this dumb really WERE "dumb"? It makes you realize that helping the "dumb" to talk really isn't such a miracle after all. Jesus!

Also...how did everyone get the idea that the word "nuptials", which basically means "wedding", is pronounced "nup-shoo-wuls"? If you look at the word, or know how it's spelled, it's clearly meant to be pronounced "nup-shulls". Is "karate" a "marshuall" art?

On the other hand, why isn't the process of "pronouncing" words called "pronounciation"?

And a long-time concern of mine is why isn't the process of "maintaining" something called "maintainance"?

It makes you despair that the English language is so often driven by pure laziness.

But then there's nothing lazier than French. Like half the sentences are two words with "eh" in between. You can spell it "e" or "est" or "et", but it's always pronunced "eh" or "ay". "Eaux" is pronounced "oh". I can understand why the French are so into wine, because people speaking the language always sound drunk! Itsoundslikeeverywordissmashedintothenext.

Once when I was in Paris a guy in a striped shirt and beret with a baguette in a small bag, said to me, "C'est la vie!" And so I said, "la vie!"

I don't think he got it.

Four Letter Weirds: "Left"

"Left" is a word that has sinister connotations in many languages and expressions. (You probably caught the example that I slipped in there, the word "sinister" is derived from words tracing back to Latin and originally meaning "on the left, which is the BAD, side".

In various cultures it's considered very bad manners to gesture or touch someone with your left hand. One of the origins of this was sanitary. If you didn't have much access to soap and running water then you'd always use your left hand for "dirtier" tasks (use you imagination), thus leaving your left hand relatively hygienic for shaking, or handling food.

But English has even deeper meanings for the word left. For instance, "When that guy sitting on your left left, he left his coat behind, the last thing he had left!" Four "lefts" in a one sentence, each with largely separate meanings.

In English, "left" means "opposite of 'right'", but is also a past tense for "leave". So in the example it's first a direction, then a verb, then a DIFFERENT verb, and finally an indicator of state, in a part of speech I actually don't know.

Mostly simply, "The guy on your left left and left all he had left."

Also, "izquierda", which is Spanish for "left", at least in the "directional" sense. I don't believe that it's used as in English, no one says, "Pablo izquierda la casa," people would shake their heads at that. You'd probably use a form of "deportar", "to depart", or even a tense of "var", "To go".

But I like "izquierda, it just seems like such an exotic word for such a mundane concept. "El Mano Izquierda" (gender may be wrong, Im not that good at Spanish) sounds like it should be the name of a Spanish superhero, not "left hand"!

Four Letter Weirds: "That"

"That" is of course one of the most basic and necessary words in the English language. But once it occurred to me that it was one word unlike others in that it can be CHAINED almost infinitely and still make sense.

If some says, "I like the phone that that guy had," that's two in a row. But if you make references you can loop indefinitely, and still make sense.

Example: "The 'that that' that that guy said made complete sense!"

To which someone could reply, "True, but that 'that that that that' that YOU just said ALSO makes sense!

A fully comprehensible, meaningful and grammatically correct sentence with a string of six "thats" in a row just seems incredible to me, but them I'm kind of a "weird word" aficionado. And since you can make direct references without requiring any change in the words you use, it's also completely meaningful (if pointless) to say, "Even that 'that that that that that that' that that guy just said was correct"--NINE "thats" in a row!

At this point someone usually suggests that I "get a life." But then I ask, "what, a life like that that that other guy has?"

You do have to take care not to get caught in a "that" loop. After all...
that "that that that that that that that that that" that that
other guy said was just ridiculous!

The Thrill of Pretend Shoplifting

I went into Target today to pick up a few things, and when I went past the aisle I remembered that I was all out of label maker tape. It's almost silly to waste money on, but I find it handy.

The refills are surprisingly expensive, kind of a "razor blade" deal, where the refills are a surprisingly high fraction of just buying a new label maker that COMES with a roll.

I calculated that a certain two-pack was the best value so I threw it in my cart.

I went on to gather other things and along the way noticed that the label refills fell off the "seat/shelf" of the cart, and wedged in along the side. It occurred to me that it wasn't very noticeable, that it was very possible that one could sneak out by buying a bunch of other stuff, and "overlooking" the refills, thus saving almost $8.

As I shopped I thought about it. I'm the kind of guy that has gone back into stores to pay for stuff that accidentally escaped accounting. However if this had happened without me noticing, I'm not sure if I would have gone to the trouble to make sure this enormous corporation wasn't deprived of $8. And in my meager cash flow, $8 actually matters.

But I DID notice. That didn't mean that I still couldn't have gotten away with it though.

A month or so back I was using the self-checkout scanner at my local supermarket. The thing got confused, and I thought that I had gotten something through to the bagging shelf without scanning it. I picked it up to scan it and it instantly sounded an ominous tone. "Please put item BACK in the bagging area!" I thought, am I sure I didn't scan it? Then I thought that it was such an insignificant item (a couple bucks) that it wasn't worth finding the attendant, having him come over, check the transaction, type in special codes, etc. if the system was going to almost FORCE me to take it, it's not up to me to make more than a modest effort to make it right. And the accounting screens are so full of "You saved 18 cents!" In between everything you can't easily figure it out.

At home I looked and I did indeed get a cheap item free. I thought, "Man, these things are surprisingly easy to spoof! If I were really into it I could get away with a bunch of stuff!"

I have actually gone back to a store and offered to pay for something they didn't charge me for. But this was like $2, not even really worth the checker's time let alone mine, so I let it slide.

At Target checking out I carefully put everything on the belt--EXCEPT the "hidden" refills. They guy checked everything out and bagged it, and I asked, "Should I load those into my cart?" Some stores work that way.

He said, "No, that's OK, I'll do it." I thought about the secret item and wondered if he would see it while loading my cart...if he found it could I make it look like an oversight, or would everybody just have smirked at me like, "Nice try, shoplifter!"

But he DIDN'T. He checked me all out and was handing me a receipt when I reached in as if just noticing it, grabbed the item and threw it on the counter.

"Almost forgot this! And it was one of the main things I came here to get!" I said cheerily. I had decided before getting in line that I really don't picture myself being a petty shoplifter, and don't want to go home thinking that I was the kind of weasel that would try to sneak away $8 ahead. Sure, they're a giant corporation and they are making plenty of money either way, but I just don't think it's worth $8 to have to think about myself as a thief.

But it was strangely exciting to have seemingly gotten away with it.

Friday Hack: Multi-toweling

I was brought up with three siblings, and at a certain point it seems that moms decide they don't need to encourage any more laundry.

So when I showered I don't remember paying any special attention to towels, I'd pretty much just try to find one that wouldn't make me wetter by using it.

Of course when you grow up you usually get to the point where the idea of sharing bath towels reveals itself for the germ-swapping habit it really is, and you start to try to only use towels that YOU have used. You don't want to wipe someone else's remnant filth on your supposedly clean body.

Some people I've seen actually go to the extent of only using towels once, but I never really wanted to spend that much time washing towels. As the years went by I started to be more conscious of the idea that I didn't feel comfortable wiping my face with a towel that had been used elsewhere on my body, if you get my drift. Being me I tried to think of "hacks", ways to keep the microbes native to one region from traveling to more sensitive places, like my face.

The first idea I had was to mark a towel, and use the ends carefully. Then I realized that towels were already marked, usually with a cloth tag, and I thought, "Use the tag on your face, and the rest of the towel everywhere else." But even this is not really satisfying to me.

Now I'm multi-toweling.

On my towel bar I keep a large towel and a small one. And whether after a shower or any time else, I only use the small towel on my face, and the large one elsewhere.

Now I can use a towel on my face and feel unafraid of bodily cross-contamination!

Perfection: Replacing Large Defects with Smaller Ones

Even though the concept of absolute perfection is something that by definition can never be reached, over the years I have developed my own idea of "relative" perfection, and so far the best expression of it I have found uses the metaphor of wood finishing.

Imagine you're a woodworker and desire to make a table top as seemingly flawless as a high-quality piano. You start by sanding with a relatively coarse grade of sandpaper. Using that with good technique can smooth out most natural defects but the problem is that rather than eliminating them it actually replaces them with smaller defects, that is, finer scratches.

So the next step is always to sand with a finer grit paper. (This is the same whether polishing plain or finished wood.) With effort and good technique you will eventually notice that you have managed to smooth out at the large visible scratches that were bothering you before. But you look closely and notice that the exact same thing has happened: you've simply managed to smooth out larger scratches by replacing them with yet smaller scratches.

Obviously, next is paper with grit that is finer still. You finish THIS stage when you notice that the remaining scratches are smaller still.

Depending on your standards eventually you will reach a point where the surface looks smooth. But a magnifying lens quickly reveals...smaller scratches.

Applying this metaphor to other skills, such as playing a musical instrument or a sport, or whatever, and you realize that the same principle applies: although your guitar playing will always contain defects that SOMEONE can detect, the goal of the pursuit is not to eliminate all defects, because that is impossible. In perfect adherence to the metaphor, you practice to make your mistakes smaller and less noticeable, ultimately in the hope of reaching the point where your mistakes, the "scratches" in your surface, are too small to be readily detectable by the people you expect to be judging your work.

If people put a "magnifying lens" to your playing, they just may notice defects, but since people mostly don't want to do that, you can say you've reached an acceptable level of perfection when you reach the point where you've replaced all your "large" mistakes with ones that are too small to be readily detectable.

So as you're playing that complicated song, or carving turns down a ski slope, you yourself may notice small errors along the way but that's OK, you only need to reach the level where your mistakes are too small to be detected by others.

Replacing large scratches with smaller ones until the scratches are too small to be seen will achieve a "mirror" finish. And replacing your large mistakes with smaller ones by practice will bring you to the point where your performance may also be seen as "flawless".

Notice that this doesn't apply to "character", the particular appealing style you might bring to a piece of music, but simply to pure technique: playing the corrects notes clearly at the exact right times.

Screw Off!

When I was a kid we had these handy little punched-out steel devices euphemized as "church keys".

This euphemism was clearly ironic because these little tools were designed mostly to give you access to beer, the oldest form of alcoholic beverage, the kind of ungodly substance that church-related "blue laws" still prohibit the sales of on Sundays in many towns across this great open-minded yet thoroughly Puritanical country called "America" even today.

One end had a little pry tab designed to provide just the right leverage to pop off a "crown" bottle cap. Of course these could also used for sodas, but I doubt they got the nickname "church key" for that application.

On the other end the steel came to a triangular point, and it was designed to give leverage to punch a triangle-shaped hole in the metal flat-top beverage cans of the day before "pop-tops" were invented.

Time went by and beverage manufacturers and "bottlers" figured out that people would probably drink more if it was easier to get the containers open, so they created "pop top" metal cans. For the first few years, you pulled the tab right off, and people made decorative chains with them but mostly threw them on the ground, which not only made a mess but presented a hazard to different animals that would ingest them with gruesome results.

Under pressure, we got the pop-tops of today, where the thirsty patron simply pulls a metal tab up which forces a metal lever down to push the tab open, but keep it attached to the inside of the can. So then cans were easy to open without a "church key", and didn't pose any particular environmental threat apart from throwing the cans themselves down. But animals can't eat those, so they weren't such a threat.

A few years went by and some packaging genius actually realized that the conventional crown-top bottle cap could be combined with a simple twist-off screw top mechanism, and make it so you could now open beverage bottles without a tool as well.

Finally! Full beverage liberation! You could buy beer (or pop) in cans, or bottles, go somewhere, and drink them without need of any kind of tool. For awhile resourceful people had figured out different ways to pop the caps off bottles, some risking their teeth, some prying with a belt-buckle or key, some actually carrying small openers on their keychains (which I always took as a sign of somebody way too focused on drinking), and I even saw a guy pull off the tops with his EYE socket! Now THAT'S the kind of bar trick worth risking your vision on!

But as more years have gone by, massive breweries have been met with small, custom outfits called "microbreweries". These purveyors along with other brands of smaller volume, "specialty" production beers, decided that it was somehow more "fitting" to reinforce the impression of "old-timey goodness" (as if most beer was at one time uniformly delicious) of their product by bottling it in a threadless, old-style crown bottle caps that require a tool to remove.

If you're not careful and you've gotten used to twisting off beer bottle caps with your hand (soda had long since gone to screw top plastic bottles) and you encountered one of these old "non-screwtop" bottles and tried to twist the cap off with your hand, well, some level of pain would generally ensue as your tightened grip tried to turn the sharp-edged crown tops off that wouldn't twist at all. That can really hurt, like grabbing a woodworker's sharpened rasp tool and just twisting your skin against it to see how bad it would hurt.

But the thing that pisses me off enough to write this is that now it's commonly used as a marketing gimmick meant to communicate, "quality, low-volume beer." But it's being used by huge breweries just to give that impression, so now I have to jump back four decades or so and make sure I have a tool to open these bottles just because some marketing genius thought it was "cool". People can buy cold beer, go someplace nice to drink it, and not be able to get the stupid bottles open, just for "marketing" purposes.

There is no good, practical reason not to make every single beer bottle cap twist off--none. But they still force people to reflexively try to twist, go "ouch!", and then rattle around in a drawer looking for what should be a completely obsolete tool. Just because they think we're such suckers that we'll believe any swill with a non-twist off cap will automatically taste good, just because they use an inconvenient and obsolete closure on the bottle.

So I write this mostly in vain, hoping that somehow it will cause a spell to be cast over every marketing manager who decides to make my life a hassle by making this arbitrary decision, and cause them immediate death for their sin, or at least, severely gouged hands.

Translation: Beer-bottlers, stop using non-twist off bottle caps, you're not fooling anybody!

The KARKIL Dictionary Defines: Unployee

Unployee, n: a person that works for a company in a capacity similar to an employee, but for no compensation; volunteer. It seems possible that as the ACA Healthcare law goes into effect, lots of people will be quitting jobs that they hate, but they will still want to have something to do even if they don't get paid. Also, there is a trend called "freeworking" where someone interested in pursuing a certain activity offers his services to somebody doing it just for the experience, CV credit, even portfolio samples. Such a person, since they aren't officially employed but still working as if they were, is an unployee.

The Devils of New Mexico

My poor relatives who mostly live back in the cold, gray Soviet Midwest have long had to put up with me bragging about the spectacularly amenable climate out here in my chosen home land of New Mexico. I feel like I have to keep them aware of how progressive this state is (Minnesotans like to think they live in the Progressive Utopia, and they may be right, except it is SOOO C-C-COLD!), because since people don't pay much attention to us, and because the state is mostly poor and the school systems questionable, they assume a state like this is run like a plantation with white bosses calling the shots in Santa Fe over the long-suffering native and Latino population.

And whether you consider it a point of pride, a liability, or just a stat, NM has long been the only non-Caucasian majority state in the US. (California is expected to join us soon.)

But the fact is that this is a state that has been almost exclusively progressive despite Republican governors. We banned capital punishment, tolerate NO laws that discriminate against women (or ethnically disenfranchised--you can't just say "minorities" here), and their right to make their own choices, and we have some of the most advanced and "careful" voting laws in the country, where you are NOT required to vote in a precinct, and we generally have WEEKS of early voting--plus, we are a leader in abandoning digital voting systems because of how easily corruptible they are, and thus require real paper records for every election.

This ain't Ohio or Florida.

Tie that in with the delightful climate (Valentines Day is t-shirt weather here, folks), the ready access to gorgeous wilderness and skiing, and the generally more relaxed pace of life (we have just TWO interstate-level highways: one that goes North to South, and one that goes East to West, and they intersect right in the very middle of our most populous city. If you have trouble getting around here, you have much more serious problems than roads can fix), and things sometime verge on the idyllic, if it weren't for...

...the DEVIL'S charm, the evil, bike tire shredding and excruciatingly painful "GOAT'S HEAD".

The goat's head is like a little burr that grows on a very common weed out here, so it is EVERYWHERE. And the problem that you go out for a walk and they get stuck in your shoes, and then you come inside and they get into your carpet, and then you walk in bare feet and...OUCH!!!

Burrs aren't generally human-friendly, but this burr is like one specially-engineered by Satan Himself (His Glorious Majesty...or perhaps I've said too much? Anyway...) It is very strong and sturdy with super-sharp barbed tips, which mean if one embeds itself in your foot expect SERIOUS pain and then a big problem getting them out, because you can't just grab them with you hand, that just compounds your injuries. You have to find a way to pry this thing out of your tender flesh without breaking off the burrs in your tissues, which ensures the pain stays with you for as long as possible.

I'm a real idiot, I've been living here for decades and it only just occurred to me to ban shoes beyond the front door.

Meanwhile, due to their persistent nature it's hard to vacuum them up, but they are easy enough to pick up with your feet if you don't mind the pain.

Oh yeah, and we have a hollowed-out mountain range full of old atomic weapons residue on the edge of town, and a prominent world-class nuclear weapons lab along with us, painting a very prominent first-strike bulls-eye on us. Not to mention the goofily-named radioactive dump called "WIPP".

We try not to think about all that. It's not mellow.
.

Changing Tires on a Moving Car

Not unusually, today I was obsessing about my personal problems. (I'm one of these sickeningly self-absorbed assholes who's always whining about DEPRESSION...I know, I know, but so far hating myself for it isn't really helping.)

So I went out for a walk and I just started thinking, "People really don't get how serious my problem is, it's really kind of a bitch to try to fix your broken mind when all you have to fix it with is a broken mind...yea, it's really kind of like the classic problem, changing a flat tire on a moving car."

And I was SO sick of thinking about it I just decided to figure that out.

You know, how to fix a flat tire...on a moving car. It's a vivid phrase because it's just seems so impossible--but IS it? If I had unlimited resources, and advance time to prepare, but just a normal car with normal tires and wheels--how could it ever be changed without stopping the car? Is it REALLY an unsolvable problem?

At first I thought, I'd need a computer-controlled robot that could calibrate and sync itself to the rotation of my wheels. But then I thought--NO, I wouldn't. I'd still need the robot, plus I'd need a small "trolley" device, something that a precision robot could reach out of the car, position BEHIND the flat tire, somehow solidly affix it to the axle and/or frame, and deploy, so that the probably TWO wheels on it could LIFT and SUPPORT the moving car. The trolley would just need to have two smaller wheels, one to go in front, and one behind, the flat tire.

But WAIT...I wouldn't even REALLY need that. I could imagine a SINGLE wheel trolley that would work as long as it could be rigidly attached, and pushed DOWN to lift and support the vehicle. But as if being PRACTICAL mattered, I can more easily imagine a two-wheeled device being stable, and the built-in lifting mechanism being simpler and easier to implement because there would be less "front to back" instability, with two wheels, it seems like it work be easier to make.

If you could do that, then program the robot--or even a person--to simply reach out, detach the defective wheel, pull it in, grab a spare, put it in position, screw in the lug nuts, and then reverse the installation of the trolley device, such that the car would once again be supported by its own four wheels.

Wow. Not that hard AFTER all.

Now..what the hell am I going to do about this stupid DEPRESSION?

The "Because I Feel Like It" Series: First Hearing "Let It Be"

The first time I ever heard the Beatles album, "Let It Be" was in 1970 when it was just released. I was 13 years old.

It's no distinction but I was at the time a long-time Beatles fan. So many millions, if not BILLIONS, of people have come to love the music of The Beatles since they appeared in the 1960s that saying you like them is like saying you like water. But at the time, it was different, it was MAGICAL.

When each album was released you were ready, you ran down to the record store and bought the LP as soon as you could.

But I was on vacation in Pittsburgh, PA, near where my mom grew up, in the cool city apartment of my cool single uncle whom we called "Timer" for obscure family reasons. It was...cool.

He lived in this area of Pittsburgh, a city I never knew well since I was only there as a kid, in a cool apartment on a very steep street on a hill, overlooking the "Three Rivers" that intersect there. Timer seemed to me to be kind of a Jay Gatsby smooth East Coast preppie, never burdened by a wife or girlfriend so he seemed especially cool and free. I didn't realize until years later that he was gay. The signs were all there but it wasn't talked about then as it is now. Sadly, Timer died young of brain cancer. This was way before AIDS.

I remember my eyes alighting on the album like a precious jewel, when I saw it it seemed to blot out everything else in my field of vision. Almost tremulously I asked if I could listen to it, and Timer said, "Sure!", and he put the LP on his hi-fi for me, a nice one with FULL STEREO, and he gave me HEADPHONES to listen to it. I remember sitting there with a feeling of disbelief at my own good fortune. Nobody else in the world had anything better.

I don't really remember listening to the specific songs and yet I somehow remember listening to all of them. I remember the awe I felt as each new one came on, "Let It Be" had a certain sophistication, refinement and spirituality to it that were mesmerizing.

I mean, just think of it: listening to something like "Let It Be", immediately after it was released, it was like being anointed. I was completely free of 44 full years of gummy, complicated context. It didn't compare to ANYTHING. It came out, and gently, and with sublime dignity, it created its own dimension to float in.

There is a certain pleasure to that that is beyond expression.

I remembering the sun streaming in through his windows and watching the glittering dust particles float lazily as I listened. I was really too young to realize what a perfect moment it was, but it felt like time had just opened up, and everything was just there all around me, and there was no notion in my head that I didn't have everything in that moment. No anticipation except for the music, no need, no discomfort or worry, I could have been hanging upside down by my ankles and I would have just hung there, a sense of eternal completeness occupied every part of my mind and body.

All thoughts of what had been and what was to come were silenced as I sat in quiet delight listening to "Across the Universe". I'm going to type some of the well-known lyrics now not because I think anybody wants to read them, but just because I want to FEEL it.

Words are flowing out like endless
Rain into a paper cup
They slither wildly as they slip away
Across the Universe.

Pools of sorrow, waves of joy
Are drifting through my open mind
Possessing and caressing me.

Oh my God! Please forget you read anything before the lyrics started; they capture much better than I could the exact way I felt then.

Except the part about the dust sparkling in the sun beams. That magnified the whole experience immensely by simply, eloquently mirroring the feeling of the lyrics.

It was...again...magical. Just...

Magical.

KARKIL Dictionary: Geofitti

The Karma Killers Dictionary defines: Geo-fitti: n; any kind of imagery or detail put in place at a scale with the intention that it will be imaged by a satellite, hopefully so it will appear on a satellite mapping service such as Google Maps. Ex: "The gang on Big Bang Theory wanted Howard's wedding to be captured by a Google satellite, so they held it on a rooftop and created a giant white circle out of sheets of paper so it would be easy to pick out of a satellite image that they calculated was due to be shot precisely at the time of the wedding."

A portmanteau of "Geo" meaning Earth, and "Grafitti", informal or unofficial visual expressions on public surfaces.

A British "Dick Van Dyke" Show

I've just finished watching a "Britcom" from the late 70s called "The Good Life." It consists of four seasons of 7-half hour episodes, and is available on Amazon Prime.

I mostly don't go for shows before the turn of the century anymore. I find then crude, clunky, and irrelevant. Even stuff from the 90s can be too cheesy. I don't even really enjoy them for their kitsch, or even nostalgic value.

One thing was different. When I first got Netflix, I watched every episode of Dick Van Dyke from start to finish, in order. I've seem them all of course, many times, but not for decades.

And I found it clever, charming and pleasing. The characters are well-drawn and engaging. You find yourself really just relating to them, as people.

And it all revolves around Dick, the classic "normal guy" at the center of the whole American sitcom oeuvre. But even he is allowed to good around and act silly, and instead of it chafing, it's charming.

"The Good Life" isn't much like DVD in concept, or even execution. No office gang, but still the neighbors as close friends.

And it was made more than a decade later. But it's got a concept that's just as intriguing today as it ever was.

The main characters are the goofy Tom, and his sharp but loving wife Barbara. It's his birthday, and his corporate job has left him feeling empty and bleak. He stays up late, and a concept comes to him. He is so excited his wakes up his wife to tell her: "I am so tired of working indirectly, doing symbolic things that return symbolic value that we have to decide how to extract meaning from, and it's driving me crazy. I don't WANT to be a cog in a machine whose function I don't even understand."

"Barbara, I want to quit, and become completely SELF-SUFFICIENT."

She fusses and resists for a bit, but slowly the fundamental value of what he is saying gets to her, and she jumps on board. They are going to quit all jobs, and do everything they can to provide for all their needs, with a goal of using as little money as possible. They mostly won't make it, and they mostly won't need it.

The "hobby farm" concept is not new. But when they think about moving to a place better suited for farming and livestock, they realize that they love their house, and their neighbors, and they don't want to go. So they decide that they are going to make a go of it right there in their small suburban home.

Their best friends are their neighbors, Jerry (!) and Margo. Tom and Jerry work at the same company, but Jerry thinks they're buts, and they want to continue working up the corporate ladder, being involved in "society" functions, and so on. They're a little bit upper-crusty and snobbish, especially Margo. But even though they can't really get on board with the "self-sufficiency" idea, they love their friends, and wish to remain close, and be supportive. They very quickly resign themselves to living next door to this mess of dirt, crops, goats and chickens, because it's for their friends.

The self-sufficiency concept is rich enough to drive the plot consistently through every episode. Sometimes it verges on being like a little workshop class, as they install and old wood burning cook stove, and make everything themselves. Tom is inventive so he immediately sets up a generator based on converting the effluence from the pigs into methane. Whether it's really strictly possible is beside the point. It's believable enough, and you want them to succeed.

One of their first breakthrough is making their own "pea pod burgundy" which looks like Alka Seltzer and packs a punch. No lifestyle is worth living with out booze, of course.

As you watch, you gain admiration for the sheer effectiveness of the physical comedy, and how they seem to give life to every scenario. It's always interesting, never overwhelming, and even the tribulations aren't so "dark".

While I'm watching this, I feel soothed by it. It's not edgy, nor challenging, nor controversial. And they do some really bizarre things, like turning their rototiller into a crude but effective powered vehicle so they can pick up supplies.

I can go on and simply describe every episode but instead I urge you to find a way to check it out for yourselves. In this scary-ass world where even the entertainment is often about terrorism, it's like an island. Whatever mood you're in, you can watch it and be soothed and amused, even when you're not laughing out loud.

And really, this world has become so serious, even our favorite comics can be so dark (Louis CK? He's the perfect person to laugh your ass of to while the last bit of blood drains out your wrists), this...is LIGHT, and happy.

That is a giant niche in our lives that needs filling, and The Good Life fills it amiably and satisfyingly.

Pussy Riot? I don't know...REVISED

Since I wrote this I've had time to reflect on the value that Pussy Riot has given to the Russian people and oppressed people everywhere, and how ultimately it may matter more than the criticisms I make below. I won't withdraw it, but just preface it to say that I'm no longer convinced that the doubts I raise are the very first order of importance.

============================================

Like most good lib...er, PROGRESSIVES, I started out just generally advocating for Pussy Riot. I figure that if Putin throws them in jail, they MUST be heroes.

(In fact, Putin spoke out and SPECIFICALLY stated that their actions didn't merit prison. Perhaps he was disingenuous, it's hard to know. Many other people came right out and suggested they be imprisoned, but Putin did not.)

But realizing I didn't really know much about them, I checked out their page on WikiPedia. What I found there didn't please me.

Petty egotistical fixation
First of all, it seems that one primary member wrote to a former member while they were both in jail, or at least she was. And the woman she wrote didn't reply fast enough, so she just basically said, "Fuck her, she's dead to me."

In a letter dated February 1, 2013 and published by her father on the Echo of Moscow web site, Tolokonnikova distanced herself from Samutsevich, saying "Samutsevich hasn't written to me for two months. That's it, to me she is already dead. There will be no more talk of collaborating after this."

What kind of people are they?! This doesn't seem like the behavior of genuine ideological protesters, but more of pissed of suburban teenagers. "Um, so, like...I saw Tiffany and, she, um...like didn't even LOOK at me...so, like...as far as I'm concerned, she can, like, eat shit." Not inspirational, CHILDISH.

Sexual "minority"
Plus, they mentioned a little term on the page for a concept they seem to support called the "sexual minority". I clicked around a little to find out exactly what it meant, and it appears to have been originated by a Swedish creator of a counter-culture protest movement which advocated for, among other things, people's free right to have sex with CHILDREN, including, but not only, their OWN kids.

Pussy Riot members have been outspoken in their support of LGBT rights, and in an early interview they confirmed that the group includes at least one member of a sexual minority.

[switch to "WP/sexual_minority"]...

The term was coined most likely in the late 1960s under the influence of Lars Ullerstam's ground breaking book "The Erotic Minorities: A Swedish View"
. . .
Ullerstam was a propagator in those times for sexual relationships between children and adults, between parents and their own children. He stated that it also was very common among his friends. Lars Ullerstam was a medical doctor and psychiatrist in Stockholm, capital of Sweden.

Surely no one can say that the whole of their body of protest is illegitimate, and admittedly the term "sexual minority" has several definitions. But if you are a PROTEST group, then what you SAY is what MATTERS. And if you deliberately choose to use a specific term over another (they could have described the member as "LGBT", as "persecuted for gender preference", but they didn't). And if I can easily produce evidence that this term was ORIGINATED by a notorious advocate of what we consider "child sexual abuse" and "statutory rape", surely they can. After all, they are trying to get people to listen to them, so they are most particularly responsible for the specific terms they choose to represent themselves. They could have qualified their statement, adding, "...although not in the sense that we approve of the practice of having sex with children, a meaning that has been associated with sexual minority before." But they DIDN'T disclaim this implication. Maybe this means they're BAD, or just plain STUPID or CARELESS, but none of these are things I would choose to support.

Again, the main things protestors and dissidents use are WORDS. As such, just as we should respect their specific protests, we should hold them responsible for the specific language they choose to use.

(You are within reason if you point out that they didn't actually say, but merely "confirmed" this. But if a reporter asked me to confirm or deny if my friend might be considered a child sex abuser, I'd say, "Well, not exactly...I don't think I'm willing to confirm THAT." Even if she wasn't sure what it meant. "'Sexual minority' I don't know, but definitely having preferences that are subject to persecution by an immoral regime." Remember, as a protestor, YOUR WORDS ARE WHAT MATTERS MOST.)

Beyond that, their activities are punctuated by childish antics and behavior. Just because they excuse their actions by say, "only illegal acts are capable of gaining international attention", doesn't mean they deserve respect.

And you know what? I am much less interested in what now seems to me to be a group of opportunistic young women who found a cause to boost themselves into the international spotlight, while implicitly supporting STATUTORY RAPE, while they scrap among themselves saying, "WE'RE the REAL PUSSY RIOT!" "Nuh-uh, WE are!"

Weirdly, the ones that just got out of prison and have come to the US to inflame our most gullible. Just before that, they released a statement that they no longer considered themselves part of Pussy Riot.

In February 2014, both Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova were announced as no longer being members of the group.

Huuhhh...??? So...are we still supporting Pussy Riot, or not?

Get your shit together or shut the hell up. Maybe the worst thing is that for anyone thoughtful enough to pay attention, they almost give people who righteously protest against the persecution of LGBT people a bad name. They should go home and play and leave the difficult stuff to the grownups. Because fundamentally the worldwide persecution of LGBT people is not a game, it's a serious issue. They have enough to cope with, they don't need a bunch of cranky punks confusing people about their right to be accepted.

Pussy Riot, I am OUTTAHERE!

PS to AMY GOODMAN: I have always had tremendous respect for your work on DemocracyNow! But not only do you give completely uncritical support to these questionable people in Pussy Riot, but just this week you had someone on that hailed a disgruntled former Olympic luge athlete as an "Olympic Snowden" (!), as if being pissed off because Verizon didn't give you exactly the endorsement deal you wanted was somehow comparable to sacrificing your freedom and possibly your LIFE to protect the freedom of others, as the ACTUAL Snowden did. Disgraceful.

(BTW, if anyone can prove me wrong, please do so. I would be delighted to not believe this. If they truly do not support these twisted, illegal behaviors, then they are responsible for clearing it up. its not like they haven't read their own WP page! If they question terms, have someone edit the page, its a WIKI! Again, it is a PRIMARY responsibility to pay attention to these things, so people cannot discredit you. If the info survives, it's more likely true.)

My source is Wikipedia, the quotes are from the pages for "Pussy Riot" and "sexual minority".

Woody REALLY?

Maybe a subject line based on a pun is not appropriate for a topic as devoid of humor as child sexual abuse, but I find it hard to fix any real sense of truth to this whole awful story.

In case you didn't hear, the whole issue of whether American filmmaker extraordinaire Woody Allen committed sexual abuse on his adoptive daughter Dylan has been brought back into the spotlight after more than a decade's hibernation with the publishing of an open letter by the supposed victim herself, Dylan Farrow, now a married 28 year old woman.

Not intending any prejudice for saying so, the letter is a masterpiece of persuasion that uses some pretty powerful rhetorical devices to make its point.

She begins by breezily posing the question, as one might at a dinner party, "What is your favorite Woody Allen movie?" She asks that the reader withhold their answer to give her a moment to make a comment.

In that comment she fairly graphically describes what she says is her memory of being sexually abused by Allen. It is more than a little disturbing and, if true, should really lead to Allen getting the full "Lance Armstrong" (ie: to be stripped of all awards and commendations of any kind, and a universal public loathing imposed) accompanied by a healthy prison sentence.

She ends the letter by writing, "Now, with all that in mind, tell me: What is your favorite Woody Allen movie?"

I don't want to say I doubt her word, but there is something about a letter so beautifully crafted for manipulation that sets off my "bullshit detector". This "detector" is not always right, I'm just saying that if someone was trying to gather public sympathy to condemn someone, this is a very good example of how to achieve this end, true or false. Something in me just wishes it weren't so cleverly expressed.

But then, if you really went through what she says she did, you would probably have written this letter about 10,000 different times in your head, and she's obviously an articulate and intelligent person, so why not write it for maximum impact?

The comments I read were all very supportive, but we cannot consider ourselves dispassionate seekers of the truth if we don't admit that memories like this have been shown before to be unreliable; sometimes true, and sometimes just not. Influencing memory is pretty well-known, and if this were shown to be a false, "induced" memory, then it wouldn't be the first one.

One the other hand, how can we turn a cold heart to a person revealing that she was sexually abused by her own father figure? Surely we cannot simply dismiss such a complaint insisting that she provide some sort of "proof" that could never be produced?

Allen, of course, flatly denies these allegations, which means very close to absolutely nothing. The only thing he has to keep him free is the Constitutional presumption of innocence. So it would seem that the only hope for resolution in this case is through the courts. She said he did wrong, he says he didn't; we can't go about deciding these things based on sympathy for the image of a child violated, when it's possible that he in fact didn't do it. To be honest, I don't think I can decide which is worse: to let a child see her abuser go free, or to falsely saddle someone with the horrendous, nearly unbearable stigma of being a child molester.

This is an extremely difficult problem. When I read the letter all I can think is "Kill the bastard!", but that's an emotional response. In our system of justice you are not supposed to find someone guilty merely on someone else's "say so".

That said, I must say that circumstantially Allen looks like nothing so much as a closet child abuser when judged merely by his own work. I vividly remember the genuinely sleazy way Allen made a sexual relationship between a middle-aged man and an under-aged schoolgirl seem "glamorous" in his movie "Manhattan", in which he showed himself in cosmopolitan scenes around Manhattan holding a decidedly "girlish" Mariel Hemingway by the hand. It was shot in arty black-and-white, and loved by critics, and though I was fairly young at the time (which would tend to make me see younger people as more "grown-up"), the whole thing made me feel downright creepy.

And a certain lascivious, even prurient, sexuality can be said to permeate much of Allen's work. I personally can't look at all the high-toned borderline soft-core porn he has produced without some wincing, and some sense that if anybody would be guilty of something like this, a pervo like Woody wouldn't be my last guess for perpetrator.

Of course, a lot of Allen's filmmaking is clearly meant to stroke his need to feel attractive to attractive women of various ages. I remember always feeling a little dubious watching movies like "Sleeper" and "Annie Hall", as good as they were, that a really attractive young woman like Diane Keaton was would actually choose to be with this goofy looking little clown is hard to swallow. It's just rare to see couples so hugely mismatched in terms of attractiveness, and even Woody would admit that he is no one's idea of a heart throb or matinee idol.

And yet it can't be denied that the self-admitted "schlemiel" Allen did indeed "score" some very attractive women in his day--including Diane Keaton! Suddenly you find yourself in a world where black is white, up is down, dogs and cats are sleeping together...how can anyone hope to gain true perspective in the face of these events?

I guess if it came time to declare a position bearing no true weight of a legal or any other kind, I would have to point back to "Manhattan", wherein Allen made a statement for all the world to see, that it's perfectly fine and natural for a middle-aged man to cavort sexually with an underage girl.

Woody, I'm trying to think of things to help you, but you sure didn't do yourself any favors by thrusting that into the ineradicable public memory. When it comes right down to it, I never would have let that "talented" creep anywhere near MY daughter.

Upon that realization I can't help but ask, "Hey Mia, where the hell were YOU when all this was supposedly happening?" Are we to believe that Mia Farrow can condemn him now, when she was actually on the scene when this stuff was happening? I mean, if I can look at the man and his work and decide that I wouldn't leave my daughter alone with him, why wasn't Mia thinking the exact same thing? Certainly she was close enough to know him much better than any of us? So why did she let this happen, why didn't she protect her daughter, and why isn't her daughter angry at her NOW for her part in this?

At a certain point it's hard to accept Dylan declaring Woody a "monster" without also hearing her say, "and Mom, just where the hell were you anyway? I was a little kid, I had no one to protect me! Am I supposed to believe that all this happened without you suspecting a single thing? Mom, I dearly wish I could hold you innocent in this mess, but circumstances just don't allow it."

I think I'm going to have to close this with a double guilty verdict: Woody, you are a sick bastard, please go to prison, AND, Mia, hitch a ride with Woody, because a mom as shitty at protecting her children as you deserves only barely more freedom than the perpetrator himself.

Friday Hack: Clean Dishwasher

The first time you open your dishwasher after running it, you may not wish to empty it immediately. So simply turn one cup or glass right side up, right away. Since you never run cups or glasses through the wash cycle right side up, you know it's clean. If by some weird chance something had gone through the wash right side up it would be filled with water.

Foolproof hack for knowing whether the dishes in your dishwasher are clean or dirty. You need never wonder again, even if you don't empty the clean dishes immediately, like you "should"!

Friday LifeHack

I thought, "I should make up my OWN clever name for "lifehacks", the term that came to wide recognition through Gina Trapani's "LifeHack.com" web site, but then I thought of an even more basic LifeHack: don't gratuitously invent terms for things for which there is already a well-known term, you make your information more difficult to understand. You wouldn't, except as a joke, say, "Please pass the NaCl dispenser", because by the time anyone figured it out, the food you had wanted to put salt on would already be cold. ("Salt shaker" or simply "salt", if you didn't get my cleverness, which was my intention to illustrate my point.) So there's your PRE-hack!

Today's LifeHack: Receipts.

These days you run from one place to another, buying stuff as you go along. Groceries, then maybe a latte, then a new router, then maybe lunch. By the time you get home, you've either lost all the receipts, or still have some or all of them in a undifferentiated blob in your pocket (or purse). Either you make a decision that you don't care, and just ditch them, or you have to go through them. After all, you probably don't need your grocery receipt, or the latte, but the router might just not work right and you might need the receipt to return it.

Is there any way to deal with this common yet unavoidable annoying task? I mean, it's just slips of paper, what is there to be done?

Not much, but this "not much" helps me a lot. See, whenever I buy something for which I receive a receipt, I make a judgment on the spot as to whether it's likely that I will ever need that receipt again. If it's the insignificant stuff like the latte or lunch, I figure, no, and I crumple them up into a ball. But if I buy that router, or maybe a shirt that might not fit, I FOLD that one neatly. They key thing is that you only have to think about that receipt that one time, rather than having to re-interpret everything. And the very appearance of something neatly folded seems to imply, "this is a valuable document", so it's easy to tell what means what. A deliberately crumpled piece of paper means "trash".

(Of course, if you're standing by a trash can when you get your latte receipt, just throw it away. But maybe you aren't, and maybe you aren't the kind of person that just throws crap on the ground because you RESPECT society.)

So now when I get home, I don't have to revisit the whole mess, look at them all again, and decide what to do. I just toss all the crumples, and put all the folded ones in a file, or with the item I bought. (If it's clothing, I'll just put it in the bag or even a pocket; if the thing came in a box, I tape the receipt to the top so I don't have to search for it.

Not only does this make handling receipts much easier, but it increases the likelihood that you will be able to come up with a receipt to return something should you ever need to.

Voila...my receipt LifeHack. I hope it helps you.

Sowing the Seeds of Cash

There is plenty of agitation in the US these days about "G.M.O.s", Genetically Modified Organisms, a purposely-broad term meant to describe all forms of life that are genetically modified. There are a lot of groups looking into various "organisms", but probably the highest-profile activity has to do with food stock plants, largely corn and different types of grains and cereal crops. Corporations being led by giants such as Monsanto have been hard at work for years to try to produce new versions of our most common dietary crops to make them more disease-resistant, drought-resistant, and even more pesticide-resistant, so that farmers, which these days mostly means agri-business corporate giants, can increase their profits by increasing their yields.

One of my favorite ironic combinations is companies that make weed-killing herbicides such as the well-known product "RoundUp" people use in their gardens, are working to make plants that are "RoundUp resistant", so growers can buy and pour more of these poisons on their crops to kill invading weeds while leaving genetically-modified (Monsanto) crops thriving. On a certain level it sounds good, but if you think about it, the idea of one company making both a poison and its antidote can't help but inspire some really scary horror sci-fi scenarios, possibly leading to situations where they spray huge amounts of this toxin that kills every plant it hits except if it is one that you bought from them. What kind of terrifying power does that put in the hands of one profit-oriented corporation?

Whatever it is, it is not as terrifying as what Monsanto and others are doing with the seeds that grow the grains and cereals and corn that we feed to our livestock to eat, or simply grow plants that are made into food. Under the guise of trying to engineer heartier plants that increase food supplies for a hungry world, they are also making it so the resulting plants cannot produce their own seed--and then, they PATENT them.

Back from the beginning of agriculture thousands of years ago, farmers would grow some plants for consumption and also some for seed, so that when the next season came around, they would have new seeds to plant, to keep the cycle going. It's a pretty successful strategy when you consider that it really accounts for the basic survival of the human species.

It is a very important and basic issue.

But Monsanto is working with government support to create a new world order of agriculture, wherein their seeds proliferate, producing crops that farmers harvest, and also require that farmers come back to Monsanto the very next year to buy more seed. It's a pretty powerful business model which is great if you're Monsanto, but not as great if you just like to eat.

The are designing these seeds to proliferate, force other species out, or cross-pollinate with them, so that even if a farmer very carefully works to maintain his own crops based on, dare I say it, OPEN SOURCE SEEDS, often his crops will be infiltrated by Monsanto crops, and then Monsanto can obtain that farmer's seeds or plants, put them through genetic analysis, and be able to PROVE that the seed contains some of Monsanto's seed genes, and declare, "You stole our property!", demanding that the farmer cease production and even pay reparation to Monsanto!

Every bowl of cereal you have for breakfast, every processed food that contains corn sugar, oil, or starch, or any part of corn, rice, you name it, and Monsanto is working to seize legal ownership of it.

I have to admit that one of the first things that pops into my mind is, "gee, I sure wish I'D thought of that!" but then I think, "Wait a minute...should one company really be legally permitted to own the fundamental rights to the food we as a species rely on for survival? So that the day will come when either we pay Monsanto a cut, OR WE DON'T EAT?

People held massive protests at a Monsanto board meeting in the last few days to demand that the law not ban, but simply require G.M. foods to disclose that fact on the label, so we as consumers can make an informed choice as to the kind of food we put in our own bodies. But Monsanto viciously--and successfully, because thanks to Republicans money now wins virtually EVERY fight, and they have WAY more money than any opposition--fights to avoid simply having to identify the "miracle foods" that they are creating for our "own good".

If it's so good, and G.M. Foods are so healthy, surely people would seek out foods with labels that proclaim "G.M.O.", why don't they even want us to be able to tell by reading the label? Are these people capable of doing ANYTHING that does not seem sinister in some way?

That's another area of enough concern to cause people to stage protests and get arrested to fight for. But meanwhile, you have to wonder what the world will be like when no own can grow any kind of edible plant, including not just grains but vegetables and fruits, without having to buy the seeds from just one company, Monsanto. Since they are working to create a monopoly on viable seed, they will also be able to set the price, because if you don't buy from them, there's nobody else to buy from. Remember? They sprayed thousands of acres of farmland with RoundUp which killed all plants except the ones grown from their own seed, so if you want food, Monsanto is the only place to get it. And none of those plants produce seed, so you have to buy seed from Monsanto.

Remember, no matter how complex it seems, they are mostly just producing sterile seed, and patenting it. It's not magic in this era of advanced genetics. They then pursue strategies to force the competition out of business, simple if you have the money and political clout they do.

Admittedly, I can't really even figure out how Monsanto itself will generate such huge amounts of "sterile" seed, but just because I can't understand it doesn't mean it isn't happening. And if Monsanto succeeds in "cornering the market" in some basic species of plants, what happens if THEY fail, and cannot produce enough seed?

"But...this cannot BE happening! First of all, it's OBSCENE. Second...don't we have anti-trust laws in this country? Haven't we already fought this fight and determined that monopolies are bad for society and thus cannot legally be permitted to exist?"

That's what I've always thought.

SOTU Morrow Comes

Watching President Obama give this year's "State of the Union" address on my trusty iPad, my first thought was, "Finally, the President has caught up with corporations everywhere in using PowerPoint to give presentations." As a graphic designer and a web UX designer I feel I have to thank the president and his team for developing a tasteful, highly effective set of visuals that avoided self-serving "design tricks" like gratuitous animation to provide a genuine complement to the President's speech. I held my breath as the first few slides went by, waiting for a dreaded animation "build" or some other distracting, corny design gimmick, but it never came.

I see a lot of design as does everyone now in this age of information and communication, and I have to say something I don't often feel: I wish I had gotten a chance to be on that design team, not for the usual reason of correcting the impulse to hideous excess that plagues so much design, but so I could take part credit for the presentation. Excellent work, people.

I'm a designer, there is no way I could let that pass without commenting on it. But onto more substantive aspects of the address.

I find that I almost always like what President Obama says, and I like a lot of what he does. In my mind, if nothing else, if everything else is discarded, this is a man who made access to health coverage for people even with pre-existing conditions, a FACT of American life, giving all of us a position from which we will never have to retreat.

"We got it now, suckers, and we ain't ever gonna give it up!" Just that single, tiny concept is to me a gigantic jump ahead in the civility of this country and hopefully, in time, the world. Sure, other countries had it first, but, no offense, but it's a totally different thing to say, "They have it in Canada", than to say, "They have it in the United States of America", which is, for better or worse, the global icon for power and democracy. Even if we play catch up, when we do it makes it just that much easier for others to follow.

Because, as an American I believe that Obama's basic moral statement resonates with mine, that ALL people are important, and we ultimately have a stake in the life of every living person. During ups and downs, this has remained the place where people dream to be, and that they dream to emulate. Every good thing we do in America is a beckoning to people everywhere: "Come on, you guys, be like us!" Not in the sense of wiping out their own identity, but in the sense of defining what every human being has a right to have just by being born.

Obama is unquestionably a great man, and I believe that he will be remembered as one of the greatest American presidents. But there are still questions that gnaw at me. He addresses the important principle of rejecting the idea that we can only maintain peace by maintaining a constant war footing. And he has put his money where his mouth is by aggressively opposing any that would stop him, and bringing an official end to the horrendous, senseless, and very expensive military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But I still have to ask, "What about JSOC, and what about SOCOM, Mr. President?"

("What about the WHAT and the WHAT now???" I hear people ask.)

JSOC and SOCOM are two expressions that I know about that describe our alarming increase in "Special and Covert" operations around the world. These are NOT the military forces the President means when he is talking about bringing our troops home, they are Spec Ops troops like Army Rangers, Green Berets, coupled with contracted private military operatives that are estimated to now have a presence in as many as 130 of the world's 200 or so countries, a number that has apparently DOUBLED on Obama's watch.

Sure, we're bringing the average soldiers home, but meanwhile we are expanding our covert military presence to MOST of the countries in the world, but with names that nobody knows, and that therefore nobody can really question. And we SHOULD be able to question, if only to say, "Hey Obama, who ARE these people and what are they DOING?"

We should be able to ask that question not simply on moral grounds but on economic grounds because these "covert" and contractor military operatives cost our country by some estimates upwards of a TRILLION DOLLARS per year.

If no one else will, I want to stand up and say, "Excuse me...I WANT MY TRILLION DOLLARS BACK PLEASE." STOP talking about how Americans have to tighten their belts and let go of critical government services when a secret TRILLION dollars is evaporating every year from our economy to suit goals and purposes that nobody has even bothered to acknowledge, let alone justify.

The Visible Soldiers are coming home! But the secret soldiers are going out--and we pay for them. They had better be doing a lot of important stuff we can't do without for that much money, for asking people at home to do without food and shelter.

And, as he should, the President gave an implied thumbs-up to the next Nobel Peace Prize winner, a man who sacrificed everything to give us critical information that Obama and the government was doing everything they could to hide from us, Edward Snowden, by mentioning that we need to respect our values and the right to privacy of people all around the world.

But Snowden is still a criminal on the run, and Julian Assange is still under house arrest at an embassy in London, at the behest of our president. Obama has announced some fairly vague and unsatisfying new "controls" on the ever expanding, enormous Surveillance State of America. Obama says not that the NSA has to stop collecting our personal communications, but that the data should be handed off to someone else for "protection" from abuse by our own agents. But...who? What organization can be imagined that can step in and take this data, and somehow mysteriously gain the power to withhold it from secret entities within the US government?

What about the fact that NO ONE can show that ANY of this information has prevented or even inconvenienced a SINGLE TERRORIST ACTION against the US? Shouldn't this mean that the NSA should simply stop this very questionable activity and thereby release the BILLIONS it costs to run the NSA and similar agencies BACK into our economy?

As he is up there eloquently expounding on our highest ideals, they are still STEALING our private data--and forcing us to pay billions for the "privilege".

Our President says--and does--some wonderful things, for the people of this country, and of the world. But these frightening issues still have a cozy hiding place in the unexplored depths of his administration, and of OUR government.

President Obama, Thanks for all you have given us, but it's not enough. We want more.