I am in the grip of an obsession with Venn diagrams. They're so useful!
16 August 2009
14 August 2009
10 August 2009
Questions I Have Been Asked About Cycling.
10 children's BMX bikes welded together to form one standard Portland adult bike.Part One--"Yes.":
"Do you bike everywhere?"
"Do you ride in the rain?"
"Do you ride in the snow?"
"Isn't it dangerous?"
"Aren't you scared?"
"Do you ever get cold?"
"Don't you get hot?"
"Has anything been stolen from your bike?"
"Have you ever wiped out?"
"Do you ride in the street?"
"Do you ever take the lane?"
"Do you shout at drivers?"
"Are taxis worse than regular traffic?" (I'd rather ride next to a CTA bus.)
"Are there lots of potholes?" (#2)
"Do you ride on the Lakefront Trail?"
"Have you ever ridden downtown?"
"Do you wear a helmet?"
"Do you have lights on your bike?"
"Do you ride really fast?"
"Do you have brakes on your bike?"
"Is that a good workout?"
"Do you do Critical Mass?"
"Do you save a lot of money?"
"Give me every bike you've got on you, NOW."Part 2-- "No.":
"Do you ride with a fixed gear?"
"Have you ever been doored / hit by a car?"
"Do you ride on the sidewalk?"
"Do you ride on the ice?" (see above in "Yes" category: "Have you ever wiped out?")
"Doesn't it ever get old?"
"Don't you ever wish you could just drive somewhere?"
"Do you hit cars with your bike lock?"
"Have you ever hit a pedestrian?"
"Do you have a lot of gears?"
"Do you have a lot of gear?"
"Do you have a speedometer/odometer?" (but I want one!)
"Do Chicago cops enforce bike traffic laws (which protect pedestrians from cyclists)?"
"Do Chicago cops enforce bike traffic laws (which protect cyclists from motorists)?"
"Do you ride while listening to your iPod?"
"Do you ride while using a cell phone?"
"Can you do any bike tricks?"
"Do you follow the Tour De France?"
Part 3-- "Only if there's traffic around.":
"Do you obey traffic signals/signs?"
He meant to do that.17 July 2009
Too Soon!
Well, it's been a terrible month. First Farrah, then M.J., Then Ed McMahon, and, just this morning, Logan.
Before you while away the minutes flipping through your mental TMZ rolodex to figure out which Logan I'm speaking of, let me just tell you. It's my buddy, Logan. Maybe he hasn't quite reached the fame level of a Fawcett or a Jackson. Here's a photo hint:
That's right. He was a rat. A hooded rat, to be (semi-) precise. And he was at least as important to me as The King of Pop, and certainly more important than Farah Fawcett (sorry, Lee Majors).
He wasn't quite as funny as Ed McMahon. But he was close.
You know what happens to rats? They squeak and beg and wriggle their way into your heart. They act like tiny dogs (the vet groups them in the category of "pocket pets"), learning silly tricks that you teach them inadvertently, and then, long before you are ready for it, they die.
They don't moonwalk, become sex symbols, or pithily one-up your favorite late-night host. On the plus side, they also don't act weird with your children, embarrass themselves on Letterman, or sell magazine subscriptions.
Speaking of emabrassing one's self on Letterman, I always thought I could send this photo in and get us on "Stupid Pet Tricks":
It's a great photo, but it doesn't do justice to the extent of the trick. Logan would actually put his entire head in there. He was looking for a raisin.
Since falling in love with rats, it has become my personal mission to prove to the world that they are not the disgusting sewer-dwellers that everyone thinks they are. Come over to our apartment for a beer and a game of "Celebrity" and you will see what I am talking about. Also, you may get frustrated while playing "Celebrity".
Our rats, like most pet rats, are undeniably cute, and waaaaaay smarter than you think they are. Recently, a labratory study proved that rats posess metacognition, whch means they can think about their own thought processes.
This means that they are fucking geniuses.
No, no-- don't argue.
Yes, your dog is very cute, and very friendly. Do you think he knows whether or not he knows stuff? Yeah, me neither.
In my opinion, capacity for metacognition also makes rats smarter than Farah Fawcett (sorry again, Lee Majors).
As if you needed it, I have one final piece of evidence to help me testify that Logan was as cute, or possibly cuter, than whatever the hell you're passing around photos of at work. Exhibit 'A', your honor:
"You can't HANDLE the truth!!!"
In short, Logan was more than just a source of endless entertainment and a bright little cagemate for Lawrence, who survives him (clumsily). He was a member of our family, and he'll be missed.
They are Rat. Hear them sneeze.
Before you while away the minutes flipping through your mental TMZ rolodex to figure out which Logan I'm speaking of, let me just tell you. It's my buddy, Logan. Maybe he hasn't quite reached the fame level of a Fawcett or a Jackson. Here's a photo hint:
That's right. He was a rat. A hooded rat, to be (semi-) precise. And he was at least as important to me as The King of Pop, and certainly more important than Farah Fawcett (sorry, Lee Majors).
He wasn't quite as funny as Ed McMahon. But he was close.
You know what happens to rats? They squeak and beg and wriggle their way into your heart. They act like tiny dogs (the vet groups them in the category of "pocket pets"), learning silly tricks that you teach them inadvertently, and then, long before you are ready for it, they die.
They don't moonwalk, become sex symbols, or pithily one-up your favorite late-night host. On the plus side, they also don't act weird with your children, embarrass themselves on Letterman, or sell magazine subscriptions.
Speaking of emabrassing one's self on Letterman, I always thought I could send this photo in and get us on "Stupid Pet Tricks":
It's a great photo, but it doesn't do justice to the extent of the trick. Logan would actually put his entire head in there. He was looking for a raisin.
Since falling in love with rats, it has become my personal mission to prove to the world that they are not the disgusting sewer-dwellers that everyone thinks they are. Come over to our apartment for a beer and a game of "Celebrity" and you will see what I am talking about. Also, you may get frustrated while playing "Celebrity".
Our rats, like most pet rats, are undeniably cute, and waaaaaay smarter than you think they are. Recently, a labratory study proved that rats posess metacognition, whch means they can think about their own thought processes.
This means that they are fucking geniuses.
No, no-- don't argue.
Yes, your dog is very cute, and very friendly. Do you think he knows whether or not he knows stuff? Yeah, me neither.
In my opinion, capacity for metacognition also makes rats smarter than Farah Fawcett (sorry again, Lee Majors).
As if you needed it, I have one final piece of evidence to help me testify that Logan was as cute, or possibly cuter, than whatever the hell you're passing around photos of at work. Exhibit 'A', your honor:
"You can't HANDLE the truth!!!"
In short, Logan was more than just a source of endless entertainment and a bright little cagemate for Lawrence, who survives him (clumsily). He was a member of our family, and he'll be missed.
They are Rat. Hear them sneeze.
14 April 2009
The Show (a short story)
No one remembers anymore what the Show was about. We’re pretty sure it’s a reality program; when the Show was first aired, reality tv was the only kind of programming that achieved consistent ratings. This is just before the networks dumped all other kinds of programming, including news, in favor of an all-reality format. There's still some paid programming on in the wee hours of the morning, but 30-minute advertisements for kitchen detritus are really their own special kind of reality programming.
And so no one remembers anymore what the Show was about. The last original producer died years ago, and he refused to divulge the Show's content because he thought it was poetically just that America had hypnotized itself rapt over a Show that had become completely devoid of substance. He, the last living original producer, believed that America would not come out of its trance until a few viewers woke up and realized that the program they had been wasting their lives glued to was the artistic equivalent of watching static, listening to white noise, for an hour every evening, 7 days a week.
It all started shortly after Great Depression II set in, when the government offered huge cash incentives for any prime-time programming aimed at creating feelings of comfort and community within the viewer. There was a direct correlation, aided by a complex proprietary algorithm, between the broadness of a program's calculated target demographic and the percentage of the program's budget that would then be sponsored by the U.S. government.
Program ‘A’, for example, might only be calculated to target men aged 25 - 45, and after that demo is plugged in to the algorithm, yield an assistance package of 25% of the show's budget. If however, after your initial assessment, you could find some way to convince the auditors that you have expanded the demo to men and women across races, aged 18 - 50, then you might get an allocation for more than 70% of your budget.
This system produced results that were predicted by every tv critic's farewell column for 3 consecutive years; namely, that tv would become a nightmare landscape of pleasant white propaganda, possibly ruined forever as an artistic canvas. And then there were no more tv critics.
A lucky few filled open film critic spots, and most of the rest took pay cuts and ended up in their publications' editing rooms.
But there's still the matter of a certain Show, whose producers decided they had enough money to ignore the government's subsidies (and therefore, their programming guidelines), but not enough money to step outside the sphere of reality programming, reality programming being the only thing a perversely single-minded public would accept.
The producers put together a reality show that would indeed draw criticism, and probably not inspire too many happy feelings, but, they were hoping, would capture the taste preferences of the large-ish flock of bored American viewers that must certainly exist by now.
Maybe the Show was something simple, like a first-person perspective of on-the-job fireman. Or maybe it was something more seamy, like following real swinging married couples through an average day (though not into the bedroom). Either way, there were phone calls placed, and though the new "permissive" FCC of the Obama administration would not penalize the network based on caller complaints, it most definitely demanded certain kinds of censoring if the network wanted to avoid heavy "capital donations", or what used to be called "fines".
The first thing to get blurred by the censors was the steady stream of upsetting hand gestures being used by the Show's principals, from the occasional flipped bird to the extraordinarily disturbing (for an over-pacified public) threats of physical violence.
The producers thought they were out of the woods when a previously sated viewership began calling the FCC en gros masse to whine about the aggressive language. There had been no "cursing", as it is traditionally thought of, but words like "hate", "screw", and "shoot!" began to get bleeped. The timid versions of those words given to the reality cast for common use also got bleeped, once FCC callers started saying, "you can still tell they're angry."
Next, the censors determined a decibel level, above which any direct speech or ambient background sounds would be bleeped. In one notorious episode, two of the reality cast attempted to have a conversation by yelling because they were standing in front of an operational oil derrick. The whole 3-minute scene was presented as one long bleep with moving images, whose faces and necks were blurred, so that no one could tell they were yelling.
Just when the producers were about to give up all hope and cancel their endeavor (though their ratings made small, steady progress with each incline in censorship), they had a windfall. The Nielsen returns for the episode immediately following the notorious oil derrick incident set a new plateau for their ratings, comfortably above the highest previous point in the life of their 2-year-old Show.
In a last, desperate attempt to capitalize on their unsubsidized gamble, they began to bleep sound that did not require bleeping, and to blur images which required no blurring. They bleeped a conversation about fruit. They blurred the face of a baby. Every instance of the word “breakfast”. An empty billboard. An unadorned t-shirt. Laughter.
Another direct correlation developed: the less of the Show that the viewer could actually perceive or understand, the higher the ratings got. This amounted to proof, in the minds of the producers, that a certain grim truth about the American psyche had taken hold of the medium. However disturbed the producers were by this confrontation, they were not disgusted enough to turn their backs on a windfall, especially not one that was clearly so deserved by such a catastrophically sensitive public.
Eventually, the Show topped out at 90 share and stayed there, and the original producers obtained a perpetual contract for the Show from their network, and then sold the Show for untold billions of dollars and retired to a life of decadent playboy-ishness (presumably).
And eventually, they both died, taking the secret of the Show's content to their graves, and leaving behind a confidentiality clause for the Show's constantly rotating reality cast that promised harsh financial penalties if broken.
An now 90% of the American viewing public watches a Show for an hour every evening, 7 days a week, whose only audible dialogue is conjunctions, and whose only decipherable faces are smiling.
And so no one remembers anymore what the Show was about. The last original producer died years ago, and he refused to divulge the Show's content because he thought it was poetically just that America had hypnotized itself rapt over a Show that had become completely devoid of substance. He, the last living original producer, believed that America would not come out of its trance until a few viewers woke up and realized that the program they had been wasting their lives glued to was the artistic equivalent of watching static, listening to white noise, for an hour every evening, 7 days a week.
It all started shortly after Great Depression II set in, when the government offered huge cash incentives for any prime-time programming aimed at creating feelings of comfort and community within the viewer. There was a direct correlation, aided by a complex proprietary algorithm, between the broadness of a program's calculated target demographic and the percentage of the program's budget that would then be sponsored by the U.S. government.
Program ‘A’, for example, might only be calculated to target men aged 25 - 45, and after that demo is plugged in to the algorithm, yield an assistance package of 25% of the show's budget. If however, after your initial assessment, you could find some way to convince the auditors that you have expanded the demo to men and women across races, aged 18 - 50, then you might get an allocation for more than 70% of your budget.
This system produced results that were predicted by every tv critic's farewell column for 3 consecutive years; namely, that tv would become a nightmare landscape of pleasant white propaganda, possibly ruined forever as an artistic canvas. And then there were no more tv critics.
A lucky few filled open film critic spots, and most of the rest took pay cuts and ended up in their publications' editing rooms.
But there's still the matter of a certain Show, whose producers decided they had enough money to ignore the government's subsidies (and therefore, their programming guidelines), but not enough money to step outside the sphere of reality programming, reality programming being the only thing a perversely single-minded public would accept.
The producers put together a reality show that would indeed draw criticism, and probably not inspire too many happy feelings, but, they were hoping, would capture the taste preferences of the large-ish flock of bored American viewers that must certainly exist by now.
Maybe the Show was something simple, like a first-person perspective of on-the-job fireman. Or maybe it was something more seamy, like following real swinging married couples through an average day (though not into the bedroom). Either way, there were phone calls placed, and though the new "permissive" FCC of the Obama administration would not penalize the network based on caller complaints, it most definitely demanded certain kinds of censoring if the network wanted to avoid heavy "capital donations", or what used to be called "fines".
The first thing to get blurred by the censors was the steady stream of upsetting hand gestures being used by the Show's principals, from the occasional flipped bird to the extraordinarily disturbing (for an over-pacified public) threats of physical violence.
The producers thought they were out of the woods when a previously sated viewership began calling the FCC en gros masse to whine about the aggressive language. There had been no "cursing", as it is traditionally thought of, but words like "hate", "screw", and "shoot!" began to get bleeped. The timid versions of those words given to the reality cast for common use also got bleeped, once FCC callers started saying, "you can still tell they're angry."
Next, the censors determined a decibel level, above which any direct speech or ambient background sounds would be bleeped. In one notorious episode, two of the reality cast attempted to have a conversation by yelling because they were standing in front of an operational oil derrick. The whole 3-minute scene was presented as one long bleep with moving images, whose faces and necks were blurred, so that no one could tell they were yelling.
Just when the producers were about to give up all hope and cancel their endeavor (though their ratings made small, steady progress with each incline in censorship), they had a windfall. The Nielsen returns for the episode immediately following the notorious oil derrick incident set a new plateau for their ratings, comfortably above the highest previous point in the life of their 2-year-old Show.
In a last, desperate attempt to capitalize on their unsubsidized gamble, they began to bleep sound that did not require bleeping, and to blur images which required no blurring. They bleeped a conversation about fruit. They blurred the face of a baby. Every instance of the word “breakfast”. An empty billboard. An unadorned t-shirt. Laughter.
Another direct correlation developed: the less of the Show that the viewer could actually perceive or understand, the higher the ratings got. This amounted to proof, in the minds of the producers, that a certain grim truth about the American psyche had taken hold of the medium. However disturbed the producers were by this confrontation, they were not disgusted enough to turn their backs on a windfall, especially not one that was clearly so deserved by such a catastrophically sensitive public.
Eventually, the Show topped out at 90 share and stayed there, and the original producers obtained a perpetual contract for the Show from their network, and then sold the Show for untold billions of dollars and retired to a life of decadent playboy-ishness (presumably).
And eventually, they both died, taking the secret of the Show's content to their graves, and leaving behind a confidentiality clause for the Show's constantly rotating reality cast that promised harsh financial penalties if broken.
An now 90% of the American viewing public watches a Show for an hour every evening, 7 days a week, whose only audible dialogue is conjunctions, and whose only decipherable faces are smiling.
12 October 2008
Comics, y'all.
Yes, I agree. Comics should be regarded as part of the literary landscape.
Here's one good reason.
(now linked to in the sidebar of this very blog.)
Here's one good reason.
(now linked to in the sidebar of this very blog.)
26 September 2008
Responses to "Newsweek" Reader Responses
"Before reading your cover story, I had major doubts about Sarah Palin.....would she be tough enough to handle the people who might try to push her around?.....your article erased every doubt. She appears to be as tough as they come. A shrewd and gifted mayor and governor, she scores higher on my list than the rest of the crowd on both tickets." --Hany Hanna, Sioux Falls, SD.
Yes, she's very tough. Tough as a pig, one might say. She's going to need that when the starving masses of America are marching down Pennsylvania Ave. enrobed in tattered zombie rags, touting torches and maniacally chanting "justice! justice! justice!" Maybe she can show them where Russia is. Oh wait, that's right--she's use to handling large firearms. Again, she's tough. Everybody duck.
"I noticed that the caption accompanying one of your photos of Sarah Palin refers to her as a "former mayor of tiny Wasilla." I believe she is the sitting governor of Alaska. As such, her title is Governor Palin. I have yet to see a photo caption of Sen. Barack Obama referring to him as 'a former community organizer.'" --Matt Lanker, Marysville, Ohio.
Well, ha ha, I can't believe I get the chance to say this legitimately, but, THANK YOU CAPTAIN OBVIOUS!!! "I believe she is..." Oh, oh, you believe, do you? That's good, see, because if you, and maybe even other people like you didn't believe she was currently the Gov, then her authority and station would just disappear in an puff of apostasy. Wow! I'm glad you're around, man! "As such, her title is Gov. Palin." No SHIT! You don't say! You know, I know you read a lot and everything, but there's this thing they do, especially in mass-market periodicals like "Newsweek", where the caption under a picture will often make reference to one of the central points of the story. Also, I know, I just know Matt, that you have been going around showing this issue to your familyfriendscoworkers and are just so proud of yourself for having gotten the attention of a very, very, low-ranking unpaid intern, but do you realize that "Newsweek" has exploited you by printing your letter just to show how banal it is to shuffle through the undercooked editorializing of random jerks? They've mocked you just by printing your stiff, juvenile, obvious comment--and silently, you're thanking them. Think about it. As a concession, let me tell you--it is for this very reason (that the journalistic establishment rightly snorts at volunteer pundits like myself) that I don't write in to periodicals. Oh, and P.S.: Obama was the one to characterize himself as a "community organizer", whereas Gov. Plain has all but buried the traces of her meager and recent beginnings. That's why "Newsweek" et. al. feel the need to highlight her background so aggressively.
"Dear Newsweek,
Do you have any idea how to paint toenails? I am, as they say, a 'nail polish version', and I am really screwing this up royally. Should the strokes go away from the cuticle, or towards it? Also, I think Senator Palin looks smart and cute, and will make a really great prez when that nice old man finally heads toward the light. Go Braves!" --Anna Smith, Atlanta, GA
"I was very disturbed by Daniel Lyons' recent article, 'A Gloomy Vista For Microsoft.' I am in no way employed by Microsoft, but were I, I would feel a deep sense of regret that the CEO of a certain PC hardware company has been 'less than pleased with Vista', and that Mr. Lyons feels the need to print this fact. The staff at Microsoft, where, again, I am most definitely not employed, may be remiss at learning that people think the need for the 'Mojave' commercials only underscores Vistas problems, or that, thanks to infinitely superior products being offered by Apple, Microsoft may be headed down the path of former-cool orgs like AOL. I have no affiliation with Microsoft whatsoever, but if I did, I would be outraged. Especially at that bit about being in a 'time warp.' You should be ashamed of yourselves." --Gill Bates, Medina, WA
Yes, she's very tough. Tough as a pig, one might say. She's going to need that when the starving masses of America are marching down Pennsylvania Ave. enrobed in tattered zombie rags, touting torches and maniacally chanting "justice! justice! justice!" Maybe she can show them where Russia is. Oh wait, that's right--she's use to handling large firearms. Again, she's tough. Everybody duck.
"I noticed that the caption accompanying one of your photos of Sarah Palin refers to her as a "former mayor of tiny Wasilla." I believe she is the sitting governor of Alaska. As such, her title is Governor Palin. I have yet to see a photo caption of Sen. Barack Obama referring to him as 'a former community organizer.'" --Matt Lanker, Marysville, Ohio.
Well, ha ha, I can't believe I get the chance to say this legitimately, but, THANK YOU CAPTAIN OBVIOUS!!! "I believe she is..." Oh, oh, you believe, do you? That's good, see, because if you, and maybe even other people like you didn't believe she was currently the Gov, then her authority and station would just disappear in an puff of apostasy. Wow! I'm glad you're around, man! "As such, her title is Gov. Palin." No SHIT! You don't say! You know, I know you read a lot and everything, but there's this thing they do, especially in mass-market periodicals like "Newsweek", where the caption under a picture will often make reference to one of the central points of the story. Also, I know, I just know Matt, that you have been going around showing this issue to your familyfriendscoworkers and are just so proud of yourself for having gotten the attention of a very, very, low-ranking unpaid intern, but do you realize that "Newsweek" has exploited you by printing your letter just to show how banal it is to shuffle through the undercooked editorializing of random jerks? They've mocked you just by printing your stiff, juvenile, obvious comment--and silently, you're thanking them. Think about it. As a concession, let me tell you--it is for this very reason (that the journalistic establishment rightly snorts at volunteer pundits like myself) that I don't write in to periodicals. Oh, and P.S.: Obama was the one to characterize himself as a "community organizer", whereas Gov. Plain has all but buried the traces of her meager and recent beginnings. That's why "Newsweek" et. al. feel the need to highlight her background so aggressively.
"Dear Newsweek,
Do you have any idea how to paint toenails? I am, as they say, a 'nail polish version', and I am really screwing this up royally. Should the strokes go away from the cuticle, or towards it? Also, I think Senator Palin looks smart and cute, and will make a really great prez when that nice old man finally heads toward the light. Go Braves!" --Anna Smith, Atlanta, GA
"I was very disturbed by Daniel Lyons' recent article, 'A Gloomy Vista For Microsoft.' I am in no way employed by Microsoft, but were I, I would feel a deep sense of regret that the CEO of a certain PC hardware company has been 'less than pleased with Vista', and that Mr. Lyons feels the need to print this fact. The staff at Microsoft, where, again, I am most definitely not employed, may be remiss at learning that people think the need for the 'Mojave' commercials only underscores Vistas problems, or that, thanks to infinitely superior products being offered by Apple, Microsoft may be headed down the path of former-cool orgs like AOL. I have no affiliation with Microsoft whatsoever, but if I did, I would be outraged. Especially at that bit about being in a 'time warp.' You should be ashamed of yourselves." --Gill Bates, Medina, WA
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