Vague-a-ries: YouTube has been designed by idiotic monkeys.
Today, preparing for a future project when this blog has some video content created by myself on YouTube, I tried to set up a channel. This was easy, to a point. I wanted to have a channel called:
VaguestIdeas
however I managed to make a small mistake and typed:
VaguestiDeas
and hit enter. I immediately realized my mistake, and thought that should be easy to correct. I was probably momentarily seized by Steve Jobs syndrome, that annoying impulse to lowercase "i" as an initial letter (maybe I should get checked out, it may be indicative of something worse, what? too soon?).
Scrabbling around the menus I couldn't find anything to let me rename, change or delete my channel name, which depending on where you look in YouTube is suddenly my YouTube username as well. Using the "help" feature gives you a list of questions asked on a forum style help, with answers relevance voted on by users. This is even more frustrating as it forces you to pour through irrelevance to try to glean an answer, this does not constitute help in my book. The "answers" seemed to point to the idea that there is nothing you can do except close your account entirely and set up a new account, which would require a unique email address, not the one you already used, and you couldn't have the channel name you already used because, although they store the case of your deleted account that never had anything posted against it, the check is not case sensitive, and that channel name, though never used, can never be used again, ever.
When I selected an option to allow me to directly post my own question, it tries to misdirect you to a page that has already asked questions similar to your "summary", but doesn't have a text box, forcing me to hope that clicking on a link marked "Continue" would actually bring me to where I had intended to go in the first place. Here's what I submitted as a question:
I have just set up a channel, but have done nothing with it. When I set it up I mistyped the capitalization -VaguestiDeas as opposed to the desired VaguestIdeas. I cannot believe that there is no way to edit/correct this. That you've developed a system that 1. allows such a momentary mistake as when your finger happens to hit the shift key to be etched in stone, 2. doesn't at least warn you that "hey you better be careful here, because we're not going to let you change this, ever"
This may seem a trifling request, I appreciate, in my case at least, I spelled the channel as I wanted it, so I couldn't delete and recreate the channel, as, although there is no data associated with it, your system will see it as "used" already.
Most frustrating of all is that your help system directed me to questions about deleting my account, and suggested that was the only workaround, and that I'd have to use a unique email address, other than the one I already have. Help systems which return irrelevant or incomplete answers show both laziness and indifference on your part as a developer. You should develop a clear comprehensive reference explanation of how your accounts '/ usernames / and channels work, not rely solely on whatever partial answer pops into the head, of knowledgeable, but blinkered forum style responses.
In my case it is a cosmetic error, but one that any users would see against any videos I wanted to post. So I look stupid rather than Google/YouTube who should look stupid for sitting on a pile of money rather than having developers create the most basic functionality imaginable.
Now I'm pretty much pissed off at YouTube, a company that are clearly sitting back on the benefits of their one killer idea, and within the fold of GoogleEarth (not the software product from Google, but the new name they've given our planet, which apparently they own through one of their subsidiaries), they don't have to care. They may be burning all their money, or more likely just jerking off into wads of disposable 100's as they index all the porn on the internet.
Labels: My Tasteless Opinions, Vague-a-ries
New Forest Film Festival: The Brothers Bloom Review = The Critic's Cut
[Author's Note: I submitted a shorter version of this Review to the New Forest Film Festival's New Forest Film Critic of the Year 2011 Competition. It was short listed in the Senior Category (over eighteen), and then was runner up. At the awards presentation Mark Kermode described it as "really, worryingly good".
To meet the 500 word limit for the competition, I chopped about 40% out of my first draft, and it was a valuable lesson in self sub editing. The version below only restores bits that I really regretted taking out, particularly the penultimate section discussing the faux literary trend. ]
I. Prologue
Rian Johnson's new movie The Brothers Bloom seems to be answering several obtuse questions:
1. If Wes Anderson did not exist, would it be necessary to invent him?
2. Why did they stop making those new-wave inflected, insouciant caper comedies from the 1960's?
3. Is Mark Ruffalo a great actor, but with zero charisma?
4. When will Rachel Weisz requite my love for her?
5. Can you like something with vague literary pretentions, without being literally vaguely pretentious?
II. The Tale
The Brothers Bloom are conmen - their cons so exquisite that they do not merely dupe the rubes, but provide their victim with a deeply thematic cathartic experience. Con as performance art. Younger brother, Bloom (Adrien Brody) feels trapped by brother Stephen's (Mark Ruffalo) machinations, but is convinced to do one last job, tricking a wealthy recluse Penelope (Rachel Weisz).
III. The Acting
Rachel Weisz starts stilted, sporting a withdrawn, self-conscious demeanor (was she playing Gwyneth Paltrow playing a Royal Tennenbaum?). When her character comes out of her shell, joyful exuberance develops. From then on Rachel can do no wrong. You just want to make her happy, smile that smile with her oh-so-bright eyes. She even made me forget about that other conmen movie she was in. Sigh.
I once thought Mark Ruffalo was stuck in that charisma vacuum which is the epitome of Matthew McConaughey. A stand out in Fincher's Zodiac, I've warmed to him; here he does a great job as the flamboyant svengali. Adrien Brody, stuck with the Pinocchio dilemma, yearning to be real, wisely plays the turmoil under his passivity overshadowed by his brother. Rincho Kikuchi appears as a delightfully Harpo-esque explosives expert. Robbie Coltrane and Maximilian Schell are by turns eccentric and sinister Europeans.
IV. The Direction
I was impressed with Rian Johnson's debut, the high-school noir, Brick. A film which managed to make Lukas Haas seem menacing. It evoked noir through twisty plot, sleazy characters and snappy dialogue, but steered clear of pastiche.
This is a bigger challenge: A rococo concoction. juggling styles - John Irving prologue, romantic heist flicks, Mamet gamesmanship and Fellini exotica along with a breezy patina of misdirection. I found myself charmed and wowed by a series of sight gags, visual ticks, and bits of business, that liberally pepper the opening sequences. Luckily, the style calms down, leaving room for ruminations on storytelling, reflecting the conmen's ambition "to tell a story so well it becomes real".
V. A Literary Problem
In the last decade there have been a slew of films like this, that to varying degrees of implementation, success and self consciousness, use distinctly literary devices. Whether it's the chapter headings, and omniscient voice over of a Royal Tennenbaum, the annoying self pitying introspection of a Noah Baumbach or the if JD Salinger won't allow Catcher to be filmed, then someone was bound to do an Igby, not to mention those John Irving adaptations and rip offs....
Are these affectations necessary?
It’s not whether films should borrow devices from other artforms, some are just inherent to all forms of storytelling. The supposed problem with these self conscious devices is that
they point out the artifice of film, alienating the viewer
and detracting from the suspension of disbelief. This couldn't be
further from the truth. True storytelling does not rely on realism,
but engagement with the listener. No neolithic people looked at a cave
painting and thought "there's no way only five hunters could take down
that mastodon"; Homer's audience didn't dismiss one
eyed giants, sirens or gods; and Dickens plausibility is not obliterated by his
cringeworthy reliance on coincidence.
Storytelling contains a contract with its audience: in exchange for your attention and the
willing
suspension of disbelief, a tale will be spun that actively entertains
you through its combination of plot and character and engaging detail.
Foreshadowing, those inbuilt intentional spoilers exist to reward the
listener by paying off details related earlier and the attention paid to
them. Titles and headings create expectations that leave suspense in how they may be met. Narrators of many ilks and styles act as mediators between the story and the told.
Perhaps the recent trend is the result of a generation of film makers which spent their formative years when rabid academia subjected all elements of our culture to deconstructive criticism. If their uber-Styles threaten to eclipse substance, it is only a result of weak storytelling as the melody does not suit the lyric (or when the metaphor changes genres mid thought). When these showy affectations aren't useful to their stories, your enjoyment may be dependent on whether your taste forgives the literary flavour of these films.
The Brothers Bloom's style is in keeping with
the elevated storytelling and artifice of the confidence tricksters.
VI. The Verdict
In the wake of other literary affected films, The Brothers Bloom might be secondary post-modern, but for me it pulls off its heady mixture of stylized reality, genuine fakery and smoky mirrors. Sure, it does seem to end a few extra times, but always to payoff earlier foreshadowing in a satisfying manner. If you find this contrived, like the chapter headings in this review, you may want to avoid, but even those who are irked by Wes Anderson will like The Brothers Bloom.
OK, sure, it's a con, but for all that, some of us enjoy being taken in.
[Author's Note: I suspected that the deleted section may have been a separate essay, but in marshalling a somewhat sloppy pile of ideas from the first draft for inclusion here, I think it merits it's present form.
I balked at making a final paean to Rachel Weisz, I'll just patiently wait for her to tire of Daniel Craig.
If you're truly a glutton for punishment you may enjoy the submitted, possibly superior, version of this: Review: The Brothers Bloom: The Sum of Its Parts; or the two other pieces written for possible submission : "Mamma Mia! as directed by Michael Haneke", and "The Last Picture Show as Reviewed By A Critic With an Axe To Grind Over This Gimmick of Black and White" (these resisted trimming for length, and perhaps too bizarre in content.)]
Labels: New Forest Film Festival, Reviews, Vague-a-ries
New Forest Film Festival: Vehicle of Horrors - The Sequel!!!
As it can now be revealed, the secret
Vehicle of Horrors film was The Evil Dead II. We can now exclusively pitch the follow up:
Until next year....
Labels: New Forest Film Festival, Smile of the day, Vague-a-ries
Groundhog Day: My Senseless Predictions for Lost
Well, it's Groundhog Day, more famously known for the Twilight Zone meets Bill Murray film now than the annual winter length rodent prediction tradition. It's also James Joyce's birthday, the author whose stream of dreamconsciousness novel Finnegans Wake finishes in the middle of and begins in ending the same sentence, and uses numerical symbolism throughout with many other Jungian tropes. It's NOT the day traditionally used by Americans to make pork burgers (see Ground Hog Day).
However it is the premier day of the first episode of the 6th and final season of Lost, the enigma wrapped in a mystery wrapped in a conundrum of sci-fi TV phenomenon. There's so much going on remembering all the plot threads and possibly significant details would be like cramming for a law exam, and you might as well hope for the knowledge helmet from the Spock's Brain episode of Star Trek which allowed McCoy to perform naked brain surgery on our vulcan friend as if "a child could do it". I vaguely remember that the 5th series ended with the white flash of a hydrogen bomb, exploded on the theory of the physicist Daniel that it would act as a huge reset button -- ostensibly averting the original Oceanic Airlines flight 815 disaster and much of what has happened in five series of WTFuckery, not to mention the circumstances that sent half the characters including Juliet back to the 1970's so that she could try to detonate a nuclear bomb WITH A ROCK!
So given how un-clued up I am, you might want to take my predictions for the episode with a pinch of salt, or a vial of Strontium 90. Luckily for me I won't get to see the episode until the winds of broadcasting, or the internet waft it over the pond.
4. The First Episode of the Sixth Series is The Pilot episode. The atomic reset button hasn't quite worked as planned and the events are the same for about the first ten minutes, then the writers cleverly throw in slight differences that only the obsessive fans will notice until the last ten minutes where all the plotlines veer into distinctly new directions. This is a tribute to both Groundhog Day, and the first series of the Harry Hill show.
8. Aperture Science = Dharma Initiative
Enter the numbers --> Get Cake!
15. Gilligan, the Skipper, the Movie Star, the Millionaire and his Wife, The Professor and Mary-Ann land and are soon integrated into the Others. The Professor contructs an atomic fusion reactor using coconuts. Ginger and Mary-Ann have their Dharma Initiative coveralls ripped to skimpy shreds as they flee the smoke monster, Thurston Howell the 3rd, is revealed to be Charles Widmore, Lovey Howell goes feral as Danielle Rousseau, and Gilligan, Hurley and the Skipper share a bong.
16. Juliet, holding the rock tries hitting the bomb for the ninth time. "Owwwww, that FUCKING HURTS!" She stands up and climbs out of ground zero. "I'm sick of this shit, I'm off to V, you sort it out yourselves!"
23. Tatoo climbs the Dharma compound bell tower and points to the sky, "The Plane, The Plane!" Oceanic Airlines flight 815 appears in the sky before exploding spectacularly. Mr Roarke warmly greets Jack on the beach, "Welcome to your FANTASY"
It later transpires that the Kahana is Captain Stubings boat and Kate becomes the new Cruise director....
42. If on Groundhog Day John Locke sees his shadow.... is it really his shadow? is it Jacob? is it the shadow of some unrevealed doppelgänger? is it a tame version of the smoke monster, playfully lapping at his heels? Is it really John Locke? Is it...???
Labels: Life Irritates Art, My Tasteless Opinions, Vague-a-ries
Back-B-Log: Me vs. J.D. Salinger
The less than untimely demise of famed literary recluse J.D. Salinger, pointedly having refused to publish, or even to admit to writing for anyone but himself since 1965, is just the sort of flimsy excuse for me to pluck one of my own pieces from its well deserved literary obscurity.
This was originally an 11th grade English assignment to write in the style of this tetchy highlight of Modern American Fiction. The only things you need to know was that I was an annoyingly precocious brat with an inflated idea of my own literary merit, and I squeezed past my school procrastinations often by rolling up a few assignments into one and trying to make the result entertaining for my teachers, who bizarrely let me get away with this. The narrative and in particularly the addendum is directed to Mrs. Lamb. Mrs. Lamb was one of my first mentor/teacher fixations, a sort of platonic intellectual crush with a tinge of mother figure; just one of a pantheon of good teachers I've had that I feel I have greatly let down by not, so far, fulfilling my alleged potential. Still this was in my ambitious headier days when all that disappointment lay ahead.
That said, much of the studied irony in it is intentional. Even while I was embracing my inner Holden Caulfield, I pretty much knew what kind of jerk I was:
JUST READ THE DAMN THING AND THEN I'LL TELL YOU THE TITLEby Brian R. TarnoffIf you really want to hear about the whole award crap, go on and read ahead personally, I find it damn depressing - even though I was pissed at the time. Maybe it's not so much that I didn't get the damn thing, it's just the fact that I was so Goddamned pissed about it that depresses me (in fact that just about drives me crazy). I was going to write this thing right after I heard about it, it being a decent subject and all, and with things still being fresh in my mind. I'm probably better off this way; I won't harm the typewriter or anything, though I do hate the idea of anger warmed over. If I've ever learned anything it's probably that self-pity and sarcasm have done more to fuck-up my life I'll tell you, . . . . and I suppose anger fits in there somewhere. And I was angry when I found out about it.I remember that right after I found out about it I got home, I kind of stormed silently into the house, I won't tell you if my parents were home or not, if they had been I would have avoided them. I won't talk about them because they'd probably scream bloody murder at their slightest mention. I could never write about any kind of family situation, they would just always cast the wrong light on it and act like I was talking about them for chrissakes. I would have avoided them at that moment because I was hostile and they'd want to do or say something which would only make me react like a bastard, and then they'd cast the wrong light on that. Anyway, I'd just gotten home and though I was hungry, I couldn't think of eating any stuff. I sort of wandered spastically from room to room in a way which reminds me of an old description of bachelorhood. I finally wound up in front of the piano playing Für Elise.In case you want to know, Für Elise is a thing by Beethoven. I taught it to myself as sort of a challenge; you see, my sister, who is about eleven years older than me, learned it about the time I was born, and when ever she comes over to our house she plays the damn thing over and over, and makes mistakes, even with the music in front of her every time; I can't sight read, but at least once I get the damn thing down that's it. So I memorized it though I don't play the whole thing. After the main part, which is kind of sad, there's this real fast cheery part which doesn't really fit in with the mood which I never memorized, there's another section later on which I know only I don't play it too much because it's even too gloomy for old Ludvig; sometimes I wonder who made him write like that. Anyway, it just seems that I manage to play the main part pretty well, over and over again.I originally found out about the damn book thing while talking on the telephone. Sometimes I feel as if half my life is being squeezed between various wires. I'm not very comfortable on the phone, and I'm not so comfortable off either.Anyway I was talking with one of my teachers, Mrs. Lamb, about my decision on whether or not to graduate early, which originally had been a strong intention of mine. Deciding things really drives me fucking nuts, I have trouble about making my mind up about going to the damn bathroom. My original graduation decision got so screwed up and awry, I have a hard time trusting myself. Anyway this is not the first time I've been shafted by a college. Harvard didn't accept me because they took some basketball player from our school instead, and his father knew the Harvard coach, I swear those athletic bastards always stick together. So I was talking about not going to college next year. It came up that there are these two book awards, one from Brown, one from Harvard, that are awarded by the junior English department, in our school the American Studies department. If I stayed on I would probably get the Harvard award, If not, the Brown, this was a sure thing. Regardless, I finally decided to stay on, not because of anything stupid like that award, for the most part, I forgot about it. The damn thing is that I'm beginning to feel I made the right choice, for a change.I heard about the award again right after I, with the help of Mrs. Lamb, Mark Young and others, had dropped off some of the school's video equipment at the Young's house. The equipment was for a project I am doing, which Is producing a videotaped version of The Mousetrap; the project was another name for a fool's errand one of my decisions had sent me on. In order to accomplish it, I had to beg the volunteered services of some of my classmates; unfortunately there was little I could do to instill a sense of what the hell a commitment means into some of these bastards, not that they were all like that, but all it takes is one or two to really fuck things up, it really makes me depressed.Anyway we had just delivered the damn cameras and all (it's a cartload of double-inventoried shit) to the Young's house. They were nice enough to let me use it for a set, well it's embarrassing looking back on the stinking mess; it took me the better part of a school year to coax the machinery away from Miss Young (no relation to the above in any respect), who is a person at convenience - entirely her own. Anyway, due partially to her slowness in shuffling the buck around, and under the Store Dick's eyes of Mrs. McConnell, I was producing a play set in the midst of a blizzard, in the midst of May.Well, enough on that crap, if I talk much more about it I'm liable to rot my gut out from the inside, I swear it's just as bad as not talking about it.Mrs. Lamb was driving me home from the Young's. I like Mrs. Lamb. I mean, really, she's the closest I've ever come to having an intelligent conversation with a teacher. And that's not her fault, I just don't have intelligent conversations, it really drives me nuts. She's nice though, I usually can't stand smokers; we do have a shared addiction for caffeine, we talk over freshly ground coffee. Even then, I always sense alot of that student/teacher crap, we're on a kind of shifting first name basis. I know it's probably tied up In some kind of respect-for-age-or-even-weak-authority-bullshit, still there always seems to be an uneasy time-lapse when I talk to her.She had agreed to be the 'supervising faculty member' for my project, this meant that if she felt like showing up she could look in on the futility between puffs of a filter-tipped exhaust pipe. This would not be necessary of course, she had kindly done enough to keep the Mothers Superioresses of the Learning Materials Center happy. She was looking slightly strained, whether from her participation in the damn ordeal or from her allergies wasn't quite apparent to me yet. She had a depressed glaze over her eyes that resembled those of her dog Rosie at the moment she had reasoned that you were not going to give her any food.Rosie is sort of an accomplishment as far as old beagles go, she is the Bernard Berenson of veterinary illness. She's deaf, frigid, arthritic , weak bladdered, and I would not be surprised to find out that she had halitosis and the colic. In a strange way I believe that Mrs. Lamb and Rosie are sisters under the skin, both seem racked by existential guilt, Rosie with her maladies and internal magnet towards food, Peg with her long suffering compulsions for nicotine, caffeine and her allergies. I'm sure that Mrs. Lamb would be amused to hear me call her a Christian Martyr.We were riding In her Peugeot, She was looking ill. I didn't know it, but I was probably making matters worse. I was talking about my upcoming appointment with my guidance counselor, Mrs. Way, to talk about the graduation thing.Mrs. Way is alright, I guess, she's just hard to stand under the wrong circumstances. She's one of our typical guidance counselors, the constant cheerfulness of a nurse in a terminal ward, the busy-ness to appear busy and the posters spouting slogans from Mr. Rodgers. Not that I'm knocking him, Old Fred's a true humanitarian, he's one of those few people who can make kids feel important, really, I remember back then. Mrs. Way tries to come off that way to High-School students, and in the long run she's well meaning and something slightly like smarmy.Mrs. Lamb got this pained expression on her face as if she was going to say something that neither of us would want to hear; that's one thing about Old Peg, she has the common courtesy to go out of her way to feel guilty. Anyway, It sort of came out, now I don't want to go to far into this but, what happened was this:Mrs. Lamb was in the Main Office earlier that day and one of the secretaries happened to mention that one of the book awards had come in, the one from Harvard, the one for,..., Jeff Everett. It was at about this time that I lost the circulation in my gums. Now, I don't really have anything against this kid, I mean from the little that I know he doesn't seem a bad sort at all, but he never seemed like much more either. His name certainly would not have risen in the first fifty when it came to writing awards for our class. If not my name, then I would suggest Mark Young; it's kind of ironical that when I happened to mention the awards to him he said he would try to contest my right to the Harvard award over the slightly less prestigious Brown award, which he received.It seems some kind of screw-up happened somewhere. The American Studies Department gave my name to Mrs. Way and she was supposed to pass it on to Mr. Knorr, our principal, and God only knows what transpired except that Everett's name appeared at Harvard. I'm not going to try to sort it out or anything half-assed like that, I'm not that heavily into recrimination; this too shall pass. But at the time blurry conspiratorial images flooded my brain. I pictured horrendous favoritistic schemes, Machiavellian deposits of large sums of money into Mr. Knorr's Swiss Bank account made by Everett's father in the hope that he too would become a basketball player.Anyway, it was soon after Mrs. Lamb finished explaining what she knew about it that we arrived gratefully home and I was delivered hence. I had been trying not to burden her with my upsetness, and here was a perfect opportunity to knockabout the house.I'd really like to get you to understand, I don't know if you write. Aside from my poetry, I'm the best writer I know personally, and I don't mean that cocky or anything. It's just that I'm obsessed with all my creative outlets and possessed by them, and writing is the thing I know I do well; I'll stop short of saying that it's tied to my masculinity or anything shitty like that, but all it took was this sterile, docile, little man sitting behind his desk to, with one sweeping, unseeing, insensitive act, invalidate my life. Now I'll tell you one thing, I did not feel emasculated, I have felt that way at times in my life, but this was definitely not one of them; that's odd. But I was pissed, I did tell you that.I understand that there's nothing personal in this gross insult. It's kind of empty and impersonal. It's like a graffiti-artist scrawling FUCK YOU across a wall, he doesn't know you or that you'll come along, but he writes it for some reason. Grammatically the closest thing to an inferred object in that is the wall itself, which receives the action from the implied subject, in this case, the author. I guess I shouldn't be so galled by the malfunctioning of the machine I live in and have resigned myself to for another year. I suppose I'll just go back to observing the way the other inmates fail to notice its existence.That's kind of like a play we read this year, A Death of a Salesman. What Miller should have written about, but only partially covered in his play, was not how people become trapped in illusions, but that if people do live in illusions of their own making and are happy and not bothering anyone else with it, then they should be left to themselves. At the end of the play this happens to Biff, he escapes his father's illusion, unlike Hap who inherits it. The only good reason I've ever seen for sharing an illusion is love, certainly not bloodlines. Anyway that can only take place in a perfect illusion, one that resembles truth.J.D. Salinger had trouble like that or near to it. This paper is supposed to be written in his style or something, looking back over it, well it's kind of uneven, maybe I'll do something about it. I just can't stand the way he refuses to grow up and all. I had a bit of trouble with maturity, but I've decided to accept it as a new form of madness different from the old. I don't know whether he had any kids, but I hope not, he'd probably drive them nuts. I suppose he was right about kids being smart and all. I always felt that it was a tribute to infantile wisdom that 'as a wee prat' I never trusted Richard Nixon, even before everyone else. I also found out that he got the Harvard Book Award when he was in High-School. I don't even want the fucking thing anymore, not even the book.Well, anyway, I don't think I'll try to rewrite this thing or anything. I don't think I can help it if my own style tries to break through and overcome the Salingeritis. I guess I'll just turn the typewriter off and go downstairs and play Für Elise for a while.Posthaste [To Mrs. Lamb]-I've just reread this thing for the fourth time and I can't get over the fact that I made you a partial Christ figure, I swear it was completely unintentional. I did have a hard time avoiding overkill, I probably have half an hour of stand-up material left over. By the way, it's called "Studies In Sterility".-BRT 12 June 1981 1:08 A.M.Labels: Back-B-Log, Life Irritates Art, Vague-a-ries
Now we are sixless.
'Prisoner' star McGoohan dies, aged 80His memory will likely be desecrated by the remake, which will likely steam ahead without his input, or objections. With the utterly charisma free Jim Caviezel taking THE number, I sense that the clueless remakers will balls this up worse than HHGTTG. They clearly don't get the essence of the original.
I wonder if there will be a memorial service at Portmeirion (actually they do note the passing on the website:
http://www.portmeirion-village.com/, and are offering free admission to sign the memorial book).
Even "rover" is sad. You don't want to see what that big white ball looks like when it cries....
Labels: Life Irritates Art, My Tasteless Opinions, Vague-a-ries
My Dog World War! (part 3 !!!)
Today at Blackpool & District Canine Society Championship Dog Show, at least three people congratulated me on, and otherwise agreed with my letter published in Dog World this week.
This is amazing for one particular reason:
No one knows who I am.
O.K., I should qualify this, my wife uses her maiden name for many things: work, dog showing, and writing about gardening for the dog show press. I probably go to less than half the dog shows she attends and during the course of the 16 years, 8 months, 2 days and approximately 12 hours of our relationship, only a few of those in the show ring side of her life have more than an inkling of my existence, let alone the notion that I am NOT Mr. Barnes.
Well, there is the fact that one of Dog World's professional photographers did our wedding, but that was a favor from Ruth, and it was before Finuala became a writer for the paper (Ruth introduced her to them, another story....). And some people showed up at the wedding to form the Welsh Springer Guard of Honour outside the hotel before the ceremony (a case of my brother in law's joke taken literally too far). Anyway, that was nearly ten years ago, surely the whole thing has blown over by now, we own the negatives, so apart from those of us in on the whole secret, nothing really has to see the light of day.
I suppose I do have my unusual, and strangely non-ancestral surname (taken by my Russian grand-parents as their free gift from the immigrant experience). So those few people in the know would have worked it out. But as far as I can tell, only one of those three people, are "In" the in-the-know subset. My surname does appear alongside my wife's "showing" name in the index of the breed yearbook, so perhaps the others merely had too much time on their hands.
I thank them all for their support, but there is the possibility that the universe is lulling me into a false sense of security before the true gauntlet is laid down.
Labels: My Tasteless Opinions, Smile of the day, Vague-a-ries
My Dog World War! (part 2 !!!)
The letter to the editor of Dog World was published!
Dog World(you'll have to select "View Editions" from the top left, select 20/06/2008, navigate to page 6, it's the third letter published).
For those of you who didn't read my
previous post (scroll down or click the link, lazy ass). I've been compelled to respond to a nasty insinuation by a dog judge that infirm people using assistance whilst showing their dogs are appearing in the ring for calculated (and indeed spurious) reasons that he was, heaven forfend, insulted by.
There are a few edits, the one that niggled slightly:
Mr. Brace's limited and cynical imagination can find only one motive for this
became:
Mr. Brace can find only one motive for this
However, one of the other letters on the same subject already labels Brace's attitude as cynical. There is a slight edit, an insertion of the words "and were" before "not hobbled by pain" by someone who clearly doesn't understand the use of a comma, and the word penalize is given it's anglo spelling penalise. The strangest stylistic edit is that every single sentence is given it's own paragraph, which, as the author, I find jarring as it discards some of the cohesion of the original.
After a quick look at Mr. Brace's article, I commented that he hasn't responded yet, but I wouldn't expect him to. Finuala suggested that he probably writes a couple of weeks in advance, but also thought it unlikely that he'd respond at all. Well, I will keep my eyes peeled for an apology, nonetheless.
Labels: My Tasteless Opinions, Smile of the day, Vague-a-ries
My Dog World War! (part 1 ???)
In last Friday's edition of Dog World, one of two (can you imagine) UK weekly newspapers entirely devoted to dog showing and other canine competitions, Andrew Brace, a judge in the upper echelons of the dog showing world, expressed in his regular column his bad opinion of infirm people who use another handler to move their dogs in the ring: "Personally I dislike this intensely" and finds it "just an insult to the judge." To read his full two paragraphs on the subject, follow this link:
Dog World June 13th(you'll have to select "View Editions" from the top left, select 13/06/2008, navigate to page 8 and skip to halfway down the third column near the end of the article, zoom in). I will quote the lot directly after I have obtained permission from Dog World.
Naturally, Finuala and I found this opinion pretty offensive. As (full disclosure) she writes a semi-regular Gardening column for the paper, she felt less in a position to respond. So, I have taken up the cudgel, which I have emailed to the letters editor of Dog World:
Letters Page: Runners in the Show Ring (response to Andrew
Brace's June 13th column)
In his "Going Around" column in Dog World, June 13th, Andrew Brace rails against the possibly rising practice of "employing 'runners' when they presumably feel they are not fit enough to gait their dogs."
Mr. Brace's limited and cynical imagination can find only one motive for this: "...the exhibitor does not trust the judge to find their dog without their face behind it." This ignores the fact that not every exhibitor is a "face" in their given breed; many successfully show only one or two animals at a time who are primarily their pets, without joining some cliquey coterie of breeders with many champions. Many owners feel that their animals are most comfortable with their handling, and, perhaps a newsflash to Mr. Brace, take pleasure and pride in their display in the ring as a result of their effort, time and expense.
My wife, for example, suffered increasingly appalling arthritis in one of her hips whilst waiting for diagnosis and a subsequent operation. During this time she tried to continue enjoying showing our dog to the best of her ability and felt most qualified to stack the animal, and confident that he would move like a dream alongside someone who could actually move, not hobbled by pain. If she was having an off day, she would ask a friend to run the dog in the ring.
With the increasingly average age of the general population, and inevitably of the showing community (not to mention waiting lists for treatment), the practice of using runners cannot help but rise. I would hope that we can expect judges to look at what they should be looking at, the animal, it's confirmation and performance, not who happens to be standing behind, or along side it. Strangely this seems to be something that Mr. Brace may not be willing to do as he vents his "intense" dislike.
We can only hope that Mr. Brace can swallow his pride, look past what he sees as an "insult to the judge", and not penalize the animal or exhibitor for what is a completely irrelevant factor. Otherwise all his prejudices should be published on any schedule that lists his future judging appointments. Let's also wish him continued good health so that he should never know where his true insult lies.
Brian Tarnoff
Hampshire
I will of course update here should this letter be published. And follow any possible repercussions.
Labels: My Tasteless Opinions, Vague-a-ries
Vaguest Explanations!! 2007!!
For a second year running the Explainer feature on Slate recently posted a selected list of unanswered questions, asking for readers to vote a favourite. Yet again I have opted to answer these questions (note the questions are the property of Slate and their authors, and can be found at
The Questions We Never Answered in 2007).
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Could you play sports in space, if you had a spacesuit?You would think it wouldn't be a matter of rocket science, but you'd be wrong. Spacesuits are pretty much designed to prohibit the playing of sports in space. The way that you get to be a space suit designer pretty much involves a disdain of sporting activities and a worship of slide rules and Cray supercomputers. It's not that these guys are geeks, but they want to encourage mankind to populate the cosmos with hypergeeks not basketball stars.
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Can a baby get drunk off of nonalcoholic beer?I have a counter-question here, how could you tell? Does your baby slur it's words? Does it put the letter blocks in the wrong order? Does it put an arm over your shoulder and drawl "I love you, man." Does it get angry and beat the living stuffing out of teddy? Is its puke a slightly different shade of green?
Do you want to get your baby drunk? Have Steve Guttenberg, Ted Danson and Tom Seleck taught us nothing?
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Very rare to find a hotel room with a light on the ceiling, they're usually floor lamps or desk lamps. Is there some structural reason for that?Here's another thing to thank rock musicians for. These non-fixed lamps are more replaceable. Chandeliers are only there to be swung from.
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If I drank a bunch of orange juice, which caused me to get heartburn, then ate a bunch of antacids, would it neutralize the vitamin C, thus providing no benefits from the ingested vitamin? If so, if you ate antacids continually, would you get scurvy?Only if you spent a long time at sea, ya antacid poppin' landlubber, then you'd get keelhauled....
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How do surface-dwelling fish survive monster sea storms?When was the last time you saw a fish ON the surface of the water? Do you mean "near the surface dwelling fish"? Only fish in aquariums actually have dwellings. Maybe you meant to ask how do sea monsters survive storms? Do you think Godzilla and Giant Squid from 20 thou leagues get together and hang out in one of their "surface-dwellings"? Have you been overusing antacids? The scurvy is clearly affecting your ability to form questions.
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I've been looking for information on how the word "dick" became an insult, especially since people still go by the name Dick. Why would anyone choose that name, when it has other meanings?!?!Dick is often short for Richard which means far more worse things in certain languages (even I have to draw the line somewhere, so I won't offend you with the descriptions of cross-species unsanitary unnatural acts and their eventual consequences). Every King of England named Richard met a violent end. Nixon may have been the start of Dick as an insult. My brother Richard renamed himself Amaran, which a guru told him meant "he who is immoral (or was that immortal?)". So you can see that in many cases Dick is preferable.
On the other hand there are those both perverse and naive enough to believe that there are women who can't get enough.... so they may have worse motives for taking the name.
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Why do male ice skaters have routines that are so feminine in execution? After all these years, there should be some kind of movements on ice that would be more masculine-looking. The gymnastics shows have them.Hey, maybe you should back off. These guys have blades on their feet. And they're not insecure about their sexuality (although, given that, what's their excuse for wearing blades on their feet?)
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Why are some cats softer to the touch than others? Is it possible I have the softest cat in the world?You do not have the softest cat in the world. If you did you would have been unable to type that question. The Guinness Book of Records notes the case of the softest cat, Athena, a Persian Longhair, who was so soft that all humans who came in contact with her died of starvation, as they couldn't stop stroking her once they'd started.
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In Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Identity, he says that Jason Bourne can pack with great economy of space, allowing him to pack much more in a small bag than it would seem. How would one do this, and is it even a real thing?This is a remarkably perceptive question, as a matter of fact when filmmakers were looking to cast the role of Jason Bourne, they asked all the auditioning actors to bring a suitcase. Matt Damon won the role solely on his packing skills. Harpo Marx possessed similarly advanced techniques.
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Do you have any idea why sporting the moustache was so much more common in the military than in any other job in 19th-century Western countries, and to some extent present-day Western countries?The 19th century moustache was the height of military technology. Properly waxed and sharpened, it could be used for both stabbing and slashing attacks (1d20, 2d9). When sucked on, the wax contained sufficient nutrient to sustain the wearer for at least three days of continuous meal-break free battle. The glare off the wax could also be used for signalling, but also made an easier target for sharp shooters. As rifle accuracy improved, this would spell the eventual downfall of the moustache, or extra-cross-hairs as they're known in sniper lingo.
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If an unscrupulous bar owner was to mix diethylene to, say, whiskey, what would the effect be on the consumer?Who are you to call that unscrupulous? These men are pioneers, brave explorers in the world of mixology. Don't think that masterpieces like the Vodka Martini, the Sloe Comfortable Screw, the Zombie, and the Blue Whale were developed without their share of inspiration, heartache and tragedy! To make a prairie oyster you gotta crack a few eggs.
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I am an Afro-American woman. I am in my youthful 50s. My hair is strong and a little past the shoulders. I wear it pressed (hot combed or flat iron). It is also a salt-and-pepper color; I get great compliments on it. The problem I have is static. Could you give me some tips on what to use to stop this?Don't try. Own your static. Reclaim the static. Enjoy your static. After all you might be able to build up enough charge to solve some of your energy problems. You may even be able to use your hair to scale walls like Spiderman (however be careful when you design your superheroine costume not to make it insulating as you could electrocute yourself).
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There was the most beautiful sunset here in Indiana last evening. Would the California fires have anything to do with that?I've often heard that Hoosier's are so unethical that they can justify anything. Quite a few pharmaceutical companies are based there. They've been pushing this whole biofuel thing way too much and are leading to soaring food prices and worldwide shortages. A native Indianan FBI Agent heard there was a cold snap back home just before Waco. They're probably secretly helping Iran's nuclear program, in the hopes that a nuke holocaust would destroy both coasts, leaving them as the capital of the mid-west continental empire.
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I haven't seen this in the news, but perhaps you could explain it anyway. Why do people feel like destroying things when angry?Your being too coy with your question. You mean to ask "Why do people feel like destroying MY things when angry?" Your coyness is one of your many irritating attributes, and I'm sure angry people drive from miles around just to find you and your things, and destroy them. You're one of those people, who, just by breathing, really seem to be asking for it. It's really no fault of your own, and I'd feel sympathy, if you didn't inspire such loathing.
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Why do most reptiles go to sleep when you rub their bellies? I have done it myself with everything from domestic water dragons to wild alligators, but I heard recently that it is bad for them—and they only appear to be sleeping, when in fact they are having trouble breathing. Is this true?If you really felt guilty about putting these cuddly reptiles lives in danger, you would give them mouth to mouth.
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Would it be possible to "shoot" someone with "lightning"? Like, a Taser with no electrodes.Only if they're already steeplejacks.
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Why do men almost never win on ABC's Wheel of Fortune?Just as women suffer from math phobia, men have problems with consonants, probably because they think is has something to do with commitment. Also, it's easier to grunt with a purely vowel based language.
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Are any of the scorpions in central Vietnam deadly? I was stung three times one night, and evacuated to a hospital where doctors said the one that stung me was the only lethal one in Vietnam. Truth or lie?Clearly you lived to write this pointless question. Unless there's a delayed reaction. Here's hoping.
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Why don't we drop medical waste and nuclear waste into active volcanoes, the "ultimate high-temperature incinerators"?Medical waste might work, but then you'd have to do all sorts of studies. Some volcanoes would have to receive placebo waste, etc. the trials will take years, the results will be inconclusive 'cause there are simply not enough active volcanoes to get a statistically significant sample. The drug companies will just end up buying a bunch of volcanoes, fudge the results, and bribe somebody. It'll be years before affordable generic magma will be available again.
However, heating radioactive material just makes it radioactive and HOT. Active volcanoes spew gasses into the atmosphere, you want to vent a meltdown cloud? What the hell did they teach you at school, you idiot? No child left behind? Everyone left back in the friggin' stone age, you ask me....
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Hello. I am an editor and writer and I would like for everyone to change some letters that are now in lowercase to uppercase. An example would be the 18th century to the 18th Century. Where does one go about starting to do this?First click Edit, then Replace, then write a computer virus which will make everyone's computer do a search and replace. What's wrong with an individual's choice of lowercase? Style guides be damned. I'd watch out, ee cummings and k d lang might show up and beat the crap out of you. Maybe that's what you're aiming for.
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Is it "open sees me" or "open says me"?No no no, it's open sesame! For only in the magic of the tiny sesame seed can we find the true tahini!
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Can dogs be mentally retarded?My dog is actually typing this reply for me. The only difficult aspects of this are that I have to hold a treat above her nose whilst she takes dictation, and finding a canine ergonomic keyboard was a bitch. Sorry, it's just a turn of phrase, oh I suppose you're going to lie by the patio door and sulk now. No, I don't think your brother is retarded, so what if it takes him an hour to find his balls when he wants to lick them.
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Why don't they build into cars a secret button for police to use, and when these people are trying to get away from police down the freeway and city streets at 100 mph, the following police car could push the button, making the engine on the speeding car stop? Surely there must be some smart person who could make this.They have. We're still waiting for the police to read the fucking manual.
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Why does having a foreign accent make a person seem more attractive?There is the possibility they haven't heard your lame pick-up lines already.
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How often are presidents born, and how often do they die? Do they die in bunches, or on average every four years?Presidents aren't born or made, they're bought. Like any cheaply manufactured good, they have use by dates and a limited shelf life. This is why they seem to die in bunches, when a particular batch gives out.
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When a fly lands on a ceiling, does it execute a barrel roll or an inside loop?Triple gainer, actually.
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Is there such a thing as "crazy eyes," where the whites go all the way around the corneas and makes the person look psycho, such as those of runaway bride Jennifer Wilbanks and wife-dismemberer Stephen Grant?Look no further than the films of Stanley Kubrick. That happens at least once in everything since 2001. Kubrick carried his desire to portray the crazy eye phenomenon from his early documentary movies. This has also led to him portraying other fundamental truths: the depths of space are as lonely and alienating as the human heart, nuclear brinksmanship is a psychotic farce, and Tom and Nicole were always kind of creepy as a couple, not the least bit sexy.
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I've always wanted to know why bald heads shine!!!Friction in the blood/brain barrier can cause the skull to incandesce. However, this can be reduced by a constant supply of glucose and sucrose, easily found in boiled sweet candy form. This was the real reason that Kojak had lollipops, to reduce the glare off Telly Savalas's dome for filming.
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Who is Daniel Engbert? I'm sure that I'm spelling his name wrong, but he's one of a few guys that you regularly go to as a reliable source—and I want to know who he is and why he's qualified.Daniel Engber is the fellow that regularly contributes to the real Explainer column on Slate.com. Which means he, like anyone else on the internet, doesn't need any qualifications. I assume he actually adheres to some journalistic standards. In the current climate this might not be something to be proud of. I adhere to the internet right to make it up as I go along, so I'm betting on a purely statistical level we're probably about even.
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What infections do viruses and microorganisms suffer from? My guess is none. They only suffer from random mutations and suffering caused (mostly by humans) by chemicals.Are you with the reptile guy? Why do you care about the suffering of viruses? Who's to say all micro-organisms play well together? They all probably hate each other, but look on us as their common enemy. I will draw no parallels with current global political situations.
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I have been looking for an old movie from about the late '60s. I was born in 1960 and watched it as a little kid. It was a Santa movie and it had the Devil in it. It was like the Devil was trying to stop Christmas. I remember the Devil was wearing red PJs. Santa has a magic powder that would make people sleep. It was a cute movie. Please help.Where movies are concerned, I can't be a smartass. I've done some Googling, and found it easily, you lazy bastard. A Mexican movie called simply "Santa Claus" from 1959. Apparently episode 521 of Mystery Science Theater 3000 covered it, so you may be able to catch it on cable rerun. Here's some links with more info:
http://www.badmovies.org/movies/santaclaus/http://www.filethirteen.com/reviews/santaclaus/santaclaus.htmhttp://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053241/•
What do the SWAT teams do to keep their fitness? Like, do they run for half an hour, or do five pressups?At least that much exercise, I'm sure. They carry guns, I'm not sure the fitness is a requirement, probably something to do in between toting firepower and storming compounds.
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If mountains are measured from sea level, then the 12,000-foot peaks in Colorado are only about 7,000 feet above Denver since they lie on a 5,000-foot-high plain. That being so, a one-foot rock lying on the ground becomes a 5,001-foot-high mountain. Do we need to address this differently, if it really matters at all?I think it's more important to measure penis size from sea level. Those with enough confidence, like myself can stay in the low lying coastal regions, and we can banish all those men with low self esteem and flash sports cars to mountainous regions, where they can crash their flesh substitute suicide machines off twisty, icy roads in less time than it takes to say the words "bus plunge." Clearly we all know what a mountain is when we see it, and that has something to do with it's size in the surrounding terrain. So if you really care about measuring the damn things with a tape measure, then you're wasting your life.
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Is it possible in any way to prove that someone was on crack cocaine nine to 10 years ago?Just piss in the damn cup, Mr. President.
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Why don't long-haired football players, many of them of Polynesian descent, get their tresses tugged during their gridiron clash?Invented by the first Hasssidic half-back, Moshe Turgidson, the modern American Football helmet actually has a suction function which causes all hair to be encapsulated in order to cut down on drag and streamline the player. This occasionally leads to oxygen deprivation for the player, but so far no one has noticed. Polynesian descendants, generally speaking, don't need to wear the helmets, particularly those who've come to the game via rugby, but do so as a courtesy to their weaker colleagues.
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This may be a dumb question. Most people spell their names as first name, middle initial, and last name. But some people spell their name as initial, given name, and then last name. Is the initial before the given name their first name, and they go by their middle name? Or is the initial before the given name their middle initial? If it is their middle initial, why would you put it before your first name, because then it is not in the middle anymore? It seems like conservatives or Republicans are more likely to list their name starting with an initial.I lost interest when you said it was going to be dumb. Which ever is first or middle, initial or name, is still first or middle. The positions give the whole thing away. Some people want to hide their first name (see Dick answer above). You are also right to assume such deceptive people may be Republicans at birth, by the time they grow out of it, it's too late to change back.
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Mitt Romney is running for president. His father, George Romney, a former governor of Michigan, ran for president in 1968. Is "Mitt" named for the mitten-shape of Michigan?Mitt is Romney's middle name (see above), Williard is his actual first name (Romney is probably hiding this in the aftermath of the Ben-Michael Jackson scandal). Only the lower peninsula of Michigan is mitt shaped. Romney has a brother, G. Scott (see above, again!!!), who doesn't appear to be named after the upper peninsula.
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What would happen to the rest of the planets and the sun if Jupiter were to explode, or somehow leave our galaxy altogether?Look, the solar system is in a pretty bad state right now, I don't know if it can take any more of this shit. First Pluto finds out that not only is he not a dog (no, siriusly), but he's a dwarf, and he's sent to the kid's table with some long lost relatives, one of whom has an identity crisis and thinks she's Xena the warrior princess or just the actress who plays her, and ends up the Goddess of dischord, the mother of her moon Lawless, which happens to be the last name of the actress who plays Xena, and the other is the goddess of global warming or spring. No wonder Mars and Venus are stuck writing self help books. Go ahead Jupiter, throw a hissy fit, see if Apollo cares.
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Which is the best hearing aid? Why are there so many different ones, and are the ones that allow you to hear others' conversations across the room legal?Folks talking loudly seems to be my best hearing aid. The electronic variety are hugely suspicious, and very narrow in their application, for instance the ones that allow you to hear conversations across the room are limited to just that, you won't hear anyone next to you. I've been at loads of parties where this would be a blessing.
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When a man lies to his lawyer to obtain a divorce from a wife of 47 years when she is ill and does not even know and cannot defend herself, is this legal, or perjury?Perjury is lying under oath. Lying to your own lawyer to obtain a divorce is pointless when you should be lying to her lawyer. If she's ill, you should wait to see if she dies, this could save you alot of legal costs.
There seems really to be a theme of illegality in many of these questions. Of course we all know the internet exists to support illegal, or at least barely legal activities. Why should my blog, or the Slate's Explainer be any different? Perhaps all those questions were written by some adulterous, dissembling, computer virus hacking, crazy-eyed crack-head presidential assassin whilst speeding, committing grand theft auto, evading out of shape SWAT teams, arson, perjury, eavesdropping with hearing loop devices, fly-tipping hazmats, angrily destroying hotel rooms, smuggling lethal arthropods, causing electrocution and distress to alligators, amoebas, and alcoholic infants with poisonous cocktails. Actually that sounds like the spec for a pretty cool video game....
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Finally, I'm sorry I've posted this so late into 2008, for reasons I won't bother to explain. But if anyone wants real answers to their questions, you can send them this way.... anyway.
Labels: Vague-a-ries
Back-B-Log: Snarks on a Plain
Despite the fact that I have yet to see the Samuel L Jackson opus, Snakes on a Plane (hoping to catch it as an in-flight pic), I wrote the following obsessive sadsters list in reply to an internet challenge for new movie concepts in a similar vein. Naturally I forgot to submit this to the challenger in a timely fashion, but waste not want not.....
Coming Soon to Your Multiplex: with all the marketing subtlety of "Snakes on a Plane":
So obvious, it's probably already in production:
Sharks in a Pool
Mel Gibson's next Biblical outing:
Snake in a Garden
(perhaps to be followed by "Jonah in a Whale", not to mention the retitled re-release of "Christ on a Stick",
or now also "Pregnant Mayan in a Hole")
Pixar's Next:
Anthropomorphized Objects in an Evocative Dilemma
Baz Lurman's first Disney kiddie flick:
Chimps in a Disco
The new Tolkien film:
Elves on a Rampage
Tolkien Porn:
Hobbits in Leather
The new teen gross-out/sex comedy:
Dorks in the Gym
Shock-Horror:
Lawyers in an Abatoir
Dentists in a Tiger pit
Actuaries in an Oubliette
Certified Public Accounts on a 103/20D Profits Disclosure Form
Some Existing Classics that do what they say they will:
Murder in the Cathedral (should that be renamed to Murder in 'A' Cathedral)
Little House on the Prarie
Devil in a Red Dress
Murder on the Orient Express
Down and Out in Paris and London
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Some classics artfully retitled:
Glass in a Menagerie
Rain on a Plain (My Fair Lady)
Blood at a Wedding
Finnegan in a Wake
Labels: Vague-a-ries
Vaguest Explanations!!
To my surprise I've discovered that the revered Explainer on the excellent Slate site, doesn't actually answer all the questions they receive. They recently posted a selected list of unanswered questions, asking for readers to vote a favourite. I have opted to instead answer these questions (note the questions are the property of Slate and their authors, and can be found at
The Unanswered Questions Digging through the bottom of the Explainer mailbag. By Daniel Engber).
• What comes after 999 trillion?999 trillion and one. (I'm guessing that the questioner meant to ask "what comes after 999 trillion, 999 billion, 999 million, 999 thousand, and 999?" That would be 1 quadrillion. However it should be noted that this stuff isn't standardized. An American Billion is One Thousand Million in Britain (although, I believe the Bush administration has pressured Blair into caving in on this one as well, this proves the CIA have something on Blair).
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Why do train whistles at night always sound lonely and mournful? Not so in the daytime.Because we cannot see the train at night, the mind is tricked into thinking it's hearing an old codger in a jail cell playing a harmonica. This should not be regarded as sad, lonely or mournful, as he has clearly busked without a license, and will shortly be silenced by the gang banger in his cell.
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Given the exchange and dispersion of matter, how likely is it/how often do we inhale/consume and/or incorporate into our own protein structure molecules that were once in some historical figure, say Abraham Lincoln?The real question here is: Given Lincoln's alleged homosexuality, is more of his matter dispersed amongst heterosexuals or gays? And which States will allow partners (regardless of sex) to wed if they contain so-called Lincoln particles. Sidebar: do owners of Lincoln particles ever find themselves wistfully desiring someone tall dark and stovepiped?
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Lasers are now powerful and small (at least I think they are), so why don't our troops carry laser guns?Donald Rumsfeld, in secret defense department memos, advocated lasers as the way to conclusively win in Iraq. The Shiah Muslims regard the laser as "the destructive light of Allah" and so would be demoralized into submission. Poor intelligence sources also suggested that Saddam had stockpiled lasers in his arsenal, but all that was uncovered was a Baghdad warehouse with thousands of laser pointers and a similar number of obsolete overhead projectors. Rumsfeld's laser initiative had to be shelved when the combination of insufficient body armor, friendly fire, and the troops tendency to shun reflective overwear led to fatalities.
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Why is smooth peanut butter cheaper than nutty?The "nuts" in chunky peanut butter are reconstituted from smooth peanut butter. This is why, in certain territories, it must be referred to as "chunky" rather than "nutty" to avoid prosecution under trade description acts.
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If we taught animals to talk, how would that affect the world?This is a stupid question. Animals already talk. Just not to us.
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What would happen to the stock market if a meteor impacted the earth? What would happen to the global markets and the U.S. market? Say a meteor hits inside U.S. borders and takes out two states.This is a trick question, like that "where do they bury the survivors?" one. Only natural disasters in Hollywood films are geographically aware enough to attack particular cities or states. Of course, if we're talking "acts of God" then it would depend on whether they were blue or red States, at least then we'd finally know which side God's on. On the other hand small meteors hit the earth constantly, and conspiracy theorists tout the magic meteorite theory of small bullet sized meteors having struck down a number of Kennedy's, MLK, Marilyn, etc.
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Is it possible to collect all the cookie dough in Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream and actually bake cookies from it?Yes, but it is wisest to remove the ice cream first. This is most easily done by feeding the ice cream to your cat, the ice cream, being milk based will safely enter the cat's digestive system, and the cookie dough will be vomited back up in a fur ball. That, of course, poses a more disgusting problem.
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How clean is bar soap in a public bathroom? Is it "self-cleaning," since it's soap? It seems like a health hazard to me.This is a conundrum on the level of the shampoo instructions to "lather, rinse, repeat." As long as you thoroughly wash the suspect soap off your hands, and then don't touch anything until you can return home to your sterile clean room environment, you should be ok. Once home, use the high intensity sunlamp to flash singe the upper layer of skin cells off your hands, just to be sure. Also, it is erroneous to think that soap is "self cleaning" any more than the pope is "self blessing." The main thing is not to eat the soap.
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Why did Zidane head-butt his opponent in the World Cup final? Do the French not fight with their fists?He clearly confused a Glasgow kiss with a French kiss. He was probably seized with a fit of repressed attraction to the other player. Latent homosexuality is rife in football (what do you think soccer is code for?), and Camus, himself a goal keeper, wrote about it in letters to Stanley Baldwin.
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When we are approaching another person, like in a hallway, why do we step to our left? That is, try and pass right-shoulder-to-right-shoulder.This is a result of a genetic disposition to Lambada. Note: it's the left side below the equator.
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I have been pondering this situation for as long as I can remember (maybe age 7-8) and it drives me nuts. It makes me feel like my head will implode if I think any harder. Is the universe infinite? It must end somewhere. But when it ends … there must be something on the other side … right?Time/space is curved, so on the other side, you just find this universe. Of course you end up somewhere else entirely if you miss the left turn at Albuquerque.
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If a group of passengers on a hijacked plane wanted to, could they bring a plane down by all of them using their cell phones at the same time?Only if they can lean out one of the doors far enough to accurately throw the phones into the jet engines. Any other use of the phones to bring the plane down would rely on unpredictable service areas, or incur prohibitive charges.
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Why do humans die so young? In biblical times, people lived for several hundred years; now living to 100 is considered a long life. What happened?Biblical measures are drastically different from today's. A cubit, for example is now the size of a sugar cube, and yet Noah's Ark was forty cubits long. Of course the variability of the length of "days" and "years" between then and now causes no end of trouble for creationists.
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How can I tell if I was the first person to use the term "K-fed-up" in relation to Britney's divorce?Britney is divorced? Hold on, when did she get married? Who to? She didn't tell me. Oh wait, she stopped taking my calls about two years ago. Hope she hasn't changed the number. You think maybe she needs a shoulder to cry on?
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Why is the No. 8 always the same combination (tamale, enchilada, rice, beans) in any Mexican restaurant I visit? This includes primarily the southeast United States but not obvious franchises.Coincidentally, the Spanish word for eight, ocho, also means "combination of the accursed gringo". So clearly your tastes have been anticipated.
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Hi, how does nature make water? How does nature combine one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms to make water? If we knew how nature makes water, then perhaps we can then find an efficient way of separating hydrogen from oxygen, thus creating the ultimate source for energy.This reader's details have been forwarded to Homeland Security. The understanding this question shows of fundamental chemical processes that could be used, in the wrong hands, to create weapons of unbelievable destructive power (WUDP). Also, everyone knows that God made water, it did not evolve from Oxygen and Hydrogen.
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Why is grilled chicken tasting increasingly rubbery and odd?As you get older your tastebuds die off, also your ability to discern the difference between the grocery store and an old time joke shop deteriorates. For instance, look closer at those blue corn tortillas you bought to make chimichangas, you will find that they are actually whoopie cushions. And be careful the next time you open a can of peanuts.
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i need more money.....what business can i start that will not take a lot of time...i have internet access daily...........and i have saturday morning free before 12 noon to run around. i work from 7am to 9:30 pm..............Economic theorists have speculated that there must be a way to use the internet to combine porn, pyramid schemes, and IPO's. If you can find a way to do that, the world is your oyster.
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Just suppose, one day someone wants to sell you an old gold bar. You don't know if it belongs to any treasure, and you can't find out if there is any reward for it, if it was a lost treasure. How would you go about melting it and selling it? The same would go for a gemstone about the size of a dinner plate. How would you go about selling it? If you're living in a country that is corrupt and you cannot trust the government, or anyone else, what can you do?You are clearly mistaken about the value of these worthless trinkets. You must send them to me, and I will make sure no one is ever again a victim of this sinister fraud.
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Can you tell me how long it will take if you eat rat poison to see if it is going to affect you? Please e-mail me back. Because my niece ate some.If she's still alive by the time you read this, she'll probably be OK. However, there is no shame in having uncontrollable urges to eat rat poison, you should tell your "niece" this. Or drop the charade, Ben. Just because Michael Jackson let you down.
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Hi. I just wanted to know if our eyeballs roll back when we are sleeping (or closed) or do they shake? Or …Rattle, ostensibly. You've been listening to a single track on repeat, and it has subliminally affected your thinking. I'm guessing you're using the Elvis cover of Shake, Rattle and Roll, you might find relief by switching to either the Eddie Cochran, or the Bill Haley and Comets versions. The Big Joe Turner original cut is preferred in lower doses, if you have a low mojo threshold.
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PYGMIES: How/when/where/still in existence/do we mate with them?Only on Thursdays.
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Do dolphins actually save people? If so, why do they do this?Dolphins have no theological understanding, and so do no religious proselytizing, it is doubtful if any have found Christ and been born again through dolphins. On this point please ignore the Apocrypha of Saint Fa which suggests that Christ did not walk on the water, but was balanced on the noses of two Dolphins (still a pretty nifty, reasonably divine feat, although there's a member of the Chinese State Circus who does this whilst scarf juggling).
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I have a sister that stresses the hell out of me. For example this one sister out of three knows that I am recovering from a serious car accident. I thank God for saving my life, and healing me each and every day. My question is can a person who complains and talks about the same complaining crap every day stress you completely out? About four days ago I had to tell this one sister (Annie) basically to get a life and stop bugging me with her problems and everybody else's. I reminded her that I am still in a neck brace and healing … I really need to know if a person can really stress you out with the same old thing over and over and over again. PLEASE ANSWER BACK ASAP.Hello, I'm sorry, but we're all out at the moment, could you please leave a message after the exclamation point..........!
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Can someone be forced to masturbate?It's not masturbation if you make someone else do it.
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Why do we make a "lip-smacking" sound when kissing closed-mouth? We do make the sound; it doesn't happen on its own ...Obviously you are not lubricating your lips sufficiently to safely engage in the act. This causes a combination of friction, surface tension, and static discharge which may release through sound. This is extremely dangerous.
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What's likely to happen to people, or what might they feel, when they're killed instantly?Do I look like I care? Obviously, whatever they feel, it happens pretty quickly. Why dwell on it?
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Can a state in the United States split into two or more states? If so, how? I think Texas has a special provision for being able to divide into up to five states. But I am wondering about the others.Unfortunately the United States is limited to 50. This was due to a pre-millennium programming error. So, yes a State could divide into more States, but they would have to eliminate an equal number of States. See Solid State Physics for a more obtuse answer.
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I have noticed that a lot of mainstream movies feature men peeing. Are the actors really peeing?Yes, they are peeing. But what you don't know is that there is much contention between the acting theorists. Brechtians follow a strict diet during productions, Grotowskiists insist on implanting a balloon in their own bladders which when inflated will cause pressure leading to urination. Even amongst the Method acting schools there is dispute, Stella Adler advocated the Long Island Iced Tea method, whilst Lee Strasberg supported the clenched sphincter technique. Stanislavski purists pee whilst imagining putting out a fire. You might suppose that with modern effects that this would be unnecessary, but pee is one of the thing that CGI still can't get right, in fact, when a Computer Generated character pees on screen, an actor is paid to urinate in front of a blue screen, with the CGI character "matched" to the end of the resulting stream.
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yea i have my own 620 gang and i dont know how to run it to make not look like a little bitch gang joke it is just me and my friend how do i run it?Dear Sir, perhaps you would like to take your fake little bitch gang and go to a "rumble" or whatever you homies call it in your modern lingo. Just wait until they reinstitute the draft, you waster.
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Hi. How did the horse in the movie about dreams make it to not only survive but to win again? Was this movie true?All movies are true. But not all of them are based in fact.
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Working in my yard yesterday, I killed a gnat in my ear canal, where it had flown. I couldn't remove the body as my finger was too fat. What happens to it now?Most likely your body will slowly move the remains down your Eustachian tube, it should eventually reach your esophagus, stomach, then be absorbed into you through digestion. If you are unlucky, its spirit could bind with one of the tiny bones in your ear, haunting you forever with small irritating gnat noises, or causing dizziness and disorientation. You may need an entomological exorcist. They're under E in the phone book.
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What is the richest religion? Scientology has a lot of Hollywood stars and I think they actually make their members give money, but Catholicism is a very old religion with its own country. Also, Islam has a lot of members but I don't know about their money situation.Jedi is the richest religion. It's adherents pay unimaginable sums for holy artifacts. They have also made four extremely mediocre movies into blockbuster hits, despite only being enraptured by two pretty good films first.
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Is chicken considered meat?Cookbooks usually class chicken as poultry, but vegetarian cookbooks would call chicken, or any flesh, meat. And, no, you can't tell that cute hippie girl that you're a vegetarian. You're better off studying sitar if you want to get under that peasant dress of hers.
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Hello ... Could you tell me if there's been any kind of medical discovery in the last 30 years besides DNA.The only advances in medicine over the last thirty years have been in the area of creative grant applications. In fact all the so called new research into regenerative therapies are just new names for existing things. Stem cells are really just antibiotics. If the public wasn't just so obsessed with everything being new and improved, we wouldn't have all this controversy.
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Are UFOs confirmed to be from other Alien Planets?No, they are only from the original Alien Planets, apart from Mars, Ork, Vulcan, Romulus, Klingon, Alpha Centauri, and the one from Wrath of Khan, there are no other alien planets.
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I met a 40-year-old stripper back in February of this year. We had a special connection. Yet, she was homeless, going through a divorce and bankruptcy. She has three kids who live in Alabama and she pays $500 a month in child support. Moreover, she used cocaine. At one point, she was arrested for forgery. She spent a month in jail but was released under the condition that she become a narc for the police department. She gave the names of her dealers and would wear wires when drug deals were going down. I let her stay at my place and kept food in the refrigerator. This past Monday she took all her clothes, my money, and left. The night before, she hung out with some friends. I called her, and she said I was too good for her. She said she had never been treated so well. She said she would drag me down and she couldn't bear to handle that. I told her my hopes and dreams the night before. I wonder if I scared her off. I don't know what to make of it. I don't know if she met someone else the night before and doesn't want to tell me. It's killing me inside. I cried for her. I really cared for her. Can you give me some advice?You really have two choices, pine for her for the rest of your life, or hunt and kill her for the lying whore she was. You may want to seek legal advice first.
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If anyone has unanswered questions that I could divine the answers to please feel free to send them the way of this blog.
Labels: Vague-a-ries
Ex-Pat-hology: All Hollow Evening
Halloween in the UK sucks!
It is a lame abomination, the costumes are pretty poor, decorations almost entirely absent (we were the only house on the street with a jackolantern), the sweets are boiled. A lot of older kids just turn up, undisguised in hooded sweatshirts expecting candy for nothing. They don't seem to realize that only kids young enough to make grown ups go awwww over their cuteness in satanic garb, should participate. Exceptions for older kids only if they are creative enough in their costumes for pity for their sheer geekery to be honored. I've been tempted to put up a sign saying you must be this height or under to trick or treat here.
In the shops you are starting to find small selections of token offerings of costumery and sweets, in my local supermarket, this amounted to a choice of two sizes of witches hat, and packs of ten chocolate balls overpriced and wrapped in pumpkin illustrated foil. It is poorly organized, and barefaced attempt to create another cash cow holiday, but they don't really have a clue what they're doing.
It's not that I miss halloween per se. I think I only have fond memories of sugar delivery product gathering, dressing up and strolling through crisp autumn evening air, but it's not something you can resurrect by going to a costume party (aka fancy dress party in UK). Short of reverse growth hormone and other science fiction scenarios, it couldn't happen, it shouldn't happen. I wouldn't want to be a child trick or treating today with a cordon of security personnel escorting each group of kids spooked up in designer scare-wear, between lo-carb candy checkpoints in some gated community.
Brits don't need Halloween, they already have a seasonal holiday for the kiddies, Guy Fawkes night, 5th of November, the celebration of the foiling of the early 17th century English Catholic Bin Laden and his parliamentary bombing plot. This is tastefully done by having public bonfires and setting off as many pet-distressing explosions as possible. Originally it involved effigies and door-to-door child vagrancy (urchins asking for "a Penny for the Guy"). This latter sub-Dickensian exercise in pre-teen agit-prop and criminal education has more or less disappeared (my wife told me it was "seen as begging"), leaving only a thriving fireworks industry, and the predictable accidental childlike enthusiasm meets dangerous chemical compounds onslaught.
The only reason that Brits try to ape Halloween is the onward imperial surge of US culture. Brits see Halloween on ubiquitous US television shows and movies. The result is a sort of cargo cult version of the holiday. The kids barely know how to say trick or treat, some don't even bother, taking a perfunctory candy then aimlessly wandering back into the night. Some seem to recognize the inherent threat in the trick part, but they don't have a trick back up plan, they don't even know what TP'ing is (I'm not telling them). I'm also certain that these kids are pretty unambitious. My Halloweens were operations of military precision, statistics, topography, logic and topology combined to define the suburban route that would maximize the haul. I doubt if kids in our neighborhood came from any farther than two streets away, or knocked on more than ten doors in total, netting a pathetic handful of chocolates.
Don't even get me started on the Great Pumpkin.
Whilst I'm usually finding myself a constant, mostly willing, apologist for my country of origin, I sense more and more that the British loathing of America, is increasingly mixed with bitter envy. Most Brits I meet can't fathom why I would want to live here, when the weather and cost of living are better at home. As much as they look down on the consumerist brash ignorant obese masses from sea to shining sea, the UK is all too quickly following suit on track to be one of the most obese nations in Europe, with an urban sprawl threatening some of its most precious natural areas. At the same time as establishing the New Forest as a National Park, the government pledges housing targets for the surrounding areas of upwards of 80,000 more homes.
Tony Blair has doing his bit to promote UK's Halloween for years. He has been dressing himself up as an American President, and blindly following the same. It's just like the squinty eyed kid who dresses up as the cowboy.
Labels: Vague-a-ries
Vague-a-ries: A Committee of Members
Ah, the Democratic process. I recently celebrated the arrival of my absentee ballot, and speculated in this forum as to whether to vote stategically, or obviously in my choice for Democratic Senator candidate to oppose Republican Rick Santorum in the Fall. I had thought that was the biggest choice on offer on the ballot.
Many of the other posts were unopposed within the party, Rendell, Sestak, Farrell, Lentz (Gov, US House Rep, PA Gen Assembly Senator and Rep). Lieutenant Gov Cath Baker Knoll is the incumbent and has three well meaning but as far as I could tell from their websites somewhat ineffectual challengers. Gene Stilp in particular seemed to me to be a malcontent with a web log, this could make a kindred spirit but despite his humor and self deprecating tone, I'm not won over. On the other hand I'd be hard pressed to tell you what the Lieutenant Gov does, at least until my ignorance evaporates, or they do a West Wing style series about Gubernatorial politics (I think I watched the first season of Robert Guillame's Soap spin-off Benson, beyond which my knowledge of the Governor's office fades as well).
For all these posts there is a reasonable level of info on the web, although I found that Google failed me in the specifics, but did lead me to:
http://www.politics1.com/pa.htmwhich gave me links to all the relevant candidates down to General Assembly level. I was particularly pleased to read about Joe Sestak, who seems to be a strong contender to oppose US House Rep Curt Weldon, who I have detested ever since he took over Bob Edgar's seat when Edgar took a quixotic run at Arlen Specter's Senate seat. Weldon has frequently used the extreme Republican majority in his district as a mandate to push much of
his agenda (example, anti-abortion in a more than marginally pro-choice constituency). Don't get me started on Weldon, I've considered him a slime from the first debate in his first race many many moons ago. Anyway, Joe Sestak, a retired admiral, defense policy aide in the Clinton White House, is just the ticket to knock Weldon, and perhaps regain the legacy of Bob Edgar who had a strong career as a Democrat in the House representing a Republican majority district.
Then I came to the list for members of the Democratic State Commitee. Fifteen candidates from my relevant districts, I can choose 4 men and 4 women. This seems strange off the bat. I'm all for equal representation, but there are no other minority or interest group criteria. And equal representation doesn't necessarily demand precisely proportional one for one as demanded here. I know this is just for the State Committee, purely the state level organization of the Democratic party, but it's as if they have a nuclear bunker to repopulate the world from when they have to start pairing off like that.
Unlike the actual public offices, for which there were reasonable sources of information, I could barely find out any info about these candidates. I thought at very least they'd have a class president style "why you should vote for me" blurb on a website somewhere.
You may ask why I should care so much. I've had much experience in the last few months of local politics surrounding the newly created New Forest National Park. This has been both a crash course in civics and recent history. Apart from the insights it has given me into issues which will be valuable in my writing, it has also given me more respect for the less glamorous, low level workings of local activism and representation.
However, with the lack of info my choices here are sadly reduced to the most spurious criteria. Five out of the fifteen are in Upper Darby, I resist their sub-Philadelphian power block, and so have eliminated them from my list (also, apart from identifying one or two of them as lawyers, and one as a delegate at the last Dem national convention, there's nothing about them on the web). Of those left I've identified one as the mayor of Lansdowne, one works for Swarthmore College, two possibly on the county council. None of them have a web-site, apart from one who writes for a blog for PA Progressives web site (
PA Progressive Blog).
My only really positive choice here is to give the blog-guy some credit. I also give the Swarthmore person an up based tenously on my respect for academia, and my nostalgia for my childhood home. Beyond that I've used a combination of location and the mere info I have on the remaining candidates. I might as well vote based on tea leaves, or perhaps grass roots.
Well, at least I've made my primary bed and will lie in it until November when my choices will be so oversimplified, and dilemma free, assuming I get the ballot in time. My misgivings about Bob Casey Jr. have increased when I recently read that he would support the Alito nomination, despite many in the party against. From an ill-informed but blind choice, to a well-informed blind choice. Democracy, but perhaps not how it should be at any end of the spectrum.
Labels: Vague-a-ries
Vague-a-ries: A Run Through My Grey Areas
Well, my mailbag is less than full, but it would appear the consensus is that the numbers game wins. Along with this several contentions such as R Santorum is "the biggest empty head" in DC and I should "hold my nose" and go with Casey. Holding my nose is no mean feat, I could argue that my weight gain over the last fifteen years has been merely to counterbalance this top heavy feature.
One correspondent accused me of being a single issue voter. Stem cells and reproductive rights not being precisely one issue, its unlikely you will find a set of people not in one of two camps on both issues (although I can't see why those who believe in life starts at sperm meets egg don't revile IV in the first place, as it inevitably destroys potential voters). The thing for me is that it is the kind of litmus test (no wonder we're doing poorly in science ed., we're teaching people to be afraid of these), that indicates a large amount of how someone interprets either specifically church v. state, or more generally individual liberty v. personal ethics. I'd like to think that part of the raison d'etre (are we allowed to use French?) for the U.S. was to establish a place where we can't impose our beliefs on each other. Of course, this is my firmly held belief, which I'd like imposed on y'all. Oh well. I think we can agree violence and mayhem are a bad thing, beyond that I guess I don't have that much of a rigid plan (if I blather on I tend to sound less anarchist, more libertarian).
I do think that we must govern our own lives with our own ethics and beliefs. I respect people who guide their choices about their own lives this way, but I shrink from those who would impose their ethics on the choices of others. At best, well meaning, at worst, an arrogance the presumes a lack of any ethical system in others if it doesn't match their own.
Perhaps in the instance of Mr. Casey I should be grateful that he seems agreeable to me on many other issues, but I shouldn't completely ignore the parts that stick in my craw. Some of the places he draws the line, such as allowing for some form of public funding for "contraceptive services", are respectable, but perhaps entirely political, others, like taking the stance for Pharmacists who want to selectively ply their trade as healthcare workers, give me pause. What's the difference in letting people make "faith based" decisions in providing essential services, to letting racists with their firmly held beliefs make similar decisions? Or what about other professions, suppose an electricity company with fundamentalist stockholders decides not to give juice to abortion clinics?
I'm worried that the more we play this numbers game, the more we cede our own beliefs to others. We can't complain about the slippery slope, if we keep greasing it ourselves.
Labels: Vague-a-ries
