Blunt Force CSS

I got tired of seeing that damn box at the top of the "Minima" design of Blogger templates. So I spent something like 5 hours clicking back and forth, looking up bits of CSS code/hacks in order to re-do my blogger template...

Voila!

Yeah it's not super fancy or complex, but it's what I wanted. Without getting too much into the mysterious world of CSS. I basically took a photo from my vacation, screwed around with it in The GIMP, sliced it into a header and body, added my blog title, uploaded it to some server space on my school's file server, and then started editing CSS.

And by editing CSS, I mean change some thing, hit preview, change it back or differently, hit preview, study someone else's CSS, try that, get confused,hit preview, try some other things, hit preview, assure myself that there is some form of sanity behind CSS, erase that line, hit preview 100 more times, ...and repeat for several hours!

My wife actually asked me if I wanted to eat lunch after I had been bent over my laptop for 4 hours and I replied, "No! I have to figure this out."

Actually, I could not find any comprehensive on-line guide pages for CSS, but I will say www.csszengarden.com is a great place to study CSS. You can find a CSS trick you like and then study it to try to reproduce that trick in your own page.

Cheers!

"Merlin's Baggy Y-Fronts!"

Exposition:
I wear both boxers and boxer-briefs.

Conflict:
Why is there that absurd flap contraption on men briefs and boxer-briefs. Is there any man out there using this vestigial device since the invention of elastic waist bands? Does it serve some sort of padding function? Or is it there to bring attention to the fact there is something behind there with its own special door, so you know, it might just come outside and say hello.

Resolution:
I recently bought a copy of What Is Your Poo Telling You? by Josh Richman & Anish Sheth, M.D.. Let me just say, I have not giggled so much and so immaturely in a long long time. Go and buy it, and read it in private if you don't want to explain why you're hooting and snorting trying not "LOL" in the parlance of our times.

Epilogue:
No really, what's up with the flap? Hanes? FTL? BVD? Anyone care to chime in on this?

P.S. - the title is a quote from the funniest sentence in HP#7.

The shallowest iMac ever!

I have tried to be nice to Apple computers, because lots of nice people I know use and like their products. But...

It's ironic that Mac sells itself as being hip and cool, but the language used in their marketing sounds as if it is espousing a certain aesthetic and body image. For instance I got an email ( as I regularly do ) from Apple selling it's latest new thing. The ad's caption in bold print says "You can't be too thin. Or too powerful." Really...are you marketing to Paris Hilton? And while usually I might forgive this kind of thing as just marketing, the ad says "You" not computers, mp3 players, or cell phones (which would have been acceptable). The subject line read "Introducing the new iMac and iLife '08." Seeing as how much of our social being is projected in and through the technology we use as a quasi-cybernetic extension of ourselves... Apple I think you've just revealed just how plastic and loose your ideals are.

Oops.

And so Apple, while you started to look enticing for a while, your marketing reminds me of the kinds of people I can't stand to be around. Popular, over rated, overly concerned with outer appearances, with market share, unwilling to admit faults, mean spirited and ugly when it suits you, and also shallow.

Personally I'm unsure what words express how disturbed I feel that many qualities of the idyllic digital technology device / code espouses all the characteristics, I find I despise in the average citizen including myself (so just go and marinate on that).

BTW... If you need an album to listen to try "Reconstructed... for your listening pleasure", a live recording of a 2004 concert by Art of Noise. It is unusual in that it has moments of sheer beauty and energy and humor and dynamism. Give it a listen through a quality sound system and an open mind.

Cheers!

I am a Purple Rhino.

HURUMPH!

Yesterday I all of sudden craved grape soda. I don't particularly like grape soda. I knew I just wanted some. So after running an errand I went to the closest 7 Eleven, and no grape soda. So I was willing to compromise, and saw a purple can in with the juice cans. It was guava nectar. I looked to the big ass Arizona Tea cans, no grape-ade. Huh unusual. So by this point, I'm looking at all the flavors. I found blueberry-pomegranate in a can. About 15 different flavors of canned coffee / caffeine. A few orange/citrus although the only true orange soda was a 2-liter of Sunkist. My point is, that while I don't really drink much soda (mostly brewed coffee and water fountain or tap water), it's conceivable that I might at some point crave something like grape soda, or a vanilla shake, or a plain Cherry coke. But I assure you I'm never going to be lost in thought on the bus, and have the craving for strawberry-acai anything. And in case there are any soda marketer's reading this blog. Die. But if you insist on living... why don't you try some of the more traditional flavors in your energy drinks. Because, later when I went to the grocery store and walked through the drinks aisle, the energy / health drinks were stocked full, while the grape soda, was almost gone with the exception of 1 two liter of generic brand, 2 twelve packs of Welch's grape soda, and 3-4 six packs of local brand (Diamond Head) grape soda. I bought a six pack. And while it wasn't a sophisticated mix of "natural" flavors or in anyway healthy.

It was delicious, and exactly what I craved.

The molecular structure of beeswax and clay.

The cavities of teeth, and journeys not taken to far away places I shall not name. For it does not matter. Space is the thing. They say Nature abhors a vacuum... but I've never found one, the world is full of boredom and lately I feel too tired to mourn its death. Drinking's the thing. There has to be more to this out here. Every time I stretch myself I gain valuable insight, and the rest of world becomes slightly more perplexed by my behavior, and reads one less line and changes the channel one minute earlier. And so I hate you. I try to be friendly and I'm really good at it, and I even enjoy being friendly, but if all we relate is the latest movies and yeah fuck that politician... then I'm at a loss.

I am over weight, and feel like replacing one or two my meals a day with a couple of drinks. Can I get a doctors opinion? Would this be an all together unhealthy idea. Because I don't know, while I wake up very hungry for food in the morning... the rest of the day I just feel I'm craving something. And sometimes it's just a certain song, because it won't stop playing in my head I might as well listen to it with my ears. And other times it's a cigarette or a drink. Every few days it's the company of someone who would like to talk about something deeply. I don't care what it is. As long as we feel we learned something at the end of the conversation. I eat most evenings b/c that's what you're supposed to do. I smoke one or two cigarettes every other day b/c I like it, and I feel like it. I have about a drink or two a day (some days none, some days 3 or 4). But I have what I would call real conversation, very rarely. So much for University life.

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee This bunch of e's was made because I started staring at the bedroom light. Some thing I do often.

To do list: Work on thesis ideas, rethink anti-gravity field generator cavity structure, check with the entomology guitar player and see if he knows.

From the Twilight of Near Unconciousness, with Tequila, onthe rocks w/ a splash orange and cherry juices.

Ladies Gentlemen and non-local beings. I am back and in form, late at night with a drink in my hand and thoughts in my head. You know, as an artist, I some time think, "while I'm at Grad School I'm going to learn more about art and be a better artist by making better artwork..." And then you have semester where you wonder if you have learned anything new...and you start doing things like being president such & Such organization, going to faculty committee meetings, and like WoW! That just sucked the life out me in such away that it made it really hard to make art at times. I'm going to back a way a little. Someone stop this brain from talking so I can concentrate. "Thank you Mr. Beer. Very kind indeed. Don't worry Mr. Gin you'll have your turn..." And then I woke up today. And what day is it?

And while I did not drink the whole semester away into one continous black out, as I might imply, above, I did want to.

Cheers!

Gin on the rockshow + a couple beers

So its late, but I wanted to get this down as I didn't have time to write it anywhere earlir today. While I was playing guitar, I had a fantastic self-realization. Unfortunately these only happen to me once every few years. So I was playing a five bar phrase over a four bar phrase (I have a sampler) and during the playing I remembered a dream from long long ago. I had this dream in late high school, early college maybe, where I was on a family trip in the van with my family. We stop at a place that had christmas all year right on the highway. While in the store, which was full of candy canes and christmas knick-knackery of every kind, I was still listening to my walkman. And the Christmas music and the walkman music at one point, would go in and out of sync. While I could play odd time signature phrases, I couldn't play to diffrent time signatures (one odd, one even) with each other. It just sounded wrong. But after this dream I was able to somehow grasp and deal with the complexity of mixed time signatures. What astonished me was that years (15 or so) I put these two together. And what does it say about the mind that the imagery of something so uncomfortable and out of place as a family vacation and a Christmas store on the interstate was able to facilitate or reflect the mental change in being able to follow two different beats as once.

The unconcious mind is weird.

Somehow to me I think it makes a weird sort of sense. Then again maybe it wasn't a dream, maybe it's a memory. I did spend a great deal of my teen years going back and forth between modes of alienation and angsty critique. It wouldn't surprise me if I've repressed vast parts of the family vacations I enjoyed/suffered. Cheers!

P.S. Do these kind of realiztions happen to any else out there?

Cuervo Black + Diet cola + Spinach!

This morning I made an Egg cheese and spinach burrito for breakfast.

Yeah thats how I roll. I guess that most the spinach crap is over. Is it? Any how what pissed me off about the spinach thing is that called for a general ban on spinach. Never mind that there are E. coli everywhere. Yes folks everywhere. How do you think it ended up on the spinach? If you read the reports they basically say "Well. It could of come from anywhere." The irony that pisses me off about it is that for spinach the FDA or USDA can say... "Yeah fuck spinach for while until we figure who took a shit on our spinach." All this because a hundred or so cases of food poisoning.

Meanwhile when it comes to the meat industry... nothing stops the slaughter house. Nevermind there aren't conclusive tests for BSE (mad cow), and while brain and cortical matter doen't go into the human food chain, it goes into pig and chicken feed. And that prions the contagen of Transmissible Spongiform Encephlopathy (TSE) which are almost industructible (even by incineration) somhow magically dissappear in pigs and chickens (yeah right). That pigs could have TSE's only they never live long enough to see symptoms. That in the study that "conclusively" showed that BSE infected meat causes variant-CJD in mice, also showed it caused signature sporadic-CJD in other mice (not so sporadic is it?). Which coincidentally has increased in this country over the last decade although hospitals aren't required to report it to the CDC. Several hundred people a year are told. "you have sporadic CJD and about six months to live." They probably ask if they have mad cow disease and I'm sure the doctors say tell them no that's vCJD and you have sCJD.
And... Alzheimer cases have increased twenty percent. And the pathology of both CJD and Alzheimer's disease are the very similar. Both are protein related diseases, both cause spongiform holes in the brain. The symptoms are the same. Actually 1% of all Alzhiemer deaths are later (post-mortem) found to be CJD.

So I, the vegetarian who doesn't lecture people or fake stomach pains after eating meat, will use this moment to say...

I'll take my chances with the spinach, and you can risk one of "the worst ways to die." Hate to be so cheerful but you fuck with spinach and I bring on the harsh realities. Enough said.

Cheers!

p.s. I am finishing the last of my homemade Umeshu. Which I made from Japanese green plums (Ume), vodka, and sugar, and a tiny amount of H20. It tastes like delicious brain damage. You can by a brand called Choya but it's like 18$ a liter. And my stuff is stronger and more tart. Washes the taste of spinach right out ya mouth.

Coconut Rum on the rocks with lime

So today was an three eye-brow day, which as some of you would probably guess are pretty rare.

I have on my left side of my face a white eyebrow and eyelashes. This often gets many double takes and funny looks. But today three different people stopped to tell me "You have one white eye-brow." The first was in the elevator this morning. I was listening to "Yoshime battles the pink robots" by The Flaming Lips. I have found that they (the F-Lips) low-key easy-listening quasi-psychedlic music is perfect coasting (ride/walk/peruse/shop/etc) music. Anyways I got on the elevator to the third floor and turned down the music, just to let the person know that, I'm not drowing out any chance of a conversation. And I do this many because I think its wierd to walk around ignoring eveyone like they're invisible just because we're strangers. If you've seen the movie "Waking Life" it's like the seen where the girl doesn't want to be an "ant". So we step into the elevator and I turn my music down and she turns to me and says the thing about the eye-brow. I inevitablely accept the compliments I receive and explain its cause and we part. No biggie this happens around once a week.

Later at lunch... "Wow you have a white eyebrow" from the lady behind the organic lunch cube at school. We talk for a minute, and she show us the hole in her left eyelid she was born with and can see though with her eyes shut. Cooool. Everyone is always surprised that my eyebrow changed about six years ago. It didn't happen over night. I actually noticed that parts of my face were getting sunburnt first and the hair changed color over a period of a few months. Oh lucky me! Actually I hate to break the news to people it's part of a skin condition called Vitiligo. Which is idiopathic (a word I couldn't remember at lunch) that is, the medical field is unsure of its cause. They think it's mostly genetic. "Hey! Like michael Jackson? Right?" Yes it's a real disease. I just show it off very well, because if I was a browner shade of human being, most people wouldn't dare ask about what happened to my face. Case in point, if normal people skin is under a blacklight it looks dark green to black (depnding on you skin color). My face is very mottled in UV light. This is sometimes picked up by certain video cameras, and I have spots of slightly bluewhite spots of skin in daylight.

Later that afternoon... one of my professors while walking by stops and says..."One of your eyebrows is white. It's very cat like; you remind me of a cat" And we talk about it shortly. Yeah its just something. No I wasn't born with it... Yeah I like cats. And so on.

I don't mind at all talking about the eyebrow. In fact I'm glad it lets me stand out against the droves of sameness out there. Today was just unusual in talking about it that much. It's also slightly strange to recieve so many compliements for a condition that can be very socially and psychologically damaging to many people.
Oh Lucky me.
Cheers!

Coconut rum on the rocks with a twist of lime and of dash of squished bug.

After the long dark night that was my Graduate Evalution (three 10-15 pg papers) over and done with my oral defense today, I bring you (the few and slightly curious) further into my world of squished animals. The picture is me inside the atomic structure of gold at a Science museum.

This morning there was a cockroach on the inside door of one of my kitchen cabinets. I looked at it. Moved slowly to the trash can where there was a Pampered Chef spatula, whose new function is to bring swift death to roaches that in the last six months have invaded our apartment. I smoothly tilted and reached down grabbing the spatula, and with one fluid movement…THWACK! It occurred to me how much easier it is to kill the roaches during the day. They must be sleeping or resting, because they are much faster and more aware of me at night. I don’t always sleep well because sometimes it’s hot, others times it’s noisy outside, and the windows are open (because it’s hot). This morning I awoke with a headache, which annoys, but I wondered after scraping the squashed remains of the roach into the trash, what it would be like, just sleeping peacefully or, tossing and turning for most the night, and after a few minutes of actual restful deep sleep.

Thwack. You are no more.

Most people assume those who die in their sleep just float off forever. I was told my great-grandfather (and namesake) who had stomach cancer died this way. I personally want to wake up and know this is it. I want to be in that moment fully aware of the impending thwack.

Cheers!

Last Mango Tequila with diet redbull like drink and four frozen cherries.

Er, sorry for not posting for a couple of weeks. Anyways I was jotting this idea in a notepad earlier today and thought I'd share with the blog-o-sphere.

We must reuse old books and objects like maps and movies and content. There will always be copies, but we need to reuse the actual objects. Old books, reels and records are just wasting away because they’ve been antiqued and archived. They fall into disuse and disrepair increasing the rate of aging. The use of copies of these works promotes simulation which accelerates not only the physical but conceptual death of the work. It sits as a referent that serves in theory to verify a copy as valid. The copy is never really checked. And in fact the work is “improved” over time to follow the political and moral fashions of the day as well as contemporary visual and aural aesthetics. The physical object then becomes a distortion to itself. It becomes a shadow that no longer contains or reflects the transient and contemporary meaning that are the work “today.” Its original meanings get lost and new ones are created. Since no one uses the original context of the work, that context gets lost, and so does its connection to history. A piece then becomes a “timeless” work. This is actually preferred by the longwinded thinkers (Am I one of these? Hmm probably, but just b/c I am in academia doesn't mean I won't deconstruct it. Oh yes, I will rip you a new one!), because the work can then be continuously re-evaluated through a huge variety of new contexts (Marxist, feminist, socio-economic, gay, psycho-analytical, Freudian, Jungian, post-colonial, etc, etc…). Each study verifying the “timeless”-ness of the “work” by creating a new meaning and destroying or devaluing the original in the process. Our notions of the permanency of meaning are illusory. We need to face this. In doing this we could drop a lot of needless struggle over intangibles like validation and authority (Which post-modernism was supposed to get rid of by denying grand-narrative, but in my opinion, it just created new alternate ones to replace the old. So much for PoMo)

And yes. That is picture of a flattened frog. I'm not anti-french or anything, I just collect images of squashed animals. Cheers!

Mac vs. PC ads... spoofed!

I found these spoofs on YouTube.com and afew are absolutely hilarious! Check em out...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLhKkvyXw-Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QG2uz2apprw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZSr89b4EoA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PDKWg9FclU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nUeZycfCG0

Enjoy and Cheers!

Coffee with Baileys and the bad Apple vs. PC ads...

These ads make the Apple/Macintosh company and Mac users seem annoyingly smug about themselves. Which I know quite a few Mac users and they’re not all that smug, a few are. Having a Mac does not make you cool.

These ads are comparing apples and oranges in they're comparing a computer brand (Mac) against a computer architecture (PC) instead of Mac vs. Dell or something much more comparable.

To add to the nonsense Macs are mostly the same architecture as PCs are now. You can now use Power Macs as PCs if you want, because there is essentially very little difference in the hardware components. They both now are using the same processors, same memory, same drives (DVD, HDD), and same buses (IEEE-1394, USB, etc). So these whole Macs vs. PC arguments are totally fatuous and actually incorrect. Because…

Macs are now PCs. Yes I know there are historical differences between those to, but they no longer exist. All the new Macs are just a brand of PCs. Sorry Mac users (the smug ones only), in the end you lost your little “Macs are so much better” battle, because your company went to the other side. Oh yes! Only they don’t want you to think them as PCs… I wonder why?

Actually, You could buy a cheaper and likely more powerful desktop or laptop (it won’t be as pretty I agree), install a free (a four letter word to Apple and MS) Linux based version of Mac’s OSX or Tiger or whatever, and run all your Mac software or PC or Linux software on it, because they are all the same hardware.

Don’t confuse “Windows” with “PC”. There are two different things. Actually the whole, “I come ready to make movies and web pages” statement is so much bullshit. Windows actually came up with that idea with the dreaded Windows Millennium Edition. Macs used to come with NOTHING but Quicktime and a text editor and calculator. So the whole “I come with software” BS is something they wised up to, not something they started. And let’s be real. They don’t come with Professional i.e. quality software like, Photoshop or Aperture or Premiere or Avid or Final Cut, Macromedia studio, etc, etc. No computer does. They come with “iDink” and “iCrap” and “iReally am never going to use this much without Apple taking even more of my money”

As per the whole viruses and malicious software, well that’s really a matter of what you call malicious. Like, spyware that tracks all your moves and purchases vs. your service provider tracking your moves and purchase (anonymously of course) and forcing you to use DRM software. If you don’t know, DRM stands for evil media corporation greed. And since Macs are now PCs viruses are a matter of a code rather than hardware, and the more Mac users... well Mac, you keep telling yourself your "safer". Sure you are.

Lastly they use up bandwidth, and make pages load slower, although all web ad movies are guilty of that. And I could go on and on but I'm stopping now to make breakfast. Cheers!

The story of the beached beer

So the other day wife and I went swimming at Kailua Beach Park. After we swam for about five 45 minutes I wanted to go get the fins and mask to go and just look at the bottom and see if there were any fish or fifty dollar bills swimming around the sandy bottom. After going out a ways and seeing not much really, I was swimming back along the bottom and swaying back and forth was an unopened bottle. Beer? Yes I rescued an unopened bottle of Heineken from the sea. I brought it back to wife (still in the water) and our conversation went something like this.
“Look what I found.”
“Is it unopened? It looks like some leaked out.”
“No, Yeah. I think. I mean it seems to missing some liquid but I think it’s just the carbonation separated from the rest of the beer.”
“You’re not keeping it are you?”
“I can’t just throw it back out into the ocean? I’ll have to throw it away or something.”
“I think there a trash can up there.”
“I don’t see one.”
“It’s behind the lady in red. "
“What lady in red?”
“That one over there.”
“I think I’m going to keep it. It’ll make a good blog.” Wife rolls her eyes (assumed) after I turn away and take the beer up to the beach, wrap it in a towel, place it under our stuff and head back into the water to rejoin wife. We swim some more, go home, refrigerate beer. A few days pass.

So today I have documented beer, with pictures and am going to taste it.

Initial observations: 12 oz. bottle of Heineken brand beer found submerged and unopened in Kailua beach park about 20 yards offshore. Front label is still intact, back label is completely missing. The cap appears to be intact although looks faded and showing signs of corrosion on edges. Contents appear to be missing about 1.0 to 1.5 oz from bottle, even though bottle and cap appears intact.

Theories: As to the discrepancy in front and back labels this could be do to the lack of adhesive applied to one side of bottle. Also back label might have already been peeling or peeled by human interaction before being lost. Pertaining to the apparent loss of contents, it is likely the bottle has been shaken in mild (Kailua beach not known for waves) but non-stop manner by the waves. This has led to the separation of the carbon dioxide gas initially dissolved into the liquid through the process of fermentation. How did the beer get to this location? After some thought I think it might be one of two scenarios. Some person kayaking or canoeing on their way out to the ocean caught some waves or winds and had a rough time of getting away from the shore. Maybe they went for a roll, and a bottle or two fell out of the bag or vessel it was in, the bottle than slowly sank to the bottom and than slowly worked it’s way northwest up the beach. Or someone at the public beach park in a hurry to get rid of their alcohol (a minor perhaps) quickly dispensed of it in the ocean, and alas never recovered it. As to age of the beer, I don’t it it’s over a year, probably a few weeks to a few months, although I have no evidence of a stamp or lot number to check it by.

Observations: After photographing the beer, I opened it. There was a good bit of bright orange rust deposited on the edges of the bottle where the cap had been. I cleaned this rust off with a dishtowel. I then proceeded to sanitize the inner and outer rim of the bottle open in with 80 proof vodka. It has little taste is relatively non-toxic and is an effective antiseptic. I than poured the beer into glass to inspect it. It appeared just like beer in color although there was no head of foam from the pour, some effervescence however is present. It smelled like beer I did not smell any briny smell of the ocean which very detectable on the bottle cap and label of the bottle. Lastly the beer tasted just like a flat beer. It had the signature taste of the Heineken brand, although this beer has not been kept in optimal conditions, and the taste has been altered by the process. I drank about five more sips as the beer warmed from fridge to about 10 degrees below room temperature. As the beer warmed a metallic tinge started to become very apparent. The corrosion of the bottle cap while intact did seep into the product. The inner cap was plastic lined and I saw no sediment in the beer I think the rust must have just seeped enough to be detectable. This also might have been magnified by the addition to a piece of lime to the beer (since I am not a fan of Heineken or flat beer). The citric acid probably reacted with the few iron or tin atoms and resulted in a metallic taste becoming every more present.

Conclusions: The carbonation had dissolved out of the beer. I was right. I drank about 2 oz. all together and poured the rest out as this beer was science not pleasure (I assure you). As for wife, she thinks I’m stupid for drinking the beer at all. I could do some experiments to try and date the bottle. I could tie some beers to a buoy’s anchor chain and see how long it rusts or lasts in the ocean, but that would be tricky but possibly worthwhile. Let me know if I should investigate further. If anyone has some further experiments or theories or similar stories please comment or email me. Cheers!

Rampant courtesy and politeness with splash of fresh fruit, tequila and coconut rum

Do you know any one stupid enough to thank people for things they haven’t done yet? I hate this public signage today that thanks you, for you support, or not smoking, or for flushing. Flushing for Pete’s Sake! Hey! I’m an adult, and I know to flush after I take a piss! I don’t need a sign to remind me. Even so, it’s just a urinal. I’m busy paying attention to what’s going on. If I forgot to flush it makes little impact on the next person using the urinal. Also, I can think of more important things you should thank me for, like not leaving a puddle of piss all over the floor, or the wall, or the commode. Who are these guys who never learned to aim? Also, in the fashion of pre-thanking, I would like to thank maintenance for fixing the broken toilets and urinals and faucets and paper towel dispensers. Also I want to pre-thank you for finally fixing that leak in the roof that you so cleverly remedied by MacGyver-ing one of the urinals into a drain for by the clever use of plastic sheeting, garden hose, and duct tape (been there a year and it’s still a marvel to behold every time I visit the 3^rd floor gents). In fact, reading your sign makes me not want to flush, so wow, reverse psychology finally worked on someone. The next one I loathe is the “Thank you for not smoking” signs posted all over campus. These just make me want to light up and then put out my cigarette on the sign itself. Not only are they ugly, and self-righteous, but they’re purposefully put in out if the way areas where smokers would normally (out of courtesy for non-smokers) go to have a cigarette. I should explain. The campus is very beautiful, and so people must smoke their cigarettes at least 20 ft away from any building or window. Never mind the fact that the A/C systems are so infected with mold and whatever else is living in there, from non-stop year-round usage (tropical island) that they smell rotten. It’s like a dirty dish sponge you just used to clean up a 2-day old cat pee! That’s ok, probably healthy even, just what your lungs were wanting. But should they ever smell smoke (I don’t know how anyone works in a rotten damp a/c office has a sense of smell left. I think they must smell it for just a moment every morning when first arrive. Honestly, it seems you’d have to be delusional after smelling that all week), well they might get the lung cancer. That right that’s the smell of CANCER! BOO! CANCER!

Knock! Knock!
Who’s there?
The CANCER!
Arrrgggghhhhhhhhh! Not the CANCER!
The one and the same!

Any ways. This politeness has one really ugly mark on it as well. In Hawai`i thank-you is mahalo. And signs rarely ever say thank-you, they say, “mahalo! for…“ This rampant use of the Hawai`ian language for meaningfulness of inflection is so fake and dishonest and racist and no one addresses it because it’s being used for “politeness.” For example, for donating, or not using the other door, or just flushing, a sign will say” Aloha! Blah Blibity Blah! Blah blahbity and mahalo for your kokua! And when it’s on television, it makes you want throw up. (Kind of like when Country and Christian singers bend there knees and reach up to the sky while singing some very very powerful and meaningful line. I mean are they supposed to be “weak in the knees” for Jesus Christ or something, because I thought that was a sin. You know they do never pick a 30s-ish, ugly, middle-eastern actor to play the big JC in movies, just the “young and virile cute-anglos” thank you very much. I mean mahalo nui loa.) Maybe it’s just me. But I feel this bizarre usage of indigenous language to signify emotional sincerity by people who aren’t Hawai`ian (I’m haole.) or speak Hawai`ian. It’s not only stupid, but a little insulting. Imagine if someone, who normally spoke any other language, spoke yours just to evoke glib uses of sincerity. It would be weird. It is weird. So everyone just stop it. I’m NOT calling for an end to common courtesy, and manners, for I have very little respect for those who have none. Only, let’s get “sorry” and “thank you” back to being a meaningful exchange rather than a mechanical absurdity. We have to write letters today, because it’s not enough just to say “thank you” in person anymore. Maybe it’s a conspiracy of postal service… maybe not. Cheers!

-Shakabusatsu

Tequila and Redbull Continued...

Baudrillard’s, theories of orders of simulacra, and simulacrum, are very important in that they logically point out how reality becomes separated from the past by rendering the meanings responsible and necessary for contextually connecting a phenomena with its history, entirely pointless. It doesn’t really matter if it takes 2 or 32 orders of simulation to sever the bonds between reason and observable effects, we’ve been there, and we need to be careful in how we treat reality, in all out philosophizing. Our evolution of thinking has come very far, very fast; let’s make sure we’re not lost, before we go to much further…

Also, I have something else I was just thinking while staring at the horizon. I think it has been shown it’s a finite world we live in. So, we are eventually going to run out of space and resources. So let’s start acting and talking like its really going to happen. Cheers!

-Shakabusatsu

Tequila and Redbull.

Structuralism is historically and logically connected to Christian theology. In this statement I'm using a broad brush to cover all formalist arguments that ignore important contextual factors that contribute to the analysis of the logic to be used. These spheres of effect of these factors often range from the personal to the planetary. The main example of why context is not universal, cannot be overlooked is because we do not have a logic, a system of rules, ways of thinking, that don't breakdown when talking about a phenomena greater than this planetary life. We are never going to be able to imagine the ways in which how we (as we seems to ourselves) are never going to join with this immense imaginary thing. We are not autonomous to all this everything around us. If structuralism could show some evidence of it always being there for everyone all the time, I could understand and allow its notions that it can speak about people as classes. But it doesn't work, doesn't even make sense to use it all the time. This "everybody and everything" usage is about just abstractly applying a system of mathematics between a semiotic system and a distorted, veiled reality. It seems like it should work logically, but it isn't consistant, which undermines the basis of its structural forms. That's why all atheists should realize that they can't go throwing around structuralist arguments, and formalist ethics, to accurately describe and judge the complex relations across boundaries of imaginary ownership, genetic distinction, political and physical natures into what ends up being post-colonialism. Especially involving the "West," when "West" is suffice to say "Christian" (just as a very appropriate example). So atheists, even the ones who still feel some sort of mysterious greater(?) power, should just keep that in mind. I don't care what religion / spiritualism you call yourself, if you're an atheist there you go. If your not, your probably saying "My religion is benevolent to manking oops… mankind and society, not a pox of ignorance and lack of mental grace, as you seem to imply?"

To you I honestly say, in all the ways you can interpret this next quote,

“I welcome you to think again.”

-Shakabusatsu

A few little changes.

Those of you who check up on this blog, (are there any left?) might have noticed I changed the background and the description. I got rid of the killing the vampiric culture beast shit because I just am too tired to write that stuff all the time. Or I was too busy last semester to bother posting at all it seems. Any how I'm going to start writing on here again. And yeah I know I reference drinking, but hey if your're an alcoholic, you probably are too drunk to be offended, and if your on the wagon or you relative died becuase of alcoholism and you can no longer tolerate drinking...BOO FUCKING HOO! Haha I love taunting people using the written word cause they had to make the effort and interest to read this. Any ways blah blibity blah, and the background image is of Sturken's and White's The Elements of Style burning in a fireplace. I don't usally attend book burnings, this one was at a house warming party. Cheers!

It's a winning combination.

Today I went swimming, after aweek of putting it off. It's suprising how while living on a tropical isle with a beach right over that way... you'd think you go swimming all the time. That is what most of think while on vacation, Comedian Bill Hicks put it in perspective, "Oh if we could just live at the beach... Could you imagine that? Livin' at the Beach ! What's the freakin' deal? It's where dirt where meets water." Still, I feel like an idiot for only going to the beach like 4 times in the last 9 months. One thing I think we are all aware of is the post swimming lazyness that hits you after you come home and take a long shower, and lat naked on the sheets and let the fan's breeze caress you dry... as you drift off into a TV wonderland where every thing is clean and bright, smells are just a concept, you are thin and have two adorable children, and every knows how happy you are by the insipid plastic grin you parade about to friends and strangers alike. Then you wake up and realize oh shit I'm hungry let find soome pizza, and put some sundried tommatoes and faux hamburger, and red pepper flakes, and don't you forget those mushrooms! But something is missing. Ah yes a cool refreshing drink of ice, orange juice, tangerine tequila, blackberry schnaaps, and splash of cranberry and lime for me, and frozen stawberry banana coconut daquiri for the misses. Eat our pizza watch some stand up and seconds on drinks. yeah I love summer. It reminds me of my second favorite Simpsons quote, "Alcohol and night swimming, it's a winning combination!" spoken not by Homer but Lenny.

Legacy

How are we, as a society of intellectuals, going to insure, to protect, to preserve our legacy. I don't know if we can even decide what exactly that legacy is or should contain. We cannot predict the next dark age. It may be only months away, possibly millenia. When is not important. But how are we going to do this ... would it just be for ourselves? Even if it was, it would be a intellectually heroic move. We don't know the extent of what was lost in the Library of Alexandria.
Are we content to let all the achievements and failures, all the great leaps of mind of even faith, just wash away. Will we be content to take every lesson we painfully learned through warfare, through catastrophe to be wiped clean? It is not hope to think we will persevere forever. It is foolishness. We need to have the forethought to realize the future, thinking may be out. We may be reduced to animals, or we may be gone and some other animals are left to evolve in our place. There won't be time to ponder, or wonder or dream. Your days may be filled with the struggle to survive and your night spent in a sleep that borders between rest and paranoia. Now look around at the world today. What do we want to leave to the next sentients, whoever or whatever they call themselves. What is around today that's worth saving? Maybe we should move towards only those things that are essential and enriching. Fire, the wheel, poetry, math, religion, politics, fashion... etc? We have to stop this sillyness, because we are weakening, and don't realize it. The greatness of the humananity has come from compassion, communion, examining the physical world, and pondering great mystery of why it's all here. Let's move toward a society based on that. Not on pyramids of succession, not on attachments or apperances, or jugdements of each other.

-Shakabusatsu