Saucy

Hey, guy at the Taco Bell window.

The other night we ordered two 7 layers and diet pepsi.

You asked if I needed sauce.

"Yes. Hot sauce."

It turns out you gave us 11 hot sauce packets for 2 burritos.

You rock.

Cheers!

No. It's not an illusion.

This is an image I made from using the Gimp to auto-white balance each disc in the image to show that in fact the color of the middle squares would be the color you mistakenly identify them as. Green and orange. Here is the original.
In fact there is a lot of incorrect usage of terms in these illusions. Especially the forms section. The examples talk about the lengths and angles of the objects pictures. But the are talking specifically about the image's lengths and angles. Cheers

Where my Blog title comes from...

Hello. I am too busy with major freakin' deadlines right now. but I thought I would post something old in the place of some thing new. This is not an old post but rather a small bit of writing that shows where I got my Blog title from. Although no one has EVER asked, here it is for you ponder-ation.

~
By looking into X- ray diffraction of metals-crystals and other solids it would be possible to look at the space of certain compounds and crystals. Of importance, and my suspicion is there are links to not only the structure of the particles of matter, but also, the vacuum between them. Consider this, electrons around a nucleus aren't particles until they leave the atom. And in crystals and metals you have atoms lined up in a certain structure sharing valences. Although in smaller atoms we tend to think of electron clouds, as a sort of atmosphere or shell around the nucleus, but as the atomic number gets higher, the outer shells, are not really shell like and there is the possibility that congruous vacuum spaces could line up, or order in different structures, causing different kinds of resonances. In this way, seemingly dull but large molecules, like proteins, enzymes, and other organic molecules could do mysterious things. Consider the brain. So dull, gray and squishy, but does incredible feats of processing, regulation, and information handling. Two out of ten points for style but 9 out of 10 for results.
~

Cheers!

I wrote a joke. It goes like this...

Knock. Knock.
Who's there?
Chicken Butt.
Chicken Butt who?
To get to the other side.

Not too funny, I know, but try it on someone. It might work a little.

How come I can go to bed at 11:30 PM, wake up at 4~5 AM , and be completely awake and wide eyed. But if I go back to bed and get say 2~3 more hours sleep I wake up in a knuckle dragging stupor? This morning I got up instead of going back to bed because I have a angry sore throat that was in need some hot ginger tea. It's amazing how awake I am compared to most mornings during the last few months.

It's also a possibility that because I took a Vicodin a few hours before I went to bed, that I somehow slept deeper than I usually do. I'm in need of a root canal, and the Vicodin is to manage the pain until I get that worked out. Funny thing is though I know hydrocodone is a narcotic pain reliever and naturally a sedative, it doesn't make me tired just more little slower and more calm, which makes me feel I can concentrate more on doing something. Like this morning, I totally feel like getting up and getting shit done, early. Which, is what I'm doing now.

And so yeah, while I know being addicted to painkillers is the hip thing do now a days, I don't want to & can't keep taking Vicodin after my root canal. But it's got me thinking that I should go to the doctor (since I have insurance, but really going to the doctor is always the last thing I think of...) to ask about possible diagnosis and medication for adult ADD.

Because I think I have become exhausted with trying to find things interesting and with trying remember what I was doing 5 minutes ago. And it creates this ever present dissatisfaction with whatever is happening at the moment, which then gets translated into a list of questions...

Maybe I....
am hungry?
need a drink?
need a cigarette?
need something from the store.
I just need to go outside.
a cup of coffee?
just need to paint.
actually I could go to the library, more research.
should take a nap/ clear my mind.

And one of these things might work 1 in 5 times to settle me down to work some more, that is if I can get my mind back on track to what I was doing. Who knows? Does anybody else feel this way.

Cheers!

p.s. I recently downed the Rev. Horton Heat album Lucky 7 because I am looking into trying playing a surf / rock-a-billy sound in my band. It is high energy, back woods, hot rod, goodness. Highly recommended.

No more A.A.

I've pinned a red A to the sidebar of my blog. It's part of a campaign by RichardDawkins.net to get people to "come out" as it were, as Atheists. Please click on it to find more. And so there it is. I am an "Atheist" by most definitions, because I don't believe there exists a (or many) God(s).

However. If you were to ask me to explain further, if I believe in anything... Well yes I do.

I believe in morality. That is to say, I believe people act in some accord to what they think is 'right' or 'wrong'. Although I think right/wrong are in many cases a matter of perspective, I think if statistically analyzed, the strategies associated with ethical & compassionate behaviors, while often difficult and illogical at times (public service, turning the other cheek, etc.) are actually more socially effective than those associated with unethical-unempathetic behaviors (aggression, greed, etc.). And it has absolutely nothing to do with any super-natural system of post-death reward & punishment.

I believe that the thing we call "our life" is historically unique. That is to say. There are no second lives. Everyone's and every thing's life is unique. There is no second chance for redemption. For instance, I am also a vegetarian. I don't believe eating meat is bad for my karma, or a more righteous than eating meat. I hold my life dearly. I don't want to be killed for food. And so I don't want to intentionally suffer that upon other animals, because they had the unfortunate luck to be tasty and un-cute. You (like every thing else) are here for a short time, why add to the amount of suffering in the world?

I believe in reason. And there is more than one kind of logic just as there is more than one kind of spatial geometry. And so yes. I believe much of science is right about many of the things civilization has studied so far. But, I also am not a strict positivist, and believe science is not seeing the full picture on many things cosmological. There is so much mystery and wonder left in the universe to examine and ponder. If you disagree, and think everything is practically known (that should or could be known) then you are asleep/blind. Wake the fuck up, and take the afternoon off to go the park and just watch the clouds overhead for a few hours.

I believe Atheism is NOT a religion. Religion is another term for spiritual fascism. Everything that you do is spiritual. The way you move, tie you shoes, how fast you chew your food, do you use pens or pencils, basically everything. Especially music. Anything that makes you think or feel or imagine, is mind altering and spiritual. There isn't one kind of music that's spiritual and one thats not (how absurd). Religions (most anyway) demand that you interpret the world you encounter, one way. One metaphysical truth, one ontology, one grand narrative, one interpretation, one meaning, one answer, and no questions.

I believe freedom isn't a passive activity. You are personally responsible for who you are, and who you become, period. Your religion will never free you. Neither will your government - which should always stay secular. The U.S. government cannot free other nations. Freedom only comes from self-realization (stress on the real). Don't be a passively agnostic Charlie Brown who just ends up going along with crowd because it's Christmas, and you don't want to upset anybody during the holidays. You were born an atheist, and having the courage to tell your family with confidence (when or if it comes up) that actually, you are an atheist (while it may not be pretty) will be liberating.

To sum up...

I am an atheist.
Atheists are NOT nihilists.
I believe in Morals, Compassion, Reason, and Freedom.

If you are an atheist... please, step up and Stand Out.

Cheers!

Lost and Found

So a few days ago my "Word of the day" from m-w.com was this...

objet trouvé \AWB-zhay-troo-VAY\ noun
: a natural or discarded object found by chance and held to have aesthetic value

I have found several of these these exciting objects, recently. So I wanted to tell the world wide blog-o-drome about these albeit not so much aesthetic, as funny finds.

First. While on vacation I found the burnt remains of a book in a cave on Kauai. Strangely (or not, depending on you personal quotient of strangeness) it was the bottom third of the last seven pages of Stephen King's Different Seasons. I say strange because I didn't recognize it as first. But also because some of King's best writing is in Different Seasons, most of his other work is too long and well... not very good - or scary. Three of the stories from Different Seasons have been made into movies. The third movie "Apt Pupil" which shares its title with the story by King stars a child actor that grew up near where I did. I remember his mom coming into the convenience store where I worked, bragging about her child the actor (who has since vanished from whatever notoriety he had, or maybe I just never really cared). I figured out it what book it was by Google searching the phrase:

an anarchy-ridden literary banana republic called the "novella"




Second. I found one of those Jesus freak comic tracts last weekend called "Party Girl." I took a few photos of it, but if you want, you can read the entire thing at Chick.com. Let me start by saying "party girl" is hilarious and disturbing, much like looking at a picture of Karl Rove. What I love about it is that Satan is a corporeal being out to actually murder people. Jill is singled out to be personally murdered by Satan himself because God warned her grandmother Rita Jones, about the devils plans to murder Jill (way to go God). Well some how Rita Jones makes the 3000 mile journey to the Hotel Orleans where Jill is at, just in time to stop her from drinking a toast to long life (does that qualify as irony or just reallllyyy bad writing?) which was poisoned by the bartender with several pills (pills? in a drink, are we sure he was going to "murder" her). And the best part is no one at the party knew that Satan was actually a bartender trying to kill them all because he was wearing a costume, disguised as ... you guessed it! Satan! I mean how clever is Satan to go around killing people wearing a clownish satan disguise?


Pretty damned clever.

But what's weird is that these Christian writers can take all sorts of licence with "Satan" who they claim is real. Depicting him doing whatever the most evil thing you can think of is. But Jesus, and God well thats a different story, actually a very old very boring story. That they don't seem to be able to break from, because it would destroy their faith, because it's so full of nonsense, that without an "ancient" text as referent the whole illusion / story would be even more suspect. So, no, we can't make up our own stories about Jesus (unless your Joseph Smith).

Third. I found two Tarot decks and Tarot books in the free store. One of them is the 1980 printing of the The Hermetic Tarot: based on the Esoteric workings of the secret order of the Golden Dawn version by Godfrey Dawson, which is entertaining to play with and scare people who distribute bible tracts (very demonic). Which reminds me of a book by Aleister Crowley (Mr. 666 himself) which I bought recently at a used book store while on vaction. Now the book is rare. And when I went to buy it they (the owners?)looked at me with smiles, and talking about how "special I must be for recognizing this rare book", and "Crowley was such a genius", and "we'll just give you that other book for free, and yeah you can have that really rare mint condition 80's video game for twenty dollars"... with a oh you believe in Magick with a 'k' just like we do undertone. After which I spoil all their fun by letting slip that "I find Crowley interesting because he and a hand full of people pretty much authored everything we think of as new age/occult/earth religion during the first half of the 20th century."

(Awkward silence creeps in as they realize I just called the entire new age book case a highly derivative work of fiction)

Wife quickly chimes in with a, "you mean he ... uh ... put it all together?" Myself noticing the change on the store owner/clerks faces respond with, "huh? oh yeah it's not like he made all that up... he traveled all over the world." And then we made our quick getaway. Honestly though, if those two truly were magickal adepts, they'd be more amazed and inspired with Crowley's work as fiction rather than the plundering of secret knowledge of Qaballah, Acetic Buddhism, etc. and all the other macho over achiever blah of his life.

Cheers ! - Anybody else find interesting stuff in caves?

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!