Martin Amis On the Spraying of Hair, Blood and Bone Fragments

Amidst the almost robotic by-the-numbers treatment of the 5th anniversary of Sept. 11, this was worth reading: "The age of horrorism". Amis goes into much greater details on Qutb's disgust with the Americans he encountered in the 1949 Sodom of the dry Greeley, CO, and closes with this quote from Joseph Conrad which sums things up beautifully:

'The world of the living contains enough marvels and mysteries as it is - marvels and mysteries acting upon our emotions and intelligence in ways so inexplicable that it would almost justify the conception of life as an enchanted state. No, I am too firm in my consciousness of the marvellous to be ever fascinated by the mere supernatural, which (take it any way you like) is but a manufactured article, the fabrication of minds insensitive to the intimate delicacies of our relation to the dead and to the living, in their countless multitudes; a desecration of our tenderest memories; an outrage on our dignity.

'Whatever my native modesty may be it will never condescend to seek help for my imagination within those vain imaginings common to all ages and that in themselves are enough to fill all lovers of mankind with unutterable sadness.' ('Author's Note' to The Shadow-Line, 1920.)

Next time: more goofy shit!

Random Toughts In The Larry King Vein - The Political Edition

It must really suck to lose your job these days, via layoff or even your own overwhelming incompetence, and then see Donald Rumsfeld on the TV just cruising along, everyday outsucking himself.

Ahmadinejad is the embodiment of evil and all that, yet on TV he mostly looks like a creep working at Radio Shack wearing a Members Only jacket.

I saw an interview on TV with a top guy from Hamas, and he was very charming, articulate, immaculately dressed - he almost made you forget his job was to convince confused adolescents to spray hair, blood and bone fragments all over Israeli pizza places.

Sayyid Qutb thought Americans were shallow and soul-less because of their pre-occupation with lawn care, and I guess I can kind of see that. But he also hated Americans for our haircuts, and I think we can compete with any nation, hair-wise.

Passive Consumer of Entertainment Product: The $1 CD Rack at TD's CD's and LP's

There was a time I could afford at most one new CD a week. That time is gone, but that doesn't mean I should ignore the $1 CD Rack at TD's, esp. since the job where I could buy (usually mainstream) CDs for $2.50 is a distant memory now. Anyhow, here's what I found last week:

• Lionrock, City Delirious
  
• Kruder and Dorfmeister, G-Stoned EP
• Various, CMJ Presents Certain Damage vol 13
  

The outstanding find was the Lionrock CD, worth it for song #2, Rude Boy Rock, alone (fuck you iTunes! I'll play the song on any computer I want! I ain't got to authorize NOTHING!). Rude Boy Rock is built around various reggae samples and snippets of Jamaican Patois, a.k.a. 'rasta guy talk'. There are horns, there is the somewhat cheap-sounding organ, there is, of course, the big dumb beat that puts it in the 'Big Beat' genre. Big, kinda dumb, but likeable, like a clumsy, sloppy dog slobbering all over you. And actually, the whole album is pretty good. 'Cellar Full Of Noise' and the Title track are favorites.

G-Stoned has a cover that's an obvious parody of or homage to Simon and Garfunkel's Bookends, something people who like both K&D and S&G (like me) were quick to notice. But there are no interviews with the elderly to be found on this CD, just that 'yuppie chillout music' that K&D built a career out of. It's not bad, but it's no Rude Boy Rock.

Finally we have the CMJ Volume 13 album, which I bought because there was a Faith Healers song I had never heard on it. Imagine my disappointment on finding this was the Faith Healers from Arkansas, not the ones from the UK that did the very noisy, repetitive but oddly hippie-ish music in the early 90's. The presence of Tone-Loc and Slick Rick tells us this CD dates from the late 80's. The presence of the Fall was no help in determining what year this came out, as they have been around forever. A hip-hop song from the forgotten 'Big Lady K' uses a James Brown sample, forgotten group S.K.A.M. contributes the song 'We Didn't Even Need James', as in 'we didn't need a James Brown sample to make this song', but maybe they did need James (or, like Tone-Loc, Van Halen), to keep from dropping off the face of the earth completely.

All in all, not a bad use of $3, or of the brief time I spent after my visit to the Laughing Planet Cafe upstairs for a burrito.

Who can('t) end racism with his smile?

When I was in college, I had this friend who, like me, was into hip hop. This was ca. 1989, a very good year for hip hop (Public Enemy, Boogie Down Productions, De La Soul, Yo! MTV Raps!, all of that and more). We also liked Spike Lee's movies (esp. 'Do The Right Thing', which as the song notes came out in 1989, the summer). We were both from whiter-than-white towns (Danville, IN and Brownsburg, IN). My friend was attending Purdue University, and in the spirit of promoting racial harmony and combating racism he decided he was gonna say 'Hi' to every black person he saw. Not all the black people enthusiastically said 'Hi' back. He was very disillusioned and shortly after that he started listening to Rush Limbaugh. He also later was about as cold about Biggie Smalls' death as Ted Nugent was about Kurt Cobain's, if that's possible.

Anyhow, around the time he started getting all disillusioned, as an experiment, I spent a day saying 'Hi' to every white person I saw, and that didn't go too well either. Try it yourself!

I grew up across the street from a kid who became a 'non-racist' skinhead, and would learn that 'non-racist' is skinhead slang for 'just homophobic'. It's kind of like how some vegetarians eat eggs, but others don't. Don't go around assuming vegetarians aren't eating eggs. Apparently at one time skinheads were working-class youth that liked ska music and wore funny little hats. Then some old racist dudes with funny little hats infiltrated skinheadism and twisted it, or something, and from that point on skinheads spent the time they used to spend listening to ska explaining the difference between racist and non-racist skinheads, and telling people which kind they were, after which the explainee would make a joke like 'ha ha, non-racist skinhead, is that like a non-rock punk?'. Google for details.

Prior to the head shaving and gay-bashing, he showed signs of being intelligent, which just goes to show 'he seems intelligent' is about as nebulous and pointless and generally worthless a statement as 'he seems nice'.

This has nothing to do with anything but I am old and like to ramble on with the stories.

One time, we tried using a railroad crossing as a Dukes of Hazzard type ramp in winter, and we flipped over the car.

Comix 'n' Scabies at Boxcar Books

Before my vacation to Lake Michigan I was in Boxcar Books getting some reading material. They were having a meeting of the Midwest Pages To Prisoners group. They give books to prisoners so they'll have something to do other than shank each other or sex each other up or just spend all their time lifting weights (or waiting for the really big guys to finish lifting weights). OK, all I 'know' about prison I learned from watching the HBO show OZ, plus 'Midnight Express' when I was a kid, up to the point where the 2 dudes start kissing, which is when my parents turned it off.

There was a guy with long hair and an interesting beard talking to one of the tattooed girls near the cash register. I wasn't really paying attention until 'I have scabies, but it's not active now'. Then I think he asked her for money. All she had to say to him was 'I'm sorry, I can't help you', and shortly after he left.

I got really uncomfortable, wondering if he'd passed on inactive scabies to me. Maybe it would lie dormant, just waiting until I was old and weak, at which point it would flare up. I might even be suffering from the diabeetus, like Wilfred Brimley, and the scabies would be the straw that broke the camel's back, last nail in the coffin, all that.

I picked these up:

• Fuzz and Pluck by Ted Stearn (via the inarticulate starving-to-death-monkey Stearn mocks ascetics and mystics, who probably aren't a big chunk of Fantagraphics' readership)
  
• Found #4 (aka 'Come into our World')
  
• The Comics Journal (requires you to give a shit about details of the industry more than I do, but did tip me off to potentially interesting books)
  
• The Believer (again introducing me to books/writers/artists I've never heard of, but suddenly find very interesting, for example: Marjane Satrapi)
  

I read them all (except the Comics Journal, I skimmed it).

I read this book, which largely has a 'it's a rough and tumble world out there, Data Warehousing ain't no game, son, you best knuckle down and get ready for some pain' tone which was off-putting, but I need to know about this stuff.

I read this book, which was a nice where-are-they-now follow up to Louis Theroux's old 'Weird Weekends' show.

The books were rung up by a friendly young woman with interestingly colored hair and a very detailed, black and white photo like tattoo of Niezsche on her arm.

That's it for now, gotta keep the entries short as in brief (to work on next - more frequently as in often).

Fun Facts about Limerick, Ireland

Limerick is called Stab City because criminals there have to resort to using knives as guns are not as readily available as they are here in the U.S.

Limerick has nothing to do with the 5-line poems of the same name.

In Limerick, they have professional darts on TV EVERY NIGHT!

The Gaelic translation of 'Arnold Schwarzeneggar' is 'Arnold Schwarzeneggar'.

Between April 15 1919 and April 27 1919 the city faced a not unsuccessful period of self-rule which was called the Limerick Soviet.

There are a lot of Polish immigrants in Limerick, who do not like the local food.

Guiness does in fact taste different in Limerick.

I am told Budweiser also tastes different in Limerick, but I did not try to verify this.

People in Limerick are very polite, and don't go on about what a moron George Bush is until you first signal to them that you think George Bush is a fucking moron.

More later!

Each of us brings our own special ignorance to the table

It's been observed that back in the day (the early 80's), you could pretty much know everything there is to know about the Apple ][e. You didn't even have to necessarily be Steve Wozniak. The Commodore 64 Programmer's Reference Guide came in at under 500 pages.

Well,apparently you couldn't get 'Hello World' in J2EE in under 500 pages these days. And that's just the beginning. Once you know everything there is to know about programming, or at least have fully mastered Java (not just core Java but JMS, JSP, JAX, JNDI and Hibernate and JSF and JKE and JRP and cetera), C++, Python, Ruby and probably thrown in a good mindfuck language like Haskell or, why not, Brainfuck, you will still be regarded as a fucktard by the DBA where you work. And best to steer cleer of the Network Engineers altogether, is my advice to you.

You will have your hands full explaining to the non techy types why you can't fix their printer (leaving out that if you could you wouldn't because you ain't the help desk, dammit), because odds are saying 'I dunno how to do that' while wearing a practiced expression that just radiates ignorance and obliviousness is just plain not an option.

Punks Over 40 and Still above Room Temperature

I found the early '92 (it's missing the front page) 'Punks Over 30 And Still Giving a Shit' issue of Maximum Rock 'n' Roll in the garage recently. It makes for an interesting window into the pre-internets, pre Green Day as background music on a Seinfeld clip show days of punk.

Within, youngsters are asked what they predict they'll be doing when they're 30 (then 17-yo Nicole Gonzalez: "Hopefully I'll be a singer of a really cool punk band, and I'll be, like, not rich, but not poor, just well off"), whether they'd fuck a punk who's over 30 (Tait, age 20: "Why does MRR always ask such vapid questions, when its readers are intelligent enough to answer more important questions?"), and then there's the main feature article, where prominent scene-type-people over (or at least close to) 30 are interviewed.

In the interest of science, with Google at my disposal, I tried to see if I could figure out what happened to some of these people.




Tom Pig, 33, Guitarist, Poison Idea

Quote from interview: "I always had a fairly questioning mind, was always curious. I was trying to find out why I am so fucked out, why do I hate my parents and why do they hate me, why I can't get along with anybody - so I had to start reading books to find out what was wrong. My quest. Also, taking massive amounts of LSD, multiple hundreds of hits - I was out there, trying to figure things out".

Where is he now?

Found dead, Feb 1, 2006, of kidney failure

Blew out my flip flop
Stepped on a pop-top

Dave Dictor, 36, Singer/Lyricist, MDC

MDC stood for 'Millions of Dead Cops' or 'Millions of Dead Children', depending on who's amateur leather jacket art you were looking at.

Quote:
"One thing I don't do anymore is skateboarding. Falling down and hurting myself. I gave away my skateboard".

Where is he now?

Still with MDC, as is the rest of the band. You can read about them on the internets.

This week on Rock Star: INXS

G.G. Allin, 35, Singer(sic)
/Lyricist(sic)

Infamous for live shows featuring cutting himself up and defecating on the stage - pretty standard MTV stuff these days thanks to Johnny Knoxville. For a while he kept promising/threatening to kill himself onstage when he turned 30, but like pretty much everybody else he chose to get in a rut and turned into a parody of himself instead.

Quote: "Going to prison...was a learning experience for me that made me a better criminal"

Where is he now?

Dead, dead, dead. Heroin overdose following a show.

I didn't go to art school,
but my wife did.

Thurston Moore, 34, Guitarist, Sonic Youth

Quote: "I remember reading an interview with Lou Reed where he said 'I don't make music for kids, I make it for adults'. I was repulsed by that."

Where is he now?

Still guitarist for Sonic Youth, who released an album in June.


Rob Wright, 38, Bass/Guitar/Singer, NoMeansNo

Quote: (When asked 'what's the secret, Rob?') "Starting late and having no hope of doing anything else! It's either this or washing dishes, folks!"

Where is he now?

Continues to give a shit. New album coming out this year. Also a member of The Hanson Brothers.

Steve Spinali, 34, Writer, MRR

Quote:

Steve Spinali: I've been trying to see how my thoughts, actions and beliefs reflect and change outward reality.

Interviewer: Huh! So, can you make the Ramones good again?

SS: There are some things far beyond my ability

Where is he now?

Apparently still kicking. Wrote something in MRR 256, the current one is 278, so that'd be sometime in 2004 I guess.

Sometimes things spring into
existence fully realized.

Joey Ramone, (3?), vocalist, The Ramones:

He and his stage brothers invented punk rock, just like Iggy Pop and the Asheton Brothers and the MC 5 and the Velvet Underground invented punk rock before them. The point being, it was not invented in England.

Quote: "I exercise, actually I've been sober now 2 years. I see a homeopathic chiropractor, and I guess I'm into something different now than I was previously, ya know what I mean?"

Where is he now?

Sadly, no longer with us. Died of lymphoma April 15, 2001.





What have we learned from all this?

Old people are kind of pathetic with the nostalgia, regardless of the youth culture they loosely aligned themselves with in the past.

Stephen Hawking: Chinese Women Are Hot

Hawking.

At a seminar in Beijing last week, famous physicist Stephen Hawking, who holds the post of Cambridge University's Lucasian Professor of Mathematics once held by the great Sir Isaac Newton, told the audience of 500: "I like Chinese culture, Chinese food and above all Chinese women. They are beautiful." He also said some stuff about global warming potentially destroying the earth.

On hearing the news, the Fundamentalist Scientists of the IDEA club immediately sprung into action, assembling and distributing a list of 'over 500 physicists who prefer white women'. Within hours, the list came under fire in the physics blogosphere, as several physics bloggers or 'blogons', as they are sometimes known, pointed out that many people on the list were not Physicists, but merely people who had taken Physics in High School.

Chinese Woman.

The IDEA club immediately fired back in a press release, noting that not only did all these people get 'A's in the classes, but further that in several instances, the classes were AP classes, meaning the students could have gotten college credit for the classes from participating Universities and Colleges.

Asked for comment, Sir Mix-a-Lot, who holds the 'Sir' title once held by Isaac Newton, said: "I like big butts, and I won't lie."

Environment of Non-Compliance - The Kelvin Sampson Story

Sampson.

Gannascoli.

IU fans will want to see this upcoming made-for-TV movie about the new IU basketball coach's experiences at Oklahoma. The title role will be played by Joseph Gannascoli, better known as gangster and Johnny-cake aficionado Vito Spatafore on HBO's The Sopranos.

I'm Santa Claus, Dammit! (GRUBB UPDATE)

An earlier entry here at words of advice for young people introduced our reader(s) to Monroe County character David Grubb and some of his outsider art.

Recently the man himself has been in the news, as with a story in the June 8, 2006 edition of Bloomington's 'Herald-Times'. I can't link to it, because you have to be a subscriber, so I will just share some excerpts in a manner I hope is consistent with 'fair use'.

One of the most universal and fundamental pieces of advice old folks pass on to the kids is: 'don't take candy from strangers'. It seems some Bloomington kids were trying to follow that advice, but the stranger, none other than GRUBB, took offense. From the article:

"David Grubb, who got 212 votes in the 1998 GOP primary and who is a fixture of public comment periods at local government meetings, is charged with felony battery of a 5-year-old boy by hitting him on Sept. 23, 2005, after he and another boy refused to take candy from Grubb."

also...

"The afternoon's testimony was anticlimactic, with a 7-year-old boy, two 14-year-old girls from across the street and two mothers who got involved testifying about the incident. The 5-year-old victim, now 6, was deemed too young to testify.

The 7-year-old boy said Grubb offered the two boys candy. When they refused, he said it was OK because he was Santa Claus, but they still refused. According to testimony, Grubb then took a swing at the 7-year-old. The boy ducked, and Grubb then hit the 5-year-old in the forehead, causing a bruise over his left eye.

The two girls across the street plus adult witness Michelle Ricardez said they saw Grubb swing at the boys. Ricardez, the girls and the 7-year-old boy all said they never heard anyone tease Grubb before or during the incident.

Baggerly said that Grubb never hit the boys but that they had been taunting him, and that the witnesses got together later to "close ranks" in their accounts. "

For his part, Grubb evoked Roger Miller and borrowed a favorite tactic of his idol 'Pres Bush' in his comments:

"The nation is at war and everything is in chaos," he told Harris outside the jury's presence. "I'm not sitting in front of a bunch of women. They're going to hang me, dang me ... I can be innocent and they will find me guilty."

Eh, at least he didn't blame gay marriage for his plight.

The trial continued today and is probably over now. We will follow this story as it develops.

UPDATE:

Actually it is over. Here's the headline:

Man convicted of battery
David Grubb could face a new felony intimidation charge for a remark he made to prosecutor Thursday at his trial for striking a 5-year-old boy who wouldn't take candy from him in September 2005

The article elaborates:

David Grubb hadn't even been convicted Thursday of felony battery of a 5-year-old child when his own remarks started police on paperwork for a second felony charge.

Grubb, in jail after being convicted of the battery, may face an intimidation charge for saying in court of prosecutor Lynda Robison, "I'd like to cut her throat."

and...

Grubb rambled at length about his life, jobs, feuds with public officials and problems with the law over the decades. Grubb is 67.

"I get run out of this county a lot because I see wrong, and I raise hell," he said. "I'm a little scattered, radical because I've had to fight for my life all my life."

One after another, he made allegations against people in the community, alive and dead, by name. He blamed many of his life's woes on "Democrats, idiots and queers."

Scratch what I said earlier. He did play the gay card.

Finally:

"I love kids. I don't hit kids," he said. Except for one case, he began recounting, to Baggerly's dismay.

It was in 1962, and two boys were throwing hay out of his barn loft. Their dad was drunk at home, so he cut a maple branch, called them out and switched them. He said it got him hauled into court for battery, and "it cost me money," so he didn't hit kids after that.

As for whether he struck the 5-year-old boy on the forehead on Sept. 23, 2005, after the boy and a 6-year-old had refused to accept candy from him, even when he told them he was Santa Claus, he denied hitting the boy.

"I'm Santa Claus, damn it!" he said.

"Take me out behind a building and shoot me," Baggerly moaned during the jury break that followed.

Neither he nor his client will be shot, but sentencing will happen June 15, according to the article.

No Irony

Here's a charming little photo that was in Bloomington's Herald Times this morning. The caption:

Lorraine Hensley, 18, sits between signs held by Alexis Hensley, 8, left, and Linda Jerome during a demonstration against illegal immigration Saturday near the Bartholomew County Memorial for Veterans in downtown Columbus. President Bush urged Congress on Saturday to find a middle ground between mass deportation or instant U.S. citizenship for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants already living in America. Bush's radio message was the third time this week he has spoken out about immigration. Andrew Laker | Associated Press

I would consider it to be an A-OK use of my tax money to round up this lot and ship them back to where they came from. Probably that would be Lower Assclownia.

Not sure if these folks will achieve the fame of the 'Get a brain morans' guy, but they tried.



Follow up 06/06/06:

'LEMA_ODA' on has a great post on livejournal (wow, there's a phrase I neve imagined myself typing, 'a great post etc etc') about the 'NO AMNETY' photo, along with other anti-immigrant spelling bloopers. He notes:

On a personal note, i have now been to two very large immigrant rights protests at which there were thousands of mostly Hispanic immigrants for whom English is a second language and i have yet to see even one misspelled word on any of the English-language signs and banners they carried. 5/25/2006 12:08 AM

He also has a quote from the photographer who captured this comic moment:

Hi. This image was taken with a still camera, and the video on the web site was shot with a different camera. And how do I know that? I shot them both - that's how. Thanks everyone for the kind comments. It was a funny situation. The down side is that my poor editor has been inundated with phone calls from angry protesters.

Here's a link to that post: click.

I SULTE PRESBUSH

One thing this blog needs is some pictures. So, in order to add some images to this otherwise logocentric site, I bravely ventured into GRUBB COUTRY (sic) on Bloomington's industrial West side with my digital camera. Occasionally you will see Mr. GRUBB sitting out in front of his house, but he wasn't there today. He will never wave when you wave at him. He used to have a grey beard, but the beard is gone now.



One morning, on the way to work, I saw Coutry Commissioner GRUBB coming out his front door, followed by a very large TV. The TV sped up and passed him going down the front steps. He was laying flat on his back. The TV was laying screen down on the ground. I stopped the car and asked if he needed help. 'No, no' he said, and waved me off. He was able to get up and that was all the convincing I needed. I hopped in the car and sped off.



Just as Ol' Dirty Bastard once proclaimed 'Wu-Tang is for the children', so too is GRUBB concerned about the well-being of our young people. The truck used to say 'KIDS NO DRUGS' along with other slogans including 'THANKS REPS BLACKS DEMORATS (sic)' and 'POWELL AFTER BUSH'. Now it says 'KIDS KIDS KIDS KIDS KIDS'. KIDS what? I'm afraid to ask

Worth noting: the satellite dish. In related news, the number of homes without plumbing recently surprassed the number of homes without satellite TV.



Our last shot shows the truck from the other side. As you can see, still shaken by my previous visit, I was afraid to get out of the car to take these photos. I would be surprised if more than 3 of the people who graduated from IU this year ever saw GRUBB COUTRY in their 4 or more years in Bloomington. But like Skull Island, it's out there, with its own rules and logic, best left alone by those from the outside.

Scenes from post-graduate life ca. 1990

Congratulations, graduates!

I graduated from college 16 years ago. W's Daddy was in office, and things were pretty bleak. He hadn't yet started that hoo-ha, let's feel good about ourselves war in the gulf yet, but plenty of people were graduating with seemingly not too bad degrees (various engineering disciplines) from not too bad schools (like Purdue, not too shabby in the technical area), yet getting fuck-all response to their job searches.

I was able to land something using some of the same pestering nerdly skills that had met with a 0% success rate in dealing with the opposite sex. Anyhow, they got sick of me calling and generally annoying them all the time, and gave me a job at what everybody called the 'Naval Air Welfare Center' in Indianapolis. It was about the only place I could think of where you could work in Indianapolis with a Physics degree, seeing as it involved creating and testing devices that could be used to kill people. It was where veterans and college grads with no self-esteem went to die. This dying process could take anywhere from 1 to 40 years, and involved such indignities as

• sitting in the cafeteria eating horrible, horrible food, listening to your Lovecraft-esque boss talk about his sex life with his wife
• listening to grown men talk for an hour about the merits of competing brands of lawnmowers
• listening to increasingly icky guy co-workers make lewd remarks about the women in the cafeteria
• watching the new boss, who had a body resembling a melted candle, pull a room-temperature (no microwaves available at the time) hot dog from his cooler every day as he ate lunch at his desk

Anyhow, dealing with this day in and day out created a level of angst and dread so intense I had to listen to the Smiths and read Kafka after work to step down from the heights gradually. It really woke me up to the nail-gun-repeatedly-to-the-head banality and tedium that apparently was what really made post-collegiate life so horrifying, and made attending graduate school and working for $4500 a semester seem like I had died and gone to a better place.

So, enjoy your new jobs!

They killed Mr. Softie

Here's some tired crap you hear a lot - it's one of those memes that people hear and pass on and on and on, without ever pausing to think about how fucking stupid they sound first off for repeating something verbatim which probably everybody has heard many times to begin with, secondly, for doing so in a complete mental vacuum in re: labor history:

Unions were fine organizations, 100 years ago. Back when the federal government was not addressing certain crucial labor issues, unions brought them into the public's view and created needed debate.

Today, however, unions do little but increase the costs of doing business. Sure, some select people benefit by earning more than they would otherwise get in a truly free market. But the majority suffers from higher prices and union corruption.

It's from here, but oh god it doesn't matter. Anyhow, I am on a mailing list for Techsunite.org. They have taken on the Quixotic task of getting techies to Unionize. Quixotic because among other things techies are anti-social creatures, so the whole getting together and organizing thing seems a bit absurd. Also because they are highly competitive, so the whole working for the common good thing seems a bit absurd. You could probably be a passable manager of techies just by insinuating to your various reports that 'employee X might do job Y better than you'. They would then bust their techie asses to prove you wrong. Anyhow.

Here's an article from a former Microsoftie, The WalMartization of Microsoft.

I left Microsoft to be a full-time parent to my newly adopted daughter in 2000. Since then, not only is the stock stagnant, but the wages and salaries are too. In fact, wages and salaries seem to have stagnated at the same time Microsoft hired a top Wal-Mart executive. That same executive has just been promoted to Chief Operating Officer.

Meanwhile, according to anonymous sources, managers at a recent Executive Retreat were encouraged to make everything like “Wal-Mart.” How deep will this exhortation go? Will wages continue to be stagnant and perhaps decline?

She goes on to reference Steve Ballmer's advice to fire 6.5% of your staff every year. That might actually please 'Who da'Punk', the individual behind Mini-Microsoft, a blog with this mission statement:

Let's slim down Microsoft into a lean, mean, efficient customer pleasing profit making machine! Mini-Microsoft, Mini-Microsoft, lean-and-mean!

Sounds good on paper, but who is he kidding? You can't go back to the garage. Once a company reaches a certain size, all it can do is hang on and make modest but safe gains, picking up new products by buying out little guys here and there, hopefully without accidentally destroying them with your hamfisted clumsy big fucking corporation hands, and eventually you just die. In the meantime, the blog is an interesting window into Microsoft, as many Microsoft type folks vent spleen within (here's the big revelation - middle management: not good!), and it's also a good source of Schadenfreude for Microsoft-bashers or maybe just people who wished they worked someplace of significance.

For the record, I actually like a lot of Microsoft products. XP, which I'm using now, SQL Server, I even think C# is pretty cool despite the Java resemblance. I got no personal beef with Microsoft. I'd get much more Schadenfreudic enjoyment seeing Oracle or Sun go down the toilet, actually. Larry Ellison's role in life seems to be making Steve Ballmer seem all cuddly and Care Bear like.

A Series of Progressively More Painful Indignities

I recently read The Tortilla Curtain by T.C. Boyle, a book seemingly written for these times, and by these times I mean the times where the immigration debate is on everyone's mind, with immigrants even marching in Burlington, VT, of all places. Actually the book was written in 1995, and is set in California, which is usually ahead of the rest of the U.S. in things like popular music, fashion, drugs, and racism toward Mexicans (I visited L.A. back in the 80's, and what struck me the most was how all the white people would speak disapprovingly and condescendingly of racism toward African-Americans in Indiana, then turn around and rant about 'beans', apparently completely oblivious to the irony of the conversation's turn. But this was before Alanis Morrisette brought the concept of irony to the masses.)

The novel revolves around two couples, well-off white liberals Delaney and Kyra, and immigrants Candido and America, who live in a camp in Topanga Canyon not far from the white folks' gated community. The book opens with Delaney striking Candido with his car, and Candido and America suffer a series of progressively more painful indignities as the book progresses, while Delaney's liberal ideals slowly (and Kyra's less slowly) unravel under the influence of paranoid and decidedly creepy upper-class neighbors.

As I've mentioned before, I'm fascinated with Mexico and its culture, so I found the book very interesting independently of the timeliness of the subject matter, and it is definitely worth reading (as is the other T.C. Boyle novel I've read, Drop City, in which a hippie commune self-destructs in a highly interesting way, in Alaska, of all places). It will give the reader a better understanding of what immigrants have to deal with, although I suspect people clamoring to round up all the illegals and ship them South of the Border might not be too inclined to give this book a chance.

I visited the NorthEast Kingdom, and all I got was this lousy virus

We all flew out to VT last Friday for an extended weekend visiting grandparents and cousins. I didn't mention this before, because you can't be too careful with all the burglars clicking that 'show me next blog' link until they see that somebody's in Vegas next week, which they note for either their own fiendish purposes, or to pass along to somebody else in the sophisticated network of 'blog-burglars'.

One of the highlights of the trip was going up to Craftsbury, VT (the name sounds like it was created by a team of marketing professionals tasked with coming up with a cute, rural-sounding Vermont name, but as far as I know, it was not), where my brother in law works for a small college as a farmer.

Craftsbury is in the Northeast Kingdom. It's in the Northeast part of Vermont, and it feels like another country. Actually, it feels like another planet. The light is different. I'm not sure why, maybe it's the latitude, maybe the lack of pollutants - car exhaust and general industrial filth, but it's very bright and clear and eerily different. So much so if I were to look up and see two suns, I might even be relieved to have an explanation of what's up with the light.

I noticed that the last time I visited the Northeast Kingdom, a couple years ago, when we visited my brother and sister in law on the organic yogurt farm where he was working. That trip was very memorable because I got to see a man stick his arm into a plastic sleeve, then up a cow's ass, and clear out a lot of cow crap so he could stick a 3 foot long needle into the cow and get her pregnant. I dodged a very thick stream of cow urine that started flowing during this process, and watched my brother in law stick his hand in a cow's mouth and pull out the ruminant. Prior to this gig, my brother in law worked on a farm camp for at-risk youth, run by I think the Farelly brothers.

Anyhow, my daughter was along this time, so I was hoping we wouldn't be seeing any of that. It was springtime, and it was time to see the baby animals. So we all walked down the street to see the chickens. There were numerous chickens walking about in the yard, and my brother in law scattered some feed for them.

'I want to go to the farm.' my daughter exclaimed.

From there we went to a greenhouse where spinach and other greens were growing. My daughter ate some spinach, and pronounced it yucky. Later during the trip, she would try to grab some gum under a seat at an airport.

'I want to go to the farm'.

The next stop was inside a shed where we heard the peeps of real live baby chicks. We got to look at them and even got to hold them.

'I want to go to the farm'.

After that we went to the barn to meet a mama goat (who had an unfortunate swollen teat that had the effect of making her look like the goat Ron Jeremy) and her two babies. They were extremely cute and jumped around a lot. We were able to pet them although they were hard to approach.

From there we went to the field populated by sheep (mamas and babies) and a llama. We were told to bow to the llama, and we did. The llama didn't really do anything in response, but apparently it's more a matter of what happens if you DON'T show the llama respect.

After the sheep we saw the cows, including some calves. There was cow excrement everywhere. I was amazed how much those cows produced. It didn't smell particularly bad (in the Northeast Kingdom, the light is different, and cow shit smells ok), but it was everywhere.

My daughter by this time was convinced we were finally at the farm.

The other highlight was riding the shuttle in the Detroit airport on the way back. It takes you back and forth along the terminal. We got at one end of the train, where if you're 2 you can ignore the signs saying 'don't sit here' and sit right there looking out the window pretending you're driving the train, and further pretend that it's not the shuttle at the Detroit airport but Gordon from the 'Thomas and his Friends' show. It's great family fun and created the
only good memory I have of Detroit after visiting Detroit on a couple of different occasions.

My spokesmodel is a Jewish Carpenter

Need Peace of Mind?
call on God and
Kelley's Termite &
Pest Control
(phone number)

(actual Bloomington Area sign)

If business goes well, Kelley can gradually phase God out,
like Sears phased out Roebuck.

True Story:

There is a business in Southern Indiana. We won't mention the real name. Let's call it 'Drywall For Jesus'. The main point here is they use a reference to Jesus in their name; Jesus is part of their 'brand'. An acquaintance hired them to do a job. With the job half-finished they stopped showing up. Much time passed, but no word from Drywall For Jesus. Aforementioned acquaintance called and asked for an explanation. Explanation: you have alcohol in your fridge and therefore your house has demons in it. We can't go back there.

When this goes to Court, we'll see what kind of game the law firm of Miller, Baker, Johnson, Oglethorpe and Christ has got.

The Moral of this story:

Alcohol in your fridge might attract demons. Do all your drinking at a bar or acquaintance's house. Or smoke weed. Demons hate that smell.

Van Driving Yahoos Are Ready to Steal Gas!

I thought people were pretty much over the 'gas is so expensive' gripes when it went back under $3, but apparently that's not the case. At the gas station today a very angry white dude of the Tom Arnold type driving a Van complained to a young guy of the Eminem/Kevin Federline type (a future entry will go on at greater length on the Theory of White Guy Types) that gas was too gosh (sic) damn expensive.

"It's 2.64 and it goes up 10 cents every week. Before long people are gonna start stealing gas. This van gets 13 mpg. I can't afford it."

"I know what you mean. I have to put premium in that piece of shit." (points to dark green, somewhat old but still in pretty decent condition BMW with the pimped out rims whose main function is to make the rest of the car look like shit).

"People are gonna start stealing gas." (the other guy again)

At this point K-Fed mentioned how motorcycles get great gas mileage, and tried to sell Tom Arnold one of his for $800, but he didn't bite, saying he didn't have that kind of money and couldn't afford it.

He should have at least got K-Fed's address. Then he could have stolen the bike at least.

Elmo's Coloring Book, live at the Murat (WARNING: SPOILERS)

My wife, daughter, mother, father and I had wholesome family fun at the Murat Theatre in Indianapolis last Sunday, where we saw a production of Elmo's Coloring Book. The last time we were at the Murat was to see Chris Rock's Black Ambition Tour in 2004. Neither daughter nor parents were with us for that.

People who don't have kids probably see going to things like this as a good reason not to have kids, but all in all, it was a well-done production featuring nice sets, much dancing and decent music, although I suspect Elmo was lip-syncing.

Actually, a nice thing I noticed about ECB, as those in the know refer to it, was it didn't throw in a lot of half-assed pop-culture references to try to reach the parents. This seems to be a welcome trend in kiddie entertainment away from the 'Robin Williams as the Genie does impressions of 80's celebrities' thing that was big for a while, as Curious George the Movie didn't pull any of that shit either, aside from the King Kong references, but how do you expect them to do a monkey movie without throwing in a nod to King Kong? Actually in this case, there was an interesting subtext having to do with Imperialism and the White Man's appropriation of other cultures. It was a message similar to that put across by Gil Scot-Heron and the Last Poets in their track 'It Ain't No New Thing' ('release the album 'John Wayne sings the Blues'/release the album 'J Edgar Hoover sings James Brown'), but in this case presented in a fashion that would entertain toddlers, and definitely would not require you to explain to them what 'cultural rape' means.

In the story, Professor Art, the only human cast member, creates a device that enables the characters to put themselves inside coloring books depicting scenes including ancient Egypt and Dinosaur times (in a bold move, during this sequence they acknowledge that yes in fact the Earth is more than 5000 years old, which would have enraged the IDers if there had been any there (nobody walked out angrily)).

Colors start missing from scenes, and even Oscar the Grouch loses his color, becoming as white and clean and annoyingly cheery as the Snuggle Bear. The culprit turns out to be a Polar Bear named Blanche, who lives in the color starved (except for the Northern Lights I suppose) Arctic, and thus has to resort to stealing colors from others to enhance her environment. Obviously there are direct parallels to White America's appropriation of blues and later hip-hop from African Americans here, as well as the British Empire's appropriation of elements of the various cultures it conquered in its Colonial days. It's an interesting message, but of course to the kids it's all about singing and dancing Dinosaurs that look like they rolled in a bowl of Skittles and seeing the Sesame Street gang pretty much Live On Stage.

At the end, everyone reconciles and all is well. Then confetti cannons go off on each side of the stage, startling especially small children and reminding the rest of us that even when peace and harmony are achieved, they are fragile things that require constant attention and care, with the possibility of war and violence always lurking in the background.

Overall it was quite thought-provoking, and the kids dug it too. My daughter was sad it was over and wanted to see it again, and it seemed the production was well-received by other children in attendance.

Recommended for people wanting to entertain people who can't read this sentence.