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.

Pimp My Senator

The recent woes of Tom Delay, Jack Abramoff, and Duke Cunningham remind us that in the U.S. we truly have a government of the people, by the people (with a shitload of money) and for the people (with a shitload of money). It's easy for the individual who does not have access to millions of dollars and a stable of lobbyists to feel shut out of the process and alienated.

I personally can not complain, though. For one brief moment a couple years ago, I had an opportunity to throw my lot in with a political action committee and be partial owner of a Congressho, the way a stockholder can be a partial owner of a corporation. I worked for a huge telecom company that had an employee PAC, and one day there was a mandatory PAC-related meeting for all the 'managers' at the company. Like 90% of the managers there, I had no underlings, but because I was called 'manager', I couldn't join the union, so it was a win/win. I had a meaningless title, and the company had no need to worry that I might ever try to stand up for myself in an inconvenient way.

At the meeting, the sub-sub-demi-President of our local nodule of the corporation made a few remarks and introduced our bi-partisan presenters. There was a former Republican State Senator who looked like the president of the Lambda Chi Alpha Chapter. There was a former Democratic State Senator who looked like an AME minister. They told us about the hard life of the state representative. It is a part time job that doesn't pay very well. Lots of very
thick bills full of legalese end up on their desks. "There is no way we could read it all". Fortunately, there is help for the overwhelmed freshman senator.

These guys were approached by lobbyists for the corporation. "Hey, we spent a lot of money on your campaign" they said. "We think we deserve some access as a result". Access means getting to tell the senator how to vote.

These guys acquiesced, but they weren't just two cheap trollops that got used up and thrown away by the lobbyists, it turns out. They ended up getting really nice jobs with the corporation after their stint was up. God Bless America.

The way the PAC worked was pretty clever. When you signed up, you'd chose a percentage or amount from your paycheck that went to the PAC. You'd also choose a charity from the corporation's approved list, and the company would match your PAC contribution with money going to the charity. That way they got your money in exchange for charitable contributions which, unlike your PAC contribution, were tax deductible.

After the presentation was over, a cynical old bag at the back of the room said, in a voice ravaged by thousands of smoke breaks: 'think of this as your management union dues'. The ex-congresshos laughed, but said 'well, we aren't allowed to say that, ha, ha'.

Some chump I worked with signed up to pay a dollar per pay period. He lived in fear and was really under the corporate fist. He slept at his desk regularly, but feared if he checked weather.com from his work computer the goon squad would take him away. Beep beep. I'm sure he thought if he didn't give them any money, his days were numbered, but I'm surprised it didn't cross his mind that the $1 would look like an insult.

As for myself, I signed up to give them nothing. I guess I only have myself to blame for my position of powerlessness and lack of say in what the government does.

(BTW, I don't know what happened to the grizzly story. Looks like blogger ate it.)

Why we're not yet really fascists: where are all the Superstar Generals?

Though Americans are proud to be without a royal family or a tough-but-fair autocrat who took charge via a military coup running things around here, we do have a history of superstar Generals who even veterans of our public schools can rattle off without even thinking: George Washington. Ulysses S. Grant. 'Blackjack' Pershing. Douglas MacArthur. George S. 'like crap through a goose' Patton. Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Even more recently, during Gulf War I, aka American Gets Its Groove Back, fat middle aged men sitting on the couch watching the ass-kicking all teary eyed fell in love with fat, middle-aged General Norman Schwarzkopf, whose aw-shucks memoir 'It Doesn't Take a Hero' was a phenomenally successful best-seller for a while. General Colin Powell became 'the black man everybody at work can agree on' before Will Smith took the title, and middle Americans unable to pronounce the word 'wash' properly marveled that 'he speaks so well'.

Then, somewhere, somehow, things went awry for the military as a path to celebrity. Though MacArthur famously said 'Old soldiers never die, they just fade away', and Schwarzkopf appears to have done exactly that (note to self - Google to see if he's still alive after typing this), Powell introduced a new model for old soldiers - the political career that crashes and burns because you hitched your wagon to the wrong star.

With Gulf War II, aka this time we mean it motherfuckers, you'd expect a whole new Rat Pack or Brat Pack or what have you of military superstars to come out and start shining, but mostly they've been in the shadows. The only Generals I could name associated with Gulf War II when I started writing this were Gen. Janis Karpinski of Abu Ghraib infamy, and General Vincent Brooks, who gave all those press conferences in the pre 'Mission Accomplished' days, charming us with strong and powerful oratory like this:

It's unlike any other targeting process in the world. It takes into account all science, it takes into account all capability, and we do everything physically and scientifically possible to be precise in our targeting and also to minimize secondary affects, whether it's on people or structures.

The words seemed carefully crafted to fade from memory the instant your neurons processed them. Kids in no schoolyards proceeded to imagine themselves bravely minimizing secondary affects on structures.

While military folks are regarded as heroes in this go-around, they are kind of faceless everyman dad-went-in-to-work-even-when-he-had-a-fever-of-103 heroes. The days of the Superstar Generals seem to be gone. Now its ex-CEOs and academic neocons running things. Where have you gone, Dwight D. Eisenhower? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you, woo woo woo.

P.S. - He's alive!

This week's brilliant online persona

CAPS LOCK shouldn't be as funny as he is. The all caps thing has been done before, both by clueless n00bs and people who know better mocking clueless n00bs.

His Diary about the death of Pope John Peel (sic) II includes this gem:

WE MUST ENSURE THAT THE LIKES OF THIS NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN. THE BATTLE AGAINST DEATH IS THE MOST IMPORTANT CHALLENGE FACING LOVERS OF FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY. WE MUST NOW TAKE IT FROM THE STREETS OF FALLJAH AND BAGHDAD TO THE STREETS OF ROME, WHERE EVIL ITALIAN TERRORISTS RIDING BATTLE MOPEDS SPREAD CANCER AND HEART FAILURE AMONGST POPES. I SAY TO THEM: BRING IT ON!

...and later...

HE WILL BURIED, ONLY TO BE RESSURECTED AGAIN AT EASTER TO GIVE HIS NOW TRADITIONAL INCOMPREHENSIBLE EASTER MESSAGE OF BARKING NOISES AND DRIBBLING FROM THE VATICAN BALCONY.

In his Diary, MY MATE ASIF, he tells the story of a young Pakistani man's transformation from star-struck youth who would follow in the footsteps of Freddie Mercury to suicide bomber taking a busload of civilians down with him. In another diary, he tells a dying friend he's going to hell:

HIS LIFE WAS A CATOLOGUE OF SLOTH, THAT MOST COMMON OF SINS. NO MATTER THE PASSION OF HIS FEELING, THE SOUNDNESS OF ITS LOGIC: HE NEVER ACTED.

THERE IS SUCH A THING AS HELL. IT IS WHERE THE GUILT OF YOUR INACTION IS MADE REAL, AND YOU CAN'T LOOK AWAY.

Like b3ta, Monty Python and of course Benny Hill, CAPS LOCK reminds us that the best comic minds come from the UK.

Yo yo yo! Represent Da Lollipop Guild!

I've mentioned here before that as you move past 30 you tend to get a bit out of touch with the new music, what with not having so much time to read music magazines and listen to the near infinite sources of music now available in our brave new (but still floating-car-free) world. There was a time, sure, all I did was hang out in the apartment listening to The Smiths, but you know, you live, you grow.

Anyhow, the options as you get older are kind of grim. Occasionally you'll get wind of some new thing of the moment. Let's say 'Grime', a genre whose best known artist is 'Dizzee Rascal'. How can you not like a guy named 'Dizzee Rascal'? Well, after listening to the CD a couple times and having a real hard time getting past the hiccuping delivery and the impenetrable UK slang, you suddenly find yourself buying up Pavement re-issues, which is the aging indie-rock fan's version of curling up in the fetal position.

New superstar out of the UK, Lady Sovereign aka SOV, presents a whole other problem. I heard 'A Little Bit of Shhhh' on the Electronica 'Music Choice' satellite TV station, and damn, it is some good UK flavored hip-hop, lots of aggression and more of that impenetrable UK slang ( "Got kicked out of school due to bunking/ Now look at me, the multi-talented munchkin," - Bunking?). But Google SOV and, Oh my God, she looks like she's 12 years old. She is 19, so we're told, but she looks 12. That just won't do, no not at all, if you are male and over 18.

I guess there's an Underworld Box set that just came out. Off to the record store I go.

How not to jerk off: my special 'choose life' message to the young people of the Islamic Republic of Iran

As I've mentioned previously in this space, part of the fun of having a blog is checking through the referrals in your logs to see what's bringing people to your site.

Recently I was excited to discover I had my first hit from the Middle East. It was in fact, from the Axis of Evil itself: the Islamic Republic of Iran. It seems a young man at the Rizbarf Mineral Company was kicking back and taking a break, and instead of daydreaming about wiping Israel off the map, he went to Google to type in his search keyword: 'jerkoff'.

Imagine his disappointment when the search led him to a posting on my blog about using the Mozilla Greasemonkey plugin to filter out posts by jerkoffs, using some javascript featuring a variable called 'jerkoffs' (and I realize I'm only making things worse for future would-be wankers, but stick with me, the positive after-school special part starts right about now).

Now, I know under a repressive regime ruled largely by religious dudes with a lot of problems with the whole concept of sex and a kind of awkwardness and reluctance in re: treating women properly, there is probably not a lot of open discussion about things like masturbation (I went to Catholic School, so I speak from personal experience), but I can tell you, not only is there nothing wrong with it, it apparently reduces your risk of prostate cancer, which, even though I'm not a doctor, I would classify as a good thing.

However, some people get a little too creative, and they get hurt. I direct you to the Chuck Palahniuk novel, Choke, which features a lengthy section about masturbatory
misadventures leading to emergency room visits (who knew some vacuum cleaners had little blades inside to chop up the dirt? You do, now.)

Another possible problem, which people here in the U.S. in general would rather not talk about (although there was an episode of Six Feet Under that opened with a young man dying this way) is auto-erotic asphyxiation.

In college, I shared a house with several students and a Physics Professor. One of our housemates was brilliant, at least he was an extremely skilled computer programmer, but he was also what people would euphemistically call 'troubled'. He came to the College I Attended after being kicked out of the infamous fundie institution 'Bob Jones University' (his list of offenses included associating with a girl from Lebanon, and possession of a Stryper tape). He got in big trouble for messing with the computer system. He failed math classes he presumably could have passed. He actually paid to have electrodes attached to his arms so he could build up muscles without having to use the weights the Professor had in his basement, like the rest of us did (another story, for another time).

Anyhow, I graduated, and a couple of years passed, and the old woman who lived next door to the house (she was a good friend, we hung out w/ her when we got sick of our other housemates) told me about the tragedy: our old roommate had committed suicide. Apparently, he was deep in debt, and quit a job thinking he had landed another one, only to find the new job had disappeared. Police cars and an ambulance came to the house, and it was a terrible scene.

Even though I wasn't close to the guy, I felt pretty sad about that. It seemed like the sort of problem he could have worked through. Later, while I was discussing it with another alum of the school and house, my friend informed me it was not suicide, actually it was 'autoro...autoerotic...autoerotic asphyxiation' (this friend is pretty religious, too; and his religion dictates that he stumbles awkwardly over terms or ideas that are too repulsive to him).

Apparently this friend had talked to a police officer who had arrived at the scene. The roommate was found with a belt around the neck. Something had gone wrong and the whole thing was an accident. He had no intention of killing himself all along.

It was very sad, and a total waste, so to young people in general, stay away from that shit. You don't want to be remembered for that, and if you go out that way without a long achievement-rich life behind you, that's pretty much all you'll be remembered for by most. Actually, it's probably true that if you cured cancer AND died of autoerotic asphyxiation, you'd be remembered as that scientist who died of autoerotic asphyxiation.

How to ensure nobody does Karaoke at your New Year Party

(invite a professor who teaches voice at one of the top music schools in the country. D'oh!)

Media worth Mention pt. 1: La Perdida

This cornily alliteratively titled feature covers DVDs, CDs, and Comic books that I've recently viewed/read/listened to/otherwise ingested that not only were worth the time/money involved to acquire and ingest them, but were in fact good enough to write about here where maybe one or two people will get curious and likewise check them out.

The first item is actually a series, a 5 part comic by Jessica Abel (of artbabe fame) called 'La Perdida'. It's about a young American woman's experiences living in Mexico (Abel lived in Mexico herself from 1998-2000). Mexico is a source of fascination for many USians, myself included, several of whom have fantasies with varying degrees of seriousness about actually moving there and living there for a bit, and anyone with that interest really ought to look into this series. It's not merely a thinly veiled autobiographical travel diary thing - there are a number of events and twists in the story that add suspense and excitement that go beyond the usual foreigner acclimating to the local culture subject matter. After reading Part 4, I had to rush back to the bookstore to pick up Part 5, because I wanted to see how things turned out.

The drawings are all black and white, with covers in color. I enjoyed the style and the story, and picked up a lot of great Mexican slang along the way, which I almost certainly will never use in real life. I'm not even sure how 'guey' is pronounced.

This came out in 2002, but I am just discovering it now, thanks to the truly wonderful Boxcar Books, a non-profit, volunteer-run bookstore in Bloomington (which, thanks to some recent renovations, now has a whole room dedicated to comix). Since I discovered Boxcar Books, I pretty much only go to Borders for tech book needs now.

Highly recommended.

Merry Christmas Motherfuckers!

Apparently some people are worried about 'secular progressives' trying to further the ongoing oppression of the Christian people by saying 'Happy Holidays' instead of Merry Christmas. All the Christians are going to have to flee to Egypt like Jesus and his Mom and non-God Dad did any minute now.

As a member of this secular conspiracy to destroy America's Heritage (I am a member of the ACLU, after all), this prompted me to examine my own behavior to see if I was doing enough for the cause. On some self-reflexion, I realized I actually say 'Merry Christmas' a lot, which made me wonder why do I show such callous disregard for friends and colleagues who are Jewish or otherwise non-affiliated with the downtrodden Christian minority of 80% of residents of the U.S. (thousands of whom attend services regularly, hundreds of whom pay attention to them)?

I realized it was kind of a knee jerk thing I do as a resident of a very churchy state in the midwest where slipping up and giving the wrong person the idea that you don't 'believe what they do' will result in all sorts of grief (I hesitate to use the word persecution as let's not be a drama queen here, the beatings ended once I got away from the nuns at my Catholic school).

So, yeah, 'War on Christmas' my skinny white ass. I am going to indulge in some serious Santa worship on the 25th to atone for my utter failure to observe the Winter Solstice. My Winter Solstice tradition is to, at some point during the day, say 'hey, it's Winter Solstice today', which has yet to trigger an exchange lasting longer than 15 seconds. Still, Solstice is important, as the truth at the root of it all is that freezin' is the reason for the season.

Best programming book EVAR!

I have written briefly before about the 7 wheeled bicycle that is J2EE. Anyhow, people are looking for something, anything to replace Java as the next thing in programming, and a major contender is Ruby, a language created in Japan by a guy w/ the nickname 'Matz'. Another big one is Python, all the rage with the Linux set.

Anyhow, while wasting time on Kuro5hin tonight, I ran into a reference to Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby. It is full of cartoons and stories about an evil scientist named Dr. Cham. It also talks about Ruby, too. This Mr. why the lucky stiff is a genius, I tell you!

I have decided to learn more about Ruby now. Comix make learnin fun!

(update 12-23-05:

I read the whole thing. I liked the bit about meta-programming and Dwemthy's array. Writing programs that write programs is great, especially if the programs partially write themselves.

I also really liked the tiny bunny who put the dragon's head in the chimbly. I'm still not sure what a chimbly is. A cute mispelling of chimney?

Overall, a bold redefinition of the programming manual taking ideas Larry Wall touched on with the 'Job from the Bible hacks Perl' bits in the Camel Book and then just really running with them.
)

Disjointed thoughts in the Larry King Column Vein

Web sites and magazines are always talking about the 10 best albums ever, or the worst album covers, and these articles always stir up arguments. But there's no dispute as to who the worst rock band ever is: Aerosmith after 1980.

There's a really happening audio installation about the famous Amen break right here. You know the Amen break even if you don't know it by name.

The Super Furry Animals have a new album out, and I didn't even know that. It's true - after you turn 30 you really can't keep up with music to save your life.

Here's a tasty treat - put mustard and swiss cheese on an onion bagel, and put it in the microwave for 20 seconds. It even tastes great on those O-rings Lender's sells in the freezer section.

One of the design goals of .NET was to enable rapid development. One of the design goals of J2EE was to take a decent language and throw so much doo-hickery on top of it that the simplest project takes years.

Every time I see Dick Cheney trying to smile, I wonder whose heat he had turned off.

Diving into Greasemonkey, or Roll Your Own Bozofilter

I read about greasemonkey in Wired, and it sounded pretty cool. What it is is a plugin for the Mozilla browser (which is vastly superior to Internet Explorer, kind of like a 2005 Toyota Camry is better than a 1973 Pinto), and what it does is allow you to write javascript snippets that enable you to change the structure of websites you visit in whatever manner you wish (common mods include adding in links to other sites, stripping out ads, or changing ugly color schemes).

This has ramifications for Web advertising and 'brand purity' that probably nobody cares about at this time, because it's only geeks who want to fuck around with writing their own Javascript and CSS and figuring out what XPath expressions are and why you'd want to use them who will be using it. There ARE plenty of pre-written scripts out there, however.

At this point the cautious will rightfully ask whether it's a good idea to install code that hasn't been vetted on your machine, and they'd be right to do so. After all, with companies like Sony trying to get all '1337' on our asses and putting rootkit software on My Morning Jacket CD's so they can 'own' our 'boxen', we really can't be too careful. There was in fact as Security Advisory involving Greasemonkey in July of 2005, discovered by Mark Pilgrim, who we'll talk about more soon. It has since been addressed.

Let's get back on topic. All you really need to do to get started is install Mozilla, and if you do plan to be writing any scripts, you need to choose the Custom Install w/ the developer extensions. You then install the greasemonkey plugin.

There are numerous sites discussing Greasemonkey. The one I ended up bookmarking and going back to was the unappealingly titled 'Dive Into Greasemonkey' by 'Dive Into' Mark Pilgrim (you have to admit, though, having a 'Dive Into' book on the shelf is infinitely better than something from the 'For Dummies' series). Mark's guide is thorough and, here's the really great part: concise. As in brief. As in not full of a lot of useless fluff (you will soon see a 900 page book with a Red Cover and pictures of several nerds on the cover from Wrox publishing if Greasemonkey catches on, though).

Anyhow, for a simple Greasemonkey experiment, I wondered how easy would it be to write a bozo-filter for my favorite running forum, coolrunning.com. It was pretty easy. I am sure there are a million other ways to do it, anyhow here is one (standard disclaimers about for entertainment purposes only, no guarantee of blah blah blah, don't come crying to me if this causes your machine to melt through the floor, etc, apply):

// This is a Greasemonkey user script.
//
// To install, you need Greasemonkey:
//   http://greasemonkey.mozdev.org/
// Then restart Firefox and revisit this script.
// Under Tools, there will be a new menu item to
// "Install User Script".
// Accept the default configuration and install.
//
// To uninstall, go to Tools/Manage User Scripts,
// select "CoolerRunning", and click Uninstall.
//
// -------------------------------------------------
//
// ==UserScript==
// @name          CoolerRunning
// @namespace     SDC
// @description   remove wack fuckas
// @include       http://www.coolrunning.com/*
// @exclude
// @exclude
// ==/UserScript==

// give us a quickie list of miscreants
// (replace with real usernames before using)
var jerkoffs = new Array("attention ho",
                        "subliterate cretin",
                        "troll");

// alt approach: use XPath expression
// note - this is it, zeroes in on 3rd cols 
// (user on thread list)
// on comment list it's 1st col.
var xpathMatch;

var allEle = document.evaluate("//TABLE/TBODY/TR/TD/H2",
document,
null,
XPathResult.UNORDERED_NODE_SNAPSHOT_TYPE,
null);

GM_log("Got " + allEle.snapshotLength + " with the H2 in TD.");
GM_log(allEle.snapshotItem(0).innerHTML);

if (allEle.snapshotLength > 0 &&
 (allEle.snapshotItem(0).innerHTML.indexOf("Clubhouse")>=0)) {
 xpathMatch = "//TABLE[@width]/TBODY/TR/TD[3]"; // topics
 GM_log("Using topics match");
} else {
 xpathMatch = "//TABLE[@width]/TBODY/TR/TD[1]/FONT"; 
 // subject page
 GM_log("Using Listing match");
}

allEle = document.evaluate(
xpathMatch,
document,
null,
XPathResult.UNORDERED_NODE_SNAPSHOT_TYPE,
null);

GM_log("XPath got:" + allEle.snapshotLength + " items.");

wipeJerky(allEle);

function wipeJerky(theElements) {
var thisEle;
var whereIndex;
var jerkoff;
for (var idex = 0; idex < theElements.snapshotLength;
   idex++) {
   thisEle = allEle.snapshotItem(idex);
   GM_log("Inside: >" + thisEle.innerHTML + "<");
   for (var jdex = 0; jdex < jerkoffs.length; jdex++) {
     jerkoff = jerkoffs[jdex];
     whereIndex = thisEle.innerHTML.indexOf(jerkoff);
     if ( whereIndex >= 0) {
       GM_log('Looks like ' + jerkoff + ' is here.');
       GM_log(' at index:' + whereIndex + ' in the contained html.');
       container = thisEle.parentNode;
       // may have to back  up.
       if (!(container.nodeName.toUpperCase() == 'TR')) {
         container = container.parentNode;       
       }      
       container.parentNode.removeChild(container);
       GM_log('Removed ' + jerkoff + '.');
     } // found a-hole
   } // jerks
} // elements
}

The Answer's to Last Week's Quiz

1. This was kind of a trick question. In this particular case, it was a corporate, private industry job, but there was a guy that slept on the government job, too.
   
2. This one was a government job. There is a street in my town with the same name as the guy, which always reminds me of this scarily intense individual.
   
3. This one was a private industry job. Consulting companies love to find suckers to milk for all they're worth, public or private. The application violated software engineering principles like not putting more than 256 fields on a screen. (note of clarification - I didn't write the story I linked too, but it illustrates my point pretty well)
   
4. This one was private, too. Corporations, driven by market forces and the invisible hand, can make innovations in stifling, soul-crushing bureaucracy that make legendary government inefficiency look pretty candy ass.
   
5. Government job. Eerily smart people sometimes are motivated by non-monetary factors like the job being the only thing in any way technical near their home town. And no, I wasn't talking about myself here. This guy lived in Bloomfield, and I've never even been there.
   
6. Corporate job. Like Wally from Dilbert, I was not overly vigilant about making sure the thing had good batteries.
   
7. Corporate job. Some plucky individuals inside the company started a Wiki to try to make sense of all the acronyms.
   
8. Government job. He did have the sense to abandon the necklace thing when it got too small for his neck.
9. Government job. I have since gone on to higher levels of flunkydom.