The Freshner!

I have gone on sometimes about the tedium and monotony of my life and job here. That's because this is a blog. Also, under all the griping and kvetching there was hope and optimism, mainly hope and optimism that I wouldn't spend the rest of my life answering calls and emails from mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging idiots incapable of figuring out the simplest things on their own.

I did finally get my wish, and already my life is nothing like it was a year ago. Not only that, I didn't make some lame-ass incremental move, like from a guy who fields moronic questions about databases to a guy who fields soul-crushingly stupid questions about websites. It was something completely unexpected, which was wonderful in a way.

It started one morning when I grabbed my coat and gym bag from the laundry room in the usual daily struggle to get out of the house on time. I didn't really notice it until I got in the car, but there was an overpowering smell, like a very strong chemical banana smell. I had no idea what was going on, but I think one of those plug-in air-fresheners had accidentally exploded all over my coat. It made me woozy and I rolled down the car windows in the sub-zero temperatures.

That didn't really help, and the fumes killed a lot of my brain cells, zapping away a lot of the higher functions that had been lying dormant for years anyway. It was kind of like a Terry Schiavo moment for my intellect. I am sort of sorry not to be able to think about the kind of complex things I never really got to think about at my former job anymore, but now I have a higher purpose.

I had several lost weeks, wandering on the streets in a semi-conscious air-freshening state. I really made the crackhouse I hung out in at my lowest point a lot more livable. Kids on the street started calling me 'The Freshner'. 'He's so Fresh, He's the Freshner, Fresher than the man Hans Messner'. I think they were making fun of me, but they gave up and left me alone because there aren't really any good rhymes for 'Freshner'.

I moved on from the crack house, because my work there was done. I taught the residents a valuable lesson about taking pride in your dwelling space, so that the freshness would live on long after the crack they were smoking there neutralized the effects of my fumes.

My next home was the public library. An elderly librarian noticed my talents and took me under his wing. He told me I had a gift, and I had a responsibility to use this gift to benefit humanity and fight evil, or at least musty dank or generally unpleasant smells. He would also touch me a lot more than I was really comfortable with.

Around this time I was tracked down by my former employer. They called me and laid the sob story on me. They were too cheap to pay anybody anything near the market rate to do my old job. They begged me to come back, ignoring my inability to construct full and grammatically correct sentences and my tendency to space out for a minute or two at random times in the conversation. They were so desperate that I felt sorry for them and agreed to a meeting.

This was a really stupid move, but as I said before, the same chemicals which gave me my new found freshening powers also really fucked up my brain.

Sometimes when a person comes home from a long vacation, they notice the smell of their house, which they are unaware of while living there day after day. This can be disturbing when a strange smell makes itself known. This is exactly what happened when I walked into my old place of employment after being away for so long. When I met with my old colleagues the odor was even more pronounced, and I recognized it as the funk of desperation and failure. I knew what I had to do: I would hide under the conference room table while they conducted interviews. This damning smell would be masked, and candidates would not be scared away. I was NOT going to come back to work for them, though. Not even part time. I'd seen people do that and get suckered into going back to full time gradually.

This plan was successful, and after a handful of interviews a replacement had been found. I had saved the day. Of course, he would pretty much figure out on his own what a horrible mistake he had made in time, but as John Maynard Keynes said, in the long run we're all dead, so cut me a break. As I walked out, never to return, people who had paid me no notice for years asked each other 'who was that man who smells like one of those Renuzit things?' 'Let's call him 'The Freshner!' 'That's a good name for him!'

I am sure there's a question in everyone's mind right now: how am I making any money doing all this? Well, as with social media experts and Internet gurus, I don't actually make any money doing this, I make all my money as a motivational speaker. The freshening activities are brand-building efforts. In these days having your own personal micro-brand is very important.

Next time: The Freshner! negotiates an end to years of Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and solves NBC's even more intractable 'Leno problem'.

Art Clokey, the creator of Gumby, is no longer with us

As a kid, my entry point into the Gumby world was via Eddie Murphy's portrayal of Gumby as an aging, bitter show business hack. I was too young to catch the original Gumby show on TV as a kid. Later I rented some videos of the best of Gumby, and I very much enjoyed the claymation and rich imagination of Art Clokey, Gumby's creator. The real Gumby was nothing like the bitter jerk on Saturday Night Live. He was a cute and curious character, loyal to his pony pal Pokey.

Since then I have been a big fan of animation in general, including claymation. While I do love Pixar movies that are made by teams of hundreds using the latest technology, I have a soft spot for animation that seems to be the product of one or perhaps a few imaginative minds, like Gumby or Wallace and Gromit. The relative simplicity and the more down to earth nature of these cartoons has a special charm not found in bigger productions.

Just 2 days ago I was reading an interview with Clokey in a compilation of the writing and comics in WFMU's 'LCD'. Although Clokey was involved with the preachy and much lampooned (see 'Moral Orel') Christian cartoon Davy and Goliath, the man was in fact very open minded:

LCD: We talked a little bit before about if you used psychadelic drugs.

AC: From 1955 through 1966-67, I didn't touch the stuff. Then I got caught up with the Flower Children in San Francisco. I met Alan Watts - we smoked hash together in Japan!

LCD: Did you think that the drug experience would open up your creative powers in some way?

AC: I think it probably loosened up and broadened my imaginative inclinations. Actually, it made me more interested in how Gumby acted, how he acted toward other people.

Gumby also inspired the collective PaperRad, who have done their own Gumby cartoons, and no doubt many of the creators of claymation and animation in general of the last 40 years were inspired in some way by Clokey.

The day after reading the interview with Clokey, I read a post in the Cartoon Brew blog informing readers that Clokey had passed away at 89. While he led about as long a life as any of us can hope for, and was recognized for his talents and skills, as we all hope we will be, I'm still sad to hear about his passing. RIP, Mr. Clokey, and thanks.

I broke the joke, baybee!

I haven't mentioned it explicitly, but I'm sure some readers have detected the influence of Bob Zany in my posts. You can find his website, a clever parody of late 90s web design, here. Bob is something of a trailblazer, with his 'fix the joke, baybee' being a good example of pre-Twitter and social media crowdsourcing.

This inspired today's feature, 'I broke the joke, baybee!' You readers at home can play along after these examples to get you inspired.

Q: Which way to Carnegie Hall?
A: Practice

My wife, for example...please.

A guy asked me if I wanted a frozen banana. I said sure, but I'm not going to eat it until it thaws out.

A horse walks into a bar. The bartender asks: 'why so glum, chum?'

I would not belong to a club that didn't have me as a member.

Get the idea? Post your broken jokes in the comments!

Free and Worth Every Penny: 'What Matters Now' by Seth Godin

People need help. I know I often do. Lots of us are stuck in schlubby jobs, wage slaves to the man. While we can find some consolation in knowing we are not alone (a report from the Conference Board research group tells us only 45% of Americans are satisfied with their work, and only 51% find their jobs interesting), or can lose ourselves in youTube/Facebook/Twitter reveries of low-to-no productivity, we can also strive and aspire to something greater.

Online personalities like Gary 'Cash in on your Passion' Vaynerchuck and Guy 'I worked on the Mac team in the 80s' Kawasaki, blessed with some sort of genetic high-energy levels and delusional unchecked optimism are out there inspiring us, and thanks to the Internet access most of us have at our shitty jobs, it is easier for these guys to get their messages out than ever.

Seth Godin, motivational speaker, internet personality, and writer of lots of books, recently released the book 'What Matters Now', and it's free! I downloaded it myself, because I am always keen to find free stuff to put on my Kindle.

The book consists of 200-word essays about 'big ideas', so we're already in oxymoron territory right out of the gate. I don't care how your Twitter-Fu is, really great ideas can not be crammed into 200 words. Sometimes a 200 word bite will pique your interest and inspire you to dig further, but most of the essays are about single words (Enough. Productivity. Focus.) It is unlikely somebody is going to get on Amazon and start shopping for 'Focus' books.

There are many hotshots and celebrities of the inspirational/self-help/internet world within: both Vaynerchuck (THNX) and Kawasaki (Evangelism), and even good ole Tom 'In Search of Excellence' Peters (his essay is on Excellence, and every third character is an exclamation point! It's annoying! I get it! You! sound! like! a! fucking! Henry! Rollins! SONG!!!! AAUUUUGGGHHHHHHHH!), and many more. I was somewhat surprised that there's no essay from Oprah, but she is mentioned twice.

Ultimately the book comes off like a lot of feel-good 'Chicken Soup For The Short-Attention Spanned Soul' empty calorie bullshit. I felt like Seth was sharing something personal with me, specifically, he was showing me his high school yearbook and pointing out all the cool and popular people who signed it and wrote cool things in it.

I suppose I shouldn't be so negative and am only hurting myself with my curmudgeonly ways. Actually and sincerely I'm happy all these people have been successful and gotten rich and made it happen for themselves. But as surely as they didn't get rich by writing a lot of checks, most of them got rich by working, not by writing empty fake bullshit, and probably not by reading really vapid value-free garbage, either.

As far as free books go, I like the book of Elric stories Amazon was giving away a few weeks ago a lot better. Believe it or not, when Elric says 'Arioch! My Lord! I give you blood and souls!' it is somehow less corny than every single essay in 'What Matters Now'.

Things I need to do in 2010

Here's the beginning of the year post most of you have probably not even started to read, being as you are a bit burned out by 'end of year' and 'end of decade' retrospectives. If you missed those, the consensus seems to be that the 00's really sucked, although I completely disagree as my daughter was born in the last decade, and this was a decidedly good thing.

New Year's resolutions are somewhat trite and often fail, but there's nothing wrong with the idea of assessing oneself and trying to better yourself in general, so here goes...

1) Get out of the I.T. ghetto

This one is my 'get in shape', the resolution I've made pretty much every year since 1999. Usually all I accomplish is pissing off people in IT who actually enjoy devoting their lives to installing and then upgrading software written by other people, people who may or may not have had serious substance abuse and personality problems when they wrote said software. There is no shortage of really interesting things in the world, and eventually most people get shoved out of IT as they age whether they want that or not, so I'm as hopeful as ever that this will be my year as far as this resolution goes.

2) Write more

I don't think writing is my ticket out of the IT ghetto. It is something I do genuinely enjoy doing when I can motivate myself to do it, so I believe this would be a worthy goal. There's also that whole thing that even if 95% of everything is crap, 5% of 200 posts is twice as much non-crap as 5% of 100 posts. I found this post from 'The Last Psychiatrist' (one of the better blogs I've discovered in the past year) particularly inspiring.

3) Find someplace other than Soma to hang out

I did manage to get a lot of the writing I actually did in 2009 there, and I witnessed or overheard things said by hipsters and/or douchebags that made for some nice tweets there. A couple of days ago I had a really great cappuccino there in a huge bowl of a coffee cup that made me regret and feel embarrassed that I'd ever had a cappuccino in a cardboard cup with a plastic lid on it. I have nothing against the place, it's just that I need to shake up the routine a bit and see if there are other spaces in town which are not geared toward getting some money out of me and then shoving me out the door so more people can come in and spend money.

4) Go to Disney World

I am not a 'Cats in The Cradle' dad. I spend a lot of time with my daughter and enjoy it and appreciate that such time is finite, but on that note, she's not going to be a little kid forever and is probably at prime Disney World age this year.

5) Learn more about electronics

I've had a lot of fun playing with my Arduino last year, but while my programming knowledge is reasonably good, I'm not so strong on the hardware and electronics side.

6) Call in to The Best Show on WFMU.

I need to face my fear of the heave-ho. Also I think Tom is looking for some new blood, so it's a prime time to be a new caller.

7) learn to 'hover' on the unicycle.

I think that's what it calls when you stay in one place. I'm good if I keep moving, but as with the other items, here's another plateau I need to get over.

Reasons, Lame and Otherwise, for My Recent Silence

In November, inspired by Nanowrimo, the event where instead of writing a novel nobody will read over the course of many years, participants write one in a month, I decided to blog every day that month. I didn't, but November featured more entries than any month up until then. They were not all good entries, but as with Nanowrimo, that wasn't the point.

I fell back into my old infrequent writing ways when December rolled around. I really wish I could say I developed and overcame a crippling meth addiction, or have been working on a grand new idea that will make me millions and make all of you love me for my gift to humankind, but I can't. Here are the actual things I've been doing instead:

Listening to The Best Show on WFMU - this 3-hour call-in radio show featuring Tom Scharpling and sometimes his comedy partner Jon Wurster has a very loyal following, including myself. It requires a bit of warming up to, as it's not boom-boom-boom punchline-a-minute comedy, actually some of the funniest bits have set-ups that are several minutes long. A recent classic moment had Tom and comedian Paul F Tompkins dissecting an infomercial for the 10th Annual Gathering of The Juggalos.

Listening to Comedy Death Ray - There is a bit of a theme here. I don't really listen to the radio at all anymore (except for WFMU online), it's all podcasts now. This one features comedians as guests, but it has a lot of comic characters doing bits - Nick Kroll's 'Bobby Bottleservice' character, Paul F Tompkins as Ice-T presenting his latest boneheaded side business, and Brett Gelman as Billy Crystal doing a one-man show of impressions including a very profane Miles Davis.

Looking for a Job - I'm lucky to have my current job and all that. But I'm kind of an ADHD dude, and am bored out of my fucking mind by the current dayjob. Hence the recent descent into comedy addiction. If nothing else, I've found other distractions, which is good. People, I am finding, are not keen on hiring somebody to do something they haven't been doing for the last 15 years. I don't suppose I blame them.

Spending time with the kid and family - Turns out that, contrary to our experience watching people drop out of the Bush Administration, you don't have to quit or lose your job in order to 'spend more time with the family'. You just have to cut down on some of the stupid time-wasting shit you do, like:

Goofing on Twitter - I am @SoundSystemSDC there. I have nearly 600 followers, some of whom may actually be people and not just programs. I've especially loved playing what I'll call hashtag-games for lack of a better term. People will start a hashtag game and then everybody piles on with their version of the joke. Today's is #domesticatedrockstars, which has featured comedy gold like those listed below.

• Minivan Halen (@SoundSystemSDC)
  
• Cleanin' Jay Hawkins (@SoundSystemSDC)
  
• Massengill Scott-Heron (@sexbiscuit)
  
• U2 Knock It Off Already--Can't You See That Daddy Is Trying To Watch the Game? (@JoeBerkowitx)
• Better Homes and Soundgardens (@klyph)

Hey, having done that, can I have a book deal? Nick Douglas put that book out: 'Twitter Wit', but there's no reason I can't cash in too by cutting and pasting other people's creative blurbs into print form. If I'm gone for another month or so, you'll know that's what I'm up to.

Lots of decidedly implied violence: 'The Impossibly' by Laird Hunt

A wise man once said 'we are all of us unreliable narrators'. Actually I thought I was that man, but it looks like a guy named Frank Wu, who has more Google juice than I do, has also said this. People (myself included) are always deceiving themselves as to their own flaws and shortcomings, or re-shaping the narrative of their lives, perhaps to improve employment or sex partner prospects. This can even be found in a perverse negative way amongst people at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings trying to out do each others' stories of hitting bottom, or among Born-Again Christians trying to convince people they were the worst sort of scum of the earth before they saw the light, perhaps to make the change in their life seem more dramatic, or to convince 'bad' people that they are inferior to the convert in terms of their capacity for badness.

Given this fact we can forgive the narrator of The Impossibly for at times contradicting himself, even sometimes admitting a retelling of a particular story is more what he wants to believe happened than necessarily what actually happened. It's also important to take into consideration that as a freelancer working for some shady international crime syndicate, years of training have made him very reluctant to provide details about some of the ugly violence he's been involved in. The book is full of violence, but there is none of the gleeful graphic goriness found in, for example, a Tarantino film. Consider this retelling of a dinner with his colleague and perhaps friend, John:

We do not, sir, have turkey, nor do I have for you an explanation.
And all I am asking for is an explanation.
Please leave.
Etc.
We did, finally, and following something a little like the interaction I have just described, get our turkey - they had some, by chance it seemed, in the freezer. Neither of us at the end of eating it entirely believed it had been turkey, but it had been called turkey with maximum enthusiasm by the man whose head John had placed in the sink, and it had been appropriately garnished, so we didn't complain.

Our narrator's life, as it turns out, is not particularly glamorous. He spends a lot of time lying on the floor listening to the river, and attends to mundane tasks like finding the paperwork required in order to get his washing machine serviced.

He meets a woman who has trouble coming up with the word 'stapler' (perhaps English is her second language - it's not clear), and they fall in love for a while, which it becomes clear is a high point in an otherwise entirely unsatisfying life. Together with his new love, his friend John, and her friend, Deau (yes, 'John Doe' - and these two people are the only people with names in the entire book) - he takes a trip to a town in the country, which everybody very much enjoys, and a good time is had by all. Unfortunately prior to the trip he's given an assignment, which he at first accepts, but later backs out of. He also manages to put the wrong address on a package before sending it, another screwup that pisses off his boss.

He is then 'disaffirmed', a punishment involving humiliation and considerable violence. Again, nothing is spelled out, but it seems he was burned repeatedly, and ultimately stapled (with the aforementioned stapler) to the table.

He and the woman separate, he takes a job in a bakery and gets very fat, sings opera, wears shorts, and, as is always the case in these kinds of stories, gets drawn back into the organization. He seems to meet the woman again and re-connect with her, but it's unclear. Identities become more fluid and uncertain. Hats and sunglasses feature prominently. This part of the book culminates in his participation in a particularly horrifying event involving a feather duster, red duct tape, a 'miniature computer' (this was written in 2002 - it'd probably be a smart phone now), and following orders delivered by intercom in a pitch black room filled with people 'none of whom knew who had been chosen or who was coming or what beyond unpleasantness would occur'.

By this point both narrator and reader are quite disoriented and it becomes increasingly difficult to piece together what exactly is going on or what happened. Not that this difficulty is a bad thing necessarily - sometimes for example upping the difficulty level on a videogame makes it more rewarding, and humorless unimaginative types who demand linear stories devoid of ambiguity will have given up before page 10.

Our hero, such as he is, is sent to live in retirement - a perk described in brochures for the organization, as he recalls. His basic needs (food and shelter) are provided for by mostly unseen people, but he still hasn't left the violence behind -

It was into something like this last that I went late one evening to witness, and in a small way to participate in, an event. It was not a nice event - there was a lot of white rock and then the white rock became splashed with red - but it was diverting. At one point, after I had, more or less symbolically, taken a turn with the mallet, I remarked to another individual that what they event lacked in subtlety it made up for in vigor. Yes, it's colorful, the individual said. I feel like I've gotten some exercise. Yes, definitely, I think the upper portion of my forehead is damp. Yes, mine too. I won't dream at all tonight. Or if you do it will be pleasant. Why is that? No one knows.

Our narrator goes on to conduct an investigation to determine the identity of his assassin. As the book draws to a close, much is revealed, and there is a shock at the end - the magnitude of the shock will depend on how well the reader has been keeping up, and, indeed, on how the reader has chosen to make sense of the events.

I've read the book twice - something I rarely do - partially because I was fascinated with Laird Hunt's style and enjoyed the absurd sense of humor our hapless narrator possesses, and partially, I admit, to take another stab at making sense of the thing. Having done that, there is now a storyline I confidently believe is the 'true story', but that's not really the point. It's possible another person could read the book and have a different version of the story which they firmly believe is what happened, and that's perfectly OK with me. The book is like life that way - a series of almost random events described by unreliable sources, and our minds, desperate to see patterns, create patterns where there may be none.

30 years Later, I'm vindicated by the Cake Boss

Many people enjoy complaining about reality shows, because, like griping about there being no good Chinese food in town, it can really help you feel superior to those around you. Personally, I finished High School, and I love some reality shows, so the complaining-about-reality-shows magic doesn't work on me.

A recent favorite is the show Cake Boss, which is about a guy in Hoboken named Buddy Valastro, who has the classic New Jersey accent (which most people from New Jersey claim does not exist). He and his employees at Carlo's City Hall Bake Shop make the most incredibly inventive and artistic cakes imaginable, which are then eaten. This makes them like Tibetan Sand Paintings, only delicious.

In one episode there is a meeting of two highly creative cultures where Buddy and his crew make a robot cake for a hackerspace party. It's not some lame sheet cake with a computer generated robot decal on top, nor a flat cake cut in the shape of a robot. It was a 3-D motorized robot, driven by Buddy using remote control.

Another episode reminded me of my own brief experience with creative cake design. It was 1977 and I was in the Cub Scouts, which is pretty much the extent of my military experience. Anyhow, our pack was going to auction off some cakes to make some money, and there would be prizes for the best cakes.

I was very interested in airplanes, particularly airplanes from World War I, so I decided to make a Red Baron plane as a cake. This presented a couple of challenges. One was that mixing red food coloring in with vanilla icing resulted in pink icing, no matter how much food coloring I used. Another was the whole business of how to hold up the top wing of a biplane. I had already given up the idea of making the Fokker Dr. I triplane that people associate with the Red Baron, which was fine really, because earlier in his career he flew the Albatross DIII, a biplane. There were some monoplanes used in WWI, the Fokker EIII being a good example, but biplanes are just cooler.

I did not know what great building materials rice crispy treats and fondant, (used extensively by Buddy's team) are. I didn't even know what fondant was. My Dad and I did come up with the idea of using cardboard 'struts' to hold up the upper wing, and that worked quite well.

Needless to say, the biplane stood out among the cakes in the shape of race cars, and the cakes in the shape of cakes, but with a picture of a race car on top. I ended up winning 1st prize, but as is always the case, haters gotta hate, and when they found out there was cardboard in the cake it caused a minor controversy and some comments about 'oh no what if I accidentally eat the cardboard?'. I ended up getting my picture in the paper, but in the caption they described it as a 'pink airplane', which pissed me off, because as mentioned earlier I was not exactly thrilled that the red hadn't worked out.

30 years later I'm watching Cake Boss, and Buddy gets a job designing a cake for an Air Force event. Of course there has to be a an airplane as part of the tableau, and guess what, Buddy uses a wood scaffolding and builds the plane around it using rice crispy treats and fondant. Next to that airplane, my airplane looked like the Wright Brothers plane, or even that plane with a hundred wings that folds up like a lawn chair in that funny clip. Still, I was glad to see that using cardboard was perfectly fine, as even a cake genius like Buddy needed to use something non-edible but sufficiently rigid to hold the airplane up. The Air Force airmen didn't whine about 'oh noes, there is wood in there!' They loved the cake, and as always the episode ended with everybody happy and agreeing that life is wonderful, especially when you're doing something you love.

The Happiness Hat Will Solve all of Your Problems

This was in Gizmodo weeks ago, so this isn't exactly a scoop, but it really captured my imagination: The Happiness Hat Will Spike Your Skull.

happiness hat from Lauren McCarthy on Vimeo.

While the idea of having a spike poke my head to remind me to keep smiling is unpleasant, an honest self-assessment tells me I really could have benefitted from such a thing in my youth. Even when I am not in the grips of the black dog of depression, I'm not particularly a smiley guy. This caused much social friction for me throughout the years. At my first 'real' job, which I really hated (ostensibly I was writing C++ code for the Navy), I once had to endure a lecture in the break room from a woman who was brainwashed by Disney. It started with 'you know what I notice about you, Steve? You NEVER smile!' She then proceeded to let me know how wonderful my life was, and how I had a wonderful job and really should be happy. I wondered at the time: who would feel happy and lucky in the middle of a dressing down from the Cheer Police?

Though she was a loathsome person who would do things like sing two lines from the song 'Young At Heart' repeatedly over the course of several days, there is certainly some validity to what she was saying. People do like and feel more comfortable around smiling people. I think there's a Chinese Proverb that goes 'A man without a smiling face should never open a store'. Possibly it's 'A man with a smiling face should open a store'. Either way, if you frown all the time, stay out of the almost extinct small family owned store business.

In my case I believe it was always assumed I was depressed, or angry, or stuck up. None of these is particularly great in the winning friends and influencing people game. And even though it's true that I don't particularly enjoy being around people and only really like a few people, I am the first to admit you can really open a lot of doors and even keep people off your back if you smile a lot. It keeps HR from looking into your business, and for that alone it's worthwhile.

The hat is of course ridiculous, but it's also very cute and non-threatening, which probably helps. It looks like something a grandma may have made, and who but the most monstrous heel would mock a smiling person wearing a cute hat made by a loving grandmother? It's a really brilliant prototype, and some engineering love could make the device practically disappear. Perhaps engineers could even use the technology that allows Rush Limbaugh's drug-destroyed ears to function here. Sensors could administer a shock not to cause pain, but to stimulate the face muscles to smile! The day will come when we'll never have to look at grumpy people again.

Of course, then we'll look elsewhere for emotional cues, and we'll be back where we started. Sigh. Why bother with any of these ideas? It's all futile.

Geisy Arruda of Brazil Keeps Berkeley Naked Guy's Fight Alive

Geisy Arruda, a Brazilian student at Bandeirante University in Sao Bernardo do Campo (near Sao Paulo), managed to get herself expelled for wearing a skirt that was deemed 'too short' by the people who get to decide these things, although in the pictures the skirt was no shorter than any skirt you'd see in a bar in a college town on any given night. At least that is what I am told.

This is strange to me for many reasons. Apparently it was not only the uptight, made-for-80s-college-exploitation-movies administration prudes who chided Arruda for dressing like 90s fake TV lawyer Ally McBeal, who also fought the power by wearing short skirts (she was also on a hunger strike, although they never explained why). Her fellow students also jeered her, and some are being suspended for that reason. Also, isn't Brazil famous for men and women running around naked or nearly naked? Somebody wiki that for me, please.

Geisy's story reminds me of Berkeley's Naked Guy, aka Andrew Martinez, who stirred up controversy in the early 90s by wandering about the UC Berkeley campus with no clothes on (he did wear sandals, and sometimes compromised by wearing a bandana, but not on his head). Naked Guy made the talk show circuit, but his story took a sad turn, as after college he had to deal with homelessness and schizophrenia, and committed suicide in prison at 33.

It would be easy to chalk up Martinez's naked activism to the mental illness he struggled with, but that would be disrespectful to his memory and to those who suffer from mental illness. It's possible for a mentally ill person to still have a mind of his own and strong beliefs. Geisy's story reminds us that people are still strangely uptight, and I'll be the first to admit that in above 80 degree weather, having to wear clothes can really suck. I'm also pretty sure this kind of thing drives the sort of people who founded the Creation Museum batshit insane, and I have to support that.

You can't say I didn't blog today!

dentist lunch soul crushing boredom home wiggly dog hackerspace lasers lcd displays more lasers solar cell monitoring devices junk food the best show on wfmu featuring andrew w k twitter twitter twitter you are on reserve battery power shut down or you will lose data what does it all mean

Knee-Jerk News

Today the world celebrated the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The guy from Jesus Jones who sang 'Right Here Right Now' could not be reached for comment. MTV organized a concert in Berlin featuring U2, and came under fire for erecting a 2 meter wall to keep out people with no tickets. Several people were tasered while trying to climb the wall to escape during one of Bono's speeches.

A nameless storm wrecked havoc in El Salvador this past weekend. Meteorologists gave the storm no name in honor of Clint Eastwood's 'Man With No Name' character in the Sergio Leone films. Kanye West stirred up more controversy with a televised comment that 'George Bush does not care about South Americans'.

'A Christmas Carol' beat 'Michael Jackson's This is It' at the box office this past weekend. Film-makers blame circulating internet spoilers about the ending of 'This Is It' for the poor showing.

Nokia recalled 14 million phone chargers after discovering a youTube video that demonstrated how the chargers can hard boil an egg, and then deliver a fatal shock.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average surged 203 points today. In a press conference, Ben Bernanke announced that this marks the end of the recession for the cocaine and prostitution industries, which are believed by many economists to lead the rest of the economy by one quarter.

In the sports world, fans have been bewildered by the recent lightening of 90s home run great Sammy Sosa's skin. This is the first time a baseball player's appearance has changed drastically in a short time for no apparent reason.

An Arizona State University poll released today shows half of Arizonans are avoiding large crowds because of the flu. The poll also revealed that half of visitors to Arizona are avoiding large crowds because they're full of Arizonans.

Tonight on Curb Your Enthusiasm

Larry goes to buy a tackle box for his friend Funkhouser, but gets into a heated argument with a clerk who won't sell him one because he doesn't have a fishing license.

Later, while discussing the script for the Seinfeld reunion, Larry screams at a waiter who gave him Lime Diet Coke, when he had asked for Diet Coke with real lime in it. Seinfeld tries to rein Larry in, but this makes Larry so angry he tells Seinfeld the reunion show is off.

At Funkhouser's birthday party, Larry presents Funkhouser with a gift card for the Sporting Goods store that refused to sell him the tackle box. Funkhouser expresses his disappointment with the gift, using that voice of his that sounds like something from a radio PSA about symptoms of Acid Reflux disorder. Susie overhears this exchange, and cusses out Larry, which is hilarious because she's a woman.

Finally Larry is ejected, and on the way out he sees a plate of glasses of Diet Coke with slices of real lime on the rims. He tries to grab one, which prompts Funkhouser to punch him in the face. The scene freezes right before Funkhouser's fist makes contact with Larry's face, and the signature tuba theme begins playing.

Anyone can hate this: the 'nathlete' billboard.

Like Maxfield Parrish, I dislike billboards. In a more pragmatic way, I understand that billboards featuring infants pimping out tire stores or car dealerships are good for the economy: the most likely local family business can use the advertising, and the billboard rental company employs people, too.

Still, most billboards have no reason to exist. I'm thinking of the 'Integrity: Pass it On' billboards. I don't really need to be inspired while I'm driving. I need to pay attention to the road.

A particularly egregious offender that's annoyed me more than I should allow billboards to annoy me is the Natural Light billboard defining a nathlete as 'holding two natty's while doing 'the robot''. There's just so much to dislike about this.

First off, the definition makes no sense. 'Holding natty's while doing the robot' is an act, a 'nathlete' is a person. See the urbandictionary entry. You don't hear a sports broadcaster say: 'wow! She really gymnasticed that one!' You probably wouldn't define mathlete as 'performing implicit differentiation in a competition in order to mark off a checkbox for your MIT application'.

Second: referencing the robot is a really lazy way to go for the laffs. The go-to breakdancing move for the 'look at whitey trying to breakdance' joke used to be the worm, but now it's the robot, possibly because this requires even less athletic abiliy. You can probably do better. Of course, if your job is writing copy for Natural Light ads, you probably can't.

Third: there are much better beers than Natural Light. More importantly, there are much better CHEAP beers than Natural Light (Pabst Blue Ribbon, Milwaukee's Best). There are even better horrible beers to drink ironically than Natural Light (Keystone Light).

In conclusion, the only way this billboard could be worse would be if it somehow made light of alcohol-fueled date rape. And that's all I have to say about that.

This post brought to you by urbandictionary.com: helping people over 30 understand what the kids are going on about since 1999

The results are in!

I lost to some of the most moronic blogs imaginable! I flopped at the Fish Fry! Back to Brownsburg for me.

I should post a link, but I already deleted the email.

'I am riddled with ADHD' - Glenn Beck's Goon Squad 'Faces Their Storm', attempts to read.

Tim Heidecker on Twitter alerted followers that Mr. Crocodile tears has rounded up another ghost writer to help him crap out yet another book guaranteed to sell to the teabag crowd. The site calls it 'an instant Holiday Classic', and it really is a tribute to the hack or hacks that were able to crank out reams of schmaltz on such short notice.

This one looks to be a tearjerker: The Christmas Sweater. There's even a 'Christmas Sweater' bus, which is probably a 9-12 Project bus that's been repainted for this latest exercise in pumping up Glenn Beck's ego while separating his fool followers from their money. There are probably 'Christmas Sweater' t-shirts, sweatshirts, coffee mugs, keychains, and more to follow.

Readers (many of whom admit that they're not really readers, which seems appropriate since Beck is not really a writer) are invited to share their stories. I know I did, and so should you. Of course by 'your story', I mean some fanciful and hopefully amusing work of fiction, which is maybe not what Glenn Beck means. That is, if his dim flickering candle in the wind intellect has any awareness that the site even exists.

To inspire you, here are some excerpts from the 'Face Your Storm' website:

Honestly Glenn, if I had not read that book, I don't know if I'd still be here. - Jennifer

Glenn, you may have inadvertently saved my life, because I found the courage to keep going and face my storm. - Sherri

Thank you for sharing this remarkable story with us, it truly was divinely inspired. Now all I have to worry about is my friends being able to read through the tear stained pages.- Philip

Let me start this off by saying I'm not much of a reader. I decided to give your book a chance, because I am a fan of yours. “The Christmas Sweater” was the first full book I've read in probably 3 or 4 years...I finished your book this morning. I didn't go to church this morning, but God met with me in my room as I read your story. - David

I read the book in two hours and I have seldom been so deeply moved and affected. I have been hiding from that storm in a bottle of wine and I have been stuck in the cornfield...I have a long journey ahead of me, but I am hoping that I just discovered the will and the willingness to make the first step, because of your book. What a gift, and what a story. - K

Thank you again. You have become a voice I turn to, to lift me up and help me understand this world we much live in. - Marilyn

I’m not a crier. I ‘misted’ when my kids were born, but I’m a tough worker who prefers to use humor to get past tough situations. I bought An Inconvenient Book because it looked informative. I bought The Christmas Sweater, because I thought it would be interesting. I’m travelling for work, so I’m sitting in my hotel room with tears streaming down my face as I realize you are writing a fiction based on your life, but it could easily be based on my life, with few exceptions. I have come to realize that even in my hard work, I’m still standing next to the corn field facing the storm.

This story has helped me make a life-altering decision that will bring my life, I believe, to the level God has reserved for me.

- Don

I am not a reader. I think I am intelligent, but, like you, I am riddled with ADHD. That awful H in there has me to where I cannot read. Well, today I BOUGHT your book and READ your book. - Bob

I guess I have a different idea of what constitutes a story than these people do. Apparently a story is a way to fellate Glenn Beck using only words. I have to admit, though, that crying my eyes out and getting a visit from God who will personally thank me for buying Glenn Beck's book sounds like it would be pretty interesting.

I attempted to leave a story, but it didn't show up. It probably has to be approved by some e-mail reading flunky, and since I didn't thank Glenn Beck for saving my life by hitting me with the lightning bolt of wisdom (presumably while I was standing in a cornfield, which apparently figures heavily in this book), it's unlikely it will be published. But as Glenn Beck shows us, anybody can write a book, even if they've rinsed the neurons out of their brain from years of drug and alcohol abuse, even if they themselves haven't read a book since high school. So to hell with the website, write your own book. Nanowrimo is already underway, but with enough Ritalin, I'm sure you can catch up.

Truly, the man is doing God's work. God Bless America, and God Bless...oh, I can't say it, not even as a joke. Fuck Glenn Beck. With a corn cob fresh out of 'the cornfield', dipped in turpentine.

Goldman Sachs Stole Your Flying Cars, Too

"Then finance started sucking people from all over. You'd walk around our trading floor and there were guys who were math Ph.D.s and physics Ph.D.s, and chemists, and lawyers, and doctors - there were doctors on our trading floor, who trade, you know, the health care sector. The bubble in financial assets had a derivative bubble in people. Some of these physicists should be doing physics; some of these computer scientists should be doing computer science. Doctors should be curing people! It's not a bad thing."

-'Anonymous Hedge Fund Manager', 'Conversations with HFM, December 2008 - July 2009', Fall 2008 issue of n+1 magazine.

The recent economic implosion has wreaked much visible havoc, but nobody has really looked into all the invisible damage it caused, at least not until this brave (and actually quite funny - check out the article if you have the time and a dollar) Hedge Fund Manager spoke out.

Some historical perspective might be helpful. Back in the early 90s, I saw a presentation by one Larry Smarr, then the director of NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications) at the University of Illinois. He had been using supercomputers to simulate black holes colliding into each other! They had to solve 10 simultaneous differential equations, and then plot really amazing pictures. Black holes! Crashing into each other! Really amazing shit!

Clearly the combination of brain and computing power at NCSA would soon unlock the mysteries of the universe. That's not what happened, though. A small group within NCSA developed an application called a browser, which made it easier to navigate the then new World Wide Web. This application was called Mosaic, and it later became Netscape Navigator, which was a pretty good name.

In no time, the dot net bubble was upon us. Our country's (and let's face it, every country's) best and brightest (and, let's face it, not particularly best or bright) dropped whatever they were doing, whether it was curing cancer or developing cheap and clean forms of energy, and flocked to web design companies and dot coms, devoting all their mental energies to making animated gifs of construction workers, coming up with the ultimate elevator pitch, or optimizing servers to allow people to buy books or CDs (remember those?) or pet food as quickly as they could. They were all, every one of them, going to be rich. Grad school was for suckers. Physics was for losers.

In a development that shocked almost nobody, the bubble burst, and everybody went back to doing whatever it was they had done before. One or two people did get rich, and lived on Carribean Islands they bought, but mostly people just had to keep working. It was OK, though, because a couple weeks later, the finance and housing bubbles were underway.

Again, thousands of brilliant people full of potential abandoned their chances to bring about radical change in the world and maybe immortality as great scientists alongside Newton or Darwin. They applied their brilliance to something maybe, in its own way, more incredible and seemingly impossible: they repackaged incredibly shitty investments as seemingly good investments. Instead of simulating heavenly bodies with supercomputers, they ran models based on a lot of wishful thinking which had actually produced some pretty cool looking equations.

So in addition to to the financial ruin and chaos, there has been a great opportunity cost of tremendous advances that would have actually benefited mankind. We can only speculate as to the extent of the damage, but we can be pretty sure we would have had the following were it not for these bubbles:

• Flying cars
• Time Travel
• Robots that do the laundry, including folding it and putting it away
• Cure for most forms of cancer
• Submarine cars
• Amphibious cars
  
• Submarine/amphibious/flying cars
• Life-like sex robots that make internet porn look pretty lame
• All-Terrain spider chairs that replace wheelchairs
• Moon Colonies
• Mars Colonies
• Dogs that can talk
• A machine that extracts fuel from excrement
• 3D movies that don't require glasses
• Drugs that only cause brain damage that's reversible

I'm sure there are more, but I have to stop here. It's just too painful to think about it.

For those of you just joining us...

This blog was recently nominated for Linking Indiana's 'Indiana's Favorite Blog' Contest. I'd be lying if I said it was nominated by somebody other than I. It seemed harmless enough, but then doubt set in. It was like signing up to participate in the talent show at your town's Founding Fathers Fish Fry - it seems like a harmless, low-stakes thing to do, but then you're hit with the realization that tomorrow people can call you 'the guy who bombed at the fish fry'.

Anyhow, the damage having been done, welcome to those who did make their way here from that page. I should probably provide a bit of background and a sampling of past posts.

Redneck Playground Of Horror is as good a place to start as any. This is a re-telling of my family's visit to a horrifying playground in Bloomington - pregnant teens, Eminem wannabes, possible victims of Looney Tunes explosions - they're all here.

Continuing the Indiana theme, we have the Grubb Series, all about Bloomington's local curmudgeon and crusader for something or other, David Grubb.

I Sulte Presbush features some pictures of 'Grubb Coutry'

I'm Santa Claus, Dammit discusses his trial for slugging a kid who wouldn't take candy from him.

Indiana Outlaw on youTube points you to the efforts of 50YearRanger to document Grubb's legendary town hall appearances. He was bringing the crazy to town halls WAY before the health care debate.

While I've always had a great time in Ireland, my post Fun Facts About Limerick, Ireland really annoyed some irony-impaired Irish readers (others caught on that I was joking around).

The post that got the most hits ever was the post about our visit to the Creation Museum in Kentucky: Elitist Liberals Visit The Creation Museum. This one was put up on reddit by a friend (I swear it wasn't me this time) and I pulled in crazy hits, which I should have taken advantage of by selling ad space for male enhancement potions, but I didn't.

Having let it out of the bag that I'm a liberal-leaning and not at all religious person, I've pretty much sealed my fate as far as losing this LinkedIn contest thingy goes. To those who stumble upon this blog for that or any other reason, welcome, and I really really promise to get on it as far as posting more than once a month.

The Balloon Boy Rhyme that I should have posted days ago

Balloon boy's dad enjoys dangerous toys
when he heard the voice of caution, always said 'fuck that noise'
He rose his children to love all the dangers
Mom and Dad sat them down, said 'take candy from strangers'

Then one morning in the sky he saw his toy pie
Thought his son was up there, and was sure to die
He called 911 but first called the paparazzi
He regretted not being his kid's safety Nazi

The balloon soon came down but the boy wasn't in it
Twitter fools twitted on, they were in it to win it
It turned out the boy was just in the garage
CNN said 'fuck this', got the hell out of dodge.

Now the dad wears a shirt saying 'Worst Father Ever'
And the fools on Twitter aren't feeling too clever.

Yeah boyyee, etc, all that, gnome sayin'.

The Baron Hall Health Care Town Hall in Bloomington - Sept 2, 2009

I have been putting off writing this recap for nearly 2 weeks now. In a way, I dreaded going to the Baron Hill Town Hall at Bloomington High School North. By now, everybody has heard of the Town Halls for Health Care reform across the nation, featuring buffoons shouting out talking points from their health insurance company sponsors (when they even bother to be coherent - other times they're bursting into tears screaming 'I want my country back' or spouting non-sequiturs about the Third Reich).

All that said, I felt like I HAD to be there, as part of the pro-reform crew. So I left work a bit early and I got there a bit before 5 (the event was to start at 6). There was already a long line, but I asked a friendly looking older woman in a pro-healthcare reform t-shirt was there a table or place to go if you were pro-reform, and was directed to a table where some helpful volunteers had signs for us to hold and bottles of water, too. So I picked up a sign and bottle of water (very much appreciated - it was kind of hot) and looked despairingly at the line. The woman said, oh, you should find some friends in line and wait with them, so I found a cluster of friendly pro-reform people and hung out with them, and held up my sign for a bit, although I didn't really see any photographers or news reporters around.

The anti-reform types had home-made signs where they'd written things in marker on white poster paper. I really couldn't make out most of the words, as they were hard to read, but most seemed to have the word 'Obamacare' and variations of the 'don't kill Granny' theme. One guy had a sign with Rush Limbaugh's face and the local affiliates call letters on it, just in case you had never heard of this Rush guy or had and wanted to check out his radio show. One scowling guy walked by with a shirt showing the 'Obama as the Joker from Batman' image, with the word SOCIALIST below the picture. We can only hope Santa is going to bring him a copy of 'How to Win Friends and Influence People' this Christmas.

Around 5:15 or so they let us in. The event was held not in the gym, but in an auditorium. The auditorium was not quite full, but there was a good turn out. A guy asked if he could sit next to me. I said yes, not knowing where he stood, but it turned out he was a pro-reform and pro-labor dude, so he was cool. We looked at the 'myths about the bill' handout we were given on our way in, and we laughed about the one about insurance companies being required to perform abortions, because we thought it unlikely that an actuary or adjuster or insurance salesman would be performing abortions whether they were required to or even if they wanted to.

Mayor Kruzan introduced Baron Hill around 6pm. They got a standing O, the first of many that night. Mayor Kruzan asked the crowd to say 'Yay!' and then 'Boo!' to 'get it out of our systems'. It was a nice thought anyway.

Hill started out reading an article by T.R. Reid (author of 'Healing America') which debunked various myths about other countries' health care systems (the usual 'my cousin's girlfriend works for a guy from Canada and he says he had to wait 3 months to see a doctor' sort of things).

After that it was time to take questions and statements from the audience. Any pretense of civility quickly went out the window. A woman told a story about how her father had to divorce his dying wife in order to avoid certain financial ruin, and the anti-reform people booed her. She turned around and told them off: 'I can handle your booing, because it's nothing compared to what I went through!'. A young man who worked full time and suffered from post traumatic stress problems after being robbed at gunpoint at an ATM told of his difficulties paying for treatment and obtaining insurance. He was booed, too. A peanut gallery in the back would shout sarcastic 'yeah right!'s and 'you lie!'s throughout the event.

Several times Baron Hill would appeal to the audience: 'We can turn this into the Jerry Springer show if you want, but let's show people Hoosiers are better than that!' It started to remind me of seeing Fugazi shows in the 90s. Ian MacKaye would keep stopping the show to tell people in the front to stop beating each other up in the mosh pit or they wouldn't play.

The anti-reform folks got to have their say, too. The scowly guy with the Obama as Joker t-shirt took the opportunity to ask why couldn't people videotape the event, call for tort reform (apparently the cure-all for all healthcare issues according to the anti-reform people), then railed against the Cash for Clunkers program, then things started to degenerate into him yelling a lot of things about 'Get Off My Back! Get Off Our Backs!', and the amen corner gave him some applause.

A young journalism student also asked the 'why can't we videotape' question. Baron Hill kind of lost his cool here, at first saying 'people take bits of video and post them on youTube and misrepresent my event', and then saying 'This is my event. Nobody tells me how to run my office!' which was not the smoothest thing to do. The Huffington Post picked up on this one.

There were, again, standing ovations from both contingents, and if I had to guess, I'd say there was a fairly even split, possibly with the majority of the crowd being pro-reform. The place never quite filled up, which surprised me, but possibly a lot of people decided to do something different with their Wednesday night than try to hold down their dinner while watching angry people who mainly just hate the president and want him to fail trying to shout down and intimidate people who were ready to address an unacceptable status quo.

Speaking of unacceptable status quo, a man made the good point that 'when you see plastic bottles in gas stations collecting money to help a child with leukemia, you know something is terribly wrong with our system.' An amputee who built prosthetic limbs recalled the time his health insurance company (Anthem, now Wellpoint) told him a prosthetic leg was 'not medically necessary' and denied his claim.

The local hero of the pro-reform movement, Dr. Rob Stone of 'Hoosiers For a Commonsense Health Care Plan' was given an opportunity to speak, and he got the loudest and most enthusiastic ovation of the night. Baron Hill joked 'Don't think about running for Congress, Dr. Stone'. Dr. Stone is an Emergency Room doctor and thus intimately familiar with the problems with the current system. His soft-spoken, rational and thoughtful manner stood in stark contrast to the shrill, 'regurgitate talking points first, think later' members of the anti-reform contingent. Dr. Stone is in favor of a single-payer system. Baron Hill said he was not in favor of a single-payer system, but did support a public option. He also said he gave a public option a 50-50 chance of surviving.

I'd like to say there were some lighthearted moments during the hour-long event, but the only one I can think of is a young (high school?) guy asking a question along the lines of 'on page 694, there is reference to a healthy ways committee (or some such). Does this mean the government is going to tell me what to eat, or stop companies from making certain foods?' He was reading a pre-written question, in a way that sounded like he was reading it for the first time. It was hard to tell if he was serious or joking. Baron Hill's answer: 'No.'

Another minimal moment of amusement came when we left the high school to see a 60-foot-tall headless bald eagle waiting for us. It was a rather absurd and unexpected sight. It was a hot-air balloon, and it had a 'Tea Party' sign on it. The headlessness was due to the fact that the balloon was not fully inflated at the time I first saw it. A woman asked the guys in the basket 'what insurance company is paying for that?' I never saw the balloon take off, so maybe it was just there as a static display. Possibly the giant Tea Party Eagle is their version of the giant inflatable rats that show up at Union rallies. I hadn't heard of or seen it before.

There were heated exchanges in the parking lot, but no fingers were bitten off, nor were there fisticuffs or brandished weapons. I made a point of thanking the young guy who told the story about being robbed at an ATM for telling his story in spite of the jeers, and he was grateful, but still somewhat shaken and upset about the hateful reception he'd received. It felt like it took forever to get out of the parking lot (but there were no fender benders or road rage), and though I was encouraged by the strong showing of pro-reform people, the hateful and goonish behavior of the anti-reform people left me with a slightly sick feeling which I've only been able to re-visit just now.