My Final Thoughts on This Seemingly Endless Election

On election day, in one week, Barack Obama needs to win the presidency. I don't say this because I think Obama is the best of all possible choices. Neither do I believe that John McCain is the most suited man for the position. Both are good men. However, we exist in a country which has pigeonholed itself into a two-party system of government. We can throw up our hands and bemoan the lack of alternate choices but when it comes down to it a decision must be made. The day will come. It's been said that democracy is the best system of government simply because all others are worse. I believe the same principle holds true when considering the candidacy of Senators Obama and McCain. Obama is the best choice because the other is worse. A McCain presidency will open the door to all kinds of terrible disasters for this nation.

I've been studying history for most of my life. Learning about the terrible things men do to each other on a regular basis has erased almost every bit of idealism in me. This is not to say that I am an unwavering skeptic or an unreachable cynic. I believe wholeheartedly in this country, the United States of America. I believe that human beings are capable of great good and great beauty. I believe in humanity itself. I also believe that some of the most terrible evils in this world happened because people did the wrong things for the right reasons, and that some of the greatest good happened because people did the right thing for the wrong reasons. Some of the supporters of Senator McCain are good people, with good intentions, but they are making the wrong choice. Those on my side who insult them based on their bad political reasoning are doing the wrong thing. We are all Americans. We all have to share this little boat on stormy seas, together.

Rain, Rain Go Away

The villagers weep and curse the skies. The driving, endless rain has not stopped for a full three weeks. Once-green fields have been reduced to oceans of brown mud interspersed with a tapestry of deep puddles. The beautiful high wheat that had soared upward under the bountiful sun of the majority of the summer has been trampled into the ground, along with all expectations for the harvest. Gently babbling brooks have become angry and dangerous torrents. Small ponds have become giant, murky lakes. A cow was lost to the water. Then a child. Then several houses. The old Gods have been taken out of their hidden places in the depths of the night, prayed to, sacrificed to, begged. It's not going to be an easy Winter.

The Sun Is Rising on Mars Right Now

I used to go to that bar but they stopped serving anything but the House Special.

I sat out on the street, the street corner, everything pale in the ugly, washed-out light. Water on the asphalt, water on the concrete, water in the air. Eyes burning from peering through the curls of cigarette smoke that danced in front of my face.

This fuckin city.

You're not getting away, and that's the truth. If you happen to hold a deluded notion of escape somewhere in that empty beer can of a brain of yours, it is very, very wrong. You have some bills to pay. I'm going to collect them.

End Hiatus

I left the house with the taste of plantain on my tongue
The world was a big blue ocean of forgiveness
Whirring past under the tires of my bicycle

hiatus

Reading today:

"Leaving Dirty Jersey" by James Salant
"The Irish Army in the Congo, 1960-1964" edited by David O'Donoghue

Reading today:

"Bat Bomb: World War II's Other Secret Weapon" by Jack Couffer

weird guy on a three-legged chair, under a streetlight

I don't even want to go into the details. I mean, it just didn't make any sense, the whole damn thing. One minute you're standing three feet from the world's most famous oak tree and then BAM, you're getting hit over the head with a piece of the world's cheapest particle board. I mean, of course the sun has to rise every single day. Plants need sunlight and living things need plants. The sun gives us everything. It won't go out and buy you a burger or anything, but since when has Mercury or Jupiter ever been the basis for every living thing on the miserable rock we inhabit? Answer me that one, smart guy! You've got your red apples, why can't they make an apple with an interesting color? A purple apple or something. I'd go on down to the store and say, "Grocer man, bag me up one of those juicy purple apples!" Any day of the week. And days of the week, what's the deal with that? Can't we have an extra one or two once in a while? Who parcels out our days in increments of seven anyway? One minute it's Monday morning and then BAM, all of a sudden it's a Thursday evening three years from now. And not a single interesting day of the week in between. You could even put in suggestions as to what the day should entail or something. Say once in a while make the calendar go Monday, Tuesday, Apple Pie Day, Wednesday, etc. Hell, why hasn't any government tried to get advertising sponsors for days of the week? Monday, brought to you by Chevrolet. Tuesday, brought to you by Six Flags New Jersey. That kind of thing. Going with my earlier remarks, you could even invent some new days and have them named by companies. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Ben and Jerry's New Flavor Snappy Crappy Day, Thursday, etc. We could get some free Ben and Jerry's or something on that day, which would be amazing. I mean, one day you're harvesting the world's finest heirloom tomatoes, and the next you're fishing pickled eggs out of a grimy jar at a county fair in the Oklahoma panhandle. What's the deal with that? Smell is the most important sense, because it's the one people pay the least attention to. Smell is the sense people focus the least on. Sure you use it to pick up various inputs in your environment, but you don't strain to smell things nearly as often as you strain to hear, see, taste or feel something. OK, you can debate the taste thing. That's life for you.

nighttime

The sunset spoke to the moon, "the world is almost yours". The moon went up over the lake, reflecting on the water in the darkness. A couple of people were rowing a little boat over the water, but you couldn't tell what color the boat was painted simply by the moonlight, no sir. A bat asked a tree, "what does the sunset look like?" There was a raccoon sitting under the tree, thinking about food, as raccoons do. Moss grew under the tree, but you couldn't tell what color it was by the little bit of moonlight that filtered through the leaves.

Probably green.

Reading today:

"The Baltic and the North seas" by David Kirby

Reading today:

"Q" by Luther Blissett

Reading today:

"In Pharaoh's army : memories of the lost war" by Tobias Wolff
"Duma Key" by Stephen King
"Q" by Luther Blissett

Reading today:

"Duma Key" by Stephen King

Chuck Asay

I've been reading the editorial cartoons of Chuck Asay, crazy old man and conservative cartoonist, for a good while now. Basically trying to get a feel for what conservatives think about the world and current events. You can't live in a damn echo chamber, ya know. Here are a few observations I've noticed about his cartoons. You can find them at gocomics.com/chuckasay, if you really absolutely want to.

1. He always portrays groups of liberals as confused, popular movements. Conservative, right-wing opinions are always come to after careful deliberation. Left-wingers and liberals are always portrayed as one person shouting to a big, confused group, while an internally focused right-winger looks sadly on from the periphery.
2. He often portrays the conservatives as looking glum, almost resigned. Usually there is some kind of commentary in the main portion of the strip, while someone dressed as a stereotypical blue-collar worker or an old person looks on from the side, grimly accepting the sad consequences of the world.
3. The sad-faced person on the edge of the strip often asks a question. This keeps Chuck from having to offer any answers to the problems he addresses. It's usually just a rephrasing of "What about me?"
4. Any minority or foreigner is depicted as stereotypically as possible. Muslims are always brandishing scimitars, usually held to the throats of US troops or Uncle Sam, and they are always dressed in desert robes. Black people most often have crazy distorted features. Asians are slant-eyed pygmies, etc.
5. The strips usually set up a problem and then challenge it. As referenced above, they do not ever offer an alternative solution, but simply say that the existing situation is wrong, hurtful, against the natural order of things, or something similar.

So check out Chuck Asay, if you must. He's not going to stop making comic strips and he's not going to change his mind. He's a force of nature and can be either observed or ignored as such. Do as you please.

Reading today:

"The Roman Empire from Severus to Constantine" by Pat Southern

interlude

Hunger forces the young male of the species out of his burrow to search for food on the forest floor.

Reading today:

"The Roman Empire from Severus to Constantine" by Pat Southern

what's in a name?

Well there used to be a trend in history, geography, etc. to give every foreign name an English-language equivalent that didn't sound anything like the original but was completely palatable to the tongues of Anglophones. We've gotten past that bit of dumbassery, but have replaced it with a modern mindset that can be just as stupid, at times.

Since the '70's, there has been this trend to use more "accurate" names for everything. It's a great idea, one that I wholeheartedly support. However, just like any time people decide they are going to "right old wrongs" or "correct old prejudices", this has lead to some major stupidity. This kind of thing always leads to some grandstanding asshats who have decided they will right their own ticket by creating a controversy that never existed in the first place (see: Gall-Peters projection). It also leads to a constant game of one-upsmanship, where everybody tries to be more "accurate" than everybody else.

The end result has been in the last couple decades, the names for historical figures and even places on the map have changed several times. There's an ever-changing "consensus" among the historical community about what a figure will be named. This can cause confusion amongst people who aren't familiar with the jargon or with the specific naming debate surrounding whatever specific historical figure (there’s always a naming debate) , and alienates people from the study of history even further.

In map-making the trend has been to put the "local" name on atlases, something that can also cause a lot of confusion. I can use examples from the atlas I own and use often, an atlas which I had to buy for a class a couple of years ago. On my atlas, Lake Ladoga is written as Ladozhskoye Ozero, which is its proper transliterated from the Russian and Cyrillic name. But how does that help the average student who is looking for Lake Ladoga?

All I'm saying is that yes, we need to use more authentic names for things, this is true. A lot of the old ways of referring to historical figures and places, at least in English, come from the retarded scholarly tyranny of the Oxonians, who were more interested in contrasting the rest of the world to their bullshit Whig history than honest scholarship. But let's avoid one-upsmanship, grandstanding, and try to keep the new names and naming debates from resulting in a garbled discourse. That's it.

Here's a little thing I've come up with to show the importance of names and naming, and also the unimportance. I've copy and pasted a section from the Wikipedia article on the Genpei War of Medieval Japan and replaced all the names of people with names that I got from the IMDB for the hit daytime drama Days of Our Lives, and all the names of places with names of places in Arkansas. Enjoy!

The Turning of the Tide
Bo Brady, suspicious of the strength of his cousin, launched a series of attacks against Lucas. Lucas had sought to take for himself lands controlled by Bo, which had earlier belonged to Lucas's father. Though the two reconciled with one another and agreed to focus on their common enemy, the Johnsons, this rivalry would remain strong throughout the war. Forced to recognize Bo as the head of the clan and to send his son Rex to Texarkana as a hostage, Lucas would not truly fight alongside his cousin for much of the war. He sought to defeat the Johnsons himself and to reach Little Rock before Bo, claiming victory and the according honor and power.

Placating Bo's suspicions of treachery or betrayal, Lucas survived an assault on his fortress at Batesville by Steve Johnson and engaged Johnson again at the battle of Magnolia. Lucas's victory for the Bradys at Magnolia would prove to be the turning point in the war. Through creative tactics, skillful division of his forces and a series of bluffs and diversions, Lucas inflicted heavy losses on the Johnsons, who fled, confused and demoralized.

The Johnson loss at Magnolia was so severe that they found themselves, several months later, under siege in Little Rock, with Lucas approaching the city from the northeast and Brandon from the east. Both Brady leaders had seen little or no opposition in marching to the capital and now forced the Johnsons to flee the city. Abe Johnson, head of the clan since his father Shawn’s death, led his army, along with the young Emperor Victor and the Imperial regalia, to his clan's fortresses in western Crawford County and Benton County.

Reading today:

"The Roman Empire from Severus to Constantine" by Pat Southern

Reading today:

"The Journals of John Cheever" by John Cheever

4000 US Soldiers Dead in Various Recreational Accidents

EVERYWHERE IN IRAQ - World news outlets have reported that the death toll of US troops in Iraq due to various recreational accidents has topped 4000.

Since President George W. Bush gave a public address to the nation in March of 2003 in which he declared that over 150,000 servicemen would be on their way to various resort areas in the country of Iraq for a little rest and relaxation, vacation-related deaths among members of the armed forces have skyrocketed.

Some people have blamed the Defense Department for not providing proper safety gear. The deaths of three members of the Army in a hunting accident near Mosul in 2006 has been blamed on their orange vests being "...faded beyond recognition" The deaths of two on-duty members of the Navy on a beach in Basra last month was blamed on inadequate coverage of the beach by life guards.

With some soldiers forced to undergo multiple vacations, even kept in service beyond their normal terms, and with the cost of plane tickets, ski rentals, margaritas, dune buggy fuel, surfboards, and other recreational items potentially ending up at the $1 trillion mark, lawmakers have been increasingly questioning the President's decision to keep all the troops in Iraq on vacation for just a little bit longer.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said yesterday that "The hotels of my district, located in historic San Francisco, could easily accommodate hundreds of the soldiers that are currently staying in shoddy Baghdad motels. Doesn't our President want the members of the American armed forces to go on vacation here, in America?"

Reading today:

"The Journals of John Cheever" by John Cheever

kill or be killed

Sun's almost up.

I've been thinking a lot about life, my life, and the nature of life. I know I'm no student of Philosophy, never been able to wrap my mind around that stuff, but I can't stop from ruminating.

I'm a young man, in my early 20's, living in turn of the century America, in a semi-small University town, a few miles from the coast of the great old Atlantic, living just as best as I can. I'm smart when I should be simple, clumsy when I should be smooth, never know just what the right thing to do is, and all those other stupid little problems that come with being human.

I've been reading this book about the life of Stalin and I've been watching this 2006 movie called The Wind that Shakes the Barley which is about the Anglo-Irish War/Irish Civil War and I think that, combined with way too much time on my hands, has put me in this schizophrenically reflective mood. Watching the movie and reading the book really gets in my head how lucky I am to be living here at this time. If this was Ireland in '22 or the USSR in '37, I'd be dead now. I can't watch my damn tongue, I'm too meek, and I have too many opinions on everything. Someone would have shot me a long time ago.

You wake up in the middle of the night and some crazy bastards throw a gun in your face, threaten to blow your head off if you don't say you're in favor of something or other, so you proclaim your absolute and undying love for that something or other and try to get back to sleep after washing your blood off your pajamas. Next day some other crazy bastards show up and shoot you in the throat for earlier proclaiming your absolute loyalty to whatever that was. That's the kind of thing that happens in those situations, in that kind of fratricidal war, but it's not happening here.

The Fed keeps our economy from going into an absolute tailspin, the Army keeps bombs from falling on my roof, the police keep dangerous minorities from selling me drugs or robbing me of the $12 in my wallet, our two party system insures there is never any serious or lasting political discourse which would involve me getting shot, my tax money is collected by somebody, and my Big Mac isn't going to give me ptomaine poisoning. The country I live in is one big oily, solid, glutinous pudding that isn't going in any particular direction, and that's just fine with me. The government is not going to kill me (probably), nobody who is fighting against the government is going to kill me (maybe), and nobody is going to put a gun in my hand and tell me to kill anybody unless I volunteer (hopefully).

There's a scene in The Wind That Shakes the Barley where a bunch of IRA fighters, including the main characters, break out of prison, but are forced to leave a couple of their comrades behind. They storm into the elegant country house of the gentleman farmer who informed on them, which had led to their imprisonment and torture, and take him prisoner. He is forced to write a letter stating that he will be shot unless the IRA fighter's comrades are freed. They are killed. The man has to be shot.

I'm watching this scene, which takes place in the way back of beyond in the Irish countryside, on an absolutely beautiful windy hill, and I'm thinking, "What?" This man, he was an absolute asshat, but think of all that you are destroying when you kill him. His childhood, his years of education, his years of work, his wife and children. It's all going to be erased with some cheap little metal bullet. It won't mean anything to anyone.

If the forces of the British Empire, the auxiliaries or the Tans or the Tories or anybody else talk about the story, they'll just make it something it wasn't. "Protestant gentleman shot by Irish ruffians" or "Another murder by Irish thugs". That kind of "England expects" bullshit. If the IRA talks about it, they'll just say "An enemy to the Republic has been removed from great Eire" or "Another victory for our heroes". Nobody is going to say "This man loved the purple flowers in his garden" (my conjecture) or anything like that. It can't be called killing, killing is when you step on an ant or hunt an animal for food. It's nothing but the destruction of something beautiful and amazing, human life. Ahimsa is on the right track.

You kill me, you could probably make it mean something. I'm probably against something or doing something you don't agree with. But I'd like you to know that I pay too much attention to my feet when I'm walking, that I like nothing better than a beer and a book in my favorite camp chair on a warm afternoon, that I adore sunlight in any form, that I'm fascinated by glass, that I love and respect my parents more than anything, and that I'm worried about the world, the future, my future, the future of mankind, the future of my dirty socks, all of it. You kill me and you're leaving my bills unpaid, my grandmother uncalled, my floor dirty, my bed empty, and my phone uncharged. You'd be destroying one of you, your kind, another human being, whatever your reasons.

the apartment

I started this blog because I didn't want to lose random short stories or whatever that I had written down, and this story is a good example because it had been lost since around January or December and I just randomly found it while looking for something else.

"The Apartment" was written in November, at a time where I spent three days in my apartment completely alone and without ever going outside. It was kind of a theoretical exploration of what would happen to me if I spent three months, or years, or who knows how long, in my apartment without leaving. Three days was just a little taste of isolation, this story uses my own life to create a "what-if" scenario of someone who lives here and has been isolated for much, much longer.

No more explanation, story time.

The Apartment

There is food, but it is both unhealthy and makes me feel sick.

There is a phone with which I could order delivery food, but I have no money. I could call millions of people in hundreds of countries, but there is no one to talk to.

There are windows, but one is too high to look out of, one has no view, and the other is in a room I do not enter.

There are books, but I have read them all. There are cds, but I have heard what is on all of them. There are DVDs, but I've watched everything they can show me.

There are fine dishes and silverware in the kitchen, but they are dirty and must be cleaned before use.

There is water which comes from three different faucets on two different floors and fills the toilet bowl. My hands, face, hair and the rest of my body are too clean to wash. When I drink it, it tastes strange. I feel no current need to urinate or defecate.

There is a heater, and the apartment is cold, but it is not economical to run.

There is liquor in the fridge, but nothing to mix it with. On its own it tastes bad and makes me sick.

There are pillows on my bed, soft ones, but I cannot use them for their most common purpose, which is to lay my head down and go to sleep.

There are noises coming from all the walls, which is to say most likely from one of the neighboring apartments or the outside.

There is a growing erratic quality to my thoughts and actions, a strangeness in my perception, an otherness to the apartment, an oddness in the quality of light. I have turned all the lights on.

There is something outside my bedroom door.

New word

I've created a great new slang word, "moogler".

It's a noun. You can't really give it a dictionary definition, but if it is not used negatively, it connotes dispensing, creating, making, or using the noun that precedes it. For instance, a bartender could be called a "drink moogler". A musician in a band could be called a "guitar moogler" Judges could be called "justice mooglers".

If it's being used negatively, it has overtones of hoarding, not being fair, that kind of thing. For instance, if someone orders pizza and is being very stingy with it, you could tell them to "stop being such a pizza moogler!"

You can even use it jokingly. For instance, if Sally absolutely hates baking cookies, you could jokingly introduce her as "My friend Sally, the cookie moogler."

It's a versatile and useful word with many applications in daily speech. However, do not fall into the trap of turning it into a verb. "To moogle" is wrong! It's a noun!

Reading today:

"Stalin : the court of the Red Tsar" by Simon Sebag Montefiore

Reading today:

"Stalin : the court of the Red Tsar" by Simon Sebag Montefiore

Reading today:

"Stalin : the court of the Red Tsar" by Simon Sebag Montefiore

pluto

I know it's been a good year and a half, but I still see "Pluto nostalgia" and it still pisses me off. It's stupid. No one "took away" Pluto's status as a planet or "demoted" it. No international body can do that. They simply acknowledged that it's most definitely not a planet at all.

Pretend there's this guy who sails to an island he has never seen. He lands on shore and looks around. Land extends as far as he can see. "This must be a new continent!" he exclaims. However, it later turns out that the island is only like thirty miles by thirty miles. So the man sadly realizes he's only found some crummy island. This is what happened with Pluto, except if we made the comparison fully apt, the man would stubbornly insist that the small island was a continent for decades and decades. And, once he stopped, the public at large would bitch and moan about how some arbitrary bullshit took away their eighth continent.

Pluto was never a planet, it was just named as such because of technology that was not powerful enough to know what a tiny, tiny rock it and Charon are and because of glory-seeking astronomers. Everybody wanted to be the first to discover a new planet, and nobody fully knew how tiny and insignificant Pluto was at the time. Simple as that.

So you can't say "When I was your age Pluto was a planet." It never was. The presence or absence of a label does not dictate fact, at least when it comes to astronomy. Cat can have kittens in the oven but that don't make 'em biscuits.

Reading today:

"Jonathon Strange and Mr. Morrell" by Susanna Clarke

red tape

A scientist perfects a machine that allows him to travel in time. He decides to go forward, to view the wonders of the future.

Upon arriving, he finds that the future has become a strange and overly legalistic place. Although almost all transactions are conducted electronically, records of these transactions must be maintained in many different locations, in paper copies, in many different filing cabinets, with many proper stamps on them. The technology for authenticating one's identity has been perfected beyond belief. Most all transactions require a fingerprint, a blood sample, a retinal scan, a signature, an inputed PIN, a wax imprint of a signet ring, an oath upon the holy book of one's choosing, and a 43 character password.

The scientist wanders throughout the streets, dumbfounded. The people of the future seem to be swaddled in a vast and confusing array of protective garments. No one talks to him, and no one cares that he is from the past. Feeling a bit hungry, the scientist stops in to what seems to be a fast food restaurant.

The scientist attempts to order a hamburger or something, anything. However, he has no fingerprint on file, his blood-type seems to match that of a criminal executed several months previous, his retina seems to match the retina of a famous corporal who died an heroic death several weeks previous, his signature is not recognized, he does not provide a PIN, he does not seem to be wearing any kind of signet ring, he asks only for an unknown holy book called "the menu", and the password he provides contains only 27 characters, most of which make up words which are unprintable. The scientist gets no hamburger.

Dizzy, the scientist stumbles out on the street. Immediately, a robot accosts him. The robot demands to know why he is on street-corner 43724-B at time interval 87J/623-C, on day 555621CBT-7, during year 47K3, during the presidency of 90191WP-6, at the specific instance the sun is exactly overhead in the sky. The scientist complains a little, but, sadly, it seems that he has no fingerprint on file, his blood-type seems to match that of a religious figure who was discredited 232.04321234 years ago, his retina seems to match that of a cashier in an antiques shop on another continent, his signature is not recognized, he does not supply a PIN, he does not seem to be wearing any kind of signet ring, his request for a holy book of his choice is garbled, and the password he provides contains only the letters "H-E-L-P-M-E" repeated four times.

The scientist is vaporized, and his dusty remains are placed in drawer 97-43021354, in building 9856BW-431W, in city 865-32, on continent 76-J. Multiple copies of the required forms are sent to the various offices involved in the recording of his ill-fated expedition to the glorious future.

Reading today:

"Jonathon Strange and Mr. Morrell" by Susanna Clarke

TJ

Proposed end to a movie about Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson is sitting at a table in a fancy restaurant. His face looks pale, almost skeletal. The camera zooms in on it.

Thomas Jefferson: Well, the hour grows late, and I appear to be dead.

Reading today:

"The royal facts of life" by Mark Hansen

inspiration

So I'm thinking about writing an inspirational book about life. But "life" is such an incredibly broad subject. Also, I'm a pretty young guy. What could I say about life?

Well, here's a little preview for you:

Reaching Higher Than Bottom

When I was 7, I thought life was crunchy and crispy and cost only 99 cents.

Don't bullshit, don't take too many napkins, pay your bills on time, appreciate sunshine, use your sense of smell more often, don't take buildings for granted, wear comfortable shoes, don't underestimate human failings, don't worry about human failings, don't worry about your own failings, try not to fail, accept failure as a natural hazard of living, realize that every failure contains a lesson, realize that some things don't have any lesson or meaning, try to take meaning from everything that happens to you but don't overdo it, mix pepsi and coke together it's good I call it "poke", don't hate the wind, don't hate getting rained on, don't hate getting snow in your shoes, accept the limitations of speaker technology, accept the limitations of weather forecasting, do something really stupid at least once a day, laugh at yourself if you fall down, eat green leafy vegetables, tell your furniture you appreciate all it does for you, absorb colors rather than noting their existence, use the word "googaw" in a sentence, use the word "rambunctious" in a sentence, use the word "roustabout" to describe someone sometime, talk into your phone and pretend there is a funny talking camel on the other end, love the banjo, hug a tree, have a picnic once in a while, wave more often, point more often, grin like you mean it, bemoan the disappearance of the stock ticker, deny the sanctity of clocks, deny the world's preoccupation with fried dough, deny everything, only eat fried dough once every couple months.

Reading today:

"To catch a Tartar : notes from the Caucasus" by Chris Bird.
"The royal facts of life" by Mark Hansen
"We" by Yevgeny Zamyatin

Reading today:

"To catch a Tartar : notes from the Caucasus" by Chris Bird

freedom and oppression

A kitten is cautiously playing with a lobster. The lobster is wearing a festive sombrero. The lobster attempts to pinch the kitten with great force, the kitten runs around it and bats at it, fascinated and confused.

Lobster: See, I'm trying to pinch you just like the world banking elites pinch the average American citizen.
Kitten: My batting you with a paw is a metaphorical demonstration of the way the secret government uses the CIA.
Lobster: This sombrero I'm wearing is pointless windowdressing, just like the 9/11 commission.
Kitten: I agree. Why would a lobster be wearing a sombrero? Why did the 9/11 commission not tell the public how the Towers were deliberately demolished?
Lobster: Well, just like my hard protective exoskeleton, the shadowy puppetmasters that control all facets of our lives have a thick defensive shell of lies and power.
Kitten: This is true. And just like me in my moments of weakness, the American public is chasing it's own tail with this phony "War on Terror"
Lobster: Yes, we should be using our constitutionally guaranteed guns to enforce all the secret edicts hidden in the paintings of the Dutch Masters!
Kitten: My teeth may be small, and I may be a cute little kitten, but I'll avenge you, Jan Vermeer!

reading today:

I've been starting and not finishing a lot of books lately, but I'll finish them all in good time.

"To catch a Tartar : notes from the Caucasus" by Chris Bird.
"The royal facts of life" by Mark Hansen

Reading today:

"The Royal Facts of Life" by Mark Hansen
"We" by Yevgeny Zamyatin

Reading today:

"The Royal Facts of Life" by Mark Hansen

life may not be spiffy every day, but it's a damn sight better, than rotting clean away

A scientist perfects a machine that allows him to travel in time. He decides to go forward, to view the wonders of the future.

Upon arrival, several centuries ahead, he finds the world a very different place. Thanks to supernutritious food, perfected plastic surgery, and improved makeup/clothing, all future people are nine feet tall and so radiantly beautiful that it causes the scientist physical pain to look upon them. All menial jobs have been eliminated through automation or exported to poorer countries. The Tennessee Data process allows someone’s memories and soul to be extracted after death, so nobody ever really dies.

The future people don’t care that he is from the past, and mostly just throw things at him because of his appearance. Immediately, the scientist attempts to return to his dismal old time. However, his time machine has broken down and cannot be fixed. He then tries to find some kind of work so as to go to a crappier, poorer country, but this fails. Finally he is reduced to begging, hoping to someday earn enough money to buy a paper bag to cover his face, which would stop the future people from throwing things at him so much.

One day he is laying on the street corner where he lives (future concrete luckily being as soft as down) and he accidentally catches a glimpse of the comedy show that someone walking by is watching on their futuristic phone/tv/computer gadget. Future comedy is so incredibly funny to someone from the unsophisticated 21^st century that his brain is overwhelmed and destroyed by it. He laughs himself to death, which takes about four minutes. The Tennessee Data process is performed on his corpse, and the scientist lives on in a computer at the public library. Occasionally, people who are making movies set in the past come and copy some of his memories, for use as accurate stock footage.

Iron bridge part 2

So, this has a very anticlimactic end. I just couldn't find anything else in books in the library about the bridge. Very depressing. Hopefully I'll have better luck with an investigation in the future.

Reading today:

"The Storm" by Ilya Ehrenburg
"The Royal Facts of Life" by Mark Hansen
"Jonathon Strange and Mr. Morrell" by Susanna Clarke

Reading today:

"The Storm" by Ilya Ehrenburg

Reading today:

"City, sister, silver" by Jachym Topol
"The Anchor book of modern Arabic fiction", edited by Denys Johnson-Davies
"Crusader Castles and Modern Histories" by Ronnie Ellenblum

iron bridge?

So I was reading about this battle, called the Battle of Iron Bridge, where the Byzantines lost Antioch and its area to the Muslims, in the 7th century. Huh? A bridge made out of iron in the 600's? The first bridge made completely out of iron was built in England in the late 18th century, at the same time people in this country were writing Declarations and crossing Delawares. So that name doesn't make much sense.

There were some pretty impressive feats of ironworking in antiquity. The Iron Pillar of Delhi was put up in the late 3rd/early 4th century. It's this big column made out of almost almost pure iron, and it's still around. Hasn't rusted away or anything. Yeah, these days we've got pillars of iron every which where, but that was pretty impressive back then. And it's even more impressive that the pillar is still around and intact about 1600 years later.

But a bridge, made out of iron, even in the very very important city of Antioch, just ain't possible. So I tried to do a little internet research. The Wikipedia article on the battle says it was a bridge of iron. Most every other place seems to just say "the iron bridge". I found one site that claimed that "Iron Bridge", in the Latin, pons ferrum, was a Crusader garbling of some kind of local toponym. But the battle happened hundreds of years before any Crusader was in the area. I even found one place that said there were towers of iron in the area. Which just raises even more questions.

So, iron bridge? Huh? The Internet isn't a great place for doing investigations about stuff like this, so I'm going to go look for a book at the library that might help, sometime this week. Hopefully I'll find some explanation. It seems most likely to me that it was just a really, really strong bridge that was called pons ferrum or something like that just because it was a solid and sturdy as iron. Like "man of iron loyalty". It's probably that. We'll see.

cities/towns i want to visit

1. Iquitos
2. Urumqi
3. Eureka
4. Missoula
5. Tiraspol
6. Auckland

Reading today:

"Unwilling journey; a diary from Russia" by Helmut Gollwitzer

Reading today:

"The Dead Zone" by Stephen King
"Crusader Castles and Modern Histories" by Ronnie Ellenblum

home sweet home

Johnsapartmentistan is a sprawling, third-world country currently suffering under the rule of an insane despot. Food is quite scarce, and the water is barely drinkable. The inhabitants are wild savages who communicate mostly through a series of grunts and growls. The climate is cold in the winter, hot in the summer. Air quality is poor. National mounuments in the capital include the Huge Trash Pile of Justice and the Empty Beer Can of Heroes. Proof of yellow fever inoculation is required for an entry visa.

Crips and Bloods vs. French and English: Reflections on the Hundred Years' War

So I was reading Ronnie Ellenblum's book on Sunday morning, and it got me thinking about the Hundred Years' War, which I've been pondering since. I explained some of this idea to Jovan on Sunday night, but here's all of it.

You've got our modern conception of warfare: nation-states battling to force changes in solid, linear boundaries. Total war. This is the almost exactly the way the Hundred Years' War was depicted in the last movie I saw about it, The Messenger: the Story of Joan of Arc.

But there are problems with applying that concept to the Hundred Years' War. For one thing, the nation state is a pretty recent invention, as is the concept of total war. The War was fought mostly by elites of nobles, all of whom spoke French. The English king had plenty of subordinates who held lands that would some day become a part of "France", just as he held large amounts of lands in that territory and spent a large part of his life there. It was really a war between the followers of two rulers who held the rank of "King", a rank between "Emperor" and the great mass of nobility. Not a war between a French nation-state and an English one. The main difference between the two groups was that one followed Salic Law and the other didn't.

The last part of the difference between our modern concept of war and the actual realities of the Hundred Years' War is the idea of solid, linear boundaries. This is what got me thinking in this direction. Ellenblum has a whole chapter about what he considers what the concept of boundaries in the Middle Ages exactly was, and it's pretty damn convincing. He says that although fields and parishes and other small units of land had clear, defined boundaries, states did not. Oftentimes farms paid partial taxes to more than one ruler. States were defined more by centers of power and the various degrees of control those centers had the force to exert. This seems pretty consistent with a lot I've read about the Middle Ages, especially the massive complexities of the system of suzerainty.

So how should the Hundred Years' war be presented? I think it should be compared and contrasted to gang wars. Gang wars occur in the context of very clearly defined spaces. Municipalities, neighborhoods, even city blocks. However, actual zones of control of specific gangs are not always perfectly defined, and are ever-changing. They impose a system on top of the clearly defined boundaries of the inner city, just as baronies and other fiefdoms of the Middle Ages imposed a system on top of the clearly defined boundaries of their villages and fields. Gangs and groups of knights had and have their own specific symbols and rituals. You think pouring a 40 on a street corner is dumb? Go on Wikipedia and look up the Order of the Garter. Absolutely retarded. The Hundred Years' war was about powerful personalities, and gang wars are also. Both are/were pretty damn hurtful to bystanders.

And the Joan of Arc legend itself is asinine. Her country wasn't even made a part of the kingdom of France until 300 years after her death, way longer than the USA has even been independent. She wasn't famous and beloved until the 1800's, when orgiastic nationalism became the mindless obsession that would eventually lead to both world wars. She was canonized in 1920.

So take two movies, The Messenger and Colors, which is an awesome crime flick from 1988 about Crips and Bloods. Neither really has anything to do with the Hundred Years' War as it truly was. However, if I absolutely gun or Welsh longbow to my head had to choose which one was a more accurate depiction of that conflict, I'd choose Colors.

Reading Today:

"Unwilling journey; a diary from Russia" by Helmut Gollwitzer
"Crusader Castles and Modern Histories" by Ronnie Ellenblum

Reading today:

Crusader Castles and Modern Histories by Ronnie Ellenblum