Freeze frame

People captured in mid-clap always look really weird -- like they're either pretending to hold something invisible or squashing a bug.

Moon Illusion II

The NY Times has a typically dismissive article about "conspiracy theorists" who believe the moon landing never happened. Supposedly, polls show that a full 6% of Americans hold such a belief.

Mr. Sibrel, who sells his films online, has hounded Apollo astronauts with a Bible, insisting that they swear on camera they had walked on the Moon. He so annoyed Buzz Aldrin in 2002 — ambushing him with his Bible and calling him “a coward, and a liar, and a thief” — that Mr. Aldrin punched Mr. Sibrel in the face. Law enforcement officials refused to file charges against Mr. Aldrin, the second man on the Moon.

I appreciate such filmmakers speaking truth to power, but I wish they would focus on the really big conspiracy in our midst. YES, of course the lunar landing was faked, YES, of course 9/11 was masterminded by the Bush White House, YES, of course FEMA is rounding up gun owners in preparation for their extermination at a scale replica of Dachau (to be built, my sources tell me, in Brinkley, AR), but such things pale in comparison to the Big Truth -- the fact that winter is a hoax. Blab all you want about "but I remember last winter happening!" I've heard that song and dance before. If you're that brainwashed I honestly don't even want to waste my time with you.

Winter is a lie that the New World Order is perpetuating to keep us all in a state of submission and fear; meanwhile, corporations rake in billions from the sale of warm, heavy garments. Just go outside for a few minutes today and then tell me that there's such a thing as "winter". Any sane, rational person will agree that the idea of the outside being extremely cold is absolutely unthinkable. It's hot outside, really hot! And yet the mitten-industrial complex would have us believe that we actually want to be warmer for part of the year. Winter! Like a big air conditioner for the outdoors, I guess! Ha ha ha!

If you have "evidence" for the existence of winter, I'd love to hear it. Also, dead armadillos are filled with a delicious substance that grants immortality and makes your penis colossal. You can prove that one with empirical evidence -- go out and try.

I try to laugh about it, hiding the tears in my eyes

So far, I've had three calls today looking for "Robert Smith" -- one from the University of Phoenix and one from Dish Network. (I didn't ask about the third caller.)

This means one of two things. Maybe Robert Smith recently got a new phone and is a little mixed up. He's a busy guy. If that's the case, he'll read this and correct his mistake. No harm done. If I keep getting calls, though, I'll know that he's doing this on purpose. Let me say this in no uncertain terms, Robert. If you think you can get away with giving out my personal number as some sort of crappy joke, you're about to discover just how wrong a person can be, ok? Ok.

A world of mysteries

What keyword in my emails makes Google think that I would be interested in joining this class action lawsuit?

Oh, I guess it's because I've recently been emailing my old high school buddy Sammy "Transvaginal Mesh" Jones. The times we had back then, he and I!

"A Real Pain"

I've been re-reading A Wrinkle in Time on my lunch breaks because I happened to find it in the office where I'm working. I haven't read it since I was maybe nine or ten, at which time it scared the shit out of me. It still sort of does; man, is it ever a bizarre and excellent and gripping book. Maybe it's just because my nostalgia buttons are being pushed, but I think it contains scenes that are heavier with fear and dread than just about any adult sci-fi I've ever read.

There are some issues with it, nonetheless. It's blatantly classist and sort of reactionary. It really fetishizes the idea of having a perfect nuclear family, and I think that that put me off even as a child (especially a child from a decidedly imperfect family structure). It sort of implicitly equates being "gifted" with being "good". (If I remember right, Madeleine was sort of an elitist jerk.) There's also a heavy dollop of semi-Christianity thrown in there, but I can live with that. Despite such annoying crap, I encourage all of you to pick it up again and read it as an adult.

Of course, Ochlocratic Osculation welcomes the opposing viewpoint in all arguments, so in the name of editorial fairness I am copying some fellow critics' less-than-glowing reviews of A Wrinkle in Time from Amazon:

i hate this book, November 29, 2001

A Kid's Review. I didnt like this book because it was boring. I thought that it was boring because it didnt make any sense to me because it would be talking about one thing and then it would talk about something else. I would have liked it more if it would have had more exciting and had more action. I don't like books like this; they are boring. The ending was the best part.

Unexplained., September 5, 2000

A Kid's Review. We didn't like this book because it was boring and didn't make any sense. The people kept wrinkling and they didn't explain how they wrinkled. Also Mrs.Who kept using phrases that no one understood. Mrs.Which kept streching her words so you couldn't understand what she said.

A Real Pain, November 28, 2005

A Kid's Review. My teacher is making me read this book for class. I love to read, and until now I have never hated a book. The characters are confusing, the plot talks too much about other dimensions, and the story is bery boring. I don't see what is so exciting about this book that everyone loves, and I have always liked fantasy books. I can't wait until this part of the course is over and I don't understand why this is such a classic. If anyone asks me to read another book by this author I would say no way.

One fewer loose end

Remember when I claimed awhile back that I had an exclusive interview with Jake waiting to be published? Every so often I'll remember that claim, because the part of my mind that manages tasks is evidently out to destroy me. While this portion of my brain should be sending me messages such as "Hey, you better look for a job!" or "Perhaps you should get your car fixed soon?" or even "What exactly are your values and goals as a person? Shouldn't you attempt to coherently express your own belief system to yourself before making any further life decisions? Without a better sense of what you hold to be true or moral, your actions will inevitably continue to degenerate into arbitrary hedonism, your words into mushy platitudes and sarcastic bleatings, and your inner life into a shameful cycle of increasingly desperate rationalizations to mask your own spiritual formlessness", it instead prefers to alert me to things such as "Hey, let's check out the news again and see if there's anything INTERESTING on!" or "Just in case I ever did  start a band, what would be a good name?" or "Whoa, buddy, you never did write that interview with Jake that you promised your audience of millions on your gigantically important BLOG." 

Well ok, to placate that part of my mind, all I was going to say was something like this:

I went to see Jake this weekend, and he tried to fill in all the gaps in conversation by endlessly reciting obscure names for groups of animals that he found from this website. It rained a lot, and we ate excessive amounts of rich foods. One morning, we enjoyed a huge breakfast of fried chicken and doughnuts -- and then later that day, my host bought multiple pounds of steamed crab legs smothered in butter for myself and some other guests. We ate ourselves sick and watched cartoons. For some reason, he also insisted that we watch the movie Beerfest, which is a fucking awful movie. I'm glad I paid him a visit.

W(h)ither the Gravy Train?

I was going to write a long and worried post about the future of my favorite webcomic (which had recently fallen into mysterious silence), but then that old workhorse Jack Recess up and posted something. So, the title of this post is now an in-joke with Alex about the title of a chapter in a book in a class we took together four years ago, and I would be absolutely astounded if he remembered what the hell I'm talking about.

Still. All is not well with the blog community (which continues to exist in my head as a Xanadu-like illusion). Ethan has fallen into disrepair, and his excellent side project has apparently been discontinued. Jake, like a crazy old hermit who cements up his mailbox, refuses to allow comments on his blog. Chris Clanton is getting married, which means he's probably absorbed in adult things like adultery and Roth IRAs and murdering. Justin whetted our appetites with a groundbreaking photo essay and then abruptly cut off the supply. Kaitlin still refuses to let me know her livejournal address. Among our tight-knit little group, only Mr. Puggle seems to be keeping up a regular creative flow lately. 

Well, so it goes. 

I was born an Allman Brothers song

Tennessee was old hat, but it was sort of thrilling to drive north from Nashville up to the Kentucky border. I've made the entire cross-Tennessee I-40 drive a few times -- from Memphis to Knoxville and onward, or vice versa -- and the sheer stupid length of Tennessee is grueling. To suddenly cut a quick northern path halfway through the state and break free of its chains felt exhilarating -- like I'd discovered a warp zone. We turned north from Nashville up to Bowling Green, KY and then to Lexington.

Kentucky was new ground for me. It was one big cliche of horse fences, bourbon distilleries, and grassy hills.

I'd also never been to West Virginia. It's a lovely state and the weather was about 20 degrees cooler than Arkansas had been. (It also turned out to be "West Virginia Day" when we arrived, which was pretty exciting.) The worst part about my time in WV was the accommodations. On our first night we tried to camp at a site in the National Forest called "Bear Heaven" but couldn't find it, and so settled at a different campsite called "Stuart". (Perhaps Bear Heaven has been closed because nobody has ever, ever returned from a night of camping there?) 

The second night -- right before I headed back to Arkansas -- we stayed at a place called the Towne House Motor Lodge, which seemed to be both staffed and occupied entirely by skinny, unhappy old men smoking Pall Mall Ultra Lights and battling cirrhosis of the liver. Our room was dirty and sticky and the sheet was so full of holes that we decided to put down a sleeping bag on top of the mattress, but it was the cheapest place in town and also they claimed to have WiFi. 

When the wireless failed to work, I took my complaint to the front desk (Though I felt like kind of a dick to be complaining about the lack of wireless in a place where the structural integrity of the building was probably a more pressing concern.) As I approached the desk, I noticed a prominent sign for the first time (right next to one proclaiming "we have wireless") that read "NO COMPUTERS." Then this exchange followed with the elderly man behind the counter:

Desk Guy: Hey there.

Me: Hi. Say, what does that sign mean? "No computers"?

Desk Guy: Oh, that? Nothing, we have the internet now. That was from, you know, before. 

Me (for some reason not asking "before what? Under what possible prior circumstances did you view the presence of computers in the Towne House Motor Lodge as a threat?"): Well, I'm actually having a problem with the internet right now. I can't get on the network.

Desk Guy: Huh. Well, I don't know much about that. (calling to the other desk guy) Hey, how do you use the internet?

2nd Desk Guy: You type in "TRAVEL LODGE".

Me: You....type in....?

Desk Guy: I don't know. I don't know how any of it works.

Me: Well, on my laptop I see the network and I can connect to it, but the internet isn't working. Maybe you could just reset the router and see if that helps?

Desk Guy (with the incredulity you'd expect if I had just asked if I could take the TV with me upon checking out the next day): Ha! Ha ha! Oh, no, we can't mess with the routers!

Me: Uh...

Desk Guy: They used to have 'em not locked up and people were always messing with them and screwing things up worse than before, so now they keep 'em locked up. We can't even get in there. Nope, we can't get at the routers.

Me : Well...then...what can we do? I've got to use the internet?

Desk Guy (laughs and turns to the other guy): What should we tell this man? Kick the computer? Send him down to the Holiday Inn? 

2nd Desk Guy: You just type in "TRAVEL LODGE".

Desk Guy: We can get somebody out here tomorrow to fix it. The cable guy. I don't know. Maybe.

Me (with increasingly shrill desperation): No, I have to use it tonight!

(we stare at each other for awhile)

Desk Guy (suddenly jolly): You know, the internet is incredible. Just amazing. You know, my grandson, he just moved to California and this morning I was talking to him on the internet with the video and the sound -- and he's in California! It's unbelievable.

(pause)

Desk Guy: I don't know why the hell he moved to California. To look for a job, he says, and I tell him "we have two motels to run here in West Virginia!" I hope he doesn't find one, actually. And the budget problems they're having out there, the way they run that state...

Me: Yeah, I hear the unemployment there is even higher than here.

Desk Guy: Yeah.

Me: Maybe he'll move back.

Desk Guy: I hope so.

(pause)

Me (defeated): Well, um, I guess the internet's not going to work.

Desk Guy: We'll get somebody out here tomorrow afternoon. Bye!

What else is there to say? I decided to deviate from my trip home to check out Pittsburgh, which is a lovely place with a lot of bridges, nice people, and a terrifying building that I presume houses Satan. Cincinnati had chili and spaghetti and looked like it should be in Oklahoma. I accidentally ended up in Indiana briefly while crossing into Louisville. Then, I arrived back home to an empty house.

Montani semper liberi

When I Googled "motto West Virginia", the first thing to come up was actually Demotto Honda Sales in Elkins, WV -- which is coincidentally the very town in West Virginia to which I am traveling this weekend! Providence.

Wish me luck.

We've been duped

Did you all know about the Moon Illusion? No? Read it. Are you not outraged?

What shall we do?

Iran

With Iran currently the most interesting place in the world, the question in the back of everyone's mind is this: just how tall is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? When he appears with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, he looks absurdly short. It's a visual contrast that immediately brought to my mind this duo of recent fame, although I feel like there's just a grain of racism in the comparison somehow.

I can't find anything decisive. This site says he's 5'2" and "may be shorter", but it's also a site devoted to something called Psychodiagnostic Chirology. (I don't know what that is, and I'm going to assume it's too stupid to even bother plugging into Wikipedia.) IMDB claims that he's 5'6", but that mostly raises the question "why the fuck does IMDB have an entry on Mahmoud Ahmidenejad?" Which then leads directly to the further question, "what movie would be most improved by the addition of Mahmoud Ahmidenejad?" What do you think? For some reason, Good Will Hunting came immediately to my mind but I guess that's just because I enjoy imagining he and Robin Williams switching places in the world.

Anyway. What's happening in Iran is incredible and I can't stop compulsively checking the NY Times's excellent Lede blog devoted to tracking new developments. Also, good stuff from Slate and Juan Cole and (just for you, Ethan) a story about the role of Twitter in the unfolding of events thus far.

Good luck to all of you devoted readers in Tehran, and let me know if I can do anything.

Deadline

Remember, everybody, today is the day that the Internet stops broadcasting in analog. Ochlocratic Osculation will be powering down its signals at 11:59 CST. Of course, I'm sure that all of you have ordered your converter boxes by this point. If you have not done so, remember that you MUST HAVE YOUR COMPUTER TURNED OFF when the analog signal stops broadcasting, or you run the risk of severe brain damage. It's also not too late to order a converter and its necessary accessories (ground wire, space elevator, nutrient solution tank); send me a quick email with your credit card number and DOB, and I'll have a crew out there within the hour.

Marketable Skills

I took a certain test on Monday. I'm still tending to think of every conversation I have as being a component of a logical reasoning puzzle, like this:

Co-worker: My god, did you hear about that shooting in DC? What a tragic, senseless act of violence. And the really horrible part is that it happened right there in the Holocaust museum.

Benji: Your logic is unsound. The sensibility of an act (or the lack thereof) is subjective, and the location of a crime has little bearing on its ethical ramifications.

When that exchange isn't followed up with a list of multiple choice answers regarding the approach of my argument, I feel lost. My eyes glaze over and I wander away.

To the Mile-High City

I lost an upstairs neighbor Tuesday to the Rocky Mountain Time Zone. He and his newly-minted physician phiancee are moving to Denver to begin an exciting young professional life full of vertebrae and mountains. The attractive young man in question was a friend from college who I'd not talked to in over a year until I happened to move into the apartment building where he lives (or did until two days ago). I already regret not making more out of our brief and unexpected reunion living together in the same building.

But I lost more than a neighbor and a friend this Tuesdeay -- I also lost a wireless internet connection. The transience of life is heartbreaking. This is just like that scene in the Little Prince where he also loses his wireless internet connection.

Jonny Dover, you are probably the only person I will ever meet to regularly call me "babycakes", and while I still don't really understand why you do that, I do know that I thoroughly enjoy it. All I can say is godspeed and good luck.

I've been reading a lot about Thomas Edison

Step right up, step up! Hear the incredible speaking machine, the wonder of an age filled with wonders! Marvel at the voice of the Wizard of Menlo Park himself, the father of electricity, master miracle-maker of this great American age, the man who has yoked the very forces of sound and light themselves to the gleaming plowshare of progress! Listen, but carefully: for contained within the ordinary vessel before your very eyes is not simply sound, not merely voice, gentlemen and ladies, but something subtler -- a force that has confounded the minds of mankind since the patriarchs themselves strode the land of Abraham. Indeed, friends, within you will find humor -- and our own Mister Edison, proving himself master not only of the elements of the earth and the machines of mankind's hand but also the jolliest fruits of its spirit, draws deep from that mysterious well which the Creator in His infinite and inscrutable wisdom saw fit to bestow upon the sons and daughters of the human race.

For further comedy, click here. Listen, but beware -- for the fits of merriment drawn forth from the listener may induce contortments of frame most injurious to the weak of constitution.

Just like Pringles

I can't stop! I can't stop reading the user comments section on Glenn Beck's "9-12 Project" blog. They're so delicious and crunchy. My only hope to break the addiction is to glut myself stupid until I can't stand to touch them anymore. Until then, I'll just post a favorite comment each day:

Since Obama is proudly proclaiming his Muslim herritage and given what he has done so far. Would it surprise anyone if he would try to institute Sharia Law here in America? If he does it I refuse to go along with it because it is a way of life that condones violence against women. As a conservative male who loves women (even the feminists who would wish that I be castrated) I would rather go to jail or be stoned to death before I would hurt or degrade a woman. Gee, I wonder if the feminists would still support him if he goes the Sharia Way.

So tasty.

Hello

The word "hello" was not recorded in dictionaries until 1883. There's disagreement over its origins and when exactly it became widely used, but apparently its popularization as the standard greeting of American English coincided with the rise of the telephone in the 1870s and 1880s.

Alexander Graham Bell, however, preferred "Ahoy!" as the standard telephone greeting. Didn't work out.

This guy sucks!

http://counterfem2.blogspot.com/

Highly refined radium in a cocoa butter base

While reading about Marie Curie today, I learned of the early 20th century "radium craze". I had no idea. After radium was discovered by Marie and her husband Pierre, a world of products appeared in the following decades touting a range of miracle properties and brimming with roentgens. Ceramic crocks that continually irradiated water with radon gas became very popular, accompanied by instructions to drink "six or more glasses daily". There was the Gra-Maze Uranium Comforter, the Nico Clean Tobacco Card, Doramad Radioactive Toothpaste (advertisement at right), and, of course, a 15-day regimen of Vita Radium Suppositories carried in a cocoa butter base allowing the"sexually weak man" to reclaim the "pleasures that are his birthright". Doctors slathered radium on wounds, acne, and people with diabetes.

The dream died slowly. People first began to suspect that radiation fucking kills you when the story of the "Radium Girls" broke. Large numbers of women were employed in factories painting glow-in-the-dark radium onto the dials of watches. Apparently, the workers would continually dip their paintbrushes into their mouths to form a fine tip; for kicks, they would also sometimes paint their teeth and nails "to surprise their boyfriends in the dark". When many of these women began to lose their teeth and develop jaw abscesses, tests revealed that their bones were so thoroughly irradiated that X-ray images could be taken by the radiation emitting from their femurs. (I know this is the second time that I've brought up jaw necrosis in working females in the past several weeks, and I realize I'm dangerously close to this becoming just yet another proletariat-woman-jaw-rotting blog.)

The icing on the radioactive cake, however, was the tale of a millionaire golfer who became convinced of the curative power of a high-dose radium product called "Radithor"; following an injury, Eben Byers began downing cases full of the stuff (over 1000 bottles in his lifetime). Radithor, which came packaged in small, helpful-looking vials, was advertised as distributing "internal sunshine" to the cells of the body. Byers body, upon his death, contained the highest amount of radium ever found in a human being and was interred in a lead-lined coffin. When his death was announced, officials finally started seriously investigating the sale of radioactive patent medications. Thank god we've matured as a society since.

Maybe this history is relatively common knowledge. If so, I apologize. Also, did you know Hot Springs, AR is radioactive? It's true.

Google ads, you've got my number

Below, you will find the top Google ads displayed on the Real Clear Politics article "Obama, Sotomayor, Ricci and White Male Privilege"

Hormone Therapy
Doctors specializing in HRT for Men and
Women. Register for Info.
www.nationwidesi.com

Interracial Love Date
Stop Getting Jealous Now You Can Have
Your Own Interracial Romance!
www.InterracialSingles.net

Black Women White Men
Specialists in Black White Dating
Lifetime Profile, Free Chat Rooms
AfroRomance.com

Also, is RCP conservative-leaning? I can't quite tell. It seems to me to skew to the right in the content they choose to link to, and the few editorials I've read land on that side of the fence, but maybe I am biased myself.

The best years

If you actually want to read something about the nominee,

read Dahlia Lithwick on Slate.

Outrage

Ok, whatever, you know what the liberals are going to say about this. Blah blah blah. The first Hispanic justice in a nation that's over 15% Hispanic, the third woman in the court's history in a country that's over 50% woman, a childhood spent in a single-parent family in a housing project, a summa cum laude graduation from Princeton and subsequent distinction at Yale Law School, 17 years in the federal courts, admirers from all across the political spectrum including GHW Bush and Daniel Patrick Moynakhalwian (Alex, I am doing that thing you described where you mash a bunch of keyboard keys at once when you don't know how to spell someone's name). I just hope you all remember that the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court is solely a product of white liberal guilt. The outrage is that her affirmative action-appeasing nomination is trampling on the backs of the truly qualified candidates for the job. Let's take a look at who "Obama" could pick if he wasn't trying to annihilate Western civilization. Here are my top choices.

1. A Jake/Alex combo - Hey, Mr. President! Looking for someone who can really bring diversity of experience to the court rather than token appeasement of a special interest group (Latinos)? Nothing says diversity like "two people instead of one". These men can quote sonnets as easily as they can reference Futurama, can use the term "acedia" as readily as "shit-dicking hungry". Not only are they students of the law, one of them has been recently arraigned. That's the kind of legal experience that 17 years cloistered in some fusty private club (ie, the federal bench) just can't duplicate. Plus, one of them is a Slav and the other is a redhead. Do you know how many Slavs or redheads have ever sat on the court? I don't.

2. Michael Savage - What better way to rebuke the British for their illegal rejection of the First Amendement than to appoint this feisty fighter to the high court? It takes a brave man to say the following: "You know what autism is? I'll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it's a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out. That's what autism is. What do you mean they scream and they're silent? They don't have a father around to tell them, "Don't act like a moron. You'll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don't sit there crying and screaming, idiot." That's the kind of valor I want to see in our judicial system. What's that, Britian, you don't like our freedom of speech? Well, you get AIDS and die, assholes.

3. The Hubble Space Telescope - You want to talk about duty? You want to talk about service to our country? Sonia Sotomayor might be awfully talented when it comes to judicial activism, but I'd like to see her just try and float around in space for two decades. Or, to take a picture as beautiful as this one. Also, the Hubble Space Telescope would be our first NASA instrument justice.

Everybody's a critic

Despite the fact of its recycling of theme -- or rather, because of it -- Jack Recess's most recent comic about mail raises questions that the reader cannot easily dismiss. The thematic repitition has forced this reviewer to plumb his own response to the comic, his relationship to the characters, and his relationship to the "characters" that constitute the ongoing narrative of "real life" interactions. Whereas in the previous comic the dialogue of these two souls adrift -- the postman and his nameless antagonist -- constituted nothing more than an atomized, random act of aggression which could be safely "laughed off" as yet another faceless pit stop on the ultraviolent lost highway of Tarantino-era "entertainment", the return of these two characters to the reader's personal sphere negates the safety one finds in that consumerist detachment.

Indeed, the reintroduction of yesterday's chum as today's personal pathos provokes a shock of recognition -- a recognition of our humanity itself. The rage and horror (and yes, eternal hope) of the mailman become our own; too, one must admit, the inexplicable sadism of the woman strikes a chord within the id. It is the very same unasked-for sensation of acute empathy that one periodically experiences in the mysterious, discrete relations which crowd the liminality of our day to day lives: the chance reunions with long-lost lovers from our grad school years in Europe, the brief yet intimate conversations with strangers at Manhattan subway stops, the knowing glances accidentally exchanged with unknown collegues during the most pretentious lectures of our literary conferences. It is the moment when the anonymous becomes the intimate. We've all "been there". And yet Recess captures this sensation so artfully, so brutally yet lovingly, that one can but stop and wonder at the deftness of his touch.

DON'T MAKE A LIAR OF ME, JUSTIN

The world is holding its breath for the big hush-hush end-of-May expo over at toast.jelly. I won't join into the orgy of frenetic speculation -- all I'll say is that I can't wait. Justin?

BREAKING NEWS - Kris Allen is Reptillian Humanoid

Remember, you heard it on Ochlocratic Osculation first. True, I have not actually seen the man perform, but there's been enough inundative coverage about Kris Allen in the Dem-Gaz to give me ample insight into his reptilian nature. Right, right, I know what you're thinking: reptiles can't sing. I know that. But that's why they invented Auto-Tune. According to the New Yorker, Auto-Tune was created by a former oil engineer who applied technology used in seismology to create the pitch-correcting device.

Oil companies created Auto-Tune so that reptillian Kris Allen could win American Idol and lull us all into a Christ-pop coma. How much clearer does it have to be? People are such sheep. Thank you to Russell Moore for opening up my eyes to the Biggest Secret. Also, thank you to Stoby's for taunting the unhuman monstrosity that is Kris Allen with their sarcastic offer of lifetime free cheese dip (as everyone knows, reptiles hate dairy). Way to go, Stoby's!

On a final note, just in case I'm wrong and Kris is not a seven-foot-tall blood-drinking alien, I keep envisioning a scene thirty years from now in which the dissolute, obese American Idol lumbers each morning across Donaghey to swill down his morning pint of cheese dip, then returns to his squalid apartment across the street by 10AM for another day of sleep and pills.

Ross Douthat

When I first saw his picture, I was all set to hate him. Something about the mix of that jacket, those slightly cherubic cheeks, and his too sparkly eyes really rubbed me the wrong way. But so far, I think every piece from the new Tuesday NYT columnist Ross Douthat has been really great. So, I extend my hand to you, Ross Douthat -- would you like to join the blog community? His columns thus far:

Cheney for President - What Dick Cheney means for the GOP

Dan Brown's America - Dan Brown is full of shit

A Hole in the Center -Tales of Arlen Specter.

Faking Left - Why Obama is right to skirt gay rights issues. Quote:

...as Peter Berkowitz noted in a prescient essay for Policy Review in 2005, the gay marriage movement is working with the grain of American political history, in which the expansion of rights “steadily erodes the limits on individual choice established by law and custom.” Our legal and political debates, Berkowitz suggested, are won by whichever side can argue for the expansion of freedom, and combatants who can’t argue in these terms will “almost certainly see their cause go down to defeat.”

Thus gay marriage opponents’ persistent disadvantage. They can argue from tradition, custom and Christianity — as Obama himself does, albeit with dubious sincerity, to explain why he backs civil unions but not full-fledged marriage. They can note the perils of formally severing the link between marriage and childbearing in a society where far too many children are born outside of wedlock as it is. But supporters of gay marriage are the only ones making an argument from personal liberty — the freedom to marry, the right to marry — and that has made all the difference.

On abortion, though, the picture is very different. The pro-life movement is arguably more comfortable with the language of rights and liberties than its opponents. Abortion foes are defending a right to life grounded in the Declaration of Independence, after all, whereas pro-choicers are defending more nebulous rights (privacy, autonomy, etc.) supposedly grounded in “penumbras” and “emanations” from the Constitution.

This helps explain why Americans under 35, while more sympathetic to gay marriage than their parents, also tend to be slightly more anti-abortion. The Obama era may be pushing the country leftward on some fronts, but recent polling suggests that America’s slim pro-choice majority is even slimmer than usual these days.

Less sense than a blind goose in a hailstorm

That's what the young boy, Travis, says about his mule, Jumper, in the classic 1957 film Old Yeller. I know this because in the course of subbing for a 7th-grade English class today, I saw the scene in which that ornery Jumper gets all spooked by a nest of bobwhites and bucks off Travis clear into a fencerow three goddamn times. However, I have chosen that phrase as the subject line of this post because it is also a fair description of my substitute teaching abilities.

Poor Old Yeller. The seventh graders, being seventh graders, openly mocked the goofy 1950s mawkishness of the movie. (At the tearful climax, when faithful Old Yeller is about to be shot by Travis following his (Old Yeller's) infection with rabies, a group of girls began chanting "Do it! Do it!") I couldn't really blame them. It's a sweet little movie with a genuinely moving plot -- but like most classics, it's also chock full of horse shit. I know, I'm a fucking cartoon of a liberal, but not only are there several references to Indians "scalping" people, but the mother character is a ridiculous caricature of June Cleaverish motherhood. I can't blame the kids for finding the movie boring, especially considering the standards of visual stimulation in media that their generation (and ours, if there's any difference between the two. Demographers? Have you reached a consensus yet?) has had virtually grafted on to their chromosomes. These kids grew up watching "Bumfights" and playing Halo 3 at their weekend pharm parties.

Only one question. Before I started the movie, one (black) girl asked me "is this the white Old Yeller or the black Old Yeller?" I assumed she was asking if the movie was in black and white, but upon further inquiry she insisted that there was indeed a version of Old Yeller shot with an all black cast (and that this was the original, although I'm inclined to disregard that considering the classic Old Yeller was made in 1957). Have you guys heard of a black Old Yeller? If so, where can I find it?

Creeps

I got this email solicitation from AT&T inviting me to sign up for their new "Family Map" service. I suppose it allows parents to know their kids' physical location at all times using GPS. "Peace of mind", says the AT&T slogan, and it's true -- nothing says peace of mind like being perpetually observed. I think I'm going to have some kids, actually, just so I can track their movements around town like the omniscient god I've always wanted to be.

Just kidding. But I tell you one thing -- whenever my next Asian mail-order bride arrives, I'm going to make damn sure she knows the rules in my house include keeping your cell phone on your person at ALL TIMES whenever you go ANYWHERE. The last one ran off after I started letting her out of the house on weekends. This time around, if the wife takes a little day trip down to the women's shelter when I'm not home, I'll be the absolute first to know.

I mean, really -- doesn't it seem like there's some serious potential for abuse with popularizing this kind of technology?

I want to say that my gut level revulsion about this service comes more from the civil libertarian in me and less from the emotional remnants of adolescent resentment, but I'm not sure.

Spit

I have this certain feeling sometimes in the last moments of a dream in which I'm trying very hard to complete an action that I'm incapable of doing. I suppose it's in the same vein as having impossibly heavy legs while trying to run away from something scary,or being called on in a class you've never taken, but the sensation I'm describing is not necessarily part of a nightmare. It's a feeling of overwhelming frustration, because the part of my mind that's taking the dream world wholly seriously is being rudely interrupted by the part of my mind that's demanding everything grind to a halt immediately and abdicate to the dictates of waking reality. In that moment when the dream is dissipating and my attempt to perform said action fails (whether the action is running, talking, flying, eating something delicious, etc), I get momentarily angry. I think "no! No! I need to do this, goddammit!" And then even when I'm fully awake, it'll sometimes take several minutes for the feeling of powerlessness to fade. It can sour a whole morning.

Well, the other night, I finally managed to do what I had been trying to do. In my dream, I was righteously confronting some faceless person who had screwed me over. (I believe he had screwed lots of us over -- maybe even you!) The setting was a polite social gathering. In my anger, I grabbed from the floor a pair of shoes that belonged to the offender and began vigorously spitting into them. Everyone was shocked at my brashness, but you could see the admiration on their faces. I was finally letting him have it --but just then, something went wrong. Everything was catching, dissolving, and slipping away. Completely determined to see it through, though, I kept up the spitting. And for just one glorious moment before I woke up, I felt a great sense of triumph and pride that I'd done it. I'd conquered the dream world. But then, when I fully awoke, I found myself laying in the dark with my face and pillow covered in spittle, confused and unhappy. Nobody won.

The lesson here is to let it go, man, just let it go.

Sub sub sub

Today was my third day of substitute teaching in the LRSD. In one of my classes, I overheard a cherub-cheeked, roly-poly 13 year old boy complain in conversation with another boy of the same age that "the girls in this class don't give it up."

Poison control

I had my first poison control hotline experience today! I was about to head down to the garden to spray some Bacillus thuringiensis on the broccoli and cabbage when I realized that the bottle -- which I'd stuck in my pocket -- was dribbling green liquid down my leg. This stuff is a type of bacterial insecticide I've used many times before and that is considered to be organic. My personal research has shown that B. thurigiensis-based insecticides are often applied as liquid sprays on crop plants, where the insecticide must be ingested to be effective. It is thought that the solubilized toxins form pores in the midgut epithelium of susceptible larva.

Anyway. I had always heard that it causes no harm whatsoever to any organism other than butterfly larvae. As far as I know, you could drink it in great lidded steins. But, when I read the bottle, it instructed me to "flush skin with water for 15-20 minutes and call a poison control center" upon contact with skin!

I called the poison center number listed on the bottle, but the man on the other end directed me to a different hotline, for some reason, which made me a little nervous. "No, that won't hurt you," the second hotline said. They were really polite. This story isn't really going anywhere. I went to the garden and sprayed the plants. Later in the day I did the dishes and brushed my teeth.

My only questions are these. Have any of you had poison control hotline experiences as unbelievable as this one? And, could one call the poison control hotline for advice about exposure to any substance? Could I call and ask, for example, "Poison control, I've eaten a frito pie! What do I do?" What do you think they'd say?

Mixed signals

The question is on the tip of every tongue: what the hell is going on over at Big Bob's House of Things? Posts flit into and out of existence like exotic quantum particles (also, although it seems too incredible to be real, the fact of us observing them seems to determine whether or not they actually exist). In a sort of permineralization process, the comments were once the only record that said posts ever existed. Now they seem to require some kind of "membership".

Is this the ravages of early-onset dementia, or is something more sinister going on? Find out soon when I unveil an exclusive interview with the man behind Big Bob's House of Things. Until then, you can use this post as a catch all for leaving comments on Jake's blog.

Phossy Jaw

I had never heard of it before today. The name sounded so cute at first. "Awwww, phossy jaw!" I thought, "I want some of that." But no, it's awful. I've decided that I will no longer seek to inflict diseases on my body just because they have cute names, not after that nasty monkeypox episode. I was so foolish when I was young. Wikipedia says this about phossy jaw:

Phossy jaw, formally phosphorus necrosis of the jaw is an occupational disease of those who work with white phosphorus, also known as yellow phosphorus, without proper safeguards. It was most commonly seen in workers in the match industry in the 19th and early 20th century. Modern occupational hygiene practices have eliminated the working conditions which caused this disease.

Phossy jaw was caused by chronic exposure to the vapour of white phosphorus, the active ingredient of most matches from the 1840s to the 1910s. This exposure caused a deposition of phosphorus in the jaw bones.[1] It also caused serious brain damage. Affected workers would begin suffering painful toothaches and swelling of the gums. Over time, the jaw bone would begin to abscess. Affected bones would glow a greenish-white color in the dark.[2][3] Surgical removal of the afflicted jaw bones could save the patient; otherwise, death from organ failure would follow. The disease was extremely painful and disfiguring to the patient, with dying bone tissue rotting away accompanied by a foul-smelling discharge.