the third rail

you've seen it down there, below the platform... the third rail...

fascinating how we can remain so happily without care, while something so profoundly dangerous lurks waiting with little but a grimy and nondescript sign to guard it. (i sometimes think that the grime is far more effective than the words to deter the unwitting from wandering too close).

my life is a veritable plethora of third rails. "did you think of me while..."

"what do you think the devil is going to look like?"

getting, as i do, all my personal knowledge and philosophies from the movies: albert brooks in "broadcast news" let slip the key when he pointed out that "nobody is going to be taken in if he has a long red pointy tail". yes, for sure the devil will "look attractive and he will be nice and helpful". (oh, and can't forget: "and he'll get all the great women"). well, opinions on oprah's appearance aside, wouldn't you say she's nice, and has got 'em all? hooked, but good? ok, maybe it's harsh to accuse that she's diogenes in the flesh, but if you're a man in a relationship with a woman, it's hard not to agree that she bears at least a passing resemblance.

recently, i received an urgent late afternoon phone call from a coworker, to whom i had confided both my relationship woes, and my wife's daily oprah habit. "you've gotta get home RIGHT AWAY, man!!!" (this sounded like a dire emergency, like my house being on fire featured at the top of the hour on CNN...) why??? what's wrong? "you can't let her watch OPRAH, man!!! they're CRUCIFYING him!!!!!!" (and my friend? the one cringing at every soul-bearing revelation? she's a WOMAN!)

i actually saw that show. (it was a re-run that day). saw it with my wife, as a matter of fact. and my friend was right, it was ba-a-ad. (did you know that all married men are addicted to web porn?) but between the tivo and my wife's encyclopedic memory of every news story in history involving a husband's mistreatment of his wife, there wasn't much further damage to be done by just staying in the office. (sometimes choosing a foxhole and digging in isn't a bad wartime strategy).

lucky for me, some bonehead guy wrote a feature piece in last sunday's boston globe magazine about women's pain tolerance and childbirth, so i've got a free pass, at least until she writes to the editor and gets that little crusade off her chest. then, as it always should be, it'll be back to being just about me.

ain't love grand?

sportsmanship and sportsmen

schadenfreude covers the other guys, but how do we feel about OURS?

i know a lot of "fans" who would gladly trade their sporting soul for that one singular taste of olympus. but what is "the hand of god", really? what does lionel messi think he proves by stitching "el mano de dios '86" on his boots? (it figures that the child wasn't even born in '86). maradona himself, in his autobiography, has likened his feelings at that infamous moment not to his original lofty quote about god, but to the shameful feeling of having "pickpocketed the english". so how many of us have been cheated, not least diego himself, by the infamy of the dishonorable moment, which has eclipsed by its treachery the transcendance of the man's final run through the entire english team that capped the day?

to me, this is the truth of sport, and of life, and of how we mistake ourselves by focusing solely on the victory, and not its means. (mea culpa for all my profound failings).

terry o'reilly is supposedly "beloved" by bruins fans. but contrast him with bobby orr, arguably the toughest defenseman of his era in the same way that o'reilly is often considered as one of the tougher players of his: i don't believe i ever saw bobby lose a fight, nor ever back down from one. (truth is, he didn't have to get into many). o'reilly? he was a punk. a cheap shot on skates. the embodied definition of poor sportsmanship, in a package of literally relentless pettiness. (quick, tell me if your clearest memory of terry is with his gloves on or off?) i couldn't be more ashamed of any player that's ever donned the spoked "B" sweater. and i am grateful that both my memories and my dreams of stanley cups past and future can all be decades apart from terry.

and so i also find it remarkable that orr's transcendance can almost fully obscure his pugilism, in exactly the opposite way that maradona's shame has erased much of his possible glory. while i'm in this fight of my life, i try to be always mindful that the "hand of god" is on my shoulder not as support, but as admonishment. it DOES matter how you play the game.

the underdog

i've covered this before, so if you're nauseated by my ad nauseum, feel free to skip today's diatribe...
but i just have to continue yesterday's discourse on schadenfreude to examine my own perverse need to identify with, and root blindly for, the underdog in all things. continuing the sports metaphor for a moment, we can contemplate my five-year-old self: the '65 red sox lost 100 games, the '65 bruins were in the process of completing one 21-43-6 season and beginning another, and the '65 boston patriots were 4-8. all while the 1965 boston celtics were enjoying a 62-18 record, their 8th championship in 9 years, and their 7th straight out of 8 consecutive. so who would you root for? wasn't even a question for me: b's, pats and sox all the way.by 1967 bobby orr had won the norris trophy, carl yastrzemski the triple crown, and, well, ok, the patriots still sucked... but the joy was there, and the pattern for my whole life. sure, the '68 and '69 celts won it all, just like they always did, but while orr was capturing his first norris (and sanderson the calder) in '68, the bruins won 37 games!!! and by '69, when espo had his hart and ross, and bobby orr set an all-time record for scoring by a defenseman and literally transformed an entire sport right before my very eyes, and the montreal canadiens still and once again dashed all hopes, i was hooked forever. you can keep those celts, i couldn't have cared less.the joy for me is in how you play the game. there is honor in striving against all odds, and there is glory in having given it your all. eventually, even after 86 years of futility, the championship gods may finally smile upon those who have perservered, but the teams i love best are seldom those who know the sweetness of final victory. "too many men on the ice"... "roughing the passer"... "pesky holds the ball"... these are all the stuff of legend for me, as sure as orr flying, or vinatieri kicking, or mientkiewicz squeezing that final out will ever be.

want to know my most indelible memory from the 2004 red sox? it's tim wakefield asking for the ball, giving up his start in game 4 to carry the team on his shoulders through the horrific 17-8 beating in game 3. that's courage. that's a champion. doesn't take a david ortiz miracle to determine that.

my team, and whoever is playing the...

they say schadenfreude has no direct english translation, but between manchester united, the montreal canadiens, and the new york yankees, i can hardly imagine a german definition that does the word justice. (ask any resident of liverpool, toronto or boston if i'm lying). GO SOX!

passive pugilism

tell me honestly, have you ever tried to wrestle with water?

ironically, as quixotic pursuits go, i'm actually getting pretty good at it. maybe my phd in passive/aggressive emotional withdrawal helps, which, best i can tell, is the way water does what it does--is there a lower point or a crack into which it can slip further? you know it's going there. well, whichever way it goes, there's a fine art to standing up for yourself in a fight that is specifically forbidden to be called one, against an adversary who can sluice away and claim victory the moment any hint of active resistance or aggression is detected, and i'm it's most apt and rapt pupil.

hardest part, actually, is responding to the incredulity of the well-wishing spectators. not only incredulous for the obvious inequity to the stakes and terms of the conflict, they're further frustrated that all their best advice must be summarily dismissed. (how can counsel on wrestling holds be received and used by a scuba diver?) so the poor folks in the front row seats are reduced to being what i dislike most: platitudinous cheerleaders equipped with only empty encouragements. "give it your all". "keep it up". "be patient, the game will come to you".

water wrestling aside, you know how i am at hiding my dislikes.

point-in-time journalism

part of the reason i've been put into this purgatory is that one particular loved-one was (and likely still is) unable to distinguish point-in-time journalism (i.e. a smattering of emails and a volume of online posts to various and sundry online forums) from enduring truths--about both the subject, and about the author. it occurs to me today, being castigated once again for past transgressions as if they were as fresh as today's daisies, (as well as misinterpreted here by others about my potential despair), that human expression is fraught with peril that often calls into question why we should do it at all.

daniel gilbert (harvard psychology professor and author of the beautifully double-entendre'd "stumbling on happiness") observes in today's ny times that "he who cast the first stone probably didn't". he begins by recounting the classic cliche of sibling rivalry from the "wayback" of the family station wagon, and hits his stride recounting some fascinating research from university college london about "the neuroscience of force escalation".

"until we learn to stop trusting everything our brains tell us about others -- and start trusting others themselves -- there will continue to be tears and recriminations in the wayback". "until" indeed, danny.

big gorilla at the LA zoo

its the anthem of desperation for the ages, and the refrain for all time: "send lawyers, guns and money". i've always loved the way he put it: "i'm the innocent bystander / but somehow i got stuck / between the rock and a hard place / and i'm down on my luck".

yes, i'm down on my luck.

well, i'm down on my luck.

self-unawareness is such a brutally honest thing...

"i'm numb as a statue / i may have to beg, borrow or steal / some feelings from you / so i can have some feelings too."

...

yup, i'm the one who went down to havana, and yeah, no one but myself has put me against it. (what was it that warren once wrote about the wall and throwing oneself? no, it ain't that pretty at all). though i'm spending a lot of time lately thinking about that train that's leaving nightly called "when all is said and done..."

when she rails at me for all i am not, there will only be one lyric left to say: "sometimes when you're doing simple things around the house / maybe you'll think of me and smile / i'm tied to you like the buttons on your blouse / keep me in your heart for awhile".

life during wartime

"this ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no foolin' around..."

we all know the words by heart. tonight i'm living in the echoes of the final stanza...

"try to be careful, don't take no chances, you better watch what you say"

it's always made me scratch my head, why david byrne left those words out of the live version he released as part of "stop making sense". tonight more than ever.

does your i-pod speak to you?

i was going to ask if your i-pod speaks to your inner reptile, but i think that's the advanced course. (write to receive a syllabus and summer reading list).

well, my i-pod does talk to me, and, yes, i listen, even if i don't always choose to accept or agree with what's being said. (don't judge--if you don't listen to the voices inside your head, who is it that's talking when you decide that you don't listen to voices inside your head?) this morning, the first song out of the 2000-song "favorite" playlist (random play, restarted at zero because i let it sit for a few days and it always has to reboot itself after being left sit for a few days, to which i attribute a very selfish, ego-centric petulance to the little device, but that's another story) was galileo by the indigo girls, which has to be one of my favorite lyrics of all times, and which was entirely topical because i was on my way to see the veritible font of all eastern religious/philosophical dogma in my life right now, and i was in need of some thought fodder. ("his crime was looking up the truth"). got that right.

anyway...

i find "shuffle play" to be one of the greatest inventions of all time, and i personally and further believe apple should propose this little gem as the final answer to that turing test thingie so that all those AI nerds can get back to work on something more productive. my i-pod DOES speak to me, and just because i don't always like the answers (aretha's "evil gal blues" isn't always what you want to hear when you're contemplating on the object of your affection) doesn't mean that it's any less helpful than your average human sounding board. (if i hear one more well-meaning friend, relative or acquaintance parrot back that inanity that "it just takes time" i think i'm going to let that inner reptile of mine go 12-foot-komodo-dragon on the world for awhile and see where it might get me instead).

so "we belong together" coming straight after "evil gal blues" doesn't necessarily constitute nonsense, nor even bad advice for that matter. (it's fair warning to point out the dangers of "if you tell me good morning i'm gonna tell you that's a lie", don't you think?) the issues don't seem to me to be in what comes out of the little white oracle, but, rather, how we hear them and react to them. some folks go to analysts to deconstruct their dreams, why shouldn't i go to mine to unlock the mysteries of my reaction to "ana ng", and "when i was driving once i saw this painted on a bridge: 'i don't want the world, i just want your half' "? she DOES want my half, and i'm terrified because i know it's not the half that has anything at all to do with material possessions, but rather that other half, lying at the back, and deep down beneath the 1000 layers of "the glow of each others majestic presence", where our literal selves and our true emotions hide...

what's your inner i-pod on today?

does your inner reptile have a name?

thinking about the triune brain WITH a triune brain would seem to qualify as one of churchill's "riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma". maclean made a point to say that the inner reptile isn't evolutionarily superceded--it still functions there, deep down beneath the surface of the murky neocortical waters. so how much of our perception is contributed by that spinal excrescence? and, can we ask it why and how it does what it does? (and, if we did, would it even bother to answer?)

while we're thinking about thinking, we're also observing ourselves thinking about thinking, as well as experiencing the emotions related to thinking about thinking, in addition to listening to our own musings and conclusions about thinking about thinking. (not to forget thinking about thinking about thinking). is one of those voices the reptile brain? or might our inner reptile be even more subtle than that, coloring what each of those elements thinks and feels without revealing itself, or any of those elements ever becoming aware that their perceptions and processes are fundamentally influenced and controlled. as i think of it, my inner reptile would certainly be cold and systematic enough to run the whole show without the slightest shadow of itself crossing the light of consciousness. lets call him tyler. limbic and neocortical brains, meet tyler. (he's already met you).

your inner reptile

anthropomorphs seem quick to gravitate towards and embrace the (perceived) high end of the evolutionary scale--dogs and cats, (esp. kittens), and sometimes, for the truly kinky, horses... but it occurs to me that this is complete denial of a deeper truth, and it's about time someone wrote a suitable paean to the beast that lurks inside all of us: our inner reptile.

paul maclean developed a fascinating take on our cognitive processes by postulating a "triune brain", and concentric layers of consciousness (or subconsciousness) to go with them. he pointed out the obvious, that each layer resembles the evolutionary point-in-time development of other species, and when the observations are at their most advanced, as with the neocortex, it's a highly self-congratulatory love in. we love to call our brethren "higher" mammals, and revel in our perceived superiorities.

but the layer that fascinates me the most these days is what he called the "R-complex", comprised of the brain stem and cerebellum. wrapped two layers deep beneath the cerbral cortex and all those high-functioning mammal behaviors, this "reptile brain" operates on a whole different level. good and evil? BAH. it's all about self preservation. (oh, and procreation of the species, can't forget about procreation of the species).

so maclean associates different thought processes and abilities with each successive layer, and we learn that our high-order thinking skills, reason and speech are all evolved and processed through our outermost cortex. (hi, from my neocortex to yours). the limbic system beneath contributes emotions, personal identity and possibly memory. (accessing data...) but the real beauty is the reptile brain wrapped beneath it all. no right or wrong, no good and evil, just survival behavior and a drive to have what it needs. from the buffalo university website link behind the brain diagram: "The overriding characteristics of R-complex behaviors are that they are automatic, have a ritualistic quality, and are highly resistant to change".

highly resistant to change indeed.

let's hear some love for our inner reptiles.

good and evil

recently, a professional said, along with the disclaimer that he meant it only in the best way, that there was something "satanic" in me. skip ahead if you would like to be spared the digression, but she was hot like habaneros, and had picked out my bookishly bespectacled friend to play a little game of jealousy. clear to everyone but him was that his heart would soon be trampled in her scarlett o'hara exit back to biff, so enter mephistopheles. as poe so lyrically puts it: "had alexander not been alexander, he would have been diogenes; and the duc assured his majesty in taking leave 'que s'il n'etait pas de l'omelette il n'aurait point d'objection d'etre le diable.' " well, i had no objection either.

blondes who dis beer being the worst there are, (beer being sacred), and to hear her pronouncement that she never drank st pauli girl, she only drank becks, was to give inspiration to the plot. there not being much beyond pretention to taste a difference between two bottles from the same line, (ain't it funny how germans marketing beer to americans would emphasize breasts in a made-up sister brand?), her idiocy proved matched only by that pretention, and she bit. enter supporting cast with a tray of three generously sized shot glasses, two six-packs of bottles sans habiliments (nods once again to poe) and a crowd of cheering onlookers. the bet was simple: identify the becks, and win. tell the odd one out from a random pour of three, and at least save face. but the wager for the devil was that barbie lacked the ken to even manage that.

blind luck would have succeeded one out of every three tries, but her kismet was to fail six times in succession. three two-ounce shots of beer, times six rounds, divided by her narrow-waisted, narrow-minded petite-ness and pettiness, yields quite the effective beer buzz, and, convenient for lucifer, relative incapacitation. the denouement was swift, and loud enough for all to overhear: "nothing but a cock tease, and stupid too". her tears and my remorselessness seemed equally stunning to the assembled crowd. the devil, indeed.

so, satanic? we could talk about my defense of my friend, but what would that change? out of a million different ways to handle the situation, i don't believe many are further from the milk of human kindness.

so, good and evil...

i've always been uncomfortable with the deification of "good", and the demonization of "evil". history is a field rife with stories of the excess of both, yet i've never felt when looking into the eyes of another human being, let alone through the long lens of history, that i've truly seen either one. to me, in this world, there is only human choice, and only, from that, human action. not good, not evil, just human. under the heading of unintended consequences, even the best of motivations and purest of achievements can still bear the taint of misfortune and sin, if you peel back the onion a little bit. (love thy neighbor? from the moment i learned that the christian god slew the firstborn of all the egyptians "for his great love is without end"--i kid you not, this was the call and response of one of the little liturgical sing-songs from the church of my childhood--i knew that there was a little bit more to good and evil than met the eye).

don't doubt that columbus discovered america, but join me in a laugh at mole and deacon arguing the final honor of being the last person in the country necessary to be excluded for being "un-american". (it's all in the jack acid society black book, i wouldn't make this stuff up). all best intentions in the world, but i'd say there is never one right answer, though often a million wrong ones. oh well, don't listen to me, i'm the devil. (nods to james brooks, who asked the ultimate good-and-evil rhetorical question: "what do you think the devil is going to look like").

walt kelly

one of the beauties (terrors?) of age is that it brings perspective on ones parents. confronting the balance of the world's blithe ignorance that walt kelly passed this way once upon a time, i recall things like my father's wistful paeans to the artists of his 78rpm record collection, which, as much for the forward march of technology and the dearth of compatible record players as the insult of cultural forgetfulness, are slipping further and further out of reach.

walt kelly, if for no better reason to remember him, once stood tall against one of the direst threats to our country and constitution ever presented. back when "comics" pointedly avoided all things controversial and political (ever try to find anything subversive in mickey mouse?) he invented "simple j. malarkey", and took aim and made daily defiance to senator j. mccarthy in a time when such defiance was all-too-often the ruination of both career and public character. he went on from laying the groundwork to murrow's eventual expose of the crime, to pillory countless outrages, from the vietnam war & our shameful abuse of our planet, ("we have met the enemy, and he is us"), to our own internal inability to come to grips with our faults. ("now is the time for all good men to come to"). well, our all being in the general spirit of walt's inimitable epithet, "in like a dimwit, and out like a light", kelly has literally paved the way for graphic storytellers for generations to come, yet he is all but forgotten by the legion of those who would read the derivatives.

the list of graphic artists and animators publically citing their debts to kelly is astounding to me: bill watterson (calvin and hobbes), jeff macnelly (countless political cartoons, and the strip "shoe"), garry trudeau (doonesbury), self-publishing pioneer jeff smith (bone), jim henson (the muppet show), matt groening (the simpsons), etc. and how many others would cite these luminaries, standing as they acknowledge on the shoulders of kelly, as the formative influence for their own work? and yet, like the bluesmen trampled underfoot by the public's enamoration with mssrs page & plant, the artists' debts are seemingly unappreciated if not outright ignored by those who would revel in all that came after. (admit it, you don't have the songs from the two record set of the surviving recordings of blind lemon jefferson on your i-pod, do you, even if you've either got some zep, or most likely just some rap or hip hop based on a rif from zep on the little gadget).

well, me, i've at least got the mixer necessary to pump the output from my turntable into the computer in order to make the mp3's, and all good intentions. (had to start first with the little feat). i've never been disappointed to peel back the onion of my ignorant fandom, and i'll always owe mom a tremendous debt of gratitude for those precious pogo books in that box in the attic.

walt even wrote the soundtrack to my current sorry and precarious situation in life: "every burden is a blessing", and, more poignantly, "women aren't as mere as they used to be", which would be harder to face if not for the ultimately comforting admonition: "don't take life so serious, son, it ain't nohow permanent".

rip, walt.

songwriting via essay

a radio dj once spelled it out to me that "flying machines in pieces on the ground" were really just the dissolution of sweet baby james' and kootches first band ("the flying machine") and had nothing to do with urban legend plane crashes. (did you know that kootch and leon russell and ry cooder and neil young and stephen stills and carole king, among others, all appeared on the soundtrack album to the monkees' 1968 movie, head, which itself was written by jack nicholson!?!) this wouldn't really matter all that much, except that it occurs to me that song lyrics, being just about the most opaque form of writing ever invented, seem to be the genre role model that i'm most trying to emulate a couple of hundred essay words at a time. (you can say it out loud, what i write just doesn't make any sense, it won't hurt my feelings).

so, unable to find a musician who might be substance-dependant enough to try putting all this to music, (let alone a graphic artist willing to even joke about illustrating it), i guess i'll just have to keep humming this music i hear in my head all to myself and hope that the few stragglers left piecing the participles together will hang on long enough to turn out the lights when there is finally (already?) nobody left at home.

literal is so dead-end... besides, when they know for sure you haven't said anything of value, it's a heck of a lot worse than if they can only accuse you of it based on circumstantial evidence. (what is it that they say, that it's better to be thought a fool than to open ones mouth to remove all doubt?) well, obfuscation is the next best thing to silence, especially for someone who is pathologically unable to stfu.

roller coasters

i've always felt myself somewhat odd, that the moment most anxious (and memorable) to me about a roller coaster (raise your hand if you've ridden the comet at hershey park, and extra credit if you rode the 1946 incarnation before they tightened it up in '78) is the one where the drive chain clanks into place and begins to drag the cars up the initial incline. does the coaster eventually speed and drop and cause ones stomach to climb into ones throat? i honestly can't remember--im too busy mastering my anxiety and fear for that inevitable and profoundly portentious "clank", and the little jerk that will drag me up onto the launch ramp for all that will come after.

this is perhaps what causes me to make all my worst choices and to run my otherwise wonderful life off its rails at every turn. (c'mon, admit it: you've felt that urge to throw off your seatbelt and jump out of the coaster before it gets too high up the towering climb too). if love is a roller coaster, and the rapture is in the thrills of the hills, both up and down, i'm the idiot who ruins the whole ride for everyone else by panicking before things even get started. just watch me climb out and cause the operator to pull the switch on the whole thing.

ironically, the circumstances of infidelity are such that outside observers might be tempted to conclude the infidelitor is thrill-seeking and compulsively roller-coaster-riding. having a more informed opinion these days, i can absolutely see how, sometimes, and at least in my case, this is absolutely ass-backwards.

if i were a thrill seeker, i'd be plumbing my inner depths for the REAL roller coaster ride--the gut-wrenching depths of my very own personal demons arrayed against the dizzying heights of true love. unfortunately, being anything but when it comes to love, i have to struggle to fight that urge to unbuckle, and hunker down while i'm dragged up that portentious and terrifying initial hill.

i'm going to end up with an entire dictionary of mantras:

"constant vigilance"
"i'm just trying to be a better person"
"please keep your hands and feet inside the ride until it has come to a complete stop inside the station"

friday the 13th comes on thursday this month

churchy la femme could find any number of reasons on any given day to stick his head inside his shell, but this one (friday the 13th comes on...) has always been my favorite. there isn't a 13th that goes by that i don't think of walt kelly.

"we have met the enemy, and he is us" is almost as useful a mantra for me these days as earl's "i'm just trying to be a better person". as i recall walt intimating that every single critter in the okefenokee was a little part of his own character, i'm reminded that howland owl's wizard cap and know-it-all attitude says more about me than i often care to admit. heck, p.t. bridgeport's entire colorfully-typeset repertoire of hucksterisms can be construed to literally define the present incarnation of my silly sorry career. albert's appetite (it always made me chuckle to see him stand accused of eating other characters), were he a sexual being, would be just about perfect for me too, especially how he's perennially left to stand the fool amidst all the plots by and around him. and don't get anybody who knows me started about the porky angle--the scowl lines of the incorrigibly pessimistic cynic on my forehead aren't becoming indelible for nothing.

it's unfortunate that the chances of somebody reading this having the faintest idea of what i'm talking about are just about nil...

bewitched, bothered and bemildred am i.

:-)

satisfying ones inner geek

i'm sure cave men (gender-generalization intended) pulled pranks on each other. (sawing spears halfway-through so they'd break instead of taking down the sabre-toothed tiger running at them and stuff like that).

when i first started working with real computers and real software (none of that pdp-11 stuff from jr high school) i successfully pranked my inner geek into bed with the hottest woman in the company. (terminal messaging on an ibm system/38--muah, cmm). actually, it wasn't really a prank, per se, but i'll digress for a moment to observe that there is something elemental about human-to-human connection, and the effects of simple communication seem to be magnified when the effort is perceived to be more than casual or trivial. (i figure it's why rock singers always get the girl, and sky-writing "i love you" gets more tail than "hey baby, you come here often?") but it was, when all is said and done, really little more than a prank, albeit one whose secret was traded around amongst the geeks until it found its higher calling under the manipulative motivations of a geek with a tan and soccer shape. some of my best work...

anyway, all good things having to come to an end, 25 yr old geek-lottery winners bedding breathtaking 38 yr old (married--ack!) beauties most of all, our correspondent was tossed out of eden (or hell, depending on how you take the discussion of insufferable bosses from the last entry) and forced to find his way in the cold, cruel world. wonder of wonders, from 15k and generic macaroni and cheese dinners to 23.5 and a MAINFRAME!!!, our hero is introduced to the world's greatest-ever assembled team of software talent, the mysteries and masteries of tso, timeless philosophies like "dasd is cheap", and the idiosyncratic wonders of cms.

when you're 25, and brilliant, and in the company of those even moreso, and afforded the tools with which to remake the world, (50,000 years ago it would have been a wooden-shafted spear and a sharp rock, though in 1980 it was an ibm 4331 with a 3270 terminal), there is all inevitability to what will happen next. geek #1 discovers that swiping someones cms password affords opportunity to monkey with their login profile to display things like "i like mike torrez", and geek #2, who still listens to "the impossible dream" 78 over beers on the weekend, retaliates by dismounting all of geek #1's logical disks. sooner or later--you know it's going to come to this--the ultimate geek showdown occurs: "here, i'll even give you my password and you can do anything you want, but i'll still kick your ass in cms." we'll pause for a moment to note that cms profiles carry the interesting self-referential potential of being able to log themselves out as part of logging themselves in, and geek #2, no slouch even if he was a step behind in the cmm sweepstakes, goes straight for the nuclear option. login, logout. game over, bucky f. dent. or is it!!! geek #1, actually having met his match, though still resourceful enough to clandestinely leverage a good phish decades before its time, secretly phones the support center, where the real cms geeks reside, with an entirely plausible, though entirely made up, customer usage scenario, and thus gains the keys to the geek nirvana kingdom: "login (nopro". back ATCHA!!!

so we fast forward about 25 years, and we run across a thoroughly satisfying website that really ought to have been bylined by the onion, but, since genius knows no boundaries, was contributed to the collective consciousness by an anonymous lone geek wolf. man, am i jealous. how satisfying it would be to pull something off so instantly memorable. i don't know if the rest of the world remembers, but the mit geeks that inflated the weather balloon from beneath the sod during halftime at the 1982 harvard/yale game are veritable role models for much of my life. yeah, i've got issues with boundaries, but i think it's notable that i couldn't resist, while helping someone add a web counter to their blogspot blog this morning, modifying the template to include a wink of a link to something they had referenced in their profile. (i hope it's enjoyed, but sometimes the inner geek can't worry about that while following their inner tech muse).

which causes me to wonder... among calliope, euterpe, clio, erato and the rest of their inspirational sisters, which one would be taking credit for this sort of thing? inquiring minds would like to know, since there's no reason not to put up on the bunker's walls a nice suggestive renaissance-era portrait of a hot babe in a provocative stage of diaphanous undress, to which he can dedicate his little diversions...

who's yo momma?

daily dilbert

it occurs to me that i've complained about spouses, sports and all sorts of other predictable predicaments, and there hasn't been nearly enough said about how desperately, at times, work sucks. (ok, this whole "career" thing has been pissing me off royally today, and i can't get past that). well, rather than be accused of being anything less than a completely well-rounded cynic, let's get right to it:

strength and flexibility are often at cross purposes, whether within our own bodies, or within the attributes of a commercial enterprise. (ever see a body builder try to touch their toes?) having worked within relatively small organizations, (nimble & capricious), as well as relatively large ones, (plodding and thoughtful), i'm wise enough to realize that there is no "perfect" combination of these two elements, other than to observe that more of both of them are usually good. (there are indeed a lot of very limber decathletes). where frustration often ensues, is wherever unreasonable expectations for becoming a corporate contortionist-sumo-wrestler, (or powerlifting-ballerina), are concerned. get yourself a boss that doesn't "get" this, and you've got yourself a recipe for membership in scott adams' fan club. (and if you noticed that this paragraph was hardly "right to it", congratulations for an honorable mention in wiley's "obviousman" strips [don't forget to watch the obviousman movie further down the link!] and an observation that you haven't been reading this blog for very long, have you...)

ok, and now i've got to digress even further for this one: in confirming the link, i happened to notice today's strip (july 11th) and laughed right out loud. the phb says to dilbert, "i want you to write a business case for lobbying our government to attack elbonia". dilbert replies, "in the risk analysis section, do you want me to assume that hell is real or imaginary?". (laugh right out loud, drawing oddly quizzical attention from officemates, here). this much would have been funny enough, but scott always likes to twist the ironic knife: "real, but remember to discount the infinite future flows of agony to the present so it doesn't look so bad." (apologies to the corporate copyright gods for stealing, and to you if you didn't think that this little exchange was so laugh-out-loud funny, in which case i'm going to have to guess that you never went to business school or toiled below decks on the ss "corporate culture").

anyway... so, where was i?

oh, yeah, my boss trying to touch his toes while balancing a logical refrigerator on his back...

archibald putt, whoever he or she is, is welcome in my corporate bed, anytime. "the value of an idea is measured less by its content, than by the structure of the hierarchy in which it is pronounced"." WOW. got THAT right, archie! "the correct advice to give is the advice that is desired--the desired advice being revealed by the structure of the hierarchy, not by the structure of the technology". words to live by. "decisions are justified by benefits to the organization: decisions are made by considering benefits to the decision-makers." ain't that the TRUTH. "organizational stagnation occurs when the punishment for success is as large as for failure." welcome to my world. (who is this savant, and why hasn't he or she been elected president of the universe?)

SO... finally,

are we shooting for strong, consistent, planned communication? or do you want an entirely new suite of nimble press releases, sales presentations, white papers and product documentation to reflect the new flavor of the month? (remembering, of course, that our love for the new flavor is only valid in north america, and we must continue to swear allegiance to our love for the old flavor in europe, except that we do care about the old flavor in case you bought it from us off the north american ice cream truck last year, which shouldn't be construed that we're discounting our devotion to the new flavor overall, though never to suggest that we're losing our dedication to the old one...)

just don't call me up one week, shuttling me nimbly off to san jose with 1000 new to-yoga-do's, and then spend all tuesday morning the next questioning why we haven't powerfully stood by all the old rhetoric... i'll be mentally thumbing through all my old archie comic books, and thinking that peter, and his principle, were right on the money.

the illustrated man

ever been a fish out of water? ever been a fish out of a cartoon of water?

put a 45-yr-old guy in the middle of a manga convention and you've got non sequitur written in big bold italics, and underlined about 45 more times for emphasis. (if the font size field is only three digits, then it's not big enough). but, actually, i exaggerate a little. the author of inthepuddle.com is actually 29, which makes her more than half my age. see? i'm NOT old enough to be her... ack...

another artist gets big props with me for her "business cards" for her site, thedevilspanties.com, (her semi-autobiographical self), with its bold-faced ad slogan: "IT'S NOT SATANIC PORN, HONEST!" i got a big laugh out of that one, as did actually (i think) my romantic partner/adversary/wife, whose first accusations when all this ugliness started were that i MUST be addicted to web porn, cuz oprah said so...

i was also impressed by dan kim. another noteworthy webcomic author, matt boyd, who often with ian mcconville pens the extremely droll and highly recommended machall, quoted yet another artist who i can't recall as saying that the difference between american comics art and japanese manga was the difference between a focus on plot vs emotion. luckily, the thought hadn't gone completely out the other ear before i saw dan kim's art at the show, and understood exactly what was meant. i find dan's drawings to be remarkably emotionally potent. (dontcha just LOVE stacking adverbs?)

matt's best bit of the day was talking about the dire non-comical straights of most webcomic authors, and the fact that amazon now stocks food on its site. his april 7th strip details the concept of charitable wish-lists, and their vegetative fruition. for complete and proper attribution, i would love to know who thought to send the broccoli. (though i wonder if broccoli, being a vegetable, can technically claim to be a fruition...)

all-in-all, a surprisingly good day, considering the possibilities. (10 hours with a bunch of manga geeks 1/3 your age does have its varying potentials). not quite sure i get the urge to costume onesself, but, hey, there were a lot of kids having a lot of good, clean fun, even if the female costumes seemed disturbingly sexist to someone of "my generation". (wtf is it about comic art and the female form?)

the thought that occurs most stridently to me this evening is that this particular meandering diatribe (yes, this one that you're reading) is in desperate need of a little illustration. had jenny been a little older, with her web pirates actually in possession of real estate instead of just shopping for it, and raising a gaggle of rambunctuous manga fans while juggling a tragically twisted marital relationship, i might have considered asking her if she did charity work.

somewhere, somehow, i wonder if there's a gifted artist with his or her pen in search of some adult pathos (parody?) to illustrate...

we could start with the look on a 45-yr-old soccer fanatic's face, after having spent 10 hours being the stoic chaperone at a teenage manga-fest, salivating wistfully at the belated treat of watching the world cup finals at home on his tivo, and then having his cheerful 12-yr-old walking up and asking him how he felt about italy winning it all...

DOH!

:-)

"some people can't be told, you know, they have to learn the hard way"

elvis costello always gets it right. (tokyo storm warning, one of the best).

did you know that peacocks are born (hatched?) without even the instinct to feed themselves? without another chick to watch, they'll starve to death without knowing to either eat or drink.

sometimes i wonder if we're the pea chicks of the primate world... if you felt in suspense from the weekend's contretemps, you'll be happy to know that after corresponding feverishly with an online confidante, she found the proper answer to my otherwise impenetrable wall of defensive egocentrism. yes, i could tell as the righteous indignation welled up within me, that it was neither rational nor constructive, but no matter how many times i told myself to break free from the cycle, i could not alone. birds of a feather as we are, neither for the longest time could she. thankfully, there was a helpful someone nearby online who could show her where the water was before we expired of thirst, and while i was doing the dad thing down at the town 4th of july picnic, she had reached out to her little electronic lifeline, and we were saved from ourselves to fight another day. thank you verizon.

embarrassing as it is to admit, i realize yet again that we're not so much more highly evolved than these decidedly pea-brained pea fowl. "you don't love me, you never loved me" might as well be tattoo'd on my forehead, just so people could read it for themselves instead of always having to listen to me recite it or some essentially identical version of it. i'd beat myself up more about it, but clearly she's got the phd and i'm only a doctoral candidate where these things are concerned. we make quite a pair.

why are relationships so hard? why do we run from love? where is this "self destruct" button that we're always so compelled to subconsciously push, and how does one get it removed, like we would a bunion or a nasty-looking skin growth that does us no earthly good?

i even have to admit i kind of miss the feeling of solitary indignation--how's that for crazy.

what have you learned today?

independence day

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed

--The Declaration of Independence

cry havoc redux

while we're examining the human proclivity for wreaking havoc... (a digression to note wayne rooney's boot-heel groin-grinding, under what others might prefer to be a slightly less violent set of social "rules", as an interesting parallel to the english' frequent and comfortable use of the expression to "play" havoc... though i'm a "wreaker", tyvm...)

so we find that some folks (ok, as walt kelly pointed out that "we have met the enemy, and he is us, so this shouldn't be intended to become a group stone-throw from our collective glass house) are adept and willing to let loose their dogs in their big and little episodes of human conflict. i suppose it's actually quite a natural human instinct, to engage ones "tribe" in standing up to the massed threats sent at us by the world at large. but we're also the ones to invent things like the marquess of queensbury rules to govern even our most violent passtimes, and there comes a point when we instinctively feel that civilized folks should be saying "enough!" about the violence of piling on. and we're all quite quick to whine to the referee (right, thierry?) when we feel hard-done-by, aren't we.

i wonder if that's really what marriage counselors are: modern western society's construction of a relationship referee, tacitly agreed among the participants to keep the low blows out of the ring, while the combatants settle who's going to "win" the relationship...

but, as we all know, there are no referees in love and war, and pleading to the "geneva convention" while our opposing spouse/partner/other enlists the moral indignation of every other mutually-known acquaintance, has got to end badly. (in my case, she's even gone so far as to cite to mutual acquaintances the preference of affections of the family dog).

so let's examine this tactic, shall we?

did she mention that she acquired said puppy after i had taken a travelling job, mutually agreed to better support the family, and she was also at the peak of her unspoken complaints of the burden of her responsibilities at home? (convenient to leverage the animal as added weight to her arguments of abandonment, and next as a cudgel to beat home the point). and did she also mention that our other dog, our FIRST dog, the one we acquired TOGETHER when we were both at home, and the one she had accidentally run over with the family minivan, had expressed a slightly different point of view?

(nope and nope, in case you're keeping score...)

so i've had a night's sleep to get my mind around the dogs, and i'm disinclined to take the "christian" other cheek. yeah, i'm in high dudgeon today, sports fans. i'll spare you the rationale for who has the high ground here, since i'm actually growing more comfortable every day with the "love and war" angle, but i will say that "fair is fair".

wish i knew to which bluesman to attribute "i'll be your dog". (you remember "baby please don't go", right?) that's how i'm measuring things this morning. are you my dog? with apologies to dylan and his post-apocolypse "i'll let you be in my dream, if you let me be in yours", it being all about the dogs with me, i'll be your dog.

cry havoc

shakespeare is a quote machine, isn't he? given but a moment to retrieve a handful of precious books from the shelves of my past, i could scarcely choose among them, but grabbed instinctively and zealously for shakespeare (collected works), followed by walt kelly (i go pogo, the pogo party, g.o. fizzikle pogo and "the jack acid society black book"), ogden nash (675 pages of "selected poetry") and edgar allen poe (the complete tales of mystery and imagination). it's a beautiful collection, if i do say so myself. and though i can quote from all of them by heart, i think it's shakespeare that continues to ring the most bells for most folks, so tonight's topical offering will thus be from one of bill's best, julius caesar, courtesy of antony's conscience:

"and caesar's spirit, ranging for revenge,
with ate by his side come hot from hell,
shall in these confines and in a monarch's voice,
cry 'havoc' and let slip the dogs of war"

i think i recall someone somewhere mentioning that the pre-medieval english orders of battle codified "havoc" as the command given when the army, hot with the passion of battle, should be set loose to plunder, pillage and rape without restraint. yes, "cry 'havoc', and let slip the dogs of war" indeed. so tonight we have the "all's fair in love and war" equivalent: "i forgive you, but you're on your own with my family".

WHAT???

i can only conclude that "havoc" really means unburdening onesself of any unpleasant opinions to a third party, who can then carry those unpleasant opinions into the field for you so you don't have to. "i forgive you". HA!

i'd love to forgive you too, baby. muah.

two for one

since last night's update tripped across the midnight barrier and became marked as a "monday" missive, today's installment will look a bit like "two for one", unless you were up either really late or really early this morning to have caught the first one "fresh", instead of stale behind this new one this afternoon.

it occurs to me that "two for one" has all sorts of connotations, from the positive (bargain!) to the negative (those bush birds for example, and by that i don't necessarily mean barb and jenna, but if the shoe fits...) and where human sexual relationships are concerned, the implication of a third wheel in opposition to a pair is decidedly volatile to say the least, not least reason for which is the huge unanswered question of which of the three is the actual third... i was going to say dangerous instead of volatile, but, well, i'm trying to keep thoughts of glenn close and the family cat out of my head. well, for you, i hope, this "extra" installment is more of whatever you've came here for, and not less...

[edited to note, thanks to anonymous, that it was a bunny, not a cat... my only excuse being my distraction at the hands of landis, abrahams and the zuckers and their "kentucky fried movie": "what's our little skeptic doing today?" "why, frying the cat in pure nesson oil!"]

so, do you mind my asking what it is that you DO come here for???

i know why i'm here--i'm spinning my tales and unburdening myself of all sorts of ticklish inner demons. (i'm also pretending that there's someone out there who cares to read it, but i suppose that's neither here nor there). it's a decidedly solitary pursuit, but that odd chance for an audience does give the scribbling just that much more dimension.

makes me wonder about all those diary writers there have been in history... they were writing for themselves, sure, but maybe their "two" is the odd thought that maybe someday, somewhere, the world would be listening. it's free, why not imagine it!

i know i do. :-)

do the red sox control the emotions of an entire (red sox) nation?

third longest winning streak in franchise history (i think) and the longest in a dog's age, and even with the lousy weather everything seems to be feeling rosier. now 2 out of three from the marlins and i'm starting to wonder (observing that i skipped posting on friday and am only doing this tonight out of guilt and shame for being such a poor correspondent) if, since it's been said that one has to suffer for art, my lack of baseball fan suffering is now affecting my creativity? (please no cheap shots about my never having been creative, that's too easy, and it would be beneath you ;-)

this causes me to muse on the cliche of our expectations of the most mature people, that they be the ones least moved by circumstance and external forces. how enamored we can be of adjectives like "steadfast" and phrases like "always there for me". and "blows with the wind" certainly isn't considered a compliment. but, here we are, each one of us receiving our moods from the most complex of decidedly external forces.

maybe the red sox' fortunes don't rule their eponymous nation to an absolute degree, but i know i feel better when they're getting the breaks. (another chapter on schadenfreude sometime later, but you KNOW you love it when the yanks come up short too, you can admit it). i find my moods profoundly affected by how i feel treated by those i love. i don't know about you, but i can run for decades mumbling to myself "you don't love me, you never loved me" in response to feeling slighted. (the third line of the triad being: "so i'll just sit here, in the dark...) so ironic, since we all seem to have so much trouble getting even an entire weekend out of "you're dreamy". so why is the shelf life on hurt feelings like that of hostess twinkies, as compared to the better ones which seem to last just about as long as the white of sliced apples left out on the counter for the afternoon? (mmmm... twinkies...)

yup, i love a good twinkie now and then. i don't care that they've finally "discovered" that marshmallow fluff is half sugar, (and what kid doesn't already know that, deep down inside?) smear it on THICK between the peanut butter, if you please. (you have to put peanut butter on BOTH pieces of bread first before applying the fluff in between, it's a rule). i'm all over all sorts of stuff that's no good for me, why should hurt feelings and bad choices based on those be any different? it's just a shame they don't taste quite as good as a bucket of fried scallops from kelly's...