I Fell Into a Burning Ring of Crap

Thom: haha
this came from a conversation where we were talking about the episode where the dude who loves to read breaks his glasses
and we were pointing out that he could probably raid an optometrists or possibly just steal people's glasses until he found a prescription close to his
or even find a new hobby
it's just that the Twilight Zone is populated by people with very poor coping mechanisms

I guess I'm wondering whether today (Blog Like It's the End of the World Day) is Armageddon or Apocalypse*. And are zombies canonical or is it more of a meme?

After Search: Ah, so it's canonical, Rise of the Zombies, etc.

My favorite End of the World scenario is probably the technological Armageddon laid out in James Burke's Connections series, which basically boils down to explaining that we've created this system based on technology to support us, so what happens if something goes wrong with that technology? Where will your next meal come from and who are you going to hit in the head with a rock to make sure that you get it? Like most eschatologies, it's a bit pessimistic**, especially in terms of predicting the overall reaction of people involved.

It certainly has its parallels to the classic Zombie Armageddon in that in the event of a truly survival-threatening event, the implication is that we will become zombies, either in the sense of the reanimated dead or in the sense of losing our societal conditioning, concentrating instead on survival, presumably through violent means as we break our societal contracts.

One question with zombies is how they survive, what they consist on, how long they "live". These issues are usually glossed over because well, logistics don't usually make for compelling fiction. They do, however, beg the question of exactly how many people, how many of these "zombies" would survive post-Armageddon, how far the populations would be pushed back.

Then, you get to the question of what separates the "zombies" from "the survivors". This is sort of uncomfortable because we all want to think of ourselves as survivors, as capable of finding the way that allows us to be the 1% of humanity that lives on to propagate the species, odds be damned. The main problems would be 1) that everybody is going to make a run for staples at the same time, meaning that you either have to rush to try and get food or gamble on being able to find food later and 2) find a renewable food source. A benefit of the zombie scenario is that the zombies don't need actual food, leaving plenty of supplies for those who need them, which handily sidesteps the horror of people killing each other over bottled water.

The basis of this near-universal psychological reaction (the desire for Apocalypse) is unclear. A fear of the loss of society? A desire from the alienated (read: everybody) to see a "wrong" society punished for its sins? A generational belief that we are "special" and thus privy to a monumental point in the history of mankind? I should probably see if there's been a good book on the subject.

* - Probably Armageddon. So it's the End of the World in a epochal sense, not in ah, terminal sense. Otherwise there would be a lot more blog entries ending in the middle.

** - One general assumption with Apocalypses is that nothing good is going to happen. Of course, there are some exceptions -- The Rapture is going to be great for everybody except the heathens, which is most of the population. I think you could compare it to the Survivors v. the Zombies scenario in the sense that in this sense, The Saved are literally plucked from destruction. Still, I'd like to see more of "the aliens are going to show up and we're all going to achieve Transhumanism".

My MRI is "unremarkable".

In neurospeak, this means that my brain shows no signs of MS.

In other news, one of our cats has also been having strange health issues -- recently she began drooling heavily and urinating, often on herself, often on us, while we slept (the frequency seems to be about every 24-36 hours, it's hard to tell since it's basically impossible to keep your eye on a cat every hour of the day). Since she was also acting very strangely, after talking with our vet, we decided to try a short run of anti-depressants. These don't seem to have any effect aside from making her lethargic, so now we're going to try anti-seizure medication -- she does seem to twitch when she's going through these episodes and the pissing on herself (i.e. when she's lying down or sitting) seems to indicate that it's involuntary.

Hi, my name is Thom, and I over-use the long dash.

Thom: it's random parade day again!

ericmt: random parade day?

Thom: every once in a while, we wake up to hear what sounds like a high school marching band going up and down our neighborhood
we've never actually seen them or figured out what they're out there for
it sort of feels like we're in the Prisoner

ericmt: hah
maybe they're doing practice runs for yet other random parades

Thom: yeah i have no idea
my wife saw what she said was some sort of community parade once, there was no band connected to it though

ericmt: just some guys with banners
"it's sunday!"

Thom: huzzah

I find it interesting that two recent changes of the National Statuary Hall Collection (that have been approved and not yet actually happened (probably because the statues haven't been made yet*)) involve the removal of two people associated with the abolitionist movement, Thomas Starr King and Zachariah Chandler, with statues of Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, respectively.

While the Starr-Reagan replacement is particularly galling (especially considering that the State Senator who wrote the bill approving the replacement claimed that he did so because he "didn't know who Thomas Starr King was" and that Starr wasn't originally from California (Reagan wasn't born here either)), the replacement of Chandler with Ford is especially egregious, considering that Ford was a lame-duck patsy who is most memorable for pardoning Nixon and being prone to pratfalls.

I feel like this is representative of how willfully ignorant and intellectually bankrupt modern politics are; I'm not sure if this is because of my gradual progression into fogeydom though, since obviously it's important to retain some sense of vibrancy in politics and in this sense, I can somewhat understand the Reagan vote. Regardless of your stance on him personally, he is highly representative of a political movement (New Republicanism) and of politically turbulent periods in our history. Ford, on the other hand, is nondescript. To enshrine somebody unable to escape mediocrity in his own time seems to me to be utter madness.

* - And I hope deep in my grimy little heart that this is because of the difficulty of finding somebody who's dedicated their life to artistic metalworking that would want to be associated with either of their potential subjects.

Sarah, playing Angband: Oh man, it's El-Farazon the Golden.
Me: Is he a golem?
Sarah: No, he's a *bitch*.
Fox Studio Audience: oooooooOOOOOOOOoooooooh!

It seems like everybody's having a difficult or moody week. Maybe it's the impending change of season; or more likely that everybody seems to be going through some sort of change in their life and it's hard to not be melancholy over moving away from what's become familiar. It's the choice between drifting away or rotting in place.

I'm re-reading Moby Dick again. It's a lot easier than I remember it, or possibly this is because I've read it often enough that I can just glide along. I had forgotten that Melville actually has a pretty sly sense of humor that he'll sneak in here or there. At the end of one chapter, he compares a hunter being accidentally embalmed in a hollow tree full of honey to people being philosophically entombed by Plato. Ha!

Reading it always make me think about sea voyages. In some way, the idea of being a sailor appeals to me, since the sea is so huge and open and unknown, a perfect situation for self-contemplation. I'm sure that if I would go to sea, I would be bored stiff in a matter of days; still, there's something attractive to the notion of finding yourself through isolation in nature, similar to how I felt when backpacking in the High Sierra when I was young.

Well, here's hoping next week goes better for everybody.

You've probably seen this linked elsewhere; however, I just got around to finishing it today:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3710987618964917848&hl=en

It's a video about Real Dolls and the men who uh, own them. If you don't know what a Real Doll is, well, I would suggest watching the video. One caveat: I wouldn't watch it while eating. Not that it's especially gross in the normal sense. It is just a little, ah, creepy.

Also: Hi everybody!

Fans of Gilliam-style animation will enjoy this, which is a movie consisting of a bunch of compiled animated pictures by Cyriak, set to his own music. Good stuff.

So, I haven't posted in well over a month. I assure you that I do in fact read LJ pretty much daily; it's just that I don't have a lot to say about myself recently, for reasons that aren't entirely clear.

I did get a new camera, and have been taking a large amount of pictures -- they're on Flickr, here. Other than that, it's been hanging out with friends, going through a crunch period at work, relaxing after a crunch period from work and starting to get back to work.

( And here I blather about games )

Over the weekend, I was driving around town and realized that with my wool beanie, flannel shirt, converse all-stars and stereo blaring Melvins, that I am probably a style anachronism. Worse, I'm a style anachronism from the early-to-mid 90s. For zog's sake, I even have a wallet chain (on a Bad Badtz-Maru wallet, for that matter). It could be worse, or at least that's what I keep telling myself.

For those unaware, Robert Anton Wilson is having medical issues that mean, aside from being life-threatening, that he might miss his next month's rent. For those of us who enjoyed his Illuminatus and other books, it would be nice to help out in a time of need.

The shirt (third link) is pretty freaking awesome and it basically acts as a donation on its own.

http://www.reason.com/hitandrun/2006/10/raw_deal.shtml

http://www.rushkoff.com/2006/10/robert-anton-wilson-needs-our-help.php

http://giantrobotprinting.com/store/shirts/raw/pope

The most hilarious way to respond to someone asking if there's free will would be to punch them and then apologize by saying that you couldn't help yourself.

1. The Middle Foam Finger is now syndicated on Livejournal. Check out middlefoam if you are so inclined. Includes: A crapload of World Cup-related stuff and some NBA writings.

2. A huge belated thank you to everyone who helped out with the pledging for the Bay to Breakers. I didn't meet my primary goal of running the entire thing because I was unware of just how nasty running 1.1 miles at an 11.5% grade is. However, I ran most of it and finished in the top 7000 with a time of 1 hour and 28 minutes. I had a great time and again, much thanks for everybody who donated and supported my entry. You guys are awesome.

British documentary about the rise of the Western neoconservative movement and the Islamic radicalist movement:

The Power of Nightmares Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Warning: May make you sick to your stomach. If Henry Kissinger comes off as looking like one of the more sympathetic figures in the whole story, then you know that you're dealing with some serious fuckfaces. Also, these things are long. About an hour per part. Will also be strangely satisfying for those of us who have suspected Wolfowitz et. al. to be lying sacks of shit from the start.

Additional Warning: Keep in mind that the documentary, like any text, has its own subjectiveness and there's certainly plenty of points that are worth questioning. It is interesting to note that most of the counter-arguments I've read that lambast the documentary do so on ideaological grounds, rather than dealing with the "facts" presented by the text. The basic theory of the documentary seems to be that smart people can over-think things and get everybody in a lot of trouble, which seems to bear out over the course of history.

I have a co-worker who is known around the office as D. D. is a great guy to have around, being a loudmouth from rural Arkansas who spent 6 years in Japan with the Navy and has an inappropriate story for every situation (the most impressive of which resulted in Ocie, completely bent over and with his head in his hands, repeating to himself "I will never be surprised by anything D. says again"). He also has a tendency to engage in some hilarious linguistic misadventures. We have been planning to present him with a "D. to English Dictionary" for his birthday one of these years.

Some handy D. words:

irrelement (adj) - A synonym for irrelevant; i.e. something that is not germane to the current discussion.

inseferior (adj) - Believed to be a synonym for inferior, although we were cracking up too much to get a concrete definition.

blob (n) - What people use to publish their thoughts on the Internet. also: webblob.

Anyway, the latter came up today when D. asked "Where your blob at?"

The blob in question is where all my sports-related posts are now appearing, along with posts from 3 of my other co-workers. The blob can be found at:

http://themiddlefoamfinger.blogspot.com/

Holla, one.

Dinner menu for/from (last) to/night (Monday):

Warm asparagus salad with farm egg and pancetta

Gigot a la ficelle: Watson Ranch spring lamb leg roasted in the fireplace; with fava beans, sheep's milk cheese, and braised chicories

Meyer lemon tart

Man, it was really good. I mean, really good. It was a hard hit to the wallet and I'm not sure I'll be eating at the downstairs again unless I come into quite a bit more money. That said, it was something that's definitely worth doing at least once.

Non-food Highlights: The overly Marined couple at the table next to ours, who were at one point observed saying "Well, that's as good a meal as you'll get in a *restaurant*."

From BBC News (from a story led by a picture of Doctor Who and about the year's TV successes/failures):

"Channel 4 invested millions blasting off the ambitious Space Cadets, but it failed to fire the viewing public's cylinders.

Three contestants were fooled into thinking they hadblasted off from a cosmonaut training camp in Russia into space, butwere in fact in a fake spaceship in a Suffolk warehouse."

This is something that I'd been thinking about for a while, in terms of either a TV show or a sociological experiment (or both, really). I'd always felt that it would be incredible difficult to pull this off with anybody of a decent amount of intelligence, because there's simply so much work that goes into a space program that to attempt a mock-up would be a particularly Sisyphean task. I'd be interested to see if the people on board the "ship" caught on and at what point things began to break down.

Thanks so much to those of you who have donated so far. The website, in case it slipped notice the first time (I did post about it on Friday afternoon), is:

http://www.active.com/donate/llsbaytobreakers2006/tmoyles

I'm running Bay to Breakers as a pledge runner, money for charity, give if you can, etc.

I need to figure out a good route near my house for practicing. Thankfully, there are definitely hills around so I can simulate running uphill. Huzzah.

If I hadn't told you before, I'm going to be running in the Bay to Breakers as a pledge runner this year, along with a bunch of other guys for work. All the money I raise will go toward The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. If you can spare the money, I would appreciate it if you could make a donation of whatever size. Those of you working for a large company might want to check to see if your company will match your donation, as I hear that many will.

My pledge site:

http://www.active.com/donate/llsbaytobreakers2006/tmoyles

Thanks!