Letter to Santa

Dear Santa

I am writing you to see if we can manage mend some fences, considering what has passed between us in these last 50+ years. Here in America, we've just celebrated the Thanksgiving holiday, and contemplating this, I've come to realize not only that I have many things to be thankful for, but that many of them relate in some way to you.

I'm thankful that you've not used your extraordinary powers to kill all life on earth. Anyone that can expend the kind of energy required to visit every home on earth in one night pretty obviously has the power of a small black hole, or is remotely tapping into the core of our sun somehow, and so considering that you unleash that kind of power on the planet every December 25th, I'm amazed that we're not all dead and the earth a smoking ruin of a planet, devoid of atmosphere and mostly stripped of life-giving water.

I'm thankful for relatively inexpensive CO2 lasers, which - when coupled with infrared sensors and aimed at the probable path a semi-supernatural being might take across my living room, might stand a chance of baking all of those millions of lbs of milk and cookies in situ. You can certainly move fast, so any aiming actuators are not going to be able to keep up, but since my laser points straight up the chimney, you'd need to have a very frank discussion with physics to get out of the way.

I'm thankful for all of the neighborhood girls and boys, who by their observable actions have created a vast Santa no-fly zone across my little neck of the woods. If you're keeping tabs on the private actions and interactions of children all over the world in order to label them "naughty" or "nice" according to your culturally uninformed view of those terms - I'm happy to say that based on my interactions with the neighborhood kids, you have no need to come withing a few miles of my home. I'll share a Google maps outline of the area in a separate note, so you can program your GPS accordingly.

I'm thankful for shopping malls, where by every possible indication we can see that the Spirit of Christmas is long gone, driven like snow before a nuclear fusion bomb by the honking and screaming in the parking lots, the fights over last-toy-on-the-shelf and general rudeness of the season. Combined with actual snow and drivers who only come to the big city once every year, the total absence of good will t'ward -- well anyone should keep you at a distance fairly permanently.

Last, but not least - I'm thankful for my friends and family. They know as well as I do what you are up to, and are a creative, inventive bunch. Some of the projects underway for dealing with the Home Invasion this year are truly diabolical and my hat is off to them.

OK, reading this again I realize I'm probably not winning any new friends in the Cringle/Krampus camp. I just started listing those things I was truly thankful for in this month before December, and it seems that most of it is still not complementary of you. For that, I do apologize, but I'm sure you understand.

That said, I only really have one thing on my list this year, and it's a reasonable quantity of deuterium fluoride, maybe 20oz or so. If you could leave it at 36°45'18.2"N+117°11'43.1"W that would be awesome. I've even set up a tree there for you to put it under.

Sincerely,

WC

Economic terrorism / Santa's Bag of Toys

Once again, we come to that time of year when we all look forward to gorging on large balls of turkey ham in gravy made from the distilled essence of reindeer ears and cranberry-raisin-shitake compote layered with garlic-acornsquash mashed potatos with crushed pine-nut and coconut topping. You know, all this stuff the pilgrims ate with their good buddies the friendly Native Americans who's land they were about to claim for England (and then subsequently take back from England.)

When I go anywhere near a place where you can buy expensive stuff that's similar to, but not quite exactly what your loved ones have been hoping to receive for Christmas, I am made aware of the gigantic economic impact that Christmas has, in a relatively short period of time. There are MANY businesses which would not survive without the large uptick that Christmas represents, and they wait anxiously for Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Opt-out Wednesday. (That last one isn't a recognized thing, but I'm naming it right now....)

 So, with all of the economic stimulation happening each yule, there are many enemies of the West that would love to disrupt it. There are threats to the places where people shop, and conversely all kinds of risk management that goes into making sure that the general shopping orgy goes on without hindrance. We take this very seriously and do what we can to keep people safe and assure that the positive economic impacts are maximized.

The major threat to this year end shot-in-the-arm that nobody seems to pay ANY attention to is an insidious regular -- even institutionalized multi-billion dollar negative impact, which flys in the face of western commerce and trade. It is a wholesale attack on our way of life, our economy and our values which we must not tolerate if we are to continue as free citizens supporting a free enterprise system. What's more, the perpetrator of this insidious attack is known to all, and his activities are sanctioned by most citizens and many governments. Santa Claus must be stopped.

Single-handedly, Santa delivers toys to all of the "good" boys and girls around the world on Christmas Eve. Bypassing the free enterprise system entirely, using "magic" and foreign (non-human) labor, paying them or enslaving them (it's not clear which) but certainly NOT having a positive impact on the labor force in any of the countries where he's delivering free toys.

The negative labor impact and suspected working conditions alone should be enough to ban Santa from our borders, but Santa is taking jobs away from hard working toymakers and  delivery drivers - the free gifts he illegally stuffs under our trees each represent a lost sales opportunity and damages the entire pipeline of goods production, sales and delivery in every nation he's allowed to damage in this way.

He's NOT a citizen of anywhere but the north pole, he DOESN'T have trade agreements with pretty much anywhere, he's dumping cheap (free) goods on a market when we most depend on our economy functioning at peak capacity. Santa's agenda is clear, and it's the economic destruction of Western economies. We cannot continue to tolerate these attacks.

Withold the milk, the cookies, block the chimney -- open up reindeer hunting season over the holiday. Do what you can to save yourself and your country from this foreign invader. Support your local toymaker, ban Santa!

He's making a list and checking it twice. He's gonna make an arbitrary line between mostly naughty and mostly nice

The human experience is filled with ambiguity. In fact, we are rarely presented with things we can measure absolutely and make specific declarations about like "I can state with absolute certainty, that I took no part in the death and/or disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa." How do you know that for sure? What if your consistent liberal voting stance enabled the infrastructure which eventually led to Jimmy's cement swim? What if the thumbtack you pulled from your tire and carelessly tossed onto the sidewalk, which then stuck to Jimmy's shoe and made a clacking sound on a marble floor at JUST the wrong moment as he was sneaking away from his assailant was the only reason he did not escape to spread corruption another day? Speaking of that tack and your clear implication in his suspicious nearly 40 year absence; was your act of careless litter a good, or a bad act on your part? Hoffa was no longer leading the union after the commutation of his prison sentence by President Nixon, but by all accounts was still up to no good. Your arguably fineable act of littering may have saved the world from quite a lot of misery.

Is lying to someone about their excruciating blog prose ("That's very nice Mr Weaselchicken. I can hardly detect any psychopathic tendencies at all from your very fine blog. You should write professionally...") bad, or good? Telling me the truth would almost certainly hurt my feelings, which could lead to other unfortunate consequences, though most likely not involving any form of orbital strike, unless I'm having a very bad day.

Which brings me to my point regarding The List. Santa is supposedly making a list and performing quality control upon the list somehow. He's creating a sharp, definitive dividing line between "naughty" children and "nice" children. One set gets fine gifts, crafted by some of the most unsavory creatures known to man. The other, naughty, list gets a lump of fuel for keeping warm in the winter cold, potentially saving their family from death due to exposure. Even if we ignore the ambiguity inherent to Santa's gifting strategy, what is the criteria he's using for categorization? Are children provided these criteria such that they can choose which side they land on? All of my calls for transparency from Santa in this matter have been ignored. He's using some arcane methodology to determine if a child's actions in aggregate (I'm assuming) are good or bad. Do some actions weigh more heavily than others? Is there a scoring system that tallys all activities of each child and provides Santa with a final number? If there's a scoring system, with a continuum of naughtyniceness from 0 (angelic) to 999999999 (The parents who park in the alley behind my house to drop their kids off at school) - where does the line get drawn? At the median? At the mean? Does some kid with a score of 5443789 get an AR Drone with the Oculus Rift VR headset and her brother with a score of 5443788 get a lump of coal? What's the cutoff for evening the score? Could the brother leave the last slice of fruitcake for his sister, just before going to bed on the 24th and end up with his very own 80 lbs bag of lime (#1 on his list) instead of the coal?

Santa needs to come clean on his methods, quality control (checking a list twice using the original method is lame by any QA standards) and generally be more transparent about how he's making decisions that will affect the self image of children the world around for the rest of their lives. He's operating with an agenda all his own, rewarding behaviors he likes and penalizing others - completely without candor or any visibility into his motives. Our children are being molded by a clear application of operant conditioning - perpetrated by a shadowy figure with no accountability.

Like my other warnings about this nefarious individual, I expect that this one will not cause the alarm and outcry required to keep us safe. Once again, Santa will perpetrate the illegal entry of billions of homes this December 25th, putting us all at risk of disease, nuclear contamination, kinetic energy release in the multi-megaton level and other so far un-named risks. I plead with anyone reading this to PLEASE think of the CHILDREN. We have no idea what Santa's real agenda is, and this sneaking into your home once a year to psychologically condition the next generation of leaders, teachers and Comcast service people should make you fear for our future.

Meanwhile, I'm converting to coal heat.

Wolf! Wolf!

Most of you will be familiar with the story of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" attributed to a slave named Aesop in Greece, somewhere around 650 BCE. In short, if you call the alarm to gain attention when there is no actual problem, you will eventually be completely ignored where there really IS a wolf snacking on your toes. I believe this tale is still told to children, as it certainly does still apply.

I happen to live near a school with very small children, whom are occasionally allowed to play outside. Occasionally, I can hear them playing and laughing and the occasional squeal of surprise/joy/rage. More often though, what I hear is blood curdling screams, which sound for all the world like a wolf has entered the playground, and is crunching their bones to splinters. I assume that is NOT what is actually happening, since the adults assigned to watching them appear to have little interest in the carnage playing out before them.

These are not happy peals of laughter, not even screams of feigned fear and amazement. These screams are imbued with every bit of life or death fear the child possesses, at the maximum volume available to the small but shrill lungs. The screams are also not short in duration, or occasional, they are continuous and lung emptying wails of terror. The problem is, there is no actual danger or inciting event. It's about getting attention -- just like the Boy Who Cried Wolf.

You may be thinking "This grouchy old crank is just annoyed at a noisy neighbor. I would know the difference between a scream from a child in real danger and one that's lost possession of a playground toy." While it's possible that you could tell the difference, my point is that I cannot, and only one of us will be in a position to rush to their aid and fight off the wolf.

Speaking of the wolf -- maybe that's the problem. What modern child knows anything at all about the real danger a wolf would pose, or what it would be like to be watching over sheep, far from the village? Aren't wolves like doggies? Sheep are definitely not threatening, and kinda cute (sheep are actually stupid creatures that invent new ways to die while they sweat lanolin and bleat loud enough for any local wolves to easily locate them.) The threat model posed by a predator which is nearly impossible to encounter in the wild, which has resulted in only three documented attacks against humans in North America in recorded history -- is incomprehensible to modern children.

So, if we are to use the general concept from the fable, we would need to use a threat that modern children would actually regard as frightening. Here is our problem. The only things that modern children would actually regard as truly frightening are so heinous that it would be borderline abusive to even refer to them as the potential consequences of "crying wolf." We would appear to have no possible way of explaining to children that making everyone around you believe that you are dying on a very regular basis is generally a bad idea. I suppose we could breed wolves in captivity and release them apon suburbia, but at this point I expect I would still just turn the music up a couple of notches to drown out the screams.

n.b. My actual suburban neighborhood is actually pretty overrun with the wolf's small scrawny cousin, the coyote. I personally have no fear of coyotes, as I know for a fact that just before they might get me, an anvil will fall on their head as they fall into a crevasse.

I am the singularity of Christmas future.

I may have been wrong about Santa/Krampus/St. Nick. I'll be big about it and admit that while I've predicted that he will be the disease vector which will end the human race, or his apparently anti-matter powered sled, radioactive reindeer or just plain obscene levels of danger involved in having a 250 lbs mass moving through your house at something like 0.2 c at some time Christmas eve would spell the end of civilization as we know it. I've gone so far as to advocate building a bunker and hiding deep under the earth on the night of terror. As it turns out, I may have spoken prematurely.

I have now come to believe that there is a serious danger of SantaGheddon in the form of a black hole with earth as the starting mass. As the population of the earth increases, the odds of this year being the one,  the year when at some point a singularity forms and obliterates every little boy and girl, along with everything else made of matter in the general vicinity of earth. No no, the mass of the extra people has nothing to do with it (we're made of stuff that's mostly already here on earth anyway, the extra population is mostly about shifting the balance between soil and ambulatory meat sacks a.k.a. "babies" which eventually turn back into soil, but not before generating at least 1.5 copies)

The problem I see looming, threatening the existence of all life on earth has more to do with something as fundamental as the reason matter has mass. I'll get to how a relativistic Santa/Toymass could mean our doom in a moment, but first some fundamental basis borne of the standard model. 

I'm not going to launch into a description of the standard model here, much as I know you would like one. Click on the link if you're interested in trivialities like "how the universe works" or "real stuff." Stay tuned here if you want to know how the Jolly Red Menace is likely to collapse all of the matter in our vicinity into a gravity well so deep, Timmy and Lassie, mamma Ruth and the entire Martin family will be consumed with nary even a bark of despair escaping.

OK, I'm exaggerating. The actual phenomena as an observer moving past a spherical symmetric gravitating object (or "Earth", as we like to call it) at close to the speed of light is called the Aichelburg–Sexl ultraboost. Seen as a sequence of smooth Lorentzian manifolds; space curves along the axis of symmetry which resolves as a Dirac delta as acceleration approaches c, thus resolving relativity rather nicely and NOT creating an inescapable event horizon.

On the other hand, as Santa's relative speed with respect to the earth increases based on the number of places he must visit (additional population) and his rest mass is increased by the additional number of toys he must pack onto the sled, his relativistic mass density becomes a very very large number. Eventually, the resistance of the atmosphere as he travels at such speeds near the surface will turn the atmosphere into a glowing plasma, while his energy density and momentum increase to the point where the resistance to changes in direction and stresses to the Higgs field in the local area are likely to make this region of space uninhabitable for a while. Presumably, he's shedding mass at a pretty rapid rate, as he infiltrates homes of good girls and boys & dumps presents, but his initial mass and required velocity to visit each home in one night will eventually catch up with us all. All that, and I'm completely ignoring what happens when he tries to slow down from that speed in any reasonable time to start making his evil plans for the next year, imagine how hot your brakes get when you stop your car while driving down a hill. Now multiply that heat by Santa's relativistic mass density including the sled, reindeer and toys. Can you say nova? Huh, not on December 26th you can't, as you'll be an expanding ball of plasma.

I have a plan to help, but first I need to convince some friends at the LHC to place a chimney in _just_ the right place.

Now you are shopping into the twilight zone

You're traveling through another dimension -- a dimension not only of sight and sound but of retail. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of clerk knowledge. That's a signpost up ahead: your next stop: the floor associate Zone! 


Apologies to Rod Serling, but it's time to describe yet another level of retail joy. In this installment, I'd like to discuss the concept of knowing what you sell. I'm not referring to this in the abstract sense of "You work for a hardware store, you should eat speak and live hardware (though that would help.) No, I mean this in the sense of - when someone asks you if you have a left handed Tesla coil tuning spanner, either

1. Knowing if you have one, and where it would be
2. Not knowing if you have one, but where it would be if you did
3. Not knowing if you have one, or where it would be but the correct person to ask this question of

All too often, in HomeOfficeStapleDepot what I actually get is more like this:

Associate: Can I help you?
Me: That seems unlikely.
Associate: Maybe I can help you find something.
Me: OK, I need a left handed Tesla coil tuning spanner. 


Here's a branching moment, several replies are common

Branch 1

Associate: Those don't exist.
Me: I already have two, but one of them was lost in that unfortunate thermal cascade event last week and the other is in an evidence locker somewhere.
Associate: Well, if those do exist, we don't sell them.
Me: I bought my last two here, but I can't recall where you keep them.
Associate: (Who is now answering in their own mind their first question of me) Let me find Bill, he will know.
[Associate runs like I have an explosive device in my hand, which I don't. I see them flinging their apron/cap/nametag at the manager on their way out the door which they hit at full speed.]
Me (to another nearby associate): Where could I find "Bill?"
Associate2: That was Bill that just ran out the door for some reason. Can I help you?


Branch 2
Associate: So, you're really looking for a thumbdrive, aren't you?
Me: No. Tesla coils and thumb drives don't play well together. 
Associate: Oh, I see. [leads me to the bathroom fixtures isle] First, you'll need a new wax ring [pulls one off the shelf] and then...
Me: I'm not installing a toilet either. I'm tuning a 130,000 volt Tesla coil, and it's at McMurdo Station, so it has to be a left handed one. The electrons swirl the other way down there.
Associate: Oh, I know what you're after now. We keep those with the fencing. 
Me: OK, you meet me there. I'm going to make a quick stop in the fertilizer section. By the way, can you tell me what fuel these fork lifts run on?


Branch 3
This isn't really a branch of the other two, but is similar in nature

Another patron: I'm looking for a 3/8" piece of string.
Associate [speaking to the other patron] What you describe doesn't exist
Patron: Are you sure? I thought I saw one in your ad. My nephew has one that he says he bought here.
Associate: Nope, you are living in a dream world old man. Nothing like what you describe has ever been manufactured, and I would know. I'm an expert.
Me: [to associate] could you help me move this 80 lb bale of 3/8" string you're sitting on? It's in front of the left handed Tesla coil tuning spanners.
Associate: That's a big bale of stuff. We'll need to block both ends of the isle and get a fork lift in here to move it.
Me: No need, I have this bag of fertilizer, and your folk lifts are out of diesel anyway. I'll move you and the bale shortly.,
Me: [to patron] You're gonna want to duck behind that fork lift for a minute. Oh, and hold out your hand, there will be some string falling into it... shortly.

What if the voices in my head are crazy?

Something occurred to me when talking to a friend who's voices take on the personality of a mouse in their head, telling them what to do. As they related  what the mouse had to say, and what whimsical direction it might point my friend from time to time, I thought "Huh, what if the voices in my head aren't just regular voices. What if they are crazy like hers?"

It's all well and good to have a fictional mouse telling you "Hey, see what happens when you put a sparkler in a pile of aluminum powder and iron oxide." We all KNOW that's sanity free. A mouse? In your head? Might as well just paint crazy on your forehead and call it a day.

The voices in my head usually seem pretty rational. The tell me about the events of the day, from all over the world, and sometimes they just entertain me with their crazy antics and stories. There are a lot of them, and some seem to change from time to time, but overall they seem pretty consistent and comforting. Most of the time, they just tell me about what's happening in Afghanistan, Iraq or even Mars - maybe somewhere in Europe if the Europeans are doing anything I should know about (rarely.) On the whole, the voices seem pretty helpful and not particularly demanding.

Which brings me to THIS time of year. Around this time of year, the voices start making demands. They tell me what to do, and they are ADAMANT. It goes on for weeks, and there seems to be no way to avoid their drumming insistence that I perform in the way that they describe.

They appear to require my help in supporting their world-wide efforts.

They appear to require a sacrifice.

They appear to have things... poorly described and apparently useless things -  that they will send me - but first I must send them money. They don't tell me exactly how much money to send, but they want as much as I can spare....

And one of them sounds like Carl Kasell.

Elvin is Evil rearranged and with an extra "n"

If you're tired of my annual warnings about the extreme danger posed to all of us by Santa Clause explained here and here; you will be glad to know that I'm posting about something else this year, namely his evil minions the elves. In some ways, I guess I'm not varying too far from the usual holiday warning, since Krampus aka Santa, aka Santa Klause, aka Santa Clause, aka Chris Kringle is also aka "Jolly Old Elf."


One of the oldest English language references to elves puts them in the same category as demons and monsters (and the original killer Cain) line 112 of Beowulf clearly spells out the nature of elves:

metod for þy mane, mancynne fram. þanon untydras ealle onwocon,  eotenas ond ylfe ond orcneas, swylce gigantas, þa wið gode wunnon lange þrage; he him ðæs lean forgeald. 

Or, if you are old English challenged (roughly):

He was of a race of monsters exiled from mankind by God--He was of the race of Cain, that man punished for murdering his brother.From that family comesall evil beings--monsters, elves, zombies.Also the giants who fought with God and got repaid with the flood.

This is the crew that the terrifying Santa creature is using to make toys for your children. Monsters cut from the same cloth as the Grendel, evil to the core. 


Only much later in Germanic lore does the concept of "light" elves versus "dark" elves start getting some play, clearly in an attempt to rehabilitate the image of these dark forces toiling tirelessly at the north pole where the sun does not shine AT ALL this time of year. These creatures which magically create toys for all of the children of the world, imbuing them with the essence of their dark heritage. 


If you are inclined to believe that there was a great rift in elf-kind and there really are dark and light elves, guess which ones live in Álfheimr (Elfhame) versus here on earth? In the 12th century,  Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda explains where each clan ended up:

That which is called Álfheim is one, where dwell the peoples called Light elves [Ljósálfar]; but the Dark-elves [dökkálfar] dwell down in the earth, and they are unlike in appearance, but by far more unlike in nature. The Light-elves are fairer to look upon than the sun, but the Dark-elves are blacker than pitch.

So, since the north pole (where all of these things live apparently) is on earth, the assumption should be that they are in the category "dark elves." All of the credible literature points to the fact that Santa is employing the most evil magical creatures he can find to make billions of toys and other gifts each year, which he then forcibly distributes to the children of the world. 


I don't know about you, but the very thought of it gives me the chills. Santa is dangerous in his own right as a disease vector, projectile and forcible entry specialist, but the dark supernatural spin he's apparently putting on the objects he's tossing under your tree should give each of you pause. 


If you still doubt me in this, take a look at that sweater "from your aunt Maude." Your aunt may have her quirks, but nowhere in her is the level of unbridled hatred, evil and rage required to send you a scratchy wool sweater in those colors, with reindeer appliques on it. No, that requires the diabolical intervention of a creature so heinous that it can only work in the 24 hour darkness of the winter north pole. A creature so evil that we have for centuries felt the need to chronicle it's nature in texts  nearly lost to the ravages of time.


Then again, maybe your Aunt Maude is in league with an elf...

Santa will kill us all

If you've read anything I've written about Santa / Krampus / Osama Bin Cringle, you know that his illegal antics each December tend to terrify me. The energy requirements for visiting millions of homes on Dec 25th would indicate that he's packing something like anti-matter while he's eating your cookies and milk (his alien physiology likely can't deal with the cookies and milk by the way. He's probably feeding them into some kind of matter to energy converter disguised as reindeer.) Today's timely warning isn't about any of those issues though. Today is about the fact that Santa will some day surely kill all of us, and by "us" I mean humans.

Just as the cold of winter is really getting started, this entity that's been observed "laying a finger aside of his nose" and then touching presents, glasses of milk, plates of cookies, the fireplace hearth, stockings even candy for goodness sake. Then, while his alien mucous is likely dripping from his fingers - he proceeds to provide a vector into a huge segment of the population of the world. Based on his travels alone, I think we can attribute 90% of the winter flu infections across the world to the Jolly Old Disease Vector. Those of you with children, imagine that instead of the classmates your kid usually hangs out with, we expand the pool by hundreds of millions and you have some idea of what Santa's bringing into your home each Christmas.

Some day, this guy that flies downwind of reindeer poop all night, touches warm milk that's been sitting out on the counter (maybe drinks it) and fiddles with his nose all of the time (Google it, he's got a nose thing) - someday he's going to spread a really bad one and since it will hit us all at the same time, we won't have time to develop a vaccine.

He's a threat to the viability of the human race, a hazard to flight, a B&E specialist and a poor example for obese children the world over. As a threat, it's hard to over-estimate his potential and yet the authorities spend no time at all working on bringing him to justice. Are they blind to the world spanning scope of his criminal organization and the threat to our way of life? How can they not see the coming Santapocalypse?

This year, as usual - I'll spend Christmas eve in the hidden safe room, cradling a 12 guage & wearing a surgical mask. According to the Mayo Clinic, I should be able to get out and bleach the house by the 28th or so in time for new years parties. That is if anyone else survives that long.

The Lateness (more about my calendar)

I’m almost never very late to an appointment, and rarely late at all. Being late bothers me, as my mind is filled with what I would be saying about my lateness, were I the other person and it’s not complimentary. My imagined 3rd person internalized harangue from the person I’m going to be speaking to soon is most decidedly negative in nature. (Note: Imagined internal monologues of others in response to my lack of planning are always performed in disgusted tones, while glancing at their watch, mumbling under their breath about how this meeting was a bad idea in the first place.) When I am late, it’s typically because of traffic or parking.

Traffic delays seem to present an almost insurmountable mathematical problem. There’s the somewhat challenging, but solvable non-equilibrium statistical mechanics models, say using the Boltzmann equation. I can’t really do that kind of math in my head while I’m driving, and I don’t really trust Outlook to solve it either before I leave the office. No, the truly unsolvable traffic delay calculation seems to be the seeming inability of many drivers to grasp the butterfly effect when it comes to the consequences of their own actions while driving.

Essentially, deciding to slow down by 5 mph to watch some poor sap get a ticket for driving under the influence of scrapple (no link, look it up) you affect thousands of people who have the bad fortune of being behind you. Big deal, everyone slows down by 5 mph right? Wrong. The people immediately behind slow by 7 mph, because the have no idea what the idiot up ahead is doing. The folks behind them weren’t paying attention, so hit their brakes just in time – coming to a near stop. While they get their adrenalin levels back to near normal, the people behind them actually stop in awe of the near accident that they just witnessed. The full stop ripples back as far as the fluid density is great enough to support the compression wave – maybe 4 or 5 miles. In heavy traffic, that’s maybe 8000 people on a 6 lane road – 1/2 hour delay for each so 4000 man hours of productivity, around 2.5 man years your rubbernecking just cost society. In the mean time, you’ve made me unpredictably late for my meeting.

Bumper Sadness

I really have to comment (rant) a bit on the sad postings I see from time to time - mostly on some forlorn soul's bumper, but occasionally on their computer  case or even a shirt. The clear expression of woe is one that I'm sure you have all seen, and one that is nearly impossible to ignore, once  the implications are clear. The fact that so many people find themselves in need of expressing such an extreme and unfortunate fact of their life would be cause for contemplation even without the additional context. The fact that the condition (which I can only describe as heart rending sad) is so common in our society that one can purchase stickers which express the shocking truth -- indicates to me that our society has failed, and not just the unfortunate few who are OK with expressing these torrents of grief, but each of us who should have been there for them; each of us who may also feel the same; each of us who participate in a world, a society, a community where these expressions happen and do nothing to alleviate the obvious pain.

I speak, of course, of the folks expressing the thought "I'd rather be knitting" or "I'd rather be shining my Ford Mustang" or even "I'd rather be petting my poison dart frog." Really, you can pretty much fill in the blank of the thing they would rather be doing, it's all the same sad commentary on their life. If it's not obvious to some of you more insensitive clods, I'll spell out what these people are really saying. They are saying that no matter what wondrous life affirming experience they may be having at the moment you are reading their sticker, they would rather be doing the mundane thing on the sticker. They could be taking their son or daughter to the airport to fly to Stockholm to accept the Nobel prize for physics, and according to their deliberately placed mass market expression of their innermost desires - they would rather be beekeeping.

How can we live with the concept that there are people out there who have given up on what life has to offer to the degree where they can with some confidence (these stickers do no come off easily) explain to the world that they have determined that no other experience which they will ever participate in will be better than the well known activity which someone mass printed and sold as bumper stickers? Can't we help these people somehow? Explain to them that they should not just give up on life because the best thing they have ever done so far is play Bocci?

If you are reading this and have such a sticker, please reconsider your approach to the rest of your life and believe that is is possible that you may have moments in the future where you would not rather be bird watching. There's nothing wrong with bird watching, especially if you are somewhere in Peru trying to catch a glimpse of an Andean Condor carting off the remains of a capybara or maybe the leg of a chupacabra. Please consider that the best thing to happen to you may still be to come, and may not be an activity which is so common in in your society that your affiliation with it can be found expressed in truck stops and curio shops for $3.95 plus tax. Your life is NOT over -- please do not express the rage, sadness and hopelessness you feel in a permanent way on your bumper, locker or laptop case.

On that note, I'll let you all contemplate the shocking horror of our abandonment of these unfortunates. Have we created self-help groups for them? Crisis lines? Maybe an awareness campaign? No, I can say that we have done none of these things and people that I talk to about their obvious plea for help uniformly turn me away. How can any of you, knowing what's going on - not reach out to the person parked next to you at the grocery store who would "rather be ice fishing" and try to ease their pain? I'm sick of the complacency and sick of fighting this battle alone. All in all, I think I'd rather be digging holes.

Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny

Which star is this which I see more than some

Of these stars set round me in constellation

I know this point of light, with me from my beginning

Sometimes shining brightly near, sometimes far away but clear

This star I think is part of me

What star could show me clearly without shadow

Each step in life portrayed in clear example

I know this aid I follow, rarely well, often poorly

A brilliant gleam or glowing ember never more than needed

This star I hope is part of me

What star might purpose be my self

Such clarity does show my path and more

I know that light which falls upon us, not all is of our choosing

That this was not of mine, no lesser my devotion

This star both guide and path provider

What star fades before the dawn

A treachery of time and entropy is our fate

I know each star cannot sustain forever

The light around me wanes, but closed my eyes still see

This star in absence guides my memories

Surrounded by giant metal cows

It seems that I can't take a drive in the countryside without encountering gigantic bovine metallic creations which are clearly hibernating, waiting for the instruction to rise and smite the humans. Sure, they may be made to look nurturing, but they are LARGE and made of METAL. How could they NOT be bent on subjugating humankind under their steely (or irony) hooves?

While I'd been avoiding Bothell (Bot Hell, not a very clever place to hide cow-bot masters of the universe) just in case the activation signal came, I now find that they have invaded an area near the seat of power for the state of Washington. Imagine my further horror to discover that they are the SAME COWS, which have apparently been active long enough to cover the distance from Woodinville/Bothell to Olympia. Nobody seems to know how they transport took place, but I imagine a very large metal "cowboy" somewhere in the mix.

Pretty clearly aliens with somewhat faulty conceptions of what cows really look like and how they behave created these creatures & placed them in fields thinking that we wouldn't notice. There they sit, silently waiting for the opportune time to wreak their terrible plan of metal cow destruction upon us all.

There's really no proof that creations like this one were NOT responsible for the 1876 Kentucky Meat Shower. On March 3rd of that year, chunks of meat fell from the sky to cover 5000 square yards with smallish chunks of meat, later shown to be lung tissue, cartilage and muscle, but 1876 science being what it was, no final determination of the animal(s) from which the meat came from. Apparently folks in Kentucky are inclined to taste meat which falls from the sky and some thought it was like venison or mutton. The best theory of the time is that a huge flock of buzzards flying overhead all puked at once (This is a protective insinct, shared among some animals. If you see your neighbor puke, your body decides to empty itself too, in case you were eating from the same carrion. Oddly, buzzards can eat disease ridden rotten meat without ill effect, so if this is what happened I don't want to know what they ate...)

Personally, I think that the Kentucky Meat Shower was PEOPLE. The aliens controlling the various giant cows across America think it was funny to have cows eat people for a change, but having no real digestive tracts (they aren't real cows), they thought it would also be funny to have them disgorge the remains onto Kentucky (and I have to agree there.) About the only way I can see this coming out OK for the human race is that we are rescued by giant sheep. Everyone knows that the giant sheep scattered around the country are the ancient extra-galactic foes of the giant cow builders, but they seem to be a dying race, with few representatives left here on Earth.

So, I urge you all to race to the nearest home improvement store and buy all of the rebar and cement you can afford, to build the largest sheep you can in your back yard. I'm hoping that if we make them feel welcome, the sheep builders will return to this galaxy and help protect us from the Others. Just don't be surprised when your giant sheep creations animate and proceed to the final battle for the fate of Earth - "Oklahoma, the Sheep Farmer and the Cowman can NEVER be Friends" It's either that, or we need to start buying meat capable umbrellas.

Post radioactive mutant cleanup nearly complete

Another visitation from Cinter Claus, Krampus or Santa (depending on your viewpoint) and I managed to escape the effects of his near light speed transit of my chimney and home, but my decontamination procedure turned up something disturbing while I was making a sweep of the second floor - unhealthy levels of radiation. My detector just registers the energetic particles, not what type, so I have no idea what I'm being exposed to.

Why would I even be monitoring for radiation, you ask (those of you that don't know me anyway?) Well, apparently this Clause character travels with the aid of mutant ungulates which have the ability to fly (which I have no explanation for) and one of which apparently glows in the visible spectrum with a light strong enough to act as a useful fog light while traveling over the earth at several thousand miles per hour. Now, the brightness needed from a fog light is directly proportional to the expected travel speed, in order to give you a chance to see an object and then react, so the light from this glowing mutant reindeer nose would need to be about 80 trillion candlepower. I don't know any normal bioluminescence on earth that can create that much light, so we're forced to contemplate power sources which could possibly suffice, namely it's a radioactive mutant reindeer.

Can you imagine the horrible toll such a creature took on his herd in the early days? All of the other reindeer would be calling you names like, "bringer of death" and "he who kills all that he comes near." Santa must have found some really decent shielding to be able to put him out front and not have reindeer hair falling out in clumps all around him as he flys. Still, it seems pretty irresponsible to be landing on rooftops all over the world with something that deadly irradiating all of your packages, the rooftops and seed clouds overhead. The eventual radioactive snow alone could doom us all.

So, the clean-up continues with me in my lead suit and hasmat protocols. I can't seem to find a source for lead roofing tiles, and automated anti-aircraft emplacements aren't fast enough to track and destroy something moving fast enough to visit every household on earth in one night, so I'm kind of stumped regarding how to mitigate the threat. I think I'll go check to see if PetCo has sold out of lead pooper scoopers for radioactive mutant reindeer droppings.

Crystalized Dihydrous Oxide

Yeah yeah, the dihydrous oxide gag has been done to death, but I'm really really tired of it in it's current, flake form. It's killing people all over the world, and the abundance in the local region is starting to make my feet cold (a known side effect of exposure to crystalized dihydrous oxide.) I live in the PACIFIC Nothwest because of the MILD CLIMATE. If I wanted to live where the temperature hovered in ranges that can freeze dihydrous oxide, I would have moved to CANADA or SIBERIA or maybe Ganymede (it's a moon, look it up.) No, I chose to come here because 1) A nice billionaire asked me to and b) Its not supposed to be 20 or 30 degrees colder than the inside of my refrigerator outside for more than a day or two each year.

Right now there's maybe about 5 to 6 tons of crystalized dihydrous oxide in my front yard, and maybe a trillion tons of it coating the city making it hazardous to drive, walk and breath. The city has crews out 24 hours a day trying to abate this menace, but it's a fight with nature which they cannot win. So, as my part of an effort to increase global warming until my current home is a tropical paradise, I'm going to start throwing the plastic caps from my soda bottles into the trash rather than recycling. The mayor can't even send the recycling police after me, since the cap itself doesn't have the symbol on it. In fact, there is some question about this item actually being recyclable at all, but that's really my point. I don't want to tip the scales fully over and destroy the planet (by global warming anyway.) I just need to nudge it a little bit so that I don't have to buy special equipment to deal with this horror of weather.

I really just need one or two of you reading this to also stop recycling plastic screw-tops, and I can go plant palm trees.

Get In Line

I'm special. OK, I said it. You all know I was thinking it, but now I've just gone right out and stated it as fact. How do I know this true? Endless observation of natural phenomena which all support my theory that I am special. The universe has allotted a place for me, unique from any other and reinforces this universal constant every day in a hundred different ways.

Unfortunately for me, all of those ways involve inserting new and unique times and reasons for me to wait in line. If you consider driving as also being part of a queue, the universes assertion that I wait becomes even more clear. I'm not talking about ordinary hanging about in line while people in front of you perform ordinary tasks nearly identical to what you are queued up for. No, this is about being in line at Safeway when the person in front of you decides to use the checkout stand to launch a hostile takeover of the chain, and has coupons for it. Unbeknownst to many of us, there's an item on the shelf of each Safeway (near the dog toys) called "Controlling Interest in SWY" Only $345,000,000 with your Safeway card! The person in front of me always seems to buy this item, along with their cigarettes (which the checker must then leave the checkstand, walk to the font of the store and retrieve using iris scanning technology from the cigarette fortress) their inexplicable 32 packages of Peanut butter Cups and 3 cotton swabs. Oh, and they will be paying by check, which they will not start making out until the SEC has approved the stock transaction.

Why don't I just move to another line you ask? You may as well ask why I don't just set Planck's Constant to a nice round number, like 10, or maybe change gravity so that attraction of objects is not from center of mass, but randomly at 5 degrees off of center in some direction. I've tried ALL of these things (remember the Seattle earthquake of 2001?) but universal constants are annoyingly stubborn. Switching line in Safeway guarantees that the person in front of me, with $737.34 in groceries already rung up will a) dispute the pricing of the bananas b) claim that there is a gravity anomaly directly under the produce scale causing a 3% overcharge and c) decide that they really did want the can of spray pancakes and run to the back of the store to get it - mid transaction. They don't realize of course that the gravity anomaly under the scale is actually an escaped micro-black hole (thanks Hadron Collider, for NOTHING) which will follow them to the spray pancake batter aisle and transport them to the spray pancake universe via wormhole. Meanwhile, I'm still waiting in line to buy cleaning products which I am most certainly NOT planning to use other than in accordance with their labeling.

The grocery store is just one example, but this sort of thing happens to me all of the time. Ferry waiting lines (the person in front is a pirate and would like them to waive the over-height fee since they will be taking command of the vessel anyway), toll booths (the person in front is Native American and would like to take this moment to assert their right to cross, using the traditional $80 million suspension bridge their ancestors have used for hundreds of years without paying a toll) or perhaps the feed store (person in front of me would like 700 lbs of fertilizer and 200 gallons of diesel fuel -- on credit, please just dump it all in the big vat, thanks.)

So, I wait in line, knowing that any lane changes or abrupt modifications to my own behavior will only result in unimaginable forces being mobilized to maintain some sort of balance in the world. Speaking of balance, why is everyone else in line leaning randomly 5 degrees off center?

Spring birth

Scheduled chaos reins
A summer wind stirs pages
Another tome born

Turkey, Mashed Potato and Baked bean McFlurry

I invented a road-game a few years back called "Invent the most disgusting McFlurry Flavor" which, for some reason doesn't seem to have caught-on farther than my group of friends. Sure sure, I couldn't do the board game version of it without permission from McDonalds, but you would still expect to overhear people playing it on the bus or in line at McDonalds.

The rules are simple and somewhat flexible and there are two variations:

Variation One: Invent the most disgusting sounding McFlurry flavor using only ingredients found on the menu at McDonalds. This game is best with more than two players, as there is no scoring, just a vote. Multiple entries are encouraged, and players may pick the best of their own inventions for the final vote.

1. McFlurry flavors already on the menu, while possibly disgusting, are not typically considered fair game.
2. Entries that cause other players to actually retch automatically win that round.
3. Always remember that the flavors mentioned will be blended into the base soft ice-cream.
4. All items from the McDonalds menu past and present are available ingredients (e.g. McRibs and McPattyMelt)
5. A minor variation to Variation One is to allow both items from the McDonalds menu and things you suspect are also in the kitchen.

Variation Two: All of the same rules from Variation One, excepting that any food item eaten in the last 3 months by any player may be used. Variation Two is not generally considered a sporting version of the game, and will doubtless not be considered for the Olympic approved version of this game.

My original entry of "Sausage Biscuit with Cheese McFlurry" still stands out as a classic, but MANY entries using minor variation #5 have propelled players to fame and glory (e.g. greasy fry-cook hair and McEgg McFlurry, from the Bainbridge games in '04)

I think you can all see where this is going. I expect that McDonalds and Hasbro have held back out of courtesy to my copyright, so I've decided that Christmas 2007 will be the last one in which children everywhere are not given the opportunity to make their parents ill by just playing a simple game. I'm officially and publicly placing the McFlurry game into the public domain so that people everywhere can savor the thrill of competition, the joy of victory over hale and hardy opponents as each of you describe the most horrifying ice-cream and McCrud you can imagine. Your imagination is only limited by the glowing reader board at your nearest McDonalds!

In addition, I'm establishing a fund to pay real money to the first person to get their game winning entry added to the real McDonalds menu. It can't be any worse than what's already on there.

Scheduled criminal visitation

Inexorably the calendar sits in sinister silent witness and I am again assaulted by the certain knowledge that a foreign person unknown to me will at some time during the night be entering my home, bypassing my security system on the doors and windows, leaving objects who's contents are purposefully hidden from me and then leaving as fast as his mutant ungulates can carry him, to serially perform these criminal trespass and possibly terroristic acts all over my neighborhood and much of the world.

I speak of course of the annual visitation of Kris Kringle AKA Santa Clause, Santa, Saint Nick, Jolly Old Elf, Father Christmas, Sinterklaas and other aliases too numerous to mention spanning the globe and many cultures. In terms of sheer volume, Mr Kringle is likely the most prolific criminal in history, breaking into millions of homes every year for hundreds, or possible thousands of years - depending on which origins one chooses to believe.

One of the stories most in line with commonly held beliefs regarding Kringle is one originating with early Germanic tribes who said that Krampus, a horrible monster, would slither down chimneys in Southern Austria and alternatively slaughter children, eating them on the spot or stuff them into a sack for a later snack. Later stories, clearly invented to calm the terrified populace, depict Saint Nicholas taming the beast and (this is the truly frightening part) then sending it BACK INTO THE SAME HOMES to provide candy and gifts to traumatized siblings - presumably after the gore was cleaned up from previous visits. While children may really like candy, I can't imagine that the sudden appearance of the horrible monster that disemboweled your brother or sister, only this time delivering candy, would be at all calming.

No, from the various tales told it seems likely that the Kringle entity is non-human in origin, likely possessed of some pretty serious alien technology. Most of us have seen the back of the napkin calculations on required speed, sleigh carrying capacity and visits per second required for the Christmas break-ins to happen the night of December 25th. Needless to say, those aren't really reindeer moving at 650 miles per second, carrying around 320,000 tons and "landing" on your rooftop. If he's not using some sort of anti-gravity, I'm pretty darn sure that my own roof would collapse under the weight.

His in-transit activities aren't really that concerning to me though. I figure anyone out flying in a conventional aircraft on a night when we KNOW there's someone moving at 3000 times the speed of sound, with no filed flight plan in the air with you gets what's coming. The good news is that if there's a collision, it will be over VERY quickly. No, the problem I have is that for the Klaus criminal to enter each home, drop the suspicious packages and get on with the crime spree, he has to move that fast inside my home. While I can sympathize with the folks that try and slow him down a bit with milk and cookies, it's really just causing a bit of a ricochet effect for the in-house path. Your best bet is to park the Christmas tree directly in front of the fireplace, minimizing the time and distance a Santa sized projectile is moving through the house at about 1000 times faster than a high powered sniper bullet.

From experiments with magnesium and sodium metal in the fireplace, I can tell you that he's impervious to heat. Nothing you do to the fireplace or fire will be sufficient to keep him out, the technology he has access to is beyond our ability to protect against. Truly, anything you could do to proof your home against the rampage would be too dangerous to you and your family to really consider. No, the only thing you can do on December 24th is barricade yourself into the basement or bedroom and hope that the entity will not take interest in your entrails or decide to leave something truly nasty in one of the concealing boxes. If all goes well, he's only in the house for about 1/1000 of a second and then off to terrorize the neighbors. There's no way to know his schedule, so it's best to wait in your safe room with your family until daylight on the 25th before venturing out. If you have children, try not to share your justified terror with them, but be realistic about their chances of survival if caught out near the tree with a 260 lb bearded home invader moving about with enough kinetic energy to instantly incinerate the whole block if he impacted with something.

Regarding the packages, you can't rely on the bomb squad as you ordinarily would for this situation. Remember, he's broken into most of the homes in your city, and it's likely the mayor is the only one with enough clout to get the bomb disposal robot into his house today. No, you might as well just hug your children and/or spouse and then carefully unwrap each of them being careful to identify tripwires and oxygen sensitive ignitors. It's good practice for the kids, in case they are ever in politics or possibly just make a lot of enemies. For the most part, the packages are benign, merely delivered to inspire terror, but occasionally the threat has to be real, or it ceases to have any effect.

Sometimes, it's a hand knit sweater from a relative that you can't just avoid for the rest of your life.

I want what he's looking at...

People who know me might have the impression that I don't enjoy shopping. While I understand how they reach that conclusion, it's not strictly true. I'm OK with shopping, and if it's stuff I'm interested in, I could even enjoy shopping - if we could just get everyone else to leave the store while I do it. Perfectly good shopping trips are ruined by sales associates, other shoppers and checkout people who all conspire to ruin the experience.

As a part of a series on HOW these people turn a simple transaction into Dante's 4.2th circle of hell (that's a 40% discount!) I'd like to take a moment to contemplate the people who seem to have no will of their own, and wander aimlessly throughout the store until I happen to stop and look at something, whereby they immediately must closely examine that same item.

I've given some thought to what's wrong with these folks (yes, I know - you're not surprised) and I think it's really a list of genetic, social and mental deficiencies that produce them.

Genetic:
Long ago in the evolution of our species it was quite useful to stop and show interest in the water buffalo that I'd just killed with my fancy new flint tipped spear. As long as I didn't decide to use the fancy new spear to add you to my entree for the evening, you might end up with some part of the water buffalo that I wasn't interested in, like the spleen. Mmmm, spleen.

Those days are long past though, and I can virtually guarantee that whatever carcass I'm currently contemplating at Fry's, they have at least 3 or 4 more of, and I'm NOT going to share even the spleen with any fellow shoppers. I'm even reasonably certain that barometric pressure activated switches don't even HAVE spleens. I need all of you in this category to evolve. Concentrate on the scaphoid bone in your hand, envision your thumb touching a fingertip. Imagine walking upright. Visualize seeing me picking up a fancy new ceramic tipped spear, and yourself sensibly running away. Visualize.

Social:
Some of you clearly feel self-conscious about approaching a retail item without someone else already showing clear interest. If you are in that category, I would like you to keep in mind that most of the stuff I'm interested in looking at more closely has some sort of sharp edge or other battle advantage. I'm not looking at the new thumb-drive that will make you more popular with all of the other social amputees that you hang out with. No, I'm gazing at things that will get you hauled off to Guantanamo if combined with 3 or 4 other household items and attached to your congressman's SUV. Back carefully away from the guy with the odd looking electrical components and walk over to the thumb-drive isle.

Mental:
Imitation is not the most sincere form of flattery, cash is more sincere. If you find yourself unable to resist the charismatic draw of my intense examination of the 12 mile range walkie talkies, don't pick one up yourself and pretend you are considering a purchase. Instead, just give me whatever cash you walked into the store with, along with your credit cards and checkbook and then go home. If you walk around buying stuff just because someone else seems interested in it, I'm afraid you shouldn't be granted access to your own money. Oh yeah, when you get home, tear up your voters registration card too.

Now, I have to go back to Fry's. I think I forgot 3 or 4 other household items.

Moby English

From time to time "people" ask me what horrible thing occurred in my life to result in the pile of ripe prose before you. While I'm sure it's the accumulation of many things, mostly unrelated to winding mazes of twisty passages or evil HVAC systems. No, most of what drove me to start putting these "thoughts" to paper was wrapped up in my "education." (Promise, I'm done with quotes for this post. I only do that when I haven't been using my right pinky finger much...)

Included below is a sample transcript from my infallible memory regarding a conversation I had in 7th grade or so. This transcript is about as exact as I can make it, though my thoughts about this teacher may have softened a bit over the years and may be remembering that he was nicer than was strictly true. For example, the blood mentioned below is assumed to be my own blood, but could in-fact be from multiple donors and/or animals. How much blood does it take to soak a yeardstick end-to-end to the point where it obscures the numbers? Those of you that quickly answered, please read my Wal-eyed blog entry, and remember my shopping habits.

Begin Transcript ----------------------------------------------------------------

English teacher: So, Mr. Simon, what have you decided to bother me about today?

Me: I humbly beg your valuable time and incalculable wisdom in
explaining a basic principal of good writing that I cannot seem to
grasp, no doubt due to my native and profound stupidity.

English teacher: Yes, your stupidity IS profound, and I despair of
teaching you anything, but since I'm paid to talk to all of you
morons, you may continue to blather.

Me: Thank you kind educator, I am most grateful for your kindness in
this matter.

English teacher: Get on with it, or I'll hit you with this stick.

Me: Since I see the dried blood from last time I was slow to learn,
I'll get right to it. One of the items that you so rightly mark and
subtract points for on my papers is that I use long sentences. You
tell me that this creates poor lexical density.

English teacher: Yes, that's true. Good writers use short sentences
which are easily diagrammed. You occasionally use twelve to fifteen
word sentences, which a) I expect that you plagiarize and b) are just
poor writing.

Me: So, there is no possible situation in which regularly using longer
sentences would be considered good writing?

English teacher: No, and in your case you should stick to sentences of
three to six words, so you can understand them.

Me: So you are telling me that this never ending pile of slag called
Moby Dick, which you've forced us all to read is really REALLY crappy
writing, since Herman Mellville frequently uses fifty to eighty word
sentences, such as this one from chapter 2:

"With anxious grapnels I had sounded my pocket, and only brought up a few pieces of silver, --So,wherever you go, Ishmael, said I to myself, as I stood in the middle of a dreary street shouldering my bag, and comparing the gloom towards the north with the darkness towards the south --wherever in your wisdom you may conclude to lodge for the night, my dear Ishmael, be sure to inquire the price, and don't be too particular."

English teacher: Please step a little closer boy, my stick is only 3 feet long.

End Transcription-------------------------------------------------

For the next few years I ignored the content of the obviously substandard texts that teachers felt compelled to have me and my fellows read, and used the analysis taught in the very same classes to evaluate Homer, Melville, Swift and the like. In most cases, they received the grade of D or F but I cut some of them slack due to the problem of multiple translations and thousand years or so of writing via the telephone game.

You might think that immediately applying what I learned in these classes to the assigned texts would have won the hearts of each educator that I encountered, but for some reason it did not. So, I've learned to keep my distance from english teachers (about 3.5 feet) and am forced to practice here - safely out of reach, with the occasional 29 word sentence.

Speed Enforced by 50 quintillion watt radar

A recent road trip caused me to read many signs regarding how local law enforcement were planning to deal with my potential speeding, and I am now quite afraid of the massive radar arrays that these folks appear to have installed. Specifically, I'm referring to the signs which say "Speed Enforced by Radar."

Enforcement is a strong word with a short definition "Compel obedience to." In states and counties where the speed is merely "checked" by radar, I assume that they are using the normal radar guns which bounce a beam off of my car and use the Doppler shift to register my rate of travel, allowing the officer to see that I am safely under the limit and turn his/her attention to some other potential law breaker and NOT SEARCH MY TRUNK FOR MARMOSETS, SINCE I DON'T HAVE ANY IN THERE.

No, the folks that actually plan to compel my obedience to the speed limit using radar are the scary ones. To do that, you would need to use something called "radiation pressure" which is a minuscule force, even when you are measuring the output of something who's radiation you can feel as warmth, like the sun. As an example, if we were at a place where the energy flux from the sun were about the boiling point of water (373.15 Kelvin) the radiation pressure would be about 2 lbs of force per square mile. Slowing down a speeding car by 5 or 10 miles per hour is going to take a heck of a lot more energy than 2 lbs / square mile.

I don't want to do the energy calculations for the requirements of a radar gun capable of enforcing speed limits, but I'm reasonably sure that it would require a captive black hole and a pretty serious array of antennas, likely electromagnetically focused (or a shaped gravity lens -- if you have a captive black hole already, why not?) In any event, the resulting EM beam would almost certainly vaporize the car, the occupant and any marmosets that you then couldn't prove were ever in my trunk. It would also vaporize anything in it's path until it cleared the horizon, and small chunks of the moon if it happened to be in the way.

Where are podunk counties in Northern California getting this kind of technology? Why aren't we seeing huge swaths of the countryside charred to pure carbon by their speed enforcement technology? I expect everyone is as frightened by the threat of radar enforced speed as I am, and don't dare speed in these places.

You may note that I've not addressed the signs saying "Speed Enforced by Aircraft" which are really scary too, but pretty obvious as to their method. It seems wasteful to destroy a whole airplane that way every time you want someone to slow down, but at least it doesn't burn holes in the moon.

Paul McCartney hates everything.

Maybe hate is too strong of a word, but I believe I can prove that he "doesn't care too much" for anything, so maybe "Paul McCartney doesn't care too much for anything" would be a more accurate title, but if you've read this blog, you know it's not about accuracy (or style, definitely not content or structure... I guess I could tell you what it's about, but then I'd have to shoot me.)

Back to my point. If you listen to the lyrics for "Can't Buy Me Love" written by Paul and John, you'll hear this:

"....I don't care too much for money, money can't buy me love"

The clear implication here is that the author/singer doesn't care too much for anything that can't buy him love. Since most will agree that nothing can buy love; clearly Paul and/or John is saying here that they don't really like anything. Paul later recanted, but not in a way that would warm your heart. He decided, based on his experience and success that indeed money can buy him love. This strikes me as even more cynical than his original position, that he doesn't much like anything, and not reflective of his thinking at the time of writing.

John Lennon later followed this up with the lyrics to "Imagine" which I'll excerpt here:

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for

John embraced his inner dislike of everything and imagined a utopia when all of those things ceased to exist. Paul on the other hand seems to have repressed his true feelings about everything not himself and gone on to write/perform several songs that at the very least explain that he likes cannabis. Actions speak louder than words though and Paul clearly showed his dislike for both his fans and the rest of the world by recording two songs with Michael Jackson.

Cynical as I must sound like from time to time, clearly Paul and John have me beat here. I've never claimed to hate everything. Everything is a really long list and I can think of several exceptions to it right off the bat. For example, I don't hate gold striped cats named "Westley" or most cheese (brie isn't cheese, it's spoiled milk with a rind.)

I'm also OK with money, even though it can't buy me love. So Paul - you can send me a check (Google knows how to find me) to get rid of some of the stuff you don't care for. I'm afraid I can't help much with the rest of it.

Wall Eyed

There’s some sort of weird experiment going on at WallMart and it’s not the one you are thinking of. No, this one seems to have something to do with mind control (no, not the one you are thinking of now either.) What I’ve noticed is that as I walk around WallMart, looking for some elusive item, like a machete or a razor sharp double bitted axe, I see the following behavior repeated time after time. A stationary shopper, who’s body is oriented in direction A whose head is turned in direction B will suddenly and without warning begin to move in direction C, which space I am currently occupying.

First, I’m almost 6 feet tall, and large enough to do these shoppers serious damage if I planted my feet, stuck out my elbows and then checked them like I thought they had the puck and the referee wasn’t looking - but I would never consider doing that. My point is that since I’m large, wearing a bright red cap with reindeer horns and playing the bagpipes while I do my shopping it shouldn’t seem like a good idea to back into me. If I’ve already found the machete or axe, I would say that goes double.

So, what explains these people countering millions of years of instinctive fear of blundering into tar pits, sleeping lions and bear traps someone put under a pile of leaves that I raked? Walking in a direction you aren’t looking is sketchy even when you are in a safe place, in a wildly hostile environment like WallMart, it’s an evolutionary dead-end behavior. The only realistic explanation is that the aliens that own WallMart have decided to exterminate the human race by somehow encouraging this dangerous behavior through mind control. Remember, it’s not just backing into me, these victims specifically confuse the issue by pointing their body towards the expired cashews, looking at the demo-sized soap isle and then making a feral plunge to their 7:00.

Fortunately, the affected population is easily identified, even outside of the WallMart environment. Look for the ones with axe marks on their demo-sized soap container and tar on their shoes.

Anarchy shouldn't have it's own symbol

I've now seen the circle with an A in it on bumber stickers, window clings and as a non-spinning weighted hubcap cover on a minivan, and I'm confused by the whole concept. Not the concept of anarchy, anyone that has seen my office knows that anarchy and I have a close working relationship. No, the concept that I'm not quite fully understanding is how a concept which by its nature implies - a state of society without government or law - can have a symbol that is accepted by anarchists as the symbol. Who, exactly, is laying down the bucks to do a graphic design suitable for a bumper sticker / hubcap cover? If someone DID pay for a nice graphic design, did they copyright it or did they license it from whomever owns the trademark on representations of the circle A? Are there anarchist board meetings that discuss how distressed the swooshy brush strokes of the A will be, or how far outside the lines of the inverted V the cross stroke shall be? Can I get in trouble with some Anarchist governing body if I start using one with a perfect circle and a helvetica A in the exact center with no distressing or brush stroke stuff? Since nearly all of the representations I see are identical, I have to assume that like most organizations there is someone in charge of the ID, and enforcing conformance to acceptable versions. Can someone please send me the EPS scalable version of this thing?

Somehow related to all of that is the uniforms checked out to the students of the Art Institute of Seattle. If you drive by the Institute from time to time, getting onto the Alaskan Way soon-to-be-another-100,000-cars-each-day-on-surface-streets Viaduct, you know what I mean. Black shirt/blouse, black pants/leggings, black head thing (hat, scarf, headband, tatoo), black shoes, birkenstocks, Doc Martins and at least three items of flair which MUST include a stylized flame tatoo, a silver studded piercing and a "free item" which can be chosen by the art student. Does the Institute have a uniform shop where they sell these, or is it more like getting your boy scout uniform from regulated multiple suppliers? Do they have problems with rebels wearing yellow rain jackets or shameless gold piercings from time to time and have to crack down hard with the dress code?

All of these people are giving anarchy and rebellion a bad name. I think I'll go clean my office.