There are certain subjects you can't (or at least shouldn't) discuss while at work. I'm not always successful at watching my mouth, but I try. Recently, a friend of mine got me to listen to some songs by a band called The Frogs. I'd heard about them in the context of being a super gay band, in the homosexual sense. People would mention The Frogs in the same sentence as the "queer-core" punk group Pansy Division. Well, I did not expect that the band's highly offensive songs would be catchy as well. And I did not expect that their songs would be offensive to gay people as well as straights. Anyway, today I found myself humming along to one of the more perverse of their songs, called Raped. Read the lyrics, and it will be more obvious why even I knew better than to sing this at work:

So they're singing this over acoustic guitar. Apparently The Frogs are buddies with the Smashing Pumpkins, which is how they got a record deal. Billy Corgan plays guitar on the record.

I know I haven't been writing much. I haven't been in a happy place. I ought to know better, but I feel that the world is about to collapse and that I am nearing the end of my life as I know it. I try not to think about it too much, but turning off your brain is a very difficult task. Alcohol slows it down, but it takes a lot of booze to completely put me out of commission. Usually I just suffer.

One of my favorite coping mechanisms is to try to put things in perspective. Other people's suffering tends to cheer me up. As a result, I was very happy to watch a History Channel special on the French Revolution the other day. It filled in a lot of gaps in my knowledge, and was a lot easier than reading a book on the subject. The only trouble with watching the History Channel is finding a subject other than WWII. I mean, there are already tons of movies about that. I prefer to learn about Genghis Khan or Hannibal or Caligula.

I had not previously known that the guillotine was supposed to be a very egalitarian way to execute criminals, and that it was several steps above the traditional methods (boiling in oil, drowning, burning at the stake). I also didn't know that the people of France would have been happy with a constitutional monarchy if the king and queen hadn't tried to flee the country. And I knew nothing at all about Jean Paul Marat, other than I'd heard his name.

It feels nice to not be one of those people sent to the guillotine.
It feels nice to not have any horrible diseases or afflictions.
It feels so nice, it almost feels good.
But not quite.

I forgot to celebrate Groundhog Day this year. That movie, with Bill Murray, was a true original, even if the idea of living the same day repeatedly is not. I wonder who was the first to write a story with that theme . . . Reminds me of the Freaky Friday franchise. I can think of at least three or four major movies with the exact same idea as Freaky Friday. There was the one with Dudley Moore and Kirk Cameron as a father and son who switch bodies (Like Father Like Son), or the one with Judge Reinhold and Fred Savage with the same plot (Vice Versa), or the remake of Freaky Friday, or a billion other movies.

There is no new thing under the sun, as I said last month.

I saw "Million Dollar Baby" today, and I have to jump on the bandwagon and say I liked it a lot. So many of the Oscar contenders are slooooow, no matter how poignant they may be (I'm thinking of "The English Patient" here, by the way). "Million Dollar Baby" was not slow paced. It had plenty of action to go with the drama. One thing I particularly liked about the film was that it featured Lucia Rijker, the Dutch boxer who is arguably the best female boxer in the world. She was featured in a documentary film that I saw a couple years ago called Shadow Boxers, and my impression was that Laila Ali, daughter of Muhammad Ali, was scared to fight Rijker. Anyway, although Lucia Rijker is playing a cheating, dirty, East German former prostitute in the movie, it was still nice to see her in action. There's a pretty thorough biography at the Women's Boxing Archive Network. She apparently had won four world titles in kickboxing before she started regular boxing. Pretty amazing. I'd like her to have my back in a fight. Check it:

I also wanted to mention a thought I had tonight, while watching Saturday Night Live. I now have a Tivo-like apparatus at my home, so I never have to watch the commercials. Or the lame musical guests. And as Kelly Clarkson was tonight's musical guest, I started fast-forwarding through her performance. But I actually heard about half of it, and I have to say that the girl has some pipes. This new rock 'n' roll stuff suits her much better than the stuff she was singing on American Idol. Anyway, I have no plans to seek out her album, but I do have to say that Ms. Clarkson puts Ashlee Simpson to shame, with respect to live performances. But using Ashlee Simpson as a reference sets the bar pretty low, so saying that doesn't say much.

I'm planning to go to Quaker meeting in a few hours. I've never been to the one in Eugene. The things I like about Quakers and going to meeting are:
1) No one preaching (at the unstructured meetings)
2) Very loose dress code, unlike most churches
3) Although Quakers are technically Christians, there are many fringe Quakers who are deists, agnostics, Jews, etc.
4) I am never disciplined enough to meditate on my own, and Quakers are less New-Agey than people at most meditation centers. Slightly.
5) Quakers do lots of community service, which can be inspiring. It's vicarious community service.
6) No titles. No "doctor" or "mister" or "missus" etc. You call people by their first names.
7) As befits a group that calls themselves the Society of Friends, Quakers are very friendly.

That's enough for now.

I've been busy over at Netflix, adding movies to the queue, rearranging, etc. In the process I have noticed many conspicuous absences in the Netflix catalog. Here are a few:
- anything by Russ Meyer (Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!),
- David Cronenberg's Dead Ringers and M. Butterfly (strangely, Jeremy Irons is in both those films)
, - Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (but wait! IMDB says that's a Russ Meyer movie, too),
- the unrated version of Reanimator,
- Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring,
- about a dozen others that I will remember the instant I click to submit this entry

In general, though, I think Netflix has a pretty decent selection. As I was browsing through movies, I read a review by Roger Ebert about Dawn of the Dead, probably the best horror movie made. Check it out:

I would have to say Dawn of the Dead had a pretty profound impact on me. It terrified me more than other horror films, but not just because of the gore. I've seen plenty worse than that (Dead Alive probably had more blood than any) but nothing that creeped me out so much. It's because of the apocalyptic nature of the movie. In a regular movie, you are a completely passive observer, watching these strangers on the screen. In the apocalyptic movies, you are one of the nameless masses who gets killed by the aliens, or earthquakes, or the virus, plague, rain of frogs, you get the idea. If the whole world gets blown up, you get blown up, too. And the idea that you might have to kill your best friend, or wife, or child in a second if they get bitten by a zombie, is really creepy. Like that movie Sophie's Choice, which I never saw.
You know, I'll bet that's the first time someone has compared Sophie's Choice to Dawn of the Dead.

One of my oldest friends, who eventually went to film school, introduced me to Dawn of the Dead when I was about 12-14 years old. My friend later made a trailer for the movie as a project in film school. He was supposed to make a preview of a film with a song for the soundtrack, and the final result was a Dawn of the Dead trailer with the Wu-Tang Clan's Shame on a Nigga as the soundtrack. See the November 17th entry for the lyrics. At the part of the song where the Ol' Dirty Bastard says Do ya wanna getcha teeth knocked the FUCK out?, the preview showed a zombie getting his teeth knocked out. I will never forget that.

I can't forget the recent remake of the movie with Sarah Polley, because that was the goriest movie I have ever seen in an actual cinema (i.e., not rented). The zombie baby was the freakiest part. Also, I noticed that the music for the closing credits was The People Who Died (or something like that) by Jim Carroll, who is not a famous musician, but is the guy who wrote The Basketball Diaries (also on my Netflix queue). I refuse to see Titanic (if for no other reason, I can't bear to hear that Celine Dion song another time), but any Leonardo DiCaprio haters should really see that movie.

I just had a "laugh out loud" moment.

So I am not usually a fan of Survivor, but I do watch it occasionally. I saw most of the second season (Colby was the favorite, but got second place), and a few episodes in the Brazilian rainforest (the two girls who stripped for chocolate, and the guy Rob who was a scheming mastermind), and a few others here and there, but I never went out of my way to see the show. Anyway, disclaimer aside, I did "Tivo"*** last night's show and was just watching it. I've seen three minutes so far. Here's a choice quote from James, a steelwork that talks like a total hick-- and believe me, I've heard my share of hicks, having grown up in their midst:

You may not find that quite as funny as I do, but let me tell you a story . . . There was a really old cartoon, featuring Porky Pig, before Looney Tunes. Back when it was Merrie Melodies and the theme song was Merrily We Roll Along instead of Merry-Go-Round Broke Down. It's black-and-white. Steamboat Willie years. Porky is building something, and while hammering a nail accidentally smashes his finger (hoof?). He screams, "son of a biii-ba-biii-ba-biii- . . . gosh darnit." Watching James was like Porky incarnate, but with a fouler mouth. I hope this guy makes it through the first few cuts, because he makes for good TV.

***"Tivo" is in quotes because, like Kleenex or Xerox or Rollerblades, its name is becoming synonymous with the product the company produces. I am flagrantly contributing to their trademark becoming public domain. Tee hee.

R. I. P. Hunter S. Thompson

This is fairly breaking news (posted at almost midnight Eastern Time on Sunday in the NY Times by the AP):

Poor guy. At least he was 67 and not 27. The first thing that comes to my mind is Hemmingway. Seems to be a trend for people that active and vivacious to kill themselves when they begin to get old and feeble.

Tidbits

First, this dead-on quote from slashdot:

That is the best explanation for why I don't call this website a blog. I do believe in good writing, correct grammar, editing, and all that other stuff that makes writing readable. I do not have contempt or horror for "heretics" who don't just love that every idiot out there now has a soapbox, if they want it. If you are reading this, it's almost surely because you know me personally and are receiving this as an email. The other major reasons I don't call this site a blog are:

1) The word blog sounds pretty fucking stupid to me. Too much like "blah" or "frog."
2) I think a requirement for a page to be a "blog" is that the entries are displayed backwards, with older material at the bottom. If I were just compiling a bunch of factoids without actually commenting on them, then that would work. But I like to think there is at least a shred of continuity in these entries, that I build on ideas rather than just spitting out random thoughts. And there are certainly recurring themes, like linguistics and music, to name just a couple of topics.

Enough talking about blogs. I want to give a shout-out to one of the shows I routinely record on my "Tivo" (see 18 Feb. entry): The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy which you can find on the Cartoon Network. I just discovered the premise about a minute ago, when I visited the site:

Happy-go-lucky Billy and cynical Mandy become best friends with the Grim Reaper after winning an otherworldly limbo contest against the messenger of Death.

Well, they make him their friend-slave. I didn't know how that happened, though. The cartoon is very dark for a children's program. Horrible things happen to these kids, and because the Grim Reaper is a character (with a Jamaican accent, by the way), the creators have license to use any supernatural characters, such as the Boogeyman (who bullied Grim back in grade school), elves, dwarves, monsters, etc. There is a lot of rewriting of myths, waxing absurd. In one episode, the dwarves dress up Billy as an elf in order to infiltrate the elf headquarters, which was a giant Keebler-esque tree where they make cookies. And very recently was an episode where a kid sings about the myth of Shnissuggah, the ancient snake who (according to legend) saved the nerds of ancient Canada by eating the cool kids. Ancient Canada was depicted as an Aztec temple with a Canadian flag at its apex.

Finally, to end with a blasphemous note, anybody want to guess how much longer the Pope has to live? He's like my grandfather, a "tough old bird" who just keeps on living, despite the odds. Still, the Pope has been going downhill fast, with all these breathing problems lately. I give him a month. As far as Popes go, JP2 is probably the best so far, but I'm not a Catholic so I have no qualms questioning his infallibility. The following quote from his recent book really riled me:

Hmm. An evil that uses state structures to carry out its dirty work. You mean, like, Western Civilization under the control of the Vatican? What do you call the Crusades? Or Inquisitions, with their autos da fe? What about religiously-motivated pogroms in Russia? I know the Pope has apologized for at least some of the evils of the Catholic Church, but that doesn't make those evils just cease to exist. He's got a lot of nerve to make a statement about the evil of "gigantic proportions" in the 20th century when it's just the replacement for the evils we had when the Church was in charge.

Privatization Gone Horribly, Horribly Wrong

In the New York Times this weekend was a story about one of the companies that does the contract health care for many, many prisons across the country. They make the lowest bid, and then they basically don't do their job. They withhold medication, ignore prisoners' health conditions, etc. Some people don't think prisoners deserve any rights at all, because they are criminals. That ignores a few facts: first, most prisoners will eventually be released; second, not all prisoners deserve to be in prison. Some are wrongfully convicted, some have incompetent state representation, and some are convicted of breaking laws that shouldn't be laws (and I'm specifically thinking about petty, non-violent, drug possession). Worse, many of these people would never have been convicted of anything, because they died in holding cells before they had their day in court. Regardless, you should read the article. He's a small snippet (it's a longish article):

So, Prison Health is the bad guy here. That corporation was founded by a Delaware nurse named Doyle Moore, who also founded Armor Correctional Health Services after several prisons blacklisted Prison Health because it was killing people. In Florida, in Pinellas county saved a little bit of money by hiring Prison Health, but lost most of that savings to wrongful-death lawsuits brought by families of those people that Prison Health allowed to die.

Goddammit, this kind of shit makes me so mad! The NY Times had an expose a couple years ago about the private contractors that run the New York mental health facilities, which were in even worse shape than these prisons. See, not many people will listen when a prisoner complains of inadequate treatment, but even fewer people will listen to the mentally ill. If you are a sadist and want a job that allows you to murder people without fear of retribution, you have a job waiting for you working in managed care of insane asylums and halfway houses. What a sad state of affairs.

If you aren't sufficiently depressed by reading this post or the NY Times article I linked to, then there are a few movies you can rent to finish the job: Chattahoochee, starring Gary Oldman as a vet who is stuck in a rathole of a mental hospital in the rural South, also featuring Dennis Hopper, Frances McDormand, Ned Beatty, and M. Emmet Walsh. And, of course, there is One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Recently, there was The Magdalene Sisters, which I have not yet seen.

I will try to write about something less depressing next time. Like bunnies or flowers.

Cohesion

I am fascinated by the mind. I took a class in high school called "Science of the Mind," and my teacher was this hippy physics guy with a long, white beard and Einstein-ish hair. At one point we were discussing the phenomenon of falling asleep in class, which is sometimes hard to avoid. We've all had those moments--where the eyes just can't stay focused, they roll back into your head. Then your head slumps over and you start to drool, at which point you snap back reflexively and slurp up the drool (if you're lucky) and make a small "snort" (which you hope no one noticed). Anyway, this teacher told us that if we were to find ourselves falling asleep, we should take off our shoes and massage our feet. I tried it before. Works okay, I guess. Depends on how tired you are. And if you're in a place where you can take off your shoes.

I could tell many stories about that class, but I actually meant to discuss the mind, because I am fascinated by the mind. The topic is Cohesion because what I was thinking about today was the "Eureka" moment, when the pieces come together, another synapse is created. I guess that would describe pretty much all learning, but the way it feels is certainly very different for each person. I was reading about this new autistic savant, who is able to describe the way he arrives at answers to difficult math problems. Lemme see if if I can find it . . . Here we go, from The Guardian (UK)

That's certainly not how I multiply numbers. It's really too bad that all we have to describe our thoughts is lousy words. And I really like words a lot, but they are so inadequate when trying to describe thoughts. Or tastes, for that matter. Or smells. There are a whole lot of things we have no words for. It would be great to have a better vocabulary for describing our thoughts or thought processes. We don't even have a good way to convey voice inflection with words! There are at least a dozen ways I could have said that last sentence, using the exclamation mark each time. Put a question mark at the end, instead, and you have at least a dozen more ways to say that sentence.

What Daniel Tammet was describing sounds an awful lot like synesthesia, which I think would be really cool to have. Days of the week might have a certain color or sound. A person's name could have a flavor.

Sometimes I think in terms of rhythms, especially when I'm listening to music. Sometimes I think of shapes. What really blows my mind is trying to visualize, say, complex numbers. Or fractals. Or strange math functions. Is there some way to visualize a Laplace transform? And I often I think in analogy.

I have several friends who are dyslexic. I wonder what it's like to be them. I know that dyslexia is more than just not being able to read well, but I'm sure it's indescribable. Since I often think in analogy, I think that for a dyslexic person there isn't much difference between "b" and "d" just as for English speakers there isn't much difference between the nine Cantonese tones, nine different ways to say "ma." We are kind of tonally dyslexic, for the most part. But one of my good friends who is dyslexic is extremely musically talented, and could probably pick up Cantonese if he tried. Seems like dyslexia is just an inability to parse a type of input: written words.

There are so many types of input--all of our senses give us input. And within the spectrum of visual input there are shapes, and colors, and patterns of all sorts. Likewise for sound, smell, touch, etc. Humans can't deal with smells as well as dogs can. Try to imagine what it must be like to be a dog--to be able to differentiate between all these colors and shapes and patterns in smell, but still have the desire to eat feces and vomit. Doesn't make a lot of sense, huh?

Okay, while I think that this entry has been light-hearted enough to make up for the last one, I should note that the story about prison healthcare (or lack thereof) in the NY Times was only the first of three parts. If you were able to stomach the first part, you can find part two here.