Odds and Ends (Potpourri, if this were Jeopardy)

Sometimes it doesn't make sense to write about just one subject, and especially not today. There's been a lot going on, and I'd like to remark on some of it. I want to give a few shout-outs to some people who have entertained me lately, and a few brickbats to those people who have shown that they deserve to be stoned to death.

First, the shout-outs, in a mostly-chronological order. A while back, I rediscovered and album that came out before I was even able to talk, and it's got to be one of the funkiest, rockin' albums I've ever heard: Fear of Music, by the Talking Heads. I had heard some of the tracks on a greatest hits album, but they weren't, in my opinion, the greatest tracks on the album. Some really interesting and amusing lyrics, too. From the song Air:

There's another band I've been listening to recently, after constantly reading about them on Amazon (recommendations) and in Blender magazine. The band is called CAN, and the album I bought ( Ege Bamyasi) was recorded in 1972. The band is German, with a Japanese vocalist (I can't really say "singer" because the vocals are often completely unintelligible). Very groovy and rhythmic. Awesome drumming. And, being a big fan of okra, I especially liked their album cover. I'm planning on getting another one of their albums, Tago Mago, when finances allow. I have to ration my album purchases if I want to be able to pay the rent and buy groceries.

Buying music is certainly my biggest vice, if it is a vice. I'm hoping to get a radio show at one of the local Eugene stations soon. I've been a DJ in the past, but I have a much larger selection of music now. The real question is, what kind of show theme can incorporate all the different types of music I listen to? I'm thinking of a show that's half Brazilian and Latin, half miscellaneous. We'll see. The good news is that if I do get a show, the local stations have internet broadcasts so my friends outside of the area could hear it. Here's the URL for KRVM, our community-supported station, and here's the URL for KWVA, the University of Oregon student station. I've talked to the KRVM station manager, and he said that no naughty language is allowed on their station at ANY time, which is different from the previous radio station where I was a DJ. Legally, between 10 PM and 4 AM (I'm estimating), which are called "safe harbor hours," DJs can broadcast material containing profanity, as long as they give their listeners a warning every hour. KRVM doesn't do that because they are publicly funded (though not by the government, I don't believe).

All right, continuing with the shout-outs. I've really gotten a kick out of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the absurd, but equally plausible, alternative to Intelligent Design. If we're going to explain scientific phenomena by invoking the supernatural, then the Flying Spaghetti Monster is just as valid as any Creator worshipped by those Luddites in Kansas. Yes, I realize there are a few people in Kansas who aren't completely backwards, but why are they still there? Adherents of the Flying Spaghetti Monster religion are called Pastafarians, and you can purchase T-shirts and car emblems to proclaim your faith. The site I linked to, Boing-Boing.net, is exactly what it claims to be: "A Directory of Wonderful Things."

And I have to give a shout-out to biodiesel, the sustainable food made from three ingredients: vegetable oil (new or used), sodium hydroxide (NaOH), and methanol. It's like making soap, but using methanol instead of water, so the product is a methyl ester of the fatty acid (instead of the sodium salt). Recently I had a near disaster because I ran biodiesel too long without replacing the old rubber fuel lines with solvent-resistant Viton hoses, and I was leaking fuel like a motherfucker. But all is well, now, and biodiesel is in fact cheaper than dino-diesel at $3.06 / gallon, here in Eugene. I knew that would happen eventually, but I thought it would take a year or so. Leave it to a natural disaster to make fuel prices skyrocket. So I'm sitting pretty, I think. For all you with gasoline engines (who can't run biodiesel), I would seriously consider propane. The conversion isn't too expensive, but propane costs about $1.40 / gallon these days. That's a better deal than I have, although I do have the option of running either bio- or dino-diesel, depending on what's more convenient, while propane people are stuck with propane and don't always have an easy time finding a place to fill up.

Now it's time for a few brickbats. Wish I could deliver them in person, alas. The first brickbat goes to the New Orleans PD, who are well-known to be the Most Corrupt Police Department in the United States, a significant achievement when you have to compete with the LAPD, the NYPD, Daley's Chicago thugs, and crooked cops all across the USA. But the NOPD take the cake. They've been filmed looting in the hurricane aftermath. They've beaten photojournalists and taken their cameras when caught in flagrante delicto. And now, worst of all, they're selectively disarming citizens who they don't like, while leaving be the hired thugs--ahem, private security guards. But as LeVar Burton would say, "you don't have to take my word for it." Read for yourself from the NY Times:

Motherfuckers! Why are mercenaries allowed to keep their military rifles (please don't use the propagandistic "assault rifles") while citizens have their means of protection taken by force? The mercenaries are there to protect businesses, while the citizens are only protecting themselves. New Orleans is now in anarchy, which is one circumstance where even the most bleeding heart liberal ought to agree personal protection is paramount. (Jeez, that sounded Jesse Jackson-esque.) The most common argument I've heard in support of gun control is that people should leave law enforcement to the police. That doesn't seem to be working too well in New Orleans, does it? (In the future, I'm planning on writing an essay in defense of cop-killers: MOST people who kill cops are murderers, but in this country it doesn't seem to matter if you catch a cop raping your sister, because cops are treated as sacrosanct, above the law. At issue is "equal protection under the law," which doesn't seem to apply to cop-killers or people who commit "hate crimes." But more on that another day . . . )

There are a lot of brickbats I could throw with respect to hurricane matters. It's pointless to even mention the Bush regime, because it gets boring spitting vitriol at the same target so often. Everyone with a brain knows he's a fuckup. Moving on. Whoever kept refugees from leaving designated shit-hole relief centers needs a brickbat; these people are poor, not prisoners. And a big, fat brickbat to all the people using this hurricane to incite racism against white people. Yes, as Kanye West said, George Bush don't like black people, but it's the poor people he really hates. Hasn't it been obvious, with all the Bush-sponsored tax cuts for the rich and spending cuts on the poor? This is class warfare, not a battle of races. To quote the Wu-Tang clan, in a very Marxist statement, "Cash Rules Everything Around Me" (C. R. E. A. M.). It's all about money.

I hope to write another entry this weekend. Lots of catching up to do. Topic recommendations will be considered, so drop me a line if you're got anything juicy.

What the Fuck is Robocop Doing on the History Channel?

Yes, it's true. I saw Peter Weller, the star of the Robocop movies and David Cronenberg's adaptation of Naked Lunch, on the History Channel. I was watching a special on ancient Rome; it was either about Engineering the Roman Empire or Roman Vice, I can't recall which. At first I thought it must have been some other historian who just looks like Peter Weller, until they put a caption under his name: "Peter Weller, Syracuse University." I did about 15 minutes of research and found out he got degrees from Syracuse in 2000 and 2004, but I don't think he teaches there. Maybe he's a TA.

I swear, the ancient Romans make today's deviants look downright prudish by comparison. One of the wives of emperor Claudius, Messalina, entered a competition with the infamous prostitute Scylla to see who could satiate the most men in a single night. Scylla gave up at dawn, but Messalina couldn't get enough. What a whore! And we can't forget Caligula, who slept with his own sister (Drusilla) and forced the wives of senators to be prostitutes in a brothel operated out of the emperor's palace. Of course there was also Nero, who allowed himself to be ravaged by male prostitutes in public. Yech.

Ancient Rome is a pretty nifty topic, and I'm glad it's starting to become trendy these days. Besides the recent specials on the History Channel (a welcome change from the non-stop WWII coverage), HBO now has an original series (unimaginatively called "Rome"). I would like to see more of Roman history than the Julio-Claudian dynasty, though. Rome did exist before and after Julius Caesar, and I'm sure it wasn't all boring. Moving on . . .

As another aside, that really has nothing to do with anything, I recently learned a bit about whisky (or whiskey, depending on what you mean). At a recent business trip to Philadelphia, I was lucky enough to be able to partake in an open bar every night. However, I am a fan of tequila (among other spirits) and they had no tequila. Or much vodka. Or much fruit juice. But they always had plenty of whisky--at least three bottles at every bar. And it wasn't always the same whisky; they had Maker's Mark, J&B, Canadian Club, Jack Daniels, and a couple others that I can't recall at this moment. I discovered that I really like Maker's Mark, and really don't like the Canadian Scotch-like whiskies. Wikipedia was, as usual, a great resource when it came to deciphering the various whisky-related jargon. There's plenty of reading at wikipedia, but I thought I'd share a couple of the more interesting points here.

First, I learned that Maker's Mark is a type of Bourbon, which superficially means that it was produced in Bourbon County, Kentucky, but that says nothing about the taste. More substantially, bourbon (and bourbon-style whiskey) is made with at least 51% corn (maize), whereas Scotch is made primarily with malted barley. If the whiskey is made with over 79% corn, then it is corn whiskey (no longer bourbon).

I also learned about the sour mash process, which had confounded me in the past. The mash is just mashed up grain, but to sour mash is added the junk leftover from beer fermentation. The spent beer is like a starter culture. Think sourdough and yogurt.

And what the hell is malted grain? That one is pretty simple, actually. The grain is allowed to germinate, then it's thoroughly dried. Germination allows the seeds to convert some of the grain's starches into simpler sugars which the yeast can digest more easily. That still doesn't explain the concept of a malted milk ball, but I can use my imagination (or wikipedia).

Lately I've been thinking a lot about a concept that is a bit foreign to Western ideology, despite its incredible importance: destruction is as important as creation. This shouldn't seem strange to Hindus, who believe that God (Brahman) is composed of three parts: Brahma (the Creator), Vishnu (the Preserver), and Shiva (the Destroyer). I'm hoping to present a more fleshed-out essay on the subject soon. For now, consider a few ways that destruction can be a good thing. Trees often require pruning to keep their spindly branches from breaking in ice storms. If I didn't cut my hair and shave on a routine basis, I'd be a very hairy bastard. Differentiation in a fetus, or selective destruction of cells, is what allows us to have appendages rather than being malformed blobs. Regulated cell death gets rid of diseased cells. When cells are allowed to divide indefinitely, it's cancer.

Destruction is a driving force in the opposite direction of creation. Destruction is the weeding out of creations that shouldn't have been created. Creation is the first draft, destruction is the refinement of an unpolished piece of dirt into a diamond. Without destruction, there would be no elegance.

And now, a somewhat controversial conclusion: since destruction is such a key part of beauty, knowledge, and all things good, we should cultivate the destructive aspects of ourselves as much as the creative aspects. People tend to be hands-off when it comes to destruction, harboring the attitude of "let the authorities take care of it," when the authorities rarely do their jobs. A park might be improved by a simple act of creation, such as planting a tree or making a playground. Likewise, a parking lot might be improved by a simple act of destruction, such as keying the crap out of the vehicle taking up two spaces because some asshole parked his new, penis-surrogate truck diagonally in a full lot to avoid door-dings. Keying the guy's car sends a clear message that, "Your vehicle would be in better shape with a simple door ding than with the foot-long scratch I just made, so next time don't be such a selfish bastard."

Sure, some people will say this is just vigilantism, but I prefer to think of it as civil disobedience. As Edmund Burke said, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." The real trick is to destroy only that which ought to be destroyed, and leave the rest unharmed.