 Hello, kitty. |
Thursday, February 2, 2012
This whole business of people harboring dangerous predators within predation range of other people's homes leaves me kind of speechless. Lions, for instance. Fully-grown, fully-functional lions, rather annoyed I should think by the sudden, severe shortage of water buffalo in their vicinity.
I listened to part of a Diane Rehm Show interview yesterday with Zuzana Kukol (President of the oxymoronically named Responsible Exotic Animal Ownership, REXANO), Andrew Wyatt (President of USARK - United States Association of Reptile Keepers) and Wayne Pacelle (CEO & President of the Humane Society of the United States).
Pacelle was not happy. He said that millions of dollars in private donations are spent each year "cleaning up the mess" made by the Kukols and Wyatts of the world. Kukol disowned the mess, saying that she and her colleagues at REXANO know what they're doing. Her rural neighbors and local law enforcement officials are on board, too, she said. Everybody approves. Everybody's happy. Predators included.
What's more, as statistics posted at REXANO.org make quite clear, the average person stands almost no chance of death by privately owned lion. Same with tigers. Same with 1,700-pound Kodiak bears.
I guess that settles that.
But would these same private zookeepers balk, I wonder, if the law allowed me to breed plague bacteria upwind of them recreationally? Would it be enough for me to say that I'd taken proper precautions? And excuse me, but doesn't the concept of reckless endangerment apply here somewhere?
| A 45-second animation of the EV/Citycar |
Monday, January 30, 2012
The Basque consortium Hiriko Driving Mobility has introduced an an MIT-designed all-electric vehicle that folds for storage. They call it the "EV." Three of these nimble, uber-tiny, two-seat "Citycars" (as they were christened by MIT) will fit into a standard curbside parking space and, because their joystick-controlled wheels operate independently of one another, they can spin in place or drive sideways as necessary. 75 miles to a charge, MSRP: $16,000.
Hiriko is positioning the EV as a fleet vehicle to be bought in quantity by cities, then rented to individual drivers as a means of easing congestion - both traffic and respiratory. These credit card-activated rentals will download and implement a user's driving preferences automatically, inclusive of music, cab temperature and maybe even color of exterior.
Meanwhile, IBM has created a 9nm carbon nanotube transistor. Kinks have yet to be worked out, but, as one Mac-centric Verge reader commented after the article linked here, think "iPhone that's as powerful as a Mac Pro" ... by 2015. Moore's Law remains in force, it would seem, and Ray Kurzweil yet may see his singularity prophecy fulfilled.
 The Asus Eee Pad Transformer |
Monday, January 23, 2012
A week out from Odd Couple rehearsals, my preflight list of takings-with and must-do-befores is quite short. I can get along without just about everything except my laptop, cell phone and backpack. They work as a team.
Speaking of essentials, I've been test driving a friend's Kindle Touch, using it to read public domain books that I might not have read otherwise (War of the Worlds and Our Mr. Wrenn). The convenience, I'm sorry to say, is addictive. Project Gutenberg alone offers almost 40,000 free e-books. Point, click, download, read. Instant gratification. Almost weightless, too.
I've been helping another friend shop for tablet computers, which is how I discovered the Asus Eee Pad Transformer (10.1" 1280x800 32Gb running Android 3.2), belle of the CES ball this year and one sweet little machine. That low rumble you hear is my paradigm shifting.
But don't I have enough technology? My laptop is less than a year old. My phone less than a month. On the other hand, wouldn't it be nice, once in a while, to walk downtown wearing a backpack that weighs only two pounds, instead of twenty?
 Ron Paul, wearing his invisibility cloak |
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Anybody who slept in today might be wondering if South Carolina's Republican primary was just a dream. The mid-morning announcements of Joe Paterno's death and Gabrielle Giffords' resignation have swept Gingrich v. Romney to sidebar status, capturing almost perfectly the "bread and circuses" flavor of consensus reality today.
The picture won't be complete, of course, until one of the Hilton twins runs naked through Times Square.
And what are we to make of the corporate media's lockstep, steadfast refusal to cover Ron Paul as if he were an actual presidential candidate? Because he is, you know. Isn't he?
 Grand Trunk car ferry crossing the Detroit River in winter 1905. |
Friday, January 20, 2012
... that Mitt Romney is the presumptive Republican nominee?
... that my friends, who love their cats, keep smashing their cats' tails?
... that I'm only just now bothering to figure out how to integrate WordPress, Facebook and Twitter?
... that I'm on my second triple-espresso this morning and might have another?
... that I kinda like living alone?
Probably not.
 January 14, 2012. A meme is born. |
 A day of mourning - or warning - at Wikipedia |
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Middle-aged businessman to svelte younger woman: ... and my ex spent over $200,000 renovating the bathroom!
They're seated side-by-side. She's 20-something. Wedding ring. She says: That sounds like a nightmare, Charlie! She's also flirting with the man seated across from her. His head is shaved.
She offers to throw away empty cups. They accept. Cups are collected and removed, but she lingers at the trash can, looking at the posters on the wall. Does she want the meeeting to be over? Do the men notice? Or care?
Man with soul patch wearing too tight green dress shirt to man with goatee wearing too tight blue dress shirt: ... which is why we believe that payroll is a tool for service and protection. When I have my business hat on, I plateau at the low- to mid-six figures ... Green shirt is animated. He's selling. Blue shirt is bored. He's not buying. The sun is in their eyes.
One teenage girl to another: ... I was just like, oh my god, I was like, I knew what questions to ask, but, I mean it's really, really hard ...What the hell is she talking about? Her friend's butt crack is staring at me. Those lowriders look so uncomfortable.
Ever-perky barista to everyone: It's a wonderful day at Starbucks! (Swear to god, she just said that. I want an ounce of her weed.)
A man in his late 20's is out of earshot, but not talking. Gray pullover sweater and matching gray backpack. Clean-cut. Gray slacks. Black dress shoes. My earbud tells me that Mitt Romney spent his two years as a Mormon missionary in Paris. Can that be true? Maybe Matching Gray Man is a Mormon. Maybe he's been to Paris. Was he a different color there?
Vada a bordo, cazzo! translates literally as "Go on board, dick!", but is being popularized in English as "Go on board, damn it!" because "cazzo," in this context at least, is an emphatic, not a perjorative. Alas.
Coast Guard Captain Gregorio De Falco is being hailed as a hero it Italy for ordering Costa Concordia Captain Francesco Schettino to return to the cruise ship he ran aground off Italy's Tuscan coast January 14 and then abandoned even as frantic passengers scrambled for their lives. Sounds like a dick to me.
SOPA and PIPA. Not Indian side dishes, but bills that would legalize obliteration of websites suspected of ... oh, does it really matter? Wikipedia took its English language site down today in protest. Google blacked out its logo. And there were others. But again, does it matter? Isn't Congress ultimately going to do what the entertainment industry tells it to do?
 Hieronymus Bosch (Click image to up-rez.) |
 SC State Superintendent of Education Inez Tenenbaum took over Allendale County Schools in 1999. Four years later, Tenenbaum locked horns with the school board chairman there, refusing to relinquish control of the district so long as he remained. Four years after that, when control of the district was returned to the local board, test scores remained at 1999 levels. |
Sunday, January 15, 2012
The Dutch company Parastone's main claim to fame is its line of resin reproductions of characters depicted in famous paintings. Here, for example, are a few characters from "The Garden of Earthly Delights" by Hieronymus Bosch. Granted, they're not to everyone's taste.
Before she suspended her campaign, then presidential candidate Michele Bachmann said, "I would go over to the Department of Education, I'd turn off the lights, I would lock the door and I would send all the money back to the states and localities.”
The quote caught my eye because Ron Paul has said that he'd eliminate the Department of Education, too. So has Rick Perry. Although Gingrich voted to create the department in 1979, he now says that he'd make it a "research and reporting overview agency" and "restore decision-making powers to states and communities." Rick Santorum believes that, while the department "might serve some useful purposes," it needs to be "substantially smaller" than it is. Romney, who once advocated closing the department, has backed off from that position somewhat, allowing that the department might be useful in "holding down the interest of the teachers' unions."
The entire Republican field, then, advocates eliminating or severely restricting the Department of Education. I was curious to know what my public school educator and administrator friend thinks about the department, so I asked him. Here’s some of what he said …
There are, as you seem to have noticed, three governing bodies for school districts: the federal, the state, and the local school board.
The federal government grew stronger and more influential during the 60's and 70's, bolstered by the civil rights movement. If it hadn't, we might not now have fully integrated schools in all states, particularly South Carolina. You need some oversight by the fed to make sure that children in Mississippi are getting something kind of close to what is happening in California.
The same thing holds true when you move from the states' departments of education in overseeing the local school districts. I have seen the work of several local school boards up close and sometimes it is a very ugly sight indeed. Local demagogues using their power to show off or to get even with a perceived enemy (a principal who suspended their child, or a superintendent who fired their cousin, the drunken janitor).
There really does need to be some oversight, but how much? That's the $64 question. At one time, my position would have been close to Gingrich's. Let the fed and the individual state departments of education issue tests and data, publish the accomplishments or lack thereof in local newspapers, and let the local schools live or die with the school boards they’ve elected.
(My friend goes on to tell the tale of a South Carolina superintendent who colluded with a district employee to misappropriate a small fortune in district funds. The school board’s response was less than exemplary.)
This scenario is repeated day in and day out, throughout the state of South Carolina at the local level. Today, tomorrow, now and forever. In this instance, I don't think any children were hurt, but it's not always like that.
(Then the story of another South Carolina school district taken over by the State Department of Education in 1999. When the Department released control of the district eight years later, the district's test scores were exactly what they’d been before the takeover. If anything of real benefit was accomplished, my friend says, it was to inspire other districts, for fear of being taken over themselves, to clean up their acts.)
Look at the budgets for these departments on the state and federal level, then go in and evaluate what is being done by their employees. Many, many directors of this, and advisors for that with two secretaries each, and custodians to clean their restrooms, etc., etc. I've seen these people, at least at the state level, and there is a LOT of waste. It is NOT worth the money we spend. I'm sure it’s the same at the federal level, probably much worse.
So there's my long answer.
Here's my short answer: I just friggin' don't know. It's too big for me to assess. Further, I don't believe that any of the Republican candidates know any more than I do. They’re just blowing it right out their asses in the direction they think will garner the most votes.
 Fiesta! (Click image to up-rez.) |
 The Marines of P Company on maneuvers in Afghanistan. |
Friday, January 13, 2012
This was supposed to be a post about the time I drove over 300 miles round-trip from Columbia to Savannah to buy a radioactive red Fiestaware teapot.
Instead, belying today's upbeat headline and photo, I'm going say hello to the Marines who deployed their youthful tallywhackers recently, urinating on what are reported to have been the bodies of dead Taliban insurgents.
Booyah, Marines. At ease.
Since 40% of the Corps is 22 years of age or younger, you'll forgive me for assuming that you're not the exception, but the rule. You're kids, essentially. Crazy high on adrenaline. Scared and angry. Put those last two in whichever order you like. We've outfitted you with every excuse imaginable for what you're supposed to be doing over there and all we ask in return is that you to help us keep up appearances. That means, among other things, no cameras rolling when you break the "rules." Capiche? I hope so. Dismissed.
Writing in today's edition of The Christian Science Monitor, Dan Murphy observes that "every war will have bodies desecrated, adding that "mutilation of the enemy dead was far from uncommon" during WWII. Yes, even the Greatest Generation urinated on corpses. And worse.
Murphy calls it "gallows humor," noting that, in the past decade, more U.S. troops have stopped abuses than committed them. A questionable comparison, I think, unless he's referring to the the number of troops caught committing abuses. In the end, though, he admits that " if you put enough men in combat, for enough time, this sort of thing is likely to happen."
No doubt, but the point isn't whether members of the American military have more or less class than, say, pirates. The point is first causes.
Ross Caputi writing in The Guardian today puts things in what I'd call proper perspective: "Though their behavior is disgusting and unacceptable, I find the public's reaction to this video far more troubling. People are not outraged that there are dead Afghans; they are outraged at the manner in which the dead are treated. This is indicative of our culture's tolerance for war and war crimes - as long as they are done in a gentlemanly fashion."
 The Buddha. (Click image to up-rez.) |
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Most of what I know about Buddhism I learned from watching Kung Fu on television. I know, for example, that Shaolin priests are wicked good at cracking head when they have to. I know also that Shaolin priests-in-training can walk the length of the rice paper and leave no trace. They're awesome.
Step back with me, then, to 1974. The television series is in its third season. "Kung Fu Fighting" has earned Carl Douglas a Grammy Award for best-selling single. I'm riding with my father down a two-lane country road.
We round a bend in the road and there's a yard sale. Tables of junk. Except on one table, strikingly out of place, a rosewood Buddha in perfect condition.
Our house wasn't like the other houses in Sumter. Our house was wall-to-wall nipponalia. Shoji screen, tansu chest, silk tapestries and porcelain vases. The cream of the crates that my father had skimmed with his employee discount at Amthor Imports (later to become Cost Plus, and later yet World Market) in San Francisco. He had what was considered to be at that time and in that place a good eye. The Buddha was "a find."
So we bought the Buddha and installed it on a shelf all by itself in my bedroom. There it sat through high school and college. There it remained when I moved to Columbia, throughout my 20's and 30's and into my 40's. And there it was, waiting for me, when I returned to Sumter in 2006 to dispose of my parents' modest estate.
Now the Buddha lives with me and the Chinese money toad that I bought on ebay. Funny thing about that money toad, bringer of prosperity that it's purported to be. I bought it right before — and I do mean right before — my mother died.
I'm just sayin'.
 Alfred Webre |
Contrast Wednesday's relatively mild post about the "alien card" with this ...
Speaking with host Joe Montaldo during a "UFO Undercover" podcast dated January 11, exopolitical attorney Alfred Labremont Webre claimed that Barak Obama has been to Mars. According to Webre, the future president was seen there by DARPA "chrononauts" (time travelers) between 1981 and 1983." He said also that native Martians come in three colors, one of which is greenish-blue.
Sweet baby Jesus, Alfred, couldn't you have kept some of that on the down low? And please stop dying your hair. It makes you look like a vampire.
 A piece of Bar Harbor, a stage screw, a leaf, a large acorn, one of my mother's many mouse figurines, one of three cotton scale weights that I liberated from an old mill building and a river rock that I think looks like a recumbent bunny. (Click image to up-rez.) |
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
My living space is dotted, now as always, with little aggregations of domestic clutter. Found objects, objects that I've made or bought or liberated from less appreciative owners. All carefully arranged and occasionally dusted. All pretty to me.
They help me remember stuff. The red-handled stage screw is youth theater. The brass weights are "rusticating" with my father. (That translates as "breaking and entering," by the way. It was our euphemism for cruising rural Sumter County in search of dilapidated farm buildings to ravage.) Rocks and seed pods, metals, ceramics, fibers, knicks and knacks of no obvious provenance.
Psychics, I've read, believe that inanimate objects are like sponges, soaking up people's thoughts and feelings in subtle ways. It's possible, I guess, but I'm too much of the world to know for sure.
Another interesting message arrived via the contact form today. A visitor identifying himself as Charles Upton of Lexington, KY (couldst be the poet and metaphysician?) sent me a link to a YouTube clip of Princeton economist Paul Krugman saying this to CNN's Fareed Zakaria: "If we discovered that space aliens were planning to attack and we needed a massive build-up to counter the space alien threat, and inflation and budget deficits took secondary place to that, this slump would be over in 18 months."
"And what," Mr. Upton asks, " is Krugman actually saying?"
I don't know, Mr. Upton, but as you're no doubt aware, Carol Rosen claims that Werner von Braun told her repeatedly that our government would play the "alien card" one day to justify the weaponization of space. Maybe Steve Basset's fondest dreams — and von Braun's most fearsome predictions — are about to come true.
 The beetle-cleaned nutria skull that guards my mother's ashes. (Click image to up-rez.) |
Monday, January 9, 2012
Behold the nutria skull. I bought it on ebay from a man who sells beetle-cleaned bones. That was shortly after my mother died. 2006. And yes, "seller of beetle-cleaned bones" is an actual job description.
The crematorium had packed my mother's ashes inside a small, white cardboard box. Like an order of Kung Pao chicken. Prior to incineration, her still-hydrated remains had been packed inside yet another cardboard box per state law, so I'll never know how much of the Kung Pao is my mother and how much is wood product. The little bits of bone mixed in with the ashes, though, are almost certainly her.
Here's what I think: The carryout box was the crematorium's way of non-verbalizing what a mistake it had been for me not to buy the $500 humidor they'd recommended as an economical but respectful alternative to the $1,500 urn. The $100 cardboard cremation coffin law was (and is?) the work of funeral industry lobbyists bent on thwarting stingy survivors like me.
Today, the ashes and the boney bits reside inside a beautiful handmade ceramic vase. Its mouth is stoppered with a natural cork plug and the plug is topped by the nutria skull you see here. Those things flaring out of the nutria's nasal cavities are dried plant parts. Mom liked dried plants. So do I.
 The 2009 cast of "Moonlight and Magnolias"... me, David McClutchey, Mike Brocki and Temple Theatre Producing Director Peggy Taphorn. (Click image to up-rez.) |
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Peggy Taphorn called this afternoon to offer me the role of poker player Vinnie in her February production of The Odd Couple. Craig Rhyne will direct and Temple stalwart Mike Brocki will play Felix/Oscar in rotation with another actor. (They're calling it "an experiment.") Craig directed Peggy, Mike Brocki and me in Moonlight and Magnolias back in 2009.
Mark Filiaci, who directed Mike and me in Dial 'M' for Murder last October, will play poker player Roy and Peggy has cast herself as Gwendolyn, one of the two Pigeon sisters. That makes this a 75% Moonlight reunion - or something like that - and a 25% Dial 'M' reunion. Or something like that. Whatever. My script is in the mail.
Children's Healthcare of Atlanta recently launched its Strong4Life childhood obesity campaign with a series of controversial black and white ads. Obese children speaking hard truths about their condition. So hard are these truths, in fact, that some folks believe the ads will harm the very children they seek to help by encouraging ridicule and lowering self-esteem.
Georgia has the second highest childhood obesity rate in the country. That's almost one million children, many of whom suffer from historically adult disorders like hypertension, heart disease and type 2 diabetes. The social demographics skew as one might expect, so how to convince unhealthy, uneducated, underachieving parents to stop feeding their obese children potato chips and soda pop without hurting anybody's feelings? According to the Strong4Life website, " 75% of parents in Georgia who have overweight or obese children do not recognize the problem." They don't even know their kids are fat!
 The cast of "Relative Madness" at Lincoln Center in 1991. No, we didn't perform there. (Click image to up-rez.) |
Sunday, January 1, 2012
Twenty years ago, give or take, we were in New York City performing Jean Cooper's Relative Madness inside a black box rental at Playwrights Horizons, our adventure bankrolled by company owner Buren Martin on the still viable theory that such credits increase a company's marketability elsewhere.
We'd ridden up in a rickety white moving truck, perched on and among our scenery and equipment like the migrant workers we were. We numbered nine, I think, or maybe seven. Memory fades. We passed out flyers, performed for scant but polite houses, saw some of the sights, loaded out and left.
Nobody was injured.
Some of us got laid.
Buren proposed to his future wife, Dottie, at the top of the Empire State Building during that trip. Probably the most romantic gesture to which I've ever been privy. They have two children now. I auditioned for Moses Goldberg and was cast in the Louisville Children's Theatre production of A Tale of Two Cities, the 1992 musical adaptation with book by Wendy Kesselman of My Sister In This House fame. I don't think she liked me, but I enjoyed myself immensely.
Buren has returned to the City dozens of times with his family. Not I. Too big, too loud, too energetic. I regard it mainly as that gigantic urban obstacle between me and Bar Harbor and have gone back there only twice in all the intervening years, both times to attend Intruders Foundation seminars hosted by abduction researcher Budd Hopkins. Budd died last year, eliminating my last incentive ever to set foot on that accursed island again.
Speaking of things paranormal, this is the year that we'll find out whether the Mayans stopped their calendar at 2012 because the world really is about to end, or because they just got tired of carving calendars. Where will you be December 21?
And continuing in much the same vein ... A YouTube subscriber messaged me last night about a video that I posted in October of 2010. It was rumored at the time that an entire Chinese village had been abducted by aliens, so I videoblogged the rumor in my capacity as Technorati.com's UFO reporter (news premasticator, actually). The YouTube subscriber thinks that we might be related. Her maiden name is Brosnan and she sees a family resemblance in my face. Funny, she doesn't look a bit Asian to me.