pix | vid
myspace | twitter

Achewood
Cat & Girl
Cockeyed
Defective Yeti
Deuce of Clubs
An Entirely Other Day
Laughing Squid
Maakies
Peace Dividend
Perry Bible Fellowship
The Sneeze

2008oct12. Friday. Or Sunday. It could be either, really.

Goosing Up Commodity Prices.
Elyse Sewell: Ice skating crutches for kids.
Loss of civil liberties since 9/11 [via doc]
Leeches: Your Humble Tempest Prognosticator.
bird
Nik-L-Nip ended production? NOOOOOO
HOLD THE GUN UP TO THE T.V. SHOOT THE DUCK.
Everyone loves Shipley’s Do-Nuts!
Lowfat Diet & Sunscreen: A Recipe for Disaster.
Light cycle escapes its own reality, man.
Carisman. When is official Carisman^® vinyl action figure? CARISMAN
Solar power a century ago: The Beautiful Possibility.
Cake Wrecks: Meta Cake Wrecks. Why does laughing sometimes sound like crying?
Howard Zinn interview Al Jazeera: US in need of rebellion. Oh god, they’re coming to get me ... [furiously chomps apple pie while playing baseball and saluting flag with crumb-speckled hands]*
Adam Savage of Mythbusters discusses building a dodo sculpture, replicating the Maltese Falcon, and talks about the show.
Damage control: high-fructose corn syrup ad. “You know, HFCS comprises 72% of the average American’s body weight. Let’s make it 80%.”
Very Small Array: The Slow Death of the Instrumental.
Zero Punctuation: Spore

* This reminds me of an old “upcoming” video game release trailer for a game called “Indy Dungeon Baseball” which was part of a game triptych prepending our magnum opus, Pizza Guy Detective 2000 or something like that. Which was never finished. Anyway, the trailer was going to have a single image – A baseball player with a bloody mace, standing in front of a Corvette parked on home plate. And then there was the audio. The audio was the important part, it put you right there on the 50-yard-line of a game which was at times baseball, at other times dungeon exploration, and at other other times a fast-paced Indy racing game, and really, all three at the same time, improbably. Which is why ... audio. In next Friday’s footnote, I’ll tell you all about how fun it is to film real live bees for a similar fakeroo video game. BEES

2008oct05. The Deuce of Clubs Book Club celebrates National Atheist Week:

Why I Became An Atheist – John W. Loftus

The End of Faith – Sam Harris

Godless – Dan Barker

Secret Origins of the Bible – Tim Callahan

The Dark Side: How Evangelical Teachings Corrupt Love and Truth – Valerie Tarico

And somehow I missed the CrimeThInc entry.

2008oct02. How Can Anyone Think Voting Matters? [via doc]

[D]uring the mid-1980s, [vice presidential candidate] Biden was the chief senate architect of the federal anti-drug laws that re-established mandatory minimum sanctions for various drug possession crimes, and established the racially based 100-to-1 sentencing disparity for crimes involving the possession of crack versus powder cocaine. Many academics have credited Biden’s law as one of the primary reasons why America now possesses the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world, and why approximately one out of every nine young African-American males are now in prison.

“I’m saying it doesn’t matter who wins since the winners are simply proxies for the game within the game.” I like that. “Game within the game.” Oh wait, shhhhSHHHH, here comes Rove’s analysis of today’s debate! Squeeeeee

2008oct01.

Off the cuff of my jacket, I would guess that the real question is why did microwave cookery exist in the first place. We all know what the microwave is used for in the kitchen – to quickly warm foods that can practically be heated in their own container without tasting like ass and for grape races. It is not a place to prepare a turkey or roast, or even shrimp fried rice. It is a shortcut that is not always the best course of action. But what did the manufacturers of microwaves think the microwave was going to be used for? That’s right, they thought it was going to be a total oven replacement system. I would imagine that manufacturers first came out with their own cookbooks and then independent authors piled on afterward. Eventually, some collective irrational beliefs dissipate (“Government helps more than it harms” ... no wait, that one is still hanging around); the cookbook fade-out I would attribute to the growth of its ubiquitous nature in the household. Perhaps you bought a microwave when they first come out, and then, under the spell of misguided optimism, you also bought a microwave cookbook. Because it was a New Thing. But instead, pretend you are buying a microwave in 1996. Come on, you’re not entertaining foreign dignitaries, you just want to nuke some goddamned Pepperoni-like Substance™ Hot Pockets^® and toxically delicious diacetyl-slathered popcorn ... your microwave cookbook can stuff it. PS: As a microwave user of many years, I recommend you avoid purchasing a microwave with a dial timer (ie, non-digital) ... it’s like buying a car with a manual transmission that only has 3rd through 5th. Yes, mysteriously, these are still manufactured (someone’s going to have to tell me why “commercial” microwaves cost ~4x more).

2008oct01. Woof Wellness Water, fortified water for dogs. Explores the same basic space as the now-defunct ThirstyDog!/ThirstyCat! dog/cat fortified water product, and that other dog water that I can’t remember the name of and may have also failed. This is a good product that will be good for dogs because all bottled water is good and bottled water for your pets is even better. Damn I love America, we’re all “You know what? We flush our waste down with potable water, we make little stubby bottles of water for kids, and we pump vitamins into water then we sell that to our pets. We shelve that fucking dog water product, and I could drink out of the toilet if I wanted to.” WE CAN DO ANYTHING WE ARE GODS

2008oct01. This ... this.

2008sep27. Excerpts from The Fruit Hunters (2008) by Adam Leith Gollner.

As with most expeditions, fund-raising was a problem at first. When we finally explained that our intent was to only hunt the largest species of fruit and return several samples to our benefactors, the money came easily. The money men thought they were dealing with your ordinary, run-of-the-mill fruit hunters. No. No my friend. We were the fruit hunter’s fruit-hunters. I wanted to call the book that but they wouldn’t let me. [pg 23]

The semi-ferocious rat-tailed papaya has a particular habit of nesting near slow-moving, narrow rivers. Some say the noise of a nicely-paced source of water soothes the fruit, makes it more docile. Whatever the case, it made for easy pickings. We bagged seven that evening, and a great feast was prepared. [pg 34]

What is the cry of the mango? What about it moves man? It is probably because it sounds very much like Slim Whitman. [pg 56]

Even while dealing with the mosquito-infested swamps we constantly had to slog through, the porters maintained good marching order and helped keep morale high. There was even a song one of them sang about us, it went something like “the fruit hunters, oh the fruit hunters, hunting ... hunting ... ” and there was something about a pear frothing at the mouth after that and us ambushing it. It was a really good song. [pg 73]

“HELP ME JAKE! IT’S GOT ME BLOODY LEG!!!” No one moved an inch. Not Norcrombe, not the porters, and certainly not I. When an orange that size is devouring someone, there’s nothing that can be done ... you just pray it doesn’t turn on you. I can still hear the flesh being ripped from the bone at night. I mean, when it’s night for me. It didn’t happen at night. The ripping. [pg 103]

2008sep24. Excerpts from Cradle to Cradle (2002) by William McDonough and Michael Braungart.

We were asked to focus on creating an aesthetically unique fabric that was also environmentally intelligent. [ ... ] The team decided to design a fabric that would be safe enough to eat; it would not harm people who breathed it in, and it would not harm natural systems after its disposal. In fact, as a biological nutrient, it would nourish nature. The fabric went into production. The factory director later told us that when regulators came on their rounds and tested the effluent (the water coming out of the factory) they thought their instruments were broken. They could not identify any pollutants, not even elements they knew were in the water when it came into the factory. [ ... ] When a factory’s effluent is cleaner than its influent, it might well prefer to use its effluent as influent. [pg 107]

Henry Ford practiced an early form of upcycling when he had Model A trucks shipped in crates that became the vehicle’s floorboards when it reached its destination. [pg 110]

In a startling use of solar power, hundreds of one [ant] colony’s workers may cluster on the forest floor to soak up sunlight before carrying its warmth in their very bodies back down to the nest. [pg 121]

Wind towers have been used for thousands of years in hot climates to capture airflows and draw them through dwellings. In Pakistan, chimneys topped with “wind scoops” literally scoop wind and channel it down the chimney, where there might be a small pool of water for cooling the wind as it moves downward and into the house. Iranian wind towers consist of a ventilated structure that constantly drips water; air comes in, flows down the chimney with its dripping sides, and enters the house, cooled. At Fatepur Sikri in India, porous sandstone screens, sometimes intricately carved, were saturated with water to cool air passing through. In the Loess Plains of China, people dig their homes in the ground to secure shelter from wind and sun. ¶ But with modern industrialization and its products, such as large sheets of window glass, and the widespread adoption of fossil fuels for cheap and easy heating and cooling, such local ingenuity has faded from industrialized areas, and even in rural regions it is in decline. Oddly enough, professional architects seem to get by without understanding the basic principles that inspired ancient building and architecture orientations. When Bill gives a talk to architects, he asks who knows how to find true south – not magnetic or “map” south but true solar south – and gets few or no hands (and, stranger still, no requests to learn how). [pg 130]

As we have pointed out, soap as it is currently manufactured is designed to work the same way in every imaginable location and ecosystem. Faced with the questionable effects of such a design, eco-efficiency advocates might tell a manufacturer to “be less bad” by shipping concentrates instead of liquid soap, or by reducing or recycling packaging. But why try to optimize the wrong system? Why this packaging in the first place? Why these ingredients? Why a liquid? Why one-size-fits-all? [pg 142; this subject was already covered in the ground-breaking 1985 environmental documentary filum, The Sure Thing].

2008sep21.

twink twink
little star
haw I wandr
wuch you
are up
uv buv
the wry
so hiy
like a dimin
in the shy
tinkl tinkl
little star
haw i wondr
wach you
are

2008sep19. The Half-Trillion House of Cards. Well, that’s wonderful. Print more money. Corporations get to fail, we get to eat it, hard. If you are wondering why a can of pineapples cost a dollar last year and two dollars this year, you’ll really be scratching your head when it’s five, six bucks. Get a larder going, that’s the bare freaking minimum you could do right now. Go on, go out there and buy more non-instantly perishable food than you usually do. Stock up. Food prices ain’t going down. A larder has no downside, save the loss of space. Storm’s coming, don’t get caught with your pants down.

2008sep18. YESH!! EFF VS. NSA

2008sep17. DFW: The cruise ship essay.

2008sep15. Greenspan: This is the worst economy I’ve ever seen. Wow. If only we knew who was minding the Fed back during the creation of the housing bubble. That’s the asshole you want to kick in the face, Greenie. Find him. [Mr. Greenspan will be signing copies of his new autobiography, “(if) I Did It” at the Moline Borders this Tuesday from 11am-11:00:07am]

2008sep14. DFW RIP. Host (The Atlantic, April 2005).

2008sep10. Oxydonor.

2008sep07. Excerpts from Twinkies Deconstructed (2007) by Steve Ettlinger.

Papetti’s breaks 7 million eggs a day at its New Jersey plant, located in an industrial park near Newark Airport. The mere idea of breaking, let alone handling, that many eggs, even over a lifetime, is hard for a mere mortal to conceive. But here at Papetti’s, big tractor-trailers arrive hourly and tank trucks depart almost as often, each loaded with 6,000 gallons of fresh, whole, liquid eggs. [pg 105]

On one machine, the egg is immediately seized on each oval end by two small suction cups. The supporting cup falls away, and the fun begins. Picture one egg among many suspended on a whizzing carousel, and follow the process as you walk around the wheel: a knife shoots up to give the egg a surgical whack, slicing cleanly through the shell. It then falls back into position, ready for the next hit a second later. Suction cups pull the shell halves back and up at a slight angle, perfectly mimicking the gesture countless cooks make in their kitchen as they crack eggs one by one. The yolk and white drop down into a set of corresponding cups. As the yolk plops down into a small, appropriately sized upper cup, the white falls down around it into a funnel cup, just underneath. Gentle blasts of air coax the last of the egg out of its shell, and the yolk cups are bounced a bit to shake the white completely out -- again, much like you do at home. [pg 111]

Gums may come from trees (locust bean, tree seeds from the sap in the Sahel region of Africa), seaweed (agar, carrageenan, aka Irish moss, and alginates, mostly from the Philippines), pealike plant seeds (guar gum, from India, Pakistan, and the southwestern United States), and bacterial fermentation (xanthan gum, fermented in good old Midwestern corn syrup). Travel to see gum and you’ll see the world. Even Osama bin Laden once owned part of an acacia gum firm in Sudan, but was forced to sell out when Sudan booted him in 1996. [pg 123]

Dairy-based food coating or glaze (like that used on candy) is another promising possible future use – as an alternative to the currently popular shellac (yes, shellac) product. [pg 128]

For starters, prehistoric people were known to leach water through the ashes of burned plant stalks to botain their primitive detergent for clothes washing, and the ancient Egyptians made glass ornaments with soda ash recovered from dried desert lakes. [pg 163]

Several of the [professional flavorists] I spoke with willingly tasted Twinkies, often for the first time since they were kids, and though they usually scoffed at their own diminished desire for such sweet things, they were impressed with Twinkies’ successful blend of flavors. [pg 200]

Incidentally, according to Hostess, vanilla wasn’t even the principal flavor of the original 1930 Twinkies filling – for the first ten years, banana was. But World War II created such an extreme shortage of bananas that the song “Yes, We Have No Bananas” soared to the top of the charts, and Hostess switched to the more widely available vanilla flavoring. [pg 201]

According to legend, Benjamin Franklin is responsible for the success of plaster of Paris as a soil amendment in the United States (it promotes aeration in clay soils). He was our first ambassador to France, and so admired its use while he was there that he brought some back here in 1785. An energetic promoter, he worked it into the soil on a prominent hillside in the form of letters reading, THIS HAS BEEN PLASTERED. When the clover growing over the enriched soil grew dramatically denser than the analphabetic clover around it, he had successfully introduced gypsum as “land plaster” to American farmers. (The strange thing is that ancient Greeks gardened with it, too, so it is not clear why Franklin’s coaxing seemed new to the Americans.) Imported from Paris at first, gypsum’s popularity was assured when deposits were found in abundance around the United States. [pg 223]

Sometimes we expect strong color where natural color is actually weak, which may explain why Ocean Spray includes Red No. 40 in its Ruby Red Grapefruit Juice. At Sensient, color scientists repeatedly state that we taste with our eyes before we taste with our mouths. In Australia, an ice cream company found that it sold three times as much passion fruit ice cream tinted with the pink of the fruit than a plain white version of the exact same ice cream (taste was not affected). [pg 248]

The best thing about natural colors is that they are presumed safe, seeing as they occur naturally in food and plants. On the other hand, natural colors are not necessarily as intense or as easy to incorporate into a recipe, as they are three to five times more expensive than petroleum-derived colors (all that food handling costs something), and, more concerning, they might add some unintended flavor to the recipe. Regardless of the hue, artificial colors do not add flavor – a big advantage. ¶ Still, colors derived from natural sources are often made at the same plants as purely chemical ones, and because they have been processed (or synthesized, in the case of beta-carotene), they are simply no longer considered natural. A label describing these colors can say, “color added,” “artificial color added,” or actually name the color, but it can’t say “natural color.” The FDA still classifies them as artificial unless they are coloring the very food they come from, e.g. strawberry juice added to strawberry ice cream. [pg 254]

2008sep05. Amy Goodman’s account of her arrest at the RNC. When asked how the press was supposed to function, the police chief of St. Paul said “by embedding reporters in our mobile field force.” That sort of talk sounds familiar. Oh yeah, war zones circa the Gulf I. You will come with us and we will show you what we want you to see otherwise you will be beaten by us and we will show you the bottom of our boots. The police are learning how to ramp up the fascism – who tells them, or does it just grow organically like children’s schoolyard rhymes? Well, as long as I gots my SUV-flavored latte, everything is smooth.

2008sep01. Police raids in Minneapolis. Overwhelming force against GOP convention protest planners (convention starts tomorrow). Purely an intimidation/intel gathering exercise. But the system still works, because these people will get their day in court! [raspberry noises]

2008aug29. Want: Fagor Portable Induction Burner. I could melt chocolate and butter together. No one could stop me.

2008aug24. Drive out the blues with IPCO creamy snuff. How to apply and what happens?

2008aug16. Friday. Not Saturday. It’s Saturday over there. East coast ... West coast.

• Bruce Lee’s screen test for the “The Green Hornet.”
• One Square Inch House.
• Missed Connections.
• Pictures for Sad Children: Tiny kitten beers.
• HU-MANS: I IMPLORE YOU TO INGEST MY SPACEUAL CREAM
• Dixie PerfecTouch. When you really need to use a sturdy washable re-usable container, why not use PerfecTouch instead?
• Taipei 101’s giant mass damper ball doin’ its thing during the quake. The music kills me. “La la la, hey wow that thing’s really movin’!”
• Semi-amusing: The Class of 1913. Scroll down to the table.
• Pictures for Sad Children: Poor People Have Got Sore Junk.
• Photo: quiero lluvias.
• Italy: Protest balls. Don’t worry, Katie Couric never shows up.

2008aug15. Special thanks to the person who generously jammed a bunch o’ cash in the tip jar awhile back. Verynicethankyou.

2008aug15. Magnus Pyke, the scientist sampled on Thomas Dolby’s “She Blinded Me With Science.”

Although Pyke was known for bringing science to a lay audience, in The Science Myth (and similar writings, such as Slaves Unaware?) he was also a critic of how the citizens of industrialized nations have historically been lured into social conformity by the comforts and security offered by applied sciences or technology, and the associated industrial economic propaganda and advertising. This has entailed the loss of important individual freedoms in the name of an ever-increasing gross national product or standard of living, measured monetarily, with some associated negation of independent human values, common sense and individuality, family and community, health, safety and ergonomics. In his 1962 book, he uses the Greek myth of Procrustes and his Procrustean bed as a metaphor for how citizens are forced to conform to the one-size-fits-all rigid structure of the modern industrial society. He cites associated problems such as coronary disease related to diet, psychological and social problems stemming from work related stress and training, “ ... softly and persistently hammered into shape until – Pinocchio in reverse – from being a living creature ... becomes for forty hours an insensate puppet ... ” and educational systems, which “knock out of the ingenious adolescent all of the ‘nonsense’ of the young, this being most of his or her eagerness and ingeniousness.” However, the Western work environment fails youthful expectations to an even greater extent than the schools. “At school, success is judged in terms of work, whereas in industrial life this is not so ... ” after young people hasten to leave school for the benefit of the social significance of the work, rather than for the work itself, they find that “Work seldom seems to the worker to have meaning or worth ... ” and “achievement is judged by the pay envelope which may have no relation to the difficulty of the work.”

SCIENCE!

2008aug15. Mail.

Nothing happened to disco balls. You got older (it happens to a lot of us), and you stopped going to the Danceteria. So now, you never see disco balls. I don’t even have to look on the internet to know that a wide variety of disco balls are available to you right now in exchange for cash (DURABLE GOODS!). You have to be partyin’ to see disco balls. The disco ball asks itself, “Whatever happened to that guy?” Meaning you. I stopped going to the Danceteria a long time ago. I used to get up on the platforms because it was less crowded, and the platform lesbians would rub up against me. Everyone’s a winner at the Danceteria. That’s the truth.

2008aug15. PingMag: Sento: A Glimpse Into Japanese Bathing Culture. Guy with bucket.

2008aug13. Mail.

I like the easy ones, the ones you go “here’s a meatball pitch” and you just slide into the whole of it. I don’t even have to answer these types of questions. I just know that I could, and it would be hilariously awesome.

First tell me where Peoria is.

Yes, I will ship to Florida. The breakdown:

$24.00 Twelve (12) bottles of Charles Shaw
$30.00 Shipping
$50.00 Handling
----------------------------
$104.00 Total

Thank you,
Cardhouse Ro-Bot.

No reply. I don’t know what the problem is here, I gave her the retail price for the Chucks, and the typical ebay seller markup on shipping and handling ... Florida, I am aching to serve you super-cheap wine ... aching ...

She is out right now, but I’ll tell her you wanted to speak with her.

Get a new girlfriend who has a different “mobile phone.” Danielle?

I am not good with the Spanish but I think I helped you out of a jar of some sort.

I will use my brain to create names.

Mid-Atlantic (Pacific, Trans-Continental, etc) Electrical Telegraphic Network Ornamentation & Pattern Concern
Web 5.3 Design
Honda (you may have some legal problems with this one)
Webwebweb Design Co.
Webual Helps
The Poison Web Design Company (the sassy promo bottles you mail out will have clients wondering if the liquid inside is unsafe to imbibe. the answer of course is up to you ["no.” { or is it? (“still no.”)}])
Kitties!
The Web Was Much Groovier Back In ’99. Company.
G.O.L.D. Webkillers
Web Hash Browns (everyone likes hash browns to some extent)
Webwebwebwebweb Design Co.
Parker & Johnson Web Design (Parker is a no-nonsense, prim and proper “by the book” female web designer; Johnson is a reckless rough and macho male hard coder who could use an hour in an autoclave. This clash of hi/lo cultural touchstones creates a simmering, potent symbiosis laced with raw sexuality beneath their daily shouting matches. Will they ever learn to see each other eye-to-eye ... and perhaps even turn up the heat? Tune in every Wednesday at 9pm Mountain Time on ABC!)
Theraflu (more legal hurdles)
webstylelifeGO!
Make The Scene With Our Hot Shot Web Design Right Here Yes Indeed GmbH
We Will Design A Website For You Then You Give Us Money Then We Spend That Money On Booze Company
Flo’s Pet Store
Any Website for $19.99 And Up Brothers
The Web Oil Company (oil companies in general are doing quite well these days)
Butter Web Design (this would be like a novelty name; correspondingly, your entire office would be coated in butter)
Syrup Web Design (see previous entry)
Cement Tacklers (I don’t know what this one means)

Another thing you can do is take two unrelated easy-to-spell words and ram them together, so you’re right around the corner, google-wise.

Hotelmagnet Web Design
Pizzacouch Web Company
Couchmagnet Web Thing
Magnetpizza Web Discourse

There’s a myspace user named “Couchmagnet”? More legal consultations.

I’m liking the hotel thing though. It emphasizes solidity in my mind, which sits soundly in the “plus” column whereas the net is so amorphous, like aerogel (though in aerogel’s case, that’s a definite plus so come up with some other negatively-amorphous thing on your own time). Hotel [classy word here] Web Design.

Last multi-tip: don’t be dumb and make some sort of spelling pun. It’s all about what you think when you see the word, and what you hear. If your company name is a homonym/homograph/homophone/heteronym, that’s just ... ugh. “Lead Technologies” – good example of a horrifically stupid name.

2008aug03. Mail.

Our love spray division was shuttered after several incidents of, how shall I put this, “high carnality” on the factory floor. “Shit’s too potent,” the pantsless division manager was heard saying some days before the line was finally shut down. Perhaps you would enjoy some of our candy cigarettes instead?

2008jul26. Ron Paul on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. 2002. Again: 2002.

2008jul25. Video: Vincent Bugliosi’s opening statement. Many more in sidebar.

2008jul22. Currently kicking myself for not thinking of Cake Wrecks. The writing is swell, the cakes suck; win-win. Yeah, I used a semi-colon. I went there. You want a piece of me, shrimp scampi? Didn’t think so. ;;;;;

2008: jan feb mar apr may jun jul aug sep

---