repository

The hand that rocks the cradle

2012-01-22T07:59:00.000-08:00

There seems to be an ever increasing number of Muslim countries and communities favoring the implementation of Sharia law. I’m not going to judge any religious aspect of people’s choices, but I think no good has ever come out of mixing church and state. However, there is something particularly nefarious about implementing Sharia in these places where social inequality is ramped and the poverty of the lower classes seems endemic and perpetual; where poverty is a legacy of despair from generation to generation.

It is a proven fact that the most effective method of pulling a community out of poverty is to empower women. Women who have a minimum education, the power to make choices, earn a living, value her children’s education and to decide how many children she will bear, raise healthier children, who grow up to be better educated and more able to rise out of poverty. The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world! And when that hand is empowered to plan for her children’s future, there is nothing that can hold it back. However when that hand is restricted by law, there is little hope for the future of her children.

That Sharia law divests women of all power, education and choice is a fact. That communities whose women are divested of power, education and choice are less likely to rise out of poverty is a fact.

Draw whatever conclusions you like.

Brazil: the emerging economy! (unless it rains)

2012-01-11T06:05:00.000-08:00

Rain has fallen from the sky since before human beings evolved on the planet. Rain has always been there, in any given day in human history it has rained somewhere on the planet. You may argue that human activity on the planet has changed rain patterns and that it now rains more or less in specific regions. But the fact remains that it rains, and that it has always rained, and that it will always rain. We have built our civilization around the fact that it rains, no one ever designed a building around the notion that henceforth it shall never rain again. That would be stupid.

Every year in the rainy season the states of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo experience floods, landslides, death and destruction, massive power outages, disease riddled drinking water, overcrowded hospitals and shelters, and general despair. Everyone is quick to point out that the catastrophe is caused by the rain, or the excessive rain, or the continuous rain. All of the victims interviewed say that god willing, the rains will stop and they will be able to return home. To this I would like to say one word: Bullshit!

It’s not the rain people!!! The rain has always been there. The rain will always be there!! It’s the complete lack of remotely adequate infrastructure that is to blame! Not the rain! The government spends no money on infrastructure maintenance. Construction on hillsides is unregulated. Massive amounts of trash clog the sewer and runoff systems, in those few instances where a runoff system is in place. The rivers and waterways are completely stagnant from tons of debris that are freely dumped by the population whose government offers no other alternative for trash disposal. No sewer or runoff system is ever cleared before the rains come.

If you force a person into a vacuum chamber and he dies, you might say that the cause of death was ‘lack of oxygen to the brain’. You would be right. However, any court of law would argue that the cause of death was the placement of the person inside a vacuum chamber in the first place, and that it was in fact murder. The corrupt city, state and federal governments pocket public funds and force people to live with completely inadequate, life threatening infrastructure. The cause of death in this case is not the excessive rain, it’s the subjugation of people to inadequate living conditions by a corrupt and broken system of government.

An astounding, shameful 49.1% of the Brazilian population has no access to a sewer system and the evening news on Globo television has the unmitigated temerity of blaming the problem on the ‘rain’ and then turn around and call itself ‘unbiased’. A people who demands no accountability from its government, who believes the news when told that the rain is the problem and is happy to leave the solution in the hands of god, deserves next year’s rain. Harsh? Perhaps, but I’m sick and tired of all of the hype and advertising around Brazil as the country to watch, the emerging power of today, the economic powerhouse in a dwindling world economy, while all of the very real problems are swept under the rug. Stop advertizing and start solving the problems. But by all means world, come to Brazil, come for the Olympics, come for the World Cup, come see all of the splendors of this magnificent country. Unless it rains.

an innocuous decision by an unimportant individual

2011-11-29T11:12:00.001-08:00

An unsung, unknown art professor at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts was given the thankless task of grading entrance exams. Hopeful students had sat for the two day examination for a chance to change their lives and prospects, for the chance of becoming a great artist and being remembered for their art. The unknown professor was having a bad day, perhaps he had had a fight with his wife, perhaps he himself was a frustrated artist and longed for the opportunity that only youth provides, the sort of opportunity that was being wasted on these students. Whatever the reason, he denied admission to several students that day. Perhaps some were better than others, perhaps some came from better families who were able to afford tuition and support a struggling artist, perhaps some had families that would contribute to the school’s coffers. There were countless reasons for his decisions that day, most seem insignificant now. An insignificant decision by an insignificant man. The year was 1907 and the professor’s decision to deny a life-altering admission to the prestigious school determined the fate and direction of none other than Adolf Hitler. Hitler never made it into the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts because a person made the decision to turn down his application. An innocuous decision by an unimportant individual…

you in oil

2011-10-18T03:52:00.000-07:00

Look around yourself. If you live in a city and are currently sitting in a man-made structure, there is nothing around you that did not profit an oil company. Not the clothes you are wearing or any item inside your house, nothing. Select an item in your environment. From the power used to run the equipment to manufacture that item, to the plastic used in its components there is oil. What, there is no plastic in the item you selected? How rare. How was it transported from the place of manufacture to the store where you bought it? Did the store put it in a plastic bag for you? Did the store clerk ring up the item on a heavy duty plastic cash register while wearing a plastic name tag saying “Hi, my name is Underpaid"? Did you put the item in your gas powered car and drive it to your house? Or did you bypass the store entirely and have the item delivered to you by a UPS truck? Was it packaged when you got it, what sort of packaging and where did it come from? Was it or any of its components made in, and shipped from, another country? I defy you to find a single item in your house that did not directly or indirectly generate profit for an oil company. If you find one, let me know. And if you find one think about this: have you ever moved and carried the item to your new house in a moving van?

So you tell me “I went to the cherry orchard on Sunnyvale-Saratoga road and walked home with – not a plastic bag of cherries, not a crate of cherries that would have used power saws and logging trucks, but a hand full of cherries! There!” And I’ll ask you did you pay cash with manufactured currency or did you charge them to your plastic credit card? You might tell me they were free, and I would then ask you how the workers who tended to the orchard get to work each day and what tools did they use? Hoses, water pumps, shears, fertilizer?

So you tell me that you picked them off a wild cherry tree in a vacant lot, and I will ask you - did you walk home on your tennis shoes on a paved road? So you tell me you walked home on homemade shoes on a dirt road your grandfather cleared with his bare hands. And I will ask you – did you wash the cherries under some PVC piped tap water when you got home? Well water you tell me. Did you draw the water in a plastic bucket from the well using a nylon rope or was it pumped by a power pump? Did you dry them on a manufactured paper towel? Did you put them in a manufactured bowl? On your linoleum counter-top? There is nothing, not-a-thing, zip, zilch, nada, in your life that did not profit an oil company. Not your hair, freshly washed in plastic bottled shampoo, not your teeth, recently bushed with a plastic tooth brush, and certainly not your recently polished nails.

That’s not the scary part. The scary part is that 100 years ago you would have been hard pressed to find an item in your house that did profit an oil company. You know, back when there was no hole in the ozone layer, the oceans weren’t dying out and every other species on the planet wasn’t going extinct… but I’m sure that’s just a coincidence.

don't flatter yourself, you're not that great, or that stupid

2011-10-17T05:15:00.000-07:00

Vincent Van Gogh stumbled back to the Auberge Rvoux clutching his stomach and when asked if he had tried to commit suicide he said "I believe so" and then requested that no one be charged in the incident. The theory presented in the video below is that he was shot, intentionally or accidentally, by some neighborhood kids who were in the habit of taunting him. Why would Van Gogh protect his murderers? Simply because he thought the world would be a better place without him and that these kids were doing him a favor by killing him.

So on one hand we have Van Gogh, arguably the greatest artist of modern times, whose self worth was so low that he regarded his own murder as a favor to himself, his family and the world. In his mind his existence was a waste of resources, there was no lower creature on the face of the earth and he welcomed death. On the other hand we have George W. Bush, arguably the worst president in the history of the world, who single handedly destroyed the world economy and hundreds of thousands of lives in two wars based on lies. A below average student who was never able to construct a coherent sentence or formulate an intelligent thought. His self worth, on the other hand, is estimated in the highest possible terms. This incoherent moron feels so superior to the rest of humanity that, when forced to touch an inferior being, he feels the need to wipe his hand on the shirt of another inferior being.

Bush regards himself as god’s gift to humanity.

So the next time you are feeling completely worthless or perhaps like god's gift to humanity, don’t flatter yourself, you are not that great, or that stupid. No-one is.

No tea then, dears?

2011-10-06T11:09:00.000-07:00

Mark sat across the table as she began to talk. Her speech was paused, but there was kindness in her voice. “I’ve lived in this house my entire life and I’ve never strayed far, this is my place in the world. I belong here. My parents were the first to go, then my husband and since we never had any children, I’ve been left alone to tend to the place. Well, not completely alone, there are the ghosts too. But they are harmless enough. I wouldn’t mind them as much if they would at least help with some of the chores.” There was amusement in her voice at the idea of having ghosts help with the daily chores. Mark narrows his eyes and tilts his head as if physically straining to hear her.

She continues “My name is Agatha and I’m an old woman now, too old to mind these ghosts and things that go bump in the night. When I was younger I would have called in a priest to get rid of these ghosts, but at my age I just can’t be bothered. They talk and they move things around, but they don’t bother me none. Some years ago they wanted to turn my house into a bed and breakfast, the notion of these young people, can you imagine guests in a hose where the curtain won’t stay open and you hear voices in the hallway? It’s my house and these are my ghosts, we are happy here.” She looks directly at Mark and adds “Aren’t we dear?”

Agatha hadn’t noticed the young woman sitting next to Mark until she said “I smell bread baking.” Agatha looked over her shoulder into the kitchen and said “yes, dear, I’m baking some bread. I like fresh bread, my late husband, God rest his soul, couldn’t get enough of my banana bread. I bake every day. You young ghosts can always smell the bread.” The young woman looks around a bit startled and says “did I hear her say she bakes every day?” Mark takes a hold of the young woman’s hand and soothes her with some words of reassurance. Agatha is a bit annoyed, the ghosts are getting younger and younger, these two couldn’t be more than 20.

Suddenly the drapes fly open and daylight streams into the room. Agatha looks over and there is no one by the window. The curtain had been flung open so violently that they were left swinging in place and one of the hooks came loose. Slowly Agatha stands up and continues her story as she walks towards the window. “These ghosts, I don’t really mind you, but if I open the curtains you close them, if I close the curtains, you open them. It never ends, you need an old woman’s patience to put up with you. When I was a young woman ghosts never came around, now they never go away. Like you young man, I haven’t seen you before” Agatha glances at Mark, tisks her tongue a few times, reaches for the drapes and closes them, slowly because of her rheumatism.

As Agatha closes the second drape the young woman next to Mark runs out of the room screaming. Mark raises his voice, there is urgency in his tone “Mother get away from the window! Come here with me!” Agatha looks back at her young ghost and there is a frightened middle aged woman standing next to him. She hadn’t been there before. Agatha is encouraged by the new presence, someone closer to her own age. Agatha likes this new ghost “Will you stay for some warm bread and tea dears?” As she offers her guests tea, Agatha moves the tea-set from one end of the table to the other so it's closer to the kitchen door, walks into the kitchen and opens the tap to fill the kettle for the tea.

When she returns to the drawing room the middle aged woman is screaming something about refusing to stay in this house another minute; the young man is screaming something about wanting his money back and having this abomination of a hotel shut down by the authorities.

Agatha stands in the doorway watching them and sweetly asks “No tea then, dears?”

Sex object or hormone addled morons?

2011-09-29T04:45:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday September 27 the Secretariat for Women’s Policies of the Brazilian government requested the censorship of a lingerie commercial staring world famous super model Gisele Bundchen. The claim is that the commercial portrays women as sex objects. I’m usually very sensitive, and easily angered by the portrayal of women as sex objects, and yet this commercial didn’t raise any red flags until the news came out today. You see, instead I had always assumed the commercial portrayed men as brain damaged, hormone addled morons. Here is the commercial, you decide. And if you have an opinion, leave a comment.

it's not the easy way out

2011-09-27T09:46:00.000-07:00

Three days ago a woman requested a key from a real-estate agency to examine and consider a vacant office space on the 14th floor of a downtown building. The night before last the same woman cooked her boyfriend his favorite meal. She invited his brother to have dinner with them and made sure everything, from the wine to the shrimp dish, was absolutely perfect. She said goodbye to her guests at the door and retreated to the privacy of her final hours. By the morning she had laid out her precious belongings on her bed with specific instructions for their disposal. By mid morning she had jumped out of the window of the vacant office on the 14th floor, leaving instructions that the key be returned to the realtor.

I sat on a windowsill once. I didn’t jump because the suffering I would cause to people I loved would be so much greater than any suffering I could be experiencing. The balance of pain in the equation simply didn’t work for me. So, to jump, a person has to believe that those she leaves behind are better off without her. Even if she never asked, she has to be certain.

People do, in fact, get tired of living. Personally I don’t think anyone should die before they have gotten tired of living. But that entails a state of hopelessness and disinterest in anything that may happen tomorrow. There is no TV show you want to watch, there is no seasonal food you want to eat, there is no place you want to visit, or revisit, there is nothing broken that you’ve been meaning to fix, there is no project, no book, no movie, no play, no birthday party, no skinny jeans to get into, no restaurant you want to try, no wine you want to open, there is nothing you want tomorrow, nothing at all. So, to jump, a person has to believe that the world of tomorrow holds nothing of interest, and what’s worse, the world of yesterday holds nothing worth remembering.

I read somewhere that people who survived jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge said they had changed their minds half way down. Their reasons for jumping seemed less significant in the void. You can’t take it back, there is no rewind, no pause button, there is no arguing with the void. So a person has to believe that her resolve is steadfast and right, right beyond a shadow of a doubt, immovable and unchangeable.

I half understand these reasons, except for the resolve required, I have never experienced such absolute, unwavering resolve. Once you step off the ledge time must stand still, fourteen floors and an eternity to consider the quality of your resolve and the quality of your existence. I hope her resolve remained steadfast to the very end, and that she found the peace she concealed so well she lacked. But most of all I admire her brave foolhardiness in choosing the quality and the exact duration of her life.

Barcelos, Portugal

2011-09-26T07:29:00.000-07:00

Apparently my great grandmother’s father was from Barcelos, Portugal and my great grandmother was an avid collector of mementos. So among her belongings are some fantastic family photos, a post card collection from the early 1900s, and a set of postcards with views of Barcelos at the turn of the last century. The latter I share with you in this post. Blogger will not display the slideshow, please click on the image to see the Picasa album.

Here is an excerpt from wiki about the city [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcelos,_Portugal]. Originally a Roman settlement, it expanded and became the seat of the First Duke of Bragança in the 15th century. The palace of the Dukes of Bragança was destroyed by an earthquake in 1755 and is now an open-air museum.The town's famous symbol is a rooster, in Portuguese called o galo de Barcelos ("the Rooster of Barcelos").

One of the many versions of this legend goes that a rich man threw a big party. When the party was over, the rich man noticed that his sterling cutlery was stolen by a guest. He accused a pilgrim and let him go to court. He protested his innocence, but the judge didn't believe him. The judge was about to eat a roasted rooster when the pilgrim said: "If I am innocent, this rooster will crow three times." When the pilgrim was about to be lynched, the rooster crowed. The judge released the pilgrim. The story ends a few years later when the pilgrim returned and made a statue over the event.

The art connoisseur

2011-09-15T14:51:00.000-07:00

My dog’s name is Saskia. Just now I was walking her across the street, and a woman who was crossing with me asked her name. I told her "her name is Saskia" expecting the usual blank stare followed by "what?" But instead the woman had a quick retort, she said "that's not a suitable name for a dog. She should be named ‘happy’ or ‘joy’". So I told the woman that the original Saskia was the wife of a famous painter named Rembrandt, while at the same time considering that Saskia's life had probably not been all that happy or joyous.

As we continued on the sidewalk, the woman looked down at Saskia and told me she looked like one of his paintings. I was delighted at that, I think she's beautiful and that may be the highest praise she ever received from a stranger. I smiled and thanked the woman. - In retrospect I should have walked away at that moment in the conversation. - The woman then looked at Saskia and said that her fur looked like his brush strokes. In my mind’s eye I tried unsuccessfully to picture Rembrandt’s brush strokes and conjured words like, precise, exact and flawless; then I looked at Saskia’s wispy, disheveled, two-tone fur, then I looked back at the woman. She might have noticed my confusion because when she continued she explained “picture his self portrait, the brush strokes are just like that”. I thought of the Rembrandt portrait hanging in the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, and just as I was concluding that it wasn’t a self portrait, the woman continued. “But not the one where he cut off his ear, I don’t like that one, it’s not happy”.

I shit you not! That actually happened to me today.

The Gettysburg address in 2011

2011-09-05T14:27:00.000-07:00

Lincolnwalks up to the podium, standing before a congregation of civilians, military personnel and the international press, he begins:

“Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a newnation, conceived in Liberty, and”, but he’s interrupted. A youth in the frontrow calls out: “Dude! What’s that score you started talking about, did you score fourtimes? Was it like, four different girls or four times with the same one?” Lincolnis taken aback, he’s not certain he understands the question, but explains thatscore simply means twenty. The youth huffs,accuses him of lying and walks away, but not before adjoining “There’s no wayyour skinny ass scored 20 times dude! You couldn't score twenty if you were the last man on earth! You’re full of it!”

Lincolnclears his throat, looks at his notes on the back of the envelope andcontinues. “Well, where was I? Yes –conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are createdequal.” At this a rather robust woman infatigues and boots, who had been leaning against a tank whittling a stick withher army issue survival knife spoke up. “Hey! You in the funny hat! What’sthat about men being created equal? Aren’t you forgetting something? What aboutwomen you sexist pig?” She never stops whittling the stick, but now she looksup and stares at Lincoln. “You come over here and I’ll make us equal!” She emphasizes her last statement by slicing the stick in half with a forcefuldiagonal swipe of the knife.

Lincolnswallows hard. “I assure you madam, that will be quite unnecessary.” Hecontinues, “er, conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that allmen” he pauses to look at the woman who has lowered her eyes to her handiworkand is listening intently. “AND women are created equal.” He smiles nervously and scans the crowd. A few are still listening to him, but mosthave started talking amongst themselves.

Lincolncontinues “Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether thatnation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We aremet on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion ofthat field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives thatthat nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should dothis.” He looks up from his envelope. There are a few more people listening tohim. He chooses to ignore the two in thefront row who are now discussing which two generals should have sex with eachother in order to conceive a nation and just how long they would endure. Heeyes the whittling woman nervously.

Hecontinues. “But, in a larger sense, wecan not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground.”And he is once again interrupted by a private in the back who stands up andprotests “Damn right we can’t hollow this ground! If you want trenches you dig‘em yourself. This is not WWI dude! Wedon’t go around hollowing ground anymore!” Lincoln explains that he said hallow with an “a” and not hollow with an“o” and the man sits back down complaining that if the lecture was going to betricky he should have had some overheads or something.

“Thebrave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far aboveour poor power to add or detract.” At which the whittling woman stands up straight andasks “Brave men? Men? Really? What have I been doing here then? ‘Cause I got the power to detract right here inmy hand mister!”

Andso it stands that in our juvenile, gender equal, politically correct, freespeech times, Lincoln would have had to walk away for some fresh underwear and would,in fact, never have finished hishistoric speech.

pretending

2011-08-29T17:02:00.000-07:00

We pretend that there will be time to get the work done, for a good night's sleep, to take that trip, to learn that instrument, to spend more time with the kids, and we pretend there will be time to say the things we meant to say.

We pretend we understand that book from English lit class, modern art, what the economist just said, the directions we got from the guy at the gas station, and we pretend we understand what makes the people we love happy.

We pretend we believe the news anchor, what people tell us, that our vote counts, that a brand cares, in a higher power, and we pretend we believe will live forever.

We pretend there is meaning in that song we danced in high school, in the French movie everyone raves about, in that boring book, in the death of a soldier, in our lives, and we pretend there is meaning in what we do.

We pretend we are better than we are, smarter than we are, more sophisticated than we are, kinder than we are, better educated than we are, and we pretend we are happier than we are.

And all the while we pretend we are not pretending.

sacred plastic in ten million AC

2011-08-15T06:07:00.000-07:00

Preparing for another presentation about his find, Sarasas momentarily questions his own convictions. Not about the find, the evidence is irrefutable, but whether it was worth going public with the information, similar finds would eventually be made by others who would enjoy the attention and the public scrutiny. “It was the right thing to do,” his new mantra provides no solace in this situation. After a day of five press conferences he now has to face a panel of his own peers, and though the evidence is in fact irrefutable, some of them will refute it thunderously. When you find something that should not be, the simple fact that it is often is not enough to convince those who are entrenched in commonly accepted doctrines. He knew the find would be controversial the moment he brushed over the surface of the fossil and quietly whispered to himself: "human".

Now facing the assembly of archeologists and historians, having summarily introduced himself and scanned the room for friendly faces that might have assuaged his nervous jitters and fining none, Sarasas concentrates on the business at hand. He presents the easily acceptable facts first. A human fossil comprising a skull, four ribs, three vertebrae and a leg bone. The specimen was in his forties, and probably a male, though without the hipbone we cannot be certain. And now for the controversy: the specimen was found below the plastic layer. This individual lived at least a thousand years before the start of the plastic layer. Proving that in fact humans were around much earlier than we believed, and that contrary to all of our understanding, plastic was not necessary for human survival.

Sarasas felt the audience members shift in place as if to find a more comfortable position. He continued “our long held belief that humans were created and existed only within the 300 years of the plastic layer has to be readdressed. They were around long before the plastic layer.” The audience mumbles in discontent. A young cleric in the middle of the assembly stands tall and addresses Sarasas directly. Sarasas had not noticed the cleric in the audience, but he knew what was coming. The young cleric could not have been older than his third shedding, but he was confident; a confidence borne of the certainty that his beliefs are true. The cleric’s voice boomed in the hall “Do you mean to stand there and tell us that in the era of plastic, the great creator did not bring humans into the world as a catalyst for roach evolution? Are you saying that humans were not created to nurture roaches into the next step of our evolution? Are you questioning the methods of the great creator?”

Sarasas had not expected a cleric in the audience. He wholeheartedly believed in notion that the great creator had created the inferior human species to serve roach evolution and explained to the youth that finding a human below the plastic layer does not in any way disproof the documented actions of the great creator. The fact still remains that no human evidence is found above the plastic layer as does the fact that roaches dominated the world from the end of the plastic age to this day, as determined by the great creator. “I’m not here to interpret the intentions of the great creator, or to question his methods. I will leave such lofty undertakings to more qualified individuals. I simply want to present the facts of this find, the determination of the implications of human existence below the plastic layer is outside the scope of this presentation.”

The next question came from an individual whose mannerisms unmistakably identified him as a historian. “Did you find any evidence of roaches being kept as pets by this individual, as was the practice of his descendents in the plastic layer?" Sarasas was relived at the question, religious matters were not his strong suit, and so he felt a twinge of disappointment in not being able to provide the historian with any concrete evidence that roaches shared the life of this specific early human. His disappointment made him elaborate on the answer “but we know that roaches were around long before the plastic layer, and now with this find, we know that humans were around too. Whatever conclusions we may draw, it would seem plausible that if humans and roaches were coexisting at the time this human lived, that the human must have cared for the roaches around him. It was in human nature to do so, and the will of the great creator. The evidence of human and roach coexistence in the age of plastic is overwhelming, all indications are that humans were caretakers of the roach species in our most fragile state, before we developed lungs. This human would have been no different.”

Sarasas answered a few more questions on human nature and the similarities between roaches and humans. At the end of the presentation he opened a box and invited the audience to come and examine his collection of plastic artifacts. For the younger members of the audience, this was their first physical contact with sacred plastic relics. After presenting facts that could bring the intentions of the great creator into question, Sarasas was comforted by expressions of awe in the young faces as they handled the sacred plastic items.

a lost word

2011-08-01T05:25:00.000-07:00

I was waking my dog this morning and I stumbled on a word. Someone had left it lying on the sidewalk. I thought perhaps it had fallen out of a pocket or purse; I refuse to believe it had simply been discarded as worthless. I picked it up and looked around for whoever might have dropped it, but everyone around me seemed to be going about their business. No one seemed to be desperately searching for a lost word. I brushed it off with my hand. My dog stood on her hind legs and sniffed it. I asked a passerby "did you drop a word?" but he didn’t alter his stride, he glanced at the word in my hand and continued on his way.

As I examined the word more closely I noticed that it was bilingual, it was Portuguese on one side and English on the other, and since I was standing in front of the state government palace, I figured some foreign dignitary must have dropped it while entering the building. So I walked up the steps leading to the great entryway. The two guards stationed on each side of the door blanched as they saw me approach. Both moved to prevent me from entering the palace. I assumed dogs weren't allowed so I told her to sit and wait while I stepped inside. But as I turned to enter, the largest of the guards blocked my way. I explained that the dog would remain outside, but he informed me that the dog was welcome, the word would have to stay out. "But it’s so little” I said, ”what harm could it do?” He became forceful in his insistence that the word not enter the building and I had to give up.

I put ethics in my pocket and brought it home with me. I placed it on the shelf, but later had to move it because it kept getting in the way of my books. I put it on the table, but it kept getting in the way of dishes and flatware. So I moved it to my computer desk, but it kept getting in the way of the keyboard. I could understand why it had been discarded on the sidewalk, it’s rather an inconvenient word to have around. But I refused to give up. I placed ethics on a pedestal in the middle of the house, so that everything else now had to revolve around it. This placement seems to be working, but only inside my house, I'm still not allowed to bring it into government buildings and public spaces.

I wish you happiness

2011-07-29T08:57:00.000-07:00

I was 17 and I was leaving the country for the last time, never to return and never again to be seen. At least that was my grandmother's interpretation of the situation as she watched our luggage being loaded into a cab that would take her daughter and grandchild to the airport, to be devoured by an airplane and spat out at most distant mouth of hell, surrounded by jackals and ferocious infidels. That was her unvoiced interpretation of our move to a place everyone else called California. She refused to come outside, she stayed at the window, her eyes filled with tears and her voice caught in her throat when she looked at me and offered what in her mind were the last words she would ever say to me, "Be happy".

Of course the world is not as big as my grandmother imagined, and California is not a world away. We saw each other many times after that, but those parting words remained with me, and I expect will remain with me forever. "Be happy" it's a tall order, at least for me, I'm often content with not being unhappy. If you think about it there is nothing else you can wish a person you love other than "Be happy". You can wish them health and success or wealth, you can wish them love, as the song recommends, but in the end all you are wishing them is happiness. All the success in the world will not bring you happiness, all the health in the world will not bring you happiness, - and if you are not happy then what good is success? - but if you find that you have enough success, enough health, enough wealth, enough love, you can be happy. The 'enough' aspect varies from person to person. The trick is to find happiness with what you have and to get what is 'enough' for you. It may be very little, or a great deal, but 'enough' is often much less than we imagine. 'I wish you success', 'I wish you health', 'I wish you wealth' and even 'I love you', all fit into one simple wish 'be happy'. I wish you happiness.

Wish someone happiness today, then look around, you will probably find that you have enough.

Airline instructions deciphered

2011-07-25T05:15:00.000-07:00

About .02% of airline passengers actually grab the emergencyinstructions in the seat pocket in front of them and try to understand how theyshould react in case of an emergency. Here is a handy explanation. Note that for the purposes of thisexplanation the airline euphemism ‘water landing’ will be replaced for the morerealistic ‘crash into water’. And whilewe are on the subject, someone really should tell airlines that when apassenger plane comes down on anything other than a paved runway attached to amodern airport of adequate infrastructure, it's not a 'landing'. Here we go, first image:

While taking off, landing, crashing into nuclear waste orcrashing into water, keep your seat belt fastened. In these situations you arenot allowed floating lit cigarettes, cell phones, video cameras, antiqueghetto blasters from the 80’s or gigantic iPods. However while the plane is flying through theair, you may have with you video cameras, ghetto blasters and gigantic iPods. You see, there is nothing scary or mysteriousabout the safety instructions. Let's continue.

If crashing in nuclear waste or water: keep your seatbelt fastened. But note that induring these events, women may not wear shoes. And floating lit cigarettes arenot allowed.

If you are crashing into nuclear waste, without thepossibility of water: you may not have floating lit cigarettes. Women must notwear shoes and men must not carry brief cases, though they may wear shoes. And,this is very important, if you feel like jumping off a ledge into flames, don’tdo it! Also if you feel like jumping offa ledge into jagged rocks, don’t! It’s just not allowed.

Now if you are crashing into water without the possibilityof nuclear waste: keep your seat-belt fastened and no floating lit cigarettes. Women AND men may not wear shoes. And if youfeel like jumping into flames, don’t do it, it's not allowed! However brief cases, ghetto blasters andjumping onto jagged rocks are probably ok, so knock yourself out!

Once you’ve crashed into the water, pull something red and araft will magically appear. Flip a flap and pull something red again, thatdoesn’t really do anything, but apparently that’s what you have to do. Now, this is very important: once you are inthe ocean, firmly plant both feet on the ocean floor and use your super humanstrength to flip the enormous raft over. It’s really easy, see, the guy in the middle does it all by himself.

If you open this compartment, the plane, while safelyfloating on tranquil, calm, and probably warm, waters, will be attacked bygiant yellow arrows, so you've got to close this other compartment to set itright.

Once everybody is on board the life raft use the handypocket-knife TSA allowed you to bring on board to cut the rope that secures yourlife raft to the sinking airplane. If you don’t have a pocket knife, usescissors or even nail clippers, any sharp metal object will do, just cut therope. If you don't cut the rope theplane will sink and drag you under the water. Remember: your only chance ofsurvival is cutting that rope! Use anything you brought on board with you, Swissarmy knife, nail files, the steak knives you bought grandma. Anything youbrought on board with you will do really, your life depends on it!

Does that look like writing to you?

2011-06-23T14:36:00.000-07:00

Does that look like writing to you? Right there in the center of the picture, a bit blurry and difficult to make out... does it look like a line of text to you? It looks like writing to me.

I have an artagraph of a Caillebotte painting. Etude for Paris Street Rainy Day. The original hangs in the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris. The original painting hung on Monet’s wall until he died. I have to confess my regret at not having visited that museum little precious time I have spent in Paris, it must be something to see, and an original Caillebotte is always something to see, isn’t it? The artagraph that hangs on my wall is an exact replica of the original, down to the brushstrokes. And that looks like writing to me. There are no mentions, studies, x-rays or articles about hidden text under Caillebotte’s brushstrokes in this painting. Experts have scrutinized this painting for over a hundred years and no one ever said “oh look, it’s writing”. So it’s not writing. But I’ll be damned if it doesn’t look like writing. It gets lost in the context of the whole painting.

not that

2011-06-23T14:10:00.000-07:00

I believe my dog when she wags her tail. I believe in things that go bump in the night. I believe in impressionism. I believe in sunsets. I believe in pain. I believe in loss. I believe in saudade. I believe I can be happy if I try. I believe in chocolate and wine. I believe in cold winter evenings. I believe in the unexpected. I believe in loving people I love. I believe in truth. I believe in honesty. I believe in dishonesty. I believe some people, but not most. I believe in trying, but not always. I believe in being kind, if I can. I believe in what I know, but mostly I believe that I don’t know. I believe in what money buys. I believe I need, and I believe I have. I believe it all. But I don’t believe that. I can’t believe that.

First human in a photograph

2011-05-02T07:14:00.000-07:00

When was the last time you watched the birdie or said cheese while looking at a camera? Photos are ubiquitous, everyone has a phone camera in their pockets and we snap constantly. Try running a red light and see what you get in the mail.

But who was the first person to be photographed? Was it a king, a president, one of the world’s wealthiest people? Not really. It was a regular Joe who, while strolling down Boulevard du Temple in Paris, decided to stop and get his shoe shined. Him and the shoeshine boy who provided the service. The year was 1838 and Louis Daguerre had invented the first useful sort of photography, the Daguerreotype: a copper plate with a thin coat of silver that was exposed to iodine vapor to form iodine crystals on the surface. Developing the mirrored image that formed involved heated mercury and the exposure time was a horrendous 10 minutes. Because of the extended exposure time, portraits were not viable. Previous methods required exposures of up to 8 hours; that’s a long time to watch a birdie or say cheese.

Anyway, when Daguerre snapped this 10 minute exposure everything that was moving did not register in the picture including street traffic and people. Except for the shoeshine boy and his customer and perhaps a person reading a newspaper on a bench to the right of the main characters.

What I find most interesting about this picture is that we don’t know who these two people were, and they lived the rest of their lives never knowing the significance of that one brief pause in that day in 1838. Regular Joe didn’t go home and announce he had been photographed; he probably never even mentioned having his shoes shined. It was an unimportant, highly forgetful moment in his life and yet it was a highly significant milestone in the history of humanity. “That's one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind" only in this case, no one ever knew anything about it. Could you be going about your day making history and not know anything about it?

And I love that the honor of being the first human photographed doesn’t go to a head of state or a millionaire, it goes to a lowly shoeshine boy living in Paris in 1838 and his customer.

Boulevard du Temple by Daguerre. First photograph of a human being. 1838

online monitor repair

2011-04-27T14:01:00.000-07:00

May take a few minutes to load animation

GoAnimate.com: online monitor repair by ANB_

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!

...based on a true story, my Dell monitor did break... the rest is not necessarily true

human gargoyles on catholic church

2011-04-24T08:03:00.000-07:00

Porto Alegre Cathedral

I live two blocks away from the Porto Alegre cathedral, I see it every day walking my dog. It’s not an impressive building but locals are very proud of their cathedral. It was built in 1920, so it’s a rather recent building for a Catholic church. I took these pictures Easter Sunday morning. The façade is decorated with several gold inlaid mosaics and the building looks as one would expect such a building to look, and I’m used to seeing it there. But you can’t build a Catholic church without gargoyles, especially not a cathedral, so you look for the gargoyles.

POA Cathedral gargoyle

Gargoyle on Catholic Church

You find them on the side of the church. Yes those are Indians, the gargoyles on the Porto Alegre cathedral are not the monstrous, nightmarish mythical creatures one usually sees on such edifices, they are people. Native Brazilian, or as the church would have you see them, heathens looking menacing and holding fast to the edge of their rocky outcrop, ready to pounce on the god fearing innocent passerby. The Indian gargoyles are snarling, their faces painted ready to wage war on the good Catholic people of the city. That is how the church would have the local population see the native inhabitants of the land.

I expect the Catholic church to practice social exclusion of those who do not contribute to the church’s coffers, and it has historically excluded native populations in Latin America. But this is the ultimate social exclusion of an entire population, carved in stone, and since there was/is no separation of church and state, this state sponsored prejudice.

Native population begging

The message is clear: shun the native population, keep them out of your society, they are dangerous, menacing heathens who will attack you as soon as look at you. The propaganda worked, today the native population is relegated to begging for alms at the door of that same cathedral on Easter morning.

And once again I’m the only one bothered by this. Everyone thinks the cathedral is beautiful. Tourists stop to photograph it every day, it’s one of the city’s pride and joys. There are no picket signs, protests or general outrage. Human gargoyles and an impoverished, subjugated native population is fine and normal for the church, the state and the population of Porto Alegre.

a bit of hypocrisy from the Catholic Church

Oh, and by the way, in modern times the menacing human gargoyles weren’t enough to keep all the riff raff out of the house of god, so they installed an electric fence. I mean, really, it’s the house of god after all, we can’t just let anybody in.

I hated Titanic, District 9 and Forest Gump, here's why.

2011-04-22T12:45:00.000-07:00

And while I’m on the subject of movies (see previous post) here is a post that will discredit all my opinions on movies. Oh well.

I hated Titanic, and not just because I find Leonardo DiCaprio annoying. I also hated Forest Gump, though I have managed to forgive Tom Hanks for Joe Vs. the Volcano. And I hated District 9 and Life is Beautiful. Why you ask? I found them extremely offensive.

Fifteen hundred people died in the Titanic, they froze to death or drowned despairingly. Those who survived watched family, friends and strangers sink to their deaths in a boat that was unsinkable. As human tragedy goes, it was pretty tragic. Watching 3 hours of a trite little love story that was far from original, all the while imagining the real life despair of the people in that ship was offensive to me. Those were real people and their very real suffering was minimized, banalized by focusing the story on fictional puppy love. It wasn’t a stupid jeweled heart that sank to the bottom of the ocean, it was people. The point isn’t that the bearably believable DiCaprio character died for true love. The point is that 1500 people perished in that ship. Real people.

I hated Forest Gump for the same reason. Real people live with physical and mental handicaps daily. In real life they are shunned by society, locked in institutions, abandoned by their families and struggle to exist in a world that was not designed for them. They are not All American players, they don’t meet presidents, become war heroes and don’t buy Apple stock and become rich. Real people, real difficulties, real struggles, that is the reality. Making light of that reality by inventing a character that overcomes all of his difficulties mostly by sheer luck diminishes the efforts of those who live with their handicaps. And that offends me.

District 9, boy, oh boy. The slums of South Africa are not populated by giant insect aliens. The freedoms of giant insect aliens are not curtailed and denied on a daily basis. Giant insect aliens don’t live in abject hopeless poverty. Giant insect aliens are not subjugated by a society that sees them as inferior. Giant insect aliens are not beaten and tortured because of their status in society or the color of their skin. Once again, people are. Real, living and breathing people like you and me and it pisses me off that that movie should portray that level of injustice, that unbearable suffering as being endured by giant insect aliens. People! People exist under those conditions. Shit.

Well, you can imagine what I have to say about Life is Beautiful. I only watched it once, and I’m angry now just thinking about it. It’s a waste of celluloid, it’s contemptible and vile. A concentration camp prisoner keeping his son with him, sneaking him into dinner with German children, pretending it’s all a game. Yes I’m sure that happened every day in concentration camps. If only everyone had done that, the war would have been so much more pleasant for everyone. Say, let’s do that in Iraq and Afghanistan right now, what fun!

You might be justified in saying that I missed the point of those movies. Perhaps I did. But similarly I would say that you missed the point I made about the same movies. It bothers me when fiction purposefully imitates real life while at the same time disregards the people whose reality it is imitating. And it bothers me that I’m the only one bothered by that.

Victor or Victoria: slapstick's last stand

2011-04-22T11:01:00.000-07:00

A pie-in-the-face simply isn’t funny anymore. Nowadays slapstick has developed a reputation of being simplistic and lowbrow. Classic gags died out with the silent pictures, we are now a sophisticated audience with sophisticated tastes. Keaton once said that a pie-in-the-face died out because you can’t fit it into a full feature and make it believable to an audience. In real life we seldom have occasion to throw a pie in someone’s face and so it’s not believable. I disagree. It still has a place in full feature movies and it can be funny. The problem is that all the people who had enough talent to make a pie-in-the-face funny are no longer around. Slapstick is not simplistic, on the contrary it requires a great deal of talent, and as an audience when we look down on it from the height of our sophistication, we fail to realize we are the ones who are simplistic in our assessment. Pulling off slapstick and making it believable to the audience is a feat of colossal proportions, almost impossible.

When Blake Edwards made Victor or Victoria the time of the pie-in-the-face had long since passed. Raiders of the Lost Ark had come out and audiences wanted Spielberg and ET, slapstick had been dead for over three decades as had musicals, and Victor or Victoria was both. It made a splash when it came out, but it has been relegated to dusty shelves and now is remembered by few. It deserves better, if for no other reason, for Blake Edward’s courage and talent in resurrecting slapstick and musicals in the same movie while audiences clamored for car chases and explosions.

Victor or Victoria brings together unbelievable talents. Blake Edwards, Julie Andrews, James Garner, Robert Preston, Lesley Ann Warren. Blake Edwards managed to put a pie-in-the-face into a full feature movie because of his rare comedic talent. The music is by Henry Mancini for crying out loud, it can’t get better than that. And Julie Andrews singing alone or with Robert Preston, well, it’s Julie Andrews, I don’t have to say more.

The last time a pie-in-the-face made me smile was in Victor or Victoria and all the slapstick in that movie - from a bottle breaking on a note sung by Julie Andrews, to a bar brawl, to Garner pretending to bribe a cop, punching him in the face instead and recovering the money before running off - blended seamlessly in a full feature film. It doesn’t take much, just phenomenal talent, the sort that is hard to find nowadays. I just love this movie, it’s a forgotten jewel. Go watch it.

sincerity and the inevitable hypocrisy behind it

2011-04-21T05:21:00.000-07:00

Recipe for sincerity: take a measure of insincerity and distill it to achieve the desired concentration, use sparingly. Sincerity in its pure, undiluted form does not exist.

I’ve seldom been accused of being insincere, but have on occasion been reprimanded for excessive sincerity. Though at the time of such admonition the phrasing used is not ‘excessive sincerity’ but rather ‘bluntness’. You see, sincerity is a good thing, and an accusation of having too much of a good quality comes across as a compliment, so ‘excessive sincerity’ is called ‘bluntness’. And rightly so. My boss once called me on the carpet for being cold and merely professional to a coworker and for wearing my opinion on my face. The man voted for Bush twice and bragged about it. I still contend that I was as nice as I could have been. Sincerity is often not politically correct in the work place - you know, that same place where your honest opinion is requested, appreciated and respected. We admire sincerity as a virtue while at the same time we scorn those who are completely sincere. And so we live in a constant state of hypocrisy. I suppose it’s part of the human condition.

As a child you could not walk up to a playmate during recess and say “you’re ugly and your mother dresses you funny”, though you might have been completely sincere in your statement. We learn from an early age that complete sincerity will most likely get you a negative result, or even detention. True story: my cousin in pre-school had the following exchange with a teacher:
Teacher: You don’t like me because I’m old.
Cousin: I don’t like you because you’re old, ugly and annoying.
He was completely sincere! Sincerity gets you a spot in family lore for being a brat, yet it is regarded as a virtue. As a general rule, when I’m asked for my opinion, I give it freely and sincerely, people who know me, know what to expect. But over the years I have found sincerity is not necessarily what people want. They want reaffirmation, validation of what their own opinion might be, and so my friends are few, but true. Sincerity is not as useful as insincerity in making superficial friendships or winning approval. It is not always well received in making a point or backing an argument, it is not what is expected of a person in an exchange, but it is virtuous.

Sincerity is in fact diluted to the desired concentration by everyone all of the time. When I pick up a ringing telephone knowing full well that I don’t want to talk to anyone who might be on the other side of the wire, I’m being insincere even if only in my own head. If I was to be completely sincere, if my sincerity were pure and undiluted, the phone would never be answered and that’s just not practical. Sincerity is a virtue that cannot be applied in its purest form.

When Bill O’Reilly is on TV spitting some sort of incoherent lunacy at his audience and I tell him to shut the fuck up and proceed to change the channel, he and I are at opposite ends of the same philosophical concept and yet we are both being completely sincere. Sincerity has no right or wrong. But sincerity on both sides of an argument of opposing ideals becomes explosive, perhaps even hateful. But it is a virtue.

There are sycophants out there, people who are insincere all of the time in an attempt to gain some sort of advantage or standing. We’ve all seen them, people with limited principles who flatter and adulate in order to gain something, I’m not sure what. I’m not going to discuss these poor creatures, they are the exception. But consider a pedophile hearing the confession of a woman who “took the lord’s name in vain twice this week”, when he says “I absolve you my child” is he sincere? Could he ever be sincere? And yet he holds a position of authority in society, that same society that values sincerity. How about politicians who promise lower taxes, education, jobs, justice and freedom. Are they insincere? Are they simply lying? Is there a difference? And yet, as a society we elect them, we reelect them, and never again demand fulfillment of those promises. Are we then sincere in our actions? Once you lay down your principles and your actions fall outside the parameters defined society do you forfeit sincerity? Are all your actions and statements tinged by insincerity from that point? Is a strong conviction to principles and an impeachable character a requirement for sincerity to exist in any person? And is that the reason we consider sincerity virtue? I’m obviously leading the reader to conclude that the answer is ‘yes’. And if so, pure, undiluted sincerity cannot exist because people’s principles are never pure and undiluted. All of our characters are flawed in some way, or compromised at some point in our lives.

Sincerity in its pure, undiluted form does not exist, it does not exist in the privacy of our own minds and it certainly does not exist in society. When anyone attempts to distill it into its purest forms, he is shunned by the same society that expected sincerity from him. So we live in a state of perpetual, sincere hypocrisy. But we seem to prefer it that way. My dog, is the only completely sincere creature I know. So next time someone calls me a bitch because of some blunt statement, I will simply reply “Thank you, I try”.

Brazilians can be very creative

2011-04-17T14:00:00.000-07:00

Walking back from a restaurant the other day I came across these two characters at a major intersection. It always amazes me how creative Brazilians are. They are creative for good and evil. Decades ago when I was a little girl living in Rio and crime there was still petty pocket picking and the occasional car theft, there was an outbreak of watch snatching. People would stop at a traffic light with their arms resting on the driver’s window and a kid would run by, snatch the watch off their left wrist and run off. So people started wearing their watches on the right wrist. Brazilians in their infinite creativity would then run by the driver’s window with a lit cigarette, burn the drivers’ left hand who instinctively reached over with his right hand to grab the cigarette. As soon as he reached the kid would grab the watch off the right wrist and run away. Brazilians always find the “jeitinho”, a way around whatever obstacle faces them. It’s amazing. These two needed money, so they devised a little show timed to the traffic light. Right before it turns green they solicit donations from the first couple rows of cars. Clever. This sort of traffic light show is rather common here, some are better than others. I liked these guys.

The flip side

2011-04-14T05:31:00.000-07:00

Imagine, if you will, that you live in a free country and you have one sister. One sunny day a foreigner arrives in your country and kills your sister. She does so publicly; she kills your sister in front of witnesses. Your sister had left you her most prized possession and upon her death this newly arrived foreigner simply steals it from you, and everyone watches as it happens. The foreigner gloats about killing your sister and vehemently refuses to return your inheritance to you. Society at large sides with the foreigner and against you. Your countrymen mock you and tell you that the foreigner is entitled to keep your stolen property and, furthermore, that she will not be prosecuted for killing your sister.

What would you do? Would you curse the foreigner and vow to recover your inheritance? Would you try to bring justice to your sister? Would you take justice into your own hands?

Well that is exactly what the Wicked Witch of the West did, isn’t it? The Wizard of Oz was on last night and it got me thinking that there are two sides to every story. Never take things at face value, always look for the aspect that is not readily shown. Just because it is written on paper, or in the news, don’t assume it is irrefutable and true. Always look behind the curtain!

fun with idiomatic expressions

2011-04-08T11:05:00.000-07:00

All things being equal Joe wanted the best of both worlds. He buckled down to fight tooth and nail to have his cake and eat it too. The ball was in his court and he put his nose to the grindstone. There were those who said the whole thing was out of the question, but he would not dance to their tune. In the small hours, Joe often locked horns with his conscience and made mountains out of molehills, but there was no sense in beating a dead horse, it was water under the bridge, the die had been cast. Getting cold feet now would make the bottom fall out. He had spun a good yarn. He never let the situation come to a head and always waited for the dust to settle before making hay while the sun shines. He was on the right track to blazing a new trail and those who said he was biting off more than he could chew were just not seeing the forest for the trees. He would go the extra mile and never dial it back. At this stage of the game all he had to do was put his best foot forward and at the eleventh hour he would be holding all the aces. Time was on his side.

He was all ears when he heard through the grapevine that someone had been cooking the books, and it spread like wildfire before all hell broke loose. He was running against the clock, this could blow up in his face.

They put him on the spot, accused him of taking them for a ride and turned up the heat. He knew there was no paper trail, they couldn’t catch him red-handed. But he had an escape goat, that fat cat born with a silver spoon in his mouth, who was now dead as a doornail in the middle of nowhere. The fat cat was a bundle of nerves and broke down in tears before he bit the dust. But Joe was on the horns of a dilemma, he was faced with a catch 22 and had to rub him out. It was a no brainer that the fat cat would have spilled the beans, Joe had bet on the wrong horse for a partner.

Now, between a rock and a hard place, he had the oldest trick on the book up his sleeve. He would pull a fast one and grease these guys’ palms so they say he’s on the level. It would be a tall story, and it would cost him a pretty penny, but you can’t make omelets without breaking some eggs. The jig was up and Joe couldn’t keep his ill gotten gains. He wasn’t all brawn and no brain, he knew you can’t take two bites at the cherry and that the brass ring comes around only once, so he vowed to turn a new leaf. After all -touch wood- it’s best not to push one’s luck and run while the going is good.

Vesuvius has got something to say

2011-03-28T07:04:00.000-07:00

Hello travelers, I can’t say ‘fellow travelers’ because I’ve never been anywhere. I'm pretty much rooted to one place. Remember me? I’m Vesuvius. Yes, the volcano. Here's my yearbook picture on the left. I see there are a couple of people in the back who look like they never heard of me. Well, my name is Vesuvius and I’m all powerful. Back in 79 AD I wreaked some havoc, here let me show you…

See, you should all fear me. I deserve respect! And I’m not getting it. Here’s the thing, now that I have internet access I Googled myself - yeah, I did, so what? I bet you’ve done it too! Anyway, here’s the thing, you know when you pose for a picture and the moron on the other side of the camera chops off the top of your head? Or your entire left side? Then you look at the picture and you think ‘damn that would have been a great picture if I had a head’. Well that’s what’s happening to me. You morons are chopping off my right side on all your pictures.

This is half of me! There is a whole other side on the right. Apparently you see a peak and you think that’s the whole mountain, but I’m not a mountain, I’m a volcano… don’t make me show you. There’s a left side with a crater and then a right side.

See! There just behind the column in the temple of Apollo, a whole right side!

There! See, a left side, with a crater and then a right side! Sheesh! In my yearbook picture above you can see I was one mountain. So if you draw the lines extending from my right and left side you get an idea of the power of the explosion in 79 AD and devastation I am able to cause when I'm angry.

Well, I just wanted to say that I’m getting angry at all the pictures of me without a right side.

Don’t make me angry, you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.

The one and only Jon Stewart

2011-03-22T06:50:00.000-07:00

America's Freedom Packages

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

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www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor & Satire Blog

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I’m responsible for what I say, not for what you understand

2011-03-17T11:59:00.000-07:00

I saw a tweet that read “I am responsible for what I say, not for what you understand” and at first it seemed like an irrefutable axiom. Our western culture prizes individual freedom and with that freedom comes certain responsibilities, like the responsibility for our own actions. My action is to say something so I am responsible for what I say your action is to hear what is said, so you are responsible for what you understand. It makes sense. In a free society this is a true statement… Or is it?

There’s a scene in an old Peter Sellers movie where Sellers is standing next to a dog and a man approaches him:
Man: Does your dog bite?
Sellers: No.
Man reaches to pet the dog and is mauled.
Man: You said your dog doesn’t bite!
Sellers: That’s not my dog.
The scene is funny because there is an underlying assumption that our responsibility extends no further than the words we utter. The man asked a question and received an honest reply. Sellers is not responsible for any conclusions or assumptions the man drew based on the honest reply he received. Sellers is only responsible for his completely honest reply. Or is he?

If a man tells a woman “hey, I can only meet you once a week, because I’m very busy and I have a wife.” And the woman walks away thinking “Well he can only meet me once a week because he keeps busy trying to avoid his wife.” He’s not responsible for the assumptions she made. However, six months later when his life turns into a remake of Fatal Attraction, it won’t matter much who was responsible for the communication at the start. You are responsible for what you say, and you are responsible for what is understood because you share in the consequences of that communication. Your responsibility does not stop at the words you say, it must continue through the consequences of the exchange. What is understood by the other person matters in the communication. You are responsible for what is understood.

You are responsible for what you say, you are responsible for what is understood and you are also responsible for what you intend the person to understand. By saying “Honey, I was with the guys from church last night” the intent is to communicate something completely different from “we went barhopping and ended up at a strip club”. When that person is accused of lying, it will be a valid accusation. The intention was for the person to understand something different from the truth, though the words used were true the intent of the communication was a lie. Remember the whole “I did not have sex with that girl” fiasco. Intent matters. You are responsible for the intent.

We have laws that make you responsible for what you intend the other person to understand. By law an advertiser is responsible for what it says and for what it intends people to understand. When an advertiser says ‘Buy this product, it will grow hair on your head’ its intention is to make people believe the product will grow hair. When people discover it doesn’t grow hair, there is a lawsuit. The advertiser’s responsibility does not end with what is said, it extends to the consequences of the communication. The consumer spent money on a product that does not work. By the way, that’s why we invented fine print, to get around our intentions. ‘This product will grow hair on your head”- and in fine print - “if you’ve recently had Dodo skin surgically grafted to your right buttock on a Friday.” Now it’s caveat emptor baby!

You are responsible for want you say. You are responsible for what is understood. You are responsible for your intention in the communication. There is no way around it, the responsibility is yours! So next time you are walking your dog and your elderly neighbor smiles at you and says “Good Morning, fine day for a walk isn’t it?” Just kick the cane out from under her and run like hell! It’s not worth it!

put your money where your ass wants to be

2011-03-09T06:06:00.000-08:00

Am I alone in complaining about the leg room and general comfort of airline seats these days? Probably not. Everyone who has traveled coach in recent years had less than stellar evaluations to make about the comfort of air travel in modern times. It was not always so. When I was a little girl my mother would ship my brother and me to the grandparents’ for summer vacations. Back then there were two airline options in Brazil, Varig and Vasp there were few other players in the market and though both airlines provided great service, Varig was renowned for its onboard service. You always had plenty of space, a hot savory meal with dessert, actual stainless steel flatware and dishes, a glass made out of glass, a cloth napkin complete with a button eyelet in case you wanted to protect your garment without tucking. The meal always gave you a choice between two entrees and the drink cart had everything from water to whiskey. Sugar, salt and pepper were in with the flatware. There was an individually wrapped wet wipe for you to freshen up before lunch, though it seemed redundant since the attendants distributed hot towels before serving the meal. And oh, the leg room and the comfortable seats that reclined were things of beauty. Pillows and blankets galore. The bathroom had little soap bars that were individually dispensed, feminine hygiene products, and multiple little compartments with personal care items. Each seat pocket had a magazine, safety instructions and an individual zippered pouch with a toothbrush, comb, toothpaste, socks and other items to ensure your comfort. Yes, this was coach.

Then new players entered the market. Varig and Vasp eventually went out of business and now we have dozens of airlines crisscrossing the skies. Competition is fierce. I don’t have to describe the current onboard conditions to you reader. You know they are dismal.

New players entered the market providing less service and comfort for reduced fares. And we consumers voiced our opinions with our willingness to give up comfort to keep our money in our wallets. We complain about the airlines. We say “charging for luggage is an outrage!” and we are outraged. We say “charging for stale sandwiches is a slap in the face of the customer!” and we are offended. We say “My knees touch the chair in front, there is no room!” and we suffer. We say “I will not stand for this” and then we buy the lowest fare we can find. As a group we consumers opt for the cheaper fare. People don’t purchase airline tickets because the airline offers them more service, comfort and food. We compare prices and we purchase the lowest priced ticket. A few years back an airline advertised “hey, we have more legroom” did we the consumers flock to that airline and pay the few extra dollars for the additional comfort and service? No, we opted for the cheaper fare without legroom. So what did the airlines do? They removed all service and reduced the fare. Our behavior told the airlines that no service and low fares was in fact what we wanted.

Consumer behavior is at odds with consumer demands. We demand great service and comfort, but when it’s time to put our money where our mouth is our behavior is just the opposite. We buy the lowest fare, not the best service. Every single time!

There are two choices people: 1 Stop complaining! Airlines are completely in sync with consumer behavior. They provide exactly what the consumers are willing to buy: no service, low fare. 2. Put your money where your ass wants to be. Pay for service, comfort and leg room. Well of course, there is the third, illogical and irrational choice that only leads to despair…. keep demanding service and opting the lowest fare without those services. My guess is that consumers will flock to that third choice. If consumers were reasonable creatures marketing survey companies would be out of business.

Gramado, RS

2011-03-08T14:06:00.000-08:00

I spent the weekend with an aunt in Gramado. She had fascinating stories to tell and we had the opportunity to walk around town. As a child I used to come here with my grandparents on day trips and I'm extremely fond of the city. It has grown and changed over the years, but it managed to maintain its quaint appeal and characteristic architecture.Oh, among its many charms Gramado is also famous for its chocolate... no need to ask if I had a good weekend.

And for those who would like to know more here is some wiki information on the town:
Gramado is a municipality and small touristic town, southeast of Caxias do Sul and east of Nova Petrópolis in the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, in the Serra Gaúcha region. Most of the population of Gramado are of German or Italian descent. Gramado is one of the towns along the scenic route known as Rota Romântica.

Gramado hosts the Festival de Gramado, a major South American film festival and Gramado's most important event. Gramado is also known by hydrangeas blossoming in late spring. Another key event in Gramado is Natal Luz, when Gramado is decked out in lights and wreaths made of recycled material by local residents.
Gramado was originally settled in 1875 by Portuguese immigrants. Five years later, the first German immigrants arrived and these were followed shortly after by Italian immigrants from the Italian settlements in Caxias do Sul.

In 1913, the town seat was moved to Linha Nova, where now is the town center. At this time, Gramado was an unincorporated township within the municipality of Taquara. Railway arrived in Gramado in 1921, boosting the local economy. Gramado became officially a village in 1937, when Gramado was already known as a summer holiday resort. Gramado became a municipality on December 15, 1954 by force of State Act 2,522. [from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramado]

eat, sleep, poop, jump, lick, wag, sniff and bark

2011-02-28T05:20:00.000-08:00

Saskia came with some pre-installed routines: eat, sleep, poop, jump, lick, wag, sniff and bark. Each native routine has subroutines. For example, when the wag and lick routines are applied concurrently the ‘look how cute I am’ subroutine becomes active. I soon decided that some modifications to her pre-installed routines were highly desirable. The ‘poop- anywhere’ routine was easily changed to ‘poop- outside only’. Given that success I got cocky and thought I could reprogram the entire system. I started with the routines with the simplest installations. I installed ‘sit’ and at first it looked like a success. But later it became apparent that it didn’t install properly since I got the ‘sit-for a millisecond just ‘cause you told me to’ subroutine. Also the ‘sit’ routine apparently can’t be used to deactivate the ‘jump-on people’ routine.

Then I installed ‘stop that and lie down’ routine and got the ‘blank stare’ feedback. I may be paranoid but think the ‘blank stare’ feedback is not an automatic response, I think the system activates that feedback on purpose whenever it doesn’t feel like performing a command line.

The repeated activation of the ‘look at how cute I am’ routine made me accidentally install the ‘beg whenever you smell rotisserie chicken’ virus by mistake. This virus is also responsible for the ‘Kibble? You expect me to eat kibble?” facial hardware distortion which I find very annoying.

I’ve almost managed to install the ‘don’t bark at every noise you hear’ routine, but I haven’t managed to locate and delete the line of code responsible for the ‘shut-up bitch and let me bark’ stance. I’ll keep looking.

I tried to install ‘don’t spend half an hour sniffing one spot on the sidewalk’ but it only works with the ‘tug of the leash’ patch. I tried to modify the ‘eat’ routine to exclude ‘crap off the sidewalk’ but apparently the change would require a modification to the ‘yum’ code in the line ‘sniff- yum, this smells like it’s been dead for a week’, and changes to ‘yum’ requires advanced programming skills which I just don’t have.

I wrote a ‘don’t follow me into the bathroom and let me pee alone’ routine but now I have little hope it will work. The ‘stop shedding all over the place’ is the holy grail of routines, no-one has yet managed to write the code for it. I’ve been told that there are professional programmers and published instruction manuals that teach you how to properly rewrite these routines. But we all know that instruction manuals are for people who don’t know what they are doing. Years ago mother tried to uninstall the ‘instruction manuals are for losers’ subroutine in my ‘smarty pants’ routine, but she too had limited success. Oh well.

oi tia

2011-02-25T07:38:00.000-08:00

This post is for my aunt. I have three aunts but only one who reads this blog and this post is for her. If you're not her this post will be of no interest to you. Sorry

A world of flat characters

2011-01-24T04:35:00.000-08:00

I was once called a flat character by a flat character in my life. The comment was directed at a group of people, myself included. I'm never offended by other people's opinions of me since I never spend time or effort in securing their favorable opinion. But the comment made me think about the general subject of flat characters in the real world.

We are all flat characters in the lives of those who do not directly affect our existence, or who exist in the periphery of our lives. We have an inner circle of friends and family and a broader circle of acquaintances including co-workers, and outside of that we are aware of information about individuals in a celebrity circuit including politicians, performers and criminals, but we are not acquainted with them in any way. And then there is the rest of the human population on the planet. If you stop to think about it everyone outside your inner circle of friends is a flat character in your life. They exist, contribute to the plot inasmuch as they prevent you from living alone in the world and force you to adhere to established social norms, occasionally they may also be fodder for gossip. But you never see them evolve, change over time and grow. Their storylines intersect yours occasionally but not enough to significantly contribute or detract.

Flat characters sometimes have a significant impact on our lives. A drug dealer that kills a member of your inner circle has a significant impact on your life, but he is still a flat character. Before that impact in your life you know nothing about him, after the impact you learn to cope without any contribution from that person. His story remains static within yours, attached only by an event.

The person who made the comment that started me thinking about flat characters in the real world seemed annoyed to be in the company of flat characters. But it seems to me that flat characters are omnipresent and mostly neutral in our storylines. Unless, of course they invite you to lunch or try to have a conversation with you, then they are indeed annoying. Now, how can you tell whether a flat character is a potential inner circle member in someone else’s storyline?- No, I’m asking… how? I don’t actually know. - At some point both people have to decide that they want the other person in their storyline, it has to be mutual otherwise you just end up with an annoying flat character. The recipe seems to call for two way communication and a dash of time.

Two way communication and time seem to be essential ingredients in bringing a flat character into one’s inner circle. Shortly after two way communication is established we decide whether that individual is someone we would like to promote into the inner circle from the realm of flat characters and we give some sort of continuity to the communication. The circle of acquaintances is the buffer zone between flat characters and the inner circle. Seldom do characters progress from the flat character zone into the inner circle without doing some time in the circle of acquaintances. The buffer zone is absolutely essential for the transition. If we desperately try to pull a flat character into our inner circle without time in the buffer zone we come across as needy, desperate and even crazy. If a flat character tries to push his way into our inner circle without time in the buffer zone, he is pushy, arrogant and meddling. Both situations have a negative effect on the two way communication and the promotion into the inner circle usually fails. The time spent in the buffer zone can be a few days or a lifetime.

Over time the person is brought into your inner circle. Naturally members of your family have done the communicating and the time necessary to be in the inner circle. Similarly, a lack of communication or one-sided communication can easily demote a character out of the inner circle and into the world of flat characters in your life. An ex-boyfriend, your best friend from grade-school or high school are often characters that once belonged in your inner circle but were demoted to flat characters in your life over time, distance and diminished communication. You know about them, and perhaps you send out a card or an occasional e-mail, but you no longer watch them evolve within your storyline. They become flat characters.

Flat characters intersect our storylines all the time, they serve as examples, warnings, entertainment, but they remain flat over time. We care little about the flat characters in our lives, we pass them in the street, they help us in stores and work in the same office. But remember this: the flat characters in your life are all inner circle members in the lives of other people, and are therefore worthy of the same respect you would like the people in your inner circle to receive form the flat characters in their lives. It’s a simple concept that can make all the difference in a world of flat characters.

Shit happens

2011-01-16T10:54:00.000-08:00

You get up in the morning and follow your usual routine which may include ablutions, coffee, tea, exercise; whatever you feel is necessary to get your day started on the right foot. Whatever your routine may be, it is most likely safe and predictable. For example you might walk your dog, have some breakfast, shower, dress for the day, catch the bus and go to work, all very safe, predictable and repetitive. You don’t expect anything to go wrong with your morning routine, it has become second nature to you, and some of us even accept it as a prediction to the sort of day we are going to have.

If your morning routine is marred by accidents and mishaps you feel that “this is not my day”, or “this day is not starting out right”. Let’s say that your morning routine starts with your dog chasing the neighbor’s cat up a tree, a fallen coffee grinder that scatters grounds in places you never knew existed in your kitchen, your favorite shirt is in the hamper and you miss your bus. As you sit there waiting for the next bus you consciously or subconsciously brace for a bad day. The question that I propose here is whether a bad day is inevitable at this point, are these events foretelling of the sort of day it will be, or are they unrelated events separate from the progression of what remains of the day? The way I see it there are three different schools of thought on this subject: destiny, creation and pragmatic.

The destiny argument is that our destinies are written by some sort of superior power? It is preordained, somewhere in the universe it was written that Joe Blow would have a bad day on this day. It’s inevitable and you see the cat, the grounds, the shirt and the bus as warning signs of providence and prophecy. Your destiny was written in the stars, or whatever parchment of your choice, and can’t be changed. Your horoscope, tarot cards and crystal ball have already decided that this is to be a bad day. All you can do is prepare for the inevitable.

The creation argument suggests that you create your own reality; you are doomed to have a bad day simply because you’ve braced yourself for one. Somewhere in your mind you have already thought “this is not going to be a good day” and with that attitude you then attract negativity to yourself. You create your own reality and the chance events of the morning plant the suggestion of a bad day. All of your subsequent actions during the day will have an aura of that expectation of a failure. Subconsciously you expect failure and your conscious self is happy to oblige. You actually create a reality for yourself of a bad day. This is a self fulfilling prophecy, if the prophecy of a bad day had never been suggested by the marred morning routine, you would never have created that subconscious expectation and your day would have progressed normally. The creation subscriber is going to buy some self help books that teach how to control the subconscious, create your own reality and be very successful. It’s all in the visualization, the mind’s eye and allowing the visions you create to enter into your reality, or something like that.

And then there is the pragmatic argument. Dogs chase cats, coffee spills, your lazy ass didn’t do the laundry and didn’t move fast enough to catch the bus. Well, if you don’t like to start your day this way leash your stupid cat chasing dog, pay attention to what you’re doing, do your laundry and get your lazy ass out of bed a few minutes earlier. The pragmatist will not read the horoscope, buy the self help book and will have whatever sort of day is ahead of him, knowing full well that shit happens. It just does, stop reading more shit into it.

god's intentions are well known

2011-01-16T05:37:00.000-08:00

The floods in Brazil have killed almost 600 people. The news coverage of the devastation is continuous. None of the Brazilian stations cover anything else. It is a horrible situation and it is not my intention to diminish the extent of this tragedy in any way. But there are two comments I would like to make.

First: The news channels have got to stop saying that the tragedy was caused of “excessive rain” or “heavy rainfall”, the rain is not to blame. They should instead be saying that the tragedy was caused by “faulty infrastructure”, “lack of infrastructure”, “lack of building inspections”, “illegal hillside construction” and “illegal deforestation”. If the infrastructure had been anywhere near appropriate this would have been prevented. Stop blaming the rain.

Second: Every victim interviewed says that “with the help of god I was able to get out alive”, “I prayed to god to hold back the waters so I could get out”, “with the god’s help I will rebuild”. Excuse me! Who sent the water in the first place? There is an old joke about a guy who falls into a river and is being washed away by a fast current, he manages to hang on to a branch and pull himself out. His friends run up to him and say “Joe, thank god you’re safe!” to which Joe responds “Thank god? No! Thanks to the branch! God’s intentions are well known.” It seems to me that god’s intentions are well known in this case. I suggest we fend for ourselves.

Protective gear? We don't need no stinkin' protecitve gear

2011-01-13T08:48:00.000-08:00

The hot water main broke in my bathroom. It had been poorly installed and when the plumber tried to shut off the water for a remodel project, the faucet came off in his hand and hot water started gushing everywhere. After shutting off the building’s hot water and dismantling the entire bathroom they set out to fix the pipes. They broke through the tile and changed the pipes and faucet, which introduces the video below. The elderly plumber doing the work installed a complex system of connecting pipes. Each connection had to be sealed with a solder-like metal. He called it solder, and since I don’t know solder from salad I believed him. He heated the pipe and melted copious quantities of solder on the connection. Then he heated the solder and smoothed it out with a wet rag. Yes a wet rag! There is nothing but a rag between this man’s fingers and molten metal. The searing sound you hear in the video is the rag against the hot metal, it could just as easily be human flesh against molten metal. (I refer you back to the man dangling out of my window to install a housing unit around the air conditioner.) Safety, what safety? Protective gear? We don’t need no stinkin' protective gear, we got a wet rag! Also note the baseball cap instead of face shield… very stylish!

The Kilroy instinct

2011-01-11T07:44:00.000-08:00

What is the fascination people have for sharing information, posting blogs, pictures, facebook, myspace? Posting mundane information, current and relevant information, instant information, illegal information, pirated music and movies. We post everywhere and we have posted since the dawn of time, cavemen’s posts are studied to this day from France to Australia. As you walk through Pompeii there are countless modern names etched into the ancient walls. These modern graffiti mix with ancient political campaigns and well wishes and poems on the same walls. As you visit Egyptian monuments, more of the same. People posting their presence in places they know are inappropriate. People post pirated movies, music, software online with full knowledge of the illegality of their actions. These aren’t exceptions, they are the norm! The post medium has changed over time, but the desire to post remains the same. There are enough pirate posts online to change the course of entire industries. Why do we do it, what’s in it for the one posting that he would defy convention and laws? We are compelled to do it. Why?

We cannot exist alone and remain completely sane, millions of years of evolution have made us social creatures, it’s innate, and it’s part of our genetic make-up, our DNA: we are social creatures. We are also self aware, we understand that we exist as individuals. The combination of those two traits, society and self awareness, over millions of years has created in us an instinct for which we have no name. It’s a basic instinct to have our existence verified by others. It is not enough to live in society, and it is not enough to be self aware, we must have witnesses to our existence. It’s instinctive.

The combination of social animal and self awareness evolved into an instinct that creates a desire that our society be aware of us. Self awareness alone apparently doesn’t do it for us, neither does being in society if no one is aware of us. We have evolved what I will call the Kilroy instinct, we need others to witness our existence. Something that says to others “I was here.” It’s instinctive because it is a self contained aspect of our common condition like vanity, pride, creativity, reproduction and survival, it is an instinctive aspect that is an essential component of all those conditions. The Kilroy instinct mixes the social creature with the self aware creature who then expects an awareness of the self from society. It wants to say “I’m here”.

It’s not pride, it’s not ambition, it’s not ego, but it is an element in each of those things. Without this instinct we would not have pride, ambition or egos, it is an essential ingredient to human aspiration. Consider pride without an aspect that thirsts for witnesses, for social awareness. Consider vanity without an aspect that thirsts to make the statement “I am here, be aware of me”. It’s instinctive, like breathing, it’s self preservation, but it’s not the self preservation that keeps you from jumping out of an office building window, it’s the self preservation what hungers to have that building named after you. But it’s not ambition, it’s an ingredient of ambition. Ambition, in its many facets, says “I want more”, the Kilroy instinct is right beneath that surface saying “I want more because I will gain witnesses to my existence”. It’s an ingredient in all of human aspirations, but not the aspiration itself, so it has no name.

We communicate to gain recognition, to be noticed, to have our existence in the world acknowledged. It’s not the self actualization on the top of Maslow’s pyramid, a starving person, or one who is living in unstable and unsafe conditions still has this instinct. It’s a component of every suicide note. It screams “I was here. Now you know that I was here”. Since everyone shares this instinct we don’t stop to try to understand, we simply accept it as a natural part of who we are. Why do jumpers leave their shoes on the bridge? Mostly because of this unnamed instinct. Existence without some sort of validation is a depressing thing, it violates our very nature.

The Kilroy instinct is a way to ensure continuity, an immortality of sorts. It’s why we procreate, it’s why write books, paint, and hunger for fame, beauty and youthfulness that is noticed. We want witnesses. We call it art, we call it vanity, pride, ambition, gregariousness, creativity, we have many descriptions for aspects of the human condition that depend on this instinct. But none for the essential ingredient in each of those conditions. We create art for many reasons, but each of those reasons includes an aspect of “I was here and you saw me”. We wear makeup and the latest fashions for many reasons, but each includes that same ingredient, a need for witnesses to our existence.

We call it acceptance, we long to be accepted by our peers, our parents, our mentors, our friends. We need people to acknowledge our existence, everyone who reads “Leonardo” on the Ramesseum wall, everyone who downloads a pirated movie, everyone who reads a tweet, a blog post, a book is acknowledging the existence of the person who posted, is witnessing his existence in action. It says “I was here, and you saw it”.

It’s the reason social networks have boomed, it’s part of the reason we write blogs, it’s an ingredient in the pride we take in a job well done when it’s recognized. It’s not pride, it’s a component of pride. It’s a component in the reason we erect tombstones on graves, it’s an ingredient in why we find the desecration of that same tombstone offensive: it goes against our Kilroy instinct. The tombstone says “I was here” to deface that goes against our instinct. It’s not an instinct to preserve the memory of the dead, but it is one of its elements. It’s a component of friendships, a friend is a constant witness to one’s existence as is a husband or wife or a child. It is even involved in our need to create gods. If we have no other reliable witness to our existence, if there is nothing we can do ourselves to gain verification of our existence, if there is no wall upon which to etch our names, then god suffices. No one else may know I exist, but “God loves me”.

It’s part of the reason we admire people who have become famous, it’s the part of the reason we buy gossip magazine. Our instinct for recognition and witnesses to our existence see the celebrities’ complete recognition by society and is drawn in, it wants more, it basks in the reflection. It’s a bit like staring at a picture of a pitcher of ice-tea when one is thirsty.

This thirst, this biological need for acknowledgment of our existence, this desperate desire to have our existence recognized doesn’t have a name. It’s not “ego”, though Freud skirted the concept with his id/ego routine, but he addressed human aspirations, not the components of those aspirations. - By the way, he also lost all credibility with the whole ‘penis envy’ concept. Seriously ‘penis envy’? Sheesh!

So it doesn’t have a name, I called it the Kilroy instinct, you may call it whatever you like. It is the unsung hero or villain of the human condition. Whether it is good or evil, it is part of us and unless we give up being social beings or self aware, it will continue to be a part of us and it will keep us posting on cave walls, and on the internet until the end of our days.

Offensive language for offensive intentions

2011-01-08T08:13:00.000-08:00

So Mark Twain’s classic story of a boy growing up in the American south during slavery is being rewritten… The adventures of Huckleberry Finn is being expurgated. All the nasty offensive bits are being removed so it is more palatable to today’s more politically correct audience. It will no longer offend our delicate sensibilities. Electing Bush twice and killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people in two illegal wars is palatable; the N-word in a classic work of literature however, is more than we can take. To the 40% of the Americans who don’t believe in evolution history is a malleable thing. If they don’t like it, change it, it’s that simple.

My problems with this idea are too numerous to mention, but they can be classified into two categories, literary and historical:
Literary:

You didn’t write it assholes! It’s not yours to change!
You don’t like it…. don’t fucking read it! No one is forcing you.
Oh, it’s required reading at your kid’s school so you are in fact being forced to read it, you say…That’s because it’s a classic work of literature, written by a brilliant man, depicting a time in history where such vocabulary and actions were the norm and your child will benefit enormously from the knowledge. And here is a novel concept for you… let your child make up his own mind about the book, he’s in high school and even though you are a limited troll-like creature with the IQ of a Texas School Board member, there might still be some hope for your child, who knows.
First amendment, free speech, freedom of expression… ring a bell?
Censorship is a bad thing, accept that as a fact, it’s true. Repeat after me “Freedom of expression….goood. Censorship…. baaad.”

Mark Twain was never politically correct, he was brilliant freethinker who questioned the government, society and his peers. Through his brilliant body of work he gained worldwide fame, his works have been translated and admired around the world, he is an icon of American culture. Which begs the question of the people who are expurgating his work: Who the fuck are YOU?

Historical:
The time and place of the story could never be politically correct by our standards, there were in fact slaves in the south and the N word was used in reference to them. That cannot be changed. It already happened. It’s done. It can no more be changed than the US’s economy and international credibility can be restored after GWB. It’s gone and cannot be altered.

Now as to the N word that is so offensive: it’s just a word, a specific group of letters to which a meaning is assigned. That group of letters can only be as offensive as the meaning that is assigned to it. The only reason the N word is offensive is that it carries its historic connotation. It is offensive because slavery and the demeaning subjugation of an entire population is offensive to us. If historically it had been used to refer to puppies today we would probably think it’s a cute word. The group of letters alone is not offensive, the context and the history associated to that group of letters, on the other hand, is extremely offensive. So by removing the N word from its historic context, by expurgating The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn we are actually removing the characteristic that makes the word offensive, its association with slavery in the south. Remove slavery, subjugation, subservience, imprisonment, and the horrors of that social condition from the word and it will no longer be offensive. Similarly, remove the offensive word from the context of slavery and the context itself will be less offensive. Therefore any attempt to sanitize works like Huckleberry Finn is in fact an attempt to assuage the horrors of a slave past, and doing so is offensive to the memories and histories of the people who had to endure those horrors. It happened! People lived through that humiliation and social depravity for centuries. And now these assholes come along with some whitewash to make it seem less than it really was. No! The N word is offensive because its history is offensive, you cannot remove it from that context without making the context itself less offensive, and to do so is to spit in the face of millions of people who suffered and still suffer with the injustices of slavery.

It has been said that if we do not learn from history we are doomed to repeat it. In this case it seems to me that some assholes are trying to sanitize the history of slavery in America to make it more palatable to the younger generation. What exactly are their intentions?

Is Twitter a stage (re-edited)

2011-01-07T07:44:00.000-08:00

The stage has always been part of human civilizations. We have always had a need to tell stories. Take a caveman painting a hunting scene on a wall, this was not the action of a lonely artist sitting in a cave by himself, it was a social occasion. We can just see the largest and bravest caveman being taunted by his fellow hunters with innuendos about size of his spear. The rules for theater etiquette started being evolving in those gatherings.

The ancient Romans had a strict social hierarchy in their theater seating arrangements, at first only the elite got to sit, later everyone sat but the elite sat in the first few rows. The rules of etiquette in a Roman theater audience were few, when blood sports are on the stage few restrictions are placed on the behavior of the audience. In the Globe the elite would actually sit on the stage. From those cave days to today we have developed a complex set of rules for behavior on and around a stage.

A few rules of etiquette are common sense and widely understood, you should arrive on time. Recently a veteran Brazilian actress managed to pass a law preventing people who arrive late from entering the theater during the performance. You should refrain from talking, especially to the actors on stage, and on your cell phone. But there is a lesser-known theater rule of etiquette that was never posted in the lobby: don't pinch the actor’s butt. Once in an off-Broadway theater I was on an aisle seat of a Frank Langella play in which the sword fight could not be contained to the stage and in a lunge motion Mr. Langella's butt was inches from my shoulder. My mother, who has always been a bad influence, whispered to me "pinch it". Even though the no-butt-pinching rule is not explicit, if I had pinched the butt of the most gorgeous man to walk the earth, I would have been kicked out of the theater and probably banned from Broadway. Heckling is a few notches below butt pinching, but still unacceptable. Throwing things on stage, unwrapping noisy candy, kicking the chair in front of you, wearing tall hats, etc. are all against etiquette.

So is Twitter a stage? Do the rules of etiquette apply to Twitter interactions? When I follow a celebrity on Twitter is he or she on a stage and am I in the audience? Is Twitter just another technological advancement of the stage, like trap doors and pulley systems or better lighting, or is it a brave new world? Am I heckling an actor on a stage if I post 140 characters that irk him, am I disrupting the audience if I post a lame story in his audience's timeline, or tweet him incessantly with mundane comments?

Twitter allows celebrities and brands to interact directly with the public, to have specific and personal conversations with the audience, so it is not a stage. At the same time the information in such cases flows in one direction: one celebrity communicates to thousands or millions of followers in the audience, so it is a stage. But there is no script, no direction and no actual stage, so it can’t be a stage. What the hell is it?

Recently Setephen Fry threatened to walk off Twitter because someone in his audience commented that his tweets are boring. "I admire and adore Fry, but his tweets a bit... boring... (sorry Stephen).” So is that the equivalent of a bad review on the NY post? Is it enough to shut down production, turn off the lights and send the caterer home? Apparently to Stephen Fry it almost was. Open praise and criticism is part of the communication in Twitter, but was Fry heckled on stage? Did someone throw an egg and some tomatoes onto his Twitter stage? Brent Spiner on the other hand takes a completely different approach. Instead of walking off Twitter when hecklers spit venom at him he adds them in his list of favorites. Twitter provides a separate space for people to save their favorite tweets and Mr. Spiner’s is filled with the most evil and vile comments lobbed at him from the orchestra seats. He takes back control of his Twitter by turning the spot light on the troublemaker.

So is Twitter a stage? Twitter is a conversation, a stage, a seat in a lecture auditorium, crowd of strangers, a bunch of friends over for a barbecue, a news channel, graffiti on a wall, a short story, a poem, a star trek convention, an art gallery, a hug and a slap on the face all at the same time and in the same place. Suddenly the rules we spent millions of years perfecting don't apply. It's a brave new world and we are starting from scratch. New rules must be developed, the problem is that new etiquette rules take hundreds of years to evolve and gain acceptance, but the technology that creates the necessity for those new rules evolves in a matter of months. By the time we come up with some sort of Twitter etiquette we will be wondering if it’s rude to use the new telepathy gadget to get some racy images out of George Clooney’s girlfriend’s head.

(invisible) Mountain climbing cats

2010-12-31T05:47:00.000-08:00

(update) I have since been back with a decent camera and here is a new video where the cats described below are actually no longer invisible.

I'm staying at my uncle's in Rio. The apartment has a view of Aterro do Flamengo from the living room and of the Morro da Viuva (widow's mountain/peak/hill) from the back bedrooms. I've been working out of one of the back bedrooms for a few days now and Morro da Viuva has kept me company just outside the window while I worked. It's a great rock! To my surprise I have discovered that there are cats living on this rock. I've seen between 6 to 8 cats roaming around the rock face. My window is on the 15th floor plus two levels of garage and a playground, so technically it's the 18th floor. Cats roam around the at rock window level!! I don't have a video camera with me, so the video below is horrible, but in the center of the shot there is a yellow cat who had been napping on a ledge just outside my window and decided to climb down. It's hard to see, actually it's almost impossible to see, sorry. You'll have to take my word for it that there is a cat in the shot.

Here is another impossible to see cat, this one is black also mid-shot, there is a little more contrast because he's black. He's the black spot on the right. Next time I'll bring a video camera....

This one gives you a better sense of the size of this rock and where these cats live. Yes I said cats! There were cats in these videos... really there were, trust me.

Brazilian Christmas is out to get me

2010-12-30T11:33:00.000-08:00

Brazil is a tropical country. Always has been. Christmas in Brazil is smack dab in the middle of summer, a tropical summer. Temperatures hover around 32C and 38C (89-100F), needless to say there is not one single solitary flake of snow anywhere in the country. It’s a large country but you can look on the highest mountain top and the lowest valley, you’re not going to find snow. Not one spec of it. Brazil also has a varied culture based on African and European ancestries and Brazilians in general are proud of their heritages and traditions. So explain something to me, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble. Why is this the Christmas decoration in every single shopping center in the country?

Why does Santa wear a long winter coat and warm winter hat while dripping with perspiration and cursing Christmas, his damned job and probably every child who sits on his lap? There are no candy canes here people! There is no candy cane tradition, Brazilians have never seen an actual candy cane.

Somewhere along the way American and European shopping centers discovered that Christmas decorations increase sales. Brazilian shopping centers imported the concept along with the temperature and country inappropriate decorations and presto. Here we are.

Personally I’m convinced it’s a plot to annoy me. Yes, me personally. I’m the only one who seems to mind the ice skating polar bears and snow sleds, everyone else thinks they are great. Don’t you just hate it when an entire holiday conspires to annoy you personally? Well I’ll just show it! Next year I’m going somewhere with snow and Brazilians can photograph their dancing penguin decorations and watch their culture sell-out and deteriorate in the name of higher shopping center sales. There are those who say I should simply not care and enjoy the holiday, obviously those are just crazy people who don’t understand that the Brazilian Christmas is out to get me. Next year I'm going to get a snow shovel, just like Mel Edison in Prisoner of Second Avenue and I'll show them. I'll show them all, bwa ha ha.

glitz and glamour

2010-12-30T10:30:00.000-08:00

I’m bored! You probably look at me and think my life is all glamour and beauty…Ha! Let me tell you something, it ain’t! Sure I look great, sure I cost a pretty penny and everyone is always so careful around me. Apparently I break. I watched a plate break the other day, horrible. So now I’m bored and afraid someone might bump the table and break me. Bored and afraid that’s my life. Not to mention this ridiculous pose I have to hold - get this - for the rest of my freaking life! Bored, bored bored.

The phone’s never bored, but what a gossip… besides there are four of them in the house… I’m unique. Unique, bored and afraid, yep that’s me. Hand-painted, yesiree bob, every inch of me. Every time they reach for that stupid gossipy phone I think they’re going to knock me down.

Take it from me, glitz and glamour are not all they seem to be. Most of the time you’re just bored and afraid.

Porto Alegre

2010-12-26T04:46:00.000-08:00

My mailing address has only read "Porto Alegre" three years, two years during high school for one year recently. All of the rest of my four decades my mailing address has been elsewhere in the world. So it’s surprising that every time an airplane takes off from Porto Alegre, ripping me out of the city as it climbs, there are tears in my eyes. It never fails, as I watch Salgado Filho airport out of the plane’s window and the plane takes flight, as it distances itself from the ground, it rends my soul. There is a bit of my soul that must remain behind because it can exist nowhere else. It's childhood memories and a hundred years of buried ancestors, it's long summer days of now faded vacations and the lesson that a loving carefree childhood must give way to whatever this is that I take on the plane with me. The soul that is mine today rips apart from the bit that must remain behind and comes with me on the airplane, and I cry. The soul I leave behind sits there, rooted to that spot on earth and whimpers, calling me to return. Over the decades I have learned to live without that piece of soul, over the years I have heard it call to me and I have felt the pain of a soul wanting to be whole again. But humans learn to live with pain and this was no different, I could almost forget I was in constant pain. And when I've answered the call and returned, my soul reunited with that bit of soul that remained rooted, whimpering and malnourished in the Porto Alegre soil and the pain subsided.

Now I know that leaving Porto Alegre will kill me some day. Not a quick instant death, but rather a slow prolonged wearying of the soul that drains the life out of a person. And I understand more of a self destructive nature that plans to someday leave this place.

The founder of WikiLeaks is under arrest for having sex without a condom

2010-12-15T05:01:00.000-08:00

Here is what CNN is not saying or stressing. American media is censoring the story to the extreme extent that Twitter will not trend #wikileaks and CNN accuses Assange of 'rape' without qualifying the charges in any way. The implication is that Assange is guilty of 'rape' as defined by the American legal system which is always an extremely violent crime involving non-consequential sex. By accusing Assange of 'rape' without qualifying the story, CNN and other American Media are painting him with the same brush as violent criminals that are little more than animals. That is not the case. That CNN chooses to paint such a picture shows the extent of the decline of the American press. Unbiased and free press no longer exists!!! DON'T KID YOURSELF THAT IT DOES. Here is what the international media is qualifying the story, information that is not readily available to mainstream American audience.

The founder of WikiLeaks is under arrest for having sex without a condom
Swedish law considers unprotected sex a type of sexual violence.
For having had sexual relations with two Swedish women without a condom, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange now faces sexual violence and rape charges and awaits for possible deportation to Sweden where the charges were filed.

The case spurred public curiosity not only because it involves a famous defendant, who is hated by many powerful people, but also for involving a complex system of laws.

Assange’s actions, based on testimony from the his two ex-lovers, were interpreted by the legal system as "rape, sexual abuse and illegal coercion", as stated by the Swedish prosecution. Both he and the women state, however, that sex was consensual. The only problem was the absence of the preservative, which would have been requested by both women, but denied by the Australian.

Having unprotected sex in Sweden is punishable by a minimum of two years in prison for rape. According to Assange’s lawyer, in a declaration made in August when the accusations were made, the term used to classify the crime is a "target for mockery” and “dramatically” damages the reputation of the accused. All of this under a legal system that is a benchmark of modernity.

In both relationships, Assange had problems wearing a condom.

Criticism aside, one of the Swedish women with whom Assange was involved says that the condom broke during the relations, according to the British newspaper Daily Mail. In this case, under the laws of the country, consensual sex that starts with a condom and ends without it become a type of non-consensual sex.

The other lover alleges that twice she had relations with the founder of WikiLeaks, once with a condom and once without. That time she requested the use of a condom, but Assange would have refused. Again the law is on the woman’s side.

The lawyer for the women denies a political ploy.

For the Australian, his arrest is part of a political ploy designed to prevent the publication of secret documents by WikiLeaks. The lawyer for the women, Claes Borgstrom, states that his clients are not involved in any sort of conspiracy against Assange.

Borgstrom also said that the Swedish women’s statement is plausible and that there is a great chance that Swedish justice will accuse Assange, if he is extradited and heard in testimony in the country.

Assange surrendered to the police in London and should be under arrest until December 14, when he will again be deposed. He stated that he will fight his extradition.

Translation of a news article published by R7 Notícias Brazilian online newspaper on 12/09/2010

Brazilian oil and the 1967 Palestinian border

2010-12-04T08:00:00.000-08:00

Well if you live in the world and occasionally read the news you might have heard that yesterday (Dec 3) Lula, the Brazilian president, declared that Brazil recognizes the Palestinian state respecting the 1967 borders. Specifically [translated]:

“The recognition of the Palestinian state is part of the Brazilian conviction that a negotiation process resulting in two States that live in peace and security is the best path to peace in the Middle East (…) Brazil will always be ready to assist as necessary.”

Furthermore, the Brazilian government stressed that the announcement will not damage its relations with Israel, which have never been so strong.

You probably think I’m going to comment on the wisdom of this decision and saturate this post with impassioned personal opinions and convictions… wrong. This issue has nothing to do with ideologies, peace, or even the Israeli Palestinian conflict. Nothing at all. It has everything to do with oil, Brazilian oil.

A few years back Brazil discovered billions of barrels of offshore oil, it is called the Pre-salt layer. Petrobras, the Brazilian oil company was state owned until a few administrations ago when a large portion was privatized. Now the Pre-Salt oil belongs to Brazil and a few international oil companies like Shell, BP etc, but still Brazil stands to change its fortune with the discovery. Recently another phenomenal reserve was found, in even deeper waters, and these reserves had not been earmarked or negotiated to any other country or company, they belong entirely to Brazil. Jackpot. So how is Palestine’s 1967 borders and deep water Brazilian oil related? Simple: Iran.

How you may ask. Consider several factors:

Lula’s 8 year administration has sought to move the Brazilian economy forward and away from the historically tight grasp of the United States.
Brazil does not have the technology to explore deep water oil, and it would take years to develop such technologies.
The US is not willing to provide the technology unless it is once again invited to sit at feast.

Brazil’s problem then is how to acquire this technology without once again kowtowing to the US?

Brazil had to find a partner for the technology it needs, a partner that is not simply a mouthpiece for the US. Countries like United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, occupied Iraq, etc, could not be relied upon for a partnership that excluded the US. A moment of thought and you will see that the choices are very few. Recently Brazil has been grooming its relationship with Iran. Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, the Iranian woman sentenced to be stoned to death for adultery was publicly offered asylum by the Brazilian government. That is, until Iran thanked Lula for his concern and told him to butt out. There have been other signs of a relationship between the countries, a relationship groomed to acquire Iranian technologies to explore the Pre Salt layer. The latest indication is the recognition of the Palestinian state.

Today Mahmoud Abbas threatened to dissolve the Palestinian Authority.

“(…)and lobby the United Nations to recognize Palestinian statehood, bypassing negotiations entirely. "I cannot accept to remain the president of an authority that doesn't exist."

Why did he Abbas make such a statement? did you guess ‘oil’? Here is how the dots connect: If Brazil now recognizes the Palestinian state in the UN, it will have more power to pass. Brazil recognized the Palestinian state because it was pressured to do so by Iran, so that Iran will provide Brazil with the technology to explore the pre-salt layer which contains… yes OIL.

Oil baby. It’s all about the oil. It has nothing to do with peace in the region, political and religious ideologies, history or any such thing. Only oil. But when you watch the interviews and the news they will all tell you that it’s in pursuit of peace in the region and the well being of the world’s population, saving the environment, stopping global warming, leaving a better legacy for our children and saving the whales. So maybe it actually is all about the bullshit… I’m off to put some cow manure in my tank and see how far I can drive. You can draw your own conclusions!

Bats! Bats everywhere

2010-11-29T14:40:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned in a previous post Everyone's gonne batty, there are bats downtown Porto Alegre. It's against the law to kill them. These are insect eating bats, no chance of mosquitoes tonight, and this was shot out my kitchen window. Anything you see moving in this shot is a bat, don't just focus on the foreground, look at the hundreds of bats in the sky in the background. This goes on for hours and they make a high pitched chirping noise that can be heard through closed windows. And you thought I was exaggerating.

bridging the gap

2010-11-27T07:23:00.000-08:00

... Sometimes I wonder if I deserve a dog...

BTW she wanted a fly buzzing on the window

Great victory for the 9/11 terrorists

2010-11-23T04:50:00.000-08:00

What was the ultimate goal of the 9/11 terrorists? To cause fear, to make Americans feel unsafe in their very homes. Well they were incredibly successful weren’t they? The latest proof comes in the form of body scanners and sexual molestation by TSA employees. If you are an American traveler you now have three choices 1. subject yourself to the humiliation of a revealing x-ray of your body, along with all the health risks x-rays may entail; if you refuse your next choice is 2. an extremely intrusive pat down by a TSA employee, the sort of molestation you would report as a sexual assault under any other circumstances; or if you refuse that 3. face legal charges for maintaining your dignity.

Well it seems to me that the 9/11 terrorists were victorious. Americans have given up their liberty, privacy and even their right to peaceful assembly due to the actions of those men. If that’s not a victory I don’t know what is.

By giving up our dignity, liberty, privacy and blindly kowtowing to the demands implemented without thought or planning by a government that boldfaced lied in order to go to war, we have in fact surrendered before the terrorists.

I’m guessing the Taliban somewhere now have an altar where they daily praise the TSA.

If these days strip searching a five year old boy doesn't cross the line or offend our sensibilities ask yourself who won? Each time we forfeit our liberties without a second thought, the terrorists have won. And by the way think about this: Anywhere else in our society a man running his hand up and down the inner thigh of a half naked five year old boy would be regarded as child abuse, but here it's perfectly acceptable. It's not abuse and it's not terror against the father of the child who had no choice but stand there and watch his son be molested. If that boy ever runs into a pedophile, all the animal will have to say is "it's just like at the airport son" to get full cooperation from his victim. But they are keeping us safe from terrorists... who exactly are the terrorists?

Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither. .... Benjamin Franklin

the pope's twisted logic

2010-11-23T03:18:00.000-08:00

According to the church the only occasion sex is not sinful is between a man and a woman, who were married in the catholic church having gone through some of the holy sacraments which include baptism, confirmation, confession and then marriage. Furthermore, the married couple can only have sex with the intent of procreating; any other reason for having sex is immoral, sinful and irresponsible. Working from the assumption that the entire world follows those edicts, the church has never condoned any sort of birth control. Until now. As you may have read recently the pope had the following to say:

"There could be single cases that can be justified, for instance when a prostitute uses a condom, and this can be a first step towards a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility, to develop again the awareness of the fact that not all is allowed and that one cannot do everything one wants," Benedict says in the book, "Light of the World: The Pope, the Church, and the Signs of the Times."

If in this man’s fucked-up logic condom use is justified when it will assist the user to develop a “first assumption of responsibility, develop again the awareness of the fact that not all is allowed and that one cannot do everything one wants” then it is reasonable to conclude that those conditions will exist whenever two or more people are having sex that does not comply with the restrictions stipulated by the church. According to the pope anyone having sex outside a strictly compliant catholic marriage with the intent of procreating must therefore use a condom in order to develop a “first assumption of responsibility, develop again the awareness of the fact that not all is allowed and that one cannot do everything one wants”

But if you’re in a strictly compliant catholic marriage and not trying to have another baby, you’re just shit out of luck, sorry.

Have you ever wanted something you could almost taste it?

2010-11-15T09:45:00.000-08:00

Saskia wants a fly that's trying to get out of the window.

have you ever wanted something this much? well apparently whining, wagging and growling will not work, try something different.

i didn't mean to call Bush a lying piece of shit...

2010-11-11T05:00:00.000-08:00

I love the internet. I love it has made the world a tiny little place. Occasionally I look at the statistics from my blog just to see where in the world readers are and I’m fascinated by the fact that people around the world somehow find my blog. People from places I’ve been and places I have yet to see, all read my blog.

Yesterday, for the first time someone from Washington D.C. accessed my blog. My Twitter account links directly to my blog and it just so happens that yesterday on Twitter I called George W. Bush a “lying piece of shit”. More precisely, this was the tweet:

Bush lying, says ex-German leader – politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/11/10/ex-… < Bush lying? the piece of shit has been lying since birth, how is this news CNN?

Now I’m flattering myself that some governmental institution monitors such comments and accessed my blog to ascertain whether I am some kind of threat or not. Of course it’s just speculation on my part, but just in case it’s true I would like to take this opportunity to set the record straight:

Dear CIA, I didn’t really mean that George W. Bush is a lying piece of shit, I'm sorry if I gave that impression. What I meant is: George W. Bush is an enormous pile of steaming runny dog shit on a hot sidewalk and that he lies constantly and has the IQ of a lobotomized fruit fly!

That’s all I really meant. Just to set the record straight... I would hate to be misunderstood

Time Traveler in 1928 Chaplin Premiere

2010-10-31T05:52:00.000-07:00

“When all other contingencies fail, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” – Sherlock Holmes

The internet is all a buzz with the video of a woman walking down the street talking on a cell phone… in 1928. The fact is that there is a video of a premiere of Chaplin’s movie The Circus that shows a person dressed as a woman holding her hand up to her ear and talking.
In all fairness, before I opine one way or the other, here is the original video with a pitch from the guy who spotted the discrepancy, he concludes that it as a time traveler who is talking on a cell-phone-like device.

I like Sherlock Holmes, he’s one of my favorite characters, and I agree with his statement that ‘when all other contingencies fail, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” That is reasonable and logical to me. My point of contention is that in this day and age people think they have considered all other contingencies and the only thing that was left is “time traveler with a cell phone”. Here are some contingencies that were not considered:

Alien talking to the mother ship
Resident of the lost city of Atlantis
1928 secret government stealth airplane, no wait that’s a different conspiracy
Maxwell Smart’s father in drag talking on a shoe phone.
Alien trying to talk to the mother ship, not getting through and mumbling “for this quality I could have AT&T”
Clairvoyant who saw into the future and is just messing with us.

And here is mine: It is an old woman, or a man dressed like an old woman. She is either cold or has seen the camera and does not want to be filmed so she holds her scarf up over her face. It’s a hefty sort of garment and she holds it up above her ear and covers her face shielding it form wind and prying lenses. You can see the black scarf pass through her hand drape around her neck and fall over her shoulder on the other side. Since it is a thick garment her hand wraps around it as she holds it up in a position similar to holding a cell phone.

It fascinates me that even CNN picked up the story. Well that is not so much a testament to the story’s veracity, but rather to the complete descent of CNN into the realm of credibility previously occupied only by FoxNews.

trust me, it's a typo

2010-10-24T04:42:00.000-07:00

“Hello, is this Bubah’s printing services?”

“Yes sir, what can I do you for?”

“It’s about this order of letterhead you printed for me"

“Yes sir, what’s the problem?”

“There are a couple of typos in the header.”

“That’s impossible, we always use a spell checker on all our jobs, and if there were any mistakes I’m sure it would have fixed them. No job gets by without the spell checker, ‘Quality first’ is our motto!”

“I’m looking at my own name and I ought to know whether it’s wrong!”

“Is your name Ryder?”

Yes, my name is Ryder, but my first name is Mick, with an M, not a D. And just so you know, my partner is coming down to your offices to express his displeasure in person. Later on today, when you are filing the inevitable restraining order, you should know that his name is spelled F-U-C-H-S. There is no K.

too often it goes without saying

2010-10-23T10:12:00.000-07:00

That I didn’t mean it goes without saying.

That I would take it back if I could, goes without saying.

That I am sorry certainly goes without saying.

That the fault is mine, that too goes without saying.

Things that go without saying should never remain unsaid

Irene: Renoir's poor little rich girl

2010-10-17T06:23:00.000-07:00

I have a replica of a Renoir painting called Irène Cahen d'Anvers. It’s an artagraph , a process where a computer scans the original and reproduces it down to the brushstrokes on canvas. Her angelic face and verdure background speak of happy, carefree times, of childish games and a loving fulfilled existence surrounded by beauty. For the better part of a decade she has personified idyllic existence on my wall. And during that time I have idealized her life as having been as beautiful as her portrait. So certain was I that her story was beautiful that I researched her life. Now I wish I hadn’t.

The painting is simply signed Renoir ’80, but it is famous enough that I knew her name before she was mine. Irene was 11 years old when she posed for Renoir and the portrait was completed in two sittings. She was the daughter of Louis Cahen d'Anvers a wealthy Jewish banker born in Belgium in 1837, died in Paris in 1922. Her mother was Louise de Morpurgo (1845-1926). Irene had two brothers Robert (1871-1931), and Charles (1879-1957), and two sisters Elisabeth (1874-1944) and Alice (1876-1965).

Renoir's Blue et Rose - Irene's sisters Elisabeth and Alice

Renoir painted a portrait of Irene and another of her sisters, that painting is now known as Rose et Blue and also as les demoiselles Cahen d'Anvers. And I think is equally famous and equally priceless as Irene. Elisabeth is blue and Alice is rose. When Renoir completed the canvases the Cahen d'Anvers hated them passionately and relegated them to the service area of the private hotel in Paris they called home. To add insult to injury they were late in paying Renoir for his services. A price had not been agreed upon before the work was completed and Renoir received 1,500 francs for the portraits. Even though it was more money than he had ever seen, it was significantly less than normally paid by this class of client for such services.

Irene's 1st husband Moïse de Camondo

Irene grew up in that wealthy aristocratic environment and when she was 19, on October 15, 1891 she married Moïse de Camondo. Who had arrived in Paris from the Ottoman Empire (Trurkey) at the age of 9 with his father (Nissim) and uncle (Abraham-Behor) who came to develop the family’s financial affairs in Europe. They were extremely wealthy bankers. Camondo was an avid 18 century French art collector, a style very much in vogue which probably explains the Irene’s family’s disdain for Renoir’s work.

Irene and her husband have two children. Nissim, named after his grandfather, is born in 1892, and Beatrice, born in 1894. Irene leaves her husband in 1902 and he keeps the children. She converts to Christianity and marries Count Charles Sampieri in 1903, who apparently headed her husband’s stables. That marriage also ends in 1924.

Beatrice and her brother Nissim the year he died

Irene’s son is a fighter pilot in WWI, and in September 1917, at the age of 25, he dies in an air combat at Meurthe-et-Moselle. When her ex-husband dies in 1935, most of his fortune goes to his (and Irene’s) daughter, Beatrice. He also bequeaths his Paris home and all of his art collection to establish the Musée Nassim de Camondo in honor of his son. Beatrice, Irene’s only surviving child marries Léon Reinach and has two children Fanny born in 1920 and Bertrand, born in 1923.

WWII starts and Europe is no longer safe for Jews. Irene’s sister Elizabeth (the one in the blue ribbon) had converted to Christianity 50 years prior, but her Jewish roots are discovered and she dies somewhere on her way to Auschwitz. Irene’s daughter, Beatrice and her two grandchildren die in Auschwitz in 1943, as does Beatrice’s husband. The Camondos, or the Reincach as they were, arrived in Auschwitz on November 25, 1944 and were immediately gassed along with 914 other people. Irene’s marriage to Charles Sampieri, her name change in 1903 and early conversion to Christianity apparently kept her safe from the Nazis and spared her the fate of her family. She spent the war years living very simply and quietly in a Parisian apartment.

In 1946, Renoir’s painting’ La petite fille au ruban bleu’ (little girl in a blue ribbon) is recognized by the model who sat for it. Irene manages to reclaim the stolen painting she hated and in 1949 she sells it at a Parisian gallery to Georg Bürhle. Today it can be seen at the Bürhle Foundation in Zurich.

Irene was the sole heir of her daughter’s estate. She inherited the Camondo fortune. She lived to be 91 and some say she squandered the entire fortune. I say that she simply discovered early in her life that money isn’t worth much and she spent the rest of her days spending it in search of some measure of happiness. She died in 1963.

p.s Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born 25 February 1841 and died 3 December 1919

Irene's family

the udder ring

2010-10-14T05:16:00.000-07:00

The Cow Parade is in Porto Alegre. Whenever I walk past a cow I stop to take a gander. Apparently a significant number of the cows has been vandalized. One was even stolen and returned the next day. It’s a sad reality in Brazil that there is no pride of ownership of public property: “If it’s public, it belongs to no one and I’m entitled to deface it.” Or perhaps there is too much pride of ownership of public property: “if it’s public, it is also mine and I’m entitled to deface it.” It depends on your point of view. But the result is always the same.

Walking by praça Julio de Castilho this weekend I stopped to look at the cow displayed there (pictured). It was a hip, modern sort of cow, it wore glasses, leg warmers and a nipple ring. - well, for the sake of accuracy, let’s call it an udder ring - The cow was intact except for the udder ring, which had been pried off and tossed on the pavement. I replaced the ring because first, it seemed like the proper thing to do and second, because how often do you get to say you replaced an udder ring?

But I walked away with two questions: what sort of person puts an udder ring on a cow? And the infinitely more disturbing question, what sort of person pulls it off?

The work is called: A Vaca Foi pro Beco by: Andrey Damo, sponsored by: Mumu, on display at Praça Julio de Caslilho in Porto Alegre. Here is a link to all the cows http://www.cowparade.com.br/poa/galeria.php

hanging out in Brazil

2010-10-12T06:08:00.001-07:00

It’s a foregone conclusion that Brazilian women wear bras and that lingerie stores in Brazil sell bras. It’s an obvious assumption that you can come to Brazil and purchase a bra. You shouldn’t even have to speak Portuguese to purchase a bra, you simply enter the store find a bra you like, find your size and… Well that’s where it gets complicated. In order to actually find a bra your size you must, without exception or deviation, be a cup size B. Only B cup sized bras are sold in Brazil. You probably think I exaggerate. But I don’t mean that most bras sold in Brazil are B cups, I actually mean that ONLY B cups are available for sale in Brazil, exclusively! If you are a 44C you have to buy a 46B or 48B and make do. In fact, if you are Brazilian, not knowing any better, you will naturally think that 48B is your bra size. If you are a 46D you are doomed to live your entire life stuffed into a B cup. If you are a DD your only option is a B cup! I kid you not!

Of course I had questions for the poor, blameless, unwitting sales ladies. In the first store she told me that she had, in the past, seen a few bras that had the letter C instead of the normal B, but she didn’t have any of those in the store. She had a hidden talent for expression and managed to verbally italicize the word ‘those’. In the next store the sales lady didn’t know bras came with any other letter than B, she didn’t know B was the cup size, she simply thought it was a letter they put on bra tags. Mind you, the word for bra in Portuguese does not start with the letter ‘b’.

There was a quick piece on a variety show about Brazilian women wearing the wrong bras. What do you think the show was about? Did you guess wrong bra sizes? You guessed wrong. Apparently Brazilian women wear the wrong bras not because they all wear B cups, but because when they dress they choose strapped bras when they should have gone strapless, or regular when they should have gone push up, colors, textures etc. Nothing about cup sizes! Cup sizes are simply nonexistent in Brazil, no one has ever heard of the concept.

I miss California at a whole different level now.

This blog was brought to you by the letters A, C, and D, and by the number zero.

Everyone's gone batty

2010-10-04T10:35:00.000-07:00

Living in downtown Porto Alegre is not for the faint hearted. I refer to you to the “human sausage” post for more evidence, and if that is not enough by all means read on. One evening sitting in the living room I heard a high pitched squeak sound from the service area. After much searching I discovered it was coming from outside. Just outside the window, flying between the buildings were hundreds of small insect eating bats. They were making the high pitched noise. I stood at the window and watched them for some time, they were very beautiful. Apparently some high ranking official also thought they were beautiful sometime in the past because there is a law against killing them. At first it sounds like a great law, it keeps the insect population under control and preserves nature. And I love nature. More precisely: I love nature outside my house, nature inside my house, not so much.

Here is how the Great Bat Alarm of 2010 went down:
Me: there are bats in the air conditioner in your room.
Mom: there are no bats.
Me: there are bats in the air conditioner.
Mom: there are no bats! Stop that.
Me: there are bats in the air conditioner.
Mom: that’s nice dear, off you go.
Saskia: Sniff Sniff. Bark Bark Bark!! Can I please, pleeeaaase have the bats in the air conditioner? Please? Just one?
Mom: What do you mean there are bats in the air conditioner? That’s awful, why didn’t you say something? We have to do something about that!
Me: *sigh*

There really is no point in killing a bat that has nested in your air-conditioning unit, if you kill the current resident, someone else will soon move in. And there is really not much point in killing bats that move into the box that houses the mechanism for your roll-up shades, another solution had to be found. The bats moved in, partied all night and apparently were all male because they drank lots of beer and peed indiscriminately all over the place. Or so it seemed based on the smell emanating from the roll-up shade mechanism.

The air conditioning manufacturer had an off the shelf solution for bats inside the units. They came out, cleaned the units, installed an external housing around each unit and presto. Bats-be-gone. By the way, the housing was installed by dangling a man by his ankles out the window. Harnesses? We don’t need no stinking harnesses!

(This is the second time he dangled, he was further out of the window the first time around, but I didn’t have a camera.)

The roll up shade manufacturer said: “Bats? Yes, that’s a common problem downtown. Learn to live with it, have a nice day, call us if you need anything else. On second thought, don’t call us, we don’t really care.”

I devised, what I think is an ingenious solution to the problem. Mom found a guy who was willing to build it and install it for an enormous amount of money and some prevarication that apparently passes for normal in Brazil. The nifty gadget keeps the bats out and allows the shade to roll up and down.
The man installed the gadget and cleaned out the roll-up shade boxes, this is what he found: (insert imaginary psycho music here)That was in the library. Here's what he found in the living room!

YIKES!!!

Everyone has heard of samba and Carnaval, but a little examined aspect of Brazilian culture is the annoying complacency that is endemic to the country. Most apartments downtown Porto Alegre have this type of roll-up shades. My gadget is of my own invention, there is nothing in the market that will keep bats out of the roll-up boxes…. people here have bats in their houses, have been told to live with them and seem to be happy to do so!!! It’s an extreme expression of the cultural complaisance found here. If something is not working, first you look for a way around it, if you can’t find a way around it, learn to live with it! i.e. dangling a man out of a window with no safety precautions is something you live with. God forbid anyone should suggest that a thing be changed or fixed so that it works properly. For decades the Brazilian motto was: “if you are up to your neck in shit, don’t make waves!” and the country resembled Elbonia.

The thing is: in the 90’s most of the shit was drained out of the country, it is now only waist deep and we have to make waves in order to drain the rest out! START COMPLAINING PEOPLE.

Visual Texture

2010-09-30T07:00:00.001-07:00

Click images to enlarge

I love the public market in Porto Alegre. I always have. I love the textures you find inside. The visual texture in this place is mesmerizing. The infinite multitude of merchandise on display, the uneven illumination from the stands filtered through sausages, salted cod, fruits, people, and a century of dinge is congealed by the overhead daylight into a visual texture that exists nowhere else. It’s unique to this space.

The details of the wares being sold, the blend of people from all walks of life, the display lights, the architecture, history and filth, the stories in the faces of people who have worked there forever, the various degrees of cleanliness, it all comes together into a singlular personality that is held together by light. The light in the Porto Alegre Public Market is unique and it fascinates me!
The market has all the elements I hate about public places: crowds, smells, noise, dirt and questionable maintenance, I would rather pee my pants than use a bathroom there. However, all of that comes together under a specific quality of light, a blend of visual textures that mix to create a persona, a personality that would be diminished if any of its faults were removed. It always welcomes me when I walk in, it says to me “hi, remember me? I’ve missed you. You’re not in a hurry are you? Take a look at this…” and I’m hooked, I could spend all day looking at what it wants to show me.

cool gathers no dust

2010-09-27T05:27:00.000-07:00

The other day, for no good reason, I wanted to use the word “swell”, I thought it would be a swell thing to do. So I took out a dust rag and started to dust “swell” off, which was no easy feat. I had to get the rag between the two l’s and give it a few buffs before the accumulated grime budged. The groves in the w were also problematic, but after a while, with the aid of some lemon pledge, “swell” looked brand new and ready for use. It felt almost like a historic moment, I knew “swell” hadn’t been used since the 50’s. Its last official appearance had, in fact, been in an "I Love Lucy" episode, I thought the event might even make it into the local 6 o’clock news. Except that I couldn’t do it. I had the newly polished “swell” on the tip of my tongue, I was ready to make history with the utterance and then I tasted “swell”. I would have expected “swell” to taste like lemon pledge after using half a canister on it, but no. It tasted stale and it felt a little like cobwebs in my mouth and at the decisive moment “swell” never came out, instead “cool” made its regular appearance. I think the reason “cool” is still around and “swell” died off is simply that the double o’s in “cool” gather less dust than the w and double l’s in “swell”. Language is a living thing and it’s continuously evolving. But here is a little known fact: the evolution of language is a derivative of our willingness to dust.

Now you know!

(I know that many linguists out there will want to use this theory for their doctorate dissertations, all I ask is that you don’t give me credit)

The world without chocolate Booga Booga

2010-09-24T10:08:00.000-07:00

A tweet by Brent Spiner recently used the term "Booga Booga" and it made me smile. At the same time it made me consider what would thrill me in the sense that the expression implies, with a childish fright of a monster under the bed. I’ve come to terms with the destruction of our environment and the inevitable and imminent collapse of humanity, that no longer gives me pause; and if the destruction of humanity no longer thrills me in the Booga Booga sense, I imagined that little would. I pondered the issue for a while and eventually I found something: Witch’s Broom. No, not the kind of witch’s broom flown by a cartoon version of Elizabeth Montgomery in the opening credits of Bewitched. But rather the fungal disease that is threatening to wipe chocolate off the face of the earth.

a healthy cocoa fruit

The cocoa tree was originally domesticated in Central America. The Mayans were fond of a cocoa derived drink some 1500 years ago, the conquistadors brought chocolate to Europe and we have all been addicted ever since. Fungal infections such as witch’s boom have completely decimated cocoa production in its native land. The fungal spores can be spread by wind and through direct contact and can quickly eradicate cocoa production in vast areas. In a recent visit to Ilheus in the north of Brazil I had the opportunity to visit a cocoa farm that had been destroyed by witch’s broom, there was nothing left. Throughout the nineteenth century Ilheus and surroundings produced and exported a third of the world’s raw material for chocolate. In doing business with Europe and the world, the city was incredibly wealthy and sophisticated, as described in the novels of a local resident Jorge Amado, whose works have been translated into most languages these days. Today Ilheus produces no cocoa and its past grandeur has given way to dilapidation and poverty, all due to – you guessed it – witch’s broom.

a cocoa fruit with witch's broom

Once a region is affected by witch’s broom there is no cure, there is no pesticide or spray that will do away with the fungus. Scientists are frantically working on genetically altered cocoa trees that are able to withstand the infestation. The greatest fear is that such funguses will cross the Atlantic Ocean and destroy the crops in West Africa. Around 70% of the world’s chocolate comes from West Africa and the trees there have no immunity to witch’s broom. The world’s supply of chocolate is one careless farmer or one uninformed tourist away from being completely destroyed. I bet you didn’t know that. Booga Booga!

Khufu: Irony at its best, biggest and smallest

2010-09-23T09:48:00.000-07:00

When we think of the great figures in history, from Caesar to Napoleon we conjure up their likenesses from images of statues or paintings. Napoleon and his odd looking hat masterfully painted on canvas, Caesar and his laurel wreath perpetually carved in marble are familiar to us, we think of their deeds and names and in our mind’s eye we see their faces. However the image of the man responsible for the largest and most iconic building in the history of humanity is relatively unknown to us. We speak of Khufu and his great pyramid and the scholarly among us might imagine the cartouche of his name, but few conceive of his face. Every school child has heard of the pyramids of Egypt, and knows that the great pyramid is the last standing the seven wonders of the ancient world. Few know that it was built by the second pharaoh of the fourth dynasty, Khufu; and even fewer people, when speaking of the pyramid, are able to conjure up a likeness of Khufu. That is simply because no representation of Khufu has survived the millennia, except for a miniscule three inch ivory statue.

A renowned English archeologist by the name of Flinders Petrie is credited with finding the only existing likeness of Khufu. Imagine, if you will, Petrie sitting in his tent at an excavation at the temple of Abydos 700 kilometers from the great pyramid. It has been a long day and he is perfunctorily examining an insignificant statue. The statue is only noteworthy for being carved in ivory rather than stone. The year is 1903 and in the poor lighting of his tent he discerns the name Khufu on the lower right edge of the statue. He is holding the only existing likeness of one of the greatest figures in history, but there is a small problem, a very small problem, in fact a problem less than one inch long. The head of the statue is missing. All excavations are halted and for the next three weeks no one does anything unrelated to finding the missing head of Khufu. After much frantic and desperate sieving of sand and rubble, Khufu’s head is found, his image is revealed for the first time to the modern world.
Khufu’s statue is currently housed in a little visited corner of the Egyptian Museum. There is no fanfare; a small spotlight shines over the miniature Khufu in a display cabinet sitting against a wall. Khufu, in his day, was the most powerful man in the world and yet we know very little about the man, from his appearance to how he built his pyramid, uncertainly is our only foundation. We will never know whether early one morning, one of his advisers turned to him and said “I’m sorry sir, but what you propose is impossible”, or whether Khufu himself turned to his architect and said “You want to build what?” But we do know that he invested his life and resources in an eternal afterlife, that he may have been unfamiliar with the mathematical concept of zero and that he was certainly unfamiliar with the practical concept of the impossible.

Nowadays we contemplate Khufu’s pyramid and we are flabbergasted by the work, the man-hours pulling and quarrying stones to build such a structure, but we seldom stop to consider the logistics required just to get enough people and resources in one location to even consider the project. Following the upheaval of earlier dynasties, Khufu’s reign was a peaceful and prosperous time for Egypt. The time was ripe for a large scale social organization and standardization of resources required for the implementation of a project of such pharaonic proportions. We now estimate that perhaps 20,000 people worked at one time on Khufu’s pyramid. This large number of people had to be housed, fed, trained, organized, given tools and the basic necessities of life. It is likely that the organization for the project comprised a number of full time workers who dedicated their entire lives to supervising and planning the building of the pyramid and a number of farmers who only worked on the site while the Nile was in flood. The workers where efficiently organized into larger groups called phyles (tribe in Greek) and then into smaller subgroups of 10 to 20 workers. They lived in the village of the Workers, as it has come to be called, and there is evidence that workers ate extremely well judging by the types of animal bones found on the site, and they received the best medical care judging from the healed fractures of workers buried on the site. The village had to provide the resources and manpower to produce ceramics as well as construction tools (mortar, metal and stone tools), administration functions such as accounting and work/housing assignment, grain storage and religious, medical and mortuary facilities, housing, legislation, transportation and clothing for all the workers and their families. The scope is daunting, for each necessity met, materials and professionals had to be made available. A sewer system was built and maintained, potters worked around the clock to provide molds for baking bread, which implies that clay had to be provided by someone, flour, water and yeast for the bread had to come from somewhere, cloth had to be woven and delivered to tailors, cattle and sheep had to be shipped over the river to be slaughtered and cooked, magistrates had to resolve legal suits, priests and tomb builders ministered to the dead and so forth. Each of the activities had to be timely or the entire system would collapse.

Nothing about Khufu was small; everything about him was larger than life. He achieved immortality and the impossible with his pyramid. With the only remaining likeness of him, an ivory miniature, Khufu achieved the greatest irony in history: the man responsible for the most colossal monument in the history of humanity is in fact only depicted by the smallest royal Egyptian sculpture ever found. His pyramid is 481 feet tall while his only existing likeness is a mere 3 inches. What, then is the greatest lesson our current leaders could learn from Khufu? Simply that if you want to achieve immortality and eternal fame, don’t erect statues of yourself in public spaces, build yourself a pyramid.

Today the Village of the Workers is the domain of Egyptologist Mark Lehner who has been working at the site for some years now. Most of what we know we owe to him. Recently the filling of a canal that ran the length of the city has caused water to rise in the site, quickly deteriorating everything.

Lehner and his team backfilled the site with clean sand to protect it from erosion and are now working closer to the Wall of the Crow, which surrounded the ancient town. Some of the town now lies under a modern cemetery and a soccer field belonging to the city.

The entrance to the Village can be seen on the left side of the Wall of the Crow.

Below are some of the tombs for the pyramid workers. Dr. Hawass, who is not shy about taking credit for all the work that takes place in Giza, is always quick to point out that if the pyramids had been built by slaves, their tombs would never have been located so near the pyramid. Pyramid workers were free people of significant social rank.

the day the telephone almost never was

2010-09-20T09:25:00.000-07:00

The fated historic moment is before us, a voice is heard saying:
“Mr. Watson -- come here -- I want to see you."
There is a pause and everything becomes silent. Alexander Graham Bell becomes a little disoriented and his surrounding a little hazy. A nasal voice comes over the wire:
“Hello? Mr. Bell?”
“Yes, I’m Alexander Graham Bell, who is this? What is going on?
The woman’s voice responds “Ah, Mr. Bell, yes, this is Marcy with your new ice delivery company, we have opened a new branch in your neighborhood.”
Bell, now a little dizzy “What, where am I?”
Marcy continues in a monotone voice “Mr. Bell I’m calling to know whether you are happy with your current ice delivery service. Is this a good time for you, I could call back some other time, what time is good for you?”
Bell shuffles his feet to adjust his balance, he looks that the invention before him. “This is not possible, it’s impossible”
Marcy’s monotone voice continues as if reading from a book “impossible… yes. Well, here at IcePick we try to make everything possible for you. Would you be interested in trying our ice for a week for half price? We have the coldest ice in the market.”
Bell, momentarily surrenders to the surreal and responds “No, no ice, I don’t understand what’s happening…”
Marcy continues: “We all need ice Mr. Bell, don’t turn down this great offer before you’ve heard what we are giving you. If you buy a one year service today I can give you a 30% discount and if you act now you get a free ice pick for picking IcePick. The free ice pick is yours to keep even if you decide to cancel your ice deliveries. You get to keep it forever, a free gift for trying our services…” Marcy’s voice trails off babbling something about a price guarantee.

Graham Bell’s eyes regain focus and he sees Mr. Watson storming into the room congratulating him and grabbing their coats to set off immediately to the patent office. Alexander Graham Bell sits down, rests his head on his hands and slowly answers: “We first have to stop by the church, I have a terrible feeling I should pray for my immortal soul before I patent this invention…”

god is actually a dog

2010-09-05T05:43:00.000-07:00

What if god is actually a dog? Think about it. Every religion has the unmitigated egocentricity to claim god created man in his own image. I’m proposing a different theory, god is a dog. He created dogs in his own image and humans were created just so dogs would have people.

God looked down one day and thought the world was perfect, dogs were perfect, but some dogs were better than others. The best dogs were more faithful to god than bad dogs. God decided that good dogs should be rewarded, they should be pampered and loved, so god created humans to serve those dogs. The better the dog, the better a human he got. Stray and abused dogs are undeserving in the eyes of god and therefore don't get a home and a human.

And following Fox News logic, and in honor of Genn Beck's dog given intelligence, I shall prove my theory by offering this irrefutable evidence (imagine this on a blackboard):

G-O-D backwards is D-O-G! Coincidence? I think not!

The space between Julianne Moore’s thighs

2010-09-03T07:14:00.000-07:00

I was pondering titles for this blog and that one made me laugh, so shamelessly and unabashedly, there it is.

Bulgari came out with some billboards featuring a scantily clad Julienne Moore surrounded by icons of the exotic and luxurious. I’m not Bulgari’s target audience and so in daily life I am as aware of their existence as they are of mine, and I am as concerned for their advertising as they are for my breakfast choices. Zilch! However, an article caught my eye, not because of Bulgari but rather because it commented on the reluctance of Venice’s mayor to post a Bulgai billboard on the Doge’s Palace. Since no billboard belongs anywhere near the Doge's Palace I clicked on the article and found an image of Julianne Moore reclined on a divan, naked, petting two lion cubs. Nudity doesn’t offend me. The current trend to airbrush women into distorted unrecognizable mutants does.

In this image, Julianne Moore’s thighs don’t meet! In order for her knees to meet at the angle portrayed in this picture, her pelvis would have to be a meter wide! What’s more, lion cubs don’t smile! The image prompted me to look at the other images in the series.

In this shot Julienne Moore had managed to show the camera the back of her left shoulder and the front of her hair draped right shoulder. Either Mrs. Moore counts contortionist among her many talents and charms, or she broke her collar bone and dislocated both shoulders for the shoot. What dedication!
How exactly does distorting women help to sell luxury products? I may not be the target audience for these ads. But I defy anyone looking at an image of a woman with two dislocated shoulders, a broken collar bone and missing the lower three vertebrae of her spine to think “wow, I need a new $3,000 purse”.

It makes you wonder if people who pay $7,000 for a purse have such a distorted image of the world that they actually prefer to see distorted people in advertising...

P.S what the hell is going on with her right hand? The bird is sitting on her right thumb and an unnatural growth on the palm of her hand. It looks like she suffers from mild elephantiasis on her right hand, strange that we never noticed that in her movies.... good grief!

Paulo Coelho and the platitude from hell

2010-08-30T05:14:00.000-07:00

“You drown not by falling into a river, but by staying submerged in it”

Paulo Coelho (@paulocoelho) just tweeted that horrific platitude this morning. I had to unfollow him the last time he tweeted something like that. I forgave and mostly forgot and started following him again. Now he comes up with that gem. I understand the allusion and may I just say that "you smell not by taking a dump, but by failing to wipe it!"

It's not that the platitude is offensive, but rather that my expectations were high.
Coelho is a wonderful author, surely such platitudes are beneath him. Or maybe not.

Being a goddess is not easy

2010-08-29T07:21:00.000-07:00

My min pin Titus used to think I could make the sun shine. Truly he did. On a cloudy day he would stand where the sun usually shone in the house and beg me to turn it on. It makes sense, I made heat when he was cold, I made cold when he was hot, I provided water and food, I made pain go away, I scratched impossible to reach places, I soothed in times of stress, I produced dog biscuits on demand, I came home with a roasted chicken in a bag, I produced a blanket on winter nights, I could open the front door, why then should I not turn on the sun? He always seemed a little disappointed when I failed to give him sun on cloudy days, and I always felt like a lesser deity for that failure. Being a goddess has its drawbacks. People never ascribe limitations to their gods and apparently neither do dogs. The difference is that I’m more powerful and infinitely more benevolent than any man-made god. Has god ever scratched behind your ear? – I thought not.

Porto Alegre - what was that street name again?

2010-08-26T10:54:00.000-07:00

Having lived all of my life in California, I now know my way around Porto Alegre instinctively. A sort of survival instinct I must have developed as a child in order to return home if ever I was lost. Save for perhaps a half dozen, I don’t know the names of any streets. This morning I had a doctor’s appointment at a building at the corner of Mostardeiro and Miguel Tostes, I took public transportation there. From my house it’s almost a straight line to my destination and these are streets familiar to me, I used to walk them as a child.

The problem is that I remember them as a child. “Miguel Tostes” is meaningless to me. I know that street as "the one with the Nacional supermarket where my grandmother used to shop". Or if you prefer as “that street where they kept the historic old house in front and erected a large modern building behind it”. My doctor’s office, by the way, is in that very building.

Since I couldn’t remember the name of the street I asked my mother, and she informed me that Miguel Tostes was actually a relative of mine. He was a doctor and was married to my great grandmother’s sister. Well, I was impressed and surprised by the story. It's all fine and dandy, but the sad part is that tomorrow I won’t remember the name of the damned street!!! I should have learned these names when I was a kid!

Human sausage in 1863 Porto Alegre (no, really! true story)

2010-08-24T12:09:00.000-07:00

Porto Alegre has a tradition of anecdotes and storytelling, I think it stems from the cowboy heritage of sitting around a campfire in the evenings of cattle drives with little more to do than eat and tell stories. Since moving here last week I have felt an urge to tell the tale of one of its most gruesome and fantastic stories. The tale is not new it has been told countless times in newspapers and books, nor is it recent, it took place in 1863. If stripped of all details the story is as old as time: murder for profit. But this story has a twist: cannibalism.

In 1863 Porto Alegre was a small town, most of its streets were unpaved, the poor street lighting was provided by fish oil lanterns that generated soot and smelled bad. The streets a couple of blocks downhill from the noble part of town were dark, unpaved, lacking in plumbing and covered in filth. The crimes took place on one such street, Arvoredo Street.

A ne'er-do-well by the name of Jose Ramos lives in a small rented house on Arvoredo Street with a woman by the name of Catarina Palse. He is the son of a military deserter and as a child was fascinated by his father’s war stories, especially those involving the decapitation of enemies on the battlefield (a common practice in the War of the Farrapos). As a young man he stabs his drunken father to death in defense of his battered mother. He runs away to another city and is employed as a military police officer, until he is caught in the act of decapitating a prisoner in his cell. He is discharged and becomes a police informer in Porto Alegre. Catarina Palse is of German descent, born in Hungary. At the age of 12 she suffers atrocities at the hands of the invading Russian army and her family is murdered. At 15 she marries Peter Palse and they move to Brazil to escape abject poverty. Her husband hangs himself during the trip and she arrives in Porto Alegre alone. There these two damaged creatures come together and are joined the third accomplice, a butcher named Carlos Claussner.

Ramos has a penchant for living outside his means and music, he also finds a great deal of joy and satisfaction in killing people. He combines his passions and starts killing people for the money they carry. It was common at the time for people to carry most of their monetary worth in their pockets, especially when traveling for business. At first he is cautions, he cannot give in entirely to his passion for fear of being caught and hung. But Claussner, who owns a butcher shop, comes up with a brilliant plan for disposing of the bodies. He would make sausage out of Ramos’s victims and there would be no evidence left of the crime.

Given a method for impunity, Ramos goes on the hunt. One of his favorite hunting grounds is the area around the city’s public market, he looks for business travelers or wealthy women from out of town. He spends time charming his victim who is then invited to dinner at his house on Arvoredo St. The victim is served a sumptuous meal and plenty to drink. After dinner Ramos excuses himself momentarily and returns with a hatchet and a dagger. His modus operandi is to split the skull with the hatchet and decapitate with the dagger. Catarina cleans the blood stains, Claussner and an accomplice named Henrique cut the body into pieces and transport it in two wooden trunks to the butcher shop. The bodies were either transported on a hired cart or by two hired slaves.

“The butcher debones the meat and grinds it on a small machine. Seasons the meat with salt, pepper and other spices. Takes the dried whole intestine, ties one end with a string. In the open end he inserts a tube through which he inserts the minced meat. When the intestine is filled he ties the other end with a string. ” “The bones are incinerated in the butcher shop yard and the ashes discarded in the Guaiba river.” [from “O Maior Crime da Terra by Decio Freitas]

The sausages were mixed with bovine meat on a cart and sold around town. The butcher was instructed to offer the sausage at a reduced price at the homes of the president of the province, the chief of police, the bishop and other prominent citizens including wealthy merchants, the remainder was sold at the butcher’s shop. There was a high demand since not many places made sausages in town.

The night before the sausage is sold Claussner and Ramos have Catarina fry some for dinner. The rest is sold the following day. In all cases they sampled the sausage before it was sold. The butcher’s customers called it “special sausage” because they thought it was more flavorful than other sausages, and complained when none was available for sale. Sometimes Claussner would take orders for future batches.

After each murder Ramos follows an obsessive ritual. He recites a biblical psalm, eats heartily but alone, he shaves and takes a long bath. He then dresses meticulously in the finery his activities have afforded him and puts on an exaggerated amount of cologne to offset the stench of the streets. He was later called the “Perfumed Monster”. He orders a carriage and goes to the Sao Pedro theater a few blocks way. After the murders he always felt artistic and following this ritual would declare himself cleansed. The Sao Pedro theater is in the noblest part of town and there he hobnobs with the highest society. His manner of dress and address makes him welcome in that circle in spite of his low origins.

In September 1863 Claussner tells Ramos he has had enough. His customers keep commenting on the odd tasting sausage, even while finding it delicious. Claussner is afraid of getting caught and declares he will no longer participate and that he is moving to Montevideo. Ramos is afraid that once Claussner is safely tucked away in Uruguay he might rat him out with an incriminating letter to the police. So in a dark evening he goes to the Claussner’s apartment over the butcher shop and splits his skull with a hatchet while he sleeps. He chops the body into pieces and uses two of the victim’s trunks to transport it to his house on Arvoredo St. where Clausssner is buried in the yard. Ramos ransacks the butcher shop for valuables and tells everyone that he won the lottery and that Claussner moved to Uruguay and left him the butcher shop. His story becomes inconsistent and the police start to suspect foul play.

With his partner gone, Ramos is no longer able to properly dispose of his victims and the next few are buried in the yard or the basement of the house. Eventually a victim is seen entering the house and never leaving and an investigation finds Claussner and a few other bodies on his property. He is tried for those murders but escapes the noose. He is never tried for the murders of 1863 or for selling special sausage to the public. After years of incarceration he managed a sort of prison work furlough where he worked in the city’s public hospital as a nursing aid. He was known for sitting vigil with the dying. Both he and Catarina lived to be old and free and the case of the sausages was covered up by missing and poor documentation. Probably because the local elite did not want to be reminded that they had been unwitting cannibals.

Arvoredo St today is called Fernando Machado St. All of the information in this post is taken from a book called “O Maior Crime da Terra” (The Greatest Crime on Earth) written by Decio Freitas, published by Editora Sulina in 1998, out of print. Decio Freitas’ research is thorough and his book is filled with fascinating details and cultural references of the time.

This story fascinates me for a couple of reasons. It took place some four blocks from where I live and every morning I walk my dog past the same church Ramos attended every morning, and past the Sao Pedro theater he attended after each murder. Ramos, in his embittered and vengeful state preferred to sell the sausages to the upper classes of the city’s society, a very small group to which my great grandmother’s parents belonged at the time. Because their portraits have hung on a wall all of my life, their names and faces have always been familiar to me, and I was fortune to know my great grandmother personally, I feel close to them and cringe at the thought that they might have been Ramos’ unwitting clients. My great grandmother was such a proper lady… I wonder what her reaction would have been. I choose to think she never knew anything about the story.

Andradas st. one of the wealthy parts of town

Arvoredo st. a few years after the crimes

The newly build jail house, where Ramos was first sent

Porto Alegre Public Market, one of his hunting grounds.

Matriz sq. the noblest section of town with government buildings the cathedral

Sao Pedro theater in those days (also on Matriz sq.)

can we win if no one loses?

2010-08-22T14:05:00.000-07:00

Can we win if no one else loses? In our commercial, free-market capitalist society we are brought up to win and our victories are always measured against someone else’s loss. We have been brain washed to win when playing games, taking tests, practicing sports and other such activities that keep numerical scores. Once we’ve learned how to keep score we apply the concept to other activities in our lives that have no visible score: dating, dressing, driving, religion, jobs are all activities in which we compare ourselves to others in order to determine our obvious superiority. Thinner, fatter, more expensive, better label, pricier store, newer car, trendy, latest fashion, our society is based on comparisons that determine a winner. But there are enormous victories to be had at nobody’s expense, victories that require no comparison to others. A beach side sunset is just as splendorous when admired from the hood of a 15 year old clunker as from the deck of a Malibu beach house. The ability to enjoy the sunset and take pleasure in the moment is the victory not the Malibu deck.

You are not better than anyone else, your religion is not better than all others and your child is not the culmination of human evolution! But if you are happy, your religion brings you peace and your child is the love of your life, then your victory is all encompassing and permanent. All the comparisons and scores in the world could not take it from you.

Treasure the victories in your life that have no losers or comparisons, they are true and real.

Does anyone know what this is? Peruvian pottery

2010-08-22T11:01:00.000-07:00

I have often wondered what this item might be. I was told it’s Peruvian, but I would love more information about which culture and time period it might belong to. Does anyone out there know?

It may be a reproduction, but of what?

Death and Windows Vista

2010-08-11T12:11:00.000-07:00

A middle-aged woman sitting on the beach watching the sun set. The beach is completely deserted on a windy winter day. Seemingly out of nowhere a dark figure appears and sits next to her. She is not startled, only people who feel hope and have something to lose are startled, that was not her case.

She glances at the new arrival and immediately recognizes him. His presence annoys her, he's early. She breaks the silence: "Seriously, a black cloak and a sickle? In this day and age isn't the sickle a bit much?"
"Well, perhaps... but I've had it so long I've grown accustomed to it."
This annoys her even further ""Accustomed to it?" What are you Henry Higgins now?"
Death is a bit flustered by her annoyance, he could handle fear and terror but he had never been merely annoying. "It's tradition you know, and It makes a handy toothpick and backscratcher, er...you have to be careful with that though."
In full blown annoyance mode the woman demands "what are you doing here?"
A little more defensively than he would have liked death explains "well, you were planning to walk into the ocean and swim until you drowned..."
"I was, but I haven't yet! Aren't you supposed to wait until I'm dead? Fetch me in the middle of the ocean or something?"
"The water is cold, and my work order says that in just a few meters out you get dragged under by an undertow and drown. I figured I would be saving time if you came right now."
Her annoyance had reached new levels and she was almost yelling now: " Saving time? You can't save time, what's wrong with you? You're death, time is meaningless to you!"
"Well, I'm just a reaper... I work for death"
"I don't care what you are!" She paused pensively, "did you say you have a work order?"
"Yes, I do." He replied as he held out a single sheet of printed paper, which flapped in the wind. "I have a quota to meet, I have to fill three more work orders by the end of the night, so can we move this along?"
Her annoyance, now subsided is replaced by curiosity. "Why do you feel you need to save time?"
The reaper sighs deeply: " The system is slow, it was down for two hours and now it's just crawling along. All the jobs are late."
"The system?" she asked now in a calm voice.
With a sense of urgency in his voice the reaper explains "we used to have a manual system, you got a booklet of vouchers and filled in the name and situation on the fly, during the job. It was easy, we had plagues, famine, natural disasters and the job ran smoothly. In China they still use the voucher system, lucky bastards."
"What system are you using?"
"Well, we are still running Vista... There was a request for an upgrade to Windows 7, but there isn't much money in death... it's just not in the budget."
The woman was feeling much better now. "I've changed my mind"
"What?"
"I've changed my mind, I'm not walking into the ocean."
"You can't change your mind, I've already issued the work order! I'll drag you in if I have to!"
"Does your work order say I was dragged into the ocean and drowned?"
"No, I would have to change that in the system... Shit, that would take all night"
The woman reaches over and slowly grabs the work order out of the reaper's hand, he watches with a depressed look on his face. She tears the paper in four and tosses the bits into the wind and smiles at them as they fly away.
The reaper is almost in tears now "I'll have to cancel the work order, it will take days!"
"You can tell them that the system froze while you were generating the work order and you only got a partial print, and that you need a new work order."
The reaper now has tears in his eyes: "Are you sure... couldn't you... I mean, it would really help me out..." as he points to the water.
The woman stands up "Sorry, no! I'm going home. At least I have Windows 7... that's something. Not much, but it's something."
The reaper gets up and slowly walks towards the water.

a modern problem

2010-08-08T14:01:00.000-07:00

"The wedding is off!"
"What?"
"The wedding is off!"
"You can't be serious, the guests are sitting in the pews!"
"The - wedding - is - off!"
"John! Helen is in the next room getting ready to walk down the isle, are you insane?"
"I'm perfectly sane and the wedding is off!"
"You love her, you've been planning this for over a year, it cost her father over 40 thousand dollars! Stop joking around. Buck up, let's do this!"
"I got a note from Helen a few minutes ago. She wrote it on perfumed paper... she says she loves me... "
"Of course she loves you, your parents love her, her parent love you, everybody loves everybody, let's get out there!"
"You didn't see the note... you don't understand!"
"Let me see it - It's a lovely note, what's wrong with you? I understand that you are insane! Her father will kill you if you're late."
"She had never written anything to me before... you see? In the five years we've known each other, this is the first thing she wrote me. Did you see it?'
"John, buddy what are you talking about? Did I see what?"
"Do you remember Kathy Conner from high school? Remember why I broke up with her?
"Well, she was annoying and whinny as hell!"
"Yes she was! I broke up with her because she kept drawing smiley faces on my notebook!"
"Smiley faces?
"Yes, didn't you see the yearbook?"
"John, are you insane?"
"I mean, we've texted and emailed, we posted on Facebook, she keeps a blog! Did you read about the wedding plans on her blog?"
"I did, she writes very well, the note is beautiful, what are you talking about?"
"She never wrote me anything by hand...I mean, everything was typed, or posted or e-mailed!"
"You're scaring me John!"
"The 'i's!!! Did you see the letter i's on the note?"
"John, get a grip, sit down! Stop pacing around the room!"
"She dots her i's with little hearts, I never knew that about her! I can't marry a woman who dots her i's with hearts! The wedding is off!"

It could be worse

2010-08-07T06:02:00.000-07:00

I was reading a magazine the other day and I saw a picture of a park bench. It was a Parisian park bench. It looked so elegant. I could have been a Parisian park bench... but no. Well when I say I was reading a magazine, I wasn't really reading it, I can't read, but I caught a glimpse of it on the counter, and there was that park bench, glistening in the Parisian sun with the Seine in the background.

It was a black and white photograph and in front of the bench there was a woman wearing a silk scarf that fluttered in the wind. It was so beautiful. I could have been a silk scarf... but no. Well maybe not silk, I'm not sure what silk is... but it sure was pretty.

There's the stethoscope looking all smug. I can't stand stethoscopes! They hang around the doctor's neck and brag about how important they are. Ha! I saw a pearl necklace on a patient the other day, now that was important.

Well it could be worse; I could be a stethoscope... or a tongue depressor, ugh. Here we go, it's my turn. I suppose there are worse things than being a speculum... I just don't know what.

A forgotten aspect of privacy

2010-08-06T10:48:00.000-07:00

Privacy is extinct. I don't think anyone will disagree with that statement. In today's digital world it is almost impossible to maintain privacy. Every time you use a credit card, an ATM card, your mobile, your GPS, make an online purchase, or apply for anything, your information is being tracked and recorded somewhere. Every time you enter a store, walk down the street, drive down the freeway you are being video taped. What you buy, where you go, your preferences, ethnicity, income, everything about you is public. But there is a minor aspect of privacy, a nuance that is never considered. This fragile aspect of privacy was the first to die and its demised paved the way for the complete obliteration of privacy: etiquette in a social context.

What does etiquette have to do with privacy, you may ask. They have an ancient and unintentional association. Their relationship is subtle, but historically etiquette and social norm have served to protect the privacy of individuals in society. The interaction exists but we have never given it a name, there is no noun that describes this phenomenon and so I will attempt to exemplify it.

For most of human history social norm has dictated public behavior in minute details. This was not done with the intent of protecting individual privacy, but it had that consequence. In Roman times (for a while at least) baths were actually co-ed, men and women bathed communally the same spaces. This might have been the ultimate lack of privacy and invitation to lascivious and salacious behavior on the part of all concerned, but it was not. Etiquette saved the day. There were strict norms for decorum and behavior in public baths and the first rule was that you should always act as though you, and everyone else, were fully dressed. If a man ran into his neighbor's wife, you know, the one he had been coveting for months now, he was to greet her politely, inquire about her health and family, send his regards to her husband and walk away in a dignified manner. Another strict rule, of course, was no staring. He had to do all of this while looking her straight in the eye. If you broke the rules you were tossed out on your fanny and banned from the bath. To quote Obelix 'They're crazy these Romans'. But the point is, even if lack of privacy reached the extreme of being naked in public, etiquette compensated for the intrusion and mortification could be completely avoided. The behavior of the public persona was completely regulated by manners and etiquette, which conspired to protect one's privacy even under extreme conditions.

This continued in different forms over the ages. Through the centuries in Europe's upper echelons, etiquette ruled society and unwittingly protected the individual's privacy. Etiquette demanded that an individual of a certain social standing present a very specific public image. You couldn't leave the house without wearing your public persona. You were expected to dress according to the specific trends, speak of certain subjects and in a contemporary style, behave fashionably and follow social protocol. This resulted in a uniform society of public personas, everyone endeavored to present the same image.
Your manners and behavior determined how society judged you. That public persona was not necessarily who the individual was in the privacy of his home. His private persona was protected by the façade of the public persona he was expected to portray. Take the play Les Liaisons Dangereuses (or movie if you prefer, Dangerous Liaisons), the characters' behavior went against socially acceptable norms. The public persona they were supposed to present became tainted by the private persona they failed to conceal, an enormous breach of etiquette. Again, etiquette operating to conceal one's reality and thus preserve privacy.

Once our numbers increased and our societies became more complex, such strict etiquette became difficult to maintain. It lingered though as a diluted version of itself. In a 1953 episode of I Love Lucy, Ethel and Lucy agreed to go on an errand downtown:
Lucy: Sure, come on let's get downtown and buy all the paper and stuff
Ethel: Ok, I'll get dressed.
Lucy: Ok hurry up
This is what Ethel (left) was wearing when she announced she had to go get dressed in order to go out:

A perfectly good and presentable dress by today's standards. In 1953 there was still some vestige of the public persona, etiquette at the time still demanded that the public persona presented downtown be somehow superior to the private persona in the house. The requirement was "to be presentable" - i.e. the same as everyone else - the unintentional result was the concealment of the expressions that made a person an individual: etiquette preserving privacy.

The artifice of presenting a public persona in order to maintain privacy is still often used today. Star Trek TNG actors for example will answer thousands of questions from fans at ST conventions every year, but will never respond to a question about their private lives. The persona they offer to the public is different from the people who go home after the convention, and if they were to comment on their private lives the two personas would merge and their privacy would be obliterated. This is a conscious decision by people in the public eye; they present a public persona in order to maintain their privacy. It is not dictated by etiquette and it does not apply to society at large. It is a tool rather than a social obligation and so it is different from the extinct concept I'm trying to exemplify.

Some time after 1953 etiquette died. People behaved, dressed, spoke and addressed each other in public exactly as they would in the privacy of their homes. The public and the private persona merged and etiquette died out completely, and with it died that aspect of privacy that was dependent on etiquette and social norm. Privacy, in its broadest terms still endured until the advent of the internet, but the demise of the nuance of privacy that was shrouded in etiquette, a nuance that had endured over millennia, was the first step in our willingness to forgo privacy completely.

This etiquette dependent aspect of privacy never had a name, we never created a word for it, and so when it deteriorated no one complained. It died completely unrecognized. An unknown species that went extinct before anyone knew it existed. I wish we had a noun of some kind to place on the gravestone.

Book-Burning in 2010

2010-07-31T09:07:00.000-07:00

The Dove World Outreach Center in Florida

It has always been known that only the most enlightened people practice the ancient and honorable art of book-burning. It is the apex of human tolerance and intellectual stability, there is nothing more glorious and noble than a crowd of people gathered around a pile of burning books. It is an activity we always associate with the most enlightened intellectual elite: Khmer Rouge, Taliban, Hitler, Stalin, Spanish Conquistadors and now, of course, the enlightened members of the church Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida. My congratulations to them all. Their parents must be so proud.

My invitation must have been lost in the mail, but I hear they've gone all out! Teeth are optional and if you husband Bubah was your cousin Bubah a couple of years back, you get a spot in the front row!!!

Here is a video of their practice run last week.

Morons Run Amuck

2010-07-30T05:45:00.000-07:00

Here's the trouble with the internet, it gives every moronic imbecile out there a microphone. Hold the snide remarks, if you please, I'm not excluding myself from the category.

I came across list of the 20 classic movies you thought were overrated, http://www.ew.com/ew/gallery/0,,20406056,00.html . And I will grant you that a few of them are in deed overrated, others don't belong on the list. To wit Citizen Kane, here is what the moron had to say about the movie:

Citizen Kane (1941)
I totally agree about Citizen Kane. Maybe it was too hyped before I saw it, but I found it a bit dull. Not to mention I have known what Rosebud was since I was 6 years old. — Ari

If you were to ask this Ari person what Rosebud was he would quickly and emphatically rejoin "It was his sled" because that is what a 6 year old would say, and apparently his ideas have not changed over time.

Ari, my new favorite moron, Rosebud wasn't his sled... it was the symbol of the sudden realization that with his last breath of life the wealthiest and most powerful man in the world realized that he had never been as happy as when he was a pauper and unknown. Rosebud is the sudden negation of an entire life. A life envied by all in the world that in a split second had become one not worth living. If you walked away from the movie saying "Rosebud was his sled" you missed the point and you don't have the mental acuity to judge the movie or even profess an opinion.

One more:
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Growing up, I loved watching old movies and heard this to be epic. Was never on TV, couldn’t find it to rent. Finally came on PBS, commercial-free. I was so excited. I fell asleep 3 times. Every time I woke up, just more walking on sand. — mlk

I can see someone disagreeing with the political bias in Lawrence of Arabia. If you were to tell me that the historic point of view in the story is one-sided and prejudiced and for that reason the movie is overrated, I might consider you opinion. But "I couldn't stay awake through it" is more of a commentary about your own ineptitude than about the movie. Poor baby, did your playstation joystick not work with the movie? How disappointing...

Morons run amuck. Before the internet you had to go to a frat party with more bongs than people in order to hear such drivel, now you need only go to EW.com.

Urban traffic in Pompeii

2010-07-27T14:51:00.000-07:00

There are so many aspects of Pompeii that fascinate me, it's hard so choose a single one to focus upon. I choose it not because it first or of any great importance, but simply because in opening a folder it was the subject of the picture that caught my eye. Urban traffic.

Two millennia ago the city stopped -forgive the cliché- dead in its tracks. Today it bustles with tourists compelled by the fascination of times past and origins lost. They stroll down streets, past houses, water fountains restaurants and shops that have been uninhabited and in disuse for two thousand years and wonder, a happy few research and speculate. Any original information will be the fruit of their labor, I can only recount what I have learned and remember.

As you walk through the streets of Pompeii one of the most striking features of the city is the very deep grooves left on the paving stones by heavy wheel traffic.

The streets were very narrow and carts, and carriages had very little room to maneuver before hitting one of the cubs or one of the stepping stones in the middle of the road. The wheels left marks on the stones which help determine the way the wheel was traveling and allows us to determine whether the street was one way, two way and which way traffic flowed. Some streets comported two way traffic but most were one way. Here are some typical streets.

Streets wide enough for four stepping stones were often two way.

That traffic was not haphazard is evident, therefore city traffic was a planned activity, and since there are no surviving or obvious traffic signs I guess that traffic laws were probably enforced by the population. People knew which direction traffic flowed and how to get places and if everyone followed the rules traffic would flow. However, there is no reason to believe Italians 2000 years ago were any more sedate than they are today, and I imagine that traffic disputes occurred daily and involved a great deal of gesticulation and shouting.

When trucks drive into the city of Sao Paulo there are numerous individuals camped on the side of the road offering guide services. These people will get into the incoming truck, direct the driver to his destination in the city and help unload the cargo for a fee. I can't help but imagine that similar services may have been offered at the entrance gates to Pompeii.

An uninformed stranger driving into the city to make a delivery could easily drive the wrong way in a major thoroughfare and stall traffic around the city. There is no room to maneuver an ox cart to turn it around, and oncoming traffic would also be hard pressed to back-up. All one could do in this situation, I imagine, is shout loudly and gesticulate grandiosely.

Stepping stones are allover the city. The curbs were high to keep both traffic and water off the sidewalks. The roads arch in the middle directing water to the curb and the city is on a slope towards the ocean. Water from the overflowing fountains probably flowed continuously in the curb and the stepping-stones were necessary for pedestrian traffic to remain dry.

The stepping stones seem high, but ancient carts and carriages cleared them with ease, the curbs were also very high to contain the water flow. Chamber pots and other waste were often dumped in the flow, not to mention the waste from the horses and oxen on the road, if you ask me the curbs and stepping stones were not high enough.

Modern carts require a little ingenuity to move around the ruins.

Roman law included provisions for road construction, road standards and even traffic accidents.

The few two way roads were often wider than one-way roads. This is a one way road and you can see the width of the groove left by the wheels and gauge the width of the street by the umbrella.

Here is a two way street that is about the same width of the one way street.

There are two sets of wheel tracks, one from the left gutter to the wooden end of the umbrella and the other from the right gutter to the umbrella's hook handle. I think there would have been a great deal of shouts and gestures on this street. Unless it was one way in the morning and the opposite way in the afternoon... who knows (but then why not just stay in the middle of the road?)

There are a few clever details that are often overlooked by tourists. The sidewalks and roads leading into the forum are studded with embedded white pebbles that stand out under low lighting conditions. At night someone walking with an oil lamp would have a better sense of where he is by looking at the sidewalk since the frequency of the white pebbles increases a you approach the Forum.

Here similar pebbles were used as a welcome doormat in front of a rather wealthy house. Debate still rages over the "H". OK, fine! Maybe it doesn’t 'rage'...but would you have me say that debate whimpers about the "H"? I thought not.

Throughout the city you will also find holes bored through the curbstones. I was told by a guard that they were used to tie horses. However, some were placed in narrow streets leading into the Forum, these would have been some of the busiest streets in town and rather inconvenient places to run smack-dab into one or more tethered horses. They may have been used to fasten awnings that hung over the sidewalk on storefronts. It's a less likely hypothesis.

If they were indeed used to fasten bridles it only goes to show that traffic in ancient Pompeii was as inconvenient as traffic in major cities today.

my new favorite picture

2010-07-22T13:44:00.000-07:00

This is in South Africa as you may have seen allover the news. Truly AWESOME! At this exact second the sailor looks unaware of the whale (you can tell 'cause there's no shit in his pants), what a picture! WOW

here is a CNN interview with Paloma Werner who was one of two people in the boat
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/offbeat/2010/07/21/moos.whale.crashes.boat.cnn?hpt=C2

I wish I could give credit to the photographer but his/her name was not mentioned. If you know it, let me know -thanks

Helen Keller and her teacher Anne Sullivan (video)

2010-07-09T07:43:00.000-07:00

Extremely rare video of Helen Keller and her teacher Anne Sullivan.
Keller became blind and deaf at the age of 19 months due to an illness that might have scarlet fever or meningitis. She learned to talk and became a lecturer, political activist and author. She wrote a total of 12 books. She was the first blind and deaf person to earn a BA degree. Her political inclinations were leftist, she was anti war and supported the suffrage movement, workers' rights and socialism. She is also credited with bringing the Akita dog breed from Japan to the US. Her life was portrayed in the movie The Miracle Worker, based on her autobiography.

Eumachia at Pompeii

2010-07-04T16:27:00.000-07:00

I was going to write something in my blog this weekend, but lately life has given me very little encouragement to professing my own opinion . Let's see, I've been unfollowed for disagreeing with Brent Spiner's politics and reprimanded for disagreeing with Mel Gibson's ... well pick a problem, he's got an array. So this week I will be foregoing an opinion. Today I will blog about Eumachia. She has been dead for 2000 years now, I doubt anyone still has an opinion about her. Besides I have pictures...

Eumachia was a woman who lived in Pompeii in the first century AD. As you might know Pompeii was destroyed in 79 AD, and since her tomb exists one might deduce when she lived. She inherited a fortune from her father and married rather well to become one of the most prominent citizens of Pompeii. (note that I'm not expressing any opinion on feminism in antiquity). Her money and social position elevated her to become the matron of the fullers, a wealthy guild in Pompeii that was responsible for the dyers and clothing makers/cleaners. One of her benefactions to the city was, what is to be assumed an impressive building on one side of the forum (prime real estate). There is nothing left of the building but the doorway which is breathtaking. The building's function is unclear, but there was a public toilet facing the forum with provides clues. Human urine was collected a public toilets, aged and used in the dying/cleaning process. (personally I always thought they would get a better yield at the stables). A statue of Eumachia at the back of the building also survives, as does her tomb.

Eumachia's tomb at the cemetery in front of Herculaneum Gate

The doorway to her building at the forum

Details of the exquisite carving of that enormous doorway

Eumachia watching over the processes in her building.

Another fact based theory

2010-06-26T08:56:00.000-07:00

There is no reason to believe dinosaurs behaved any differently than animals today. After compiling information from an array of experts in the field I have reached the following fact-based, logical conclusion:

T-Rex used to wake up in the morning, uncurl himself, stretch, yawn and then he would shake himself. The shaking motion would start at the tip of his snout and work its way over the body until it reached the tip of the tail. His floppy ears would make a flap flap sound as he shook. He would then look around, yawn again and meow softly.

What? You don't think so? Well I figured that since no criminal charges were brought against GWB and Cheney, Palin and Rand Paul have a political careers, BP can freely state that all of the 5000 barrels-a-day are on the surface and Glenn Beck has an audience... I could pretty much say whatever I wanted and someone would buy it ... grant me it was worth a shot, I'm thinking of having my fact based theory made into a Fox News special...

Speaking of rhetoric people believe... is Guantanamo closed yet? (well, I believed that one too)

.

When god is busy we get to live another day

2010-06-22T05:19:00.000-07:00

God to us is nothing more than a superior being. A being that for whatever chance of evolution or fate has powers that to us seem omnipotent. A being that is able to control our existence to suit his will. But as with everything in life, that is nothing more than perception - to a ladybug I may be god: omnipotent, omnipresent and indecipherable. I'm convinced my dog thinks I'm some kind of deity; this faith is reinforced every time I leave the house empty handed and come back with a roast chicken... An essay written by a friend of my mother's first made me consider this concept. It was written in Portuguese and I haven't read since I had enough youth to ponder such things, but it stayed with me. He described being in the bathroom performing his morning ablutions when he noticed a mosquito on the wall. He thought of swatting it but he was busy at that moment and so the mosquito got a stay of execution until god was ready to leave the bathroom. For at that moment he felt like god; he imagined that for that mosquito he held the power of life and death, he was the supreme being, he had absolute power and wondered if the mosquito knew that it shared a bathroom with god. He was amused by the thought and continued to shave. By the time he was done shaving, the cares of everyday had occupied his mind and the mosquito had been forgotten. He left the bathroom and the mosquito lived. It lived because god had a careless moment.

The thought that we may owe our existence to god's busy schedule still amuses me.

The author of the story that stayed with me all these years was Ibere Camargo, a brilliant man. Sorry I don't have the reference, but the book is in my mother's library and I don't have it with me. I believe it was called No Andar do Tempo.

good manners requires proximity

2010-06-18T07:46:00.001-07:00

I'm for freedom of speech, even when the speech is contrary to my own convictions. In life, out in the real world you can't avoid running into people who think differently than you; there are going to be right wing republicans in your workplace or social circles, it can't be avoided. In real life you have to deal with people politely and with civility even if their response to your "good morning" is "wasn't Bush's speech great last nigh?" In real life you can't turn to that person and say "It wasn't, you only think it was because you are a complete moron." Social norm and what has evolved to be our concept politeness and civility don't allow for such interactions. In an office situation you might be fired for such an exchange, and rightly so.

The online universe is redefining our social behaviors. On Twitter the situation I described happens everyday. Instead of politely unfollowing someone they don't like, people often choose to lash out with expletives they probably would not use in the workplace or in a public setting. Frequently it doesn't end there, the offending party becomes offended and retorts in kind. There is something about the facelessness of online communication that brings out the worst in us. Even if your account is not anonymous, you are not face to face with the other party and that somehow makes people more likely to be rude, belligerent and obnoxious. To us distance seems to be some sort of diplomatic immunity.

Long before we were rude to each other online there existed another great example that human politeness is restricted to personal contact situations. Traffic. Yes, before the internet there were automobiles. The lack of personal contact between drivers frequently becomes road-rage. You would never chase down a co-worker and beat him with your bare fists because he cut in front of you or even bumped into you in the hallway. But warp a ton of steel around your ass and that is exactly what you do.

Apparently good manners requires proximity. I wonder why that is?

IQ test for BP executives, do you have what it takes?

2010-06-12T06:32:00.001-07:00

Connect the picture to the corresponding description

The best deal in the universe

2010-05-02T16:04:00.002-07:00

The Judeo-Christian god has billion of worshipers. All Christians, Jews, Muslims and most of the weirdos on the planet. It has all the worshipers it needs and then some. It can even afford to smite a few every once in a while and never miss them. So here is the best deal in the universe, switch allegiances and start worshiping the gods of Valhalla.

I'm serious, think about it. When was the last time Odin had someone knocking on his door. We create gods and we worship them; we give them existence through our devotion and faith. What happens to them when we stop worshiping them? Well this deal is based on the assumption that once created, an immortal being never ceases to exist. Therefore Odin and his cohorts from Valhalla are right now sitting in a forgotten corner waiting to be worshiped. How many worshiper will they have? You and a hand full of nuts. You are guaranteed all the attention a god can bestow on a mortal. So light a few candles, blast the dance of the valkyries in the back ground and go worship a god that might give a shit. It's a great deal! In a millennium or so, if humans are still around and the Judeo-Christian god is sitting in a forgotten corner maybe someone will cut him a deal too.