Vesuvius has got something to say

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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:

1. You didn’t write it assholes! It’s not yours to change!
2. You don’t like it…. don’t fucking read it! No one is forcing you.
3. 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.
4. First amendment, free speech, freedom of expression… ring a bell?
5. 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)

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

(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.