What is This Crap?

A blog is supposed to be a weblog--commentary on links to other things on the web. That seems to be less true today, but a blog isn't supposed to be "here's all these files I found while recovering a dead hard drive."

But that's what this was. Some of these were written years ago, others more recently. Some were meant to be posted somewhere; others I just wrote as notes to myself. I'm sick, and I didn't feel like sorting them, so here you go.

Don't expect a dozen posts/day from me in the future....

Plagues

Remember the plagues of Egypt? A river of blood. That was supposed to spook old Pharoah into letting Moses's people go.

At first thought, it sounds pretty creepy. But compare it to what we live with every day today. Rivers of motor oil, syringes, and used condoms. Which is worse?

OK, sure, Egypt's entire agriculture system was based around the Nile, while ours is based around managing software projects coded in India or producing movies made in Canada, so it probably affected them more than it would us.

But personally I'd rather be drinking blood than motor oil, syringes, and used condoms. And that's despite the fact that some annoying wannabe-vampire twits would think I was cool for drinking blood.

Of course someone will point out that, unlike the Egyptians, we can drink bottled water. Is that any better? More than half of California's tap water comes from the same lake system as Arrowhead. And it's not $2 a bottle.

Also, something like 30 million of the various brands of bottled water are actually owned by Coke or Pepsi. Read the fine print. (Oddly, in the developing word they put their gigantic logos on the water, and people drink it because they trust Coke more than some company they've never heard of....) And then there's the imported French water that's not legal for sale in France.

Even when the bottled water isn't just your municipal tap water or the runoff from the Coke plant, studies show that it's no cleaner. And, while most brands win in taste tests against most cities' tap water, that's just because of the chlorine.

If you really want healthy water, get distilled water. A gallon costs less than a pint of whatever post-Evian brand you're into. And it has no nasty bacteria or chemical runoff. And no weird taste.

Unfortunately, distilled water also has no electrolytes--and dying of a water overdose sounds pretty sad, especially if you're not even on ecstasy. Plus, some people apparently like the taste of dirt in their beverage. I don't get it, but it's true.

But you can fix both problems by adding a sprinkling of salty dirt.

Come to think of it, maybe someone should sell special blends of salty dirt as "mineral packets," to add your favorite flavor or "health boost" to distilled water. (Personally, I prefer a blend of table salt, potassium salt, MSG, iron, manganese, selenium, and LSD.) It'd be cheaper for both the manufacturers and for the consumers.

Plus, we'd be living that old joke about "dehydrated water--just add water."

Anyway, I've gotten way off the topic of the Egyptians' plagues. The Egyptians had locusts, rivers of blood, hail-and-ice-and-fire storms, death of cattle--we have killer bees, rivers of oil, the last three Novembers (at least in the Bay Area), and Mad Cow Disease.

Frankly, I'm not sure how we're still alive, but I'm in favor of figuring out who God has chosen this time and letting them go wherever the hell they want.

But maybe that's just because I'm a first-born son.

Waitresses and Sonic Youth

Here's a pair of bands you rarely see compared. Why?

Both bands were formed in the early 80s when quasi-stars of the post-prog-rock/pre-no-wave New York art-music scene found a skinny chick who couldn't exactly sing but could talk really cool. Both bands had alternative hits in 1992 with brilliantly quirky pop songs. Both bands have influenced far more musicians than their mainstream fame would imply.

Plus, both bands are somehow magical. Maybe not the same kind of magic--one is the everyday magic that's responsible for you coming up with the perfect sarcastic response without even thinking about it, while the other is more the kind of magic that you have to say "klaatu verata nikto" before picking up if you don't want to wake the deadites. But still.

OK, that's really about as far as the similarities go, so now for the "contrast" part of my "compare-and-contrast" assignment.

The Waitresses made brilliantly quirky pop music from day one. Starting with "I Know What Boys Like," and ending five years later with "I Know What Boys Like." It was a good time to do quirky pop, what with new sub-KROQ-clones springing up across the country (the spawn of a former KROQ program director who'd sold his soul to Satan).

The strange thing was, they had at least 5 good songs on the album, plus one brilliant non-album track. (Remember "It's my car, and I'm gonna do the drivin', drivin'"? Didn't think so... but you should.) And of course the theme song to the most quintessentially 80s period piece, "Square Pegs." And yet, all you ever heard was "I Know What Boys Like." Or, as the band called it, in their politer moments, "That Fucking Song."

The Waitresses were, to most people, a one-hit wonder, but they did have a mini-legion of devoted fans, mostly boys who imagined having an ambiguous relationship with Patty O'Donoghue. You know, the kind that mostly consists of sneering at the world together and staggering around under the influence of something, although it might have involved some drunken sex a few times but neither of you can remember.

All Waitresses fans are now playing keyboard in post-britpop bands.

Sonic Youth started off making the most off-putting music they could make. Discordant guitars, played with screwdrivers, feeding back on each other fed through distortion, with a gravelly-voiced cry for help. Technically brilliant, but the only people who'd had enough music education to figure that out either couldn't sit through an album or were in the band.

If you've never heard it, that description isn't going to give you an idea. So, have you ever had one of those days where you can't score your fix of smack so you try a couple hits of LSD hoping you won't notice the withdrawal symptoms and then realize what a bad idea that was? The sound you heard 20 degrees off to the right of Hell: early Sonic Youth is like that. But louder.

So most of their fans had to get into them as an acquired taste. It started off as a sort of macho test, like a punk rock version of a habanero burger, but after a while it grew on you, and you found yourself trying to convince your parents that there were real melodies in there and your friends that there was raw anger in there and secretly dreading that one of them might actually get it.

All Sonic Youth fans are now playing guitar in post-grunge bands. Except the ones who are dead or in psych hospitals.

So, what the hell happened in 1992?

Well, Nirvana got famous (much to their dismay). Suddenly the alternative stations were #1, except that when they ran out of grunge bands they pretty much changed "alternative" to mean "bad wannabe-70s crap" so they could stay #1. The few real grunge bands who found themselves caught in the frenzy spent every minute telling the press how cool Sonic Youth was.

Sonic Youth responded by suddenly making quirky pop music. Sure, "Goo" made a little less sense than "I Know What Boys Like," but you have to factor in the extra decade of learning to distinguish between different varieties of feedback noise while under the influence of heavy drugs. Anyway, a few years later, you'd still hear "Goo" every once in a while (usually when some hardcore Sonic Youth fan made a request for "Schizophrenia").

Meanwhile, now that they were #1 in every major radio market, the alternative stations had to come up with morning DJs and special features like seasonal countdowns. And you can only play the Ramones' one Christmas song so many times in a row. So the music directors started looking through the requests, and they noticed one called "Christmas (W)rapping" by the Waitresses, and suddenly they were in regular rotation again. And not "That Fucking Song," either. From November to December every year, this song is all over the airwaves. On the 26th, some DJ who's glad Christmas is finally over will play "I Know What Boys Like" one time before the record goes back in the closet, but that's about it.

So, in 1992, Sonic Youth and the Waitresses both found themselves as lasting alternative quirky pop one-hit-wonders.

A few years ago, there was suddenly a major reunion circuit for 80s pop acts. Some bands are back with their original lineups--which is sometimes not such a good idea. Others are the one or two core members filled out with younger guys who used to be huge fans in the 80s and really like the idea of second choice on the 35-year-old groupies. But neither of these bands are there.

Patty O. died a few years back, and the Waitresses guys have enough class that they haven't tried to fob off a replacement singer. Sonic Youth--well, they didn't actually have a pop hit until too late to cash in, and I don't think they'd sell out if it meant having to tour with all those bands they used to hate.

Anyway, I won't ask you to listen to Sonic Youth's "Confusion Is Sex." If you're going to like it, the name probably already called up nostalgia and/or flashbacks, and you're listening to it right now.

But go buy (or at least pirate) one of the Waitresses' multiple best-of albums (pretty impressive for a two-hit-wonder with a decade between hits even though they were on the same album...).

And if you can find the Barcelona song "Haunted by the Ghost of Patty," bonus points.

Gower Gulch

As special as Sport Shots were, the place I bought them was more special still.

When I lived in Hollywood, there was this little shopping center called Gower Gulch, which looked like a leftover set for a C-grade western. This shopping center contained everything you'd expect--a locksmith, an Indonesian sushi/karaoke bar, a Japanese Mexican seafood restaurant, a Denny's, an optometrist's office that never opened, and a Baskin Robbins/Starbucks/Togo's.

But the whole thing was anchored by Gower Gulch Liquor, the greatest store in the history of the liquor/convenience/drugstore/deli genre.

Gower Gulch Liquor made great sandwiches. They stocked the largest selection of impossible-to-find sodas in the world, from the only Triple Cola west of New York City to the last 300 bottles or RC Draft in existence. They had weird candy from Australia (ever had a Jaffa?) and imitation Japanese junk food from Malaysia. They had 4 more flavors of Spam than normally exist outside of Guam. They even claimed they could get me a can of Pocari Sweat, but that never panned out. (I finally had some this year in Singapore--it's basically Gatorade with a silly name. Oh well.)

Of course, being a liquor store, the variety of alcohol was really the central point. From $60-a-bottle Canadian rye that was worth every penny to all flavors of Cisco in existence. But the crowning achievement was Sport Shots, which I never saw anywhere else.

As sad as it was when Sport Shots disappeared, it was even sadder a few months later when Gower Gulch Liquor disappeared. It was replaced by another Starbucks, two doors from the original one, but not saddled with a Baskin Robbins and a Togo's.

You'd think this would be the death of the hybrid Starbucks, but years later, both were still going strong. (Just like the Starbucks a mile down the road that failed to kill off the Burger King/Starbucks and the laundromat/Starbucks in the same 3-storefront building.)

Neither one, of course, had Sport Shots.

Sport Shots

I never got those guys who were waking up to get their morning exercise just as I was staggering home from a club to plan my hangover, but when I watched them lift those nifty bottles and squeeze water or Gatorade or their own urine or whatever it is they drink into their mouth, I always felt a twinge of jealously. It just looked so convenient.

Somewhere in the mid-90s, I discovered Sport Shots. Jealousy no more!

Sport Shots were vaugely-Schnappsish-flavored alcoholic beverages that came prepackaged in transparent squirt bottles just like the ones those sanctimonious bikers carried along with their safety reflectors and smug "Hey, I'm not puking in the gutter" looks.

Plus, while they were labeled with alcohol content and a few other words of text, the letters rubbed off as soon as you looked at them, so they were perfect for walking down the street drinking in flagrant violation of California's open container law. (Come to think of it, you never opened them, just squirted the alcohol through the little nozzle--but I don't think the LAPD would have gone for that excuse.)

Finally, there was the name. Sport Shots. In case you ever need to get really hammered before quarterbacking the big football game, I guess.

There were four flavors which, like much of 1995, I for some reason can't remember, but the red one tasted just like cinammon Scope mouthwash. Ah, memories.

I would have spent my childhood slurping Sports Bottle Candy in prepration, but they didn't invent it until I was 16, so I had to come into Sport Shots unprepared. But I took to it with gusto. Until 6 months later, it was gone, as quickly as it had come.

I suppose I could have gotten a bicycle and started drinking Evian or whatever, but when forced to choose between convenient health and inconvenient drunkenness, the choice was easy.

Salsa

I love salsa. Yeah, as George Castanza says, it's partly because it's fun to say.

Especially specific different salsas and hot sauces. I don't mean the trendy boutique salsas like "Jump Up And Kiss Me Hot Sauce," I mean the simple things, like habanero.

For a semi-Spanish-speaking Caucasian, this word gives you the delightful challenge of making it clear that you understand how much different the word sounds in Spanish without sounding like a TV anchor saying "Channel 4 reporter <brief pause to switch language modules> Rrrrrramon Marrrtinez <pause> is on the scene with more."

But my favorite is Pico de Gallo. Because it means, of course, a trillionth of a rooster. Sort of like homeopathic salsa, in case you need to be cured of roosterosis or something.

Plus, there's the fact that people from all Spanish-speaking countries, even the ones where "ll" isn't normally pronounced like a hard "y," have to say "Pico de Guy-yo," because it just sounds wrong any other way. Even the dumb gringos get this one pretty close.

Anyway, any tacqueria without a decent salsa bar is not worth eating at. They don't have to have 20 flavors of salsa--in fact, if you find southwestern mango chutney paste, leave before someone tries to charge you $10 for a "wrap"--but they should have at least two, one of which should be very hot and one of which should be an odd shade of green.

But the real key to the salsa bar is the pickled spicy carrots. There is no proper English term for these things, because it's really not proper to speak English in their presence. Many people cannot handle them, and Taco Bell exists for those people, but that just means more for me.

Speaking of Taco Bell, when I was young, they had two salsas: Mild and Hot. At some point they added Fire. Fire is not really much hotter than Hot, it's just redder. Both have no flavor whatsoever, but can be used to give spice to Mild, which actually has an interesting taste once you get over the fact that it tastes like nothing else in the world that has ever been called "salsa." Somehow, it makes Taco Bell chicken almost edible. But for the boil-in-the-bag beef, you really need Hot. Or maybe Fire, whose thicker color hides the meat from view. Maybe that's what it's for.

Anyway, carrots.

POP Snacks and Nazi Rice

I know, you expected this to be a paean to Pop Rocks, Magic Gum, and other hypercarbonated snacks of the 80s. But this is even better.

Someone I know recently got back from Korea, and brought a bunch of snacks, including something called 'POP' Snack. With the quotes and everything. Basically just rice cakes, except for the packaging.

Now, usually I don't go crazy over East Asians and their bizarre English. (It's certainly better than Americans and their bizarre Chinese, Japanese, and Korean--"bonsai" and "banzai" are not the same word, damnit!) But in this case....

Written on the package was the sentence: "Let's establish heatlh society by abolishing inferior food."

This is creepy.

At first it sounds sort of bad-spelling-hippie (which is better than the usual bad-smelling-hippie).

Then suddenly the Nazi overtones hit you.

Finally, you realize with relief that it's actually talking about the cleansing of inferior food, not people. Some Hitler of the rice fields is attempting to establish a master race of pure white rice.

Not so scary, but still sort of disturbing. I was just about to become amazed at the Koreans' lack of sensitivity to racist fascism after their treatment by their neighbors during WWII, not the mention the previous millenia, when I remembered Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netenyahu and it all makes sense.

Anyway, I'm not sure how much lebensraum a grain of rice needs--I'm sure any farmers out there can help me. But if I were the soy in the next field over, I'd watch out. Or at least make sure that I didn't form all my defenses into a big line that reaches almost all the way across the field.

Hillary and Tipper and Hadassah, Oh My

I never understood why the Republicans hated Clinton so much. Sure, he occasionally talked left, but this is a guy who balanced the budget, destroyed welfare, ended affirmative action, screwed over gays again and again, attempted to censor the Internet, prevented technology from being exported, expanded wiretapping, and gave us the DMCA. And not just as President, under duress from the Gingrich revolutionaries; back when he was governor of Arkansas, he was the only governor who allowed Reagan's people to use one of his state's national guard bases for illegal Contra-funding missions.

This is the kind of stuff conservatives love.

The real problem, I think, is that Republicans aren't conservatives anymore. Look at W: He's destroyed the balanced budget. How? By spending more than anyone in history, mostly on a massive nation-building exercise that would have made Goldwater or Reagan blow smoke out of their ears (and, if it weren't both misguided and misapplied, would have made the hippies proud).

Unfortunately, the Democrats now are conservatives, since the Democratic Leadership Council's successful takeover. If you've never heard of the DLC or their agenda, read Nader's viewpoint, or the same thing in their own words. Then come back here.

But forget about their Reaganomic policy for a moment; the worse thing is that they've turned the Democrats into the anti-fun party. There's something horribly wrong when the people who went to Woodstock (or wish they did) finally take over the Democratic Party and immediately use it to try to prevent the MTV generation from hearing bad words (remember the PMRC?) and follow up by trying to prevent the PSX generation from seeing badly-animated simulated sex without nudity. Yes, these are the wives of Clinton, Gore, and Lieberman in action.

The sad thing is that you can imagine W having a good time at a concert, while Gore stands outside giving out leaflets against the band. The question isn't, "How can Democrats like that win," but "Who in their right minds would want Democrats like that to win?"

Grand Theft Auto: The Sex

Of course the real hoopla with GTA:SA wasn't the violence, it was the sex. It all started with the "Hot Coffee" patch. Not that the right-wing lunatics of the Democratic Leadership Conference wouldn't have found some reason to shout about GTA, but this was their way in.

After Hot Coffee surfaced, GTA:SA was pulled from the shelves, and eventually rerated AO for Adults Only. How exactly is this different from M for Mature?

For an M, if you're not an adult, you have to convince your parents to buy it for you even though you probably shouldn't be playing it.

For an AO, if you're not an adult, you have to convince your parents to pretend to buy it for themselves and then give it to you even though you probably shouldn't be playing it.

(If you're Dad's too much of a pussy to look the salesman in the eye and say, "Yes, I want to play Grand Theft Auto," he can just tell them it's for his 18-year-old son in college.)

The difference is supposed to be the sexual content. Never mind the whole argument about hidden content that you have to download a mod to access (and RockStar shouldn't have tried it). Among dozens of minigames is a cheesy sex game with no nudity, and this is somehow less acceptable for tender young children of 17 than Grand Theft Auto.

Well, I suppose it might be dangerous for kids to think they could have sex without taking their pants off. They'll be bragging to their friends that they "went all the way" when all they got was a dry-hump--and they won't even know they're lying. A whole generation could grow up pathetic.

But somehow, I don't think this is what Hillary, Tipper, and Hadassah are all pissed off about.

Grand Theft Auto: The Violence

Does Grand Theft Auto really affect kids? Are today's kids going to be jacking cars to do drivebys for corrupt cops tomorrow? Of course not; that's so 90's (before the games even came out).

Besides, in my day, the biggest game was Pacman. Did my whole generation end up eating pills and running around a dark room to a repetitive beat?

Hmmm... Bad argument. Let's try a different tack.

First, kids aren't supposed to be playing these games.

Pacman was pretty much for everyone, except the small number of people who were over 25 when it came out and therefore never got it. But there were games clearly intended for different markets by the time I was a teenager.

You wouldn't want a 6-year-old to face the trauma of real combat in the form of wireframe tanks approaching over a 2D landscape. And it takes a certain amount of maturity to face up to the awesome responsibility of losing at Defender and failing the last of the humanoids. And the demonic talking space station Sinistar would scare the crap out of any young kid other than maybe Damien the Omen.

On the other hand, the Strawberry Shortcake game was torture to anyone in double-digit ages.

And then there was Master Blaster, a game for the Apple ][ that simulated masturbation, which was obviously too mature for anyone under 18 and far too immature for anyone old enough to masturbate for real.

Now we have this rating system, brought to you by the Clinton/Gore/Lieberman families (you know, the ones who were going to save us from the Bush family fascism). I'm not sure I like the rating system, but it's the same people who pushed for it who are now attacking game companies that follow it.

RockStar claimed that GTA:SA was Mature, and it is. It has lots of violence, tons of antisocial content, light sexual content, and the kind of social satire that nobody really enjoys until they're in college (and not for long after).

The M rating, for Mature, means that if you're not an adult, you have to get your parents to buy it for you. Sort of like R for movies, but with much more detail. There's no way your parents could buy you GTA:SA without knowing what it was about. Besides, the name ought to have been a clue.

Second, if any of these governmental wives had played any of the GTA3 series, they might have liked the messages. Bad guys screw each other over and always lose in the end. Drugs kill. When you spray a room with a Tec-9 it's really easy to accidentally kill your friends. The good cops hate the bad ones. Chuck D is insane. You can make more money putting out fires than setting them (although you do have to steal a firetruck first).

The violence in the GTA3 series is less extreme, less graphic, and at the same time less realistic than you find in movies--and the guys who make those movies get to be governor of Minnesota or California, while the game developers are threatened with bodily harm by Congressmen.

And when is the Predator himself going to get to be governor instead of letting the minor characters get all the glory?

Hints for Austrians

Austrians clearly don't get the American psyche. They don't understand why Kurt Waldheim couldn't be in charge of the UN because of his Nazi past but Schwarzenegger can be in charge of California.

That's OK, Americans can't tell Austria from Australia.

But given that America likes to invade countries for reasons not far different from "You gave us an immigrant who looked like the savior of the Republican Party but who actually turned out to suck," Austrians might need to understand America. So here goes:

While Kurt was recording messages of peace for the aliens to be carried in space probes, Arnie was acting as a homicidal robot and blowing shit up. Penance doesn't work nearly as well as blowing shit up. Look at Clinton and Yugoslavia.

(Not to pick on Democrats. The only reason the Republicans don't try this is that excessive blowing-shit-up is usually the very thing they have to make penance for, as opposed to Democrats, who have to make penance for getting shitty blowjobs. Rimshot.)

One-Hit Wonders

The thing about one-hit wonders is that they usually aren't.

Oh, sure, there's the occasional Baltimora or The Vapors, who produce an album or three but only one song gets any airplay.

There are also plenty of Gary Numans and Human Leagues who have a dozen hits in the UK but only one of them ever made it big in America.

But the most puzzling of all are the legion of artists who everyone agrees are one-hit wonders, but nobody can agree which one is the hit. No, I don't mean Soft Cell, where the club kids think it's "Sex Dwarf" but everyone else thinks it's "Tainted Love." I mean bands where any two random people are likely to come up with different answers.

Let's go through a few examples.

• Falco: "Der Komissar" or "Rock Me Amadeus"?
• The Waitresses: "I Know What Boys Like" or "Christmas (W)rapping"?
• The Smiths: "How Soon is Now" or "Panic"? (If it weren't so much fun pissing off Morrissey fans, I wouldn't include them on the list--but it is.)
• Suzanne Vega: "Luka" or "Tom's Diner"?
• Beethoven: "5th Symphony" or "9th Symphony"?
• Nena: "99 Luftballons" or "99 Red Balloons"?
• Men Without Hats: "Pop Goes the World" or "Safety Dance"?
• Twisted Sister: "We're Not Gonna Take It" or "I Wanna Rock"?
• Kylie Minogue: "Locomotion" or "I Should Be So Lucky"?
• Frank Stallone: "Far From Over" or "What, as in Sly's brother? He had a hit single? No way!"

As with many of the undisputable one-hit wonders, most of these artists (with the obvious exception of Frank Stallone) have multiple albums full of equally good songs, and legions of devoted fans.

For example, the entire nation of Austria is up in arms that Falco is considered a one-hit wonder in America (although the rest of Europe is just baffled that "Jeannie" isn't the one hit). Falco's three big hits (in America) are spread between his first and third albums, but he continued to release great music up until his untimely death--as artists ranging from Chemical Bros. to the Bloodhound Gang recognized, not to mention most of Europe, but few non-musicians in America even noticed.

It's sad, but the nice thing is, all those great Falco and Human League and Suzanne Vega albums are out there, ready to be downloaded via mininova^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H purchased from Amazon, hits or not.

Money Smarts

My last thoughts about money, I promise.

I don't get why we still have exact-change slots. Anywhere.

When the bus was 25 cents, this made sense. When I hop on the KX and have to deposit exactly $3.50, though, it's a bit silly. Why can't I get change, or just slide my debit card through the machine, like on the CalTrain?

And parking meters are even more ridiculous. When I'm planning my commute to work, it's not that hard to set aside 6 dollars and four quarters. When I'm running off for a quick drive to the store, having to scrounge in the sofa cushions for dimes is ridiculous. But when the alternative is playing beat the clock with the DPT, hoping I can dash in and get change for a dollar so I can feed the meter so I can run back in and do my actual shopping, what choice do I have?

Everyone in Europe is switching to smartcash. You go to the ATM, slide your card through, and instead of getting a 20-Euro bill that can't be used as exact change anywhere, you get a different card, that's worth exactly 20 Euros. And you spend it by waving this smartcard at other machines (including parking meters) which deduct the appropriate amount, until eventually the card is worth nothing.

I've been told that in some countries, you can't spend the last euro, because they want you to recycle the card. Money with a cash-back deposit is an interesting idea, to say the least.

Maybe Americans are afraid of their cash being smarter than them, but I don't see it's any better if we're dumber than everyone else's money just because we're still smarter than ours.

Mo' Money

Why do we even still have a $1 bill? Even before the Euro, coins usually covered everything up to about $2. If you pulled out a bill, it was 5 marks or 10 francs or 20 billion lire or something of similar value.

People always say the same thing: "Americans just can't get used to a $1 coin." More conservative-minded folks will claim it's because the $1 coin always has someone forgettable (code word for "female") like Susan B. Anthony or Sakajewia.

Bullshit. Americans can't get used to a $1 coin because we still have a $1 bill. Get rid of it, and people will use the coins. Nobody's going to magnanimously say "keep the change" and wave away $4.25 because they don't want to carry coins. Or, if they do, it'll be a major change in American consciousness that's probably for the better.

Speaking of coins, some of them are cool. I've always liked the sub-penny-sized dime. (This is a holdover from the days when they contained measurable quantities of copper and silver. As every D&D player knows, 1 gold = 10 silver = 100 copper. And something called electrum comes in there somewhere.)

But other countries have cool coins. Most of the Scandinavian countries--you know, the ones that are 20 years ahead of us in cellphone technology--have at least one coin with a hole in it. Round coins with square holes, triangular coins with round holes, maybe even sawblade coins with intricate holes that can be used as a stencil to spraypaint the prime minister's face on a wall, although I haven't actually seen that one.

If you go far enough north into Scandinavia, the Sami used to have half-ton coins made of stone, probably because of their inherent value as something you could roll down the hill to kill reindeer. OK, I don't want to try to put these in the bus exact-change slot, but I suspect it makes money seem more real.

Money

The Talking Heads said it: American money is the ugliest money in the world; that's why it's worth so much.

Maybe there's something to this. But forget how ugly it is; that's a matter of taste. What's indisputable is how incredibly boring it is, despite the fact that we spend so much more (ugly, boring) money designing our (ugly, boring) money than just about anyone else.

Let's start with the paper. In most countries, bills come in different colors, so even without looking carefully (or soberly) you can immediately tell 20 rupees, which is worth about a gumball, from 1000 rupees, which will get you cabfare all the way across India. They also come in different sizes, so you can reach in your pocket and pull out that Hong Kong $2 as a tip without pulling out and rummaging through that big wad which may have a $1000 on top in front of the local Triad boys.

Our bills--including the fancy new "uncounterfeitable" bills (like "uncrackable" software copy protection)--are all identically-sized, identically-green, identically-dull slips of paper. Although it is cool that you can wash our bills in your pants pockets and they come out good as new (if considerably lower in cocaine content), there's not much else going for them.

Vegetarians

I have little respect for vegetarians. But I have even less respect for carnivores who are grossed out by the knowledge that animals are dying for their food.*

I've never stalked an elephant with a crude hand-ax and 20 cohorts in hopes of carting off enough raw meat before the hyenas arrived to feed my tribe for a week. But I have killed a turkey.

Once upon a time, for Thanksgiving, a group of us who lived too far from college and/or were too poor to fly home decided that we'd spend the long weekend and our friend's dad's farm in southern Jersey. We arrived around 3am Wednesday night** and were awakened at 6am Thanksgiving morning by the dogs barking at the roosters to shut the hell up.

Pops*** came into the room and asked who wanted to kill the turkey. My other city-boy friends freaked out (my city-girl friends were spared by Pops' gentle sexism), but once I realized that I'd lived 19 years as a meat-eater without ever taking responsibility for it, I volunteered.

At first, I wasn't sure I could do it.

That's because I'd never met a turkey before.

I assumed that, when you walk out into a field of free-range turkeys, the first thing you notice is the sound. Or maybe the smell. But really, the main thing you notice is the fact that dozens of turkeys are pecking at your legs hard enough to draw blood, as if they think there are seeds hidden somewhere in your veins. You shoo them away, and then walk around in circles for a couple minutes and come back to bury a beak in your flesh.

These are hideous, foul-natured fowl. It's hard to call anything so stupid evil (W's saving grace), but it's hard to find anything nice to say about them. By the time Pops handed me the axe and explained how to do the deed, the only hard part was lifting 25 pounds of vicious attack-bird up onto the stump.

Still, I didn't enjoy killing it.

But I did enjoy eating it.

Yeah, I know, just another way of putting the old joke, "Meat is murder... and murder tastes damn good with A-1 sauce." Still, having never actually killed a soy plant, I'm not entirely sure I can eat tofu in good conscience--but I have enough understanding of where my meat comes from before it's injected with water and covered in plastic wrap that I can make the choice. I wouldn't want to kill a cow, but if I were starving in a field of cattle, I could.

Anyone who can't say the same, maybe they should stick to fungus. And if you can't bring yourself to kill a mushroom, you deserve to starve.

Footnotes follow. I like blogs with footnotes; it's such a silly idea. So here:

* Of course I don't have much respect for hunters, or people who work in slaughterhouses--or animals. And definitely not plants. I guess I don't have much respect in general.

** I know, officially Thursday starts at midnight, but if 6am is good enough for TV Guide, it's good enough for me.

*** Pops was not his actual name, and his sons weren't named Speed and Rex, but it sounds like a good farmer-dad name.

Masks and Sports

So apparently a famous Mexican wrestler died a while ago. I had no idea. Everyone says it the same way: "You know, the Mexican wrestler."

Now, in my head, I'm thinking of Mexican Wrestlers. You know, with the masks and capes and the extreme overacting that made them so much fun. One of them died? That's a tragedy! But no, this is just some guy who happens to be both Mexican and a wrestler of the American variety. No mask. No cape. No bizarre combination of Catholic, Satanic, and Precolombian mythology. Hohum.

At first, I feel bad for not caring more--I mean, a human being died. But you know, a few million others did, too. So lay off your guilt trip.

My next thought is, would I care more about athletes in other sports if they wore capes and masks?

And then it hit me. This is the first time I realized that no other sports have capes and masks. Even in Mexico.

Outside of wrestling, what sports even have masks? Not many. OK, baseball catchers and hockey goalies, but somehow Johnny Bench never had the same kind of charm as El Santo.

Maybe he needed a cape.

The real scientific test is to find some good opposed pairs. So, who's cooler: Mario Andretti, or Racer X? Dale Earnhardt, or Racer X? Speed Racer, or Racer X? Rex Racer, or Racer X?

Yes, I'm a bit short on examples. And yes, the last two are the same guy--but Racer X is still cooler. The conclusion is obvious.

Everyone's whining about how crappy sports are today. We pay them $100 million and they won't even work their asses off like the old guys used to. Frankly, that doesn't bother me too much--if we're stupid enough to pay them $100 million without any kind of performance review process, they'd be stupid not to take advantage. Obviously they're getting something out of those college scholarships.

But at least we can tell them they have to wear masks. And capes. I suspect some of the basketball guys would enjoy it. As a side benefit, the white-kid-wannabe-ghetto types would all start wearing capes.

That's mildly cool because the upper-middle-class kids once wore capes to look like the rich, and now they'll be wearing them to look like the poor. But it's really cool because this is the perfect time for the real poor to open fire in a glorious Tarantino-ripping-off-Lam-ripping-off-Peckinpah moment. Just imagine the sight.

Well, I've gone a bit astray. My central point is this: If you want to take sports fandom back from stats-crunching nerds and flaming homosexuals with endless puns about tight ends, add capes and masks. Trust me.

Peace, Love, and Matriarchy

The Greeks didn't have our penchant for associating femininity with compassionate rejection of patriarchal violence. Hera, the Queen of the Gods, was the ultimate psychobitch from hell, and the most important human women in their mythology were the Bacchanites, who got roaring drunk and ripped people limb from limb in their celebrations.

Today, Gaia is the hippie symbol of all that's good and peaceful. After all, she's the earth goddess, the all-mother.

In particular, she's the mother of her own husband. And of another boy who she raised so she could give him a sickle to castrate her husband/son. And a bunch of weird-looking monsters, too. Not the kind of stuff hippies are usually into, unless you lace their pot with a mixture of speed, PCP, and blue nine.

Say what you will about Margaret Thatchter, I think she'd fit right in on Olympus.

This whole longing for an ancient pagan matriarchy that was destroyed by the Christian patriarchy is just silly. Anyone who's read the slightest history realizes that the Athenians, the Persians, the Chinese, and the other important pagan nations were ever bit as patriarchal as Charlemagne's Holy Roman Empire.

It wasn't Julia Caesar, after all.

There were a few women like Boedicaea, who ran things for a while when some tribe ran out of men after one too many bloody battles. But you can say the same thing for the Christian era--look at Queen Elizabeth, or the 20 or so Queen Christinas that plagued northern Europe for most of the middle ages.

Then there were the behind-the-scenes women, from just about every king's mother or wife in Byzantium having her nephew's nose cut off up to Princess Sophie of Hanover, who arranged enough royal marriages to guarantee the survival of hemophilia into the modern era.

P.S., to those neo-hippies who think matriarchy is as bad as patriarchy and poly is the real way to go, remember that before the Jews started putting limits on things, "poly" meant that the King had a harem of hundreds of wives guarded by eunuchs. Polygyny is common all over world history, but polyandry only exists (outside of San Francisco) in tribes on the edge of survival, and then only in special circumstances. (For example, some Inuit tribes make the groom's younger brother into a "junior husband" in years when there's not enough whale fat to feed the usual number of nursing women and babies. Not exactly the free-wheeling love fest the Ren Faire/Burning Man crossover crowd imagines.) If you can make it work, good for you--but don't try to tell me it's "natural" or "pagan."

Filet O'Fish

Nowadays it's called "Filet-O-Fish," like "Bass-o-matic," but when I was a kid it was "Filet O'Fish." Not "Filet o' Fish" like "Barrel o' Monkeys," but "Filet O'Fish," like "Feeney O'Flannery."

Considering that back then, nobody but the Irish ate these things,* did Ronald McDonald read Jonathan Swift's "Modest Proposal," get the sarcasm, but still think it was a cool idea?

Before you scoff, remember, this is the same Ronald McDonald (as Scottish Presbyterian as a man could be without being named Robert**) who dressed up in whiteface and a red frightwig and a red nose to signify drunkenness as a hideous parody of the Irish for the delight of the normal beef-eating children.

Of course they're still made today despite the Irish being able to eat hamburgers,*** but they spend their allotted hours under the heat lamp in vain hope that a Scotsman will wander in, lost on his way to H. Salt or Long John Silvers or Canada, and order a fish sandwich.****

Footnotes follow:

* For those who don't get what the Irish have to do with fried cod: Until the 60's, Catholics weren't allowed to eat meat on Fridays, so they ate fish. Even after they dropped that rule, there were a number of kids--for some reason mostly Irish--with alcoholic fathers and dead grandfathers who ended up being taken care of by crotchety old grandmothers who refused to listen to that blasted new Pope. Fortunately, the last 6 escaped into legal adulthood, the hobo underground, or the sweet embrace of death somewhere around 1986, and modern Irish kids eat double quarter-pounders and supersize fries and are, as a consequence, just as fat as the rest of us Americans.

** ... or Bruce, or Mel Gibson

*** You read * above, right?

**** Scotsmen are required to eat fried cod, of any quality, whenever offered, or the English will stop letting them call themselves British. It's sort of a hazing ritual for being the new crown in Great Britain. Lucky for Northern Ireland there's no adjective "United Kingdomish."

The Internet Will Turn Us All Into 13-Year-Old Girls

Once people expected that the net would turn us all into geeks. Well, it makes sense. If the instant access to all of the world's information didn't geekify you, surely learning how to fight Internet Explorer and the bizarre interfaces of many early web apps would....

But the most popular use for the net--after porn--seems to be LiveJournal. And the most popular use for LiveJournal seems to be reading journals of people you'd never talk to in real life and gossiping about them behind their back.

This all reminds me of my sister in 6th grade. "Ohmigod, did you see what Pam wrote on her notebook?"

Except instead of 13-year-old girls who will grow out of it faster then fluorescent sweats and leg warmers, it's everyone. Geeks, artists, parents, people who should have something better to do with their life all want to ask me--via email, from across the room, even out at clubs--"Ohmigod, did you see what Pam wrote at http://livejournal.com/pamsnotebook?"

No, I didn't see. And I don't care. I don't know Pam, I don't want to know Pam, and I'd rather read a good book or the news or even some hideous Microsoft sample code than read up on what Pam's saying about her friends--or, as seems to more often be the case, what she ate for breakfast today. If her life is not interesting to me in person or over email, why would it be interesting when written up in tedious, rambling detail?

There's a theory floating around in linguistics that humans developed language specifically for gossip. For a good example, see Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language by Robin Dunbar.

But even if that's true, we're only designed to handle gossip about the 50-100 people in our local tribe. TV added dozens of soap opera characters and hundreds of celebrities to our repertoire. Now LiveJournal adds thousands of random strangers. Is there a point where enough gossip is enough?

I'll bet the answer is no. After all, look at porn. (Well, you probably already do....)

Until about 30,000 years ago, if you saw a naked woman, that meant a real woman was naked right in front of you: a living chance to outcompete your neighbors in the Darwinian sweepstakes. But then someone invented art.

You draw a stick figure with a couple of circles to represent tits, and suddenly you've found a way to fool your brain: all the pleasure of looking at a naked woman without having to fight the other guys for her, bring home food for her, or clean up your dirty loincloths.

Of course a stick figure only works for unsophisticated cavemen or 13-year-old boys, but the cave paintings and pocket sculptures got better, and eventually we reached the point where you can download thousands of high-quality videos of beautiful girls spreading themselves for the camera.

If that's not enough porn, LiveJournal probably isn't enough gossip. Hence MySpace, and dozens of imitators of LJ and MS, and Blogspot, and....

Yeah, I know, there were also cave paintings of deer and bison, and there are also blogs about politics and music and software, but just as nothing comes close to porn for total bandwidth usage, I have a feeling nothing comes can beat blog-gossip for total eyeball-seconds.

Well, at least the kids are reading....

Flock, und stuffen

So since I work for Zimbra, one of the hot new Web2.0 companies, I felt a bit guilty for not using any of the other Web2.0 stuff out there. Really, I haven't felt the need to replace anything but mail/collaboration with an online app.

I don't know if I'm too geeky (is it really that hard to write wikitext by hand in emacs and copy-and-paste it into the edit window?), too old and out of it (do people really want to see the photos on my cellphone?), or too demanding and ahead of the game (can you give me an online replacement for Garage Band/Logic/etc.?). But I thought I might as well try it.

So I downloaded Flock, grabbed a blog on blogger.com, and now I'm trying it out.

OK, so editing the blog through Flock seems marginally nicer than using the website directly--and much nicer than using the "Word export" thingy. Hmm, maybe there is something to all this after all?