Sometimes I wonder things...

I see it's already been a month since my last post. Inexplicably, however, the earth's rotation continues unabated. The tides come in, the garbage gets taken out, and everywhere the unsettling tentacle-scrape of expanding civilization can be heard. When I was younger and more idealistic, it aggravated me to contemplate the miniscule extent of my affect on the biosphere at large. But now I find it somewhat comforting that I could have a greater impact on the grand scheme by tossing an errant soda can into a stream than I exercise through even the most profound act of mentation. Sometimes being insignificant can be reassuring. And it’s much less stressful than the alternatives.

So anyway.
I wonder things sometimes.

Why, I wonder, would a presumably logical, mentally functional adult choose to answer all political questions and form the decisions based thereon by first asking himself, "What would Osama [bin Laden] want me to do?" and then selecting the alternate course? I've wondered in the past about the motivations of Christians who preface every action with the question, "What would Jesus do?" This, too, seems to illustrate an alarming degree of cognitive surrender and abdication of personal responsibility, but at least patterning one's life after the (supposed) tendencies of a benign religious figure has an air of wholesomeness and good intention about it. Basing one's--political--life on the principle of contradicting a random radical religio-socio-political wacko, however, seems not only highly misguided but petty and vaguely petulant as well.

I wonder, too, why a parent would choose principle over their own child. An acquaintance of mine related a story to me just this afternoon that brought this question to mind. It seems that she is the daughter of extremely, obsequiously religious parents. Well, based on other conversations I've had with this friend, I had already gathered that she is...well, not. This is not to say that she is a blood-drinking, Bible-burning, old-lady-kicking Neo-Baalite. It's just that, as a nineteen year old university freshman, her lifestyle is considerably more relaxed in any number of ways than that of her progenitors. This is obviously a surging wellspring of potential conflict, but, so I thought, one that need not merit any more strife than what is typical of the grudgingly adaptatious relationship between a young adult and her family. But I digress. To return to this afternoon, I listened, fully and excusably awestruck, as this young lady recounted to me the circumstances in which she circumstances surrounding her domestically eventful previous few weeks. I learned that some members of her immediate family had encountered her out about town somewhere some days previously. Apparently they decided that her attire caused them some considerable distress. Pursuant to this violation of the family dress code, she was summoned to the paternal estate for a (pun unintended but sadly unavoidable) dressing down. Certain privileges and/or financial benefits were withdrawn as punishment. I made no comment at this point, obviously, but it occurred to me that this was a fair and fitting punishment. By the age of nineteen, if one wishes to oppose the mandates of one's parents, one should reasonably be expected to be able to do so without being caught. Enough said. But the tale continues. Some span of time elapsed, and this individual returns to the family estate, once more at the behest of the parental units. They, apparently, want to talk. On the father's birthday, no less. Those of you who once had childhoods will immediately recognize this as an ill omen. So after all the requisite pleasantries had passed, the talking began. It seems that the girl's parents had somehow gotten wind of the fact that she had been taking birth-control medication. So do you suppose that Mr. and Mrs. X issued a collective sigh of relief congratulated their daughter on having made the very mature, responsible decision to avoid an unwanted pregnancy? If you answered yes, you obviously didn't read the course material closely enough, my pupils. For you see, I think I mentioned earlier that these were pious and stoutly religious individuals. So naturally, they were incensed. It is here that my friend perhaps made her first truly grievous error. Sensing impending domestic tribulation, she elected to go for broke and announce at this moment that she intended to spend the coming summer months residing--unwed, of course--with her current romantic interest. She said little of what transpired in the ensuing moments, skipping ahead in her narrative to later that same afternoon. Her parents drover her back to her dorm on the University campus, escorted her to her room, removed some of its furnishings to which they had reasonable claim, and departed, with a final admonition to--and here I quote directly from the girl herself--“have a nice life.”
Oh, but wait! There’s more, all for the same low price.
Sometime shortly after this debacle, the young lady in question had been discussing this unpleasant circumstance with some other members of her family, and had had occasion to express the view--and in my most humble assessment, perhaps a valid one--that she had been summarily disowned by her parents. Well, it just so happens that this sentiment made its way back to the ears of the parents. A few days later, when she went home to collect her belongings--which had thoughtfully been packed and stacked in the garage for her convenience--her parents informed her that since she was going to carry on about having been disowned, she may as well see what it was like to actually be disowned. So they immediately put an end to all financial support, cancelled her insurance coverage--including Medicare, which paid for her ADHD treatments--and said, in effect, “Bye.”
My gut reaction to all this was to scream, childlike, “That’s not fair!” But I decided instead to put myself into the role of Father, and see if I might not get some better perspective on the situation through his eyes. So I’m a father. My daughter, I find, is taking chemical substances to prevent pregnancy. Obviously, this indicates she is having sex. I know for a fact that she’s not married. She’s nineteen. And she’s having sex. Now I come to the real dilemma. I can take this issue as an intellectual one, and realize that since she is only nineteen and unmarried, it is especially imperative that she not get pregnant, and therefore be glad that she had the foresight to get on the Pill. As an alternative--or perhaps as a corollary to the first option--I can elect not to think about it at all, opting instead to go and beat the living shit out of her boyfriend and dump him in a reservoir somewhere. Or, lastly, I can do what my friend’s father did. I can make a moral issue of it, and cast out my wayward daughter for daring to offend my theological sensibilities. I can cast her off to her own devices and be done with her.
Yeah, I sure that’s what Jesus would have done.

I also wonder what makes a good person. Look at any two random people you see on the street. Talk to them for a while. Take them out to dinner, maybe. Now tell me: which is the better person? Really? That one? I would have thought you’d pick the other one. But no matter. Tell me, then, how you made your decision. Well, if you happen to be a heterosexual male, odds are the two random people you chose to interview were the possessors of the two most impressive sets of breasts you could find, and your ultimate selection rested on the relative merits thereof. Honestly, sociologists should restrict their subject pools exclusively to heterosexual males between the ages of 13 and 30. Data analysis would be greatly simplified, I assure you. But back to the question at hand: what makes us love one person and hate another? For instance, consider John Wayne and John Wayne Gacy. Well, you say, one was a beloved actor, and the other was a serial killer. The disparity is obvious. We love good guys, and hate bad guys, end of story. Ok, then, wiseass, define good.
...
I’m waiting.
...
There, you see? It’s not so easy, is it?
But I have an idea. Since someone brought up John Wayne, let’s examine this matter in the spirit of the good ol’ Cowboy Code. And no, I’m not talking about the one that reminds us never to drink downstream from the herd or use the blankets you get from an Indian reservation if they happen to be stamped U.S. Army. I mean the one that reminds us, among other things, to always judge a man by his actions. So a good man is a man who does good things, a bad man is a man who does bad things, and a foolish man is a man who votes Bush in November, right? So we’re all decided, we’ll judge on the merit of action. But which actions? Take the man who mugged you one afternoon last week. Do we condemn him as evil scum because he threatened your life to get you to part with the fifty bucks you had tucked into that fake Gucci bag of yours? Or do we call him a hero when, later on that night, as he’s headed for the all-night liquor store to turn your hard-earned stash into hard brown liquor , he happens on a homeless diabetic girl who reminds him of his daughter and decides to give her the cash to buy insulin?

Ok, so you prove it didn’t happen.

Anyway, my point is, we just don’t know how to approach this sort of thing. True, we could attempt to quantify a man’s behavior. That’d be simple enough. One good deed here, three bad deed over there, and pretty soon you’ve reduced human behavior to simple Karmic arithmetic. Q.E.D.
But can we, morally, really live with that? Aren’t there times when cold mathematics would make us really uncomfortable? Batman is one of our all-time favorite heroes. We know he’s a little unstable, but that’s what makes him an effective vigilante. Consider, if you will, an average day--er, night--for the Dark Knight. He saves Gotham from a flood, a blizzard, two separate geological catastrophes, and an influx of Scientologists; he foils every major super-villain for two hundred miles; apprehends three bank robbers, a jewel thief, an art smuggler, two purse snatchers, and a jaywalker. He, in short, earns the title Hero. But what if we follow the Caped Crusader home? We see him pilot the Batmobile back to its secret lodging in the Batcave, peel himself out of what is now undoubtedly a very smelly Bat-costume, ascend once more into Wayne manor, pull all the shades, fire up the Victrola, and spend the rest of the night in the kitchen smashing kittens with a hammer. What do we say? Do we run away screaming with guttural revulsion, or do we silently--if tremblingly--allow our city’s dark protector this one idiosyncrasy? Or what about Superman, arguably the greatest in a pantheon of superheroes and the one man who really was badder than old King Kong and meaner than a junkyard dog? What if we were to follow him clandestinely back to his Fortress of Solitude after a hard day’s defeating Lex Luthor, only to find that he seals himself inside, turns down the lights, puts on an old dress he “borrowed” from Lois Lane, and masturbates to Vietnamese pedophilia? I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I could get out of that place fast enough to suit me. I probably wouldn’t even be able to sleep that night. But if it hadn’t been for this Man of Steel, I might not have a planet to sleep on in the first place…

So how do we add it all up? How much good goes into the equation, and how much bad? And, incidentally, what, precisely, is the numerical value of the Karmic penalty for smashing kittens with a hammer, anyway?

Occasionally, I wonder if perhaps I wonder a little too much...

Drat these computers, they're so naughty and complex

Damnable server apparently ate my last two posts. No time to fix them now, I'm already late for a tea party.
Back soon, though. Stay safe, kiddies, and, if you're travelling to the South in the near future, remember: Don't drink the Kool-Aid.

Peace.

Spring is in the Air

Yep, it's that time of year again. You step outside, take a deep, slow breath, feel the warm sunshine on your face, and you think to yourself, "What the hell is that smell"? Then it hits you: it's March. And you know what that means. That means the humidity comes back. For those of you not immediately familiar with the southeastern regions of the United States, I should explain what I mean by humidity. In the plain meteorological terms which apply everywhere else in the world, humidity refers, simplistically, to the moisture content of the atmosphere. Here in the quaint little geographic oddity where I live, humidity is a highly ironic euphemism for the ubiquitous, suffocating miasma that broods in the air waiting for a chance to envelop you bodily and condense until you're drenched to the skin (which usually takes about thirty seconds, depending on your attire). This can become a problem. Some enterprising individuals seek temporary relief by wearing rain slickers when they are forced to travel out of doors, or by hiding in a neighbor's sauna to dry off for a bit. By the peak of the season--usually just prior to the peak of summer--residents are advised to periodically apply a light coating of marine-grade preservative to shrubberies and small pets which must be left outside for long periods of time. Which brings me back to where we came in: the smell. After about two days, three at the outside, this roiling, saturated atmosphere begins to undergo some little-understood chemical process by which it breaks down into roughly the same substances which might be found in the velour upholstery of a Buick that has been submerged in the Everglades for a month. And so as if it weren't enough trouble lugging around the aqualung all the time, we then find ourselves immersed for months at a stretch in a fetid, reeking, wet-dog fug that not even Old Spice will penetrate. They never print this stuff in the travel brochures...

Remember though, how I said that in March the humidity comes back? Yes, we do get something of a short reprieve during the coldest of the winter months. Where does the humidity--foul and wretched thing of evil--go? We don't know, and frankly we're not interested in finding out, except insomuch as we might strive to avoid wherever it is. But it, like that odd uncle who always drinks too much and gets into arguments with his dead wife at family reunions, always comes back. And when it does, it's a sure sign that spring is near at hand, hanging precariously in the air, ready to fall headlong upon us like a drunken 250-pound frat boy plunging into a swimming pool after balancing on the railing of a second-story balcony while trying to urinate into a manicured bed of Mr. Lincoln roses. Not only will we once more have air moist enough to shower in and redolent of fried goat to look forward to, but inches-thick blankets of plant pollen and virulent, cruelly self-aware strains of plant life as well. Oh, and let us not forget the heat-seeking, armor-plated, nuclear powered, GPS-equipped killer attack wasps that always choose to live and/or mate in unfortunate locations, such as under the small of your back as you lie shirtless on the grass--which is extremely foolish for a number of other reasons, some of which we will discuss at another time.

Oh, I know, I hear you. Spring is for lovers, you say. Spring is a magical time of rebirth, when the world comes alive after a bleak winter slumber, a time when everything is wrought with the electricity of...whatever. Balls. It's hard to be romantic when you've rendered yourself semi-conscious with over-the-counter antihistamines trying to combat pollen allergies. As for rebirth, I suppose I can't argue that. Mosquitoes proliferate by the trillions this time of year. And I've only ever encountered electricity in the springtime once before...

...when I nearly electrocuted myself repairing damage caused by my faithful lawn maintenance machinery in pursuit of a feeble attempt to keep my lawn in check.


I think I'll just stay inside till Thanksgiving.

Math is Funny Like That

Did you ever stop to wonder just who comes up with all the statistics we're forced to absorb on a daily basis? Well I did, and what I discovered will shock you...

Wait, what's that?

Sorry, you're going to have to hold that thought. This is interesting.

Anybody know where I can find 716,009 spiders?
I want to try something...

The Results are in...

That's right, friends, the totals from Super Tuesday are in and counted, and we can now say with authority that the winner is...

...whichever itinerant alien race gets here first.
I don't know about you people in the rest of the world who, for reasons of culture or currency, are relatively insulated from the collective American psyche, but I for one think we're long overdue for an inter-special changing of the guard. I say we've done damage enough to this unassuming little world, and we ought to let someone else have a go at it for a while. They can scarcely do worse, can they? Less than 200,000 years since any ancestor we would readily recognize on the street appeared, and already we've had centuries of war, genocide, and ritual bloodletting, as well as multiple seasons of American Idol and many other unfathomable cruelties. But not to ourselves alone have we restricted our destructive tendencies. According to one reliable estimate that I just made up, as many as four hundred species worldwide become officially endangered or extinct each day, roughly a third of which are consumed by the McDonald's Corporation alone. Even the earth itself has not been immune to our pestilence. We've pilfered the forests, poisoned the air, befouled the deeps of the sea, raped the soil for its riches, and erected innumerable grotesqueries on the face of the world--not by far the least of which is New Jersey. Moreover, we leave one of our most advanced, powerful, and influential civilizations in the care of a man who routinely requires Secret Service assistance to interpret the cartoons in his Sunday newspaper. So I ask again: Could any theoretical interstellar interlopers conceivably do worse were they to have run of the place?
To illustrate, let us play devil's--or alien's, as the case may be--advocate. Let's you and I assume for a moment that extraterrestrial lifeforms did in fact come to colonize the earth. What then? To answer this question, we need to make a few assumptions. First, let us assume that the alien visitors are native to some world outside of our immediate stellar neighborhood. Based on what Mr. Drake has to say on the subject, this seems a very fair assumption. Secondly, we will assume that, as they managed to come here in the first place, they--or at least some members of their civilization--must be significantly more technologically advanced than are we. Thirdly, let us assume that they have come here intentionally; that is, they have traveled here with a specific purpose or intent, rather than having simply wandered by on their way to somewhere else. This implies forethought, reconnaissance, and planning. This is also an arbitrary assumption, but let us make it anyway. The correlation of these two assumptions logically suggests a fourth, which is for our present purposes irrelevant but interesting nonetheless. If these are significantly advanced beings who decided at some point to bend their technological might to making the long journey to earth from their homeworld even after they knew what it was like here, then we may safely assume that they are a highly masochistic species. If we take as given that their presence on earth is purposeful, what might that purpose be? Curiosity seems a solid motive, for even though an advanced civilization must set a high stake on the extravagancies of interstellar travel, surely only a highly developed sense of intellectual fervor could lead them to their advanced state. After all, curiosity is the forbear of science. So we might say that they are here because they wish to find out...
Find out what? Perhaps to find out what sort of geological formations our planet possesses, or then again maybe to find out whether or not we taste good with breakfast. As I see it, what they wished to find out is immaterial. The heart of the scientific method, regardless of the nature of the heart of the scientist, remains the same: Observation. It doesn't seem unreasonable to assume that they could observe us without our knowledge if they so desired. If they did so, then we would never know we were the object of their scrutiny. Given that scenario, our lives would continue unchanged. In fact, this may very well be going on right now. You know, that bush outside is a little closer to the house than it was yesterday...
If we discount pure science--which is likely just as rare in the alien species as it is in our own--we must then assume that they are curious in a much more...shall we acquisitive manner. Much like the intrepid explorers in earth's past, they might come in search of revelry, of rarities and riches with which to return to their distant homes. Or perhaps it is in fact a home they seek. This notion brings--or so I should hope--to the reader's mind a number of possibilities:

"What if they kill us all simply because they don't understand us?"

"What if they use their superior technology to force us to live like they do, and worship their heathen alien Gods?"

"They might take away our planet because they like it better than theirs."

"They might not want to stay here, but would instead herd us onto giant intergalactic vessels and indenture us for the rest of eternity in their equivalent of a salt mine."

..to which I can only say, "Hmm. How about that?"

So then let us construct a final, implausible, worst-case. The aliens have indeed come bent on making our world their home with or without our cooperation. Having come prepared to defend themselves, they are more than capable of besting any attack we, the lesser technological entity, can mount. We are then swept away with little fanfare to one of the remoter corners of the biosphere, where, presenting little if any threat to the usurpers, we are allowed to eke out whatever miserable existence we might until such time as we annihilate ourselves in a fit of petty bickering--no doubt precipitated by something highly pertinent, such as whether or not Howard Stern should have been removed from Clear Channel Radio. Or, if we survive long enough to make some feeble showing of political presence again, we may in time be allowed certain minor ambassadorial discourse with the new overlords. They, being the mightier, compel us to take on a somewhat subservient role in their society, something of a satellite civilization. Eventually, if we are this lucky, we end up under the total and unflinching domination of inscrutable creatures who barely--if at all--speak our language and demonstrate little understanding of or concern for our needs, desires, general wellbeing, etc. We are subjected to mandates we cannot hope to comprehend, and, in all likelihood, are forced to pay heartily for the privilege.

Come to think of it, how would this scenario present any major change?


This is all fine and good in jest, but I'm not naive enough to believe that the total domination of the human race by aliens would be a pleasant thing. I simply mean to convey that the total domination of the human race by other humans is not necessarily any more so.
But seriously, though, alien invasion is, if not an immediate peril, at least a plausible notion, at least in America. Don't take this to mean that I believe America to be any more likely a spot for invasion. I simply mean to say that such a thing is more plausible in America. After Curious George W.'s rationale for war in Iraq passed public scrutiny with barely and eyelash flutter from Jane and John Q. Public--and their bastard son, Sam--I'm convinced that we'll swallow anything. I can just hear the Conservatives--they of the shaved-head, hyper-Nationalist, Nazi-jackbooted, hound-dog-and-a-basement-bunker variety--now:

"If we don't go out of our way to make welcome these esteemed extraterrestrial visitors of ours, with their vastly superior weapons and technology, you can bet the Terrorists will!"

Rockin' Ebola; Split-end Blues; et al.

Finally, musicians are playing actual instruments again. Synthesizers are all fine and good, and I personally love the theremin, but there's a line that should never have been crossed: electronic drum kits. Logistically, it's almost infinitely more complicated to design and manufacture a hunk of electronics that simulates simple percussion than it is to build a drum. That's just inefficient. Besides, isn't there something fundamentally satisfying about banging away on some big ol' drums with little wooden sticks? And it's not as though the synthetic drums sound particularly impressive. If you're going to waste biomechanical energy beating on stuff, you may as well take the trouble to do it right...

You know the only thing that would be more imminently enjoyable than watching cobbled-together robots beating the bloody hell out of each other? Watching cobbled-together robots beating the bloody hell out of my Roomate. I'm generally a pacifist, but this guy's a real ass.

I was in a local store today, and I chanced to wander into the section devoted to hair care products. Apparently, it is not only possible to curl my straight, fine hair, but to condition the pores in my scalp, maximize the moisture balance in my assorted follicles, and even--I know, I couldn't believe it either--finally put an end to the abysmal terrors of protein deficiency. I didn't know I had a protein deficiency, but it must indeed be severe if its ill effects have spilled over to my coiffure. You know what I like in a shampoo? I know this must sound like a radical, even dangerous idea, but I like a shampoo with the ability to clean my hair. If I wanted herbs and nutrients in my hair, I'd put a steak on my head and roll about on the lawn.

If I see one more puppet cavorting about my television screen issuing geysers of simulated excreta, I fully intend to...
Come to think of it, what in Hell can be done about this? I welcome any suggestions.

Note to Self: If Pres. George W. can frolic around waging war on nebulous intellectual concepts such as the ones governing Terrorism (punctuation his, not mine), then I declare an immediate commencement of hostilities against midlife angst, daytime TV talk shows, and that weird crud that forms on the tops of toothpaste tubes. Oh, and the color yellow. I never did like yellow.

The Masked Logician is lazy and very, very surly. Comments, cash, and secrets of immortality welcomed.

I used to have this nightmare, see...

...where I'd be alone inside this desiccated hulk of an early-eighteenth-century farmhouse on the property where my grandparents lived when I was young. Once there I could always expect to be visited by some supernormal malevolency the like of which would bring a tear to the eye and a quiver to the bladder of Robert Englund himself. On more than one occasion, I can recall, in the infinite wisdom of the dreaming unconscious, fervently hoping that some leprous abomination would skitter the most revolting of its many appendages from the darkness under the bed and lay hold of my ankles and draw me down into the unflinching embrace of eternity as I slept so that I might be reprieved from my own imagination. Not to say, mind you, that anything I saw and/or suffered in the course of these somnolent sojourns was any more or less than the meat and bread of the day's Hollywood gore machinery. It simply seemed as though my pre-adolescent sensibilities were unequal to the task of coping with anything even tenuously connected with this humble, moldering former residence. Always, in the sober, Joe Friday light of morning the despicable things I recalled--fortunately few--would utterly fail to shrivel to shrieking fantasy death as did my other nocturnal frights. No indeed, even still some of the latent imagery from those dim childhood nightmares, burned into the phosphor screen of an overactive imagination, come back to me on nights darkest and most still. All of which amounts, as they say, to precisely dick, I suppose. And in further supposition, the fact that, lacking any prompting or discussion of the subject from myself, my pseudonymous beloved, upon spending some few minutes in the environs of this particular dream-specter's real-life counterpart, came down with what can only be called a righteous case of the heebie-jeebies must also be discounted as meaningless--indeed totally insubstantial--coincidence.
On a similar note, don't you hate it when you dribble gelatinous melted cheese onto a clean shirt? And even if the shirt is not, according to the strictest empirical definition, precisely clean, as such, at such time as the cheese makes contact with the fabric, well, that's still pretty lousy, right? Unlike less viscous substances, a cheese spill cannot be absorbed by a napkin or blotted away with a towel. Moreover, even if the bulk of the cheese is removed promptly, there always remains behind a troublesome residue of unwholesome dairy substance that attracts not only the attention of those individuals lucky enough not to be so endowed, but ever dust particle within approximately three parsecs of your current location, creating, after a time, a stiff, Bakelite-like layer of gunk on your poor abused garment that, once dried, will not be removed by anything less than a religious rite.

Alright, I realize that the two topics are not in any way related. But then, if you wanted coherence and relevance, you wouldn't be here.