Ursine Philosophy

A while back, I was asked what my “personal philosophy” was. My initial reaction was to say, “Go to hell, you saprophyte Nazi swine!”

But my mom hates when I talk back to her like that, so I refrained.

The question, however, is valid.

In college, I maintained a philosophy consistent with Ayn Rand’s writing: the greatest good for the greatest me. This generally involved long hours of alcoholic and nicotine induced meditation, and watching utopian and dystopian documentaries along the lines of Tombstone (and eye for an eye), Mortal Kombat (an eye for an eye), The Crow (an eye for an eye) and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (revenge is bad). At the time this seemed preeminently logical.

But logic, we know, is the beginning of wisdom, not the end.

Other, more sanguine sources of deeper thought must be delved to arrive at a true basis for the living of life, and Forest Gump’s box of chocolates just won’t cut it, since the bum ate most of them before he even arrived at Jen-Nay’s doorstop.

Greedy bastard.

To that end, I have turned to the venerable sagacity of the three ultimate, though often over-looked, Ursine Philosophers: Winnie-the-Pooh, Smokey the Bear, and Baloo.

From Winnie-the-Pooh we learn that the simplest answer is often the right one. He's very Thoreau in his attitude, but without all the complex introspection and pedantic psycho-babble that is Thoreau: “Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you, you will suddenly know everything there is to be known . . . Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.” Socrates once stated, “The unexamined life is not worth living,” and Pooh has certainly taken the old Greek’s thought to heart. When confronted by Rabbit, who kindly quips, “Pooh, you haven’t any brain,” Pooh immediately, but humbly, responds, “I know.” He states in many different places that he is a “Bear of no Brain at All.” Pooh has learned enough to know that even all his combined knowledge of hefflelumps and his beloved hunny amounts to very little in the great scheme of things. But in recognizing this, he also recognized a fundamental understanding that many of us can miss altogether. We may not be able to “know” much of anything, but we can certainly feel plenty; friendship and love being the foremost to the Silly Ole Bear, “If you live to be 100, I hope I live to be 100 minus 1 day, so I never have to live without you.”

From Smokey the Bear we learn that if we want something done, then we must take the burden first upon ourselves, rather than shucking it to someone else. We also learn that being proactive is much, much better than being reactive. Finally, we learn that our actions can have vast reaching implications for others, so we must be cautious against carelessness. Smokey has never been a bear of many words. His mottos are simple, slogans, almost marketing jingles. And yet, the concept that, “Only you can prevent wildfires,” is as true today as it was in 1944. This can be cross-applied to many different aspects of our own lives, “Only you can prevent a seven-car pile up on the freeway by turning off the cell-phone, and using your damn blinker.” Rather than telling others what they should do, according to our own moral or socio-ethical models, we should turn within, and understand that we are responsible for our own independent destiny, but at the same time this world is what we choose to make of it. If we choose to drive really slow in the ultra-fast lane that has repercussions on everyone else. They are not necessarily forced to think evil, nasty and vile thoughts about us, our parents, and our sexual preferences, but the path is certainly much more brightly lit because of our choice.

Finally, from Baloo (not the Kipling creation, but the Disney derivative) we learn that happiness comes first from the basics:

Look for the bare necessities
The simple bare necessities
Forget about your worries and your strife
I mean the bare necessities,
Are Mother Nature's recipes
That bring the bare necessities of life
Wherever I wander
Wherever I roam
I couldn't be fonder
Of my big home

Baloo teaches that when we look to the complex for our joys, we often overlook that which is more easily and more readily available. We also learn that life shouldn't be taken nearly as seriously as most of us take it. If we have a roof over our heads for those rainy days, food in our stomachs when we’re hungry, a car as a means to go where we will, and defeat the plans of Captain Kirk, well, so much the better.

So that it then, the Ursine Philosophers. Much more, I’m sure, can be dug from their simple musings and meanderings than I have laid down here for you; but this is the key to what makes these simple bears such excellent role-models.

New Math - Iraq, Terrorism, al-Qaeda and Computers

An interesting bit of math occurred to me today during a discussion regarding Big Brother, the Orwellian name for a government who watche sand attempts to control actions and even thoughts.

By typing in any or all of the words in my tagline title into a search, or into an email, or into a discussion forum, or even a blog you might trigger a government computer to log it into the memory. But there's a problem with the paranoia regarding this. While I won't suggest that they're aren't such computers; there are, and they should be there. What I do suggest is that a simple search of this nature will likely not land you in Room 101.

Let me explain.

No, wait, there is too much. Let me sum up.

Worldwide there are over 1 billion internet users daily. I, personally, will run four or five searches each day, with any number of refinements or sub-searches just to find the information or item I'm looking for (usually jewelry for my wife). For the sake of simplicity, let's say that half the people on the internet are actively searching for something via a Google or similar search (I guess the other half are looking at porn/myspace or blogging).

So 500 million people logging in each day to use it for something other than blasting movies.

From that, let's say that they run, as I do, an average of 4 major searches each day (we'll reject any refinements or subsequent searches for the sake of brevity). That's about 20 billion-with-a-B searches. Now, my searches are generally for topics I'm writing about, or interests that I have. For instance, on Monday, I spent an hour searching for the second edition (I already own the original release) of The Crow graphic novels released by Tundra. I used words like "death", "tundra", "crow" "pain & fear" "irony & dispair", etc. These were parts of the titles of the graphic novels. However, some of these words are likely on so-called "watch lists". That's one out of four of my searches.

But again, for the sake of brevity, let's consider that our 500 million people who are not looking for Jenna Jameson, run their 20 billion daily searches and only hit some of these "watch list" words one time in 100.

One percent of the time, an individual hits one of those words on the watch list.

That's 200 million searches that are now logged away by some vast government computer.

Daily.

Now then, we have 200 million searches that may or may not have anything to do with terrorism, national security or, alternately, pornography (bang, explosion, and penetration being part of favorite search/site names all over).

Further consider, now, a computer program can probably sort through the majority of these and discard, let's say, 90 percent of the more mundane. Leaving a mere 20 million user searches.

Daily.

I'm not going to go into inter-agency or multi-national information sharing and whatnot to complicate things. Suffice to say say that we have 20 million daily searches that would like have to be gone through by a dedicated staff. Of our figure of 20 million, we could probably again say that 90 percent could be rejected out of hand, at a first glance, leaving a mere 2 million user searches that might need some follow up work done.

Now the FBI employs about 30,000 men and women, half of which are support personnel. If all 15,000 of these individuals were given the task of reviewing the 2 million user searches each day that required follow up, that would mean each employee of the FBI would have to review 133 searches each and every day.

Including weekends, and we know the government pays overtime.

Our poor FBI folk would have to review one search roughly every four minutes to get through their assigned 133. That means that the other 15,000 field agents, the ones who get to carry guns, would have absolutely no support, backup, paper-pushing, lab or forensic, or the guys ordering bullets for their guns being done while they're trying to do theirs.

It's one thing to pull a gun, it's another to fire and remember that the bullet order didn't quite get through because of all those pesky emails that Agent Clarice Starling is sorting back at HQ.

And that's without the fava beans and a nice chianti.

Now, I'm not saying that they, the various world governments, don't have computers looking for specific words and phrases. They do. They should. Terrorists and the like are bad people.

But something as mundane as looking up "terrorist explosions in Iraq related to al-Qaeda" will probably not trigger a red flag on your personal J. Edgar Hoover file. It would require daily and repeated searches along the same lines as a terrorist seaking a target, a means and/or like-minded individuals in order for you to start showing up in a database. Even then, the federal government generally frowns on tracking you without a warrant.

Goerge Orwell may be alive and well in 2006, but he has infinately less funding and requires infinately more precise techniques than 1984 would suggest. After all, sometimes Big Brother feels the need to go down the street and beat up some of the other kids who claim to be as tough, and spend $250 billion doing it.

And on that note, tell Mom and Dad that I want my $1,000 bucks back!

What's Up Doc?

It has come to my attention that many of you are unaware that doctors are essentially big, fat liar-faces.

Liar-faces burn in Hell, you know.

Given the hundreds of thousands of emails that I've received on basic health and exercise question, I've put together the following FAQ of essential information that every educated American should know.

Q: Is running good for me?
A: Consider the marathon: 26.2 miles. The longest single-day running race based on the legend of Pheidippides, a Greek soldier who ran from the town of Marathon to Athens to announce that the Persians had been defeated in the Battle of Marathon, and died shortly after.

In honor of this noble runner, marathons held the world over maintain oxygen tents and have medics standing by with a good supply of body bags.

Does that sound good to you?

Q: Can cardiovascular exercise extend my life?
A: Your heart has a warranty for only so many beats. After that, time is up and you have to cash in your chips and head for the exits. You may be helped out by friendly civil servants called coroners. Speeding up your heart is like driving your car faster and hoping it lasts longer.

Prolong entropy by taking a nap.

Q: Should I cut down on meat and eat more fruits and vegetables?
A: Five words: logistical efficiencies. Riddle me this: What does a cow eat? Hay, corn, and grasses; sometimes other cows. But essentially vegetables. So a steak is nothing more than an efficient mechanism of delivering vegetables to your system. Need grains? Drink beer.

Beef, chicken and pork can easily give you 100% of your recommended daily allowance of vegetable products.

Q: How can I calculate my body/fat ratio?
A: Simple: If you have a body and you have fat, your ratio is one to one. If you have two bodies, your ratio is two to one, etc.

In the event that you have no fat, then you don’t need to bother.

Q: What are some of the advantages of participating in a regular exercise program?
A: Sometimes cute girls wear tight and revealing clothing.

Q: Will sit-ups help prevent me from getting a little soft around the middle?
A: When you exercise a muscle, the muscle will grow larger. So exercising your abs will increase your middle, not decrease.

By contrast, muscles grow smaller from lack of use.

I see another nap coming on!

Q: Is swimming good for my figure?
A: Explain whales to me. Maybe they do a lot of sit-ups, but that seems to only make the more attractive to those harpoon wielding one-legged captains.

Whale-blubber isn’t just a clever euphemism.

Mos Eisley's Got Nothin'!

My office.

There has never been a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.

Last Thursday, I was feeling rather chipper. I was mostly over my illness, which had cost me the first two days of the week in sickness, and I was in an interesting, and for once, useful training. Plus, in the training, we were given handi-wipes and chocolate truffles.

Non sequitar, I’ll admit, but there it is.

What’s integral to the story is that I had my big, purple plastic cup with me. This is the cup that I use for my water. I like my water cold and my tea hot, and I prefer to keep my two cups separate from each other so that they don’t cause inter-drink-holder civil war.

Detente at its most tenuous.

Now, silly me, after the training session, I clean up my laptop, my training materials and my handi-wipes, but fail to pick up my purple plastic water cup. I leave it sitting there, in the conference room, in a secured building.

The next day, first thing at 7:45 a.m., realizing my mistake, I rush to the room only to see it is completely devoid of anything resembling a plastic purple water cup. It’s not in the trash, and the trash is still there.

Now, forgive me if this seems overly Wagnarian, but . . . WHO THE HELL STEALS A PLASTIC PURPLE WATER CUP?

I mean honestly, what kind of degraded individual wanders into a conference room after 5 p.m., sees an abandoned and helpless water cup and thinks to themselves, “Yes, that’s right. I’ll just be taking you my pretty!”

Do they then adjust the angle of their wide-brimmed pointy hat, jump on their Numbuss 2000 and cackle as they smash through the glass windows of the conference room? And who cleans that glass up, but doesn’t report a stolen water cup?

MY water cup!

Upon phoning the police I found that some kind of officer morale day was going on which included a stand-up comedian. Most of the officers I spoke with were paying more attention to the comedian than to taking my report. I can’t fault them. The comedian was apparently good.

He also had incredible timing.

Whenever I reached the part about what exactly had been stolen, he apparently cracked a funny, and the officers would laugh so hard they couldn’t be trusted to take my report.

Oddly, Human Resources also seemed to have a similar comedian in-office when I called them.

So, sadly, mourning the loss of a cup whose time came too soon, who gave its life defending those principals, I went back to work, poorer and less hydrated, but wiser for the experience.

Speak of the Devil . . .

. . . . And he appears.

Most people don’t know that’s how the whole saying goes.

Of course, most people have better things in their minds than the interesting but useless bits of trivia that I keep in mine. For example, despite my general dislike of all professional sports great and small, I know that the Lakers got their name because the team was originally based in Minnesota. I also know that Lou Gehrig died of Lou Gehrig’s disease.

You woulda’ thought he’d have seen that one coming!

But I digress.

If you scroll down a bit, you will see that I provided an interesting, if somewhat high-handed and generally humorous take on the subject of coffee; that foul and most loathsome of drinks. No sooner had the ink dried on the page . . . or rather my hand had finished clicking on the mouse key, than the Devil, Lucifer himself, the Morning Star and First of the Fallen Angels, must have known that I was on his track. His little helpers, the eight-legged-freaks of myth, lore, legend and detox hallucination, scurried to do his bidding.

In Southern California, it grew cold.

Not just a little cold.

Damn, damn cold.

So suddenly had this cold hit that I was not prepared. I happened to be at a high school debate tournament, helping to coach and judge the talented youngsters from Diamond Ranch High School in their regional qualifying rounds. Cold, I tell you! Bitter, bitter cold. The kind of cold that can kill a man and strip his flesh from his bones in 18 seconds. Apparently, Damien High School, where the tournament was held, doesn’t believe in listening to the weather reports OR in turning on the heat.

Damn Catholics anyhow.

I know, I know what you’re thinking. But honestly, where was I going to find rubber pants in my size at that hour?

So there I was, there I was, there I was, in the cold. My hands had lost all sensation earlier, and all attempts to keep my scarf secure enough about my neck so as to warm the rest of me had failed utterly and miserably. Burning my team’s briefs was out of the question, and the smaller freshmen had formed some kind of mutual non-aggression treaty, preventing us from sacrificing them to the sun gods.

And then, salvation.

That’s right loyal readers, it was coffee.

Liquid evil.

Made by a cut-rate teacher’s lounge coffee-maker in a stained generic pot, smelling of forgotten and moldy grounds, un-distilled water and bargain-basement ground coffee that had gone stale. I’ll admit, I probably don’t know a good coffee from a great one, or an expensive coffee from really expensive coffee, but I do know what good coffee should taste like, even if I have to suppress the urge to run to the nearest confessional and beg forgiveness for drinking it.

This was not good coffee.

This was just short of nuclear waste spillage.

Foul, disgusting, murky black water with the taint of madness and grief.

Coffee, most foul and unnatural.

But warm, and a man will sell his soul for a little warmth in that bleak, bleak Southern California cold.

Maybe I’m getting acclimated too much.

Juan Valdez Spells Satan

There are many things in this life which we simply will never understand. No matter how fast and how far science takes us, certain elements of our culture, current or historical, will always result in head-scratching, a shrug of the shoulders an a clichéd, ‘Whaddya gonna do?”

The sound of one hand clapping.

The true nature of God.

Paris Hilton.

All are things that we cannot now, and perhaps never will, grasp in there entirety. Of course, as Robert Browning wrote: “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?” According to Browning, this head-scratching and grasp-achievement is simply something we have to put aside and move on with ours lives.

But one such cultural/historical concept I feel should be reviewed with all due haste.

Coffee.

Coffee may smell good, and I won’t dispute that in any form. But it tastes like someone burnt something. Why anyone who isn’t Klingon and feeling the need to prove their manly-worth would want to drink something so foul truly boggles the mind. But further, how the concept of coffee as a beverage in general was arrived at is further cause for consternation.

Consider exactly how coffee beans must be fussed and bothered with in order to achieve your regular cup of joe. Laborers must pick baskets of coffee beans by hand. By HAND people. Like with fingers and sore backs and such. They can’t even use a machine to handle these oh-so-delicate beans. The cost per human-laborer’s basket is something around $2 to $10 depending on how many pairs of silk gloves the workers have to wear, and how long they have to apologize to the bush before plucking the bean.

Now, after all that is accomplished, a task that can take anywhere from a few seconds to a few days, the beans must then be “defruited”. I am not making this up. Defruiting, despite not being a real word, requires the outer skin of the bean to be removed, either by washing, soaking, scrubbing, scouring, or promising the beans a movie career and plying them with appletinis.

After this, the beans must be dried. Here is where coffee is actually treated in the manner which I feel this soul-sucking commodity deserves. The beans are poured onto flat cement or hard rocks and repeatedly racked into piles, and then pushed back out until they every last drop of life-giving moisture has been allowed to depart from their black hearts.

After this phase, the beans are sorted. Apparently, like American Idol contestants, just don’t make the “coffee” cut, and must be thrown back into the sea of semi-talented, but mostly annoying divas and hacks. I understand Simon Cowell has had his fill of bashing the wannabe grinders, the beans are then allowed to age somewhere between one and eight years.

Eight years, folks.

This is how long it takes a doctor to complete college AND medical school.

Finally, we come to my three favorite parts of this process: roasting, grinding and brewing. In the 19th century, beans would be thrown into an open pan must as Christians were thrown to lions and punk-rock mutant frogs . Now, we mass torture the beans at 400 degrees for a few hours before grinding the hell out of them and passing the bags on to fools who actually think this is a good thing.

Interestingly enough, even after roasting, this Spawn of the Overfiend will continue to emit CO2. Yes, that’s the byproduct that humans expiate, and causes bad side-effects if we breathe too much.

Once all this has been accomplished, those drinkers of this Beverage of Doom will then pour boiling, steaming hot water over the concoction and serve it as some kind of daily ritual.

To boil it down, if you will allow the pun, the coffee bean takes more time, effort, energy and money to process for mass consumption than 747 Boeing does.

Of course, now, in my wee little mind, comes the question of just exactly how this process came to be. Some one stumbled upon these bitter, untasty seeds and said, “Hey, I know, let’s pick, shuck, dry, age, roast, grind, run hot water over these things, and drink it for fun!”

At what point did all this start making sense to someone?

I suppose I should just scratch my head, shrug my shoulders and say, “Whaddya gonna do?”

The Absence of Presence

There is a theory rolling around called “Absent Presence” fostered by Kenneth Gergen, and it goes a little something like this: because communication technology is so widely available, and so widely used, individuals who are standing, sitting, kneeling, walking, running, etc. right next to you are not aware of their surroundings or even you.

To put it more simply, when you’re on the cell, you don’t hear the bell.

Mobile technology including iPods, cell phones, Blackberry, laptops, personal DVD players, internet, pod-casting and wrist-televisions have moved the potato’s couch out of the house and into the real world. No longer are we required to be bored by the general tedium of waiting that surrounded out patient, but pathetic forebears. Now, we can tune in, or tune out, of the general noise, chaos and conversation that surround us.

But at what cost, I ask?

AT WHAT COST?

Perhaps that’s a little more vehement than is required.

OR IS IT?

Sorry.

Still, the cost is there. Gone are the days when you might have had to spend a grueling hour of tedium on the train to work and back, trying to tune out the various “train friends” who would talk, laugh, sing, or yodel so loudly that you couldn’t even read your latest George R.R. Martin book (excellent, by the way). Here are the days of hearing someone, who is not psychotic or possessed by demons, talking to themselves; laughing at the ether, arguing with the air.

Yes, children, a time actually existed when something called a PUBLIC TELEPHONE BOOTH was not only practical, it was economical too. There was a time when computers the size of a briefcase were only found in science fiction. When only Dick Tracy had a wrist-watch sized communicator, and only George Jetson has a flying car.

Oh, you think there’s no such thing as a flying car?

http://www.viewaskew.com/tv/leno/flyingcar.html

DOOM ON YOU!

But the coupe de ville of this entire Absent Presence phenomenon, aside from the evil, soul-sucking demons who insist on leaving their cells phone on during a movie for fear they will miss THE MOST IMPORTANT CALL OF THE LIFE, was made painfully clear to me yesterday. Minding my own business, and quite unprepared for the horrors I was about to witness, horrors that would cause Poe, Lovecraft and Christina Aguilera to lose their lunches, I went into the bathroom at work.

Now ladies, you may not know this, but there are rules in the men’s bathrooms. Generally speaking, and unless someone is dying, on fire, or selling a winning lottery ticket for pocket lint, there should be NO TALKING. This is not strongly enforced, but most men know that they will lose their Man Card if they insist on discussing relationships, make-up strategies or the latest on That-Bitch-Paris-Hilton.

Yet, yesterday, not only was someone talking in the bathroom while standing at the urinal. Loss of Man Card Factor: 12.5 on a scale of 10.

Not only was said genius talking at the urinal, he was apparently talking to someone on the other end of his cell phone wireless headset while making his deposit.

No, seriously.

And thus I give you the Eighth Sign of the Apocralypse*. Lo, did the leviathan stir, and lo did ten-thousand sushi dinners cry out for vengeance. Soggy potato chips rained from a clear sky, and the land did cry out for cumquats.

I really don’t think theirs is much more that I can add at this point. I’m just going to find a corner and shudder at the horror.


*The Apocralypse is the end of the world, so named because it is an apocryphal apocalypse, nobody is sure when it will happen, how it will happen, and whether it will happen in the here-and-now sense. It is the Tea-Time of the Gods, when the Ice Giants will march against them for the last time, probably without even giving them the lawnmower back first.

Four Things

I saw this on someone else's Blog (yes, sometimes I'm bored at work . . . like when I get to my desk) and thought it would be fun to update this site today.

Four Jobs I've Had
Skeet/clay pigeon loader at a gun club - you heard me right, when the guy says "PULL!" it's my job to put another clay disk on the machine so he can blast it to hell

Peice worker at a farm - they pay you pennies for every bushel or bunch

Lifeguard - I'm not kidding, saved some 8 year old's life

Collections Agent for credit card company

Four Movies I Could Watch Over and Over (series is one entry)
"Shogun" - Eight hours of culturally and historically simple Japan
"The Lord of the Rings" - Nine hours of culturally and factually simple Middle Earth
"Scrubs" - Hours and hours of factually and culturally correct hopsital internships
"Serenity" / "Firefly" - Science Fiction cowboys

Four Books I Could Read Over and Over (series is one entry)
"The Lord of the Rings" - I read and loved it before the movies, thankyouverymuch
"A Different Light" - Elizabeth Lynn - Science Fiction with prose of the highest kind
"The Chronicles of Westmark" - Lloyd Alexander's amazing triple crown
"Against the Horde" - David Gemmell's 2nd rate hack-n-slash . . . but no one does hack-n-slach better

Four Places I Have Lived
Battle Mountain, Nevada - Officially the Armpit of America as rated by the New York Times
Portales, New Mexico - Flat, lots of sand . . . flat
Pontiac, Michigan - Note to self: Do not live in a city named after a car, or vice versa
Salt Lake City, Utah - Mormons, Rocky Mountains, the Great Salt Lake . . . must be heaven

Four TV Shows I Watch
I don't watch television. I rent a series I like from Netflix.

"Scrubs" - See above
"House" - It's like a mix between "Scubs" Dr. Cox and "CSI"'s Gil Grissom
"CSI" - Gotta love the Grissom
"The Simpsons" - D'oh

Four Places I Have Been On Vacation
New Orleans, Louisiana
Denver, Colorado
Seattle, Washington
Riverside, California - before I moved here

Four Websites I Visit Daily
DMS - internal site
Kiagi Swordscat - http://acceleratedculture.blogspot.com/
SF-FANDOM - http://www.sf-fandom.com/vbulletin/index.php
Neko the Kitty - http://www.nekothekitty.net

Four Favorite Foods
Bean, rice and cheese burritos - WET!
My own spaggheti sauce - I won't eat spaggheti anywhere else now
Sushi - good, bad, indifferent, I can't tell the difference
Hamburger Helper Beef Stroganof - nothing like real beef stroganof but that's the way I like it!

Four Bloggers I'm Tagging
Eric and Amy aren't bloggers, but I follow their site.
I recently started watching another old friend's site.

That's all.