Something new.

Sometime soon (probably never) I plan to move all of my para-geography work-related posts to a new blog. I'll let you all know when that happens.

Right now I wan to talk about something that happened last night. Whether or not it happened TO ME is up to interpretation.

Sometime around two, I think, I was awakened by the sounds of someone screaming, a woman. It took me a while to figure out what was going on, but something was obvious from the very beginning. Whoever was yelling was PISSED. At first I assumed that whoever was being yelled at was some kind of zen-master buddha, not raising his/her voice in such a hurricane of insults. Then, after I woke up a little more, I realized that whoever was yelling was probably just on the phone. I'm assuming that she wasn't just raising her voice because of a bad connection.

I think she was pacing. Sometimes I could hear what she was saying, but most of it was muffled. However, a couple of things came through very clearly. I heard "I can't believe you..." "Why didn't you say..." and "How could you?". Far more frequently I heard "gave me an STD" and just about every variation on "Fuck you."

Even half-asleep it wasn't hard to figure out what was going on.

To her credit she wasn't crying, or didn't seem to be actively doing so. She wasn't wasting the emotion on passively being upset with the guy who had "done this to her."

[ An interjection: if she is concerned about having contracted an STD from someone because of frequent unprotected sex, the first person she has to blame is herself for not being smart about it, followed by the guy (or possibly girl, I don't know), if he lied about it. However, blame does and should go to her first. Anyway...]

At first I thought about going and, politely, asking her to please, keep it down, since I was trying to sleep. After quickly letting that scene play out in my mind, I thought I might have better luck politely asking her to turn lead into gold. So I just sat back and waited. And listened.

I'm a little ashamed to admit that I listened for so long. I mean, I didn't really have any other choice (yes I did), but I guess that's not the bad part. I really enjoyed listening.

I have mixed feelings about that. On the one hand I feel bad for listening to what is obviously a very emotional moment in someone's life. Of course she wasn't really keeping it a secret. But that's not really the point, now is it?

No. The point was, and the question that I was asking myself, was, Am I taking joy out of this poor woman's pain? Jesus, I hope not, thought I in my half-awake musings. That's a whole problematic world to deal with.

That sort of deep soul-searching is not very well handled when half-asleep, I have found. It took me some time, but I was able to "figure out" (at least enough to calm down) what I found so entertaining in the interaction going on next-door.

It was all that anger. I know a lot of people who prefer to stay away from it at any cost, but I've always found it really exhilerating, so long as I'm not too involved. This woman was boiling with it, I could almost feel it coming through the wall, the floor. I can only imagine what it must be like to actually burn like that. I don't like conflict, but I love anger.

So there's voyourism involved too. Like reality TV (which I hate). I like seeing powerful emotions acted out by those around me. When I see something like what I witnessed last night I am always reminded by how dulled are the emotional responses people in "polite society" wield. It makes civilization easier, but arguably less interesting.

I encourage anyone who's read this far to have a really powerful emotion today. In public. See how it makes you feel. Maybe you'll like it.

Pet Peev.

My original intentions for today's posting was to elaborate on the delicate nature of inter-species reproduction and the vital role Deloware has played in ensuring the maintenance of bilogical un-diversity in the contiguous 48, but something has happened that I feel I cannot allow to go undocumented.

Two days ago I climbed a mountain.

Sort of.

I have been spending the past month in Vermont, doing research along the Canadian border - a federally funded study of the "porous border" problem - and I had this week off. I had been staying with friends of mine (a People-and-Human Studies Professor at UVM and a Jew) in Burlington. On Wednesday they were both busy at work (at Old Navy and Taco Bell, respectively) so I had the day to myself. I thought it would be a good opportunity to take in the local landscape by climbing the highest peak in the county, Camel's Hump, and really see the sights. I looked online to find directions to the mountain but any direct help elluded me. I decided to just wing it and let my natural directional ability guide me.

Once on the freeway I could see the tall peak in the distance and guessed my way toward it. Across freeway and backroads alike I drove until coming on a sign pointing down a dirt road, "Camel's Hump 3 1/2". I took the long road for what must have been closer to six miles before coming on an empty parking lot with a sign "Camel's Hump State Park."

But there was a problem.

There was no mountain.

On some level I was immediately aware of what was going on, but my anger at the situation drowned out my better reasoning and I simply let myself get carried away. There was a small path which I followed, hoping that my instincts were wrong and that the big mountain was simply hidden behind one of the smaller ones. This, alas, proved not to be the case. Camel's Hump is a para-geologic formation.

NO WHERE online did I find this information! NO ONE ever mentioned anything about the mountain having any para-characteristics! NO WAY could I have predicted this!

Which brings me to that pet peev of mine. I hate it when people don't adequately make these para-formations a part of their everyday psychological lives. Everyone knows that the mountain is sometimes there, sometimes not, but the situation is too "wierd" to really think about and so no one does. The problem is just ignored by those whose imagination cannot take in the whole reality of the situation all at once and something in their small little minds fizzles out. For professionals like myself in the para-anything fields, this is simply unacceptable.

It is also, unfortunately, very common. Such a large part of the culture has no place for those things that cannot be understood VERY EASILY. My colleagues, specifically those regretable few in the high-publicity world of para-zoology, are constantly being attacked as "crazy people" because they are capable of seeing things others cannot because of their small minds and even smaller imaginations.

There is, I know, little I can do about the problem. One cannot be educated when one is completely empty headed. Writing here my emotions have moved surprisingly fast from anger to sadness at the state my fellow humans are in. The best I can do is teach who can listen and ignore the rest.

And warn anyone in the Burlington area to approach the mountain with caution.

Advice.

So, I'd like to return to my one-part, ongoing column about how to pick people up on the subway in Boston.

As you know, this is a subject that is very important to me and all other para-geographers around the world, for reasons that are simply too complicated to divulge in anything other than a language based on pictographs.

In today's installment, I'd like to examine what is widely regarded to be the best approach to the situation, the "caveman method." Put simply, this is when one acts like a caveman in order to pick up people. This practice has been descrbed as "progressive" by Professor Mickelsen of Otterbein College, Department of Music specializing in lyrical deconstructive methods of late reneisance Denmark of the 1400s as well as the band "Men Without Hats."*

But enough introduction (or I'll go on all day). First, an example, followed by an examination of the events.

A cute boy and a hot girl are sitting across from each other on the nine train heading uptown just before lunch. The cute boy notices the hot girl and, beginning to feel groovy, starts to plan his moves. He knows that there's no chance of using the Guggenheim method because of the bum down on the left, and knows that the Sarrafan Reaction is out of the question because of the over-whelming percentage of people on the train of German decendency. The only reliable answer left to him in the Caveman Method.

Without much hesitation the cute boy stands up and begins waving his junk in the general direction of the hot girl. The hot girl pretends to be reading her review of the Brazilian World Cup loss, but in reality, she has already noticed the cute boy and recognizes his actions as the precurrser to the Caveman Method. She feigns disinterest to spur on the cute boy's actions.

At that time, and quite serendipitiously, a mammoth gets on the train. The boy slowly stops waving his junk in the girl's face and approaches the mammoth with a spear hidden behind his back. He asks the mammoth for the time and, while the mammoth is looking at his watch, stabs the beast in the eye.

As the fur covered mastadon begins wailing about, the hot girl, signaling her interest in the hot boy, goes on doing nothing. Juices flowing and encouraged by the girl's actions, the boy begins to peel the animal's skin off with his bare hands (that would be the mammoth and not whatever dirty thing you were thinking, you filthy bastard).

AS the giant lies bleeding on the floor, the cute boy gathers the wolly pelt and moves back toward his seat as he realized that the hot girl's stop is coming up and she is moving toward the door. The cute boy then sits down and begins to examine the animal pelt (again, the mammoth).

The hot girl, recognizing that time is running out, attempts to attract the cute boy's attention by doing nothing at all, but as she begins to sense that she may lose to the flesh of a rotting carcass half-way down the asile, she rushes over to her Caveman and writes her phone number backwards on his forehead with a sharpie, because he's a caveman and doesn't have any paper, obviously.

The hot girl gets off. The subway (pervert). The cute boy waits and gets off at his stop, pelt in hand, informs the conductor that there is an animal carcass on the train, finds a mirror, programs the hot girl's number into his phone, and then goes home to show his boyfriend that he got a number, only to find that he, the shrewd swine, got three on the bus, and is still totally the mac-daddy, fag that he is.

That, my friends, is the Caveman Method.

Join us next time when we will examine the events here. In the mean-time, do yourselves a favor, take a lithium and watch the floor for a while.

----
* (7-15-06) It has come to my attention that I have mislabeled the specialization of Professor David Mickelsen of Otterbien College as specializing in the band "Men Without Hats." It came to my attention in the form of Professor Mickelsen calling me and telling me, "If you think I specialize in those one-hit-wonder assholes, I'll tell you right now I'm offended."
Professor Mickelsen, in fact, specializes in "Men at Work."

Efforts like maple syrup.

While enjoying the natural beauty of Vermont this summer, I was compelled to write the following. Let's pretend this makes up for ignoring my dear blog and you, my imaginary readers.



What is the Matter with Michael Brown?



“What is the matter with Michael Brown?” my mother asked with mock curiosity.
I tell her that today in school he fell down a flight of stairs and broke his back. He’ll probably be okay, I tell her, but he’ll never walk again.
“Well, so long as it didn’t happen to you,” she says in a soft voice, making my sandwich for a snack, “I guess it really doesn’t concern me. Tough luck, though.”
Yes, mom. Tough luck, indeed.
I take my sandwich and go into the other room to watch cartoons. Today it’s the one about the man with the hat and his friend who is so very stupid. They do things I would never dream of doing in the real world, dangerous things with insignificant consequences. I laugh. It’s funny.
After I eat my sandwich and watch my show it’s nap time and I get tired. There’s three hours until dinner but I don’t want to sleep through them all, because if I do I won’t get to see Sid and Nancy at the playground.
I sleep for maybe half an hour and have dreams of stair monsters that eat little children’s legs. They eat my legs, my body, my head, and on the inside of the stair monster I see little Michael Brown in a wheelchair, paralyzed up to his neck. I am seven years old and I know what it means to be paralyzed.
After my nap I go outside without saying anything to my mother because this will get me extra dessert after dinner, because she’s so worried about me. She feeds me to kill her own sense of dread and fear at the dangers of life. This constant playing with her fears will have a very bad effect on her when I leave for college, it will throw her into a bad depression for a couple of years until she starts smoking, which will kill her before I’m thirty-five. I don’t know any of this yet and my only thought is of two scoops of chocolate instead of just one.
At the playground I find Nancy. She isn’t playing, she’s sitting, looking at her feet. I ask her where Sid is and she tells me he’s visiting with his grandfather who has no hair but a motorcycle. She takes her sandals off and looks at her feet.
I ask her if she wants to play something, knowing that she doesn’t. She only plays when Sid is around. She looks at her feet and asks me if I know where feet come from? I tell her they come from our legs and she laughs. She tells me that her father told her that feet developed from hands that monkeys have on the ends of their legs, that when our ancestors left the trees they had to make feet because hands don’t work for walking on.
This makes me sad because I don’t have a dad. So I go home.
At home my mom has just started to worry about me, but only just realized that I wasn’t in bed. I tell her I was in the lawn looking at butterflies and she smiles a big smile at her little man and I go wash my hands for dinner.
Tonight is tacos. I like tacos but my mom doesn’t because we’ve been having them for almost three straight weeks, since my dad left. I don’t know why we keep having them but I like them.
“Tomorrow Aunt Mary is coming to live with us,” she says, “to help with all the work.” That’s good, I tell her, because I like Aunt Mary. She’s married to Aunt Ross and they’re both very fun ladies. Maybe with them around my mom won’t feel like she has to make tacos all the time, though I still don’t understand this. Mary and Ross only stay for a week, but then they have to get back to their own lives.
After dinner I’m watching the cartoon about the fish that wears pants and I laugh when he sits on the stove. There is a phone call and my mother is talking to someone and she keeps saying Michael Brown. She says it over and over.
She comes in to tell me that Michael Brown died from his fall down the stairs. I am seven years old and I know what death is. I cry into my mother’s blouse and wait for her to tell me that everything is going to be okay, that everything’s going to be alright.
She never does, and I’ve never stopped being grateful for it.


Why it is that mosquitos and pine trees made me think that I don't know, but that's the kind of thing you get when you're lost.

Okay people, I'm back.

Word.

So I'll begin with my IS topic. Because that's really the most I've done.

In Russian, (almost) every verb has both a transitive and intransitive form. In English almost no verbs have this formation, but the word "fucking" does. If I say, "They are fucking," it could mean either that they are currently fucking, or that they are fucking in general. I will disect the linguistic situation and the ramifications in language between these two systems. At the same time I will deconstruct the notion of studying a mouthful of profanity in an academic setting. Should at least be interesting.

Uh...right.

Bye.

The End is Nigh.

Well, friends, as you may very well know, the end is near.
That's right, soon all that is will be no more. Soon, the world as we know it will come to an end and everything comfortable, everything familiar will be but a distant memory. The great gaping void is coming into all our lives, and that void, that bottomless monster has a name. It is called "Summer."

I for one say, BRING IT ON .

I've heard an interesting tale about past survivors of the so-called "Summer Months." Novelists of yore wrote of camps in the woods. Ancient texts tell tales of running through sprinklers. There even survive a few primitive cave drawings of prehistoric humans spitting watermelon seeds off the back porch.

And yet, they all survived.

I used to wonder at this marvel. How is it that our ancestors could possibly have handled something so difficult for modern man to deal with, something so trying and convoluted as three months of unrestrained fucking off.

The answer, I think, is in the way they approached it.

Think for a moment about summer. Close your eyes and remember childhood days spent lying in the grass, blowing on those little white dandelion things. Remember the smell of a baseball mitt. Delve deep into memories of intense childhood friendships, early loves come and gone. Close your eyes and remember.

Maybe that stuff, for our ancestors, wasn't bad. Maybe they took joy in those small moments, the sun on their faces and grass tickling the backs of their necks. Maybe, for them, that was all good.

Maybe it should be good for us too.

I invite you, this summer, to quit your job at least twice. Take at least two consecutive weekends to do absolutely nothing with as many people as you can find. Play tag. Drink sun tea. Lay in the grass on a bright day and dream.

And never forget the small moments.

THIEVES!!!

Well, not really.

Check it out.

http://drmcninja.com/page.php?pageNum=20&issue=3

I'm just glad that someone out there can draw properly.

What the hell does 'rant' mean?

Prepare for blog-type blogging. The BS content of this post is as high as in the recent past, but it's a different kind. If at any point you get bored (like right now) stop reading and go drink a beer.

Today I've decided to actually talk about something serious, though I'm sure that to all of you it's going to sound like pure pulp. Well...meh.

I call myself a "libertarian," but I suspect that some of you--like my dog-- may have noticed that I don't really fit the general definition of that category. This doesn't really bother me. In my own mind my self-classification as "libertarian" makes perfect sense and I don't really feel any need to justify it by detailing my personal political views. That's not what I'm doing here. Actually, I'm probably never going to do that. I really just don't feel the need to justify anything I do to anyone. At least, that's my aim.

What I want to bring up is the notion that I (or anyone) am supposed to use the words you all know in the ways that you know them. I'm going to generalize quite a bit here to bring the discussion down from politics, a world in which things like "Social Democrat" means a million different things depending on the period, nation, person, and time of day you're talking about.

I think, for the sake of this argument, I will focus on the word "cat."

So, for this semiological discourse, I need to begin with a general definition of "cat." I could do this in two ways. One would be for me to find a definition that I feel fully embodies what I feel "cat-ness" is and use that as my definition. The other option is to forgo my personal opinions on the matter and define "cat" as what the greatest majority of people believe "cat-ness" to be. In most cases two native speakers can actually forgo having to make this decision as the general definition is the same as the personal definition.

For the sake of making an argument we will have to agree that this latter possibility is not an option. I will explain why.

Let's say that the social definition of "cat" is "a small, furry, domesticated animal well known for its contradictory sense of independence and belonging in a human social group." They generally have four legs and a tail. Most cats also have heads. They are mammals and have babies, which are obscenely cute and blind until they learn to open their eyes when they immediately become obscenely cute and destructive.

And, for the sake of this argument (though I'm not denying that this is how I actually feel about the situation), let's say that my personal definition of "cat" is best described as "a large, falling boulder."

Now, I imagine that many of you are concerned about this latter, my definition. Sucks for you.

Okay, so now that we've established definitions, let's examine a possible situation where this could be construed as a problem.

Uh...okay. Me and another guy are hiking. We're in the Ruby Mountains heading for Dollar Lake and I turn around, point, and scream "Cat!"

My companion turns, expecting, perhaps, a small tabby with a mouse in its jaws, but is promptly flattened to death by the giant rock he didn't see coming.

Some of you are, perhaps, thinking that this is a "failure to communicate." This is a common mistake to make, seeing as such "failures" positively infest modern life. But I will argue that this isn't one such case.

To understand my view you must understand two important things. The first is that I, with my "different" definition of the word "cat," have already been told a fucking ridiculous number of times that my definition of "cat" is, in fact, capital "w" Wrong. So, I get the idea. I know that, however much the definition in my head works with the concept in the real world, this is a poor method of communication. As such, when I screamed the word "cat," I knew I was going to be misinterpreted.

To understand why I would want to cause this confusion, the other thing you have to realize is that, if a boulder big enough to turn you into jelly is falling at you, there really ain't shit you can do about it. You can be aware that your doom is nigh, or you can be ignorant of it. At that point I could have screamed "boulder!", but what good would it have done? My hiking companion would have a second to consider the greater existential crisis of life and death, coming to no real conclusion and dying at the hands of a big fucking rock. Or he can turn away from death to look at an adorable affirmation of life, and then die at the hands of a big fucking rock.

So, in conclusion, I call myself a Libertarian because there's a big fucking cat about to turn you into jelly.

I'm glad to have been able to clear that up.