Ugh, Shut Up

Believe me, I know how annoying those ads for my company are. I also know that, while they are accurate, they paint a very rosy picture of what is a fairly typical corporation. I guess you could say that we're ahead of the curve, but we can't get as far ahead as maybe I would like to see us go. But every time that guy with the breathy voice comes on after the Jim Lehrer News Hour, I want to stab someone!

Stop the Presses!

The tagline under the top stroy on Yahoo right now is as follows

Tiger Woods' caddy makes an unflattering comment about golfer Phil Mickelson.

Source

That isn't news, that is gossip, and regardless of what the comment was (really, he could have issued a death threat or even something horribly misogynistic), who really cares? What a bunch of crap.

I Love His Reaction

"Let me talk about the guy throwing his shoe. It's one way to gain attention. It's like going to a political rally and having people yell at you. It's like driving down the street and having people not gesturing with all five fingers.

"It's a way for people to draw attention. I don't know what the guy's cause is. But one thing is for certain. He caused you to ask me a question about it. I didn't feel the least bit threatened by it.

Source

Blowing it off like this will make it hard to use this incident as evidence of danger to the rest of us. There isn't enough time to spin this into another stupid security measure that actually lasts. All this is evidence of is that there are people so frustrated in Iraq - educated, professional people just like us - at the irrationality of it all that they ran out of ways to describe it without throwing something. Someone got pushed "over the edge", and hopefully he won't be a political prisoner for long. My America shouldn't do that kind of thing to political protestors. It says so in our constitution.

Seven Years Ago

The week after Thanksgiving, on a Monday night, Minnesota and northern Wisconsin had a snow storm. Huge piles of snow dropped on the great white north, closing most schools on Tuesday. College classes weren't canceled until after everyone had already done their best to get to campus (about a third of the students at my college commuted to class from around town). It was also the second Tuesday that semester that classes were canceled after noon, the first one being on September 11.

I felt bad for any teachers - or students, for that matter - with Tuesday night classes, which met only once per week. Living in the dorms, the snow storm was nothing but fun for me. I woke up in my loft and decided to cancel my classes myself - screw what the administration said. I had just gotten a mattress pad for my bed and it was soooooooo comfy! Actually, I can't remember if I went to class or not, I'm pretty sure I didn't, but I was up and about that day. After all, the cafeteria was on the other side of campus, and I had to eat and catch up with friends.

That night, while hanging out in the dorm room we all hung out in, my friends and I decided that we were going to celebrate the storm and get drunk. Problem was that we had no booze, only one of us was 21, and the liquor store would be closing soon. So we created a shopping list. For some reason, two of us wanted wine coolers, another two wanted beer, and someone wanted some Boons. The 21-year-old and I set out with our backpacks. We weren't normally friends, him being an evangelical and me being an atheist, but we hung out and got along. He was also an Art Major and I was History. We decided that if we saw any of his Christian group friends, we would tell them that we were on the way to the library to study. If we were past the library, we were going to a classmate's apartment off-campus to study. What were we studying? Art History, of course. We could safely tell most of my friends the truth about out outing.

So onwards we trudged over the ice and through the little paths created in the foot deep snow. We finally made it to the Coburns liquor store with time to spare. My friend went in and bought the consumables - 22 glass bottles in all. When we were safely across the street, in the parking lot of some church or other, we packed the bottles in our backpacks, taking care to make sure we weren't seen. SCSU was a dry campus, after all. We ventured back slowly. Clinking bottles would be a dead give-away. My friend told me that if I fell on the ice and broke anything, he didn't know me. We made it back to the dorms, checked in with the night supes (it was past 10pm by now) and walked up the stairs to see the rest of our friends resting in heated comfort.

That night was a lot of fun. We peeled off our snowy clothes, drank, and danced all night long. Being only 20 years old, I wasn't smart enough to avoid a hang over yet, so the next day, I felt awful. I ended up canceling my own classes again and nursed myself while working on a paper for my Wednesday night class. On Thursday, I remember taking a good look at that snow with some co-workers at my admissions job. I remarked that it looked like it would be gone by Christmas. They thought I was crazy, but the snow was gone by finals that semester.

Finally, Catholics Can Enjoy The Beatles Again

Well, this is a relief

A Vatican newspaper has forgiven the late English singer John Lennon for saying four decades ago that The Beatles were more popular than Jesus.

In an article praising The Beatles, L'Osservatore Romano said Lennon had just been showing off.

- Source

This Vatican newspaper seems rather amusing and follows my own reasoning that The White Album is very awesome, calling it a "magical musical anthology." Surely this means that the Catholic church can begin to agree with me on other things like the importance of allowing women to make their own reproductive choices and the irrelevance of divinity.

There Were NO 'No on 8' Offices in My Area Code

In response to the victory of hate, figuring out just where the fuck we went wrong, in response to this, a comment on a Pandagon post that I needed to share with other people, here is my observation: I was at SF Pride, bawling my eyes out because I just happened to see two men get married. The happiness in me (and some booze) was that great. I saw the “vote no on the marriage ban” at that time. In the interim, I slowly saw this thing gain ground. Seeing a commercial on TV at the gym once, then a sign here and there (I remember the first time I saw that yellow sign, it was so foreign that I said to myself, “what is 8? why should I vote for it?” before I connected it with that thing that I didn’t think any decent person could support), then last week, it exploded.

Sunday night, I saw signs popping up in the middle of the night. I checked to find my local No on 8 office, and the closest I could get was Berkeley or Oakland. There were no offices with numbers from my area code (925). Monday morning, I made the mistake of taking the road to the highway to get to work and found myself in what I call “The Gauntlet of Hate”. Yes on 8 signs three feet apart for MILES, people guarding them, then there were the people WITH the signs. My rage was palpable, and the only thing I could do was give dirty looks and the finger. One of the people with signs looked sad when we made eye contact. That was my solace.

How could so many people be so arrogant?

I had sent a message to the No on 8 campaign the night before, asking for assistance, giving them my daytime phone number. I did not get a call back on Monday. I do not know how overworked or staffed the office was. I had been wanting a sign against 8 for my car for months, but the closest I got was a bumper sticker that I had wanted to tape inside my car, but I got effing lazy. I finally got my sign, found on the ground at UC Berkeley on Tuesday night, but it was too late. One person that saw me holding it that night approached me to give me the sad news. I already knew and just wanted to enjoy the return of rational US government to our planet, so I was more discrete with the sign, so as to avoid mourning for now. But I still wanted my sign, if only as a way to remind myself and everyone else that no, I was not a bigot.

Last night, some of my friends went to the SF protest and came back with a sign. I remarked at how badly I had wanted one but hadn’t gotten one until now. My friend said the same thing. We are all guilty in some way for this loss. We’re doing the same thing that Republicans are now doing about McCain. Only, instead of infighting and blaming those that didn’t vote with us, we need to figure out how to dispel the myths around Prop 8. Anyone that listens to KQED (or other CA NPR, probably) has heard that man who said that he supported gay people and their right to marry, but stopped short at it “being taught in the schools”, and that was why “of course” he voted yes on 8.

In other words, undoubtedly, many of those 52% that voted yes that did so because of the outright LIES told by the Prop 8 supporters. We needed to dispel these lies even more vigorously (myself included, don’t think I’m not as pissed at myself as anyone else) - no, we STILL need to. We need to remind people that this is a civil rights issue, and just like those people that protested school desegregation, the Yes on 8 crowd will find itself on the wrong and embarrassing side of history.

Obama, the Musical

I didn't know that my subconscious was looking for this, but it seems like Kenya had a direct line to my brain. On Sunday, this musical opens in Nairobi.

They're Made Out of Meat!

Ten years ago, this made the rounds of the internet. I wonder how many jokes I've missed because I didn't see this at 17.

"They're made out of meat."

"Meat?"

"Meat. They're made out of meat."

"Meat?"

"There's no doubt about it. We picked up several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, and probed them all the way through. They're completely meat."

"That's impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the stars?"

"They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don't come from them. The signals come from machines."

"So who made the machines? That's who we want to contact."

"They made the machines. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Meat made the machines."

"That's ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You're asking me to believe in sentient meat."

"I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. These creatures are the only sentient race in that sector and they're made out of meat."

"Maybe they're like the orfolei. You know, a carbon-based intelligence that goes through a meat stage."

"Nope. They're born meat and they die meat. We studied them for several of their life spans, which didn't take long. Do you have any idea what's the life span of meat?"

"Spare me. Okay, maybe they're only part meat. You know, like the weddilei. A meat head with an electron plasma brain inside."

"Nope. We thought of that, since they do have meat heads, like the weddilei. But I told you, we probed them. They're meat all the way through."

"No brain?"

"Oh, there's a brain all right. It's just that the brain is made out of meat! That's what I've been trying to tell you."

"So … what does the thinking?"

"You're not understanding, are you? You're refusing to deal with what I'm telling you. The brain does the thinking. The meat."

"Thinking meat! You're asking me to believe in thinking meat!"

"Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the whole deal! Are you beginning to get the picture or do I have to start all over?"

"Omigod. You're serious then. They're made out of meat."

"Thank you. Finally. Yes. They are indeed made out of meat. And they've been trying to get in touch with us for almost a hundred of their years."

"Omigod. So what does this meat have in mind?"

"First it wants to talk to us. Then I imagine it wants to explore the Universe, contact other sentiences, swap ideas and information. The usual."

"We're supposed to talk to meat."

"That's the idea. That's the message they're sending out by radio. 'Hello. Anyone out there. Anybody home.' That sort of thing."

"They actually do talk, then. They use words, ideas, concepts?"

"Oh, yes. Except they do it with meat."

"I thought you just told me they used radio."

"They do, but what do you think is on the radio? Meat sounds. You know how when you slap or flap meat, it makes a noise? They talk by flapping their meat at each other. They can even sing by squirting air through their meat."

"Omigod. Singing meat. This is altogether too much. So what do you advise?"

"Officially or unofficially?"

"Both."

"Officially, we are required to contact, welcome and log in any and all sentient races or multibeings in this quadrant of the Universe, without prejudice, fear or favor. Unofficially, I advise that we erase the records and forget the whole thing."

"I was hoping you would say that."

"It seems harsh, but there is a limit. Do we really want to make contact with meat?"

"I agree one hundred percent. What's there to say? 'Hello, meat. How's it going?' But will this work? How many planets are we dealing with here?"

"Just one. They can travel to other planets in special meat containers, but they can't live on them. And being meat, they can only travel through C space. Which limits them to the speed of light and makes the possibility of their ever making contact pretty slim. Infinitesimal, in fact."

"So we just pretend there's no one home in the Universe."

"That's it."

"Cruel. But you said it yourself, who wants to meet meat? And the ones who have been aboard our vessels, the ones you probed? You're sure they won't remember?"

"They'll be considered crackpots if they do. We went into their heads and smoothed out their meat so that we're just a dream to them."

"A dream to meat! How strangely appropriate, that we should be meat's dream."

"And we marked the entire sector unoccupied."

"Good. Agreed, officially and unofficially. Case closed. Any others? Anyone interesting on that side of the galaxy?"

"Yes, a rather shy but sweet hydrogen core cluster intelligence in a class nine star in G445 zone. Was in contact two galactic rotations ago, wants to be friendly again."

"They always come around."

"And why not? Imagine how unbearably, how unutterably cold the Universe would be if one were all alone …"

by Terry Bisson