Never Take Your Dungeon Master with You on a Blind Date

Funny Videos Funny Cartoons More Video Clips

[Video Link] A short film about a gamer who decides to take his dungeon master with him to mediate his blind date, based on the life of Jeff the Baptist. HT: Topless Robot

Create Your Own Donut

Dunkin Donuts is inviting website users to create their next donut. Mine is a chocolate butter filled donut with peanut butter frosting and chocolate sprinkles. What's yours?

HT: Radley Balko

Uh Oh...

I love my Chevy Silverado. After 27,000 miles, the only work that I've had to do on it is change the oil. But after the federal takeover of General Motors, I have a feeling that it's about to start falling apart. President Obama:

It is my hope that the steps I am announcing today will go a long way towards answering many of the questions people may have about the future of GM and Chrysler. But just in case there are still nagging doubts, let me say it as plainly as I can -- if you buy a car from Chrysler or General Motors, you will be able to get your car serviced and repaired, just like always. Your warrantee will be safe.

In fact, it will be safer than it's ever been. Because starting today, the United States government will stand behind your warrantee.

The quality control of my truck is guaranteed by the federal government? I'm screwed.

HT: Bainbridge

I Was Told that There Would Be No Math

Well, at least it's still in number base 10.

Link via Popped Culture

School Vehemently Denies Rumors of Vampire Infestation

The Boston Latin School, a private prep school, has found it necessary to issue a press release to quash rumors that the school is infested with vampires.

It's really silly for people to get anxious about vampires. They're imaginary.

HT: Hit & Run

The Emerging Trend of De-Baptism

This Breitbart article addresses the trend of Britons and other Europeans formally renouncing their baptism:

The male nurse said he approached the Church of England to ask it to remove his name. "They said they had sought legal advice and that I should place an announcement in the London Gazette," said Hunt, referring to one of the official journals of record of the British government.

So that's what he did -- his notice of renouncement was published in the Gazette in May 2008 and other Britons have followed suit.

Michael Evans, 66, branded baptising children as "a form of child abuse" -- and said that when he complained to the church where he was christened he was told to contact the European Court of Human Rights.

The Church of England said its official position was not to amend its records. "Renouncing baptism is a matter between the individual and God," a Church spokesman told AFP.

My thoughts:

1. When I was thrown out of the ministry, standing before the District Committee of Ordained Ministry, I tore up my baptismal certificate. But I meant that as a formal and symbolic denunciation of the Church, not Christ, as many of these de-baptized people intend.

2. Still, like divorce ceremony liturgies, if de-baptism helps people heal from whatever has hurt them, good for them.

HT: The Corner

Weekend Music: Shame and Scandal in the Family by Shawn Elliot

A hilarious song from Trinidad about a young man looking for a wife, and uncovering unsettling secrets about his family.

[Video Link]

Weekend Music: Too Much Butt (For One Pair of Jeans) by The Uppity Blues Women

There aint' no such thing.

[Video Link]

From the lyrics:

Sergio Valenti and Calvin Klein
They aren't ready for these hips of mine
They me be designers but they haven't designed
Jeans to fit your valentine
They make womens' clothes for the long and the lean
I got too much butt for one pair of jeans

Well if a gown's too big it don't fit the holster
I don't buy jeans--I get reupholstered.
An acre of denim custom cut. Sewn with care to fit this butt
Well if my zipper could talk you'd know it would scream

Celebrate Human Achievement Day

Today, at 8:30 PM, turn on every light in your house and celebrate the wonders of humanity's conquest of the darkness. For we are our own Prometheus, and we have left the blackened caves of our ancestors to accomplish great marvels.

Tonight, bathe in the light that comes not from nature, but from the forges of human ingenuity.

The Economics of Star Trek

James R. Rummel points out that in the Star Trek universe, there is no money:

That always struck me as being exceedingly odd, particularly when I noticed that people were serving drinks in the space station saloons, and generally doing scut work. What motivated these people to get out of bed and work as servants every day, anyway? Where did the ambition to excel and become a starship captain come from? Why would anyone put on a red shirt and accompany the bridge crew as part of an away team?

Don't think I let this bother me too much. It was just entertainment, after all, and I didn't think it would stand up to too much scrutiny. If it bothered me at all, I just figured that the science of psychology had advanced so far by the time the Star Trek society rolled around that people were conditioned from birth to give their best, even if they didn't get any direct reward from their efforts.

And in a follow-up post, he expands upon this theme regarding the moral corruption that would result from a holodeck:

What would it take to condition someone to the point that they wouldn't want to simply spend all their time in the holodeck, running Roman Orgy v1.0? The methods to alter a human's natural desires to the point that they would shun such fleshly delights in order to strive to contribute to society essentially would warp them into something that I wouldn't even recognize as human anymore.

I left a comment to the effect of my usual interpretation of the economics of Star Trek: they were unrealistic, as they eliminated the first law of economics -- scarcity. Thanks to the replicator, there is virtually no need to manufacture anything. Although there were a few objects, such as latinum or yamok sauce, that could not be replicated, there was essentially nothing that your replicator could not provide for you -- including more replicators.

Commentor Dove took me to task for this assessment:

The higher and less obvious: patterns, designs, inventions. Dropping the cost of manufacturing to zero would do for tinkerers what dropping the cost of distrubution to zero (internet again) has done for writers. You wouldn't see stagnation. You'd see an explosion. The internet didn't leave us merely happy that we could finally get free porn and games. Perhaps for the first little bit, but then it turned tons of people into writers and public intellectuals who otherwise would have led private lives. So it would go with replicators. We might be content with the free food at first, but not forever. Soon we'd be giddy about the ability to design, say, our own working model train sets.

I found this at least partially persuasive. The manufacturing sector might disappear, save for those few items which cannot be replicated, or those protected by replication from proprietary claims, but the maintenance of such machinery and the creative sector would only expand. Tom Paris, for example, became a successful holonovel author. Although early Trek suggested that computers could do all of the necessary creative work, Trek did move away from this position and the ability to create entertaining and effective holoprograms became a prized -- and therefore scarce -- skill.

Likewise for manufacturing. Although a replicator could create anything which already existed, it could not create anything original. And this scarcity would fuel human desire to possess it.

There's no real bottom to human greed for more. More stuff, more experiences, more more. After all, we Americans live in a society where a person with home air conditioning and cable TV is considered poor. This would have been an absurd position fifty years ago.

If members of a society can have any common object in unlimited quantities due to replicator technology, or experience anything ordinary in a holodeck, they will begin to crave the uncommon and extraordinary -- and will be willing to work to earn the money (or credits) necessary to purchase them.

Alternately, there could even be a manufacturing economy for illegal products, such as narcotics (which might be programmed out of replicators) or holodeck programs of highly questionable taste.

Star Trek was not entirely consistent in depicting this economic universe, where there were merchants for everything, from self-sealing stem bolts to clothing. There are some items which cannot be replicated, and occasionally there are energy limitations on replicator systems. But this can be excused for the sake of good storytelling.

I would like to note that although I am coming around to Dove's point of view, we are approaching it from different directions:


On the whole, I think the view that humanity consists of gluttons and hedonists who would do nothing but eat, sleep, and have sex all day if we could get away with it is pessimistic and ultimately degrading. That's an all right vacation, but nobody actually wants that life. We are not our lusts, or not entirely. We are our ambitions, too. Self-discipline and achivement can be expected of us.

Actually, I think that a lot of people, particularly in the first generation of such technology, would do nothing but eat, sleep, and have sex all day if there were no economic incentive to get out, work, and achieve great things.

Quick: how many of you would quit your jobs if you suddenly won $100 million in a lottery? I would, and I have a great job right now. I might follow other ambitions, like get a Ph.D. or get back into art, but in the absence of bills stacking up, I probably wouldn't work as hard to achieve these things.

I've had days that were bad enough that, if given a choice, I'd walk into a holodeck and never leave. And I bet that a lot of other people would do likewise. Dove is too optimistic about human ambition.

Other articles on the economics of Star Trek:
The Marxism of Star Trek
Star Trek and Money
The Political Economy of Star Trek
Eidelblog: Star Trek economics

Quiverful paradox

The post on the Quiverfull movement reminded me of a theoretical theological and practical question I have had for some time that I have never been able to resolve.

This Quiverfull movement is generally strong in Evangelical homes (although certainly devout Catholics and Mormons will frequently end up bearing many children). I will try to lay the paradox as clearly as I can (please forgive the lack of theological precision in my language and laying out of the question):

• Evangelicals are supposed to believe in original sin
• In the doctrine of original sin, all people are born sinners
• According to evangelical thought, sin necessarily separates humans from God
• If a human is not saved from sin, he or she will be damned to an eternity of torment
• In order to be saved from sin, a person must either a. accept Christ freely (Arminian evangelical) or b. be predestined for salvation (Calvinistic evangelical)
• A parent has no ultimate control over the salvation or damnation of his or her children (influence - yes, control - no).
• Therefore, why would evangelical Christians willingly bring many more souls into the world that are sinners in need of salvation? Is there not a reasonable chance some of them will be lost for eternity?
• Corollary: Shouldn't Evangelicals be leading the way in adopting those children who would likely never hear of Jesus apart from their influence? Besides, adoption is a significant New Testament metaphor for how an Evangelical understands his or her relationship with God the Father - that is nobody except Christ is the natural child of God, but all the saved are God's children by adoption.

I am sure that I am not the first person who has wondered about this, but I have personally never sorted out a satisfactory answer.

Yeah, I'm Pretty Sure That These Are the Droids We're Looking For

[Video Link] HT: Topless Robot

The Road to Tyranny

I'm afraid that my daughter may have to grow up in a goose-stepping prison society like this.

I blame Obama.

HT: Alphecca

Previously on The Zeray Gazette.

Rev Mommy is Getting Pounded

First her cat dies. And then another cat vanishes. And now her daughter has a ruptured ovarian cyst. That's a whole of heavy blows to get all at once. Pop over and leave a supportive comment, if you can.

Memoir on faith lost

William Lobdell, formerly the religion writer the Los Angeles Times, has written a fascinating memoir about his journey into and out of the Christian faith. I won't spoil his story for you by summarizing it, but rather will share one quote. Near the end of the work, entitled Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America - and Found Unexpected Peace (Collins, c. 2009), Mr. Lobdell writes about getting asked a question for which he was unprepared:

I recently spoke about my de-conversion to a group of students at Biola
University, a Christian college in Southern California. At the end of my talk,
one student asked what had taken the place of God in my life. The question
caught me off-guard because I'd felt no vacuum created by God's exit . . . So
what has taken the place of God in my life? A tremendous sense of
gratitude. I sense how fortunate I am to be alive in this thin sliver of time in
the history of the universe. That give me a renewed sense of urgency to live
this short life well. I don't have eternity to fall back on, so my focus on the
present has sharpened. (275, 278)

I greatly appreciated the complete honesty the author shared about his spiritual life. Regardless of whether or not you draw the same conclusion he has, I recommend it as one of the best books I have read so far this year.

A Fascinating Retelling of Little Red Riding Hood

A bizarre and original recreation of the story by Tomas Nilsson.

[Video Link] HT: Neatorama

Another Odd Baby-Related Movement.

It's called the Quiverfull movement. I heard about it on NPR this morning.

This is an evangelical Protestant movement in the U.S. which advocates large families on Biblical principles. The name comes from part of Psalm 127, which says that numerous children are a blessing, like a full quiver of arrows.

I would say that this notion would have greater applicability in a society with a lower lifespan and a higher infant mortality rate.

I have encountered variations of the notion that birth control is sinful and that pregnancy should be left up to divine providence. Some of these have struck me as anti-sex, although Quiverfull does not seem to have this bent.

One of the Quiverfull women interviewed on NPR advocated a curious form of evangelism: growing Christianity by outbreeding Islam.

For a contrary approach: vasectomies are on the rise in the U.S. during this recession.

The Diaper-Free Baby Movement

This strikes me as insane. These folks believe that it is possible to potty train a child from birth if one properly reads the intentional, non-verbal cues that a child expresses when it wishes to eliminate.
My experience is limited to one child, which may not be a representative sample, but I do not see how it is possible for an infant to be aware of and control its excretions, let alone communicate them.

Keeping Up With the Joneses

A hilarious car ad starring Andy Richter.

Car Ad with Andy Richter & James Adomian - watch more funny videos

Cantina Theme from Star Wars on a Harp

This kid is amazing.

[Video Link] HT: Topless Robot

Is it Wrong that I Find this My Little Pony Made up as Leia in Her Slave Girl Outfit Kinda Hot?

Nevermind. Don't answer that question.

Via Topless Robot

Love in the Blogosphere

Ann Althouse is now engaged to be married. She met her beau for the first time when he left a comment on her blog.

I wonder who among my commentors will someday sweep me off my feet....

HT: Insty

This Way Up

[Video Link] A 9-minute slapstick-style short film about two undertakers trying to deliver a body to its final destination. Nominated for an Oscar in 2009.

Sometimes the Only Person You Have in the World is a Stranger

Twenty years ago, I drove a cab for a living.

It was a cowboy’s life, a life for someone who wanted no boss.

What I didn’t realize was that it was also a ministry.

Because I drove the night shift, my cab became a moving confessional. Passengers climbed in, sat behind me in total anonymity, and told me about their lives. I encountered people whose lives amazed me, ennobled me, and made me laugh and weep.

But none touched me more than a woman I picked up late one August night.

Read the rest. As I process all that I have experienced in the past year, I try not to overreact and overcorrect so that I reject the good with the bad. What did I experience in the Church that was actually good, and should not be tossed out with that which was exploitative and manipulative?

A co-worker asked me if there was anything that I missed about pastoring. And I said "Hell, no!" and then modified the statement. I missed being important in the lives of hurting people. I remember once, about two hours before Sunday morning worship, getting a call at the parsonage from a community resident that I didn't know about her suicidal child. I remember sitting with people mourning their lost spouses. I remember being present while several people died. I remember being present in the midst of suffering and helping people heal.

That was good work. And as I've written before, it is a universally needed work. It was certainly more important than what I'm doing now.

Still, I'm taking care of myself and my family, and getting paid for it rather well. And I don't lie awake at night in terror at whatever salacious lie some "saint" at the church is going to say about me, nor wonder what dumbass thing my DS is about to do next. Nor does my wife have to put on a fake smile and perform to the demands of others at my workplace.

It is a return to sanity and normalcy, and I had forgotten what those things were. Reflecting on the past year, it's amazing what I had allowed to become normalized in my life -- the lies, the manipulation, and the fear that never fully unknotted in my stomach. And even though I'm not helping the hurting anymore, I wouldn't trade it for that hellish existence for a minute. I'm still hurting badly from what happened to me in the past, but I like where I am now.

So I guess that someone else will have to drive the taxi from here on out.

HT: Grow-A-Brain

Hookah Dreams

Eric Osowski, a recent University of Colorado graduate, started a rather clever small business in Denver: Deliver-a-Bowl. It's a hookah rental and delivery business. For $15, you get a hookah for a few hours, as well as some quality hookah tobacco. Deliver-a-Bowl comes back later for the hookah.

Back in college, my co-blogger Larry brought home a hookah from a semester abroad in Israel. It was truly awesome. I could tell various stories about our adventures with the hookah, but I don't know if I have permission to reveal them here, so I'll hold off.

Anyway, years later, I bought my own hookah. I still have it, though it has gone unused (thanks to Asbury's ethos statement) for the past few years. With it I have stoked out a small business dream that wafts through my head from time to time:

A combination hookah bar/used bookstore/coffeehouse.

I've been to all three, and they are awesome places individually. I figure that their coolness stacks exponentially, not merely multiplies.

I'll call it The Peavine in reference to a very special place, and locate it in a bohemian district of a southern city. We'd have open mic poetry night, guitarist solos, and radical philosophy discussions. It'd be a little slice of bohemian heaven.

Discovering Your Inner Superhero

[Video Link] Nemesis is a short film by Leonard Scarlow about an ordinary man trying to discover his hidden superpowers. Because deep down inside of himself, he knows that he was meant to be a superhero.

It's about 9 minutes long. The dialogue is in Norwegian, but it's subtitled in English.

Documentation

I recently had a poll on preferred documentation styles, and Chicago (and its fraternal twin sister, Turabian) won handily. But at the time, Matt Akins wrote derisively:

They're all poison to the writer in my soul that longs to be free.

It's an understandable view, especially when a documentation style prevents effective communication -- or a source simply won't fit within the prescribed guidelines of a stylebook. But as an old history professor of mine long ago said to students who stressed about getting every jot and tittle correct:

"Documentation is like sex. When it's good, it's very, very good. And when it's bad, it's still better than nothing."

R.I.P. Doodle

Theresa's cat has passed on at the age of twenty. She reminisces on the the life of Doodle in her family.

If Jackson Pollock Wrote Poetry

At Yankee Pot Roast.

Art Blogging: Joyce Tenneson

Joyce Tenneson (1945- ) is an American photographer. Born in Boston, she grew up at the convent where her parents worked. She has been widely published in American media, particularly for her portraiture, and currently lives and works in New York City.



Maesie Murphy, 83. From Tenneson's collection Wise Women, which is a celebration of the wisdom of elderly women, once valued more highly in human societies than it is today.



Cheryl, 1997. There is something particularly beautiful about a pregnant woman, which I think that Western art has discovered only in the past century.






Old Man and Deanna, 1987. From a collection known as Transformations, Tenneson juxtaposes contrasting dualities. Here, old age and youth.

You're A Bad Man, Chris Brown

From MAD Magazine. Who knew that MAD could actually be funny?


If you're missing the pop culture reference, it's to singer Chris Brown, recently arrested for beating up on his girlfriend, singer Rhianna.

Efficiency in Parenting

Feeding a baby, I have discovered, is a profoundly inefficient process. Of baby food presented to a baby, I would estimate that only one fourth completes its journey down a baby's gastrointestinal tract. Of the remaining, about one third does not make it into a baby's mouth, one third does not make it past the mouth, and one third is vigorously ejected from the esophagus.

This is indicative of serious design flaws in the infant logistical system.

Nick Seafort and the Delusion of a Rule of Life

Back in our pregnancy days, my wife and I were selecting baby names for our child, and I suggested "Nicholas" if it was a boy. This selection was in reference to the main character of the Nicholas Seafort Saga, a series of science fiction novels by David Feintuch. Although the series was never very commercially successful, I long found the character of Nick Seafort to be among the most gripping in fiction. This was a person that I could admire, in spite of his flaws, and I wanted my son to see in the pages of these books a person worthy of his emulation.

Now, when I glance through the pages of the Nick Seafort novels, his world seems so unrealistic. To Nick, nothing is more important than upholding his word and fulfilling his duty. It is these traits, along with a bit of cleverness and luck, that propel him to great fame and glory.

Nick lives by a code, largely framed by his oath of enlistment to the UN Navy and the Naval Code of Regulations. He would rather die than break a letter of them. People, especially troubled young men, gravitate toward him as they desire to become like him (much to Nick's befuddlement).

I'm no Nick Seafort, but my wife has told me that I'm rather similar in that I live by a set of rules; a code of conduct and principles. I was never conscious of this trait until my wife asserted that I view the world this way more greatly than anyone else she has ever known, including her own father.

So perhaps the United Methodist Church appealled to me because of its codification of everything in The Book of Discipline. I knew this book backwards and forwards, and assumed it to be the rulebook for Methodist life. Of course, I read enough in the news to know that it was not always followed (e.g. the homosexuality controversy). But I always assumed that those above me, such as my District Superintendent, my DCOM, and the Bishop, would act in good faith to adhere to the Discipline, or at the bare minimum, give lip service to it.

So as I followed the complaint process, I figured that I would greatly inconvenience these overlords as I argued solidly and indisputably that the subjects of the complaints had violated the Discipline. To weasel out of the plain text of the Discipline would require great effort.

I was to be disappointed. When I filed a complaint against my DS, Bishop Whitaker simply refused to process it. And so, as his actions were contrary to the Discipline (among other charges), I filed a complaint against him to Bishop Ward. In doing so, I provided a five-page single-spaced argument with numerous citations from the Discipline about how Whitaker had violated the Discipline. Ward responded in a single sentence that she found no violation of the Discipline. When I pressed her via e-mail to explain, citing the Discipline, how I was wrong, she simply refused.

My assumption that senior Methodist officials would give even a whit as to the regulations of the Discipline was completely false. I had lived by a code, but found that others did not.

I found that one cannot appeal to the law to a person who has no regard for it; one cannot appeal to righteousness to someone who has no conscience. So I dropped the matter, realizing that it was futile to continue.

In a more realistic novel, Nick Seafort's sense of honor, adherence to his word, and obedience to Naval regulations would have gotten him booted out of the Navy in disgrace, if not killed.

That's why I'm no longer sure that I want any future son to be named Nicholas. I wouldn't want him to read the novels and think that a life of honor and integrity has any future. Nick Seafort, by his own example and leadership, encouraged people to become greater, more noble men and women. But if set in our own world and not a fictive one, Nick would have been found dead in a corridor with a knife in his back.

I don't think that I want a son of mine to end up that way. I don't think that I want my son to be a sucker. Like his old man.

I want him to grow up cunning and crafty. I want him to know when to tell the truth and when to lie through his teeth. And I want him to value his own security and that of his family above anything else.

Dangle

Dangle
[Video Link] While walking in the woods, a man discovers a cord hanging down out of the sky. Curiosity gets the better of him, and he decides to pull it.

If Frank Miller Drew Peanuts

Everything is better if it's made like Sin City.

Link via Popped Culture

Previously on the Zeray Gazette: Robot Chicken's take on Sin City.

Lex Luthor Applies for a Federal Bailout

"Lex Luthor Bailout" with Jon Hamm from Jon Hamm

Eating on $69 A Week

The LA Times has an unintentionally hilarious article up about a couple that decided to take the "Food Stamp Challenge" -- to spend no more than $72 a week on food, which is what food stamp recipients receive. Normally, Jason Song and his girl spend about $700 a month on food, so they had to cut back to the bare bones during their shopping trip to (gasp!) Costco:

Our Costco grocery bill came to $67, so we decided to adopt that as our limit. We planned a menu for the first week and vowed to stick to it: oatmeal or eggs for breakfast, ham pita sandwiches and salad for lunch, ginger-lime chicken thighs for dinner.

These people live in a different world than I do.

HT: Neatorama

Question of the Day

Crawfish season is upon us, so it's time to sidle down to a boil and pick up a bag of spicy cajun crawdads. I prefer to pick up a couple pounds, a newspaper to spread them on, and a gallon of sweet milk to douse the fire in my mouth from time to time.

How do you like your crawfish?

How do you like your crawfish?
	With beer
	With milk
	With boiled potatoes
	With corn on the cob
	With mushrooms
pollcode.com free polls

Oh, It's On!

Is Olive Morgan, at the age of 87, challenging me to a fight? That's what it looks like, what with her talkin' smack in the comments.

Place your wagers in quatloos in the comments below.

Unless Their Walkers Had Spikes

Via DPUD

Congratulations

...to Gavin Richardson and his wife Erin, who are expecting their first child.

Well, Erin's first, anyway.

As for Gavin....

UPDATE: I have an idea. Let us have a virtual baby shower for Gavin and Erin.

Who's with me?

My Favorite Charles Bronson Movies

Charles Bronson is one of my favorite actors. He generally played himself, a 4-star badass, except that he toned down his badassery on film because audiences would have fled theatres in terror if he had unleashed his full awesomeness.

His most memorable roles occurred only after he grew older, as movie directors refused to cast the younger Bronson because cameras burst into flames whenever they tried to capture his image. A handful of these later films are my favorites:

The Mechanic (1972) A professional hitman mentors a younger aspirant. The opening hit in this movie is brilliant, and the plot turns on its head in the final few seconds of the film. Magnificently directed. Here's the first scene:

[Video Link]

Death Wish (1974) Architect Paul Kersey's peaceful ideals are destroyed by the wanton rape and murder of his wife and daughter. In this controversial film, Charles Bronson stalks the streets of New York City, baits thugs into attacking him, and then guns them down. Here's the trailer:

[Video Link]

Chato's Land (1972) The wife of half-breed Apache Chato is raped by local white settlers in the American Southwest. Then they come after him, forming a posse to hunt him down. One by one, they fall. Bronson rarely speaks in this film; he lets his killing do his talking for him. I have no embeddable video available, but here's the trailer.

What is your favorite Charles Bronson movie?

Vise Grips Stories

Popular Mechanics has an article up on that marvelous wonder tool: vise grips. The magazine asked readers to submit stories about how people have used them in creative ways, such as clamping a gushing artery, dipping cannolis in hot oil, and holding a bridal bouquet together. Here's my favorite:

Back in my college days, my best friend and I traveled from Moorhead to Hibbing for an impromptu bear hunt. The year was 1973, and my trusty 1963 Mercury Meteor's shift lever broke off at 3:00 a.m. I promptly clamped my Vise-Grip on a shard of metal sticking out of the column. The "shifter" sufficed for 690 miles on logging roads. By the way, we did get a bear!"

Well, when I was about 20, I decided to throw a surprise birthday party for my Mom. So I bought a pinata, but was unable to find a way to hang it up anywhere in our apartment that would permit her to smack at it with a stick. So my Dad cleverly hung the pinata from his vice grips, which he attached to the top of a door frame. My Mom was delighted.

Okay, so it's not the most impressive vise grips story. But I did learn how critical and handy it is to have them around.

Click here for a history of vise grip pliers.

World Builder

[Video Link] World Builder is a short film by Bruce Branit. It's a love story about a man who creates a holographic world for the woman he loves.

This is one of the best short films I've ever seen.

HT: Neatorama

African American Baby Names

John Derbyshire, in reference to a child named in a recent Obama speech, blasts parents who invent names for their children:

I wish no offense at all to young Ty’Sheoma, but much offense to her damn fool parents, who saddled her with that absurd name. Making up a gibberish name and burdening your child with it is heinous. Sticking unnecessary apostrophes in there is beyond heinous. There should be fines, at the very least, for these parents.

Although he doesn't say it, the Derb is referring to what is almost exclusively an African American practice: creating a name out of sounds without any particular philological origin.

Although the results may sound odd (I have personally known two ladies named Niptheria and Retunga), I am sympathetic to the practice. If my identity group had been oppressed by a dominant culture for generations, and within recent memory, I would be inclined to reject the names of that culture on that basis alone -- even if it meant resorting to creating a name out of nothing. Better to have an invented culture of one's own than a historically-grounded culture associated with oppression.

My Father Asks for Nothing

A touching tribute by a son for his father.

HT: Ace

Quote of the Day

Today, it's from my wife. Unlike my mother and my mother-in-law, she's not a daily reader. So she's only just now seen that I've switched header pictures from Henri Rousseau's The Dream to Francois Pompon's Polar Bear.

"I like it! It's so not tits!"


I guess that that's an accurate critique.

The Middlebrow Culture of America

Terry Teachout has an intriguing editorial in Arts Journal. He points to a recent story in The Guardian in which the author laments popular ignorance of the fine arts. The critique is based on a British survey, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that 49% of Americans would be unable to identify the creator of the Mona Lisa. Nor, like Teachout, do I think that this is necessarily a bad thing, for American culture allowed people to question the aesthetic assumptions of the West and decide for themselves what they considered to be art:

Ours is essentially a popular culture, of course, but in the democratic culture of postwar America, there was also unfettered access to what Matthew Arnold so famously called "the best that has been thought and said in the world"--and, just as important, there was no contempt for it. When I was a boy, most Americans who didn't care for high art still held it in a kind of puzzled respect. I doubt that Ed Sullivan cared much for Maria Callas or Edward Villella, but that didn't stop him from putting them on his show, along with Louis Armstrong and the original cast of West Side Story (not to mention Jackie Mason and Senor Wences). In the Sixties, all was grist for the middlebrow mill.

This is as it should be: cultural values should be determined by individuals in free market environments, and not regulated by force or even substantially influenced by elitist standards. An observer can't look at art effectively without first peeling away the aesthetic presuppositions of cultural norms and letting a piece speak for itself. Forced cultural blinders which say "This is bad art" and "This is good art" can only distort the perception of the individual.

Teachout then moves on to the main focus of his column, the decline of a unified national culture:

The catch was that the middlebrow culture on which I was raised was a common culture, based on the existence of widely shared values, and it is now splintered beyond hope of repair. Under the middlebrow regime, ordinary Americans were exposed to a wide range of cultural options from which they could pick and choose at will. They still do so, but without the preliminary exposure to the unfamiliar that once made their choices potentially more adventurous. The rise of digital information technology, with its unique capacity for niche marketing, has replaced such demographically broad-based instruments of middlebrow self-education as The Ed Sullivan Show with a new regime of seemingly infinite cultural choice. Instead of three TV networks, we have a hundred channels, each "narrowcasting" to a separate sliver of the viewing public, just as today's corporations market new products not to the American people as a whole but to carefully balanced combinations of "lifestyle clusters" whose members are known to prefer gourmet coffee to Coca-Cola, or BMWs to Dodge pickups.

Teachout is, of course, referring to the Long Tail -- the economic phenomenon of mass production that allows individuals to be very selective about their aesthetic desires (among other cultural and financial habits). Due to telecommunications, people can form very specific microcultures and identity groups free from any geographic limitations.

The downside, as Teachout points out, is that people within a geographic area, such as the United States, have a diminished national, common culture:

What's really sad is that most people under the age of 35 or so don't remember and can't imagine a time when there were magazines that "everybody" read and TV shows that "everybody" watched, much less that those magazines and shows went out of their way to introduce their audiences to high art of various kinds. Those days, of course, are gone for good, and it won't help to mourn their passing. I'm not one to curse the darkness--that's one of the reasons why I started this blog. Even so, that doesn't stop me from feeling pangs of nostalgia for our lost middlebrow culture. It wasn't perfect, and sometimes it wasn't even very good, but it beat hell out of nothing.

HT: The Corner

Twitter Throughout History

And Gavin always thinks that he's ahead of the curve for early-adopting into new social networking tools. Ha!

Follow the link for Tweets from Australopithecus, Adolf Hitler, and Julius Ceasar.

HT: Neatorama

Everything is Amazing Yet Nobody is Happy

[Video Link] Comedian Louis CK offers a dose of reality on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. Astounding technologies are available to consumers today, yet nobody is content with the miracle machines in their pockets. "How quickly the world owes him something he knew existed only ten seconds ago."

HT: Neatorama

Art Blogging: Spotlight on Linocuts

Today, I was in the mood to look at some linocuts. This was my own preferred medium back in high school when I was doing artwork of my own. In fact, in this, my post-Christian life, I now have enough time that I could seriously consider purchasing some supplies and getting back into the art habit.

I think that I like linography because of its sharp lines and contrasts of form and color. Linocuts are alive in a startling way.


Speedway, Sybil Andrews, 1934.

Reading, Fliss Watts, 2004.

Boethia, Eunice Agar.