Posted on March 12th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Badness, Old Posts.
Today, just now in fact [well, nearly thirteen years ago, but anyway], I created a very impressive special effect, and I wish i hadn't. You know how corningware's supposed to be virtually unbreakable, except when it shatters spontaneously deep in the cupboard? Don't believe them. I'm housesitting for friends, and I wanted some beans and rice. Pulled out an appropriately-sized corningware pot, and went to the kitchen where the lids are propped on a wall unit. I carelessly pulled the right-sized lid, and it took the next-larger one with it; that lid crashed to the floor, and astonishingly (I wish I were in a position to admire this) crashed right through the pot I was holding. Corningware all over the kitchen floor to the atomic level. Me left holding a very sorry little corningware pot handle. Now I have to (heavy sigh) go clean it up.
And, naturally, this means that there is now a pot without a corresponding lid, and a lid without a corresponding pot. I'd worry about replacing them, but right now I DON'T GET TO HAVE ANY RICE AND BEANS.
Posted on March 11th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Songs, Words, Dance, Old Posts.
Last night I dreamed that I was skipping and running cheerfully along a colorful series of ledges, rails and ropes, with a partner, improvised yet perfectly synchronized, while around us "The Candy Man" by Sammy Davis Jr played, and it was the beats and chord changes of the song that we improvised our steps to. And it all. felt. perfectly. natural.
Posted on March 9th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Stuff, Media.
Rush Limbaugh will leave the US if health care reform is passed.
Any sane person would applaud; that was my first thought. But my second was: What country is Limbaugh going to? Most every developed country has national health care. Answer: Costa Rica.
Posted on February 27th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Games, Old Posts.
The idea that "chess is relatively easy" is very recent, and very nearly postdates the crucial match. Just ten years ago, it wasn't difficult to find folks in the AI debate asserting that computers would never beat the best humans at chess.
We don't have a problem with machines being stronger or faster than us, but the idea that we can program computers to exceed our mental processes is deeply disturbing. Yet the notion that this is "impossible" is essentially mystical: it insists that there is more to human thought than the physical workings of the brain, and hence can never be artificially created.
When computers start making original contributions to philosophy, there will be folks maintaining that philosophy is relatively easy.
Posted on February 23rd, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Media, Old Posts.
If advertising were as insidiously, relentlessly effective as all that, we'd all be automatons. (Ah, but how do you know you're not?) We wouldn't be so much like our parents (but who made your parents?), we wouldn't, so many of us, have very much the values of the people who raised and taught us (but who programmed them?). If advertising is so effective, why do we resist it? (Don't make me laugh.) If advertising is so effective, why can't they make us buy anything they want, regardless of quality? (You think you have your own taste, desires, free will? Get real.)
I've read The Hidden Persuaders, and I probably have more interest in what makes advertising work than is healthy for me, just as I am interested in the rhetoric of persuasive (as opposed to truthful) argument. But, with all due respect, most anti-advertising rants I read (closely related to anti-television rants) strike me as a species of conspiracy theory. If someone wants to say there are strings attached to my limbs and those of my children, I can see for myself that it's not so; a persuasive voice is not a string, and the contentiousness, irascibility, and simple desire to please one's own self will continue to confound and frustrate sellers with nothing good to sell, no matter how sneaky they are.
And I've never met an adult where you couldn't guess a lot more about their parents, schooling, and religious upbringing than what television they watched and what advertising they were exposed to.
Posted on February 19th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Untruths, Old Posts.
Brad Jones solved the Trees of Mystery.
You know that creepy feeling that someone's looking at you in the dark? Brad Jones.
Brad Jones is both singular and plural.
Brad Jones disdains the title "producer," preferring to be listed as "mystic wagga."
The Tufted Bean-Warblers have declined to offer arbitration to Brad Jones.
Brad Jones Swallows return to Pensacola every year around Christmas break to party and crap all over everything.
Give Brad Jones a fish and you've fed him for a day. Teach Brad Jones to fish and you're rid of him forever.
The correct plural of Brad Jone is actually Brad Jona.
Brad Jones keeps losing his lab assistants because he insists upon referring to them as "my amanuensis."
Whenever Brad Jones sees Counting Crows on tv his eyes get big and he yells "It's Doctor Jones! Doctor Jones!" until someone changes the channel and he subsides, muttering.
Brad Jones pronounces "infrared" to rhyme with "dared”, to the confusion of his students, readers, subscribers, followers, sidekicks, lackeys, and heirs and assigns.
Teaching Brad Jones is now optional in Kansas. Scientists worry that this will result in Brad Jones growing up pig-ignorant.
You know that really annoying conductor on the 1 train with the same "clever" patter every day? Brad Jones.
63% of Americans can't distinguish between Brad Jones and New Lemon Pledge.
Can you imagine Thursday nights on NBC without Brad Jones? You can't.
Brad Jones has had to be legally enjoined from walking up to small children and informing them grimly that there is no itsy-bitsy spider.
Brad Jones could have had a decent career in competitive jacks had he been able to say "sixies" without loss of muscular coordination.
Brad Jones is a card-carrying card-carrier.
Brad Jones didn't mean to rain on your parade. He can't help it; he's a low-pressure air mass sweeping down from Canada.
Brad Jones's given name is not Bradley; it is just Brad. However, his surname is actually Jonesley.
Have you heard Brad Jones sing the high notes in "Witchy Woman"? Not unless you're a dog.
Brad Jones isn't talking. He is, however, emitting a seemingly organized series of squawks and beeps that experts are attempting to crack.
"Adapt and improve," says Brad Jones, with clenched teeth and jaws.
Sometimes Brad Jones stops dead in the middle of the street and cries out "Christ! what an imagination I've got!"
Posted on February 18th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Movies.
"This early in the film, we're still asking such logical questions. Later, the despair sets in."
--review of Buddy Buddy
Posted on February 17th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Stuff, Untruths, Old Posts.
Brad Jones rips the veil from the nun inside you.
Brad Jones offers a free lunch to all Libertarians.
Brad Jones could feed a family of five for weeks if they'd goddam sit still.
Brad Jones feels chummy today. Look out here he comes!
Brad Jones is demeaning to grubby inconsequential people who smell bad.
Brad Jones conquered half of Europe, but gave it back when a sad little girl cried for Andorra.
There is no "Brad Jones" in "teamwork."
Brad Jones had his Hidden Daffies surgically removed by Dr. Zizmor's Laser of Love.
Round up Brad Jones.
Brad Jones continued his diligent work on the four color mop problem.
Brad Jones has had it with everyone trying to keep up with him.
"Brad" is short for "Hmmmmmmm-brad."
You know how sometimes this topic shows you nothing new for a whole day through several passes, then suddenly it has a dozen messages going back several hours? Brad Jones.
Brad Jones sits in front of a set tuned to SCANALYZER orbiting on triptine and saying over and over "Christ what an imagination I've got!"
Play it, Sam. Play "Brad Jones."
Posted on February 15th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Comedy, Untruths, Old Posts.
Brad Jones was actually born Brad Bowie, but changed his name to avoid confusion with Brad Buoy, the inventor of the liferaft.
Brad Jones is feared in seven languages.
Brad Jones is responsible for all ska band names. He is still looking for bands willing to shoulder the names "Ska of the Antarctic," "The Skashank Redemption," and "F. Ska Fitzgerald."
A careless whisper of "Brad Jones" in the wrong alley could lead to the death of innocents.
Brad Jones will be down from 5 to 6AM for routine maintenance, following which it will no longer be permissible to disturb his routine.
If Brad Jones had been born a girl, his parents were going to name him Cleopatra.
Brad Jones plays without a cup. His opponents think it just makes him scarier.
If Brad Jones were granted three wishes, he'd wish for three more, but only three, because hey, be reasonable.
Remember that to Brad Jones and his people, a smile is an expression of hostility. If you wish to express your affection for Brad Jones, rub the top of his head.
If Brad Jones could only tell stories, the stories he could tell.
Brad Jones shot the sixth, seventh, and eighth Beatles.
Brad Jones is my brother, yet he's heavy.
In time, everything will be true of Brad Jones.
Posted on February 14th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Comedy, Untruths, Old Posts.
There are more Brazilians in Brussells than there are in Sao Paulo.
There are forty-seven words for "Abba" in Swedish.
Shouting "Bronco Nagurski!" while leaping from the shower to bed in a single bound is responsible for 90% of accidents in the home.
Left-handed people are disproportionately represented in Benetton ads.
Posted on February 14th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Lists, Words, Comedy, Untruths, Old Posts.
I taught Madonna to eat, sleep, drink, breathe, ride trains, open envelopes, file taxes late without penalty, drop heavy objects from tall buildings, execute perfect triple axels, throw darts accurately with either hand, compensate for the distorting effects of rear-view mirrors, cheat, fly (with or without wings), sprint backwards, extract revenge with no chance of prosecution but with full knowledge of the victim, open child-proof packages effortlessly, play accordion while retaining her friends, tighten belts, loosen sockets, chew gum in a beguiling working-class manner, groan convincingly, belch like a lady, construct origami pets of every genus, pop corn in her mouth, lead oppressed south americans to freedom, defend a field hockey goal mouth, swim, dropkick, shimmy in a corset, tap the zeitgeist in her dreams, and die in her sleep.
In return, she taught me to relax. Ahhhhhhhh.
Posted on February 10th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Badness, Stuff.
And I am distressed. I loved zoos as a child, and Woodland Park Zoo was my second home. When the Nocturnal House opened, I was fascinated, and it immediately became my favorite. I went there for hours and hours. Now it's going to be closed, a victim of budget cuts. I guess I assumed that it would be open forever. Thank god I saw it last year with my family.
Posted on February 8th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Memory, Old Posts.
(Answering "What is the best time you've ever had at a fireworks show?")
Eighteen years old, with my first girlfriend, sitting on a bluff on Capital Hill in Seattle overlooking Lake Washington. It was three days after we'd kissed for the first time, and eight days before she took my virginity; we were at some very nice place in between for most of the night. Some hours after the fireworks we dropped acid and waited for sunrise. In the very early slow light before dawn, holding each other in absolute infatuated blissful stillness and silence, an owl swept down into the valley beneath us, passing not two feet over our heads. Just remembering that moment makes goosebumps rise on my arms.
Posted on February 8th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Badness, Movies, Old Posts.
My roommate has a cat, Milo. A neurotic cat, but until recently within normal cat neurosis territory. But my roommate has begun a relationship that has him outside the apartment a great deal more than previously, and unfortunately Milo turns out to be a Desperately Needy cat, starved for attention after mere minutes of solitude.
I am friendly to cats, but allergic. Petting is out of the question; I swell up, choke, go blind, die a dozen unpleasant deaths. Milo begs for love, and though I cannot touch him, I speak to him kindly, endeavor to make him understand that his problems are heard, that he is appreciated and loved and that someday his master will return and shower him with the affection to which he is so manifestly entitled.
No more. Yesterday, as I prepared to meet my sweetheart to see a movie, the phone rang. My roommate's phone was closest -- he was gone, naturally -- and as I answered it, Milo ran up behind me and bit me on the fucking leg. Hard enough to draw blood. I whacked him with the phone receiver -- I'm sorry, but he was out of line -- yelled at him, poured disinfectant on the wound, and yelled at him some more. Not to put too fine a point on it, I was fucking freaked out; blood running down my leg, wound swelling, cat running around howling. Not fun.
Then Velma & I went to see Shadow of the Vampire. It was good and creepy, but I'm seeing Nosferatu in the cat's fuzzy face now.
Posted on January 18th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Stuff, Recovery.
Tomorrow it's the important doctor's appointment, with my neurologist. I've careful written down the message:
"So I tried Keppra another six weeks, with Gabapentin gradually tailing off until it was done. It’s better without Gabapentin, but the Keppra is still bad.
"It’s still, all the time, twenty-four hours a day, dazed, dull, sluggish, and a little bit stupid. I hate it, all the time. I can’t find the words. It’s been two months since the seizures; I was improving, but now I’m not – if anything, I have regressed -- and I am frustrated.
"I have a theory. I think Keppra is all right if the stroke didn’t affect the language part of the brain (or not much). Maybe the medication is making me dull and dazed, but theoretically it’s fine because my language is still fine.
"But it’s not fine; my language is very much affected. I need that part of the brain. I value that part, so much so that I can’t do without. Please, can we try something else?"
Posted on January 14th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Recovery.
Another: My spelling is still 100% good -- when I'm presented with the correct word. But my spelling function -- "spell it out" -- is horrible. In other words, if I get presented with five variants of a word -- say, "fortunately", "fortunetely", "fortunetelly", "edgar", and "fortunatelly" -- I will pick the right one every time. But if I'm asked to spell it out aloud, I will be dumb. And sometimes I can't spell even writing -- not speaking -- simply, I can't find the word; for instance, I can't think of the variant "fortunately" -- the right one -- and I'm helpless. Once I've found it, I know it.
It's really hard to explain, that one.
Posted on January 14th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Recovery.
Samuel Beckett, Rough for Theatre: "There croaking to the winter wind [rime with unkind], having lost his little mouth-organ."
I literally can't parse "rime with unkind". I understand perfectly the sense of it, but my mind skips, every time I try to sound it out, the winter wind rhyming with unkind.
addendum: It's not Irish. It's not the words.
I understand perfectly how "wind" rhymes with "blind" and "mind". But my hearing mind doesn't understand it; it's broken.
It's weird.
Posted on December 29th, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Stuff, Recovery.
Today my head speech therapy guy, Luis -- it's between semesters, there is nobody who is a student and therefore usually speaks to me, so it's up to Luis (don't get me wrong, he's very busy, and I'm a free -- Medicaid -- therapy case) -- anyway, Luis said the neurologists and speech doctors in charge of me had a meeting. They were worried that I had regressed -- which, of course, I had, since the seizures -- and they wanted to keep me pointing forward, so I am -- probably -- going off the maddening Keppra, and going on something else. (Unfortunately, Dr Benjamin, my head neurologist, was not there.)
We talked about homework; specifically, we talked about the homework that was going to do any good to me. I asked about function words, because those are words that were particular problems for me. Unfortunately, he said there were no homework -- things? jobs? this is how I write, casting about for words -- he said, well, my mind is ahead, even though I can't grasp it. (And I can't, today.)
Posted on December 27th, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Stuff, Recovery.
I went to speech therapy today, and she felt confident of my sentence completion skills that she sent me home with homework. Last week I was numb; I was just staring at the paper. So today I was writing; still can't write like two months ago -- before the seizure -- but slowly coming back. Especially humor; grade-school humor, but still.
I'll show you some. It's mixed with humor -- not wit, that's coming, I hope -- and, well, despair and anger. (This is what Velma has to put up with.) The all-caps is the part I'm completing:
2. I DON'T LIKE cell phones BECAUSE they're difficult to hear.
3. THE TROUBLE WITH POLITICS IS, well, nothing. Politics is compromise; you can't necessarily get what you want, but you get something, if you participate. Unless you're talking about corrupt politics; to many, corrupt politics are the only politics. I think that's a copout.
4. YOU LOOK LIKE a patient woman.
6. SHE CAME LATE BECAUSE her hair fell out, and she had to glue it back on.
7. I WISH I had my language back. Also, I wish I had just one more hit single.
8. IT UPSETS ME TO have to write eighth grade sentences; and that I know I have to.
9. FLOWERS ARE funny. Particularly daisies; I don't know why.
Posted on December 20th, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Stuff, Movies, Recovery.
One of the changes in my life is movies. Reading is now very hard for me; I can read, but it's ten times as laborious -- still -- and it's exhausting. But movies is easier. So I've begun, late in my life, teaching myself the classics. One of my lists is Roger Ebert's 4-star movies. So far, I have watched The Thief Of Baghdad, In a Lonely Place, 12 Angry Men, and The 400 Blows.
I watched The 400 Blows yesterday. And I discovered another dismaying thing: if it is not English, I have to expend translation time -- ten times as hard, basically -- trying to keep up, flickering my eyes up and down, everything watching, not comfortable, not lost in the movie. By the time it's ending, I'm again exhausted. The 400 Blows is really good, but I've going to have to watch it again, tomorrow, because I was literally lost for much of it.
The ending shot was powerful, though.