Photoshop

It'd be cool if someone photoshopped a picture of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, only instead of their usual bodies they'd have lady bodies, and they'd have elongated breasts. I mean, super duper elongated, like ten feet. And the two of them would be standing in front of a road that dead-ended in about eight feet. And then there'd be a caption underneath that said "you and I have mammaries longer than the road that stretches out ahead."

No wait, that would be stupid.

Dummmbbbbbb

Hey, dudes. What's up? What's up in the "blogosphere?" I haven't been in here in a while. Is anyone still there? I suddenly have all this leisure time but I don't want to water down my facebook post quality, so let me tell you these things here:

• I am driving around in a legal van for the first time in months. It will be hard to quit the habits of the illegal driver, though, like parking really close to the car behind you or pretending you arrived at your destination when a cop is behind you or taking the alley.
  
  
• Pet peeve: when people say night-times after midnight are the morning. For real, that drives me nuts. Night is when it is dark. Morning is when the sun rises. It's not tomorrow until the sun rises. I know it's just a little joke, but it's such a petty way of thinking in terms of technicalities. You can do it, but don't do it at me. On the radio. I will change the station. I feel that strongly about it.
  
  
• It's the same problem I have with how people in America sometimes say "an history" or when people get all up in arms about the correct use of commas. The "n" in "an" only needs to be there when the next word starts with a vowel sound. We pronounce the "h" in history, so we shouldn't say "an" before it. The comma simply denotes a pause in speaking the sentence. Say it out loud, and if you pause there, use a comma, and if you don't, don't. Especially when talking about that final "Oxford comma." Sometimes you want a pause before the last thing to emphasize it, sometimes you don't. It's not a thing where there needs to be a rule.
  
  
• I have this new food I make where I have a leftover bit of a King of the Hill sandwich (a giant Italian salami sub, for you non-STLians), which tends to get a little soggy, and cut it up into bits and put them and some pepper jack cheese in a flour tortilla and microwave it for way too long and let it cool back down. I swear to god, it is incredible.
  
  
• I also made this green curry burrito with some leftover veggie green curry with these weird ultra-dense Japanese yams and some off-brand laughing cow cheese. This one is more of a sealed-up toaster oven burrito. Unreal. The tang of the cheese and the sweetness and hotness of the curry. Yes.
  
  
• My experience with my dissertation has changed my mind about something: you can polish a turd, after all.
  
  
• Let me say here in this exciting historical time that I think this is an exciting historical time. I mean, every time is, but all these protests and shit. The next generation will ask us what it was like. It will make us feel cool.
  

Well, that's about it. Goodbye, blogosphere. I'll try to have something better for you next time.

Records and CDs

I am in the middle (well, closer to the end, thank God) of moving across town right now. Today was my big day of going through all my records and CDs and deciding what to do with them all. I was struck by something I never really thought through. CDs suck. They are a horrible product. The shitty plastic cases break. I'd say 70% of my CD cases were broke. No matter, I just put them all in one of those binder things anyhow. Which now seems just about out of date, cuz I could as easily rip them all onto a hard drive. What would make me want to keep them would be the art, but since all the shitty ass plastic cases are broken and infuriate me every time I open them and they fall apart, I just stuck them all in a box that will go to the basement and probably never again see the light of day.

I paid probably an average of $7 each for all those CDs-- lots of new, lots of used, lots accidentally stolen but balanced out by those accidentally stolen from me.

Then my records. My records had to be winnowed. I have limited shelf space and tons of good rock, classical, and a few jazz records. I mean for real good, not just tons of Sergio Mendez or 101 Strings or stuff. These records look beautiful. The sleeves, even when worn, are often things you could hang up or frame. The most broken ones just need a little tape to keep the discs from falling out when you pick them up. The older ones have a circular halo around the record, like the back jeans pocket of a seasoned tobacco chewer or the wallet of a wishfully thinking horny young teenage boy.

I paid probably an average of $3 each for all these records-- lots of used, a few new, a few in bulk, a few individually ordered or sought after.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this. I hate to be one of those people who thinks newer stuff is shitty and older stuff is awesome. But in this case it is true. CDs are just a piece-of-shit product that got sold for way too much money and used shitty plastics that are probably filling landfills right now. When the shitty plastic cases break, the shitty plastic discs with the thin metal coat are bared to the elements, like cold, or heat, or friction, or, I don't know, air, and now lots of them won't play unless you play them on a super quick drive. Where's the super quick drive but in a computer, where you could just rip them and not have to get infuriated with the broken case in the first place.

Whereas records, you can hold them and feel the weight, you can look at the art at a reasonable size. Having to flip them engages you in the music, if you are paying close attention, or encourages multiple listens if, say, there are lots of people hanging out and someone just keeps flipping the record when it runs out. They are hard to break, hard to lose, and easy to love. I'm sure the markup on records was astronomical too, but at least the product was worth a shit. Plus isn't it true that they sent out that stuff to space for aliens to hear and they decided they better use a record since a CD might be hard to figure out? Um, plus, don't those crazy audiophiles say there is like a 7 micro-hertz band that CDs cut out but you can hear on a record, if you have a titanium needle and vacuum-sealed superconductor speaker cables?

So I guess I'm saying that, in my opinion, records are a superior product to CDs. That's all. And just to be clear that this isn't one of those knee-jerk older-is-better sort of things, let me say that I prefer DVD to VHS, and maybe even laser discs to DVD. Then again, film and projectors aren't quite as affordable and available as records and record players...

My own personal bias vis-a-vis living history

On a completely different note, I want to talk about two ways of enacting history, and my bias about them. First, you got your history-killing Olde-Tymey-ness. This is when you try to reenact historical artforms just as they were, down to the clothes and styles, etc. I call this history-killing because it freezes things into a period and stifles them there. It makes the period itself the showcase, rather than the art that flowed through it. I get most annoyed with this in music, because it just so happens I am really into acoustic instruments, but this buts me up against so much Olde-Tymey-ness I could puke on your suspenders and washboards. Cuz see, my bias is towards the second way of enacting history, which is radically directed at the individual artwork and its enduring message in today's society. No need to beat around the bush here, I am talking mostly about silent film, and the way plenty of those movies are awesome and plenty of them suck, and how that distinction is being lost by their historical fetishization by Olde-Tymey-ists. Each film before and after sound is its own deal, and putting them all to shitty ass old ragtimey huzzah music just dilutes the good ones and makes the bad ones even worse. To reenact movie history, you have to take the movies seriously as though they were made today, and part of that is playing music that is relevant today. It's like the difference between baby-talking to kids or treating them as real honest-to-god people. I get pissed about this issue because to me it is a matter of respect, and my bias is that respect is important, and you disrespect history when you fetishize it and parade it the way Olde-Tymyists do.

So I guess I'm saying there are things within the arts that endure and things that don't, and making that classic argument about how styles change but substance stays the same. Wow, I never thought I'd be that guy, but I guess in my older age that is what I believe.

There is an element of tragedy to historical style-peddlers, because it takes incredible talent to recreate a style, but that talent seems wasted to me when it parades the dead for the living, instead of trying to create something that will have life long after the maker is dead.

Miscellany

• What are blogs even for anymore?
  
  
• The delicious curry I made yesterday, which I think is vegan even:
  
  • Have some yellow curry paste, a can of coconut milk, some garlic, a humungous yam, and some spinach and mustard greens in your back yard you better eat quick cuz they are going to seed.
    
  • As per the instructions on the container, stir fry a giant spoonful of the curry paste in some of the coconut milk for a while. Nice and hot.
    
  • I usually would put onions in there but all I had was garlic so I put a bunch of cut up garlic in there, like six cloves worth, just at the very end of the stir-frying part, so you don't burn it.
    
  • Then add the rest of the can of coconut milk, and about a can's worth of water, and the yam, which you cut up into lil' cubes
    
  • Let it come to a boil, then turn it to simmer, with a lid on there.
    
  • Oh, did I mention you should be also making a pot of rice? Be making a pot of rice.
    
  • Go to your backyard and grab a bunch of spinach and a bunch of mustard greens. Oh also some fresh basil if you got it.
    
  • Rinse off the greens and basil. Then just shove it all in the pot, even if you have to squish it in, they will shrink so much, it'll be fine.
    
  • Wait til the potatoes are tender. You want that to time out with the sauce getting to a nice thickness. If it is too thin, take the lid off and turn up the heat. If it's too thick, add a little more water and put the lid on tight.
    
  • I like to add something sweet, usually pineapples and pineapple juice, but if yes you have no pineapples then just use sugar, it's what I did and it was fine.
    
  • Pour that shit over rice, it's delicious.
    
  • Don't be alarmed when you piss and it smells weird.
  
  
  
• I recently heard about how it is too late for anything to save the planet except massive changes in personal behavior, which obviously will never ever happen because humans are designed for shit and even if 99 people somehow change how they live, that one person out of a hundred can still fuck it all up (some brilliant engineer who used to be into wind kites did some calculations or something, I forget). In other words, the situation may be hopeless. This depressed me for a few days, because I didn't know what the use was of trying to live in a more responsible way. Then I got the idea of the "Last Sip of Milk" theory. My mom used to get pissed when someone would just leave like one swig of milk and put the carton back in the fridge (yes, the cardboard carton, remember those, anyone?) I mean, the milk is doomed, it's gonna get killed by someone eventually, but you can at least do your part by taking a small enough amount that it is the next person who kills it. Not because it is morally good, just to not be an asshole. I don't know, I'm still working on this one, cuz it also occurs to me another way to not be an asshole about the milk is just to put it out of its misery so you at least don't get the next guy's hopes up...
  
  
• Like every two-bit asshole in the world, I have my two cents on the big oil spill. It is this: boycotting BP does no good-- every oil company does the same sort of shit, and you'll only make the other ones stronger, thus creating an even smaller group of multimillionaires, who will squabble less with each other, and form an even mightier and more focused pile of money to influence politics. The only real retaliation is to boycott oil at all, or at least use less, about which see the above item about how nobody will ever change their personal habits ever and we are all fucked, or at least our children are.
  
  
• Speaking of changing personal habits, I think the main people who need to change first are the poor people. It seems like poor people buy the stupidest shit, live the stupidest unhealthy lives, and care the least about the health of the planet. This is so ass backwards it infuriates me. As a poor person, I have found that living healthier, being a more responsible consumer, and caring about the planet more are all mutually beneficial to a low-income way of life. You walk or bike more, you buy less gas, you save the planet. You grow more food or at least cook your own food, you spend less money, you save the planet. You recycle, you get some money, you maybe walk or drive to the recycling place, you get healthier. You grow food, you don't drive to the grocery store, you save the planet. It all works together, health, ecology, and economy-- which gives you three reasons to do it. No moral posturing necessary, because saving money and being physically healthy are their own rewards. But instead you so often see poor people driving their fat asses in gas guzzlers through McDonalds drive-thrus. I have heard it argued that fast food is so cheap it makes poor people eat it. Bullshit. A one-dollar bag of raw beans and a two-dollar sack of rice can hook you up for a week for less than a Big Mac. That is fucked up, friends, and though I believe people on the whole are fucking idiots, I still hold us responsible for the idiotic choices we make on a daily basis, i.e., I can't comfortably lay the blame on advertising or education or cultural values or whatnot.
  
  
• It's not like I sit around worrying about this shit, I just wanted to actually write something in my blog, and this is for some reason where it went. Jeez, come on, I'm not one of those people. I mean, shit, I eat fast food like once a week and when I'm in a bad mood I will drive my van ten blocks to my girlfriend's place. I got no moral high ground to stand on, so the arguments I'm making are not morally based.
  
  
• I have another big idea I've been working on, I guess I'd call it something like "Halfway." It is a way to address the difficulty of changing personal habits. The idea is that you are always gonna fail if you try to do it all at once. So if you want to change your economic, ecological, and health habits, every little bit helps. Instead of not driving, you can park further away-- that way you use a little less oil, you pollute the environment a little less, and you get more exercise. You can take your bike in your car and park pretty damn far away, then bike the rest, which may also save you money if you have to pay to park. You can order a shitty pizza, but then put garden spinach on it. You can only ever buy shit that has coupons. You can only turn on your AC when you get home, or turn it off in the middle of the night. Every time you go shopping you can gather all your shit, then at the last second pick three items to sacrifice.
  
  
• God I sound like an asshole. Sorry.

Fun with anagrams

I saw that movie The Vanished a few days back, and like a week or two before that, Shutter Island, and then maybe a couple years ago Memento, all of which got me thinking about anagrams in the back of my mind somewhere, I guess, cuz then lo and behold the other day my mind went blank for a while, then when I came to I realized that "saint" and "isn't a" are anagrams, and then I did this thing you always have to do in music theory where you find the different "rotations" of a series of notes, resulting in something like this (only scrawled out in the sort of messy writing indicative of a crackpot revelation in progress):

isn't a saint
(sntasainti)
(ntasaintis)
(tasaintisn)
as ain't isn't
saint isn't a
ain't isn't as
in 'tisn't as a
(ntisntasai)
(tisntasain)
isn't a saint


Then I thought it would be cool to make a poem where you had to use all the five letters before you reused them, but I had to sort of cheat, and it looked like this:

saint isn't a saint
-but-
saint ain't isn't as saint isn't
-so-
ain't a saint a saint?


I dunno, it seemed worthwhile at the time but now it seems like Matty ran out of crosswords and the internet was broke.

Dear blog,

I am sorry for being away for so long. I have been busy with other things. But don't think I haven't thought of you. I have some ideas. Wanna hear them? Want me to make an unordered list? You got it, B!

• a hilarious new youtube video based on the law and order theme
  
• the story of how my friend got mugged and then became a softball hero
  
• plugs for shows I am in
  
• new stand-up style jokes I made up, like this one: "Seriously, though, it's great to wake up next to a beautiful girl . . . [comedic pause] . . . who's still alive."
  
• a song-by-song comparison/review of Alex Chilton's and Chris Bell's first (and, in the latter's case, only) post-Big Star solo records.
  
• stupid ideas for commercials that would be funny once, but then irritating as HELL
  
• versions of famous songs where certain parts repeat too many times, or where certain sequential processes are carried on for too long, to comedic effect
  
• brand new nicknames for my balls
  
• anti-bird propaganda
  
• a memoire of the challenges inherent in trying to love, or at least not hate, a dog I hate
  
• not smoking for a year
  
• my continued love affair with the unordered list tag

Sweep out the old, sweep in the new

• I changed my picture there and my background color. Do you like it?
  
  
• Have you heard of "the modulator"?
  
  
• Did you know there are over 150,000 parts in a piano? We invented that shit. Humans like me and you invented that shit.
  
  
• It's the today, ghost titty.
  
  
• Also, this:
  
  
  
• Well that's all folks.
  [insert youtube video for Fleetwood Mac "That's all for everyone" here, the only one I found was a soundtrack to someone feeding a baby]

Hobosexuals

They're freakin' everywhere. Watch out. They're comin' out of the walls. They're increasing in numbers. They can really squeeze it into a place, too, to the tune of an entire OC* per barroom. They might... bump into you. They might... question your authenticity. But also they are loveable little ragamuffins who deserve all the love and respect you'd give their new-tymey counterparts. I'm just sayin', some of my best friends are hobosexuals.

*Oliver Cast: the basic unit of number of hobosexuals in a given horde is the amount needed to cast the movie Oliver.

Where'd the muse go / askphilhartmansballs.com

I usually write about funny things I cooked, but I am on a boring-ass streak of just cooking good food that is not that unusual.

I usually draw a shitty comic strip during the class I TA, but classes have ended for the season.

I usually write about new names I've come up with for my balls, but lately they haven't changed in character enough to warrant it.

I guess instead I will tell you about the idea for a website I got way back around 1996 or so, in the precipitous uprise of the world wide web. It was a time when people still used Gopher to get on those weird not-quite-internet internets, and when I would type my emails through Telnet on a completely text-based system called Pine. It was a time when if you wanted to download a porn video, it would take about a half hour and be like ten seconds long. It was a time when people used a lot of flashing text, when horrible fanfic sex stories (smurfs, brady bunch, etc.) were forwarded in wide circles, it was before much advertising, before Flash, before firefox, it was the era of Netscape Navigator and every other person having an aol account. It was in this environment that I conceived of askphilhartmansballs.com. The idea was simple: a blank page with a crudely drawn picture of Phil Hartman's balls, which you would click as you thought of a question. Then the balls would reply in the style of a magic eight-ball, probably using the exact same set of responses: Yes, No, Outlook foggy, Ask again later, etc. That's it. No other features, no explanation.

Twelve or so years later, I think I have the skills to make that site. But now I don't want to. Isn't it a conundrum about wanting and time? About wanting what you get and getting what you want? About wanting what you want, even?

Signs point to yes.

A lady was aghast at my wagging finger

I wish I could have got a picture. Some lady pulls out in a way that would have caused her car to hit my very visible, very reasonably located bike, if I hadn't foreseen her pulling out without really looking, because she was clearly in an important cell phone conversation and just looked like "the type," if you hear what I'm saying. So I slowed down just enough to make it safe but not enough that she wouldn't see what she'd done, and right as she finally noticed me (a good ten feet or so after when she would have hit me) I gave her a stone-faced finger-wag accompanied by a very subtle "no" motion of the head. Her face was priceless. Agog, aghast, a mixture of ashamed and pissed and shocked. Good thing there wasn't some old lady crossing the street in front of her, because she kept going as she craned her neck around to look at this audacious finger-waggin' guy.

See, when I'm driving a car, I'm a firm believer in using the horn as a behavioral modification device. I'm a peaceful man, but if someone cuts me off, I lay on the horn in that special way that signifies FURIOUSNESS, because how else will they even know? So on a bike I have developed a repertoire ranging from the more subtle finger-wag to the "what the fuck are you doing" shrug to the screaming flip-off. I figure the next time she is at that intersection, she will think twice. And then maybe, just maybe, she will generalize it to other intersections. Maybe somewhere down the line some kid won't get run over because of MY making a total stranger feel shocked/disgusted/ashamed/aghast! I think that is called the "butterfly effect"?

Two (2) things on this Friday morning

1.) I was gonna post a video of Bruce Springsteen's "I'm on Fire," but I actually didn't really like the video. Doesn't do the song too much justice. How about instead you just go find it on youtube but then turn down your brightness on your monitor all the way and just, like, imaginate.

1.5) Have you noticed that if you want to hear a song you can always find it on youtube? And half the time there will be kind of a Ken Burns panning shot of a low-res image of the album cover?


2.)

• I am in love.
• It is with the "unordered list" html tag.
• Seriously. I love it.
• This is not some clever metaphor. I am in love with an html tag.

2.5) My inner Dr. Phil tells me I seem to have a crush on unattainability.

2.75) My inner Popeye just punched my inner Dr. Phil. I have a headache. I have to go now.

Figure 12: I yam what I yam, and though I yam suffering
the Slings and Arrowes of outragious Fortune, I yam gonna take Armes and Leaves of fyne Spinache against a Sea of troubles