The World According to the Emetic Sage

Thoughts On My Smartphone

2011-11-03T16:15:00.000-04:00

I've been thinking about my smart phone lately.

Maybe it's a generational thing. I was born in 1965, so am really part of that first generation to come to terms with things like the Internet, cell phones, and all sorts of media defined by the term "digital".

Prior to the early 1980s, it was an analog world. I grew up in that world where there were only three television channels of any substance, and if you had a strong enough antenna (a giant tree-like metal structure bolted to your roof) you could pull in an extra two or three PBS stations from Boston that had deliciously fun things like Saturday-afternoon cartoons, and Benny Hill imports with scantily-clad dancers.

Since there was no such thing as plasma or LCD technology, we had to get by with television sets that displayed their pictures via a giant and weighty cathode-ray tube. This meant that, practically speaking, the average set was constitutionally unable to be larger than 35 inches. Thirteen to twenty-five inches were more the norm.

If you wanted to listen to music, there were no such things as tiny little digital personal players connected via ear bud headphones. No, you either fired up the family record player, or you listened to a tinny crystal FM radio.

If you wanted to make a phone call, you had to either be at home where your phone was physically tied to the network via a long copper cable, or if you were out and about, you had to search for a "phone booth", a large glass rectangle that had a phone also tethered to the network. Waiting outside for others to finish their calls were common occurrences, as well as finding out that the phone book had been vandalized just when you needed to look up a number.

If you were travelling, and wanted to find out where you were, or where you were going, you needed a set of maps. One giant one for the big picture, and several more smaller regional-specific ones for the details. GPS did not exist yet as a consumer product; it was still a closely-guarded secret of the Department Of Defense to aid and enable precise military navigation.

So these are the kinds of things I think about when I think about my smart phone. A tiny little 4.3 inch device that either replaces other products, or does things that did not even exist previously. So I thought I'd try and enumerate all the things that I use this device for, that used to be handled by a raft of other devices. From my perspective, it's really a science-fiction world I am now living in, for the most part.

0. Device. I have an HTC Evo 4G, running the Android mobile OS.

1. Phone. It's number one, but it's probably the least of what this device does. I was one of the first people I knew, however, to go completely cellular. I looked around me, and didn't really see a need for the traditional land line anymore. Why pay two bills for the same thing? I don't remember the exact date I switched over, but it was probably sometime in the mid-nineties with a plan from Cingular.

2. Music. My smart phone has completely taken over the need for any other portable music playing devices. Over the course of several long days, I ripped my complete music collection to 320 Kb/s .mp3s, and copied them to a 32 GB SD card that replaced the standard 8 GB card that came with my phone. Sometimes I still stop and think about it: my entire music collection, that used to take up milk crate after milk crate filled with LPs, which then migrated to a large rack space filled with CDs, now fits onto a tiny solid-state card half the size of a matchbook.

3. GPS. This is one of those things that just didn't exist that long ago, but to some extent has replaced the stand-alone GPS devices that glutted the market several years ago. In my phone I have a fairly sensitive GPS receiver, and coupled with the free turn-by-turn navigation software from Google Maps, I never have to be lost again as long as I'm within the boundaries of the network and GPS signals, and electricity. As a man with a poor sense of direction, this is quite an awesome thing.

This is huge for me. I find that I fire up the GPS whenever I'm in the car now, not just for directions, but because of the traffic display inherent in GMaps. Before I even leave my driveway, I'm scanning for any red zones, and then I just re-route around.

Also, now I'm never afraid of trying some new route, or even just exploring the area. Just the other day, I found a route home that goes through neighborhoods I never even knew existed.

4. Internet. Just take a step back, and realize that your smart phone actually connects you to the larger world of the Internet. Maybe speeds aren't blazingly fast yet, and the interface is really to small to do much worthwhile, but connected you are. And that means just about anything you do from home on the Internet, you can do on the smartphone. I can't even calculate how many bullet points this could subdivide into, but definitely some high spots are email, banking, social media (Facebook, G+, Twitter), Newsreaders, and any manner of web searching for the answers to those drunken questions that pop out of nowhere at midnight in some dark pub.

5. Texting. For those times when you just don't want to talk to someone.

6. Time and Temperature. A little widgit on the phone's display gives the current time and temperature. So prevalent you never think about it, but where would you have gotten that information in the past?

7. Camera/Camcorder. Let's face it, unless you're a photophile, your smart phone has pretty much replaced a stand-alone camera and/or camcorder. The ramifications for on-site recording of historical events, or just capturing that shot of your best mate drunkenly puking on his shoes is hard to ignore.

8. Flashlight. I wouldn't have given this one much thought previously, but I find myself often using that flashlight app where i might have groped in the dark before. And in the event of a power outage, you can use your phone to find those matches and candles stashed away somewhere.

9. Alarm Clock. Not too long ago, I finally threw away the twenty-five year old alarm clock that I had inherited from my ex-wife. It took me a good two or three days to adjust, but now I just pre-set a whole suite of wake-up times, and have any of my music stored on the phone for wake-up alarms. Very handy for business travelling as well.

This is just a short list of the things I mostly use the phone for, that used to be separate physical devices for the most part; your uses obviously may vary. I'm not even getting into the thousands of software apps that truly make this smart phone a handheld computer.

Ada Lovelace, Charles Babbage, John Von Neumann and all the science fiction writers that didn't get it quite right would be amazed.

Knobcast - Series 4 Episode 6

2010-12-11T16:11:00.001-05:00

Episode 6 of Series 4 of Knobcast is now available if you're into such things.

My Grandparents: A Remembrance and Elegy

2010-10-25T08:39:00.015-04:00

My grandfather died fourteen years ago, my grandmother died three days ago, and thus comes to an end the long love affair that my grandparents had for some 54+ years. You'd never know it was a love affair; they were of that generation that grew to maturity in the midst of the Depression, and reflected those values of uncomplaining stoicism and hard work that are so rare in these modern times. But it was a love affair nonetheless, and the more I examine and think about their relationship, the more I come to view it as a model for what Love is all about.

* * * *

As a little boy, it was always an adventure when we would go to visit my grandparents. We'd pack the car up, dump me and my sister into the back seat of those enormous '70s cars, and head out up to Warwick. It's about a twenty-minute drive, but to our little bodies packed with youthful energy, it might as well have been twenty hours. We'd fight and scream and punch and make driving a scary mess for Dad, and Mom would try and devise games to keep us otherwise occupied and preserve their sanity.

But eventually we'd start seeing landmarks and know we were almost there. "Al-most home to Na-na's house," they'd chant in sing-song. And we'd pull onto Hillard Ave. and I'd stand up on the seat with my hand on the door handle.

And as soon as the car stopped I'd be out like a shot! Around the garage and into the backyard and leaping onto the swingset that my grandfather had built out of heavy metal piping and heavy chains supporting a heavy oak plank for the seat. The thing was a death trap in the best tradition of '70s-style toys, but it was a different time then, when people played with lawn jarts and let their kids roam the neighborhood from dawn to dusk with nary a thought of the ten million things that hurt kids nowadays.

But I loved that heavy old swingset, because all that weight let you get an enormous arc going -- little legs pumping and pumping; before you knew it your toes were just scraping those puffy white clouds high high up in the bluest sky. And just as you couldn't get any higher without wrapping completely around the cross beam, you let go the swing at the apex of the arc and shoot like a cannon ball out into space, free falling like superman until you crashed into the ground on both feet, absorbing an impact that would shatter your ankles in your now-middle-aged body. And you ran back to do it all over again, again and again, reveling in the feel of flying and freedom.

But eventually your Grandmother would call to you from the open window, "Gregory! Come in right now and have some cookies!" And you knew it was a ruse to get you inside, but you suddenly realized you were starving and maybe it wouldn't be so bad to go inside if there were cookies involved, so again like a shot you're off the swing and racing inside.

And these are your first clear memories of your grandmother, she the gatekeeper of all the delicious treats. The kitchen was her domain, all spotlessly white linoleum and formica, and a clankety old red metal folding step stool that allowed you access to the countertops and upper cabinets if you were willing to risk standing tippy-toe on the top step -- and you were willing.

For up there was the holy grail -- the clear glass cookie jar filled chock to bursting with cookies; a different kind every visit. But your favorite was the iced oatmeal with raisin, and they were there today! You grab a handful and start munching, and patiently suffer through Nana's kisses -- you're too young, unfortunately, to understand the unconditional love being showered on you, you just take it as your due and move on to the next part of the adventure...

...which is the small den in the back of the house where Gramp is. It's Grampa's room, there's no doubt -- he's sitting in his comfy chair, and he's got the ball game on the old AM radio while leisurely doing the crosswords. He's got a bowl of peanuts on the end-table, and he contentedly munches whilst occasionally hurling good-natured insults at his beloved Red Sox, like "Come on ya bums!"

And I sit for a while, and help Gramp with the Crossword, and munch a few peanuts myself along with the cookies, and listen to Fisk and Yaz and Burleson and Petrocelli as they once again lose by the skin of their teeth. But you're a little kid, and you've got far too much energy to sit around too long, so once again you're off to something else -- and you won't realize it for many many years to come, but those brief times with your Grampa in that little den listening to the Sox and eating peanuts and doing crosswords and just being with him, will be some of the most long-lasting and happy memories of your childhood, and you hope that Gramp knew it at the time and felt the same.

But for now you're off, and headed down to the finished basement. You're scared by the darkness at the bottom of the stairwell, so you make sure the light is on first before you descend the stairs. But once you're down it's like your own private wonderland. You first stop off in the laundry room where the old white Kelvinator sits, and you grab a juice container from within and sip contentedly. There's the TV room too, with the giant old black and white television mounted in a huge slab of furniture, and although the picture is grainy and faded by today's standards, it suits you just fine as you lay on your stomach on the giant braided rug and watch Davey and Goliath or some Sunday morning cartoons if you're lucky to find some.

But eventually you make your way back to the Holy Grail of the house: Grampa's workroom. At the time you don't know that Gramp was a carpenter, you just know that the room is filled with every manner of tool under the sun -- tools whose names you know, like hammers and chisels and saws; and tools whose names you don't know, and those outnumber the others by ten to one. You wander from cubby to cubby, running your hands over the strange shapes and wondering for what strange purpose they could be put to. It's a wonderland as much for the scent of it -- the pungent aroma of lubricating oils, and old sawdust, and the cool damp of basements.

And these are the memories of your grandparents and childhood, of adventure and juice and cookies and peanuts and baseball and people who had the time and inclination to cater to your every childhood whim.

* * * *

My grandparents were never very demonstrative to each other, at least that I could see. They were rocks that were always there for me, and I never gave much thought to the nature of their relationship. They were together obviously, and loved each other, but it was not in the manner of Harlequin romances or Hollywood rom coms.

Time passed as it always must, and my grandfather took ill, and ended up in the hospital, suffering a series of small seizures that left him in a coma-like state and unresponsive. He was not expected to last much longer, and the hospital made him as comfortable as possible, with regular doses of morphine so that he would feel no pain.

On one of my last visits to the hospital my Mom said that I should go in and say my goodbyes, and as I approached the room I saw that my grandmother was in there with him. She was sitting on the side of the bed, leaning over him, crying gently, and she was saying, "It's OK Tommy, you can go. It's alright, you don't have to fight anymore."

I silently backed out of the room and left them to their private moment, and have never mentioned that scene until now, fourteen years later. But I have often thought of that moment over the years, both as the first true glimpse of my grandparents' love for each other, and also for what love is all about. For my grandmother dearly loved my grandfather, had been with him for almost sixty years, and was making that ultimate sacrifice in letting him go despite how bereft and alone it would leave her.

Love is many things, and they have been enumerated over the years, but I think that Love is mainly that condition when another person's welfare is more important to you than your own. And letting a loved one go despite the enormity of your need for them is maybe one of the hardest and truest things that a person can do in their life.

* * * *

My grandmother had been poorly for the last couple of years, suffering several falls that broke bones and imposed a toll on her body and mind that eventually she would not recover from.

Last weekend she took a fall and fractured her pelvis. She was in severe pain and was taken to the hospital, and given morphine for the pain. No heroic measures were taken; she was 92, and it seemed better to make that extremely hard sacrifice and let her go rather than drag her life on beyond the point where there was any sort of quality left. And in some fashion she herself or her body decided that there was no more going forward. She no longer had that fighting spirit that kept her alive despite loss and physical deterioration. She refused food and water and, if not giving up, then decided to take that ride into the great unknown that eventually we all must take.

I went to visit her that Sunday, and my mom woke her up, saying "Mom, Greg's here...". I stood over her, and her eyes briefly focused on me, and her face lit up in a great big smile. She whispered, "Gregory...", and I smiled at her. I said, "You look tired Nana," and she got an understanding look on her face and she whispered back, "I am tired...". And I said to her, "Well you just go back to sleep and get some rest", but what I was really saying to her in my mind was, 'You go ahead Nana, it's OK. You don't need to fight anymore'.

And she went to sleep and I never saw her alive again.

I'd love to believe that they're together again, somewhere, in some fashion -- that Love like that doesn't end, but simply goes on in some different form. If anyone deserves it, they do.

And if you don't think tears are streaming down my face as I write this, then you're completely wrong. I miss them both terribly.

Be Yourself: Petey Greene and the Art of Eating Watermelon

2010-05-06T14:49:00.003-04:00

Petey Greene, in the video clip that has become an internet sensation, dispenses some sage advice on just being yourself. The message is somewhat disguised by the humorous delivery, the exaggerated poor black southern vernacular -- but Petey was no fool, and could tailor his speech to his target audience, the largely poor black neighborhoods of his native Washington, D.C. And furthermore, Petey was simply taking his own advice, by being true to who he was: a humorous prophet, a man of the people, trying to effect some change, be it large or small, in his community.

The video clip is a 5-minute paean to the joy and pleasure of eating a watermelon, sweet like honey and ripe from the vine. But Petey quickly becomes agitated and incensed at what he perceives as improper attitudes towards melon eating.

Petey makes the argument that the only proper way to eat a melon is to simply cut a hunk away from the hull, pick it up in your hands, and plunge your face into it. Sure, lay some newspaper down to protect the furniture, have a towel nearby to clean yourself with, but don't fancify the act of eating a melon. Don't put on airs when you're about to partake in God's great bounty. Eating a melon is an elemental act, it's a way of communing with Nature, and there's no need to sully that communing by putting man-made barriers between you and its goodness.

His first point is how mad he gets when he sees people take a perfectly good watermelon, cut the insides out of it, mix it with other fruits, and then put the resulting mix back into the melon's hull. Some of them even put liquor in it! Petey is not a fan of the fruit cocktail.

His second point is that it is not necessary to drown a watermelon in salt. Just a twang of salt is sufficient to bring out the natural accent and flavour of that sweet flesh.

I think, though, that Petey's art of watermelon eating can be sufficiently seen as a metaphor for a proper approach to living life in this degenerate age.

For one should truly just be yourself. There's no need to jump on the bandwagon of popular sentiment. There's no need to slavishly follow prevailing trends in haute couture. There's no need to dilute the simple pleasures in life with pretentious manipulation.

If you're one of those rare few people that is an individual, that is different, that marches to your own tune, that has some sense of originality and is not one of the faceless sheep in the herd, then embrace that quality and be yourself. As Heinlein put it, it is that creative 1/10th of 1 percent that drives a culture, and we'd all be poorer without the likes of a man like Petey Greene.

"I'll tell it to the hot,
I'll tell it to the cold,
I'll tell it the young,
I'll tell it to the old.
I don't want no laughin',
I don't want no cryin',
And most of all,
No signifyin'."

The Emetic Sage Credo

2008-09-03T15:01:00.002-04:00

- I believe in the peace of solitude and wide open spaces.

- I believe in roads with no speed limits.

- I believe that the wearing of seat belts and motorcycle helmets is a matter of personal choice.

- I believe in the objectification of women, without abrogating their rights.

- I believe that women are incomprehensibly both the most gloriously beautiful creatures as well as the most coldly cruel.

- I believe that I cannot trust a man who smiles too loud and often, whose hair does not move in the breeze, whose teeth are too polished, and whose fingernails are too clean.

- I believe in the expansion of consciousness through experimentation with drugs; ergo, all drugs should be legal.

- I believe that the buying, and selling, of sexual favours is not a criminal activity.

- I believe that no man, or government, has the right to tell me what is best for me.

- I believe that a house lot without trees is a sterile box broiling in the sun -- your brain along with it.

- I believe that housing complexes, traffic jams, supermarket checkouts, television commercials, and middle management will wither the soul.

- I believe that, relatively speaking, there have been very few individuals throughout history; conformity is a lot easier than being unique.

- I believe that organized religion has been, and still is, the single greatest limiter to the intellectual growth of Mankind as a species.

- I believe that laziness, not necessity, has been the single greatest mother of invention.

- I believe that the scientific method will eventually unlock all that is possible to know.

On Being Jaded and the Gentle Swell of Bosoms

2008-06-16T14:18:00.002-04:00

I last wrote about Irish pubs, nosh and pints, hags and Hag-O-Meters, and the Myth of Guinness a little over a year ago, back in April of 2007.

Well, I went out the other night to Ri Ra in lovely downtown Providence with those same mates, Viszlat and Nobby Burton, for some more nosh and a few more pints -- me: Fish and Chips and lager; Viszlat: an Irish Breakfast and Guinness; and Nobby Burton: Bangers and Mash and ale.

The nosh and pints were, of course, delicious, but be damned when the waitress would come by if she wasn't wearing one of those button-down Oxford shirts. And be damned if her bosom's gentle swell didn't force the shirt to open up a little viewing portal between two of the buttons.

Now, a Gentleman, of course, would avert his gaze so as to not visually molest the young lady; I, however, am no gentleman, so let my eyes feast to their heart's content, to malapropriate a purple metaphor. The opening in the waitress' blouse was no more than two or three inches in diametre, but through it I could see the gentle swell of her bosom, contained only by a semi-transparent demi-bra. Again, I briefly feasted on the sight, and when she moved off I began to reflect as is my wont.

Why is the sight of partially, or barely, revealed flesh so intoxicating? Yes, it's the mystery, but why is the mystery so important to the equation? Is it just our curious monkey-brains at work; that something not yet known must be made known?

For once you do, in fact, know -- that is, once you've seen that particular bosom in all its naked glory, the appeal eventually wanes. Once you've seen that person walking around the house naked, like a National Geographic African tribeswoman retrospective; once you've watched that person blow their mucous into shredded kleenex and some gets on their clothes; once you've seen that person grunting on the toilet; once you've seen that person in all their biologically imperfect glory, the appeal eventually wanes. And you sort of settle into that next level of couplehood whereby romance and desire is substituted for comfort and stability and the satiation of reflexive horniness. Passion and sexual interest become "sparks" that must be worked at to achieve.

Is it so easy, and so inevitable then, that one becomes jaded? I've been around a while. By the time I was twenty-five, I'd fornicated in just about every position imaginable. I've seen just about every deviant fetish the Internet can throw at me. Does it have to come to this in the end, then, that the only way you can get off is to watch two Japanese girls shit into a cup and then vomit on themsleves?

Why does the human mind operate this way? Is it a biological imperative that maximizes the safety of progeny? An initial phase of torrid sexual interest that results in children, and then a waning of that interest that transmutes into feelings of safety and pair-bonding that provides a stable nest for those children? I suspect we're all a lot more complicated than any simple analysis could elucidate.

And yet, somehow, despite the most jaded personality, all it takes is that little glimpse of unseen and forbidden flesh to set off those little chemical transmitters all over again. Am I just a plaything of my gentic code, or do I have some say in the matter?

Ode To Angie

2008-06-12T15:55:00.000-04:00

O Angie,
you are like an angel
named Angelica,
angelic in your ethereal beauty,
come down from Heaven
to taunt me with your
argentine presence.

It is ever thus the nature of things
that beauty likens,
with charismatic precision,
to beauty;
and those that are not beautiful
are forever denied its
soothing caress.

And so I,
in the middle of my years,
am forced to confront reality
as it was so gleefully put:
"You don't have a chance in Hell --
she's way out of your league;
the reason being:
some unappetizing
combination of male pattern baldness,
and ambitions deferred,
and the overwhelming tendency
of your body to avoirdupoisity."

And yet,
when you on a bet,
made my testicles jiggle,
I could not help but wonder if
for one dollar more,
you wouldn't revisit
my package and tickle --
for one dollar more --
yes, again tickle my balls,
for one dollar more.

Greg D'Agostino Interviews Greg D'Agostino about Greg D'Agostino

2008-06-09T18:55:00.000-04:00

Greg D'Agostino: First of all, Mr. D'Agostino, I just wanted to thank you for doing this interview. I know you're a busy man, and the last thing you probably want to be doing is to sit and answer questions about yourself.

greg d'agostino: Not at all, it's my pleasure.

GD: Well, either way, you're well come. Now, where to begin?

gd: Why not at the beginning?

GD: Yes, well, why not? as you say. Unfortunately, I'm afraid, we only have a scant few minutes in which to chat, leaving precious little time in which to properly delve into your full and, no doubt, fascinating life. Why don't we start, instead, with some of the criticism that's been levied at you of late?

gd: Well, no man is enamoured of critical examination, e'en at the best of times, but I suppose it would be an opportunity to address some of the more outlandish stories that have been circulating.

GD: Quite right. Well, Sir, how do you address the accusation that your writings and soliloquies are largely self-congratulatory, monuments to an overly large sense of egotism that is rarely in sync with a more accurate portrayal of reality? That is to say, any objective examination of your works inevitably shows an unhealthy tropism with your very own self; a tendency to obfuscate and dance 'round the point by using five dollar words and cheap philosophy disguised as dedicated scholarship; pathetic showmanship and bravura masking deep-seated insecurity and fantastical wish-fulfillment...

gd: Mm hhmm, excuse me, Sir, I believe I've grasped the point you're trying to make -- and no doubt you yourself could benefit from turning that high-powered lens of critique back on your own person.

GD: Ah, yes, well... Apologies, I may have gotten a bit carried away.

gd: Yes, well, be that as it may, I believe the main impetus behind these critiques of myself lie in quite banal reasoning. You see, I believe that at a most basic level, people are quite simply jealous of me.

GD: You don't say?

gd: Oh, indeed, I do, Sir. You see, I hate to say it, but most people live lives of common mediocrity and quiet desperation. They rarely think for themselves, much preferring to suckle at the glass teat of their television screen the stories that others make up for them. Any philosophy of life that they espouse comes either from the ranks of Oprah's latest book recommendations, or the ramblings of some demented paedophile priesthood which teaches that all will be forgiven if one tithes enough cash and kills any heretics in sight.

GD: And you say this engenders feelings of jealousy in the populace?

gd: How could it not? Whilst this proletariat may be masters of deluding themselves, nevertheless there lies deep in the fatty cockles of their hearts and deep in the vasty layers of their collective unconcious, a glimmer of awareness that they in fact do not and cannot measure up to someone such as myself.

GD: A weighty, and might I say, unprovable, assertion?

gd: And might I say, in rejoinder, "res ipsa loquitor"?

GD: And might I then respond, to which ipsa are you referring? For in order to prove your assertion, you must first demonstrate that the affected person knows you, and knows of your learning and erudition, and your deeds, and your classic good looks and swarthy charm, and that there is then some demonstrable response that clearly shows jealousy. It is nigh impossible to know what lurks unseen in the mind of Man, and for someone to make assertions such as you yourself do might indicate what is commonly referred to in the business as delusions of grandeur.

gd: Sir, I must take exception to both your thesis and your tone...

GD: May I point out, good Sir, that not only are you being interviewed by yourself, but you are in fact writing the self-same interview I just mentioned.

gd: Preposterous!

GD: The tile of this piece is Greg D'Agostino Interviews Greg D'Agostino about Greg D'Agostino, but it should more accurately be entitled Greg D'Agostino Writes an Interview about Greg D'Agostino Interviewing Greg D'Agostino about Greg D'Agostino.

gd: That's quite a mouthful.

GD: Indeed.

Fire and Ice

2007-12-16T18:58:00.000-05:00

Story

2007-11-29T14:42:00.000-05:00

Story, story, it all comes down to story. Everything you do, everything you strive for, it all reduces to the quest for story.

A child, sitting on your mum's lap as she reads to you from The Brothers Grimm, or Dr. Seuss, or Aesop's Fables, or The Wizard of Oz.

Listening to music, a song the story of a journey of succession of notes.

Looking at a painting, the frozen slice of an instance of life.

And reading book after book, watching television show after television show, movie after movie, our thirst never slaked by the thousands upon thousands of stories that play out in the theatre of our mind's eye.

Watching the news at night, we get sucked in by the story of a child lost then found.

We meet someone and fall in love with the story of how we met.

Even every equation we memorize in school is a page in the story of how the world works.

And if fire was the first invention, it must have only been invented to keep the night at bay so we could sit 'round it in warmth and comfort and regale each other with tales of Gods and the Hunt.

Aldona Novak

2007-11-18T17:37:00.000-05:00

A tribute to the lovely Polish sous chef Aldona Novak:

Qui Non Intellegit, Aut Taceat Aut Discat

2007-10-27T21:22:00.000-04:00

The Emetic Sage, riding the ebbing wave of a diminishing high, still managed to pilot his black Cadillac Seville in a vigorous and forthright manner.

Palms lightly gripping the leather-wrapped steering wheel, his eyes leisurely yet determinedly scanned the horizon from beneath tinted aviator sunglasses. The Caddy was a plush beast: a delicious synthesis of leather, wood, rubber and steel, and to drive it was to partake in the highest and noblest of Man's aspirations. Complementary to that lofty ideal, strains of Bach's Art of Fugue issued forth from the sound system's speakers, barely managing to cover up Bittersweet's incessant chatter.

Which prompted Sage to reflect that, unfortunately, life was not always about basking in the sun's warmth, and naked dances, and high quality drugs. Sometimes a chill rain fell; sometimes you couldn't get laid to save your life; and sometimes the only weed on the market was skunk.

It had all started the other night when Bittersweet had grown weary of dancing in the moonlight. She was all like, "Sage, I love living in this dome -- and I love you -- but I've got to get out into town and do something."

And Sage said, "Sure, sweet pea. We'll go out tomorrow night. What do you feel like doing?"

And Bittersweet was like, "I don't know. What do you feel like doing?"

"Whatever you want, princess. It's up to you."

And that was when her face clouded over, eyes narrowed and brows furrowed. "I'm tired of being the only one in this relationship that cares about anything. Don't you ever have an opinion on what we could do?"

The Emetic Sage was a jaded man of laissez-faire attitudes, partly arising from a lifetime of varied experiences, partly from the study and practice of Taoist philosophy, and partly due to natural inclination. It was hard for him to get really excited about anything. "But sweetness," he tried to reason, "if I say I don't want to go out dancing and would rather stay home, or maybe just feel like going to Chili's for a Southwestern Cobb salad and a root beer, you get mad. It's easier to just leave it up to you."

"But I don't want it to be just up to me. I want you to have some interest in things too!" And that's when she placed the call to the therapist and made an appointment for them.

***

So now, cruising along on their way to the North Attleborough Center of Mental Health, the Emetic Sage sought refuge in old Bach's mastery of the fugue, but each time he reached that warm glow of appreciative reverie, some chatter of Bittersweet intruded. It was like a radio station with intermittent signal, so that only snatches of her soliloquy were heard:

"...and she was wearing white shoes in October..."

"...five Vicodin and a shot of Tequila..."

"...behind the bushes..."

"...he was so fucking hot..!"

A grunt here and an "mmm hmm" there was sufficient to keep the flow well oiled. Like the vast majority of women, Bittersweet was not interested in having an actual conversation: one of give and take, ideas considered and exchanged; speaking and listening, listening then speaking. She much preferred an unbroken stream-of-consciousness river of speech, one unburdened by interlocutor to her deponent. Of course, it was all quite subliminal; asked later, she would have said they'd had a fascinating chat. When they arrived at the Center, it came as almost a relief to Sage.

The building was one of those modern structures that sacrificed any hint of style and taste for extreme utility. Blank concrete walls interspersed by silvered windows masked what went on in its hidden interior: a visual analogue, perhaps, to the psychic probing they'd be enduring hence.

Bittersweet tugged him along, hand firmly in hand, keeping up a running dialogue of instructions: "Now do not, I repeat, do not, embarrass me in front of the doctor, and stand up straight, and try to tuck in your shirt, and did you brush your teeth? I swear to God, if you've got bad breath..."

With each admonition the Sage's shoulders slumped further, his pace slowed, and he assumed that position that comes eventually to all men in relationships: that of the aggrieved slouch. Despite his bitter recalcitrance, they finally entered the lobby to frigid air-conditioning, and mercifully his sweaty garments began to dry out, or freeze; he wasn't quite sure which.

"Now you wait here," Bittersweet instructed, and handed him her purse. "I've got to go to the ladies room; I'll be right back."

The Emetic Sage, virtually immortal, master of some thirty systems of martial arts, hiker of mountains, liberator of the weak, guru to the cognoscenti, lover of countless women throughout the ages, stood in the lobby of the North Attleborough Center of Mental Health with ladie's purse in hand and sighed.

***

Several minutes into the getting-to-know-each-other stage, the therapist, a nondescript woman of indeterminate age, said, "It seems to me, Mr. and Mrs. Sage, that -- "

"Oh, we're not married," the Sage interjected, some might say hastily.

"Ah, yes -- well, nevertheless, it seems to me that from what you've so far described we could start with an exercise identifying areas in the relationship where a compromise -- "

"I must disagree, my good woman", the Sage interjected yet again. "Qui non intellegit, aut taceat aut discat. Compromise as a means to a happy relationship is a null proposition. Compromise is most definitely that condition whereby two people engage in activities that neither enjoys doing, but at least can feel safe knowing the other isn't enjoying himself more than they are. They are together both equally un-happy, rather than separately happy, if you will. Compromise generally degenerates into tit-for-tat, an oscillation between polar extremes of dislike, as in when a man will accompany his partner to a so-called 'chick flick' in order to be allowed to watch the Sunday football game unmolested, or a woman will fellate her partner in order that he attend to domestic chores otherwise put off."

"Um, really now, in order to enjoy a fair and balanced relationship -- "

"The reality, my dear, is that what on the surface appears to be a happy and balanced relationship, is, upon closer examination, inevitably revealed to be one where the female controls all the puppet strings. It is not even a situation that comes about at a conscious level. It is more some sort of racial memory, knowledge programmed at the genetic level. In a relationship, it is simply assumed that men are a product of needs, and that women manipulate those needs to further their own ends."

"I must say, Mr. Sage, you appear to have definite control issues with women. Perhaps there are certain repressed instances in your past dealings with women that are now expressing themselves though -- "

"I must yet again, and most powerfully, disagree, madame. Memories, emotions and feelings are meant to be repressed, hidden away, forever barred from the harsh light of the noonday sun. As the oyster protects himself from a stray irritant by coating it with layers of nacre, thereby producing that lovely tear of the Gods, so too must we protect ourselves from stray emotions, forever binding them in layers of mental nacre. And if we repress long and hard enough, we are rewarded by a mind glistening with milky jewels, a far more lovely and precious condition than one whereby a man perpetually vomits out his feelings and concerns."

"Oh my dear, Mr. Sage." The therapist was quite flustered, as if she could not believe what she was hearing. "That is just the complete opposite of a healthy attitude. Look how your beliefs are affecting your relationship with Bittersweet; if you do not attempt to modify those beliefs you may end up losing her. Is that what you truly want?"

"But this is the nature of the human condition. Examine a couple in a relationship after no more than a few years together, sullenly unhappy with each other, desperately attempting to change the other into their own vision of how their partner should be. And what is most fearful to that couple? Staying together in their protracted misery? Or chucking the whole thing and attempting to start afresh? And what does that mean? Being alone on Valentine's Day and Christmas, putting in a Personal's Ad or joining some internet dating site, participating in that meat market that is the dating scene?

"Oh, yes, they fear being alone. They see it as failure, as being ostracized by normal society. Being alone, to them, is sitting on the couch with a TV dinner. It is a life expectancy several years shorter than their married brethren. It is a restaurant table for one with all the concomitant stares and whispers that go along with that. It is black depression, severe loneliness, empty isolation from all that is warm and kind and reassuring and safe in the world. It is rational thoughts about an irrational desire to end it all.

"But being alone is entirely liberating. It is the ultimate in freedom. It is the ability, and the allowing of oneself, to do exactly what one wants to do with one's life. No compromise. No pandering. No reduction to the lowest common denominator. It is the purity of a single vision, not the filibuster and gerrymandering of a democratic collectivism. It is living in serene dignity rather than put-upon abasement."

The therapist sat back and mused, her fingers crossed and steepled above pursed lips. She sighed and came to a decision. "Mr. Sage, you are clearly a very repressed, jaded and disturbed individual. I recommend either we begin a long and intense series of sessions aimed at modifying the way you perceive and interact with the world, or that you never attempt to enter into a relationship with another human being ever again."

* * *

Outside in the parking lot, Bittersweet angrily pulled the Sage along by a deathgrip on his ear. Her face was red and her eyes were dark. The Sage's shoulders slumped, and he followed along without resistance.

Ars Longa, Vita Brevis

2007-08-25T23:00:00.000-04:00

Bittersweet walked naked in the moonlight.

The moon hung huge and argent in the southern sky, illuminating colorlessly but lambent that summer evening's landscape. The Emetic Sage, sitting relaxed on the deck in an Adirondack chair, found that he was not able to blot out the moon's disc with his thumb at arm's length.

Below and out in the yard, Bittersweet moved bonelessly, essaying a dance of her own creation, one that was synchronous with earth and sky, wind and water. Long waves of hair, white and unbound, cascaded around her shoulders in a Divine nimbus. She loved being out at night; loved it best, when unfettered by restrictive garments, cool breezes would play 'round her limbs and stomach, insinuating touches into private places, crinkling her nipples with invisible caresses. She moved in time with the world, lightly over the surface of the world, bare feet glistening wet with grass's dew.

The Emetic Sage sat, and watched her dance, and reflected that, contrary to popular opinion and conventional wisdom, there need not be a purpose for every action under Heaven. Every living moment need not be caught up in the pursuit of purposeful goals. Sometimes actions just are -- sometimes what we do is simply in resonance with the vibrations of the celestial spheres, carrying no harsh weight of mature responsibility.

And then he reflected that sometimes a beautiful woman is justification enough.

Eventually Bittersweet returned to the deck, and took pity on the Emetic Sage as his large and clumsy fingers attempted to roll a marijuana cigarette. She sat in the other Adirondack, and arranged the smoking accoutrements on its wide arm. Expertly she cleaned and rolled, fingers slim and nimble, the Emetic Sage in awe.

"You've got a real talent," he complemented.

Bittersweet smiled, the joint resting betwixt her lips. "Ars longa, vita brevis, my friend."

She lit up, holding the smoke deep in her lungs, then let it out in a huge white plume that expanded out into the evening sky.

The Little Death

2007-05-28T12:45:00.000-04:00

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
And if I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.

This little children's prayer from the 18th century provides us a glimpse through a window into a time when religion and death were an intimate part of daily life. With the average life expectancy being somewhere around forty, and the infant mortality rate right around 50%, the average person of that time would have been acquainted from an early age with the inevitability of death.

So how comforting would it be to consign one's soul to God each night before bed? In a world where it was a statistical inevitability that some children would not awaken come morning's light, it certainly behooved you to plead for your soul's beneficial disposition.

Although I can quite clearly remember saying this prayer nightly before retiring, I'm sure the meaning it had for me was vastly different than it would have been for my 18th century counterpart. For me, childhood was about good, nutritious food; clean, drinkable water free of bacteria; clean sheets without bedbugs; plenty of fresh air and exercise that didn't involve back-breaking labor on a farm or down a mine; pets that I raised for love and friendship and not for food; schooling that went well beyond the sixth grade; and a care-free existence untrammeled by the reality of parents, siblings and friends dying before their times.

As a matter of fact, I (like many of us who grew up in the latter part of the twentieth century in America) was so shielded from the reality of death that it wasn't until the age of thirty that I witnessed someone close to me die. Imagine that! Where only two hundred years ago, people at age thirty were potentially reaching the ends of their lives due to illnesses from poor hygiene and diet, I, at that age, was just becoming acquainted with the reality of death.

So, for me, that little prayer had no semantic or emotional content. I recited it because that's what little children being raised Christian were taught to recite. I had none, or very little, understanding of what the words actually meant. I didn't think that I could possibly die while I was asleep. Going to bed was just something you did because you were tired, or were ordered to do if you weren't tired. You always woke up the next day; the sun always rose the next day; and there was always a new adventure to be had the next day.

Truth be told, even today, while I have a much more sophisticated intellectual understanding of death, I still don't really believe that when I go to bed I might not rise again. While I've seen death a-plenty on the news, in movies, on television shows, and yes, video games, I still have not had the inevitability of death ceaselessly rammed into me on a personal level. My parents are still alive; my grandmother, bless her Swedish toughness, is still kicking at age 89. Yes, I know intellectually that I can die, but I don't feel it.

Sleep is a funny thing. One the one hand, to our best scientific understanding sleep is a functional process whereby we process and integrate the day's events, ordering and collating vast amounts of data into usable information. On the other hand, sleep is the "little death", a rehearsal for that last journey into the great unknown, or simply a permanent cessation of consciousness, depending on your beliefs.

I was thinking some of these thoughts as I got into bed last night, switched off the lights, and lay there in the dark, listening to night sounds, waiting to cease awareness once again, as I'd been doing every night for the last forty-one years.

I can't, for the life of me (pun intended), see any real difference between going to sleep and dying. They both involve that most weird concept, the idea that I am not. But why it doesn't scare me to go to sleep is because I believe that it is not the end. I believe that I will wake up in eight hours or so, and continue as always. But death? I suspect that when it's your time to go, you know it. I hope, though, that with that understanding also comes acceptance. And that it's not scary. I hope that when my end comes, it is like going to sleep. What could be more natural than that?

Nowadays I no longer say the prayer. This self no longer believes that, if there is a God, it is necessary to plea-bargain with Him. If there is a God, I hope that he'd just take me in my sleep based on my life and actions, not whether I've showered Him with prayers and adoration. If there isn't a God, then I simply won't wake up, and all that will be left of me will be those thoughts of me that linger on in the people that knew me, the images of me in a few photographs, and a few scribblings in this electronic format.

Yeah, sleep is a funny thing.

House's Guide To Picking Up Chicks

2007-05-09T22:42:00.000-04:00

Gregory House, M.D., world-famous diagnostician and board-certified Nephrologist, is maneuvering to pick a girl up, a Vegan Nutritionist. She believes she's being interviewed for a hospital position until she sees through House's machinations:

NUTRITIONIST: This isn't a job interview, is it?

HOUSE: It's some kind of interview... You're judging me; I'm judging you.

NUTRITIONIST: You have the upper hand. I don't know anything about you.

HOUSE: [long pause] I'm on anti-depressants, because a doctor friend of mind thinks I'm miserable. I don't like them -- they make me hazy. I eat meat. I like drugs... and I'm not always faithful to the women I date.

NUTRITIONIST: You don't seem depressed.

HOUSE: You do realize you just skipped over several deep character flaws that most women would run screaming from?

NUTRITIONIST: You told the truth.

HOUSE: Yeahhhh... I don't always do that either.

NUTRITIONIST: Well -- how miserable can you be saving lives, sleeping around, and doing drugs?

HOUSE: [smiles] Were you on the debating team in High School?

A Farewell To KP

2007-05-03T18:15:00.000-04:00

One year ago today, I wrote a little post about KP

I Feel Good About Myself...

In the post I talk about how I'd been making a difference in the life of young KP, taking him under my wing, and teaching him about the real way the world works.

Over the past year and a half or so, I've watched the boy blossom under my tutelage, as he's become a world-class programmer, scored a girl for himself, and matured in mind and body. It is bittersweet for me, though, because I've put a lot of work into that boy, learning him about many things, and now he's all grown up and on his own.

Recently I've made a change at work, transferring to a more technical position, which was always my passion. March, Jocular and KP no longer work for me, and I no longer sit across from KP. This will more than likely be the last post ever written about the lad.

But in the days leading up to my transfer, I noticed that Kapes was nibbling on some carrots for his repast. And the day before I transferred he let out a huge, voluminous sneeze. A sneeze of rare power.

And I wistfully realized that at the center, things never really change at all.

Can You Identify These Four Television Series?

2007-04-27T13:02:00.001-04:00

If you can, you've surely enjoyed some great TV.

1 + 1 = 1

2007-04-09T22:00:00.000-04:00

I don't know if you're like me at all -- actually, you're probably not.

Do you ever become nauseated when some well-meaning and pie-eyed romantic talks about how their lovey-dovey relationship transcends logical rules of number theory? How when they come together it's not 1 + 1 = 2, but 1 + 1 = 1; they're so in tune with each other that they become one person.

Or some smug expert will talk about how 1 + 1 doesn't always equal 2. You'll say, "Oh yes it does," and they'll point out the old canard about two clouds adding up to one cloud.

My contention is that these people, while attempting to point out romantic and clever alternatives to logical thought, are missing the actual point, and are mistakenly thinking about things on the wrong level. Let's take the cloud argument, for example.

When talking about addition, we're talking about the addition of two distinct objects. Each object is unique and has discernable boundaries. For example, if I have one shiny new quarter and put it into a piggy bank, and then the next day put another quarter into the piggy bank, I will now have two quarters in the piggy bank. There is no way to say that I now have one large quarter; both quarters retain their distinct identities.

Clouds, however, are amorphous entities -- they are only clouds if we pull back and look at them on a sufficiently high level. Closer up, what we call a cloud slowly loses coherence and becomes a vaguely defined area of air saturated with water. Lying on our backs in a field, watching the sky overhead, we see that those fluffy shapes slowly change shape, break apart, come together. What was once a clearly visible form will no longer exist five minutes hence.

Now, we could do a controlled experiment, however. We could limit our observations to a particular region of the sky, measuring the water content of that particular area. In it, we could see a cloud, and then another cloud come together, and there would be indeed one cloud left over. Here's the rub, though: the density of that cloud would have increased in direct proportion to the volume of the second cloud. If one must insist, still, that there is one cloud left over after the process of addition, perhaps it might be more appropriate to change our description of the process.

Saying that the bringing of two clouds together is an additive process is true, but it is not true in the number theoretical sense. On the level of clouds, what is actually happening is that a merging is taking place. One cloud is merging into the other, both giving up their uniqueness to form a new, larger [or more dense] entity.

On the level of molecules, however, true addition is taking place. If there are 6 trillion water molecules in the first cloud, and 4.5 trillion water molecules in the second cloud, it is not possible to say that they newly formed one cloud is made up still of 6 trillion water molecules. No, by the strict rule of addition, there are now 10.5 trillion water molecules in the new cloud.

Thus, on the level of clouds, there is not an addition of clouds, there is a merging of clouds. On the lower molecular level, there is a true addition. One molecule plus another molecule equals two molecules. In no logical sense does the expression 1 + 1 = 1.

Does it make sense poetically? Yes. In poetry anything goes. But don't pretend you're using logic to make your point. 'Cause you're not. The morons that push Intelligent Design, for example, are using the equivalent of poetical arguments. And bad poetry at that.

The Hag-O-Meter Bell Curve Distribution

2007-04-02T23:40:00.000-04:00

I went out with a couple of mates the other night to one of those Irish pubs for some nosh and a few pints. Is there anything worse than being at an Irish pub and not liking Guinness advertisers?

We're sitting there, sipping our pints [stout for me mates, conventional american lager for meself], when approaches a tart, and her assistant, carrying a tray of shots of Guinness in little plastic cups. She set one down in front of Nobby, one down in front of Viszlat, and attempted to set one down in front of me, but I waved the vile brew off. The lads added their shots of Guinness to their pints of Guinness and commenced sippin'.

The tart was dressed in short skirt and short top, leaving legs and midriff exposed. Her hair was dirty blonde, and hung limp 'round her shoulders. Her buttocks were fairly flat and square, and the cut of her ribcage melded seamlessly with waist and hips. When I gazed into her face I immediately thought, "duck".

The lads were in their glory, though. A blonde tart with mousy hair, poor muscle tone, and the features of a duck was offering them shots of Guinness and they loved her. They gazed at her with "pub" eyes and lowered standards and said things like, "Cor blimey that one's a looker", and "I'd like to escape up her tunnel", and "While you're down there, luv".

And when I opined that I was not so impressed with her poor muscle tone and duck-like features they sort of looked at me as if I was a div kid, a special needs child, maybe a hydrocephalic or thalidomide baby. I cannot over-emphasize the feeling of ridicule and shame that comes over you when your mates think you're plumb loco and far off-center.

It is as if each man is distributed a "hag-o-meter" (™) at birth, but each hag-o-meter is calibrated in some sort of bell-curve distribution, such that the vast majority of men think, behave and crave in much the same manner, whereas a smaller minority of men are the outliers of that curve and think, behave and crave in a much less "normal" manner. And they're ostracized in pubs and football gatherings and sewing circles and such when they dare to question the status quo or take an unpopular contrarian opinion.

But isn't this the modus operandi of human beings? Don't we choose our friends and mates and life-partners based on some sort of common world-view and behavioural sets? When you first strike up a conversation with some bird in a pub, and it turns out that she thinks that Harold and Kumar Go To Whitecastle is total rubbish and you think it's the funniest thing ever committed to celluloid, don't you start to question the suitability of this person as a life-mate? How could I ever, you say to yourself, be with a person that doesn't think H&K is hilarious?

Is this not simply a modern manifestation of the fear of the unknown that served a very real survival characteristic when we were savages and the world was young?

And if we cannot accept someone who doesn't share our sense of humour, how can we accept someone that doesn't speak the same language we do? And if we cannot accept someone who speaks a different language, how can we accept someone who worships a different god? And if we cannot accept someone who professes different beliefs, how can we accept someone with a different skin colour? Is it not better to kill those who are different outright? Before they have the chance to do the same to you?

And so, if we accept this tautology, is it not a fair assessment that the behaviour that Nobby and Viszlat exhibited in the pub, vilifying me unmercifully for having a differently calibrated hag-o-meter, is in essence no different that people like Hitler and Amin and Hussein? Left to their own Guinness-fueled and duck-loving predilections, would they not go on a drunken rampage, torching and slaughtering the different-minded, leaving rapine and famine in their bloody wake?

I tend to think so. Q.E.D.

The Myth of Guinness

2007-03-28T23:00:00.000-04:00

I went out with a couple of mates the other night to one of those Irish pubs for some nosh and a few pints. Is there anything worse than being at an Irish pub and not liking Guinness? Talk about sticking out like a sore thumb.

The waitress smiles down condescendingly at you as she takes orders: "I'll have a Guinness"; "I'll have a Guinness"; "I'll have a Sam Adams". Your mates shrug at the waitress in embarrassment.

At best, people sort of look at you disdainfully out of the corner of their eyes, disbelievingly, as you sip on your Sam Adams. It's as if you're a special needs child, maybe a hydrocephalic, or a thalidomide baby.

At worst, people get up in your face and mock you for not liking what they perceive to be the greatest beer on earth. "What's the matter?" they say. "Are you not a man? Are you a little girl? Shall I hold your hand while you go pee pee?"

I saw a show the other night, however, that clued me in to what's going on here. It said, basically, that human beings are the only animals that can override their inborn aversion to certain tastes. In other words, we can learn to like the powerfully moldy smell of Stilton cheese. We can learn to like the bitter taste of coffee. We can learn to like the putrid brine of pickled cucumbers. We can learn to like that vile blackness called Guinness. Some can, anyway.

And, as in many elite clubs, people revel in their assumed stature. They drink the burnt, molasses-like, oatmealish, black oil that they call beer, and turn up their noses and verily sneer at anyone who enjoys a smoother, more delicate brew.

I could be the same, though. I could turn it around on them. I could go around eating cockroaches all day, and when they elect to eat a filet mignon in my presence, I'd mock them: "Oooo, look at the little baby! What's the matter -- not man enough to eat cockroaches? Shall I hold your hand while you go pee pee?"

Suzuki C90

2007-03-26T10:00:00.000-04:00

Well, it's been about twelve years since I last had a motorcycle, and this weekend I picked up a new one.

For most people, a motorcycle is a luxury item, something that they wish they might get at some point in their lives, but never really get around to doing. There's always some other expense that needs taking care of, house payments, saving for kids' education, saving for retirement, car repairs, and sometimes just putting food on the table.

Well, this spring I remembered how much I enjoy riding, and came to the realization that if I don't do it now, it's probably something that I'll never get around to doing. The minutiae of life's necessities would always prevent me from taking that "unnecessary" plunge.

So this weekend I did it. My good mate Viszlat gave me a ride to pick the beast up, and now it's a done deal. Click on the pics below to see what she looks like.

A Little Arm-chair Physics

2007-03-23T14:51:00.000-04:00

Where I work, we sit in cubicles, two employees sharing the same cube, sitting back to back. I often find myself using my chair as a transport vehicle, shuttling between my cube-mate's desk and my own when I want to discuss something.

The other day I was returning to my desk at a somewhat relatively high velocity when I used the edge of the desk to stop my progress, resulting in a rather loud thunk. KP removed the baby carrot from his mouth, looked at me with his bulging googly eyes, and laughed in a rather high-pitched girlish fashion.

"Whoo whee!" I cried, much like a rodeo rider exclaims whilst riding his bronco.

"Kapes, I wonder how much kinetic energy I had when I hit that desk. Would you mind calculating it for me?"

Kaples got excited, like he does whenever any mathematic or physics-related topics are broached. "Sure, just let me know your mass and velocity, and I'll get right to it."

Me: "Ummm, I estimate that I was moving at around 25 miles per hour when I hit and..."

KP: "Uh, dude -- I'm gonna need that in meters per second squared..."

Me: "For fuck's sake, why do I have to do all the intermediate conversions? I suppose you need my mass in kilograms as well?"

KP [giggles]: "Yup!"

Well, I'll be fucked if I do all the intermediate conversions and let Kaples take the glory for doing the actual calculations, so I decided to do it myself.

... Let's see, 25 miles per hour is 132,000 feet per hour, or 37 feet per second, or 11 meters per second. Mass? Uh, let's just say somewhere around 100 kilograms, +/- 25 kilograms or so.

Kinetic energy? (1/2)mv², where m = mass and v = velocity.

That means that (1/2)*100*11² = 6050 joules...

6050 joules? What the hell does that mean? Is there some way to get a real-world feel for what a joule actually is?

Well, consulting Wikipedia, it turns out that in the real world, 1 joule is the equivalent of:

the energy required to lift a small apple (102 g) one meter against Earth's gravity.
the amount of energy, as heat, that a quiet person produces every hundredth of a second.
the energy required to heat one gram of dry, cool air by 1 degree Celsius.
one hundreth of the energy a person can get by drinking a single 5 mm diameter droplet of beer.

So, I guess when I slammed into my desk I produced the equivalent amount of energy as would take to lift 7 people (or roughly half a ton) 1 meter into the air.

And who said you'd never need math or physics once you left school?

Aerial

2007-03-18T23:12:00.000-04:00

I was playing around with the Windows Maps Live web site, and was able to get a cool satellite view of the dome.

The dome is marked by a red arrow pointer, and to the right is part of the Xmas tree farm. To get an idea of the scale, from the dome, through the woods to Rte. 295 at top, is roughly the length of two football fields.

Click on the pic for a larger version.

Nightmares

2007-03-16T13:00:00.000-04:00

In the early to mid-nineties, I worked for five years at a company that made uninterruptible power supplies. At that time, I had no college degree, so my job was essentially factory work, assembling the power supplies against the ticking of the clock. Piece work.

In order to determine a pay scale for us laborers, management would send an engineer down to the factory floor, armed with a product schematic and a stopwatch. He would time us as we built each section and, armed with that data, would calculate a pay scale based on the number of units built in a given hour.

If memory serves, the pay scale ranged from somewhere around $5.75 to $8.20 per hour, with the lower end corresponding to a lackadaisical approach to building, and the high end corresponding to a furious pell-mell approach that necessitated arriving early, staying late, and often working through the majority of one's lunch break. Needless to say, people rarely achieved the $8.20/hr. pay scale. I think I left the company pulling in a massive $7.70/hr. Try living on that.

Above the factory floor where we toiled, supervisors prowled on suspended metal catwalks, much as guards patrol in maximum security prisons. As we stood [yes, we stood for up to 8 - 10 hours per day] assembling our units, we felt the eyes of management on us at all times.

It was worse for me, though. My ex-wife, wife at the time, worked in the office of the company as an outside sales representative. No man, I believe, wants to be in a relationship where his wife is ten times higher than him on the social scale, and makes 3-4 times as much money to boot.

I tried, though, to advance myself. I'm a fairly bright person now, and was equally bright then. I attempted to secure a position in the office, but was continually rebuffed because I didn't have a degree to prove my aptitude. It was a very difficult point in my life, and ended only after a painful divorce and being laid off.

To this day, some eleven years later, I still occasionally have dreams about my time spent toiling in that factory. I had one last night.

I dream that I'm back working in the factory, and all the good things that have happened in the last eleven years have not come to pass. I'm still standing there 10 hours a day, fingers bent and gnarled, supervisors staring at me from above, and living hand to mouth in a small bedsit. What comes through most powerfully in the dream, however, is a feeling of helplessness, of being trapped in a situation that I'm unable to change.

Even though I wake from the dream in a cold sweat, and it's a horrible experience, it still makes me appreciate all the more the good things that have happened since then, and realize that I'm not trapped and helpless, and that there are options.

MIU Puzzle

2007-03-08T15:45:00.000-05:00

Whenever I re-read the fantastic book, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, by Douglas Hofstadter, it always re-ignites my interest in computer programming and mathematics, the Baroque music of Johann Sebastian Bach, and the mind-twisting drawings of Maurits Cornelis Escher.

Early on in the book, Hofstadter presents a puzzle while discussing formal systems, viz. given a starting string of MI, and a set of four rules, can you produce the string MU? In order to get a feel for how these formal systems work, Hofstadter encourages the reader to play with the puzzle for a while, before reading ahead to discover the answer.

Now, I admit that in earlier attempts at reading this book, I would skip these mathematical puzzles; it seemed too much work to invest for just reading a book. This time around, however, I decided to give it a go. And thoroughly enjoyed it. So, for the interested reader who might like to give it a try, here is the puzzle:

Goal: Can the string MU be derived from the axiom MI?

Rule 1: If you possess a string whose last letter is I, you can add the letter U at the end.

For example:

From MI, you get MIU.
From MIUI, you get MIUIU.

Rule 2: Suppose you have Mx, you can create Mxx.

Note: the lowercase x above represents a string of any size.

For example:

From MIU, you get MIUIU.
From MUM, you get MUMUM.
From MUIUIM, you get MUIUIMUIUIM.

Rule 3: If III occurs in a string, you can make a new string with U in place of III.

For example:

From MIIIMU, you get MUMU.
From MIIII, you get MUI and MIU.
From MII, you get nothing.
From MIII, you get MU.

Rule 4: If UU occurs in a string, you can drop it.

For example:

From MUUU, you get MU.
From MUUUIUI, you get MUIUI.

Those are all the rules. Starting with MI, see if applying different combinations of rules will eventually produce MU. I encourage you to give it a try before displaying the solution.

Oh, I Love You Milanesa

2007-02-26T13:08:00.001-05:00

I once waxed rhapsodic about the wonders of milanesa

here

and whilst surfing flickr the other day, came across a nifty picture of a milanesa napolitana. It's a thing of beauty: beef, topped with ham and cheese. That's special Argentine vegetarianism.

Also, notice the orange soda top right. That's what Argentines call Fanta Naranja, an orange soda made by the Fanta subdivision of the Coca Cola corporation. It's extremely popular in south America, almost ubiquitous -- when I was down there that's just about all I drank, except for Quilmes, the national, and equally ubiquitous, beer.

I swear to God I am getting hungry for some real Argentine food.

If You Were Stranded On A Desert Island, Would You Eat El Tabachnickov?

2007-02-23T12:10:00.000-05:00

Some people recoil in horror when presented with a situation where they might have to eat another human being to survive. I guess it all comes down to the question, How badly do you want to live?

Clearly, self-preservation may be one of the strongest impulses built into animals. Hardwired, at a genetic level. If it weren't so, then how would a species survive? You don't even question it -- you simply go on breathing, drinking, and eating. The majority of your daily time and effort is spent laboring for the money that buys the food that keeps you alive.

Evolution is a fantastic manipulator. Those things that she really wants you to do, like surviving [in the form of eating and drinking], reproducing, and bodily maintenance [in the form of sleep], she makes really, really pleasurable.

How great is it to tuck into a big plate of spaghetti and chicken parm when you're starved? How great is it to knock one out in the bathroom, masturbating furiously to a picture of Stirling Gallacher, when you're all backed up? How great is it to slip into some nice clean sheets and blissfully dream your cares away for the night?

But all that comes into question when you're stranded on a desert island with El Tabichnickov. As the hours turn in to days, and days slip in to weeks, and the hope of rescue fades, you start to look at your erstwhile amigo in a different light. You've decimated the coconut population of your little island, eaten every last one of the cockroaches that come out at night, and worn your eye teeth down to nubs as you gnaw on tree bark, hoping for any little last bit of sustenance. And for the purposes of this thought experiment, you can't catch a fish to [literally] save your life.

Yeah, so your little friend starts to look mighty tasty. You find yourself salivating with the little bits of saliva left that your glands can produce. You envision how you'd slice up Tabachnickov's thigh, or maybe you'd go for the rump first. Either way, your friend is looking less and less like a human, and more and more like a tasty lunch.

And you even comfort yourself with the rationalization that cannibalism is not only tolerated by one of the world's most largest and powerful organizations, it is actually practised by it on a weekly basis. Millions and millions of otherwise normal and respected people, come Sunday, tuck into a little Jesus flesh.

Yes, the Catholic church!

"This is the body of Christ." And you dig in.

"This is the blood of Christ." And you slurp it down.

A miracle of transubstantiation and all Jesu's followers chow down.

And so I ask you again: if you were stranded on a deserted island, would you eat El Tabachnickov?

Me and Pepler Fight About Vegetarianism

2007-02-21T13:10:00.001-05:00

It's been a looong time since old KP has made an appearance in this blog.

Rest assured, though, the boy is still alive and kicking; however, his sneezing and baby-carrot eating and other aberrant behaviour has been on the wane for quite some time, leaving me precious little to blog about.

All he does now is sit at his desk and work on tasks. He listens to heavy-metal music through his enormous Sony headphones, the better to blot out my attempts at communication. The only time he removes them is when he wants to ask me a question about some complicated programming scenario.

Click here to remind you of what KP looks like from my vantage point.
Click here to remind you of what KP's walnut-sized brain looks like.

All that changed today when I haphazardly let drop that I am a vegetarian.

Yeah, I explained that I value life -- all life -- and didn't believe that an animal had to die to sustain me. Well, KP snorted, like he often does to express disbelief, or disdain, and said something like, "You're not a vegetarian!"

And I was like, "I am so!"

And he was like, "No you're not!"

Et cetera, ad nauseam.

And then he was like, "What do you have for lunch today?"

And so I showed him, and said, "It's a smoked turkey sandwich with chipotle mayo and asiago cheese, on focaccia bread, with a side of spicy fries."

I pointed to the spicy fries and said, "See? There're my carbs, from potatoes."

Kapes snorted again and said, "That's turkey! It's meat!"

I said, "It's not meat... it's poultry!"

And Kapes, in furious disbelief, did an internet search and produced the definition of poultry, something like: "Poultry is the meat of chicken and other fowl."

And I came back with some rationale that poultry, while meat, isn't a true meat in the sense of cows or buffalo.

And Kapes came back with something like, "You don't even know what the word 'vegetarian' means!" Still furious, of course. Kaples gets awfully mad when he believes someone's pulling the wool over his eyes, or trying to cheat him.

And then I explained to him that vegetarianism isn't a cut-and-dried definition, but that it exists along a continuum of what is permissible to eat, and still be called a vegetarian.

"For example," I pontificated, ticking points off whilst counting on fingers, "Vegans don't consume any dairy products. Regular dyed-in-the-wool vegetarians still eat shrimps and fish. I'm simply that breed of vegetarian which consumes dairy products, shrimp and fish, and poultry products. Quod Erat Demonstrandum."

Kapes came back with something like, "That's ludicrous!"

"And I came back with something like, "Yeah -- yeah, it is isn't it? But don't let on to anyone. I want the benefits of being a vegetarian whilst still being able to eat a nice chicken or turkey lunch."

And we left it at that.

Eva Dögg Guðmundsdóttir [part ii]: The Etymology of Names and the Planck Length

2007-02-16T13:00:00.000-05:00

eva part i: a little poetry

* * * * * *

I'm a big fan of the etymology of names. For example, my name is Gregory D'Agostino:

Gregory - this derives through the Latin Gregorius from the late Greek word gregoros, meaning "watchful", or "alert".

D'Agostino - this is a patronymic surname that derives from the roman imperial adjective augustus, meaning "majestic", or "venerable".

I suppose it is unprovable whether there is any direct correlation between the meaning of one's name and one's personality, but in my case I can safely say there is plenty anecdotal evidence that I am both watchful and majestic. And who is more venerable than my alter ego the Emetic Sage?

* * * * * *

If my comprehension of the Icelandic language could be graphed on an axis with a continuum from 0 to 100, where 0 = no knowledge of the language, and 100 = native fluency, then my grasp of Icelandic could best be described as equivalent to 1.6 x 10^-35 meters, or a decimal point with 34 zeros after it, and then a 16. Very small!

Some of you may recognize this number as an approximation of the Planck length, or that unit of length where space itself breaks down and must be described in terms of an as-yet determined theory that unifies quantum mechanics, gravity, and relativity.

All of which to convey that my knowledge of Icelandic, while oh so tiny, is not 0.

So imagine how excited I was when, through voluminous research, I finally discovered the meaning of lovely Eva Dögg Guðmundsdóttir's name:

Eva - this is from the Hebrew Havvah, meaning "one who gives life".

Dögg - this means "dew".

Guðmundsdóttir - this is a compound name, comprised of Guð (meaning "God"), mundur (meaning "hand" or "protection"), and dottir (meaning "daughter"). Note that Icelandic names that end in dottir are essentially saying that the person is the daughter of their father; in this case Eva is the daughter of Guðmund.

If one was of a poetic bent, one might then translate her name as "the dew of one who gives life, daughter of God's love".

I'm not sure, in this case, what "dew" refers to -- it's probably some bodily fluid; and can God's love be synonymous with his power? Sure, anything's possible in poetry.

The Burning Man

2007-02-11T17:31:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I got me down to some burning.

Junk accumulates, yes it does. Scrap wood, cardboard cartons -- the detritus of construction and electronic components.

So I took Saturday to do some incineration. An old wood stove out back, a little kindling, and I was off.

Fire is atavistic -- one of the few "elements" that links us back to our early past as savannah-roaming hominids. As I sat in the adirondack chair and tended the fire, I settled into a sort of trance. The colors, the way the flames licked and danced; it's as if the fire is alive in some sort of primitive and unconcious way.

There is a direct link to the hindbrain that bypasses higher thought processes; fire is warmth and safety from the dangerous things that wander unseen in the night.

But I tell you what, after spending five or six hours tending that flame, one thing I'm certain of is that fire is freaking hot. When I go I want to go peacefully in my sleep, or on the tails of a really wild opium trip.

If someone wants me to confess to some religious dogma, or political viewpoint, and tortures me with the flame of an acetylene torch, then I'll confess or profess anything they want me to. The devout monk who douses himself with gasoline and sets himself ablaze to protest political upheaval is not my way.

I like my fire properly maintained, far away from my skin.

How I Spent Xmas, 2006: Part I

2007-02-09T12:50:00.000-05:00

The dome at night. A partial moon hangs high overhead, its argentine light shining brilliant but cold through the enormous skylight above.

* * * * * *

I lay supine on the couch, listening to the dome creak intermittently around me.

Sometimes it's good to just sit, and listen. No distractions, no tv, no music even. No drunken revelers, no church services -- in short, complete solitude.

Until I heard a thump far above on the roof, a clattering, and then a huge shape fall past the picture window. It crashed into the deck railing and then over and out onto the lawn below.

A groan of pain and then, "Fucking dome!" came faintly up from outdoors.

I got up and rushed outside to see what the hell had happened.

And be damned if it wasn't an enormous fat man in a red suit and white beard, groaning as he struggled to his feet. I couldn't tell if it was his enormous girth giving him the trouble, or if it was the forty foot fall he'd just taken.

"Santa!" I cried, once more an eight-year old boy.

"Uh... Oops," Santa said sheepishly. "You mind if I come in for a bit and recuperate?"

"Yeah, yeah, of course -- c'mon in, please do."

I got Santa in and settled in a recliner. "Can I get you something? Milk, maybe? I don't have any coffee -- don't trust the stuff. Ooo, I know -- how about some pineapple juice?"

Santa grinned and rubbed his hands. "Oh, yes, that'll do nicely. Thankee kindly, young man."

I poured about half a liter of fresh p-juice into a frosted mug and pressed it into Santa's hands. He downed about half of it in a long pull and wiped the residue from lips and snowy white beard with the back of his hand.

"Oh, that's nice, lad," Santa enthused. "Five billion glasses of milk in one night's a bit much, wouldn't'ya say?"

I nodded.

He paused, ruminating. "If someone put a gun to my head, and said, 'You must select one favourite beverage, or I'll blow your fucking head off...' I'd have to go with pineapple juice, that most delicate and beautiful of nectars."

"Santa," I replied, "I know exactly what you mean. We are just the same."

We smiled at each other, happy in our shared solidarity for the love of pineapple juice. But then a sneaky thought came creeping into my head on little cat's paws. Dare I ask?

Of course. "Um, Santa?"

"Yes, young man."

"Uh, what would you say to a little taste of the sweet leaf?"

"Tea?"

"Um, no -- not quite. THC, maybe..."

"Do you mean that sweet green leaf, then? Ganj? Marijuana?"

"I mean the very same."

Santa paused and considered. He twiddled his thumbs. He tapped a few paradiddles on the arm of the chair. "Young man, I do believe a little taste would do me just fine."

"Santa, just call me Greg."

I went into the kitchen and pulled out my stash for guests -- the one that contained the good stuff, fresh in from New York. Five hundred bucks an ounce and worth every penny. I then removed my trusty bluebird from the refrigerator, the water nice and cold, and stuffed the bowl with a small quantity of blue-green aromatic herb.

"Oh, man, Santa -- this stuff will fuck you up. Here, take a smell."

I placed the bag under his nose and Santa inhaled deeply.

"Whoa, take it easy man," I chided, "it's not like it's coke."

"Oh, that is nice," Santa breathed. "Man, I haven't smelt weed like that since Babylon fell."

"Well, let's light this shit up, then. You do the honors, Santa."

Santa took the bong in hand and applied flame to the bowl whilst inhaling deeply... and promptly coughed out a huge plume of white smoke. He coughed a series of huge racking coughs -- the ones that sound like the lining of your lungs are being hacked out.

I just laughed. "Damn Santa, you gots to know that weed's a little more powerful now than in Babylonian times." I laughed again. "Dude, you're gonna have a powerful buzz now. I hope you don't get paranoid."

"Nah," he replied. "I'm pretty cool. I only got paranoid once, and that was 'cause this disgruntled elf laced my regular stash with some PCP. Shit, man" Santa chuckled, remembering. "I was running around the North Pole naked, screaming that I could fly, flapping my arms like a damn pelican. I almost got frostbite on my pecker, and it took Mrs. Claus three hours to calm me down... Fucking elves!"

"That's heavy, man." I took the bong from him and hit it myself. I held the smoke deep in my lungs as long as possible and then let it out in a huge blue-white plume that slowly rose to the ceiling, making pretty serpentine contrails in the dim light.

"Santa?"

"Yeah."

"Let's get out of here. Take a ride."

"Suits. But my sleigh is totally trashed."

"No problem. We'll take the Caddy."

* * * * * *

We were cruising slowly through North Attleboro, Santa putting the finishing touches on a Wendy's Triple with cheese and large fry, when I spotted a chick in a set of khaki capris and a white blouse loitering outside the entrance of some dive bar.

"Well I'll be dipped in butter and pan-fried," Santa swore around his last mouthful. "Doesn't that chick know it's colder'n a witch's tit out?"

"That's no ordinary chick, Santa, that's little Bittersweet. She's really slumming tonight, though."

And lo, while we were talking, she had latched herself onto a little chicken-wing of a boy. Young, thin, clad in jeans and a black leather jacket, they walked arm in arm towards a vehicle in the back.

"Christ, I knew this was gonna happen. Sage is off meditating on some mountain top, and Bittersweet has reverted to her old predatory ways."

Santa had a long roll of parchment on his lap, a set of pince-nez held to his eyes. "Bittersweet... Bittersweet... ah, yes, here she is. Oh, my, she's been quite naughty... a lump of coal at best for this one."

"Aw, Santa -- she's not so bad. Just a bit misguided, really."

We cruised up to the couple and I lowered my window.

"Yo, Bittersweet, why don'tcha let that poor chicken-wing go and come cruise with us?"

The boy chose that moment to get tough. He thought he was going to score with this fine chick. He could already picture those blonde dreadlocks cascading around his waist, and he'd be damned if some bald fuck and a fat man in a red suit were going to prevent him from knocking one out.

"Hey, you bald fuck, why don't you move on before I kick your fucking ass?"

I put the Caddy into Park, and got out.

"You know, Son," I said, "many girls find bald men quite attractive."

"Maybe they do, he sneered, "but they don't like fat bald fucks like you, old man."

"Did you say 'fat'?"

"I did. Pathetic little fat man, you are. National joke."

"I suppose next you'll call me a chubby little loser."

The chicken-wing laughed, and I laughed too.

"What? You saw that episode of the hit television series 'Extras', too?"

"Yeah, yeah -- fucking brilliant. David Bowie's best tune in years."

I put my arm around the chicken-wing companionably. "I know, man, that show kicks ass! Look -- let's not fight anymore. I tell you what, I've got a fat spliff that we can smoke up..."

I stopped as the end of a fairly large and sharp knife came out the front of the chicken-wing's throat. Bittersweet cradled the boy to the ground and removed the knife from his neck.

"Oh, shit, Bittersweet, was that necessary?"

"What?" She wiped the blood off the knife on the boy's jeans and placed it back into the scabbard at the small of her back. "Maybe you'll think twice next time before fucking with my prey..."

She hopped into the Caddy, onto Santa's lap, and gave him a big hug. Santa, confronted with the reality of a lovely young woman sitting on his lap and hugging his enormous torso, melted. Chide him not, for mayhap only a Catholic priest would be able to resist such blandishments.

Back on the road, Santa and Bittersweet continued snuggling. She reached deep into her pants pocket and pulled out a foil packet. "Keep 'er steady, Greg," Bittersweet directed, "this is some beautiful and expensive shit -- I don't want it all over the floorboards. Santa, you want to chip a little of this dust?"

Santa refrained from caressing Bittersweet's breasts long enough to take a look at the packet. "And what kind of dust is that, little one?"

"Santa, this is only 98% pure white heroin, cut with a little opium, direct from Thailand. A little of this and you'll be feeling so too fine..."

"Well, now, don't mind if I do. And in return, a little dust for you." And he reached deep into an inside pocket of his red velvet suit, produced a vial of his own, and handed it to Bittersweet. And then, with nary a pause, Santa directed his big red nose towards the foil packet and inhaled hugely. He appeared as though to sneeze, but mastered it.

"That's good smack, Santa -- it'll come on in a few minutes. What's this stuff?"

"That, my dear, is the finest magic dust from the North Pole you can get. I've got a team of elves that cultivate it. That's all they do. Go ahead, give it a shot."

Bittersweet opened the vial and scooped up a quantity of the dust with the attached tiny silver spoon. She placed it at her left nostril and inhaled quickly. Another scoop -- into the right nostril. Her face turned bright red, then just as quickly back to normal, and then her entire body started to shimmer faintly. Her outline grew somewhat translucent -- the dash of the Caddy faintly visible through her torso -- and then she appeared to melt slightly, matching curve for curve the contours of Santa's pendulous frame.

"Goddamn, Santa! What the fuck?!"

"What? How do you think I get down chimneys and such? It's a bio-morphism powder -- loosens the ligaments, minimizes bone density -- your body now has a viscosity comparable to molasses."

And in fact, Bittersweet was slowly oozing down Santa's torso and pooling in his lap.

"Santa," I said, somewhat concerned. "Do you think that was wise?"

"Aw, she'll be alright. That little dose she took -- it'll wear off in about a minute."

And in fact, Bittersweet re-solidified with an audible pop. "Oh, man! that was nice. Feels just like you're floating on clouds while someone massages your entire body. I could really get used to something like that."

And in fact, Bittersweet dipped the spoon into the vial for another go.

"Hang on!" I cried. I swerved into the right lane and took the 295 South exit. I accelerated onto the on-ramp and merged into traffic doing about 85. I set the cruise control and said, "Santa, take the wheel, I've got some stuff to do in the back seat. "

In the back seat, I opened the pass-through compartment to the trunk and removed a face-mask, attached tubing coiling into the darkness of the rear compartment. I applied it tightly to my face, and inhaled deeply. The nitrous oxide hit me like a hammer, and I laid back on the seat, laughing like a loon. I took another whiff and passed it up to Bittersweet. "Carpe diem and ipse dixit!"

Twisted to the gills, we headed south into the night.

Why I Like Surround Sound

2007-01-22T12:55:00.000-05:00

In mathematics, as in the real world mathematics strives to represent, multiple dimensions equate to a richer, more complex experience.

For example, if by some chance you were confined to a one-dimensional universe, your consciousness would exist as a point-source, knowing neither left-right nor up and down. You would, perforce, be unaware of any other point-sources in such a universe. A very lonely, and torturous, existence to be sure.

Likewise, if you were confined to a two-dimensional universe, you would exist as an infinitesimally thin construct on a planar surface. You at least could move around; you could move to the left and to the right, and forwards and backwards. But you'd never be able to lift your "head" up and look around; that third dimension of up and down would be forever unavailable to you. It'd be like slithering around as an incredibly flat snake with a permanent neck crick.

It's only in our fully three dimensional world that you have the perfect freedom to experience those three dimensions. The universe goes on forever and ever: to the left and right, the front and back, and up and down. It's as big as it gets, the exploration thereof never ending, yeah?

But what if there was a fourth spatial dimension? If x indicates one dimension, y the second dimension, and z the third dimension, then we need a letter post-z to indicate that hypothetical fourth dimension. Let's call it z-prime.

Unfortunately, we can never experience z-prime. Our physiology is not wired for it. We cannot just simply by an act of will raise ourselves up and look into z-prime. It is forever barred to us except maybe by the most tangential scientific measurements.

But if being a 3-dimensional being is so much more amazing than being locked into only 2, how much more expanding would it be to exist in 4? What types of things would be visible? What concepts would be opened up to such a four-dimensional being? What would he perceive, as a matter of course, that our mind not only boggles at, but cannot even innately comprehend? What would such a being think about religion, or the ultimate nature of the Universe? It's fucking awesome to even contemplate.

But to bring things back to Earth, for a bit -- the whole process of music reproduction via a sound system is analogous to the above discussion.

For example, up until the 1950's, music reproduction was monophonic. From the hey-day of the wind-up Victrola, to the long-playing 33 1/3 record, music was recorded via a single micropho ne and played back on a system with a single speaker. That single speaker corresponds to the one-dimensional point source we discussed above.

If the goal of music reproduction is to create as realistic a listening experience as possible, to put you right in the middle of the action, like you're actually at a real performance, then the monophonic speaker system fails miserably. There is no separation of instruments, no "virtual" soundstage. The entire orchestra, or band, sound like they're all inside that tiny little speaker box. Even if the speaker is of high quality, there is no depth and life to the music.

With the invention of stereo sound reproduction, a big window was thrown wide open. Like binocular vision, which allows us to accurately place objects in a depth of field, using two speakers allows us to accurately locate instruments and voices in a two-dimensional plane, the plane from floor to ceiling that intersects where are speakers are standing. It is as if a virtual orchestra were playing there in front of us, with woodwinds to the left, brass to the right, and percussion in the center. The end result is a much more realistic listening experience, with excellent recorded source material and excellent playback systems approaching that of a true live concert.

Well, in the '70s people started experimenting with expanding that two-dimensional listening experience. Quadrophonic sound recordings, whereby instruments could be located in a three-dimensional space with the use of four discrete speakers, was an early attempt at realizing this goal.*

Having just recently set up my surround sound system here at the dome, I believe that we're really, really close to realizing that goal of a truly realistic listening experience. By allowing sound recording engineers to place sounds in three dimensions by using five discrete channels: left front, right front, center, left rear and right rear, the listener truly becomes immersed in the soundscape of an album or movie.

Also, with higher sampling frequencies and bit depths that exist in the new SACD and DVD-A audio formats, the music itself becomes more transparent and at the same time more realistically present.

While music reproduction over the last hundred years has always strived to get better and better and more realistic, I feel that [ironically] in the digital age we're somewhat reversing this trend. Oh, technically we are still doing better: SACD and DVD-A are perfect examples of this; but as consumers we're moving more and more towards convenience and away from quality.

CDs, some say, were bad enough, that the sound was harsh and cold compared to vinyl warmth. But now everyone listens to mp3s, which is a lossy compression of that CD! Or downloads from Itunes, for example, which files still use a lossy compression. The result of this lossy compression is diminished highs, wavery mids, and diminished bass response. In a word, truncated. Music that is less than what it could and should be.

Now, I'm all for convenience. The ability to take music on the go is fantastic. But it shouldn't be the end-all and be-all for an entire generation of new listeners. There should still be that goal of striving for perfection, for the perfect listening experience.

How many people nowadays actually just sit down and listen to an entire album? Do nothing else but just concentrate on the music? Let it envelop you and transport you to another place? No tv on, no reading books, no cleaning the house whilst listening -- just listening.

I'd say most don't. The world is too fast now, too many things to do, too many places to go, too many people to see. The world is small and getting smaller. Our electronic products are getting smaller. Our attention spans are getting smaller. Our lives are getting smaller.

So now I take some time each day, and settle myself on the couch, and shut out outside distractions, and just enjoy some of the finest music recorded in 5 channels and played back on a really nice sound system and I'm right there. I'm getting what the artist wanted me to get.

And I'm slowing down my part in this fast-paced world. I'm taking time to concentrate on what's good, and blowing off all the bad.

Don't even get me started on Hi Def.

* Some might argue that quad, or 5 or 6 or 7 speakers simply extend the two-dimensional space to front and back, rather than just left and right. For true 3-dimensional sound, you'd need to be able to distinguish sounds that are above and below you. To some extent I agree with this.

The Attention Of A Beautiful Woman Is A Powerful Thing

2007-01-18T13:35:00.000-05:00

You must forgive me, little ones, as I wax verbose yet again on thoughts that come to me as I watch the hit television show 'Beauty and the Geek'.

This time, those ugly rascally geeks were given the benefit of makeovers and an entirely new wardrobe! Their hair was trimmed and coiffed into hip trendy 'dos; oh, gotta love those blonde hilights and spikes. Nothing says 'cool' more than seacrest-like hair spiking.

Beards were trimmed down to nothing or completely removed.

Glasses? That's a no-no.

And they were given some cash as well, and turned loose in a hip, trendy clothier's shop. They were to adorn themselves in all the latest fashions. Say goodbye to that Star Trek uniform, little geek.

And here's where the pathos began. Poor Mario: the fat geek. Brilliant guy. Sensitive. Loves comic books. Lord knows he must love them, he owns 25,000 of them. But turn loose a fat sensitive guy in a trendy clothier's shop, and it's a recipe for disaster.

Why? Because there are apparently no fat hip guys. No clothes would fit him! He'd get the waist size right on a pair of jeans, but the length would be 10 inches too long. He'd get the length right, but the waist would be 10 inches too small! He'd try a belt, but the thing wouldn't wrap completely around his waist.

And as more and more items wouldn't fit, he'd get more and more depressed. His eyes glassed over and watered. In the end, his scientific conclusion was that a man of his proportions was not meant to be a part of that brave hip world.

But as the geeks paraded their new-found stylish selves before their beautiful partners, they grinned and posed as if with a new-found confidence. No longer were they schleps, ostracized by the beautiful ones. They had made it, baby! It's true, intelligence doesn't matter! What matters is the perception of a beautiful surface and adherence to prevailing stylistic trends. That's all it takes! 'Christ', you could almost hear them think. 'Why haven't we done this before?'

And for this episode's contest, it was the beauties turn to show off their hard-learned business skills by using their best business pitch to sell a date with their geek partner. The geek with the highest bid would win the competition.

And guess what? Our old friend Mario, the fat comic book geek, lost! He garnered the lowest bid. The geek that looked the "best", with his washboard stomach and trendy shoes, won!

It turns out that a savvy business plan and accurate sales pitch is not enough. This really surprised me, but apparently the best-looking guy won. Apparently, vacuous surface appeal is sufficient to buy a woman's vote.

Well, for the finale, we got to observe the five geeks on their dates.

And herein lies the rub. These geeks were scrubbed, and coiffed, and dressed to the nines. They really looked sharp. Pleasing to the eye.

But guess what? They were still geeks inside. They censored their responses to what they believed the girls would find appealing. For example, when one geek was asked what his favourite kind of movies was, he had to bite his cheek so he wouldn't blurt out Star Trek. 'Star Trek', the dating kiss of death.

I hope that what the geeks learned was that happiness and self-confidence does not arise out of a nifty haircut and a hip pair of clothes. That 'style' is as empty and vacuous as the vacuum of space.

But I don't know. The attention of a beautiful woman is a powerful thing.

Breathe

2007-01-16T22:55:00.000-05:00

Two weeks into January the weather is finally turning cold, although not the bitter chill that is normal this time of year in New England. The only good part to global warming, I guess, is the drastically reduced heating bill.

However, it is in the lower '20s now, and a few first flurries of the season were falling during the commute home tonight. Cold enough to break out the mad bomber hat for my evening perambulation:

I love this hat -- made of canvas and lined with rabbit fur, it is so insulative I daresay my bald head would be warm at 50 below.

I'm not the kind of bloke that likes to remain indoors in the winter. People crowding into gyms, breathing stale, sweaty air, walking endlessly on a treadmill, staring at the wall, is not my idea of fun. I'd rather bundle up nice and get outside and feel the natural air on my face, though it leave me raw.

There is a special kind of stillness in winter that I very much enjoy. The animals are snug in their dens or have flown to warmer climes, and people rarely leave their homes to walk outside. I feel as if I'm alone in the world. There is magic in that stillness: the world as it sleeps, waiting to rise again.

We are often insulated by our modern lives; our enclosed cars, our enclosed offices, our enclosed homes. I like to get outside and walk in the woods, and breathe cold clean air. I like to know that I'm alive.

You are a small mote...

2007-01-12T08:00:00.000-05:00

Have you ever seen that brilliant British TV mini-series, The Singing Detective? Not the crappy US version starring Robert Downey, Jr., but the six-hour masterpiece penned by the incomparable Dennis Potter?

No?

Well, there's this one scene where the hero, as a boy, climbs up into a treetop in the Forest of Dean, and sits there amongst the swaying branches and talks to God about his life and what he'll be when he grows up.

And I, of course, remember similar moments as a boy: the irresistible allure of branch and leaf, bark rough against little hands as you scale ever higher, glorying in the heady sensation of being so far above everything else in the world.

You stand there at the intersection of branch and trunk, not daring to climb any higher as the treetop sways back and forth in the breeze. You look out and the sky is immaculately cerulean, a blue not to be found in even the largest collection of crayons. You look down and the lawn is a carpet of viridian, scattered with toy-sized rocks and gardens and the occasional lawn jart.

You are a small mote in the grand panoply of life, poised delicately on your perch between heaven and earth. And yet, you are not diminished. You are small, but not insignificant. You are a boy, and instinctively strive to push the boundaries of your existence as far as you can.

And all your maturing life is simply more and more refined attempts at recreating that feeling of expanding your being. It's no longer as simple as climbing a tree, but hopefully it's as rewarding in its own way. The books you read. The paintings you view. The music you listen to. The equations you solve.

The quest to extract meaning from an apparently meaningless universe.

But how nice to still climb a tree.

...a man barely alive.

2007-01-08T19:00:00.000-05:00

Steve Austin: astronaut... a man barely alive.

Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world's first bionic man.

Steve Austin will be that man. Better than he was before.

Better... stronger... faster.

Revisiting my childhood of 33 years ago via Region 2 DVDs from Britain. Steve Austin and his friend Dr. Rudy Wells and his boss Oscar Goldman have all held up really well.

Oh sure, there's the typical shit. Leisure suits. An E.R.A. in its infancy, such that Austin would score a new fawning babe every week. Computers that used tape drives for storage. "Cellular" phones that were the size of a suitcase and needed a radio link-up. The Soviets were still a world threat.

I had remembered almost nothing of the story lines. But watching now, what came to me were flashes of recognizance -- little scenes of Austin using his bionic limbs. Running in slow motion. Heaving a concrete fence post fifty feet through the air. Leaping off a ten-story building. It all came back to me.

And running... always running. Austin never had a car, nor needed one. The camera would shift to slow-motion, and Austin would run, and run some more. Gloriously running, the coat-tails of his leisure suit flapping behind. Squinty-eyed like the best of heroes, hair perfectly coiffed.

And you know what? the little boy I was then and the man I am now thrilled to the same wonder of it all. I overlooked the little inconsistencies of scientific plausibility and reveled in bionic super-strength and bionic super-speed. Austin was still my hero 33 years later.

So I chose to not remember how eventually Austin grows one of those '70s moustaches; how he fights a sasquatch; how he saves the Earth from aliens; how he gets a bionic wife and a bionic dog. Oh yes, Austin jumped the shark and jumped it far.

But the first season of The Six Million Dollar Man is a gloriously serious yet fun exploration of what it meant to be a former astronaut who almost dies in a test flight and is rebuilt with technology that we all suspected might be just around the corner.

Take a look at this clip of the famous intro sequence and glory in it yourself:

Interlude: eva dögg guðmundsdóttir

2007-01-05T12:00:00.000-05:00

Update! [3/14/07]

After noticing some spikes in my Sitemeter account from visitors from Iceland, I checked on the referring links and it looks like the lovely Eva ran a google search on her own name, like many of us do, and found this post. She then wrote a post of her own on her own blog, at

Hvað er að gerast ?

Now, again, my Icelandic comprehension is pretty much zero, but I was able to puzzle out the gist of what she was getting at, along with the those who commented on her post.

Apparently, Icelandic words like "kripi" and "skuggalegt" mean "cool" and "handsome" respectively. So as far as I can make out, Eva wrote how flattered she was by the poem I had written, and the commenters agreed and also noted how cool and handsome I appeared to be as well.

It's great to know that such international goodwill and kind-hearted feelings can occur despite the language barrier.

I feel all warm inside now.

--------------------------------

Through a rather strange confluence of events, much too tedious to elaborate herein, me and a couple mates of mine, Icelandophiles all, discovered the lovely Eva Dögg Guðmundsdóttir on an Icelandic website.

Apparantly, sweet Eva was a runner up in last year's Miss Iceland pageant. To say more I am unable, because deciphering the Icelandic language is not my forte.

Smitten by her obvious innocent girlish charms I set pen to paper, and in a white-hot fever of creativity wrote the below poem.

Is it a good poem? Och, who can say? All I can remember is the heat in my loins that Miss Guðmundsdóttir engendered in me. And so, without further delay:

oh, eva dögg guðmundsdóttir,
you are not a dog, but
simply eve, guðmund's daughter.

your hair is silvery white,
like a snowy icelandic albino.
your teeth gleam like pepsodent.

your frame is slight, and tight-
fitting is your lime-green shirt
that accents your bosom's gentle swell.

oh, eva dögg guðmundsdóttir,
be no longer guðmund's daughter,
but be my wife.

A Little Essay on "Beauty and the Geek"

2007-01-04T12:42:00.000-05:00

Whilst watching the hit television show "Beauty and the Geek" last night, I was struck yet again by the cruel trick that Nature plays on her children.

For example, there definitely appears to be an inverse correlation between a man's intelligence and his appearance. That is to say, the more intelligent a man is, the uglier and less fit -- "geekier" -- he is.

Take a man who gets a perfect SAT score, has an almost eidetic memory, has an almost personal relationship with his computer, and is fluent in the Klingon language; he will invariably be skinny with no musculature to speak of, have wild and unruly hair, have pale and sallow skin tone, wear corrective lenses for his eyes, have little to no co-ordination; and no contemporary fashion sense to speak of.

Now, the converse of all that is the beautiful woman: glowing, healthy skin, clear and limpid eyes, prominent bosom and gluteus maximus, and pearly white teeth in a wide smile. She is invariably woefully ignorant of current politics, has not read a book with the exception of Cosmo or Vogue, has no conception of geography apart from where the location of the local salon is, and spends as much of her income on hair and nail products as the "geek" does on comic books and video games. In essence, she's not very bright at all. Stupid, even.

Put these two groups together, and what happens? The "geeks" invariably blush and stutter, giggle like schoolboys as they catch their first real-life glimpse of half-revealed cleavage. The "beauties" invariably laugh in disgusted horror as they see up close these men that they heretofore have successfully ostracized and ignored.

Now, I know -- this is not always the case. Some smart men are actually handsome. Some beautiful women are actually smart. Look at me: I've got classic good looks and an incredibly powerfully smart mind. I'm just speaking in generalities.

Back to Nature.

Her one maxim is that the species must survive. Inferior individuals may perish and fall by the wayside, but as a whole the species must survive. And how do humans reproduce? Sexually.

And how do humans select their prospective mates? By their appearance of "healthy" attractiveness.

Guess what? Those geeks are never gonna mate with a beautiful woman. Not unless they make some serious money using those brains Nature blessed them with.

I Like You, Tony Bennett...

2006-11-12T12:35:00.000-05:00

... and Christina Aguilera, too.

There were two great bits on last night's SNL, and both involved octogenarian Tony Bennett.

The first was when host Alec Baldwin portrayed Bennett on "The Tony Bennett Show", and had as his guest little-known comedic lounge singer Anthony Benedetto, played by Bennett himself. Watching the two performers side by side highlighted just how great Baldwin's portrayal of Bennett really is. The duet at the end was like watching a younger version of Bennett performing with his current elder self.

But the greatest bit happened right around the 12:50 mark. Musical guest Christina Aguilera and Bennett performed a duet of the old Irving Berlin-penned standard, Steppin' Out With My Baby.

Now, I'm not generally a fan of Miss Aguilera nor her music, with the exception of noting her evident physical charms, but it turns out the girl can sing. Granted, she tended to use a bit more vibrato and diva-esque theatrics than would have been done in the days of crooning, but she's got a great voice, and there was a nice chemistry between her and Bennett.

Bennett was dressed in the crooner trademark of formal tuxedo, and Miss Aguilera was made up to look like a 50's era chanteuse. And as they performed, it became evident to me why I love the crooner era so much.

Yes, it was the pop music of its day. Yes, the lyrical content, while witty and clever, was not overly sophisticated. But man, could that music zing. Sizzle. And it was made by musicians who played actual instruments like drums and acoustic bass, and pianos and guitars, and saxaphones and trumpets. They played the instruments so well that it was an exercise in cool effortlessness.

And best of all, the sexual content of these performers and songs was understated. It smoldered and simmered just beneath the surface in smoky nightclubs where gentlemen drank tipples like Highballs and Harvey Wallbangers, and ladies decorously sipped Gimlet martinis and Seabreezes. It was all about the look in someone's eye, a subtle hand gesture, a coy tilt of the head.

Now I don't mean to sound like an old fuck, but in my opinion that's what's wrong with modern pop music. It's all about blatant sexuality with not a hint of refined subtlety. To wit: there's nothing sexy about a butt-ugly rapper with left-over jericurls and a gold tooth in his mouth rapping about how great he is and how many bitches he's banged, while in the video for the "song" a platoon of crack whores violently shake their oversized asses directly in front of the camera such that the outline of their pudenda can be clearly seen through their skin-tight shorts.

Not sexy. Watchable only in the sense that a car accident, or autopsy, is watchable.

I never thought I'd say it, but kudos to Christina Aguilera.

steppin' out with my baby
can't go wrong cause i'm in right
it's for sure, not for maybe
that i'm all dressed up tonight

steppin' out with my honey
can't be bad to feel so good
never felt quite so sunny
and i keep on knockin' wood

there'll be smooth sailin' cause i'm trimmin' my sails
with my top hat and my white tie and tails

steppin' out with my baby
can't go wrong cause i'm in right
ask me when will the day be
the big day may be tonight

if i seem to scintillate
it's because i've got a date
a date with a package of
the good things that come with love

you don't have to ask me
i won't waste your time
but if you should ask me
why i feel sublime i'm

steppin' out with my baby

Oh Come On, Greg: Incest?

2006-11-03T22:46:00.000-05:00

I've been thinking a lot lately about incest.

A pause while that thought sinks in...

Now that you're ready to either castrate me, or turn away in disgust, why not take a moment to realize I'm not saying that 'cause I want to bang my sister. I'm saying it 'cause I've been thinking about the human population explosion.

It all started with my interest in genealogy. And my interest in science. To wit: we, all of us, who are alive today, are alive as the result of an unbroken line of fornication and a-sexual reproduction going back millions and millions and, yes, billions of years to that primeval ooze that slimed in the shallow waters of the primordial ocean. We represent the culmination of those lines that were most hardy and most adaptable and just plain luckiest. The Earth is littered with the bones of species that couldn't cut it, or were unlucky enough to, say, get hit by the fallout of a giant meteor strike.

An unbroken connexion. Billions of years. Wow, talk about a chain of life.

So, here I am in the year of our lord 2006, the product of a sweaty liquid explosion betwixt my parents. And each one of my parents is the product of some sweaty encounter betwixt their parents. And my grandparents are the products of some sweaty encounter between all of my great-grandparents. Cause everyone had to have two parents, right? And they had to have two parents, right? As far as I know, humans have not hit on the secret of parthenogenesis yet.

Now, if we continue to take this regression backwards in time, using a fairly simple mathematical formula of 2ⁿ, where n equals the number of generations in your past, then we quickly get to a situation where by 1000 years ago, or no more than forty generations, you or I would have 1,099,511,627,776 direct ancestors.

Just to clarify, that's one trillion, ninety-nine billion, five hundred and eleven million, six hundred and twenty-seven thousand, seven hundred and seventy-six ancestors. Or 183.25 times the current world population.

Obviously, that's patently absurd, because in the year 1006 the world population is estimated to have been somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 million souls. And whoops! the Black Death was right around the corner. Say goodbye to 1/3 of Europe.

So what is the solution to this little conundrum? How can the simple fact that you and I had parents, and grandparents, and great-grandparents ad nauseam, lead to the astounding fact of so many bloody ancestors that never existed?

Well, it's quite simple really. Human beings don't reproduce backwards. My ancestors at each generation were not from unique familial lines. From time to time, more often the further in time you go back, blood relations were interbreeding with blood relations. There's no other way for the numbers to work out.

So, as a corollary to this, if you go back far enough, all of us are related to each other. If you go back far enough, you start to see that familial bloodlines intertwine, then break apart for a while, then re-mix, such that close cousins breed with close cousins, distant cousins breed with distant cousins until the entire large cluster of human pageantry is, at core, one big, happy family.

Happy? Well, like most families, there's a few tiffs here and there.

Actually, many scientists have now come to the conclusion that most people of current European stock are actually descended from a few small familial tribes who made it through the last ice age some 10,000 or so years ago. Can you imagine the incest that must have been going on in those days?

As any good line-breeder knows, though, you breed for desired characteristics and eliminate the culls. Any incest-related reinforcement of lethal, or non-lethal but contra-survival, genes would have been severely dealt with in those primitive times. The culls would have died, and the strong would have survived. The cleaned gene pools would have actually resulted in a stronger, hardier stock.

That we are talking about human beings here is somewhat disturbing, but it doesn't negate the reality of how Mendelian genetics works.

* * *

I often like to pose thought experiments to people, to make them think outside the narrow boxes that we tend to think in. One I often like to throw out is about incest.

Now, please, don't get me wrong. Incestual attacks, for example, whereby an older parent or sibling takes advantage of a younger weaker child, is heinous and clearly wrong by any stretch of the imagination. But I think it's important to point out that incest is tangential in these situations. Someone who is older, stronger, in a position of trust, and presumably wiser is taking advantage of someone who is underdeveloped and not in a position to defend themselves.

My thought experiment posits a different scenario. What if there is a sexual relationship between two consenting adults who just happen to be siblings, descended from the same parents, but that union does not result in progeny.

Would that be wrong? Our gut says yes, but let's haul it out into the light.

Let's examine the prohibition. Like many moral laws, they have their beginnings in practical concern. Witness the Hebraic dietary restrictions that now have the force of religious dogma. These restrictions most likely originated as a way to protect the wandering Tribes from improper and harmful culinary practices. Prototypical, but empirical, cautionary tales.

And it was most likely the same with incest. Most organisms have a hard-wired aversion to mating within familial bounds. They seek mates from outside the group. This appears to be a very rational mechanism to protect any progeny from potential birth defects. Humans, however know no bounds when it comes to sexual practices. Inculcating a moral prohibition against incest would go a long way towards preventing likely genetic birth abnormalities which are the result of close inbreeding.

I am not a geneticist, nor am I attempting to write a scientific paper here, but suffice it to say that the main problem with inbreeding is the chance for reinforcement of harmful recessive genes. The chance for these reinforcements, which can result in very damaging non-lethal characteristics in offspring, or even death, is severely higher in people who are closely related than than with those who are not.

So all in all, a wise precaution on the part of Nature and Man to prohibit this type of activity. In the long run, it is contra-survival, and survival is really all Nature is interested in, isn't she?

But in my thought experiment, children, and the potential for serious birth defects and/or death, have been removed. If nothing "bad" can happen from the union, then, is incest still wrong? Really, what are we dealing with now? Two people that presumably love each other having sex. I guess what I'm asking, really, is: Removing all potential health risks, is incest inherently wrong?

I leave the puzzling out of moral implications of this thought experiment to the reader.

Administravia and Foto Essay

2006-10-23T19:15:00.000-04:00

Administravia

Based on some feedback from me old mates Nobby Burton and Viszlat, namely that my stories just don't cut it in their estimable opinions, I've decided to rip them from their erstwhile home here and give them their own blog. That way, if you like reading my fiction and the occasional ode, then you can go to that blog for the specific purpose of doing just that.

That blog is called Laudanum Blues, and will be updated infrequently -- whenever I gets the urge for a little story-telling. This blog will be solely for my personal ramblings.

Foto Essay

As the old back's feeling better, I managed to get outside and appreciate this fall weather. As I'm sometimes wont to do, I slung my camera along for the ride. As always, click on the below picts for truly ginormous versions if such is your wont:

The view of the dome and Caddy from
the woods, very near where I almost
shat myself, but didn't.

An old towering pine in the
woods behind my house.

Fall has come to the sitting area
in my back yard.

The cemetery down the road.

Me and the old pine
as seen through a glass filter.

I've Been Overdosing

2006-10-22T23:00:00.000-04:00

I've been overdosing lately on the Science channel.

I've been cooped up for the past week or so because of another bout with the old back and, as with other episodes in the past, I tend to get depressed because of limited mobility. Sometimes I deal with it by staying as drugged up as possible and sleeping the majority of the day; other times I'll bury my nose in books, and lose myself in fantastic and glorious stories.

This time I've been overdosing on the Science channel. Hour after hour, with short breaks for lunch or the bathroom, I immerse myself in the wonders of trying to figure out just what makes the world and the universe tick.

Most people think of physicists as hopeless nerds, socially inept and backward. And yet, in reality, I believe these are some of the most passionate and human of our entire society. Because, in the end, what really makes us human? Above all, I think, it's our innate curiosity and drive to understand,

From the first savage who managed to tame fire, to the team of scientists who sent the Voyager spacecrafts on an endless journey out of our solar system into the great beyond, it has been a common human trait to try to understand and harness the world around us.

For those who are bitten by the bug, it is an addictive passion to know, and to try to understand. Simple faith is not enough. An ostrich-like sensibility to hide one's head in the sand cannot be countenanced. It is an all-consuming drive that has raised us from animals cowering in fear in rude shelters to, for good or ill, masters of this planet.

As I get older, I think about death. As I see family members fall before me, I have my nose rubbed in the fact that I too will pass on at some point. Am I afraid, though? A little. Unfortunately, I have no religious faith to soften the knowledge that when I die my ego will cease to exist forever.

But what really pisses me off about that is that I won't get to see how it all works out! I believe we're really just in our infancy as a species, and that there will be glorious and undreamed of things to come. I believe that at some point we're going to be able to answer a lot of those big unanswered questions that have plagued shamans and philosophers and theologians since the dawn of history.

And fuck it all, I probably won't be there to see it. Unless some really big medical breakthroughs happen relatively soon, all that'll be left of me will be my scattered atoms and some witless scribblings stored on some computer hard-drive somewhere.

That's what really pisses me off.

The Lord Giveth...

2006-10-15T21:05:00.000-04:00

...and the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord.

I went to my sister's house today, to a birthday celebration for one of my nieces. My old da' was there, my mother, and my grandmother as well. Yes, I do have a family, I was birthed by a real woman, I do not exist in a vacuum. I was not hatched by a basilisk, nor did I sprout fully formed from the sea's foam.

Now, as a card-carrying misanthrope, I'm not partial to attending these types of functions, or any function really where more than three or four people congregate, but my little niece (God knows why) thinks I'm the shiznit, and requested that I be there. Like many women, she thinks I'm the bomb-diggity (so to speak), but if she actually got to know me at any personal level deeper than that of avuncular uncle, she'd probably tire of me just as fast as the rest of Womankind.

No, no -- do not protest. I am not being overly self-deprecating. I am not slagging myself off to win your sympathy and caring. I'm just stating the bald (hee hee) truth. In the beginning, women believe me to be deep and mysterious, to be possessed of some unrevealed Truth. They are attracted to the dark side, something wild and dangerous that lives in my eyes.

And then they get to know me. I speak. I spout off on some of my trademark pomp and misogyny. I don't want to go shopping with her. I don't want to go dancing. I don't want to dress in a neat and pleasant manner. I don't want to attend her best friend's child's first birthday party. I don't want to do any of the myriad things that normal men are forced into doing in order to placate a woman's sensibilities.

I do want to go out to eat. A lot. I do want to sit on the couch and watch Star Trek and/or House, M.D. I do want to take every illegal drug I can safely get my hands on. I do want to laugh at people's babies and say, truthfully, how goddamn ugly they actually are and not the sweet cherubs that their mom's mistakenly think they are. I do want to drive excessively fast and not wear a seatbelt. I do want to lay around all day Saturday and Sunday and not do errands or household chores. I do want to ravage her body in any number of perverse and deviant ways.

And that's when I'm not so mysterious anymore. The chick decides that yeah, maybe this bloke isn't the shiznit after all.

But listen, I could go on and on. I was actually trying to write about how the Lord giveth and then, selfishly, taketh away.

So, does this ever happen to you? You're at some family function, and your ma, or grandma, pulls you aside, and then gleefully proceeds to catch you up on all the family gossip? Like how this aunt is 95 years old and can no longer do for herself and refuses to do her hair or put earrings on because she just doesn't see any reason to anymore. Or how another aunt is now blind due to complications arising from diabetes. Another is bedridden and it's just a matter of time. One older cousin just had two lumpectomies and is starting a round of chemo, and another cousin is clinically depressed and is on medication.

I rue the day when I go home, because it's always bad news. Someone's always either sick or dying or diseased in some way.

And it hit me. They're all dying off. Yes, it's nature's way, or God's way, but it never really hit home for me before. Everyone that I knew from my time as a little tyke is going to that great beyond. It may be sooner, it may be later, but the writing's on the wall. I'm that generation now that gets to watch everyone that they knew, and that came before them, pass on.

Any time now, it could be five years, it could be twenty, but at some point relatively soon I'm going to be the eldest generation. My grandmother, who's 88 years old, has been that eldest generation for just about forty years now. Her mother died sometime in the mid '60s.

I asked her today, do you ever miss your mother?

She looked kind of funny, like it wasn't something she had ever expected to be asked, and thought a bit. Then she said, no. It's been so long. You get used to it.

Last Night I Almost Shit My Pants

2006-10-12T14:05:00.000-04:00

Yeah, so last night I almost shit my pants.

Cut to two weeks ago and me arriving home from work, the westering sun passing behind trees such that all was dappled shadow: that eldritch time between full light and full dark. I got out of the Caddy and prepared to head inside when I noticed a deer staring at me from the back yard. She was quite still, just staring.

I walked forward a few paces and she turned tail and ran. Have you ever seen a deer run? It's quite a majestic sight, as they're quite a bit heavier and larger and powerful than the typical bambi-esque portrait of them you get on television.

She turned tail and ran to the edge of the woods bordering my property, turned, and resumed staring at me. I tell you, I began to feel somewhat uneasy, because it felt like there was something quite alive and aware looking out at me from this doe's eyes. The stare was too unwavering, too sentient to be animalistic instinct.

It reminded me of the post I had written about the god in my woods, and I was seriously starting to wonder if the god had taken animal form in order to fuck with me. It somewhat surprised me, though, 'cause I always thought the god and I had a decent and respectful relationship. But that's the thing about gods, you can never tell what they're gonna do -- they're pranksters of the highest caliber, with the morals of spoiled children.

And then the doe stamped its front foot, startling me out of my reverie. I flinched, and almost turned tail myself. Prankster god, or psychotic animal, that foot stamp reminded me of a bull getting ready to charge.

And then she stamped her other foot. And then the other. She alternated foot stamps every few seconds, and I was thinking to myself, What the fuck is going on here? Is this deer going to fucking attack me? I glanced behind me, made sure I had a quick retreat to the stairs leading up to the deck, and decided to stamp back. They always say that not showing fear is the key, so I decided to mimic the deer's behaviour and see what would happen.

So I stamped my foot, and she stamped hers, and I stamped mine again, and we had a little dance. And then I moved forward confidently a few steps towards her, and she high-stepped it back into the woods and disappeared into the foliage.

Now cut to last night, and I'm at the Mint Cafe in Norwood with these two friends of mine. One I'm not allowed to describe in any way because she refuses to be publicly identified, but the other is not so strict.

She's a mad [in the sense of loony] Hebrew who, unfortunately, can often be heard belting out hip-hop rhymes in a voice that's the bastard love-child of the Notorious B.I.G. and Ethel Merman. She owns two cats that are loved more than any human, and is so overly fond of her own gaseous emissions that she cannot rest until she's fanned said emissions into the unsuspecting nostrils of any poor sod nearby.

Anyway, we're at the Mint, and these two friends of mine are discussing things like the relative merits of hair colouring technologies, and how trendy the brazilian wax is becoming, whilst I'm shoveling chicken pad thai and strawberry smoothies down my gullet and contributing almost nothing to the prevailing conversation other than the occasional "hmmm?" or "really?" or "you wax your pubes?".

Since I consumed the pad thai and smoothies so rapidly, my body never got the chance to tell me that I was full. So I overindulged, and at the end of the meal realized that my abdomen was as tight as a drum. I surreptitiously loosened the button to my trousers, but that had little effect, as my belt still cut into me like
a tourniquet into a heroin addict's bicep.

I just sort of groaned and shifted my weight from side to side, attempting to find a position in the booth that alleviated the pressure, whilst my two lady friends sipped their coffees and looked at me pityingly. "You shouldn't have drunk all those smoothies!" one of them pointed out to me.

She just didn't understand how delicious they were.

We eventually left, and as I was heading home in the Caddy, I realized that I really had to evacuate my bowels. No joke. The combination of oily noodles and fruity smoothies was causing some sort of gastronomical warfare to ocurr in my little tummy, and my digestive system was losing the battle. Instead of trying to assimilate the nutrients in the food, my body decided the best course would be to expel the contents on my tummy in a great heaving diarrheatical convulsion.

*Note: for those of you who question the veracity of the word "diarrheatical", all I can say is if it's not a word, it by God should be one. What a great fucking word! Diarrheatical!

I was still about 15 minutes from home, so I did what many of us do: I tried to hold it in. I thought that the power of my sphincter would be sufficient to keep everything in check until I got to the gloriously private crystalline purity of my very own bathroom in my very own house. "Cause let's face it, if you're gonna have some explosive diarrhea, there's no place better to have it then your own private bathroom.

And so I was fairly successful for a while. The tight contraction of my anus held back the deluge, and the internal uproar even quieted for a bit, and falsely led me to believe that everything was under control again. But, like many cruel fates the universe teases and taunts us with, it all came back with a vengeance about two miles from home. You know that feeling you get when you just can't hold it any more? When tears start leaking out of you in shame because you know you're literally going to violently expel the nasty contents of your rectum directly into your underwear? When you know that poo is going to mash all over your buttocks and slide down your leg and collect in the crevices of your shoes?

No! I couldn't pull over! This is a residential neighborhood, with lit houses and manicured lawns cheek by jowl. No safe place to let go. I'd have to shit myself. No choice! Oh, the shame of it all! The inhumanity! The horror!

I groaned, and cried, and cursed the gods that this fate should befall me, a grown man in mortal danger of soiling himself. I sped up the Caddy, I must have been flying, I don't remember, it's all a blur. C'mon! Hold on! You can do it -- 1 mle, 1/2 mile, 500 feet, there's the dome up ahead! Quick, pull into the drive, slam the car into park, rush to the edge of the woods, no time to get inside, drop your drawers, sqat, ahhhhh!!!

All I could think as I squatted there, dropping that pile of steaming poo into the woods, was, "I hope that deer doesn't come 'round and decide to give me the 'bum's rush', so to speak."

The Story of Why El Tabachnikov Is So Obsessed with Pasties

2006-10-03T17:30:00.000-04:00

So, apparently El Tabachnickov is undergoing some serious withdrawal pangs. He's been logging on to my blog and looking for new content every five minutes since Sunday. It's gotten so bad that he actually surfed over to Jocular Schlemiel's blog and gave that a perusal.

O, poor Tabachnickov, had I known you were going to do that I would have warned you! Never, never [did I say never!?] read Jocular's blog if you can help it! That shit'll burn out your eyes, and then you'll jump into a vat of hydrochloric acid to try to escape the horrifying memory of what you've just read. And to top that off, even the sweet surcease of death won't end your pain, as you'll come back as a tortured spirit, forever forced to read new "Joc" blog entries hot off the press, and your pain will only end when Joc decides to stop blogging, or dies, or both.

But I have kindly decided to assuage El Tabachnickov's torment by posting a new entry. And what better entry than to tell the story of why El Tabachnickov is so obsessed with pasties. And so, without further ado:

The Story of Why El Tabachnickov Is So Obsessed With Pasties

El Tabachnickov came squalling into this world on March 13, 1970, his passage viciously torturing the vaginal canal of his suffering mother, Mrs. Tabachnickov. She screamed and cursed little Tabachnickov, and damned him to the cold and lonely torments of Sheol. Mr. Tabachnickov, rather than comforting his tortured wife, lounged in a small straight-backed chair, taking frequent pulls from a half-empty bottle of Manischewitz, and chain-smoked his beloved Dorals.

The midwife raised little Tabachnickov into the air and administered to his umbilicus, then wiped him clean of blood and amniotic fluid. She wrapped him in a warm blanket and placed him at his mother's breast. Little Tabachnickov squirmed contentedly, his little fingers grasping at imaginary objects, his mouth opening and closing like a guppy at feeding time.

The placenta then came, a mass of bloody tissue, and the midwife set it aside on an old newspaper on the floor, and began to tidy up. Little Tabachnickov's nostrils flared as the scent of the placenta reached him, and be damned if he didn't begin squirming out of his bunting, moving snake-like to the edge of the bed.

His mother tried to stop him, but she was understandably tired from her ordeal; the midwife was preoccupied with her tidying up; and old man Tabachnickov was still lost in the surcease of his bottle of Manischewitz and cancer sticks.

And so, like an olympic high diver, little Tabachnickov plunged off the edge of the bed and plopped onto the floor. Why wasn't his skull damaged? Why wasn't a bone broken? Why weren't his internal organs pummeled and bruised?

Well, I guess it's because this was El Tabachnickov, and even as a tiny baby it was clear that he was made of stern stuff. And, after all, aren't babies pretty much made of cartilage and cotton? And, since babies are so tiny and light, isn't the square-cube law pretty easy on them? And, if he was hurt and damaged, wouldn't this story be pretty much over?

Alas, little Tabachnickov did survive unharmed, did land on the floor with a plop, and did begin to wriggle his way [snake-like, remember?] over to the forgotten placenta. When he got there, he exposed little tiny baby razor teeth in a huge gaping maw, and proceeded to chomp on that placenta like it was the finest T-bone steak and mashed potatoe dinner.

Mother Tabachnickov screamed as she watched her son chow down, and that penetrated sufficiently her husband's Manischewitz-soaked brain such that he finally raised his weary ass off the chair and came over to watch his son's first meal. He proudly looked on through red-rimmed and bleary eyes, and said, "Now that boy's got some enthusiasm."

Little Tabachnickov raised his enormous head on trembling neck, and grinned at his papa, blood running from each corner of his mouth. He then went directly back to his meal.

The midwife rushed over and lifted little Tabachnickov away from his grisly repast and was about to shake him, but then remembered that this was a bad thing for children. They didn't like being shaked. It tended to addle their brains. So she shook her head instead, and re-wrapped him, and placed him back at his mother's breast. "I suggest you let him suckle a bit," the midwife suggested.

Mother Tabachnickov removed one enormous breast from her dressing gown, and little Tabachnickov perked right up. He grasped the flesh of the breast and tried to give suck. But guess what? He couldn't. The nipple was covered with a damn pastie. Mother Tabachnickov removed the pastie in a great tearing rip, and from underneath poked the largest nipple ever. It was literally the size of a man's thumb from tip to first knuckle. It was light brown in coloration, with an aureole surrounding it the size of a tea saucer. Small drops of milk leaked from it with every breath.

Baby Tabachnickov latched onto the nipple with tremendous eagerness and started suckling with a furious energy. Mother Tabachnickov winced, but then sighed as the milk was drained from her distended breast. Before he was done, Baby Tabachnickov had drained the other as well.

And now, ever since he first entered puberty, whenever El Tabachnickov sees pastied breasts, his salivary glands activate, he drools, and experiences an overwhelming urge to suckle which he sublimates into Oedipal sexual desire.

House Waxes Poetic about "The Circle"

2006-10-01T14:05:00.000-04:00

Dr. House, in discussing an autistic boy, soliloquizes about the nature of normalcy:

CAMERON: Is it so wrong for them to want to have a normal child? It's normal to want to be normal.

HOUSE: Spoken like a true "circle queen".

CAMERON: ?

HOUSE: See, skinny socially priviledged white people get to draw this neat little circle. And everyone inside the circle is "normal". Anyone outside the circle should be beaten, broken and re-set -- so they can be brought into the circle. Failing that they should be institutionalized -- or worse: pitied.

CAMERON: So it's wrong to feel sorry for this little boy?

HOUSE: Why would you feel sorry for someone who gets to opt out of the inane courteous formalities which are utterly meaningless, insincere and therefore degrading? This kid doesn't have to pretend to be interested in your back pain, or your excretions, or your grandma's itchy place. Can you imagine how liberating it would be to live a life free of all the mind numbing social niceties? I don't pity this kid. I envy him.

An Open Letter to You: The Fucking Moron Going 50 m.p.h. In The Left Lane Whilst The Entire State of Massachusetts Piles Up Behind You

2006-09-27T12:50:00.002-04:00

Dear Sir [or Madame, as the case may be],

You clearly are under the misapprehension that our nation's highways are democratic. That is to say, you clearly believe that the quality of your car, and the driving speed with which you are most comfortable, holds true for the quality of my car and the speed at which I am comfortable driving.

Your belief, however, is an ipse dixit, and one that I take exception to. For, using simple empirical observation, it becomes evident that there is no democratic principle at work on our nation's highways. A car, for example, that is assembled from $7,000.00 worth of parts clearly will not perform in the same league as one that is assembled from $30,000.00 worth of parts.

Items like the road-handling ability of tires, the strength and reliability of braking, the sensitivity of the suspension, and the power of the engine all contribute to a significant difference in the real-world manner that a car will perform. For you to believe that your clunker performs in the same league as my Caddy is asinine and sophomoric.

Also, as amateur and professional sports teach us, the human animal is wildly divergent in its abilities. There are some blokes that can barely get off the couch to fetch a beer from the fridge, and there are other blokes that can clean-and-jerk 700 pounds. Some blokes get winded walking to their car from their front door, and other blokes can run 40 yards in 4.4 seconds. Some blokes think that reading the sports page is the height of intellectual achievement, and other blokes will read Dostoevsky in the original Russian for fun.

And so I say to you, my friend, that either your car is inferior, your reflexes are inferior, or your intellect is inferior. Maybe it's some combination of the three. Heck, maybe it's all three! Either way, you've got no business being in the left lane on the highway, placidly chewing your cud at 50 m.p.h., whilst the entire population of Massachusetts piles up behind you.

Do you derive some righteous satisfaction from trying to bring everyone down to your level? Do you believe that just because your car starts to shimmy uncontrollably at 54 m.p.h. and that you break out in a fear sweat at 60 m.p.h. that no one should go any faster than you?

Yes, apparently you have suckled from the teat of modern American philosophy and are drunk on its righteous empowerment. Why should you be expected to fail or succeed on your own merits? Why should you be bothered to get a college degree? Why should you be bothered to understand simple mathematics? Why should you be expected to know how to correctly conjugate a verb? Why should you be able to quote a line of poetry? Why shouldn't you live off the Dole?

Why should any man's opinion be any better than your own?

And why should YOU have to get out of the way of ME?

Fuck me! you say -- right? Give me the finger as I blow past you on the right.

Scream at me in righteous anger as I smile condescendingly at you.

But feel free to choke and die on my fumes as you dwindle to a speck in my rear-view mirror.

You fuck.

Sincerely,

Greg D'Agostino

Socks, and Controversial Thoughts on Women

2006-09-26T12:05:00.000-04:00

So, I'm right on the verge of creating a fashion revolution. Well, not so much a revolution, but a bringing back, so to speak, of a fashion item that has long since gone out of favour. I think it's high time it's re-introduced, and I aim to be the bloke that does it.

I'm talking about socks, and sock paraphernalia.

I'm talking about how much socks suck, and about how much our culture has changed in the last 60 or 70 years.

I'm tired of my socks becoming de-elasticized over time. Instead of staying nice and tight and close to the flesh of my calves, they eventually start to droop and puddle around my ankles. When I spin around at my desk to talk to some important visiting person, where is that nice taught fabric? What is instead displayed is the milky white hairy flesh of my leg. My visitor invariably flinches and looks away, his nostrils flaring in disgust, as if some vile odor was permeating the atmosphere.

Why not just buy new socks when they start to go? you ask.

I think it's just a combination of laziness, and dammit! it's a matter of priciple. Of thrift. Why get rid of perfectly good socks that just happen to have lost their elasticity and maybe have a hole or two at the toe?

Back in the day, before women became interested in things like suffrage, or owning property, or working, or equal pay, or equal rights, or reproductive rights, or self-determination, they had the time and inclination to darn males' socks. It's fairly self-evident that we need to get back to that cultural norm.

Spouses, or mothers, or sisters, should be concentrating on how they can improve the quality of life of their husbands, or sons, or brothers. By providing their men with piping hot nourishment, a clean and orderly house, and clean and pressed clothing, they will be doing their part to ensure the smooth and orderly functioning of society.

But enough of that pipe dream. Now to the fashion item that I'll be re-introducing presently. Drumroll please...

Sock garters.

Yeah, how awesome is that? A garter, that goes 'round the calf, just under the knee, and clips to the end of your sock to keep it taught and smooth even when its elasticity no longer functions. I will be the envy of men, and the object of desire to women. The garter will make a comeback.

You'll see.

It'll be awesome.

Top 10 Reasons The World Would Be A Better Place If Everyone Thought Like Me

2006-09-22T10:15:00.000-04:00

#10. The only reason to go to war would be over stupidity. Pretty soon all the stupid people would be dead and then war would be a thing of the past.

#9. There would be no debate over which religion is the One True Religion. People would worship me, and any debate would be a moot point.

#8. Every public restroom would be required to have, in addition to toilet and urinal, a small secluded masturbatorium where one could relieve any pressing tensions that couldn't wait 'till you got home. Yes, couples could use these masturbatoria as well, but only mutual masturbation would be allowed to be performed.

#7. Coffee would be banned, and all coffee dispensaries would henceforth be required to dispense pineapple juice instead. An addiction to pineapple juice would then supplant our nation's great shame.

#6. Every single drug under the sun would immediately be legalized. In order to prevent harmful addictions, education [a formerly hard-to-find commodity] would be used to teach people about the effects of these drugs, and people would make informed decisions about their usage. If people, at this point, still abused these drugs, then any medical insurance or public assistance would be withdrawn, and Old Man Darwin would have his way with them. Survival of the fittest, and all that, y'know.

#5. People would actually read and make attempts to expand their minds. As a corollary, obscure authors like Harry Crews, Trevanian and Stephen R. Donaldson would be national treasures.

#4. Obscure bands like Porcupine Tree and Pure Reason Revolution would be found on Top 40 radio stations.

#3. House, M.D. would be the top-rated show, and discussed at watercoolers the following day, dissecting the show's plot and brilliance. Dr. Gregory House would be seen as a teen heartthrob, supplanting that icky McDreamy as a Tiger Beat pinup.

#2. Autobahn-like speed limits would be instituted on our nation's highways. As a corollary, people would be required to actually prove that they know how to drive under a wide variety of conditions, and know how to properly utilize the left [or speed] lane. If they could not prove this satisfactorily, or displayed an attitude that the world revolved around them on the road, then their licenses would be revoked, and they would be banished to public transportation.

And the number 1 reason the world would be a better place if everyone thought like me.....

#1. Collegiate institutions would be required to teach proper oral sex techniques, and oral sex itself would become the most often performed sex act, whilst missionary-position intercourse would be relegated to the status of little-performed foreplay. Note: by "oral sex", both fellatio and cunnilingus are implied.

Interlude: Ode to Poo

2006-09-21T13:22:00.000-04:00

Something there is in poo
which grows in the soul,
moist,
and glistening,
and coiled
in the bowl.

Sitting there on the can,
heaving and straining;
anus:
stretched
and bruised,
barely maintaining.

Long coiled rope suspended:
an umbilicus of poo,
twelve inches,
or thirteen,
surely
a record for you.

Involuntary anal contraction,
and the rope is cut:
the poo drops,
and plops,
and water
splashes up your butt.

Nauseating aroma.
Induces coma.
Unhealthy as broma.
Mistaken for adipoma.
Not recommended for
display in tokonoma.

Why I'm Like Dr. Gregory House, M.D.

2006-09-20T13:19:00.000-04:00

RIP: Greg D'Agostino

2006-09-14T13:30:00.000-04:00

So Pog posted a comment the other day about how I would want people to write about me if I died, and be damned if she wasn't right spot on. I'd want people to write about me, talk about me, party in my honor, commission statues in my honor [bronze, please!], name children after me, dedicate an addition to the Guggenheim in my name, set up a collegiate grant in my name, and have bored housewives scream out my name as their portly husbands give them a bit of the old "in and out".

'Course, I couldn't trust anyone to do a proper job at the eulogy, so I thought I'd write it out now, just in case, for such a time as it is needed.

The Euology of Greg D'Agostino

(as read by a tearful, but stunningly beautiful, woman)

To paraphrase Lt. Commander Data:

To know Greg D'Agostino was to love him. And to love him was to know him. Those who knew him, loved him. And those who loved him, knew him.

I think the above is a fair assessment of that wonderful, gracious man. For can it not be said that anyone who came into contact with him was not emotionally and physically overwhelmed by his presence? Did men not value his friendship and want to be just like him? Did not women secretly, or not so secretly, desire his physical charms?

I know that it was unfair that the laws of our country did not allow Greg to take multiple wives. He had so much love to give, and verily so much love to take, that it was a literal crime to deny the women of America, nay! the women of the world, access to his loving presence.

When housewives threw themselves at Greg, their husbands did not get angry. They just ruefully shrugged their shoulders, and wistfully smiled, knowing full well that their was nothing they could do to prevent this type of adoration. It was not that their wives loved them any less, it was more that Greg was such an elemental force of nature that the wives could not control their basic physical urges. The husbands contented themselves with manfully shaking Greg's hand after their wives had been despoiled, and thanking him for taking time out of his schedule to plow such fertile fields, so to speak.

I should probably mention Greg's intelligence. He forever struggled to allow the huge unwashed masses of humanity not to feel overly stupid in relation to himself, but he struggled with little success. The fact is, he was so far advanced in brainpower that even keeping silent was not enough. The steely look in his eyes, alive with sage-like awareness, was enough to humble the most advanced physicist, or string theorist, for that matter. In his plethora of blog entries, he often dropped archaic and little-used words, not to humble and shame his readership, but to prod them to access a dictionary and advance their own little vocabularies.

Greg often thought of humanity as a series of beloved pets, limited in brain power but lovable nonetheless, and he would feel genuine sadness when it was necessary to apply a little discipline with a swat on the nose, or a slap on the tochis.

But most of all, I think it is important to touch on Greg's modesty. Despite being incredibly brilliant, and handsome, and pheremonically superior [a package most men would kill for], he did not lord these attributes over the common man, the plebeian masses. He remained withdrawn from society, lest he be contaminated by their dirty hands. He closed his ears when Oprah recommended books to the slatternly painted faces of her middle-aged and intellectually vacuous female audience. He refrained from discussing politics in a time when the majority of his countrymen ate up the demagoguery of the prevailing political parties like dung beetles ate up balls of shit. And he absolutely refused to indulge in religious speculation when a large majority of the population was either convinced that the Universe had come into being 6,000 years ago and a 2,000 year old pamphlet was the literal truth of an unseen God, or that vibrating crystals could attune you to the disembodied spirit of a 20,000 year old extraterrestrial guru.

Yes, he was a modest man. And lovable. And special. I shall forever be saddened knowing I will never see him again, nor have the opportunity to rub oil onto his bald head, and have him rub that head all over my naked heaving body.

Rest in peace you glorious Man, you.

[roaring applause, standing ovation, audience filters out. fade to black.]

A Quartet of Random Observations and Happenstances

2006-09-12T13:25:00.000-04:00

One. Grief is Private.

I spent the day of 9/11/06 striving to avoid any mention of the anniversary of the 9/11/01 tragedy. Not because I'm insensitive or don't care what happened, but because I'm a firm believer that grief is a private thing. I will debate with you till the cows come home the sociopolitical ramifications of that day, examine the historical events and attitudes that led up to that day, and even hypothesize about what it means for our future in this fucked up world.

But I think that grief should be a private thing. Of course it's important to remember that many people lost their lives, and that this affected their families beyond belief. Of course it's important to remember the many acts of selfless heroism that occurred, that honor and duty still mean something in this fucked up world. And I know most people don't agree with me on this, but I think grief should be a private thing.

For example, here at work is a most vile custom, in my opinion. When a member of an employee's family dies, and they need to take some time off to deal with their tragedy, the word BEREAVEMENT is placed into our In-house tracking system. The grapevine buzzes, people find out who died, and when the employee comes back, everyone consoles them and offers condolences, and cast surreptitious glances at them with sympathetic and moist eyes.

Now I know most people don't agree with me on this, and they even tend to value that sort of community and shared support system, but I prefer my grief to be private. I don't want some acquaintance to know my business, and to see me in pain. I don't want their sympathy and condolences, I want to remember my loved one in my own way, treasure their memory, and heal in my own way and time.

I've told my boss, if ever someone in my family dies, I want straight sick time. No bereavement.

Two. String Theorists strike again.

A couple of days ago I noticed in my Sitemeter account, that I was getting quite a few hits landing on my August archive. However, frustratingly and most puzzling, there were no pointers to the referring page. I had no idea where these hits were coming from.

Some of the earliest hits, though, had come from a google search on the name Sylvester James Gates, Jr. There were also a couple of early hits from a Yahoo e-mail page. Most of the ISPs these hits were coming from were from collegiate institutions, and one even from the Brookhaven National Laboratory. The kicker: for those of you who remember my Superstring Man-crush post, Sylvester James Gates, Jr. is that fly string theorist with the mac-daddy hair-do.

Now, the only reason you'll not get a referring page link in these monitoring programs, is if someone references your page from a bookmark, types the address directly into the browser url window, or in some cases from a standalone mail client.

What I like to think happen is that some dude did a google search on Mr. Gates, saw my man-crush post, and fired off a series of e-mails to friends and acqaintances the world over, pointing out this amusing post. Actually, I'd love to believe that's what happened. It's important for super-intelligent string theorists to know that at least some people in the general public appreciate and are fascinated by what they're doing.

Three. Mama's Boy?

Not too long ago, my mom and grandmother bought me a new set of bedding. A red paisley comforter, a gold blanket, lily-white cotton sheets, and a brand-spankin' new mattress pad. They kick ass and I'm so psyched to have them, cause my old sheets were threadbare, and the comforter had done double duty as a blanket to lay on outdoors.

I suppose the question is, though, is it wrong for a forty year old man to let his momma buy him some new sheets?

I have to say, no! No way!

Two reasons.

One, I'm a bachelor, and unless you're gay or a god-forsaken metrosexual or overly clean, bedding just isn't that high up on your list of things to shop for. If I had to compose a short list of things that I'd shop for, here's what it's look like:

1.) Books.
2.) Food.
3.) Music.
4.) Electronics.
5.) Some more books.
6.) Some more food.
7.) Bedding.

Two, my mom and grandmother love to shop. I mean, they'll get up early Saturday morning, and got to the mall, have luch together, continue shopping, have dinner together, continue shopping, come home, and then dream about shopping.

The way I look at it is, who am I to deny them the pleasure of shopping for me for an item that I probably wouldn't shop for anyway? It's not like I let them buy me underwear too, is it? Wink!

Four. Retracted Testicles and Smoke Detectors.

I woke up this morning out of a deep, sound sleep at the god-forsaken hour of 0430. That's military time for 4:30 in the fucking morning. Let me tell you, four fucking thirty is not a human hour. Humans should not be awake at this time unless you're working third shift or have been up all night partying.

I stared at the ceiling wondering why I was awake. And then I heard it. A beep. The sound a smoke detector makes when its battery is on its last legs, so to speak. I knew I was not going to be able to sleep again with that damnable sound going off at 2-minute intervals, so I roused myself out of my nice, soft, warm, clean bed [see item number three above], and went downstairs to find this fucking smoke detector and consign it to the oblivion it deserved.

I stood in my dining room, in my birthday suit, waiting the what-seemed-like-an-eternal two minutes for the beep to go off again, when I realized just how fucking cold it was and that my testicles had retreated to their ancient home in the interior of my abdomen. This is the curse of Man, that their genitals are out in the open and on display, and that they are exquisitely sensitive to extremes of temperature, and that they shrink unmercifully when cold is applied to them.

Why was it so cold? 'Cause holy fucking shit it was 35 degrees out! It's not Fall anymore at night. We skipped right from summer into incipient winter. Why didn't I put any clothes on? Cause who wants to get dressed at 4:30 in the morning to go find a fucking beeping smoke detector?

Anyway, the thing finally beeped, and be damned if it wasn't the detector right outside my bedroom on the mezzanine ceiling. I went and stood on a chair and ripped it down and ripped the battery out and threw it on the floor and went back to bed. Fire? Who give a shit, I'd rather the dome fucking burn down if it would allow my testicles to descend a bit.

Here's alittle video I shot while experimenting with my camera. If you want to see what my bedroom looks like, take a gander here:

My Bedroom

Greg Climbs A Mountain

2006-09-10T15:00:00.000-04:00

Yes, that's right. Me. Not the Emetic Sage. And, it wasn't a mountain, it was more of a hill. The Great Blue Hill, actually.

At 635 ft. of elevation, the Blue Hill can't be called a mountain, but if one takes the North Skyline trail starting at the Reservation Headquarters to Elliot Tower at the summit, and then back down again along the South Skyline trail, you'll experience roughly 3 miles of rocky terrain with a fair number of steep ascents and descents to challenge you. If you're in good shape, the circuit is a breezy hour walk in the park. If you're not in shape, the trail will take it out of you. And by "take it out of you", I mean it will remove your will to live.

After writing the recent story "The Emetic Sage Climbs a Mountain", I realized that I, myself, really missed being out there in the open air and trees. The dome had been taking all my time with its renovations, leaving little for outside pursuits. And concomitantly, the more out of shape one gets, the less one wants to actually get out there and begin exercising again. 'Cause it hurts. The joints. The back. The lungs. It's so much easier to lay on the couch and wallow in gluttony.

But writing that story made me realize how much I missed it. The clean air. The vistas. The chance for appreciating nature. The chance for introspective thought as you plod along. And the opportunity to challenge yourself. A few years ago I used to hike that Skyline trail a lot, towards the end sometimes doing it 3 or 4 times a week. 'Till the dome came along.

So this morning I was like, Fuck it. I'm heading out and seeing if I can still make it through. I'd been doing my evening constitutionals, the back was starting to feel stronger, and I realized I really wanted to be back out there.

So I did it. It took me about an hour and 20 minutes, almost a half hour longer than it used to take, but today it wasn't about stopwatches and making good time. It was about getting out there again and appreciating the surroundings and challenging my body. And it all came back to me. The trail path; every little twist and turn; what rock not to step on; the best path for a particular descent. I think I'll be heading out every Sunday morning from now till summer. I think.

Oh, and I kept an eye out for my slightly clumsy eyeglass-wearing hamadryad, but she wasn't anywhere to be seen. I guess she doesn't inhabit these woods.

Here is a foto essay from a hike I did the day after Christmas in 2004. Hiking in the winter is awesome.

As always, click on the pic for a larger version if such things interest you.

The trail head for the North Skyline trail.

The trail continues. Notice the blue blaze on the tree to mark the trail. Getting lost is a bitch.

A tree that has come down over the trail. I call it Viszlat's Bane. Why do I call it that? Because one day Viszlat cracked his head on that trunk trying to pass underneath. That had to have hurt.

Looking across a valley to the weather tower on the summit of the Great Blue Hill.

A wooden footbridge over a small pond. This small valley tends to retain water as a sort of catch basin.

This is Elliot Tower at the summit of the Great Blue Hill. It's all downhill from here.

The Chronicles of My Kitchen

2006-09-09T22:00:00.000-04:00

Last week it was one year that I've been doing floor and kitchen renovations in the dome. I thought I'd celebrate the anniversary by posting a foto essay of the progress over that time span. As always, click on the picture for a larger version if you so desire.

------------------

May, 2005
This is a still from a promo video the realtor did sometime in May of 2005. Notice the white tile, and white cupboards, and white everything.

May, 2005
Another still. Notice the cabinets over the island. My head would routinely connect with these during prep work, and is one of the main reasons I decided to do the renovation.

August 25, 2005
I'd owned the dome for two months at this point. The demolition is well under way.

September 6,2005
Base cabinets are out and old floor is up.

October 22, 2005
A buddy of mine helping me lay the new cherry floor. Notice the deliciously difficult acute and obtuse angled cuts around the steel plate.

November 20, 2005
Cutting a window in the side wall to open the kitchen up even more. I love open spaces.

January 23, 2006
The new floor is finally done in the kitchen. The back wall has been removed to re-do the sink waste and to re-wire a couple eletrical circuits. The side wall window has been completed and re-framed.

March 20, 2006
Sheetrock has been replaced, cabinets hung, and new dishwasher and stove have been set in place.

April 24, 2006
A functioning kitchen finally. This is how it currently looks, with a black and green granite countertop along the back wall, and a maple butcher block on the island. As soon as I get some decorating sense I'll do a back splash and add some color to the walls. I'm just psyched to be able to cook again, though, so no rush.

Sage Climbs A Mountain: Part II

2006-09-06T22:37:00.000-04:00

With one day of climbing behind him, the Emetic Sage was almost half way up the southern face of the mountain.

He was keeping roughly parallel to a stream that brought snowmelt down from the peak to the valley below. The way was fairly gentle, with occasional cuts and switchbacks that necessitated hand- as as well as foot-holds. On those occasions, the stream would plunge out of its millenial bed and cascade over the precipice into a frothy pool below before continuing to wend its way ever downward.

At one such pool Sage decided to stop and rest and break his fast. He shrugged the rucksack down off his shoulder and removed a bit of jerky and some cheese and a biscuit and munched contentedly. When thirsty, he cupped great handfuls of icy cold water out of the stream, and drank deeply. This water had never seen contamination from any of Man's great works and, as such, lent a concomitant purity to Sage's soul as he imbibed.

Sated, Sage gazed 3000 feet back down the mountain to the valley below where everything appeared tiny and ant-like. Cars were ant-like, houses, factories, stop-lights, malls, freeways -- all the works of Man were small and tiny and incredibly far away in distance and spirit. He took a deep breath of the cool fresh air and reflected that he needed to return to these mountaintops more frequently; the bilious nature of living in crowded cities and driving crowded highways slowly sapped the enjoyment of life and poisoned his spirit.

And then a faint sound penetrated his woolgathering, a lilting melody carried on the gentle breeze. It was quite elemental, and spoke to him on a level below conscious thought. Sage gathered up his supplies and headed upstream, following the melody like a trail of breadcrumbs.

Up ahead through a strand of trees in a clearing was another wading pool, this one contained by several large boulders and ringed by towering pines. Warily, Sage peered out from behind a nearby rock outcropping and was quite surprised to spy half a dozen naiads bathing and playing, idly singing as they frolicked. Their hair was long and sky-blue, reaching down to the tops of their pink-nippled breasts, and the limpid water of the pool clung to their skin like a caul, causing their bodies to appear to undulate with delightful ripples and purls.

Within the ring of pines, half a dozen dryads gamboled as well. They sang counterpoint to the naiads' melody whilst moving lightly from branch to branch in a simple yet intricate dance. Their hair was long and green, reaching down to the tops of their brown-nippled breasts, and their skin was smooth but segmented and orange-brown like the cones of the vast pines they inhabited.

Smitten, and still under the spell of their melody, Sage stepped out from behind the rock and moved towards the ring of trees. And the melody abruptly cut off. The naiads screamed daintily and disappeared into the depths of the pool with soft plashes, and the dryads vanished into the upper boughs of their pines with faint leave-like rustles.

A quiet pause, and then a thump, as a previously unseen dryad fell from a branch and landed higgledy-piggledy on a bed of pine needles.

"Oh, dear!" the dryad exclaimed in a sweetly high-pitched voice.

Sage chuckled.

"Oh! Who's there? Who's out there?" and she patted the pine needles around her, myopically looking for some lost article.

"It's only I, little one," Sage replied, moving closer, "and I mean you no harm." He bent down and picked up a pair of eye-glasses, and handed them to the dryad.

She placed them on her face, pushing them up with a forefinger until they rested gently on the bridge of her nose. The glasses were diamond-shaped, somewhat resembling the cat's-eye frames of prior generations.

"Oh, thank you, kind Sir. I'm so glad you're not here to do any harm."

"No, little dryad, that is not my way. But, I must say, in all my years I have never seen a dryad wearing glasses."

"Oh, Sir, I'm afraid I'm not a very good dryad. My eye-sight is poor, and as you can see, I'm quite clumsy." She paused, and looked determined. "But I love my tree very much, and I have been here for many years, caring and protecting it as best I can."

"And you have done a fine job, little hamadryad, for your tree looks tall and hale and healthy."

She dimpled, and made a low curtsy. And stumbled a bit, and leaned on her tree for support. Sage chuckled again.

The day passed in like wise, talking and laughing, Sage nibbling on dried meat and cheese, the hamadryad sipping on water from the nearby stream and basking in photosynthetic sunshine. Sage dipped into his resevoir of stories and regaled the hamadryad with tales of the wide world she'd never seen, and she told tales of purity and service and growth and sun and wind and rain. Presently the other dryads and naiads returned to the trees and pool, and the frolicking and dancing continued without fear of human interruption.

And so day passed into night, and Sage and the hamadryad continued talking under the moon and starlight, and it was only the coming of dawn again that made them pause and shyly realize that it was time for sleep. And the first day was done.

Love blossomed, and took root, as it often does in the most unlikely of circumstances. And, as a tree setting down roots is a physical process in the world, so too does love often find expression through the physical coupling of those who express that love. And so Sage set the hamadryad down beneath her tree and made manifest his love of her, and she, in return, did the same. And the second day was done.

The third day dawned and with it something quite miraculous. For hamadryads are born with the birth of their tree, and die with the death of their tree, and know no other method of reproduction or existence. But Sage's hamadryad this morning was quite gravid with child. And that same evening she gave birth to a healthy baby girl, whose hair was a deep viridian, but whose skin was as white and unlined as the Sage's own. The baby squalled, then quieted as she was given her mother's breast. And so the third day was done.

Life grew into a routine for Sage and the hamadryad, as they tended to their daughter, and followed the rhythm of the changing days. They fed her, and clothed her, and taught her what is good, and what is bad, and what is to be avoided, and what is to be sought out. When she was sad, they comforted her; when she was happy, they laughed with her; when she was angry, they soothed her; and when she was afraid, they showed her the hidden strength we all have within.

There came a day, however, that comes to all children and parents, when the daughter was ready, even eager, to set off on her own path of life. And though it grieved the hamadryad to see her daughter go, she wished her well, and bade her welcome to return at any time.

More time passed, as time inevitably does: summer turning to fall, the air growing crisp each evening, frost crisping the ground upon waking. The hamadryad grew soporific at such times, and Sage could see that soon she would sleep sound the winter months away. And one morning the couple heard wild geese honking overhead as they made their way to warmer climes, and Sage knew that he would be leaving soon as well. The old mountain trail, dormant for a while, was calling to him again with its irresistible lure.

The next morning dawned cold and white, a dusting of snow over tree and stream like a blanket of peace over the world. Barely conscious, her glasses askew at the tip of her nose, the hamadryad gave a last kiss to the Sage and shut her eyes. Sage returned the kiss, softly, on her neck below her ear, and placed her gently in the warm knot of her tree, there to sleep for as long as the cold lasted.

Sage gathered a few supplies and filled his old rucksack, and pushed on upstream, the path faint but present, and wending ever upward.

Sage Climbs a Mountain: Part I

2006-09-03T12:40:00.000-04:00

The Emetic Sage stood amongst the steep foothills of the mountain. Enormous humps of granite like the exposed backbone of the world interspersed with towering pines filled his vision as he gazed up and upwards at the mountaintop plunging into thick white cloud cover. He meant to climb this mountain, and as the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, he took that step and crossed over into the tree line.

Just ahead, however, and in a clearing off to the right, stood a small one-room house, gabled and clapboarded, with a stone chimney that pierced its moss roof and sent white plumes of smoke into the dawn air. It looked very inviting to the Sage -- very warm and very cozy -- so much so that he crossed the clearing and knocked on the door.

It was almost instantaneously thrown wide, and in the opening stood a rather small yet zaftig middle-aged woman. Her dress was simple and plain, and a gingham apron covered her ample bosom. Her face was ruddy and pleasant, her eyes kind, and her smile wide. "Welcome!" she greeted, and ushered Sage in. "You're just in time for breakfast."

"Look, Dad," she said, speaking to a middle-aged man who sat at the table, "we've got us some comp'ny for breakfast."

The man looked up and grunted. "Hrmmph. Sit down boy -- sit yourself down."

Sage went obediently over to the table and sat down, shaking hands with the man first. He had a good solid grip, large calloused hands than felt like they could straight-arm an anvil by the horn.

"Thank you for the hospitality, Sir," Sage said.

"Oh, 'tweren't nothin', my boy, nothin' at all. You've got the looks of a climber in you, and a body's got to have fuel for a climb, that's for darn sure. Mother, you bring this boy a plate and some utensils, and Boy? You just dig right in."

The table, a homespun affair of rough-sawn pine boards, was covered in a red and white checked tablecloth, and laden with deliciously aromatic victuals. There was a heaping platter of flapjacks, and a large platter of scrambled eggs, and buttermilk biscuits, and bacon and sausage, and marmalade and jelly, and a pitcher of home-made maple syrup, and honeydew melon, and coffee and enormous glasses of orange juice.

Sage piled his plate high, and commenced to eating. He started with the eggs and bacon and sausage and biscuits, and when he finished that he loaded up himself a short-stack of those deliciously light but crisp flapjacks, and smothered them with rich real butter and marmalade and syrup.

"Mother," the man said, "it sure does me good to see a body eat like that. That's enthusiasm there, I tell you. Enthusiasm!"

Mother rolled her eyes and said to the Sage, "What's your name, Son?"

Sage swallowed a mouthful of flapjack and said, "Most people call me 'Sage'."

"Maybe most people call you 'Sage', Son, but what's your name?"

Sage sat there for a bit, thinking. It had been so long. Then he smiled.

"Thefarie. My name is 'Thefarie'."

"Teh-far-ee-uh? Now, Son, that there's a mighty strange name. What be your surname?"

"Lands sakes alive!" Dad interrupted. "Mother, let the boy eat in peace without you yammerin' and pesterin' 'im with pointless questions."

"Alright, Dad, don't go gettin' your overalls in a bunch," Mother replied, miffed. "I'm just trying to show the boy some polite conversation."

"More like polite interrogation, sounds to me."

The couple continued to good-naturedly bicker as Sage went back to contentedly stuffing forkfull after forkfull of breakfast into his gob. The bickering made him faintly uneasy, but he could see that it was the their way, and that deep down the couple loved and cherished each other.

After finally finishing eating, Sage leaned back in his chair, placed his hands over his abdomen, and groaned contentedly.

Father beamed, and said, "C'mon, Boy, let's us sit a spell on the porch." They rose up slowly from the table, their joints creaking, while Mother commenced to clear the table for the washing up.

"May I help you with that, Ma'am?" Sage asked.

"Oh, get along with you, Son! I'm much obliged, but the day I can't handle the warshing up in my own kitchen is the day they lay me out for the final judgment."

Sage nodded his head and, truth be told, felt fairly relieved that Mother didn't take him up on his offer. He followed Dad out onto the porch and set himself down into a large wood chair, solid as the earth. He settled himself comfortably and gazed out over the valley below. The sun was rising higher into the clear blue sky now, leaving only wispy white clouds to scud high overhead. A slight breeze carried the scent of pine and jasmine and goldenrod. The only sound was that of birds cawing in the distance while they soared on thermals.

Dad pulled a small pipe out the bib of his overalls and started fiddling with it: tapping it upside down on the arm of his chair to clear the lees, then filling the bowl with a pinch of tobacco, and tamping it down a bit. He took a long-stemmed Diamond wooden lucifer and gave it a brief but strong flick with his horny thumbnail, and it flamed into life. He then applied the flame to the bowl, puffing all the while, till the tobacco caught sufficiently to stay smoldering on its own.

"You care for a smoke, Boy?"

"No thank you, Sir," Sage replied, "I don't smoke." At least not tobacco, Sage thought to himself. But he didn't want to burden the man with that knowledge. They settled into a companionable silence, appreciating the morning, Sage lost in his own thoughts, Dad smoking and rocking in his chair. Eventually the silence and fresh air and plumes of sweet-smelling tobacco lulled Sage into a gentle nap.

And he didn't wake until a strong but gentle hand nudged him and the sun was high and directly overhead. "Rise and shine, Boy. If you're going t'go, now's a good a time as any."

Sage rose and stretched, yawned and blinked. "My, that was nice. Yes, you're right, Sir, it's time I took up my journey."

Mother handed him a heavy rucksack. "Now you take these viands, and I won't brook 'no' for an answer." Sage looked into the sack, and there was some dried and salted meats, and a couple wheels of good strong cheese, and biscuits left over from breakfast, and several apples red and ripe.

"I'm much obliged, Ma'am, and I thank you very kindly for the gifts and hospitality."

"Oh, you don't be so formal now, and just call me Mother like old Dad does." And she gave Sage a big bearhug and pressed his head into her ample bosom. She smelled of cooking and home and hearth, and Sage breathed deep as he hugged her back.

"Now you go, Son, and don't look back. 'The moving finger writes; and, having writ, moves on: nor all thy piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.'"

Sage smiled at her, and nodded, and turned to old Dad. They looked each other square in the eye and shook hands again. And then Dad pulled him close and hugged him and slapped him on the back as men are wont to do in times of emotion not easily expressed through words.

"You look out for yourself, Boy, and don't take any wooden nickels. Remember, 'the woods are lovely, dark and deep, and you've got miles to go before you sleep.'"

"Yes, Sir, that I do. Goodbye, then," and he turned and walked out of the clearing onto his path up the mountain and, true to Mother's advice, did not look back.

A Perfect Moment

2006-08-29T09:21:00.000-04:00

In any life lived, over the years high and low points accumulate.

A schoolage child, in remembering his limited past, may point to a particularly delicious lunch [a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with the crust cut off, a juice box, a yodel, and no fruit!] as his high point. A low point might be the last time he was set upon by bullies on the way home and given noogies 'till his scalp was raw.

As I now enter into my middle years, I often think back on my experiences, and to the many high and low points: ones that transcend that delicious lunch, and regrettably, ones that were worse than some abraded skin.

But I think out of all my memories, one stands as a particularly transcendent moment. It may seem hopelessly banal, or even silly, to you, but to me it's one of those rare special moments that speak to what life is all about.

In the late '80s, my ex-wife was attending URI, and when I was home from playing gigs, I would spend what time I could with her in her dorm room. The room was on the third floor, a corner suite, with long windows that looked out over manicured walkpaths and trees.

One winter night, late, we were laying on the floor, wrapped in quilts taken from the bed. She was nestled close to me, drowsing, her head on my chest, tendrils of her curly hair tickling my lips and nose. I was awake, but in that hazy realm between full conciousness and slumber. Outside the windows, a thick wet snow fell past the illumination of the streetlamp, flakes so large and pregnant that they twinkled individually at me on their journey to the ground.

There is something magical about being so warm and snug when a biting cold is so near. As I lay there on the floor, wrapped in my woman and warm blankets, something clicked in my head, and I entered a state of perfect calm. Perfect tranquility. Perfect peace. There was no thought of what was to come, or what was in the past -- there was just this almost timeless sense of pure contentment.

I believe I sort of smiled, and just existed like that for as long as possible. But alas, perfection cannot last long in the physical world -- the physical always come a-calling. Your arm starts to go numb from the weight and lack of circulation. That balance between wakefulness and sleep tips in the direction of waking, you move your body to adjust, and the moment is gone. You eventually drift off to sleep, and all you have left is the memory of a perfect moment in your life. But it's a powerful memory.

It's funny, sexual calisthenics are often the driving force behind much of human behaviour -- and don't get me wrong, that sweaty exercise is fun and important -- but when I think back to what made an impression on me most in all my years of relationships, it was that perfect moment of being in my love's arms and totally content and at peace, even if only briefly.

A God In My Woods

2006-08-27T17:46:00.000-04:00

You know, in my last post -- the elegiac tribute to a fallen watermelon -- I didn't mention something. I think I'll mention it now, though, because it's something pretty interesting. Oh, some of you may say to yourselves, "Pshaw!", or, "Loony!", or "That boy's completely out of his gourd!", but I've got to say that it's all quite true. Or as true as anything can be called true.

And the thing I didn't mention was that I have a god in my woods. The watermelon I brought out and tossed to the ground was his tribute. For services rendered. He loves watermelon, and who could gainsay him that? His name is Silvanus.

My little piece of woods is a tiny enclave compared to where he once held sway. The large and old-growth forests of Europe, uncultivated land for millenia, were his protectorate. And one thing I'll say for my god: in the old days you did not want to fuck with him. You showed him respect; you lit no fires, you honed no axe, and you trod lightly.

Ah, but it's the way of the world that the new crowds out the old. As populations rose and trees were felled to provide shelter for an ever-burgeoning mass of humanity, a new bloke came on the scene. Jesu, a former carpenter turned messianic revolutionist, taught the meek and the poor to store up treasures in heaven 'cause, guess what?, life's a bitch. And as they looked heavenward with glaucomic eyes, they no longer saw the glory and power of the gods that regulated the ebb and flow of the natural world.

Poor Silvanus struggled on for a while longer -- two or three hundred years -- but the writing was on the wall. His once-proud forests dwindling, he set sail for the New World and took up lodging in the pristine forests of what would someday be come to be called America. There he had a grand time, interacting with the gods and spirits of the Indian nations, and for many years things were good.

But, alas, those voracious consumers of trees eventually followed, and we all know how that worked out. Silvanus realized that as this plague of humanity spread, sowing disbelief like others sowed crops, sowing that most inane belief that Man is not a part of Nature, the Earth would continue to get smaller and smaller. There would eventually be no place for him to dance and frolic and commune with his trees and dryads, and when that happened a very important part of the fabric of life on this planet would be lost.

And that is how I came upon him last summer when I arrived to live in my dome. He had been hemmed in on all sides by encroaching humanity, and now lived in this 20-acre preserve, bordered by roads and concrete and oil-soaked macadam.

I quickly became aware of him, and we slowly grew into a relationship of mutual respect and wariness. Silvanus' memory was long, and much of it was coloured by anger and resentment. I venerated his woods, however, and brought him tribute often. He loved all manner of organic products, anything that would nourish his roots and life, but most of all he loved the watermelon. I would bring the rind out to him after consuming the delicate red flesh. I would place it at the entrance to his woods, and bow in respect, and walk quietly away.

And with that renewing of the ancient covenants, Silvanus was content, and came to terms with his diminished position. For it is not about the size and extent of our grandeur, it is about the purity of our service; and that may be reflected in one act of kindness: the nurturing of one little kitten, the planting of one little tree, or the respect given to one diminished god.

But don't let his diminished state fool you! You'll want to tread lightly if you're ever in my back woods. You'll want to show the proper respect. You do not want to fuck with Silvanus.

An Elegy

2006-08-25T10:41:00.000-04:00

Have you ever felt sad? A bone-crushing weight of depression that sets upon you out of nowhere like a black stormcloud pregnant with gelid fury?

Or maybe a wistful tristesse, that sense that one's best years have passed by, with naught to look forward to but crippling deterioration and lonely death.

How about that queasy emptiness in the stomach, the taste of copper in one's mouth, as you realize your woman never really loved you and is never coming back? Never.

I have recently felt such feelings.

It happened when I cut into my last watermelon.

The melon was small, like the runt of the litter. Its flesh was deceptively red, and had good water content. But when I bit into a slice, the taste was not so sweet. There was a very faint aura of decay, a harbinger of the time when fields lay fallow and wait silently for winter's cold embrace.

As I ate the melon, I realized that this would be the last one I would eat this year. I briefly teetered on the cusp, and then passed into Autumn. Many people define this season's beginning by the autumnal equinox, but for me it begins with the realization that there will be no more sweet melon.

And so, I gathered up the remains of the watermelon, the rind and what flesh could not be consumed, and I cradled it gently in my hands. I held the carcass like a mother tenderly holds her newborn infant. And I brought it outside, out into the back yard, and to the edge of the woods that border my property. And I cast the carcass into the woods, there to rejoin the ground from whence it came; there to nourish tiny little animals as it slowly decayed and became part of that great wheel of life and death in which we must all eventually take part.

I took a deep breath, the cool fresh air, the scent of grass and pine on the breeze, and felt at peace. Gone was the tristesse from feelings of loss, the sense of fear of a melon-less future. What remained was an excitation for the fruits of autumn, of harvest-time, and for that sense of peace and rest that comes when the world winds down its clock for a while.

peplerfuckingrules.com

2006-08-15T14:00:00.000-04:00

Some of you may know, and some of you may not have realized, that when KP leaves a comment on one of my posts, he also alters the url that normally points to one's profile. While I like a good comment, I always look forward to these pithy little amusing quips.

For lack of a more interesting post, I decided to compile all his 39 comment urls and display them here:

1.) http://www.peplerfuckingrules.com
2.) http://www.pepleristheman.com
3.) http://www.myspace.com/soulcoughi [his real page!]
4.) http://www.peplerkicksass.com
5.) http://www.iruleandyouknowit.com
6.) http://www.donttestme.com
7.) http://www.pryingopenmythirdeye.com
8.) http://www.cocaineisahellofadrug.com
9.) http://www.gregtookabulletforme.com
10.) http://www.thirdeye.com
11.) http://www.drugsarebadmmmkay.com
12.) http://www.killalldirtyhippies.com
13.) http://www.keithdontdodishes.com
14.) http://www.sagesuckslozoscock.com
15.) http://www.burned.com
16.) http://www.girlsarestupid.com
17.) http://www.porcupinedeathmetaltree.com
18.) http://www.howdoirocksohard.com
19.) http://www.wierdo.com
20.) http://www.getoutofmyhead.com
21.) http://www.sexrules.com
22.) http://www.metalforlife.com
23.) http://www.wingsofdesire.com
24.) http://www.konichiwa.com
25.) http://www.billhicksismyhero.com
26.) http://www.psychokillerssuck.com
27.) http://www.blogsaregay.com
28.) http://www.ilikechicksanddrugs.com
29.) http://www.headnigga.com
30.) http://www.greghasimmortalizedme.com
31.) http://www.gregdavinci.com
32.) http://www.sweet.com
33.) http://www.wah.com
34.) http://www.iwasherefirst.com
35.) http://www.buuuuuuurn.com
36.) http://www.bestcommentever.com
37.) http://www.forcedcomment.com
38.) http://www.dontcockblockme.com
39.) http://www.youarestillanutbag.com

God Holds a Q & A Session

2006-08-13T11:08:00.000-04:00

I woke bleary-eyed and confused. Where was I? Oh, right -- God's "debate" night. I was still in His private study. Oh, man, did that nectar pack a wallop.

The room was quiet and still in the early morning hours, or whenever it was in Heaven, except for the sound of faint snoring. I got up from the piles of quilts where I had finally made my nest; the girl was gone.

Off in a corner, the Emetic Sage and Bittersweet lay entangled in a Gordian knot of limbs and bedsheets. While Bittersweet had been cured of her penchant for violence, she still enjoyed prowling through the fleshpots of the night, a de-fanged and de-clawed cat haunting her old stomping grounds. She must have come in late last night and joined the festival after I had passed out.

I went off in search of the snoring, and there behind the velvet couch was the Buddha, laying on his back, his pendulous abdomen a great mountain rising skyward. A trail of drool ran from the corner of his mouth, down past his jaw, and collected in a pool on the oriental carpet. On either side of him, a dancing girl lay nestled in the crook of his arm and chest, rising and falling along with his laboured breathing.

A voice said softly, "Let him sleep. He exerted himself greatly last night, and no longer has the strength and stamina and yes, trim physique, that he once did."

I turned, and there was God, sitting by the fire in an old comfortable recliner. He made a gesture, and I went over to sit by him.

"God?"

"Yes, my son?"

"Do you have sex?"

"I can have sex, but usually do not. There's really no point, as it is only a pale approximation of my very existence."

"God?"

"Yes, my son?"

"Have you ever heard of string theory?"

God laughed. "Heard of it? I set it up." He mused for a second. "You know how string theory can explain how everything in the Universe arose from several microseconds after the Big Bang, but anything before that is simply nebulous guesswork?"

"Yes, I've read that."

"Well, before the Big Bang, before there was such a thing as space and time, there I sat, smaller than the Planck length, in between units of Planck time. I sat there, and contemplated myself, for what else could there be to contemplate but myself? I sat there, outside of all conceptions of space and time. How long I sat there is a meaningless thought. There was no time yet.

"And when certain conditions came to be, maybe a particularly interesting quantum jitter, everything expanded. Out of my essense formed a string, and out of that string space was formed, and time was formed, and from the perfectly lowest entropic conditions imaginable a great expansion took place, from whence your string theorists and inflationary cosmologists take over in explaining the rest with great precision.

"So, to further clarify my answer to your previous question, I can have sex, but really it's just like a big masturbation session. At my level, the concept that anything is distinct and alone is an illusion. Out of myself came everything that is, and everything that is, is me."

"What about the worship? Does it sway you?"

God looked sad for a moment. "You know, humans can be real fucked up sometimes. Man, the last thing I want is to be worshipped. Number one, why abase yourselves? You're not children, and I'm not your dad. Number two, I find it offensive that people think they can wheedle things out of me. Do you honestly think that I'm so petty that I sit around all day, basking in devotion, and rewarding people based on how much they thank me, and praise me. If I fucking hear one more pro athelete thank me for giving them the power to win against some heathen on the opposing team, well, I'm gonna go nuts!"

God sighed, and massaged his temples. "Sorry about that, but I just get so angry sometimes..."

I waited a bit, and said, "Is it appropriate, then, to call you God?"

God furrowed his brow. "All I can say is, that it is appropriate to call me God, and it is also inappropriate to call me God."

"How so?"

"Language is imprecise. It does not accurately describe reality as it truly is. And humans, as constructs embedded in spacetime, cannot..." God hunted for a word. "...cannot comprehend certain features of reality. You might as well ask an ant to solve for the derivative of a differential equation. Here..."

God reached a finger over and touched my forehead. Instantly my mentality expanded outward and I knew what it felt like to exist outside of space and time. As my conciousness expanded outward my eyes started to bulge in my head, and a great sense of ecstasy and an equal sense of tremendous pain wracked my body. My physical form was starting to come apart.

And then it cut off. The knowledge I had gained leaked away like a faucet in need of repair. I was once again a lowly human, but the sense of awe and peace remained.

"Sorry about that," God said. "Like I said, some things just cannot be comprehended. Your mind and body would have come apart, by the way, had I not stopped the process."

"And all this partying you do?"

"That's just me playing games with myself. I may have given birth to everything in the Universe, but things evolved on their own after that. I've been following humans lately with great interest, and pride, and wonder, and sadness.

"For example: love. A mighty biochemical process designed to elicit the pair-bonding of mating individuals, for the welfare of their progeny. But is that all love is? Not with you humans. The concept, and even the feeling, of love has evolved along with your mentalities. It is mother-love, it is the love you feel for a kitty cat, or a dog, or special pet. It is sexual. It is a-sexual. It is that feeling you get when the welfare of who or what you love is more important to you than your own welfare."

"Do pets go to Heaven?"

"Do you love them?"

"Sure."

"Then they go. Heaven's all about the love. Let me show you."

A space opened up in the air before us, and figures gradually began to come into view. It was much like Earth, but different too. People rapped with other people, played tennis, strolled in parks, swam in rivers, ate -- lord how they ate! Pineapple juice flowed like water! Huge patches of watermelon dotted the land. Chickens jumped into fryolators and were painlessly and happily cooked. Fields of peanuts were harvested and dumped into large machines that squeezed out ropes of peanut butter. One machine might have smooth, another chunky, another might be filled with nutella. One lass twirled and danced between the machines, a big silver spoon in hand, sampling the various types over and over again.

And God was right, here and there were beloved pets. Kittens gyred and gamboled between their owners legs, climbing with claws that never hurt. Dogs yipped excitedly, running to and fro. There were ferrets too, and frogs, and mice, and gerbils, and snakes, and all manner of animals that people had poured love into.

And then I saw him. It was my grandfather. He was relaxing in an EZ-boy with a bowl of peanuts handy, working on a crossword whilst alternately watching a red sox game televised from down on Earth.

Tears begain to squeeze hotly out of my eyes, and I got up to go talk to him. I strained and tried to get through the space to him, but I couldn't. God held onto me, and wouldn't let me go. "I want to go!" I begged. "I miss him so much, let me go talk to him, please let me go..."

And God sighed, and the space once again clouded over, and the vision of Heaven was gone. "I'm sorry, little one," he said, and was truly sorry. "That, unfortunately, is not permitted. I should have known the effect this would have on you. But be of good cheer, for as you can see he exists yet in the fashion of those departed. He remembers, and waits, and enjoys that which he loved on Earth."

"But, God," I cried. "How do I know that this is all real and not something I just made up to amuse myself and get me through the day?"

"You don't, my son. But does it really matter?"

Midnight to 5:24

2006-08-12T16:00:00.000-04:00

I had an experience last night.

It was probably close to midnight, and as I was practising some Bach on the piano, a little voice spoke in my ear. I stopped playing for a bit to listen. At first I was somewhat nervous, this voice out of nowhere whispering to me. But the voice was soothing, and I kept listening.

It was telling me things -- funny things, sad things, angry things, mundane things, things that live in the depths of the human heart. I listened in fascination and timeless wonder as these tales were spun.

And lo! before I knew it, the clock was showing 5:24, and I realized I had passed the night away in a reverie, listening to this soothing and disembodied voice. It was only then that I became exhausted and, despite the fact that I didn't want the voice to stop, passed into a dreamless slumber.

Looking back now, I'm not quite sure if it all really happened. The memory of it has a dream-like quality, but was it a dream? Maybe it was an angel? Or maybe a fae, come to weave some eldritch enchantment over me?

I'm not sure.

A Few Observations

2006-08-11T21:22:00.000-04:00

I went out last night with a gaggle of kids from work. March was there, KP, Jocular, Nobby Burton, Bittersweet, her two friends, Divad Sairf, and others who I have not blogged about. A few observations:

1.) The club, Martini's, was pretty cool. I dig the layout. It's essentially a bar, with couches and ottomans placed strategically on the opposite wall. As I lounged in a couch, and watched liquor flow like water, I rapped with KP about how cool it would be if each table by each couch had a large hookah with a complimentary bowl of leaf alongside for smoking. I mean, not everyone wants to drink till they puke or pass out. Oh wait, smoking's illegal, but drinking's not. How's that again?

2.) I have re-confirmed, through glaring evidence over the years, and especially last night, that I cannot dance to save my life. As a musician, I can analyze complex polyrythyms and odd time signatures. I can tap out, using fingers hands or feet, the simplest hip-hop beat to the most convoluted jazz.

Try to sway or gyrate or bop in time, however, to a simple dance groove, and I look like a severely retarded child with incipient cerebral palsey. This has confirmed something that I've always known; I live in my head and not in my body. But I gave it a go; it's amazing what a few drinks can do.

3.) Girls are fucking awesome. Just awesome. They're so sweet to hold, so soft and curvy, and so happy and full of the joy of life. I feel it incumbent on me to say, however, that they can also be hell on Earth; but last night these girls were wonderfully tipsy and ebulliently jovial.

4.) I talked to a bloke, and apparantly this blog is more widely read than I had thought. While it's flattering on one level, it's also somewhat unnerving, as I don't know you, but you surely know me. I would simply say, if you're reading this, and you dig it or not on whatever level, leave me a comment or two.

5.) I've got to send props out to my old mate Nobby Burton. He dropped a line at the club that just had me in stitches, and in awe at the multiple levels it worked on. I'm sorry that I can't repeat it here, but it wouldn't make much sense without a lot of personal exposition, and I'm not prepared to do that. But kudos, mate, well done.

Superstring Man-Crush

2006-08-09T11:15:00.000-04:00

This post is rated:
W	Big Words.
P	Personal ramblings.
C	Comedy

My mate Viszlat has mentioned in the past that he has a man-crush on Tom Brady. Totally a-sexual, mind you, he just respects Brady's attitude and admires his accomplishments on the field.

Well, lately I've been forming some man-crushes of my own. Check out some of these fly dudes:

	John Schwarz. One of the fathers of string theory. His work with Michael Green on anomaly cancellation in Type I string theories led to the so-called first superstring revolution of 1984.
	Michael Green. Along with Schwarz above, one of the fathers of string theory. He has also worked on Dirichlet boundary conditions which led to the discovery of D-branes.
	Leonard Susskind. Susskind was one of three physicists who independently discovered during 1970 that the Veneziano dual resonance model of strong interactions could be described by a quantum mechanical model of strings.
	Edward Witten. Probably one of the top minds working in superstring theory today. Founder of M-theory. Fields medalist.
	Brian Greene. Writer and host of the hit book and television series The Elegant Universe. This guy is dreamy.
	And the mac-daddy of them all.... Sylvester James Gates, Jr.! He does research in a wide variety of supersymmetrical systems, and has the flyest hairdo this side of Sly and The Family Stone.

These dudes are the shiznit when it comes to teasing out the secrets of the universe. They're about as advanced intelligence-wise compared to me as I am to a mentally challenged ant.

Bittersweet's Symphony

2006-08-07T12:08:00.000-04:00

This post is rated:
S	D	V	L

bittersweet is a lass that found my blog and fell under the spell of my writing. she asked that i write a story about her. however, like many of my stories, this one got away from me, and is not 100% accurate in its depiction of bittersweet as she really is. probably more like 98% accurate.

Bittersweet's Symphony: A Tale in Five Parts

Part I: Prelude

Bittersweet was getting ready to go out for a night on the town. It was a highly ritualized and involved process.

She sat in an old kitchen chair with a tablecloth covering her torso and lap. Her sister, stunningly fetching in her own right, used a series of shears, irons, and dryers to convert Bittersweet's coiffure from one of quotidian utility to that of a lion's mane of pulchritude.

Close at hand, a drink sat frosty and inviting. It was one-third fruit juice, two-thirds 80-proof ethanol. Every so often Bittersweet cradled the glass lovingly in her delicate hands. She caressed it, as if she were a loving mother nurturing her baby. And she suckled from it as well, her pink tongue flickering hither and yon to catch any droplets left behind.

The liquid coursed through her system, leaving a fiery trail from oesophagus to stomach. With each draught, she grimaced and shuddered with pleasure. The ethanol was a very important part of her pre-game ritual; it was the catalyst that transformed Bittersweet from a mild-mannered corporate drone to a predator of the first class.

Bittersweet did not question her predatory nature. She experienced no existential angst regarding her place in the food chain. As a Bengal tiger will feast on tasty Indian villager flesh without qualm, Bittersweet saw the conquering of young male "hotties" as quite a natural activity, divorced from questions of right and wrong. She was vaguely aware that other human females did not act in this wise, but she gave it as much thought as you or I might give to the swatting of a mosquito.

So, coiffure done, ethanol consumed, makeup applied, nails painted, Bittersweet and her sister and her two friends set off on their Saturday-night hunting expedition.

Part II: Stalking

Rumor was crowded, shouted conversations merging into a dull roar as they competed with the pounding music. Alcohol flowed like water as the kids sought to relieve their inhibitions as quickly as possible.

The club was little better than a meat market, in the sense that the gaudily dressed and gilded patrons scanned and evaluated each other for mating suitability. Top of the line hotties were Prime cuts; those with slightly less perfect features were Choice; the average looking of face and body were Select; the youthful, but fat or ugly, were Standard grade; and the middle-aged coyotes or the middle-aged balding pervs were Commercial or Utility grades, not to be eaten unless you were very poor or desperate for meat.

There was an elaborate pecking order to the evaluating that could, in theory, be described mathematically, but the patrons were all quite aware of their respective positions. Beautiful women talked to beautiful men, mediocre women talked to mediocre men, and the uglies stuck close to their better-looking friends until such a time as they would need to be abandoned. Occasionally, however, breaking the unstated rules, a particularly ugly boy, fueled more by alcohol than good sense, would make the mistake of approaching a beautiful woman clearly out of his league. She would invariably look at him as if she had mistakenly stepped in a steaming pile of poo, and shoo him away in as haughty a manner as possible.

Bittersweet made her way to the bar, exhibiting classic signs of Brownian motion as she randomly collided with wildly gyrating dancers. Once there, she ordered a Kamikaze and swung around on the barstool to scan the crowd. Pickings looked pretty decent tonight.

Bittersweet liked her men young, as close to eighteen as possible. Lightly muscled, thin, close-cropped hair, and dumb and innocent. She wasn’t looking for in-depth discussions on theology or superstring theory, she wanted a dumb but beautiful male at his physical peak. She enjoyed separating him from his pack of friends, and then pouncing for the kill.

Bittersweet was in full predator mode now, the alcohol having done its work, the scent of prey in her nostrils. Her mode of attack was subtle, however. She didn't need slinky costumes to show off her charms. Apart from a huge lion's mane of dreadlock-like blonde and brunette hair, she presented a rather normal appearance: lacy white halter top, khaki Capri’s, and platform sandals to show off her delicately frenched toenails. No, Bittersweet's magic was in her eyes and her smile. Which she was about to display to the young hottie across the room.

She waited till the hottie was looking at her, then demurely half-lowered her eyelids and smiled at the boy. It was a radiant smile that highlighted her cheekbones and made the corners of her eyes crinkle. It was a smile that communicated interest and promises to come. It was a smile that made the boy feel like he was the only boy in the club. And that's all it took. He made his way over. And Bittersweet knew that she had scored her prey -- all that was left was the kill.

Part III: The Kill

The boy lay supine on the bed, and Bittersweet rode him gently. She rocked gently back and forth, occasionally reaching around behind to fondle his balls. He groaned with pleasure whenever she gave a particularly vigorous squeeze. Despite mashing her clitoris into his abdomen on every upstroke, Bittersweet felt absolutely nothing.

They had come back to his tiny apartment in Dorchester, sat cross-legged on the bed, and fired up a small wooden bowl packed with some fine-grade cannabis. The weed was quite moist and aromatic, and had little red flecks mixed in with the green. Bittersweet sucked on the pipe with hollowed out cheeks, drawing the smoke deep into her lungs like a pro, without coughing. She held it for close to a minute, then leaned close to the boy, and with an open kiss expelled the smoke directly into his mouth.

As the boy took his turn with the sweet leaf, Bittersweet slowly removed her halter and bra. Her breasts were small and firm, and topped with dark nipples that crinkled as the boy gazed at them. A small spray of freckling covered the upper slopes. The boy flicked the lighter, but failed to light the bowl. He was finding it hard to concentrate on higher-motor functions. His only thought was to lick her little brown buds. Bittersweet grabbed him by the nape of his neck and drew him to her. The boy suckled greedily, trying to drink milk that never flowed.

When it became evident that the boy was sporting a huge erection, Bittersweet pushed him back on the bed and removed his clothing. She steadied his penis with one hand, and then impaled herself. She rocked gently back and forth, occasionally reaching around behind to fondle his balls. He groaned whenever she gave a particularly vigorous squeeze. Despite mashing her clitoris into his abdomen on every upstroke, Bittersweet felt absolutely nothing.

But it was not yet her time. It was important to get him to the edge, get him delirious with pleasure, on the verge of release. And the boy was nearly there. Stamina was not his long suit, but that was of little concern to Bittersweet.

She gazed into his eyes, and saw that it was now time. She leaned down, dangling her breasts in front of him. The boy panted as he tracked their random movements. Bittersweet reached into her mass of hair and pulled out a long thin silver hair stick and drove it through the boy's ear into his brainstem. He commenced to die without even realizing what had happened.

As the boy convulsed in his death throes, Bittersweet rode the wave. She was definitely feeling something now. With each jerk and flail, she converted his life into her pleasure. With a last convulsion, the boy ejaculated deep into Bittersweet in a last ditch effort to preserve his genetic material, and then expired. Bittersweet threw back her head and roared as she convulsed in her own orgasm.

The boy now disgusted her in his stillness, so she dismounted, and dressed quickly. Leaving the apartment, she gave as much thought to him lying dead in bed as you or I might think about the dinner scraps we scrape into the trash after eating.

Part IV: Reversal

Bittersweet once again sat in her favourite spot at the bar. Two weeks had passed since her last kill, and she was craving another hottie.

Tonight, however, there was someone odd staring at her. He was a middle-aged man, balding, and tending to portliness. The white Ralph Lauren oxford shirt he was wearing had pale red stains down the front. He had what looked like hiking pants for trousers and -- what were those? Yes, they were hiking boots. Bittersweet wanted to laugh at the man's fashion sense, but there was something magnetic about his eyes as they stared at her -- something deep and aware. Bittersweet was slightly afraid, but at the same time strangely attracted to this stranger.

The man got up, and circled around the bar, keeping her in view the entire time. Despite his apparent age and physique, the man's stride was measured and powerful, a coiled spring at the apex of tightness. Bittersweet attempted to shake off her unease, and reverted to her old standby of demure looks and a personalized smile.

The man approached, stopped in front of her, and stared. Bittersweet was transfixed. All her tricks and tried-and-true methods of seduction were failing her. "Who are you?" she managed to ask.

The man spoke, softly yet with a steely enunciation. "Amongst those who know me, I have no need of a name. Amongst those who do not know me, I am called Sage."

"Are you so wise, then?"

Sage just looked at her, disdaining the question.

Bittersweet was a predator, and though she hunted and acted alone, there existed a deep instinct in her makeup regarding dominance and submission. Despite years of living at the top of the food chain, she recognized that this Sage was her superior. Instinct encouraged her to submit to him straightaway, but she had been alone for a long time, and submission did not come easily.

Quicker than an eye-blink, Bittersweet lashed out, intending to blind him with her nails. Before she had closed half the distance, Sage had her arm in an iron grip. She struggled, and spit at him, but might as well have tried to move a statue. Sage moved in close, reached around her with his free hand, breathed softly into her ear, and removed her hair sticks. He held them in front of her face, and snapped them between two fingers. Despite her anger and frustration, Bittersweet felt a warm rush go through her as the sticks snapped.

"Shall we go?" Sage asked rhetorically.

They left the bar, Bittersweet manacled by Sage's strong grip, and following meekly behind. When they got into the Caddy, however, Bittersweet lashed out again for old time's sake. Sage blocked the blow without even looking.

"Let me explain something," he said to her softly. "When driving this car, I of necessity must pay less attention to you. That means that, if you try to strike me again, or try to escape, I may hurt you unintentionally. Do not make me subdue you again. Do you understand?"

"Yes," Bittersweet responded meekly.

Part V: Denouement

In the dome, Sage sat on his dais in half-lotus position. "Remove your clothing," he instructed.

Bittersweet felt shame, and blood rushed to her face. She had been naked countless times in front of boys, and thought nothing of it. This felt different, though. She was not in control; this was not the means to a pleasurable end. She turned to flee, and Sage spoke.

"Bittersweet." Softness and steel. She looked back over her shoulder.

"Do not make me get up."

She acquiesced, and shyly started to remove her clothes. Her hair cascaded out and over her shoulders, teasing the tops of her breasts. Her face and shoulders flamed red in shame. She removed her sandals and trousers, and stood thus exposed in her sheer panties.

Sage gestured at the panties, and she removed those as well, standing with legs pressed tightly together, pubes gently curling in the V thus formed. Sage beckoned her forward, and she came to stand before him. He tugged on her curls lightly; then caressed her buttocks, gently prying her legs apart. He inserted a finger into her quim, finding it quite wet within, despite Bittersweet's plaintive protestations to the contrary. As Sage stroked the upper wall of her vagina whilst playing with her clitoris, he gently licked at her nipples, forcing them to stand at attention.

Bittersweet began to moan deeply in her throat. Her thighs trembled, and knees threatened to give out, with every wave of pleasure that coursed through her. This was all so strange! She had never experienced pleasure without the concomitant pain extracted from unwilling prey. Submission was having unintended consequences. But as she remembered her past, she decided to attack one last time.

She pretended to stumble, and placed her hands on Sage's shoulders for support. As he continued to stroke and knead her private spots, she quickly put her hands around his throat and began to squeeze. She squeezed with all her might, and all her will, and all her rage and frustration. And as she squeezed, her pleasure got more intense. This was more like it! This was the old Bittersweet! She was about to deliver this Sage to his just reward, and was about to orgasm hugely in the process.

When suddenly the stroking stopped. It was like a physical blow. His hands were no longer on her, in her. Bittersweet felt empty and bereft. Her glazed eyes re-focused, and she looked into his face, expecting to see it blue with tongue protruding. Instead, Sage was staring at her calmly, completely unaffected by the pressure on his throat.

"Are you quite done?" he asked her.

"Noooo!!!" she screamed, now beating him about his head and shoulders. How could this be? How could this man take all she threw at him, and not even be affected?

Sage took the abuse for a while, letting her anger run its course, then forced her hands to her sides. She sobbed, in frustrated anger, and frustrated pleasure. She sobbed as she gave in to his dominance.

Sage got up from the dais. "Bend over," he instructed Bittersweet, and she grudgingly complied, grabbing her ankles, leaving her buttocks completely exposed.

Sage went to the kitchen, retrieved an item from a drawer, and a plastic container from the fridge. Returning to Bittersweet, he took a generous amount of lube and massaged it into her anus. He then took the item, a stainless steel anal speculum, and inserted it gently into her rectum. Bittersweet moaned from the unnatural sensation. Her anus reflexively clenched around the speculum; it felt as though she had to take a shit. Slowly opening the speculum to its full 3-inch diameter, Sage set the thumbscrew, and Bittersweet's insides were exposed to full view. She continued to moan, tears of shame leaking hotly from the corners of her eyes.

Sage then poured a quantity of pineapple juice from the plastic container into her rectum. The cold liquid settled into her bowel, and Bittersweet screamed from the icy sensation. It was as if an icicle had been shoved up her ass, and left to melt. To her credit, though, Sage noticed that she did not try to get up or escape the punishment. She was finally being tamed.

Once the liquid reached room temperature, Sage released the thumbscrew and allowed the speculum to collapse. The pineapple juice shot out of Bittersweet's rectum in a great fountain, soiling the cherry hardwood floors. That's all right, Sage thought. Bittersweet would be cleaning that up later.

But now Bittersweet was crying, prostrate on the floor before the Sage as he resumed his seat on the dais. She crawled up into Sage's lap, and rested her head on his chest, still sobbing gently. He stroked her hair, making soft cooing sounds until her trembling slowed and the sobbing devolved into sniffles.

"Bittersweet," Sage said, speaking gently into her ear. "You are a predator without any moral mediation. In the animal kingdom, your behaviour would be just and appropriate. Here in human society, however, they rightly fear you and will band together to bring you down. It was just a matter of time before you were locked in one of their cages.

"I could not allow that. Despite your previous behaviour, I believe you are redeemable. You will stay here with me, learning new ways of deriving pleasure, and new methods for staying out of humanity's way.

"Your hair will always be long and wild, but I am your master, and you will learn that there is plenty of freedom within my discipline."

And he reached down once again to her soft belly and gentle curls. And Bittersweet smiled, her canines peeking out from bared lips.

A Few Weekend Observations

2006-08-05T19:02:00.000-04:00

I don't normally like to do these, a sort of "this is what's happened to me recently" kind of thing; I have the conviction that each one of my posts should be an amazingly well-thought-out essay that brings an "a-ha" sense of enlightenment to whoever reads it. Plus Nobby Burton's always making fun of me when I get personal, saying things like, "Ooo, as if people care."

But fuck it. I haven't been real inspired lately. Maybe it's that work's been a bit busier than usual, or maybe the heat's been sapping my will, or maybe I'm just goddamn lazy. Probably the latter. Here goes then:

* * *

MySpace's been really getting slagged off lately, but I came across a band recently, called Pure Reason Revolution. I dug the samples on their page, so I picked up their latest disc, The Dark Third. And I dig it. It's like a cross between The Beach Boys, Electric Light Orchestra, and Pink Floyd. And if MySpace can turn me on to a band that I end up liking, it can't be all bad.

* * *

My old school chum I mentioned in earlier posts, Travis, did some googling of his own recently, and found my blog. He fired off an e-mail to me, and I've responded. How fucking cool is this modern world? I feel nostalgic one weekend, post about it, and days later I'm in contact with a guy I haven't talked to in probably twenty-three years. I'm psyched.

* * *

I went to a wedding today. It was my cousin's wedding, and I was pressured enormously by my family to go, otherwise I probably wouldn't have.

Weddings just aren't my scene. The idea of getting dressed up, going to a church: standing, sitting and kneeling at the command of some bloke up on an alter just isn't my cup of tea.

But I did it. I went. And be goddamned if I did NOT get smited upon entering sacred ground. Either God really digs me, or he's too busy to send a lightening bolt my way. Two observations though:

1.) Despite all the trappings and pomp and unnecessary ceremony, there comes an ineffable moment when the fact that two people who are really in love, and are pledging themselves to each other, shines through. You can see it in their eyes, and you can see that there is a reason that all this pomp and circumstance grew up around what was originally probably a very simple ceremony. I admit it, even an old cynic like me can still feel the magic for one brief moment. But...

2.) ...God's blood, it was hot in there! That church did NOT believe in air conditioning for some reason. Maybe they felt the heat would purge any sin lingering in those attending. Not me though. My mind tended to wander [apart from the magic moment described above], and at one point I found myself fantasizing about one of the bridesmaids. She was wearing one of those dresses with a plunging low-cut back, leaving expanses of flesh exposed. All I wanted to do was rush up to the altar, lift her arm up, and lick her exposed armpit. Is that so wrong?

* * *

I was watching BBC America last night, a show featuring comics from the world over. There was one bloke who came on from Australia by the name of Tim Minchin. He's one of those music comedy guys, who play an instrument and write funny songs. Well, this guy is a piano wizard, he's really fucking good.

And he does a song, an "anthem" really, for his vision of bringing peace to the Middle East. I think it was called, "If I Don't Eat Pigs, And You Don't Eat Pigs, Let's Not Not Eat Pigs Together". And then he did another anthem, about using your own canvas bags when you go to the supermarket, so as to limit the spread and use of plastics and the degrading of the environment.

Really good solid clever stuff. And the songwriting's really excellent. I'm going to keep an eye out for this bloke. Here's a YouTube video of the canvas bag song, not quite as good a version, if you're interested:

That's it for now...

An Open Letter To Dim

2006-08-02T12:31:00.000-04:00

Oi, Dim, where have you been? I miss your witty comments on my silly litle blog entries.

I need you.

I'm a mess without you.

I miss you so damn much.

I miss being with you; I miss being near you.

I miss your laugh.

I miss your scent; I miss your musk.

When all this gets sorted out, I think you and me should get an apartment together.

A Confluence of Events

2006-08-01T13:30:00.000-04:00

This morning was one of those rare confluences of events that just make you smile in appreciation for when things go right.

Maybe it was that I got up a little earlier than usual. The first thing I do upon waking is to stumble over to the computer and load Winamp. I then crank up whatever tune happens to be queued. This morning it was Psychedelic Soul by Yoko Kanno.

For a good ten years I lived in an apartment complex, and was always painfully concious that volume levels had to be at an appropriate level so as to not disturb neighbors. Some music can be listened to softly, but some just cries out to be listened to as loud as possible.

One aspect of the dome that I haven't tired of yet is waking up in the morning and cranking music. No neighbors -- just set the volume to a hair below speaker distortion, and let the music roll around the dome's interior. What a way to wake up!

So I headed out to work around 8:15, feeling good. And by God, when I got onto 95 there was minimal traffic. No jams, no morons puttering along in the left lane, and not a cop in site. It was as if the world was fresh and clean and new and it belonged all to me!

I was cruising along when I happened to glance down at the speedometer and noticed I was doing 97. That's miles per hour, not kilometres. And that's the third glorious thing that happened this morning. The Caddy was simply running spectacularly.

Every component of the systems that make up that car were just functioning exactly like they were designed to. The tires were gripping the tarmac like superglue. The engine was stroking along powerfully, whisperingly quiet. And the feel of car was perfect. Responsive. It was one of those rare moments when you feel like you're part of a system. It felt like the Caddy was responding directly to my thoughts instead of the usual clumsy movements that have to be mediated by mechanical linkages.

So I saw that I was doing 97, and it felt like 55. I was psyched. I love machinery that does what it's supposed to do. One of the drawbacks of this modern world, in my opinion, is the lack of skilled craftsmanship and machinery that's built to last. We live in a world of plastics and planned obsolescence. Sure, it's convenient, but it rots the soul.

When was the last time you picked up a product, held it in your hand, and felt the heft of it? Where was the density, that feeling that this item was built to take a beating and be around 20 or 30 years hence? When was the last time you had something repaired? No one repairs anything anymore. It's so cheaply made, and filled with un-repairable circuit boards, that no one bothers anymore. Just chuck it into the landfill and buy another thingamajig.

I inherited a drill from my grandfather, and it was made out of metal. A brushed aluminum finish. You held it in your hand and the thing had presence, had weight. My grandfather had owned the drill for a good forty years, used it almost everyday in his carpentering, and I've had it for another ten. With some minor repairs the thing will probably last forever.

One thing I want to accomplish with the dome, is to surround myself with natural materials. Wood, stone, brick, water, metal, fire. No plastics, or as little as possible. No vinyl. Nothing that hasn't been crafted. It's amazing how much more connected you feel to the world and environment around you when everything's natural. I'll grant you, it's harder to do nowadays. There's so many people in the world, and so few dwindling resources. Craftmanship costs a lot of money. But it's so easy to become disconnected in the modern world that it's worth it to make the effort.

Well, I made it to work eventually, and it was like any other ordinary day. But how enjoyable those three glorious events were.

On Noxious Fumes and Pain

2006-07-31T17:00:00.000-04:00

I'm always immortalizing KP in my blog, so this time I thought I'd do the same for March.

So, last Friday March came over to my desk to rap with me and KP about something; I forget what it was. At some point in the midst of the conversation he lifts one cheek up and breaks a fair amount of wind. Within seconds the noxious fumes had reached my nostrils, and I made a sour face and opined that that sort of thing was better left done behind closed doors.

March just sort of laughed and said, "What are you, a girl?"

Now this remark gets me right at the core of my belief that in some instances men and women are not so different after all.

I indignantly replied, "What? So just because I'm a guy I'm supposed to enjoy breathing the rancid fumes that get expelled from other guys' rectums?"

Think about it.

Yeah, it's great being a guy, huh? You hang out with a bunch of your mates, drinking beer, eating all kinds of food, and stand around breathing in each other's rancid egg farts. It's hilarious, as Tracey Morgan would say. The only thing lacking is the pulling of the finger first.

So, yeah, guys are supposed to dig that kind of stuff. It's a male bonding kind of ritual, where a real man will stoically breathe the most poisonous atmosphere to show how far above he is over it all. Stiff upper lip, and all that, what?

Oh, yeah, he's supposed to be immune to pain as well. Not the kind of pain that comes from a car crash, for example, where you're partially in shock, so all you do is the occasional wince or just mercifully go into a coma. I'm talking about the kind of pain that comes from a severe pinch. Or someone pulling a hair out of your body. Maybe a purple nurple, or atomic wedgie.

Maybe I'm wrong, but last time I checked I was a human being. I've got nerve endings scattered all throughout my body that are wired directly into the pain receptors in my brain. I'm hardcoded to recognize pain as something bad, to avoid and retreat from when encountering a condition that causes that pain. If you cut me, do I not bleed?

I defy any bloke out there to refrain from screaming when the electrodes are attached to the scrotum, and the fingernails are gently pried back by plyers. Let's see what a tough guy you are then, tough guy.

I'm secure enough in my masculinity to know that I'd be screaming for my mommy. And if you fart in my general direction, like March did, I'm going to be girlish enough to point out that you fucking stink like a landfill on a hot day.

More High School Nostalgia

2006-07-30T22:33:00.000-04:00

Writing about my first love put me in a bit of a nostalgic mood again this weekend. I admit it, I'm a sap for nostalgia; there's something about the passage of time and remembering the way things once were that fascinates me to no end.

I pulled out my high school yearbook and went through it. It's fair to say that I haven't seen any of my classmates in a good 20 years. And to be honest, I haven't really wanted to see 99% of them. I've passed on all reunions.

However, reading some of the bios that went along with our photos, I realized that I never knew some of these kids. Some were the idiots that I'd remembered, but some seemed like we might have had some things in common, and might have gotten along had things been different.

It was interesting to see some of the answers kids put on their questionnaires. Like for pet peeves, some of us still thought disco sucked in the early '80s. I'd forgotten that. Some didn't like burnouts. I'd forgotten that expression too. Mostly, though, we didn't like snobs and fake people.

It was funny to see the blatant references to drugs and alcohol. For favourite hangout, a lot of us put "J" sessions. For their ambition, a lot of kids wanted to own beer distributorships.

And for their quote, far and away the most popular one was, "If you love something set it free...". Ah, young philosophers.

Even as a young man, I had my life figured out. My ambition was, "to be the best bum." Not literally, no. Not to wander the streets, panhandling for scraps of food and such. No, I meant more that I wanted to get through life with expending the least amount of energy possible. Twenty-three years later, so far so good.

***

Remember I wrote about that school talent show, where myself and a few blokes played Freebird? Well, I found a pic in the yearbook. That's me, on guitar. Click for larger versions.

I also found a pic of my ex-wife and I playing a song at a local coffehouse event put on by the school. Apparantly, there was a lot of talent in the school because they contracted with a local restaurant to put on this talent show; I think several were done before the idea was abandoned.

***

Remember I also wrote about those two schoolmates of mine that did those Dago-san illustrations? Me as a samurai? Well, one of the blokes was named Travis Stewart, and I googled him to see if I could see what he's been up to. Apparantly, after going to NY film school, he now goes by the name Trav S.D. and is involved in the NY theatre scene, writing plays and putting on vaudevillean shows. There's a brief bio page here if you want to see what he looks like. He's also just published a book on the history of vaudeville, and it's gotten quite good reviews. It's at Amazon, called No Applause -- Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous.

If anyone would make it in life doing what they loved, It had to be Trav. Good job, man.

Some Blog-related Fandom Encounters

2006-07-28T12:14:00.000-04:00

I had my first run-in with the insanity of blog fans yesterday.

El Tabachnikov swung by my desk, and proceeded to shake his head and say, "Yeah, Sage, I was disappointed with your post." He was referring to the entry, "A History of My First Date".

"Disappointed?" I came back, unbelieving. "You mean, the sweetly wistful reminiscence of my first love? Didn't it strike a chord in you, make you wing backwards in your own memory and put you in touch with your own youthful vulnerability?"

"I guess... a little bit... I was expecting how most of your posts end..."

"You mean, a deviant, or not so deviant sexual encounter?"

"Exactly..."

"Sure, Tabachnikov, that stuff is great, but there are other facets to the human condition. I'm just trying to explore them, and show that I've got the ability to work in different genres."

We went on to rap about other stuff; the nature of repressive households, the scarcity of chicks at Yeshiva, etc., etc. But in the back of my mind was this nagging pustule of doubt. Should I, in fact, be pandering to the mentality of my readers? Should I tailor what I write to the likes and dislikes of everyone who stumbles across my blog?

Clearly, the answer is no, and yet, geez, I can't stand criticism. Why can't people just accept and appreciate my artisitc endeavours as I do? Why can't they just think I'm the greatest thing since sliced bread and let it go at that. But no, they're like, "why can't you do more X?" where X denotes their particular interest. Remember that kid Road, before she vanished into forgetfulness and obscurity? She loved and worshipped me like one of Jim Jones' followers, yet always wanted me to be "funny". March can't stand anything that involves "words" or "concepts" deeper than that of eating cake. Fresh eviscerated me for using white paper instead of lined. Pog now loves me instead of disagreeing with everything I say, so that's something anyway.

Which brings me, inevitably, to KP. Here's a bloke who'd got a deep and penetrating mind, who thinks about the nooks and crannies of the universe as well as the nooks and crannies of his friday morning bagel. The kid's got moxie. He's got opinions and things to say. But when I ask him to comment on my blog more often, he say's, "It's gotten too popular."

And I'm thinking to myself, popular? Well, strictly speaking, there was a time when just March and KP read the blog. But, inevitably, like blowflies attracted to putrefying flesh*, the blog readership swelled to a good twenty regulars that I'm aware of, and probably a bit more that do not leave any trace of their visitation apart from a stamp in some metering program.

So, if that's popularity, then KP must really enjoy getting in on the ground floor. And then abandoning. He's like the blokes who used to like Green Day but savaged them when people actually liked their music. But I understand KP's rationalizations. He once had me all to himself, and now he must share. And he doesn't like sharing. He balls up his fists and cries out in existential agony, "O Sage, wherefore hast thou forsaken me?"

And then there's Nobby Burton. Nobs used to work at the desk right next to me, for about four years, in the spot that KP now enjoys. We've rapped about stuff till the cows come home, and know the ins and outs of each other's personality. Nobs knew me way before this blogger stardom thing happened.

It is Nobby's self-appointed duty, and I do mean self-appointed, to keep my ego in check. It all started back when I brought in a tune I had written for him to check out. He was mildly impressed [he's always mildly impressed!], but he still had to describe it as "a bit Teshy." Tesh-like. As in John Tesh, the former entertainment show host who went on to a profitable but artistically vacuous musical career pandering to new-age crystal worshippers.

Now, let me point out that, musically speaking, there's a superficial, but still vastly different, resemblance between the two. They're both mellow. There's a piano in both. But that's it. That's the only similarity. But rather than give me the satisfaction of saying the tune that I created is actually pretty good, he must always ensure that I remember my place in the grand scheme of things.

After each post, he often comes by the desk to give me the benefit of his critiques. The "God" series, where I write dialogues to explore various aspects of the human condition in a witty and irreverent manner, is described by him as "wacky".

"Why don't you write real humour, like Seinfeld or The Office?" he asks me.

"Do you know how hard that is?" I ask him back.

What I write is never good enough for him. I'm like the dutiful son forever trying to win the overbearing father's affection. And Nobby's quite satisfied with that arrangement.

I can only imagine what it must be like to be a real star, or famous person, and have to deal with legions of insane fans. No wonder they end up living in walled compounds with armed guards and dobermans patrolling the perimeter. But for now, it's not so bad. At least people are reading. I'll get the walled compound when and if it becomes necessary.

But if there are any female readers out there that want to sleep with me because of my burgeoning flame, please let me know. I'm sure we can arrange something.

KP Makes Me Mad

2006-07-27T10:02:00.000-04:00

I never [or almost never] get angry anymore.

Genetically, I'm 3/4 Italian, and yes, I inherited a tremendously powerful temper from my old dad, and his dad before him, and his dad before him. Probably going all the way back to old Ceasar Augustus, from whom we take our family name. Early on I recognized that I need to control that temper if I wanted to co-exist relatively peacefully with society. Studying philosophy helped a great deal, as understanding of the human condition is a tremendous tool in achieving perspective. But every once in a while, something happens that makes me seethe. This morning it was KP.

We were rapping about the song "Small Fish" by Porcupine Tree. I had made him listen to it yesterday, because in my own words it "was one of the best songs ever written". So this morning I asked him what he thought about it, and he was like, "It's not bad."

Well, of course I was somewhat non-plussed, as I couldn't conceive of anyone not recognizing the brilliance of this song. But instead, I tried to make him understand WHY I appreciatied the song so much.

I said, "The reason the song is so good is because it replicates the feeling of an opium trip. It's so smooth and gentle, you feel like you're floating on clouds."

And KP just snorted, and laughed. He was like, "You don't even KNOW what it's LIKE to take opium."

I was like, "Yes I do, when I was a young man I tried it."

And he was like, "No you didn't."

And I was like, "Yuh huh."

And he was like, "Nuh uh."

I was furious. How dare HE tell ME whether or not I've tried opium before. When it comes to drugs I'm deadly serious. And to question my veracity is another matter as well. Truth is important, it's necessary to tell it at all costs.

And so, KP, it is true, I did take opium once as a young man.

This dude I knew had scored some weed, and he concocted a fairly good-sized joint; it was the weed he had scored laced with a certain amount of opium. We fired it up on the way to a gig we were playing, and in a relatively short space of time we were feeling very, very good.

Weed, of course, imparts a certain amount of sensory dislocation. It's a bit fuzzy. The concentration easily narrows to a single sensory input. Music fills you. Hunger is magnified tremendously. Time slows. Now add the opium. You feel like you're floating. Your body becomes weightless. If there was a breeze, you'd float gently away. Any cares wash away. You feel really pleasant and relaxed.

Those who have read any of the fiction on this blog know that the opium obsession has not waned since that early day's trial. It was so good it's probably a blessing I've never scored any since then. Cause I'd happily become an addict. It's that good.

So, KP, as you can see, I HAVE tried opium, I AM familiar with its effects, and "Small Fish" is EXACTLY like an opium high.

Nonny nonny boo-boo.

A History of My First Date

2006-07-26T14:00:00.000-04:00

Do any of you remember what it was like to fall in love for the first time?

I'm not talking about kids like Jocular, who's just about graduated to long pants. I'm talking about blokes who've been around the block a couple of times, and who've gone through a couple of people or three in their quest for the perfect mate.

My first love was my ex-wife.

I was just starting my junior year of high school, a long-haired stripling lad of fifteen years of age. I walked into my third year Spanish class, and there she was, sitting a few seats back in the left column. She was giggling with one of her friends, and as she turned and glanced at me as I walked by, I knew that I had to be with her.

The first thing I noticed was her skin. It was smooth and dusky, a rich cinnamon color. Her hair was a midnight black, curly, but pulled back severely from her face and held in place with a large barrette. Big silver hoops hung from her ears. She looked a lot like Sade, but at that time, Diamond Life was still two years in the future.

I sat towards the back of the class, and it's a good thing I was proficient in Spanish, because all I tended to do was stare at her and daydream during class. Oh, sure, we chatted here and there, but I was such an introvert and, frankly, scared out of my mind, that I never made the move to actually ask her out, or even make my intentions known. In retrospect, I'm sure my behaviour made my feelings quite well known.

Now, at that time, a school talent show was being put on, and myself and a few mates were going to perform Freebird as the show's climax. I was on lead guitar, another bloke on piano, and I believe there was bass player and drummer as well. We used the band room as our rehearsal space, and with our loud amplifiers and pounding drums, people reported they could hear us on the other side of the school before we were shut down by The Man. Oh, by the way, let me state now, for the record, that we sucked.

One day, I was messing around on the piano in the bandroom, playing Freebird as it were, and my first love walked by on her way to Chorus practise. I think that episode was what did it for me. A few days later, on January 13, 1982, she passed me a note. It was a poem. Unfortunately, with the passing of the intervening twenty-four years, I no longer remember the full poem, but I remember a fragment of it:

And he's just as a free as a free bird, for his own grace and style,
Makes me want to listen, and stay for a while.

I can't speak to the quality of the poem, but all I know is, it hit me in the guts like a piledriver. My stomach felt all warm and squishy. The blood rushed to my head, and it seemed as though my world had irrevocably turned on an impossibly large pivot. Why do I remember the date, January 13, 1982? Because for many years after we celebrated that anniversary as the beginning of our relationship.

We were very young, and very poor, and weren't even able to drive yet. She came from a VERY strict Puerto Rican family, so any extracurricular activities were out of the question. We spent a great deal of time writing notes back and forth. We poured our hearts out, our thoughts about life and feelings and music and the future.

As the weather turned towards spring, I took to walking her partway home after school. We'd often sit on a picnic table on school grounds, and talk a bit further. She developed a tendency to play with my hair as we sat, running her fingers through it and massaging my scalp lightly at the end. Even now, after countless sexual experiences that blur in the memory, I still remember and shiver to the thought of her fingers in my hair.

That spring we had our first "date". After school we walked down to the local Cumberland Farms [which, for those of you who don't live in the area, is a convience store] and proceeded to stock up. We grabbed little containers of juice. We grabbed a box of chocolate glazed doughnuts. We grabbed a package of nutter butter peanut butter sandwich cookies. We grabbed a bag of chips, amongst other items. We packed up our haul and walked back to the school.

In the football field, we layed on our backs and looked up at the sky and chowed. We tore through that junk food, and talked and laughed. And we chowed. And our chowing was a dionysian revelry. I was probably quite sore in the stomach for a couple days after. Still love chocolate glazed doughnuts, though.

Our first real date happened that summer. There was a dance being put on by our local beach club, and I wanted to ask her to go with me. I, coming from an Italian family, understood the way to go about this. One weekend, I walked to her house. Her father was outside, sitting in his car and sipping from a bottle of Bacardi. His sons were outside as well. As I approached the car, I could see a flurry of activity in the windows. My girl's mother and her sisters were peering amazedly at me. They couldn't believe I was actually approaching this tyrannical figure: the father.

But even at that age, I understood the psycology of the old world father. He valued respect above all things: the respect due him as head of the household. Many blokes would have simply asked my girl out, and bypassed the father altogether. This would have aroused suspicion in him, and made any progress with girl very difficult.

I, on the other hand, approached him head on. I acknowledged his position as head of the household by asking him if it would be alright if I could take his daughter out to the dance. Don't get me wrong, I was still clenching my anus tightly so I wouldn't shit myself out of fear.

"I heard your father is from Argentina," he said.

"Yes, sir," I replied.

We talked a bit further, and in the talking it was found out that my father actually had performed the anesthesia when my girl had been borne. The father lit up when this was discussed, and I knew that I was in. We were close, in a way that no other guy in school would have been able to accomplish. Our shared latin heritage, the proper respect I had shown him, and the fact that our families had some history together.

To wrap this long post up, the father gave me permission to escort his daughter. I still had to have her home by 10:00, and believe you me, I got her home on time.

It may seem as if I'm glorifying those days, and that I miss my ex-wife, but nothing is farther from the truth. We had gotten together so young, that as we grew up together, we found that we were also growing apart. In the normal course of events, we found that we were actually very different people. The last time I talked to her was a good nine years ago, and I've heard that she has since gotten re-married and now has two [or maybe three] kids. I wish her all the best.

But the memory of that first love, even though it gets fainter every year, is something unique that will never happen again. That kind of love, where you open yourself so completely to another person, cannot happen quite that way again. Each experience we have, each failure, or hurt, inevitably adds another layer of callous to our souls such that you can never enter into a relationship again as that innocent young person.

But I suppose that's as it should be. Callouses protect us against hurt, and wisdom replaces boundless innocence and optimism. I still think fondly, from time to time, about that young man. He was a good lad, naive as all hell, and making as good a go as he knew how. Would I want to be him again, though? Just for the hair, I think.

Just for the hair.

The ESCR VI: Dim

2006-07-25T13:10:00.000-04:00

Caricature Number 6 of The Emetic Sage Caricature Review:

An older version of
Dim

[click me!]

A No-talent Hack

2006-07-24T22:16:00.000-04:00

Looking at Hotwire's recent magnum opus, and looking back at my five days of caricatures, it is clear that I'm a no-talent hack. And yet, I enjoyed the fuck out of it, almost as much as some of my best writings, or the composing of Variation 1.

Two things in my life I've always wanted to be able to do well: drawing and singing. I've been blessed with the ability to do neither.

When I was a sophomore in high school, the miniseries Shogun aired. It kicked off my fascination with, and interest in, oriental cultures. It featured a not-yet-gay Richard Chamberlain. It was my first exposure to the massive acting talent of Toshiro Mifune. And the female lead: Yoko Shimada. Oh man, did I fall for her. I fell in love with her like only a fourteen your old boy can fall in love. It eclipsed my previous love for Bernadette Peters. Man, did I love Bernadette Peters. I loved her like only an eleven year old boy can fall in love.

But back to Shogun. I'm an enthusiast. When I dig something, the people around me know it. I can't contain myself. I'm a proselytizer of the 1st rank. I'm like a Christian with a stack of bibles in the remotest part of Africa. So my friends in class knew about my obsession with Shogun. I had two mates of mine who were really excellent illustrators. And one day one of them drew a picture of me as a samurai. I had the shaven pate, the kimono, the two swords. It was titled Dago-san. Just about each day they alternated with a new pic featuring Dago-san in some adventure. I can't remember now all the different variations, but one that sticks with me was a picture of me, as the samurai, shaking hands with Isaac Asimov. God, that was fantastic! By the time they lost interest I had a sheaf of 40 or 50 drawings. I would kill to still have those drawings now.

Regarding the caricatures, then, that I've done recently -- it was a labor of love and desire and envy. I'm a firm believer that the creative fires of a person must be fanned. If there's anything to this God thing, then what is it about God that is most apparant? That he demands worship from abject slaves? No. That he prohibits the sexual gratification of his humans? No. What, then?

Well, I'd have to say it's that he's a creator. He started with nothing and created everything. All the rest pales in comparison. So, if we want to commune with God, then all the church-going and book-banning and heretic-burning and prostrating and abasement is not the way to do it. No, the way to commune with God would be through the act of creation. If God created us in His own image, then the noblest thing we could do would be to create.

When Bloggers start with a blank post window and fill it with ramblings, they're communing with God. When Hotwire starts with a blank sheet of paper and fills it with a vision out of his head, he's communing with God. Every time a piece of music is composed, or a story is written, or a dance is danced, the Divine spark is tindered yet again.

Look, I don't want to get too dramatic here. I'm just saying that creation is a very important part of what it means to be a human. Appreciation of art by watching television, or reading a book, or listening to music, or going to an art gallery, is a fantastic thing. It's a sharing of the creative spirit. But that should not be the be-all and end-all of our lives. Everyone's got some of that Divine spark in them, and it's a bloody waste if it never gets fanned into a flame.

So you're not an expert illustrator. You're not the next Dostoevsky. You'll never croon like James Darren. But give it a go, man. It feels so good.

The ESCR V: Bittersweet

2006-07-23T20:57:00.000-04:00

Caricature Number 5 of The Emetic Sage Caricature Review:

Bittersweet

[click me!]

The ESCR IV: Fresh Air Lover

2006-07-22T23:59:00.000-04:00

Caricature Number 4 of The Emetic Sage Caricature Review:

Young Fresh Air Lover

and

Cat

[click me!]

The ESCR III: Jocular Schlemiel

2006-07-21T14:48:00.000-04:00

Caricature Number 3 of The Emetic Sage Caricature Review:

Jocular Schlemiel

[click me!]

The ESCR II: KP

2006-07-20T10:49:00.000-04:00

Caricature Number 2 of The Emetic Sage Caricature Review:

KP, or Kaples, or
Liberated in Theory

[click me!]

The ESCR I: March To The Sea

2006-07-19T17:25:00.000-04:00

Caricature Number 1 of The Emetic Sage Caricature Review:

March To The Sea

[click me!]

God Fucked Up

2006-07-18T12:35:00.000-04:00

I was sitting on the toilet last night, and I thought to myself, Man, God really fucked up. Well, He either fucked up, or He's got a really perverse sense of humour.

So, I decided to have another chat. I rang him up on the bright red phone that was wired directly to Heaven. His extension, by the way, is 999.

"Heaven. St. Peter speaking."

"Yeah, this is Greg. Put me through to God."

"God's in a meeting right now, can I have him call you back?"

"Uh, this is kind of urgent. Can you pull him out of his 'meeting'?"

"Sorry, he's in with Laozi, the Buddha, and the Emetic Sage; they're having their weekly debate session."

"Oh for fuck's sake, I know what this meeting is about. This 'debate' is just an excuse to sit around and get pissed on nectar. C'mon Peter, put me through."

"You know I can't." He sounded scared. "God doesn't like being interrupted. You know that!"

"Look, I'll take full responsibility. You know God digs me."

"Not after your last published dialogue. He came off looking pretty lame."

"Look," I bargained. "What if I can score you some sweet nectar? From Moses' own private stash. It's delicious...."

"Well..."

"That-a-boy! Deal!"

"Deal."

Peter put me through, and I heard the phone ringing. After seven times seven rings, it picked up.

"God here."

In the background I could hear riotous laughter, and then the Buddha exclaiming, "This nectar kicks ass!"

"God, it's Greg. Beam me up."

"Oh ko, you want me to beam you up, eh?"

"Yeah, c'mon, no hard feelings. I need to talk."

"You pusillanimous pissant piss pot. You want to talk, eh? How about you feel my wrath, instead?"

"You know what they always say: 'to forgive, divine'."

God seemed to deflate, his righteous wrath diminished. " Yeah. Yeah, they do say that."

"There's a lad."

"Alright, come on up."

I am transmogrified into Heavenly ectoplasm, and find myself in God's private study. The Emetic Sage is languishing on a velvet couch, Laozi is sitting on a divan by a cozy fire, and the Buddha is in lotus position on the oriental carpet until he falls over and spills his nectar. They're all holding pewter tankards of nectar, and are all pissed to the gills.

"Well, well, well, me foin friend." God staggers over and clasps a comradely arm across my shoulders. His breath reeks of nectar and... what is that? Pork rinds? God is a closet swine freak!

I move a step away, try to find some fresh air. "Hey God, what's up?"

"Have some nectar!" and he presses a tall foaming tankard into my hand.

"Thankee, thankee kindly." I take a sip, and be damned if the stuff isn't delicious. "Oooo, that's nice," I say, and take another gobful.

"'course it's nice!" God roars. "By the brass balls of Beelzebub, you won't find nectar like that on Earth."

"'coursh it's nishe..." the Buddha mumbles from the floor.

"Man, that dude is snockered," I observe, taking another pull from the tankard.

"Yes, for a man of such girth and plenitude, he's quite the lightweight. So," God says. "To what do we owe the pleasure?"

"Well," I say. "I was sitting on the can last night, and I realized that you fucked up! Well, either you fucked up, or you've got a really perverse sense of humour."

"Here we go again! Now what? Are you never satisfied, my little child?"

"Well, you don't know what it's like! You've never had to take a shit! I was sitting on the can, not thinking about much, when I realized what I was doing. I was squeezing solid waste out of a hole in my body. I mean, what the fuck!? At least when plants, for example, give off waste, it's lovely clear fresh oxygen. Humans squeeze noxious, stanky, odiferous, sulfuric, nasty shit out of holes in our bodies. Now, that's either a serious design flaw, or you thought it'd be pretty funny for us to go squatting around in our own filth."

God looked serious for a moment. Then a small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. Then he grinned, a wide, shit-eating grin if you will. Then he burst out laughing, huge guffaws that racked his frame. He slapped me on the shoulder companionably. "You noticed that, eh? That was a good one, yeah?"

"Quite," I responded dryly.

"Oh sure, I could have made it so you processed energy without any need to eliminate wastes, but I was in a mood that day. You should see yourselves, the proud intellectual inheritors of the universe, squatting on your haunches and dropping steaming piles of poo wherever you go. It's hilarious!" And he was off on another laughing jag.

"Yeah, real funny." I refilled my tankard.

God was in a jovial mood now -- apparently with his cosmic joke about the steaming poo he felt he had paid back my insults. "Dancing girls!" he ordered forth.

"And another thing...." I started, building up to complain further.

"Not now, son! Now is the time for dancing!"

Lilith came forth, clad only in the sheerest diaphanous silks. Her hair was long and black and heavy, and cascaded over her shoulders and down her back. The shadows of her breasts were heavy and full, and dark nipples poked through the material like thumbs on a midget. Her waist was tiny, and flared out to wide child-bearing hips.

She began to dance, and it was a slow, undulating dance, a dance that was old when the world was young. It recalled the Serpent in the Garden, the tease of forbidden knowledge, the tease of forbidden pleasure. God slowly circled her, moving clockwise, his arms raised, his fingers clicking. From the shadows, strains of music pealed forth,a clarinet and accordian and cymbals. It was a slow and sensuous version of Hava Nagila.

Lilith continued to undulate while God kicked up his heels. His movements were a masculine counterpoint to Lilith's feminine wiles. And then He began to sing in a low rumbling voice. Lilith accompanied him in a sultry alto duet.

Let's rejoice.
Rejoice and be happy.
Let's sing.
Sing and be happy.

Awake, awake, brothers!
With a happy heart.

When they sang 'Awake, brothers!', the Buddha roused himself from the floor. Laozi and the Emetic Sage rose as well and they began to move. Several more scantily clad girls emerged from the shadows and joined the dance. At the end of every line sung, the dancers clinked tankards and drank a draught.

The music began to pick up tempo, the dancers matching. Their robes swirled as they turned and twirled and kicked up their heels. Nectar was quaffed, and as much spilled to the floor in great swaths. And as the tempo increased, so did my passion. This was music and dance that was not meant for mortal Man. It spoke to something preternaturally old deep in the recesses of my brain and blood.

And then I saw her, off in a corner. She was nude and alabaster of face and limb. She writhed and undulated on a bed of cushions, beckoning me with smoldering hazel eyes, the colour of harvests and home and hearth. I heeded the music and the pull of her magic, and hied thither to lose myself in her billowy softness.

And in the distance I could hear God as he sang, Let's rejoice. Rejoice and be happy.

Post 101

2006-07-17T20:38:00.000-04:00

I just noticed that this is my 101st post. I guess people look at 100 as a sort of milestone. Television series reach episode 100 and know that they've been around for 4 or 5 years, and have survived the cut. People reach age 100, and see that they've beaten the odds and have well exceeded their biblical three score and ten. Bloggers reach post 100 and consider that they've learned a thing or two about writing.

It took me six months to get here. That's roughly a post a day, excluding weekends. Turns out I achieved at least one goal I had set for myself: to write. Write at least once a day, even if I couldn't think of something good to write about. Train the fingers and mind to come up with copy, even when I'd rather be laying on the couch.

I took this opportunity to go back and read my blog, and I realized that I've come quite a ways. The first three months of my blog were 50% shite. The other 50% I think were pretty good. Still, it took at least 50 posts to get into the swing of things -- find a voice, find out what I wanted to do and say with this blog.

I suppose if I was really serious about my writing I'd abandon this blog right about now. Time spent blogging is not time spent crafting stories for publication. Time spent blogging is not time spent working on the dome. Not time spent making music.

But damn, blogging's fun. I do derive a certain amount of satisfaction from it. It satisfies an urge that isn't met in the real world. The ability to hop up on a soapbox and preach a carefully worded and crafted message without fear of interruption. The ability to vent my sick fantasies. The ability to try to persuade people that the Way of the Sage is the way they should be following. People will read it all the way through [although one I know just skips through], and reflect on what I've said, and then comment after. There may be debate, there may be raw adulation, there may be slings of derision. But I've made my point the best way I know how. Can't do that in the real world with generalized conversation.

I've met some interesting people too. It's odd to me that I, a loner, have actually met and communicated with people on a fairly regualr basis, if only through writing. There's the Jersey contingent: sweet Fresh Air Lover, and ranting 'noyed and his woman Rosie. From Connecticut, there's the wonderful artist Hotwire. From good old Rhody, there's Road [who's apparantly on hiatus]. All the way from Ireland there's my little nemesis Poglette. And from Massachusetts, there's little beady-eyed KP, and musically-obsessed March, and hilarious Dim, and old inconstant Viszlat. And all those who stop by to read but prefer not to comment.

Oh yeah, that little schlemiel Jocular, too.

So as long as I've got something to say, and as long as I keep enjoying this crazy shit, I'll probably stick around. See you all tomorrow.

Syd Barrett, Rest in Peace

2006-07-16T20:53:00.000-04:00

Well, after I got home from my dentist appointment, and wrote it up for blog comsumption, I decided it was time to pay fitting tribute to Syd Barrett.

For those who know who Syd was, no explanation is necessary. For those who do not, Syd Barrett was one of the founding members of Pink Floyd. As an art student, he joined up with architecture students Nick Mason, Roger Waters, and Richard Wright in 1965 to form a band at the tender age of nineteen. He created the name Pink Floyd by borrowing the first names of two Georgia bluesmen, Pink Anderson and Floyd Council.

With Syd's innovative and unique songwriting style, they had two hits, Arnold Layne and See Emily Play. Their 1967 debut LP release, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, cemented them as the top psychedelic underground band in England. On stage is where they shone, going on in the early hours of the morning, their mix of blues, jazz and pure psychedlia mesmerizing the tripped out audience.

In early 1968, Syd suffered a deteriorating breakdown due to mental instability, fueled by burgeoning stardom and almost continual LSD usage. The Floyd continued on without him and went on to major success and stardom. Syd recorded an abortive two solo albums, and then retired to virtual isolation and hermitism in his Cambridge home. He remained there, painting and having no contact than other with family members, until he died last week at the age of 60 due to complications brought on from diabetes.

Syd is a tragic story of mental illness cutting off a young genius in his prime. By the age of 21 he had penned his finest songs, and by his late twenties had become a virtual recluse. Syd was never a real hero of mine, but I thoroughly enjoyed his songs, respected his accomplishments, and recognized his young genius.

What better way to pay tribute to a life than to remember and celebrate its accomplishments?

So yesterday afternoon I turned off the TV, shut the computer down, and turned off the phone. I queued up all the early Floyd singles, and The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. With what materials I had on hand, I got completely and thoroughly wrecked. Blind wrecked. And listened to Syd's music. And remembered him. And celebrated his legacy.

Jugband Blues
by Syd Barrett

It's awfully considerate of you to think of me here,
And I'm most obliged to you for making it clear
That I'm not here.
And I never knew the moon could be so big
And I never knew the moon could be so blue
And I'm grateful that you threw away my old shoes
And brought me here instead dressed in red.
And I'm wondering who could be writing this song.

I don't care if the sun don't shine
And I don't care if nothing is mine
And I don't care if I'm nervous with you
I'll do my loving in the winter.

And the sea isn't green
And I love no queen
And what exactly is a dream?
And what exactly is a joke?

Dentist Appointment

2006-07-15T14:00:00.000-04:00

I just got back from my dentist appointment this morning. I'm grinning from ear to ear.

Why would I grin after being poked and prodded and scraped and polished? 'cause, dude, I lucked out and my hygienist was a smoking hot mindnumbingly delicious technician of the 1st class. Well, in retrospect she wasn't anything out of the ordinary if seen out of doors walking down a busy street. But put a lab smock on her and put an instrument of torture in her hand, and the fetishist in me was in his glory.

The minute that chair reclines you surrender any control. And the hygienist stands in front of you and slowly dons latex gloves and a mask. And then she sits down next to you and gently pries your mouth open and starts inserting fingers and probes and scrapers. All the while she's speaking to you in sweet dulcet tones, and all you can do is gurgle responsively somewhere in the back of your throat.

She leans over you to get better access to your soft palate, and you're not sure where to look. Do you roll your eyes back into your head? Do you gaze at the ceiling? The high-powered interrogation lamp? You try all of those options, but then you're aware that wisps of hair have come loose from her professional coiffure, and are tantalizingly brushing your forehead and cheek. You squirm ineffectively in the chair, valiantly but unsuccessfully attempting to hide the burgeoning swelling in your pants.

You can't help it, you look into her eyes, and then guiltily away. You look at her delicate ears, her swan-like neck as it plunges into that severe smock. The clean scent of her mingles with the smell of latex and fills your head. You're completely at her mercy.

And as she contorts herself to get even further access to the depths of your gaping maw, her thigh rubs up against your arm. What can you do? Move away? You don't acknowledge the contact. She doesn't acknowledge the contact. It's just part of the process. And then her bosom brushes up against your shoulder. Again, no one acknowledges the contact. It's part of the process.

But for fuck's sake, it's inflaming you! Contact with a fully clothed woman is driving you wild! You might as well be fifteen again, soiling your underwear 'cause you just copped a feel for the very first time. And to top it all off, combined with all these pleasant sensations are jabs and jolts of pain as she drives her implements up and under your gums. It's confusing you. Do you groan in pleasure? Or in pain? Or does it even matter at this point?

As you're drifting in your reverie of sensations, you hear her say, "Shall I finish you off?"

And you're like, "Whaa.. whaa... what?"

"I said, 'we're all finished here'."

Greg House	Greg D'Agostino
First name is Greg.	First name is Greg.
Is a maverick medical genius.	Is a maverick blogging genius.
Is a misanthrope and thinks very little of humanity.	Is a misanthrope and thinks very little of humanity.
Uses an innate perspicacity to delve into a person's soul and use what he finds to pick them apart, and then mock their weaknesses.	Uses an innate perspicacity to delve into a person's soul and use what he finds to pick them apart, and then mock their weaknesses.
Uses deductive reasoning to solve complex medical mysteries.	Uses deductive reasoning to solve complex programming issues.
Has chronic pain in thigh due to infarction.	Has chronic pain in lower back due to extreme laziness.
Is addicted to Vicodin.	Is addicted to opium.
Unabashedly appreciates fine young female flesh.	Unabashedly appreciates fine young female flesh.
Fantasizes about Dr. Cameron in the clutches of a robotic surgical tool.	Fantasizes about Dr. Cameron in the clutches of a robotic surgical tool.
Holds grudges for an inordinately long time.	Holds grudges for an inordinately long time.
Psycologically scarred by a woman he loved.	Psycologically scarred by a woman he loved.
Is a strong non-conformist, and holds authority figures in contempt,all the way up the chain to God himself.	Is a strong non-conformist, and holds authority figures in contempt, all the way up the chain to God himself.
Presents a dishevelled appearance.	Presents a dishevelled appearance.
Was presented a calendar by a 17 1/2 year old girl, which counted down the 6 month's worth of days until it would be legal for them to have sex.	Wishes he was presented a calendar by a 17 1/2 year old girl, which counted down the 6 month's worth of days until it would be legal for them to have sex.

The World According to the Emetic Sage

Thoughts On My Smartphone

Knobcast - Series 4 Episode 6

My Grandparents: A Remembrance and Elegy

Be Yourself: Petey Greene and the Art of Eating Watermelon

The Emetic Sage Credo

On Being Jaded and the Gentle Swell of Bosoms

Ode To Angie

Greg D'Agostino Interviews Greg D'Agostino about Greg D'Agostino

Fire and Ice

Story

Aldona Novak

Qui Non Intellegit, Aut Taceat Aut Discat

Ars Longa, Vita Brevis

The Little Death

House's Guide To Picking Up Chicks

A Farewell To KP

I Feel Good About Myself...

Can You Identify These Four Television Series?

1 + 1 = 1

The Hag-O-Meter Bell Curve Distribution

The Myth of Guinness

Suzuki C90

A Little Arm-chair Physics

Aerial

Nightmares

MIU Puzzle

Oh, I Love You Milanesa

If You Were Stranded On A Desert Island, Would You Eat El Tabachnickov?

Me and Pepler Fight About Vegetarianism

Eva Dögg Guðmundsdóttir [part ii]: The Etymology of Names and the Planck Length

The Burning Man

How I Spent Xmas, 2006: Part I

Why I Like Surround Sound

The Attention Of A Beautiful Woman Is A Powerful Thing

Breathe

You are a small mote...

...a man barely alive.

Interlude: eva dögg guðmundsdóttir

Hvað er að gerast ?

A Little Essay on "Beauty and the Geek"

I Like You, Tony Bennett...

Oh Come On, Greg: Incest?

Administravia and Foto Essay

I've Been Overdosing

The Lord Giveth...

Last Night I Almost Shit My Pants

The Story of Why El Tabachnikov Is So Obsessed with Pasties

House Waxes Poetic about "The Circle"

An Open Letter to You: The Fucking Moron Going 50 m.p.h. In The Left Lane Whilst The Entire State of Massachusetts Piles Up Behind You

Socks, and Controversial Thoughts on Women

Top 10 Reasons The World Would Be A Better Place If Everyone Thought Like Me

Interlude: Ode to Poo

Why I'm Like Dr. Gregory House, M.D.

RIP: Greg D'Agostino

A Quartet of Random Observations and Happenstances

Greg Climbs A Mountain

The Chronicles of My Kitchen

Sage Climbs A Mountain: Part II

Sage Climbs a Mountain: Part I

A Perfect Moment

A God In My Woods

An Elegy

peplerfuckingrules.com

God Holds a Q & A Session

Midnight to 5:24

A Few Observations

Superstring Man-Crush

Bittersweet's Symphony

A Few Weekend Observations

An Open Letter To Dim

A Confluence of Events

On Noxious Fumes and Pain

More High School Nostalgia

Some Blog-related Fandom Encounters

KP Makes Me Mad

A History of My First Date

The ESCR VI: Dim

A No-talent Hack

The ESCR V: Bittersweet