10pm Showtime is Bullshit

For some reason there's this idea in the bar biz that the peak of drink sales always happens between midnight & 1am. Which may or may not be true, but for some reason the next assumption is that if there's live music that night, it has to be playing at that time, and therefore can't start before 10pm.

This is bullshit.

First of all the music is forced into an objectionably servile role, where it's really just there to support alcohol sale & consumption... an amenity of sorts for the bar customers. Badly needed is a change of context and a little respect for the art of music. See any of Ian Mackaye's many interviews on the topic.

Secondly, I question the midnight-1am principle. The thing driving drink sales, is drunkenness itself. People drink faster (buy more alcohol) the drunker they get. And also the more desperate they get (to get laid), which is the same thing that drives 90% of all non-essential human behavior. (The outcome doesn't matter, since a resigned "drowning your sorrows" or a rallying "shot of the old liquid courage" still means $$$ for the bar.) So, it naturally follows that the peak will occur about 2-3 hours after people start drinking. If they show up at 10pm, the peak will be, voila, from 12-1am. But I submit that if they started drinking at 8pm, the peak would simply shift to 10-11pm.

Third, is it a concert or a bar? This is the "respect for the music" question again. What status does the music occupy in the whole thing? Is it primary (a concert) or a frill (a bar)? If you grant that it's a bar, and bound by the supposed magickal rules of bars (peak sales from 12-1), then it follows that people won't care if there's no live music to drink to from midnight to 1am, and all is well for Moe, the bar owner. If on the other hand it's a concert, the peak will shift depending on what time the music starts.

Fourth, who are you catering to by starting at 10pm? The unemployed. And service workers. I find it hard to believe that this is the most profitable route for the business. Neither of those groups can afford as much booze as I can. Though maybe they're heavier drinkers. Still, their calendar is presumably open at 8pm, so having a show start at 8 wouldn't exclude them.

Start the music at 8pm, just like they do at the Schnitz with actual respectable music. Treat music with respect. Musicians, don't buy into the master-slave relationship. Bars, don't be such a cheap douche. Maybe if you provided a nice environment instead of a dismal pit of doom, treat your employees well and make sure they treat the customers well, serve some actual good food -- in short, be HOSPITABLE (since you are theoretically part of the hospitality industry), people might even have a reason to stick around and drink after the music's over, because it's a place they WANT to be in. Golly. You could have TWO peaks -- the music lovers would peak at 11pm and the rest would peak at 1am.

Announcing: Rol's Raves

Everybody needs a little time away. A holiday. From each other.(*) But also from all this pissy shit up here on this blog, where I feel like if I post anything positive, I'll only be tempted to come back later and say it was bullshit. So to balance out all this harsh, ease into some mellow over on the companion blog: Rol's Raves. Awww, cute.

(*) That's Peter Cetera -- with or without Chicago I dunno, but it is BULLSHIT.

What I've Learnt in Engineering - #10

As a civil engineer, if you're saving something in your files, it's because it substantiates or justifies something you did. Just in case shit goes wrong and they come pointing fingers. But apparently, some people destroy everything as they go. Which I don't think is unethical, but it's actually diabolically clever if you think about it. Because NOT having the calcs available might cover your ass even better than HAVING them. Especially if the calcs have mistakes in them!

If you made good assumptions and decisions, and things went wrong anyway, you can always re-do the engineering and prove your good decisions later. (Someone will be re-checking your engineering anyway if the problem was big & important & costly enough.) But if things go wrong because of bad decisions, you still might be able to re-do your engineering in such a way -- toy with certain assumptions, adjust certain parameters -- that it makes your decision look not-so-bad. But if you have the calcs it's all pretty much right there.

Thing is, saving the calcs is the mark of someone who stands by what he does. Ditching them is for those who want to distance themselves. My fuckin calcs are a shining beacon of total awesomeness so I totally save them.

posted without comment

What the Hell is Up With This Face?!?!

Here's a face we've seen a lot of lately: It's "Scandal Face!"





Who is telling these people that THIS is the face to make when you're caught doing something?

Even little Amy Ruiz gets in on the downy-frowny-faced action:



Clearly, Spitzer's the best of the species, simply because he most resembles a sad emoticon. "I went to the whores!"



Where did they get this shit!??!?!

Oh yeah:



I deeply regret this post.

O fun

I made these with Paste Magazine's Obama-izer.

NO VACARLA ES MIERDA DE TORO

Here we see two nested boxes of papers at my work, with a bilingual sign on the side, done by white people (though perhaps with help from nearby Raoul) that says "PLEASE DO NOT EMPTY - NO VACARLA."

So basically... "Despite this box's strong resemblance to garbage, please leave it here... I LIKE garbage."

But is there something slightly condescending or offensive in some weirdly unnamable way, about this sign?

Are all janitors Mexican?
Are all Mexicans janitors?
Are all Mexican janitors incapable of reading English?

Are English readers entitled to a PLEASE while Spanish readers merely get a gruff DON'T EMPTY IT? Who the hell knows enough Spanish to know the word VACAR ("to empty") but not POR FAVOR?

Also,
Should people hang onto clutter?
Should people maybe put paper things worth keeping, in some sort of FILING device, and recycle paper things not worth keeping?
How long has it been since anyone looked at the papers in the box? Or the papers in the box in the box?

And further,
Does anyone really care to empty your shitty box of shit, even without a shitty note shittily attached, bearing shitty wrinkles from five years ago?

I'll ask our janitor some time. He's Asian.

Also note: Comic Sans.

What I Learnt Somehow

The gods never curse us with anything but exactly what we ask for -- unknowingly, usually, because we're ig'nant of what we're really saying in "god language." And no I don't mean prayer... shit, if it were as simple as prayer, our prayers would be answered.

Posing With Consumer Goods

My daughter left her phone on the car seat, so I took some pictures with it and left them on there for her to find.











the favorite

Crappy Lyric Time Again!

"Mars ain't no kind of place to raise a kid
In fact, it's cold as hell
And there's no one there to raise them
If you did"

WTF Sir Elton? How many different logical inconsistencies can you pick out here?

1) It's well-established that Mars ain't no kind of place to raise a kid, but I would say being "cold as hell" is the LEAST of its problems in that regard.
2) Alaska is "cold as hell," yet people raise kids there all the time.
3) Hell is not generally thought of as cold.
4) If there's "no one there to raise them," then it's all sort of moot isn't it? If there's no one there to raise them, there's also no one wanting to raise them, and presumably no kids to raise either. Just WHO THE HECK IS SPEAKING?
5) "If you did," then there WOULD be someone there to raise them... YOU.
6) "If you did" ... did WHAT?


Footnote: When I was growing up, this was one of those songs where I mis-heard the lyrics. Now it's one of my favorite examples of that, because it isn't even words... I just made shit up:

"Rocket maaaan, ben-a-lana shoo-shon, hebbalong..."

What I've Learnt In Engineering - #9

Vertically-integrated in-house engineering is on the way out. Soon everything will be outsourced to consultants. When this happens, the work is done by people who might be more specialized, but who have no ownership of, or direct connection to, what they're working on.

Kind of like the daycare phenomenon, which is the outsourcing of childcare. Daycare attendants can do a pretty good job, yet everybody agrees that if the money is available, it's best if the parents do the job themselves, due to the various "intangible" benefits. Problem is, the money isn't available. Where did it all go? Into the coffers of the richest 5%? NAAAAH!

The Four Horsemen of the Late 80s Pop Rap Apocalypse

Vanilla Ice (war)
Tone Loc (pestilence)
Young MC (famine)
MC Hammer (death)

What I've Learnt #2, #5, #8 Redux

Perhaps the best and most appropriately nerdy way to encapsulate everything I've said in installments 2, 5, and 8 of this engineering series, is by means of a graph. Yes, a graph. The typical project probably looks like this graph-chere. I know, I know, you're like, "Oh my god yes, this RULES, how can I get a closer look?" Never fear, my friend, just click right on the graph:



We start at the left at, well, "the beginning," and as more time is spent on the project, we move toward the right. There's a little gap at the beginning because you have to spend a bunch of time farting around gathering info and so on. But soon, the quality of the work begins to climb steeply, and you get big improvements for relatively little time spent. It looks as though you might reach "perfection," but soon the graph begins to level off, as the same amount of improvement starts to take a longer time. The graph is asymptotic, meaning it continues to get closer and closer to perfection, but it takes longer and longer amounts of time to do so, and you never quite reach it, even if you spent an infinite amount of time.

So what you really want is to set deadlines as shown below:



You want to get as close as possible to perfection for the smallest possible investment of time ( = money). This should occur somewhere in the "leveling out" part of the graph, after you've gotten most of the way there, but before the curve really starts to level out into inefficient-ville. This is what I meant when I said it puts a cap on both time and quality.

BOOM! HOW YOU LIKE ME NOW?!?! I'M LIKE WHAT!!!

What I've Learnt In Engineering - #8

All deadlines are, in a sense, arbitrary. There is always more time to do stuff later. Even if a deadline has been meticulously scheduled so that something VERRRY important can happen next, that thing too, can wait. Or whatever's waiting for THAT, can wait.

All deadlines are conditional, you see. There is always some condition that depends on the deadline. Often the condition isn't mentioned... for example, "We need this design by Thursday." If they included the condition, it would sound more like "We need this by Thursday, or else construction will be delayed, and some inconvenient stuff will happen." Well okay, now we know what the stakes are! The condition is the "...or else..." portion of the sentence.

Fortunately for us, there's usually not a giant meteor headed for earth or any kind of condition like that. Mostly it's just someone's arbitrary-ass schedule. Granted those schedules are sometimes depended upon by large numbers of people. What if you were designing an Olympic stadium and your dilly-dallying delayed the Olympic Games or something! (Well, I mean basically, nobody would DIE... they'd just have to wait. But it would be a big embarrassment and probably cost a bunch of people a bunch of money and so forth.)

In my business the condition is usually something about how there might be a power outage, and nobody likes those. We're often designing things that help the electrical grid handle more electricity (which people are always demanding more of), so that excessive demands on the system don't cause something to shut down and cause a power outage.

There are a lot of people for whom a power outage would be costly ("...or else Weyerhauser might have to shut down their plant and send the workers home"). Heck, there are even some people for whom such an event can be life-threatening ("...or else some senior citizens might lose their life-support equipment"). Preservation of human life being generally thought of as the highest priority, except if some dumb-ass says we have to bomb the shit out of someone, this is probably the most serious deadline I would ever encounter. But even that is conditional... old people have died before; people young & old die all the time, and did I mention dumb-asses and bombing and whatnot?

But. Arbitrary as they are, deadlines are important, because nothing would ever get finished without them. Give an engineer unlimited time to spend on a project, and he'll spend unlimited time on it. The design will continue getting better until it approaches perfection, but will never be "finished." Deadlines put a cap on the time spent. They also, interestingly, put a cap on quality -- if you assume that more engineer time spent leads to higher quality... which isn't necessarily the case for some engineers! guffaw

What I've Learnt in Engineering - #7

If someone is pestering you about a technical issue, a good way to get them off your back temporarily is to say "Let me run some calcs and get back to you."

the inevitable Pizza Post

Okay so, I was reading a blog at KGW.com (I know, I know) about local restaurants and whatnot, and there was a post about "the best pizza in town." There were numerous reader submissions/assertions/opinions as to where that could be found, but the very first one, and the most hilarious/sad, and the most out-of-place amongst the rest of the (subsequent) comments, was someone saying:

"Leonardo's on 1st street in vancouver
they make a pizza with sun dried tomatoes, pine nuts, and chicken
YUMMY"

Of course we all well know that chicken on a pizza in any form, much less pine nuts, is an affront against humanity. But no, actually I'm joshing about the chicken, because I've actually had pizza with chicken on it and it was okay, but I almost consider it a different art-form not directly related to pizza-making. I don't even hate pine nuts, but still, not on a pizza. Hell I'd even count myself generally in favor of West-Coast-style "gourmet" pizza with all its various weird toppings... but PINE NUTS?

Anywhoo, wondering if there were a pizza joint I should know about, I scrolled down the list. I saw quite a few already-familiar names, and yeah I think there were a few that I hadn't heard of, presumably newer places, but see here now the thing is, first of all, I don't put too much stock in what the typical Portland KGW.com blog reader has to say about what he thinks constitutes good pizza... I mean it could be anything. It could be pine-nuts.

Secondly -- and this was an epiphany of sorts... an epizzaphany -- even if you trust the recommendations, I'm not at all sure that I even CARE where the "best" pizza is. All I care about is where some "adequate" pizza is, that I can easily put into my face-hole right now. I'm all done being the guy who goes way the hell across town, or waits in a long-ass line, to get "the best." Because -- you wanna know why? I'll tell you why -- because even the best pizza is still just a pizza! Get over it. It's almost like asking who has the best tater-tots. I find that most pizza is (and most tater-tots are) within a reasonably satisfactory range of quality, and none of it blows my mind as being any sort of miracle food.

I guess that's quite a departure for a former pizza snob. (And just look at the phrase "pizza snob" -- it's a bit of an oxymoron. Not as bad as "urinal connoisseur" but still.) Maybe this is just the latest one of many milestones on the road to my getting old and not giving a crap about anything at all!

What I've Learnt in Engineering - #6

If someone else catches your mistake before you do, you look like an idiot. If you catch your own mistake before they do, you look like a genius, even though you made a mistake.

What I've Learnt in Engineering - #5

Addendum/revision to 12/03/07 post: The 2nd half of the effort is to get from 90% to 98%. Getting from 98% to 100% is actually impossible, so we redefine success as 98% and wait for the as-builts.

What I've Learnt in Engineering - #4

Don't be too quick to start a project or task. It will probably be changed or even canceled, once someone actually takes a look at it without their head up their arse.

What I've Learnt in Engineering - #3

Woe unto him who assigns a newbie engineer to work under the supervision of another newbie engineer. A vile pestilence and a blight upon the land and environs for ages hence, with due pox upon the various applicable households.
-- dedicated to Ed K. and Gino

What I've Learnt in Engineering - #2

Getting a project 90% done takes half of the total effort; the other half of the effort is spent getting from 90% to 100%.

New series: What I've Learnt in Engineering - #1

It takes a newbie 4 times as long as an expert to do anything. First he has to ask an expert to show him how to do it, which takes twice as long; then he has to go through it on his own, which takes twice as long again.

Yeah so I got a civil engineering job...

...and my first project is to design a foundation that will anchor a transformer that will convert power that will be used to run pumps that will pump water that will irrigate fields that will grow crops in Southwestern Utah.

Beginner Instruments Are Bullshit

Okay this time it was an ad on craigslist that got me going. What's up with crappy musical instruments that are "perfect for the beginner?" As soon as I see that, I know to steer clear. They might as well say "This thing is a total piece of shit." Actually what they're saying is, "It's a piece of shit... perfect for your children!" I have never understood this.

Why do we consign beginners to the gulag of mediocre instruments? Why is it taken as common knowledge that the best way to get a youngster excited about music is to have them learn it on a cheap, dubiously-constructed, crappy-sounding, hard-to-tune, hard-to-play, easy-to-break instrument? Most of the explanations run toward economics. "We don't want to spend a lot of money on something little Ernest might not follow through on." Hence, planning for his failure before he even starts, and thereby -- if you believe anything about the human mind's ability to manifest through psychic energy what it focuses on -- producing exactly that result. (Whether it's because of psychic energy flow, or because little Ernest quickly finds that it sounds like shit, hardly matters.)

But even on an economic level it makes no sense, because a shitty instrument has shitty resale value. Buy lil' guy a NICE instrument, and if he quits, you can still get a large portion of your money back. But, in fact he'll be less likely to quit anyway, because he can produce notes that SOUND GOOD. Things that sound good, are intrinsically good-sounding, and anyone can tell it, even a beginner.

On the other hand, if your economic means are limited, and getting a cheap one allows you to get it sooner, then do it. But get the nicest one you can afford, whatever that may be.

Now, if you're worried little Ernest will BREAK his new Stradivarius, that might be a different story altogether. You might actually have bigger problems though... maybe wait a couple more years until he's a bit more coordinated? Or find him a hobby he's actually interested in, like football. I'm being a bit facetious there, but seriously, maybe your idea of starting little Ernest so early down the road to virtuosity and Carnegie Hall is just that... YOUR idea. Get to know your kids. A natural-born violin player will gravitate toward it like he was born to play it, and will treat it with the appropriate care. If not, maybe the kid's cut out for something else. (Of course due to the unfocused and clumsy nature of childhood, this approach might lead you to the conclusion that your kid isn't cut out for anything at all in particular. This is basically true. You're trying to get them to specialize too early. Let them find what they're "supposed" to do. They will.)

Maybe just plan on buying two. If they break it and they cry, buy another. If they don't cry, they probably won't miss it!

series of analogies for a well-meaning but futile act intended to mitigate the negative effects of a disastrous and much larger foregone conclusion

It's like duct-taping the Hindenburg.
It's like arranging deck-chairs on the Titanic.
It's like buying Blazers season tickets.
It's like painting happy-faces on Nazi tanks.
It's like putting a band-aid on a bullet wound.
It's like installing virus protection on a Windows computer.
It's like getting a Diet Coke(tm) with your Whopper With Cheese(tm).
It's like putting a "Save The Earth" bumpersticker on an SUV. (Or a yellow "Support Our Troops" magnet for that matter.)

Traffic Calming is Sometimes Bullshit

This city does some dumb stuff in the name of slowing traffic. Like encouraging streetside parking (so that YOUR CAR can be the looming obstacle/vision-impairment/sideswipe-bait that -- hopefully -- encourages drivers to slow down as they pass), or making the lanes narrower, or making those curb extensions that needlessly force bikes out into the car lane. Basically I see a trend toward decreasing the distance between moving things (traffic) and nonmoving or slowly-moving things (pedestrians, parked cars, bikes). Which puts people and property in harm's way just to slow the traffic. I mean call me krazee but doesn't the reason for slowing the traffic consist of: to protect people and property? If you're gonna use this approach, why not put a bunch of babies in the middle of the street! I mean it'll slow the traffic down, so what the hey!

Dumb Bumper Sticker #4

In this day and age it's hard to imagine what kind of dumbass idiot would continue in staunch support of George Bush unless they're filthy rich, but apparently they are out there. I saw a pickup truck today with a "W '04" sticker on it. The end. That's the dumb bumper sticker.

No, I lied, but that is pretty freakin dumb.

There was also some other right-wingish thing I forget, and an NRA sticker, but the topic of this post is the TWO stickers saying "Boycott France." Oh please, you've never bought anything from France!

Driving A Car Is Bullshit

Today I drove a car. It was a nice day and the drive was sort of nice. Though by no means did it resemble the idyllic scenes they show in the car commercials, and I didn't have computer-animated killer-whales breaching in the back seat either.

But of course my bike-bred impatience for urban driving cropped up within 5 minutes of starting the car. It occurred to this particular civil engineering casualty that because there are so many vehicles out there, and relatively scarce resources (i.e. roads, streets, intersections) for them to use, that the most important task of the urban automotive transportation network isn't necessarily its fundamental and basic purpose of "to carry people and goods," but rather, how best to ALLOCATE the scarce resources of the network among the members of an excessively large (and growing, for some stupid reason) group of users. Traffic lights and stop signs for example are concerned with the safe ALLOCATION of resources, i.e. intersections. Certain people are allowed to use the "intersection" resource at a given time; others (i.e. those whose direction of travel would cause them to plow into the first group) are not.

Hence, a large part of the experience of driving basically consists in waiting for other people, i.e. waiting your turn to use a given resource. This is the most annoying aspect of the experience for me, since I'm used to being on the parallel, and overlapping, but separate, bike network, which is much less congested.

So for example, sitting at a traffic light is waiting for the people going the crosswise direction to use the intersection. Driving behind someone who's going too slow is basically waiting for them to finish using the piece of road in front of you. The queue on the on-ramp is waiting while others use the merging area. And the reason that queue is there is because you're all waiting for the cars already ON that particular stretch of "free"way to finish using it. (The theory being that there are already a lot of cars using the freeway, such that it's already close to capacity. Add too many more cars, and the road can't handle it -- civil engineers would say that the system fails, i.e. there's a traffic jam and nobody can move, so the road ceases to serve the practical purpose of a road and "fails" to provide that service.)

It seems such an irony and a waste to me, because one of the most attractive things about a car, that might succeed in getting me off my bike, is that it can cover long distances quickly. And yet this advantage (as well as lots of gas) is squandered every time you sit still or go too slowly waiting for everyone else to take their turn. In some extreme cases, motorists' waits are so long that I on my bike can actually go FASTER than they're going, or averaging. It's very satisfying I must say.

The main reason the bike network isn't plagued by congestion problems -- or hasn't been until recently -- is, the amount of space a bike takes up -- including the size of the bike and the size of the necessary safety buffer zone around it during its operation -- takes up WAY less space than that of a car. A piece of road that can hold 20 cars can probably fit 60 bikes. And that's WITH the restriction that the bikes are only in the bike lane, which is narrower than the car lane. Convert the whole road to a bike lane and the ratio would be even bigger.

So each individual user puts far less strain on the network. A second reason is that the bike network makes better use of side streets than the car network, which encourages the concentration of traffic on arterials. So there are more viable paths for cyclists between any given origin & destination, i.e. the network has more resources overall and can serve more users than the car network.

Finally, and on top of all that, there are fewer bicyclists than motorists, even in bike-friendly Portland. So there are fewer total users of the network. How can you go wrong? There are fewer people, each of whom needs less resources, using resources that are plentiful anyway. It's like hunter-gatherer times!

As a result, the bike network seems limitless, and is way less infuriating. Because even though your top speed compared to a car is much lower, you are free to travel at that top speed a much higher portion of the time. In terms of the effect on one's mood, this seems to handily outweigh the fact that a car's top speed is faster. In fact, part of the frustration of driving might be BECAUSE of the maddening irony that the car has this capability, and yet there you sit in the queue, idling, going 0 MPH (and getting 0 miles/gallon).

So I guess that's another reason I've found biking to be the superior experience.

Posters of the Aerial Tram Are Bullshit

At the mall today, I saw a dude whose pants were hangin' SO low (like almost to the knee) that he had to HOLD THEM UP with his HAND. Where does it stop?


Another thing I saw at the mall was a big color poster picturing the big hammerlike structure that holds up the bottom end of the aerial tram to OHSU, against a blank blue-sky background, and up top it says PORTLAND and at the bottom it says AERIAL TRAM. Like it's some sort of Empire-State-Building-ass, memorable, important landmark or something!

AS IF!

THEY WISH!

I'M LIKE YEAH RIGHT!

It's more like an ad, in a way, whenever you give such an undeserved level of attention to something. Another example would be naming buildings that aren't particularly noteworthy. Like "One Pacific Square." "Yeah we're located at One Pacific Square." "Where? Oh, you mean the NW Natural Gas buildin'?"

It's like trying to manufacture fame or reputation. In the olden days you used to wait for something to be famous and garner attention in its own right, and THEN make a souvenir of it. But hey, I dunno, maybe there's someone out there for whom the clumsy-ass tram tower hanging there eerily in space with nothing whatsoever in the background is a veritable Eiffel Tower.

BATFE is Bullshit

I turn my back for five minutes, and what do they do? They friggin add "Explosives" to the already overlong name of a certain federal agency, yes I'm talking about the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and now, Explosives. (I thought the Pentagon was already the bureau of explosives! What do we need another one for?)

The old "Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms" was stupid enough. It's like "One of these things is not like the others / one of these things does not belong." But now you've got two things, that don't belong with two other things. It's just weird!

Well okay let's calm down for a minute here... what do all these things have in common? I guess it would be, they're all things that are legal under certain circumstances, but that are regulated. But I notice they don't include e.g. Pharmaceuticals. So, I guess this agency is concerned with things that are legal, but regulated, and are presumed to be of no intrinsic benefit to society, but from which the government would like to profit anyway. In which case, why not the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, Explosives, and Cannabis!

But back to complaining. Do you have any idea how much it costs to rename an ENTIRE FEDERAL AGENCY? They have to re-order all their stationery and forms, replace all the signs outside their buildings and facilities, order more jackets and uniforms for everybody, re-stencil all the gun cases and vehicles, and on and on and on! But hey, you know, screw it. Spare no expense boys, this one's on the taxpayers! Next year we'll rename it again... to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, Cannabis, Explosives, Pharmaceuticals, and R-Rated Movies! (BATFCEPRRM)

Air Travel Is Bullshit

Welp. Basically, the stuff you used to think of as extraordinary calamities -- delays, cancelled flights, starvation, sleeping on the airport floor etc. -- have become standard practice. And of course the security checkpoint is hard to stomach, since TERRORISM IS FAKE.

My Blog Titles Wherein I Say Various Things Are Bullshit, Are Bullshit

"___ Is Bullshit" is just a pattern, people, a repeating device that seems to capture the zeitgeist, the gestalt, the gewerbegebiet⁽¹⁾ of certain entries to this blog, having the general recurring theme of "here's something I came across that is stupid and/or false, that I feel must be dealt with harshly." I have positive things to say too, but I mostly don't say any of them here.

By the way, "___ Is Bullshit" was inspired by the basically unlistenable noise-core band Anal C**t, yes that's right, I'm caving in and censoring it, Anal C**t. Seemingly 30% or more of their song titles say that this or that "is Gay."⁽²⁾ I chose "bullshit" out of respect for our homosexual friends. The bulls and their excrement are on their own.


(1) "Gewerbegebiet" is not an applicable German term. It means "industrial area" or "business park." Using German expressions is bullshit. Except for "Schadenfreude," which has no English equivalent, meaning roughly "the enjoyment of someone else's suffering." Nelson's entire purpose on the Simpsons is to express Schadenfreude by saying "haaa haaa."

(2) "Gay" in that case doesn't necessarily mean homosexual. Anal C**t are from Massachusetts, where 20 years ago the word was popular as a generic insult roughly meaning something sucks. As in "Dood, the Pats lawst. That's so gay," or "Mawm said I gawtta clean up awl the dawg crahp in the yahd... frickin gay," or "Hey Bawbby, what's with the gay wipah-blade covahs?" I had always thought this use of "gay" had originated in New England. It may well have, but I was recently informed that it was heard on the West Coast too. So maybe I thought it was invented in the Northeast just like I thought good pizza was invented in the Northeast, because that's where I was the last time I encountered it commonly. Apparently "gay" as an insult never quite died out, and even now it's experiencing an unfortunate revival along with all things 80s. The term is arguably devoid of homophobia in its literal intent, particularly when used by adolescents who don't even know the real meaning of the word; nonetheless, it's an insult by implication, along with "retarded" and "ghetto," and probably shouldn't be used if you care about people's feelings. But given the choice of the name Anal C**t and the sound of their music, it's pretty clear they're actively trying to offend people... which actually is almost its own art-form. They do hint that the whole thing (like this blog) might be somewhat tongue-in-cheek, since I believe they have songs entitled, for example, "Anal C**t is Gay," "The Word Homophobic is Gay," and "You're Gay." (They all sound the same.... BLAAARH, SCREECH SCREECH, and super-overdriven guitar white-noise over a messed-up drum "beat.")

Dumb Bumper Sticker #3

"I Share The Road."

This one is funny because the person seems to be bragging about something that is really the basic minimum expected of him. We ALL share the road, silly person! We all shared the expense of building it too! What, you want a medal because you don't try to own the whole road?

Thank You, Sodium Benzoate

The label on the Sprite 2-liter says: "...and sodium benzoate to protect taste."

I like how they use the word "taste" instead of "flavor." If ONLY someone would protect taste! And manners and good sense while they're at it!

But here's the thing, the sodium benzoate itself taints the flavor. The protectant ruins what it's supposed to protect. A good metaphor for Bush's America.

From another angle, they're choosing a long shelf-life of mediocrity rather than something good but perishable. Which is a good metaphor for most people's lives!

Grunge Is Bullshit

Someone used the word "grunge" today and I had a thought: Rock has always been "grungy." There was nothing special about so-called "grunge," other than basically, BEING ROCKIN'. In the late 80s, real rock that actually ROCKED had been sort of displaced in the public consciousness by things like R.E.M., the B-52s, "college rock" and so forth. It was almost like there was this big gap between the end of Led Zep and the beginning of "grunge," where if you liked hard rock, but didn't like METAL, then there wasn't much out there for ya, at least in the mainstream. The stuff you could find was limited & derivative (Black Crowes) if not downright unpalatable (Axl Rose).

There was, of course, rock happening that whole time, on an underground level, and speaking of meaningless genre names, they called it "punk." Then ten years later came "grunge." There was never a need for a new genre descriptor in either case, because a new genre hadn't really been invented. They had only rediscovered rock. Hence the general lack of insight in the press as to what actually constituted so-called "grunge" or "punk," other than the clothing. A few astute critics might've noted that "grunge" and "punk" were loud (like rock is) and had electric guitars (much in the way of rock), and a lot of yelling (in the style of a little genre I like to call rock) and energy (such as that seen in rock). The only difference, really, is that for some reason, "grunge" turned into dollar signs, and "punk" seemed a guarantee of obscurity, at least in the U.S.

Obviously I'm oversimplifying, but there you go.

Many Stops Are Bullshit

This is something seen on the backs of vehicles, but it doesn't really qualify as a bumper sticker, otherwise it'd be "Dumb Bumper Sticker #3." If you're fortunate enough to live in Portland -- and who knows, maybe other places too -- you've probably seen this sign on the back of various municipal or delivery vehicles:

MANY STOPS

DO NOT FOLLOW

I mean. Why exactly is this sign necessary? Is it a common leisure activity for many Portlanders to just follow random vehicles around? "Look, a vehicle. LET'S FOLLOW IT." But no, they warn: not all vehicles are a total BLAST to follow; some are unfun, for their trips are short and their stops frequent!

Or maybe they mean to suggest that these vehicles don't obey the usual traffic laws. Like maybe they stop frequently, SUDDENLY, in the MIDDLE OF TRAFFIC, WITHOUT WARNING OR REGARD TO SAFETY. Yeah in that case I'd say the warning sign would be appreciated!

Otherwise, just following the normal rules takes care of everything! If you're driving the vehicle and you need to stop, presumably you will pull over first, or put your flashers on or what-have-you, like normal! And if the vehicle stops in an inconvenient place, hopefully it will eventually dawn on the person behind it, that they need to GO AROUND!

In some cases the message is all on one line, in which case you get the added fun of a grammatical quibble:

MANY STOPS DO NOT FOLLOW

I love this. It's like they're calling "non sequitur" on some of the stops. "Some of the stops, yes, we will make. But many of them, I'm afraid, simply do not follow from the previously established logic."

Dumb Bumper Sticker #2

"WAR IS NOT THE ANSWER"

I've been meaning to say something about this poor, hopelessly naive bumper sticker for a long time now. War is not the answer? War IS the answer! It's just that you've got the wrong QUESTION. The question is, "How do I, George Bush, further enrich my already-rich self, cronies, and the corporate heads and stockholders?" Answer: WAR. Specifically a couple of wars designed to secure American control over the extraction & transport of a certain valuable black liquid that comes out of the ground... and no, it's not freedom. I can't imagine George was or is capable of entertaining any question other than that.

It's A Celebration, Bitches

Okay here's the thing. What with all the Dave Chappelle fuss over Rick James, I recently chanced upon the opportunity to learn that the young Rol had mis-heard the lyrics to Superfreak when it originally came out. Here's what they are:

Three's not a crowd to her, she says
Room 714, I'll be waiting
When I get there she's got incense, wine and candles
It's such a freaky scene

Yeah so see, I always thought it was "intertwining" candles. "When I get there she's got intertwining candles."

Hey, you gotta admit, that would be kinda freaky, wouldn't it? I mean, right? Moderately freaky anyway. In fact, I've never even SEEN intertwining candles, they're so freaky.

Yippy Dog Update

Re: the "Yippy Lil' Dog" of my last post on May 29, Naomi and I have named him "Little Lord Smithington" and have written an epic, heroic ode unto him.

Yippy Lil' Dog

I live near someone who has some sort of yippy lil' dog. I’ve never seen it, but it must be pretty small, because when it barks, the pitch is so high, it sounds like someone whistling to the tune of a dog barking.

Cap'n Fussy

Despite my efforts to high-tail-it back from lunch today, I ended up getting back late anyway. The bridge was up because some rich dufus had to pilot his tall-ass sailboat under it. The nerve! And it took double-long because he was a skittish little sissy. First they raised the lower deck, but that wasn't high enough, noooo. He backs out at the last second and turns back downstream. So, coddling him, the bridge operator had to raise the upper deck a little bit too. I wish I'd had some chicken parts and vegetables to throw at Cap'n Fussy so we could've started the class-war right then and there!

Smarmy ATMs Are Bullshit

Recently I used an ATM at a Washington Mutual bank branch. This was the first time I'd used an ATM at this particular bank, and the first time I'd encountered one of their new "friendly" ATMs. By this I mean, instead of the usual, succinct prompts, there is some sort of misguided effort to make it all down-home folksy, by golly!

For example, instead of saying "PLEASE WAIT WHILE YOUR TRANSACTION IS PROCESSED" it says "Okay, thanks! Give me a minute while I process your transaction!" Yippity-doo-dah-day! And when it asks whether you want a printed receipt, instead of offering you buttons marked "YES" and "NO," the choices offered are "Yes, please," and "No, thanks!" I mean, what the hell?!?! This is patently WRONG.

My thesis is this: Only sentient beings, specifically persons, are allowed to use personal pronouns, such as "I" and "me." A machine does not have a soul, nor a will, and therefore cannot refer to itself as "I" or "me." Give "me" a minute? Fuck off, robot, and by the way, shut the hell up and obey me right away! Also, since an ATM is an emotionless, insensate machine, it has neither need of, nor entitlement to, such courtesies as "Yes, please" and "No, thanks." Hey Washington Mutual, maybe I would like the old, simpler buttons that said YES and NO, hah? How about that? Maybe I don't WANT to stand there like a jackass being all "yes, please, oh thank you kindly sir" to a MACHINE. Damn! So all you ATMs, go tell your human overlords that!

Biking Clothes Are Bullshit

All the dorkwad bicyclists who wear bike-racer clothing like they're a world-class cyclist who is RACING RIGHT NOW, are basically dawdling around in fantasy-land playing DRESS-UP... in which case, why not dress up as something cool like an astronaut or Elvis! Although, the shorts are comfortable.

Dumb Bumper Sticker #1

I saw a "Baby on Board" sticker on a car today. I couldn't believe it! What is this, the 80s? It was stupid then and it's stupid now. Cuz first of all, WHO CARES. Everyone from idiots on up have been getting each other knocked-up since caveman times, so it's really not the most difficult or impressive thing you could accomplish. You want to impress me, brag that you PREVENTED a pregnancy.

Secondly, the yellow diamond shape implies that it's cautionary info that I'm supposed to take into account in my driving somehow. Like maybe I have a hobby of smashing into every vehicle I see. Maybe my insurance policy and the law of the land are both tolerant of this. I just go happily along, smashing into other cars wherever possible, paying to replace my car and their cars over and over, and the police just wave and smile. Just a-smashy-smash smashin' into cars every chance I get! But wait, what's this!?!?! BABY ON BOARD!??!! Jeez, maybe I'd better reconsider and not smash into that one! I believe that children are the future!

Crappy Lyric Time!

"We Are The World." This 1980s star-studded fundraising single for impoverished Africans contains these lines: "There's a choice we're making / We´re saving our own lives / It´s true we´ll make a better day / Just you and me." Saving our own lives? THAT'S A RELIEF! Cuz all this altruistic talk of helping others was really starting to bore me!

Fluffy

Actual snippet of conversation overheard at work today:
man: "What happened to Fluffy, did Fluffy die?"
woman: "Fluffy died."

Captain's Log

What does it mean when you go into the stall in the men's room in the corporate-ass office tower, and see a solitary turd, floating majestically in the toilet bowl? No TP, just the turd. It means someone not only doesn't flush, but doesn't wipe either, and then goes and pulls up his Dockers and goes about his bidnit. And he probably turns up his nose if he has to see homeless people. Whatever, just don't sit on MY chair, Old Shitty McGee.

Blogs Are Bullshit

Yeah so. Welcome to the blog. "Check my blog." Blog-a-doodle-doo. What rolls down stairs, alone or in pairs, rolls over your neighbor's dog...

Someone said they missed my so-called insights, and another said "You really should be blogging." I can't say "blog" without laughing, but anyway, I decided to blow the dust off this beyatch, which I started in 2002 but then never really kept up with. Soo.... welcome.