« 11 december 2005 - 17 december 2005 | Main | 25 december 2005 - 31 december 2005 »

24 december 2005

All about [Christmas] Eve Eve

Nothing is what it seems; nothing is what you expect. Nothing is nothing-at-all.

Indexfrontside20051011This is the life you choose when you choose, the one you lead when you lead. And in an acute sense, sometimes the way to lead your own life is to let Pan lead you along his path. I know, it makes no sense in the telling of it. But that's alright. Life, dear friends, is in the living.

On Friday—yesterday—I went down to work, knowing Pan it would be desolate, that I'd likely be the only one there. I was there because, well, I'm not sure why because I could have easily telecommuted. Ahh, but I did need to pick up some things at the Company Store down on Apple Campus, and so I did that. So I hopped on a Caltrain Baby Bullet, where Santa handed me a candy cane and wished me a Merry Christmas. I smiled for longer than expected. But down to Cupertino I went. Which led me to the rest of my day, living in the vault of the sky, our City, a welkin on earth.

I had set to buy a few small items that Sam wanted, and ended up participating in Christmas more than I'd expected: I found something for one of the best guys in the world, my Fred The Plumber, and something for David B., the manager of the place where I played Santa—twice!—this year (pics to follow ASAP).

Daddys440-1Our manager sent us all home early, and off I went, having to take a $20 cab ride from Apple to the Caltrain station. I got back to the City mid-afternoon, expecting to just chill for a while. Not to be. I had to drop off a package at a friend's and decided to stay out and drop off David B.'s gifts as well.

I knew he was working, so I stopped in at Daddy's 440. On the way over, rain threatening, I thought of my Aunt, the one I've mentioned here many times. Her favorite cocktail was a Manhattan, and whenever the mood strikes—which ends up being about once a year—I have one in her honor. And to honor my own memories, I always get an extra cherry in mine: Tootsie (her nickname) would let me have the cherry from her drinks. I was quite a little boy, and my mom never knew, but it was something special for me. Just enough taste of bourbon and sweet vermouth to convince me that adults drank potent drinks and I'd never do that and I'd never become one.

Well, one out of two ain't bad.

I asked David for one, and he brightened. “I make the best Manhattans in the world. Did you know that?” “Nope, I didn't. Oh, and can I have an extra cherry?” He smiled. And you have to understand that when David smiles at you, the world goes away. It's like that.

Well, one Manhattan turned into three: he does make the best Manhattans in the world—Toots would have approved.

David's partner, John, stopped by and I chatted with him for well over two hours. Carol Merrill, Grease 2 and any number of other topics were covered. John and I hadn't ever had much of a chance to talk, but this certainly made up for it.

A man with an East Texas accent from the Avenues interrupted us, and rubbed the hair on my forearm, swooning. I was embarrassed. John is a diplomat. The man said that it was obvious that two such handsome men were a couple and I had to point out that no, in fact, John belonged to David and vice versa, but assured him that I had my own handsome man at home. The man bought a round of shots. “Easy stuff,” David said, handing us little glasses full of Peach Schnapps.

Having a “long drive” home to the Avenues, the man excused himself and set down his still-two-thirds-full drink and walked out. Just as John and I recovered from the whirlwind of the man, he popped back in and handed me a small wrapped gift: for you, he says, and is gone again.

I'd just finished China Boy by Gus Lee on the trainride home, and ever since the first couple of chapters when he related Chinese culture to food, I'd been craving it. So after I left Daddy's 440 Castro and made a quick stop at the video rental place (none of your business), I ran across the street to get some food: BBQ Pork chow fun and chicken chow mein. Two pints packed with food for $5.20. Not bad. I dropped $1 into the tip jar, then fished out another from the wad of bills she'd handed me back and dropped that into the tip jar as well. “Enough! Enough! Too much! Too much!” she blurted, smiling. I just smiled back, warmly. “It's fine, it's fine,” I said through the lingering smile. “Happy Holidays!” she said, voice chasing after me as I walked out. The broken English of an “anti-Christmas” saying made me feel more in the soi disant “Christmas spirit” more than any other moment.

I zipped home in a misting rain on the Vespa, happy to find that I had not only soy sauce in the cupboard, but also chopsticks in a drawer, two things I'd forgotten with the take-out.

I. Ate. It. ALL. OMG.

I scarfed it down while watching the best/worst TV show of all time, Passions, the NBC Soap. Poisoned guacamole (!!!) led to an accident which led to the handsomest man in daytime to be laid up Schiavo-style in bed for weeks with his shirt off. In classic (that is to say, dumb-ass) soap style, he miraculously shows up at Christmas Mass (with a shirt on, dammit all) and claims a real “Christmas Miracle”. If it weren't so campy, it'd be offensive (though I imagine that most people wouldn't be offended if only it weren't so campy).

It was also a few days worth of multiple references, including JM J Bullock, Glynnis Johns and, today, more Glynnis Johns and Bill Pullman. Julie Andrews, Camelot, Cabaret and Mame.

Tonight I'm watching Auntie Mame, one of the many DVDs that have Christmas references. It seems the least I could do for having such a non-Christmassy Christmas so far.


Technorati Tags










Posted by jeff at 11:04 pm | Comments (0) | TrackBack

22 december 2005

Rectum Santorum

The sheer blatancy of Rick Santorum's recent disassociation with the Thomas More Law Center, a “Christian-rights” organization, speaks volumes about the hubris of the American Right Wing. They've always been in a state of denial about the world, but until recently, they've fooled enough people that they could get away with it: there were things that no one would call them on, a space where no foes would enter: the Conservative Sanctum Sanctorum.

SabirthOn the surface, Rick Santorum's move is inexplicably stupid. He gives every appearance of being a fair weather friend, of changing his mind because he backed the losing whores horse.

What he actually is doing is attempting to set up further support for so-called “Intelligent Design” by distancing himself and ID from the “religious argument”: Santorum told the Philadelphia Inquirer that he was troubled by testimony indicating religion motivated some board members to adopt the policy.

Religion and ID overlapping?!? Why, The Honorable Mr. Santorum seems to be surprised by the notion that they're not separate things! What a fellow.

Apparently Santorum will hook up with just anyone without checking out their background. He had an association with the Thomas More Law Center, whose website contains their mission statement, quite easily discoverable. An excerpt:

The Thomas More Law Center affirms the right of Christians to publicly practice their religion and freely express their religious beliefs. Our Founding Fathers fought for a nation built on a foundation of religion and morality. Our lawyers are committed to restoring and preserving that foundation.

These are the folks who were defending the Dover schoolboard's decision to require teaching of ID in science classrooms. So you can see how Santorum would be surprised to find out that people choose ID over evolution for religious reasons.

Personally, I think ID should be mentioned in Science classrooms in its due proportion of scientific merit. If I were a science teacher, I would mention the existence of groups of people who believe origins to be based on Intelligent Design and then offer a summary of their position: God Did It.

And then I'd spend the rest of the school year providing examples and theories and research all supporting evolution.

ID isn't Science. It isn't even anti-Science. It's ridiculous posturing and lying by Christians who should be following their own Commandments.


Technorati Tags





Posted by jeff at 05:58 pm | Comments (4) | TrackBack

21 december 2005

The Science of Science

So. Intelligent Design. I wonder if its proponents are starting to wish that their grand plan to redefine science wasn't also the work of at least one Intelligent Designer.

There's an irony to the pomposity and pride that accompanied the Christian/Fundamentalist push to corrupt Science in order to serve themselves. Last time I checked, Humility was a big deal with the Christians. That's not ironic, tho, that's just hypocritical. What's ironic is that Humility has a profound role in the scientific approach to discovery, and that it was Science's absence of ego that thwarted the Christian attempt at corrupting it.

I'm not saying that every scientist is humble; far from it. What this is about, in fact, is that there is no hubris behind something arrived at by proper scientific method. Assertions generally require believability; and believing generally requires a strong persona (human or mythic) in which the masses can have faith. Science uses assertions, of course, but only tentatively or temporarily, meaning that there's a willingness to drop an assertion when it's demostrated to be untrue or impossible, or to drop an assertion when the truth of it changes.

Christian “truth” mongers abound, hiking up and down Main Street America with their big sacs of capital-T's, asserting various truths to be Truths, immediately ossifying each into Timelessness (see? those capital-T's come in handy!). Trouble is, many truths don't become Timeless Truths, they just become Dated.

I can assert here that this is a plausible mechanism by which every myth moves into History: it becomes incompatible with the Present because it refuses to adapt to the times.

The Discovery Institute—which seems hell bent on doing everything to prevent actual discovery of anything, calls the recent Dover ruling a “triumph”, stating: “Anyone who thinks a court ruling is going to kill off interest in intelligent design is living in another world...”

Remember, folks, these are the same types of people who brought you the Scopes Monkey Trial, who saw fit to find John Scopes “guilty” of teaching evolution. Again. Not irony. Hypocrisy.

KitzmillerpdfFact of the matter is, the rest of us are living in another world, the world of material explanations which humbly acknowledge the limits and limitations of learning and set to painstakingly carve out those niches of knowledge that are discoverable. We don't live in the world they live in, where Zeus came down from Olympia to create the world, the world where interpretation of the Christian bible contemporarily paints Jesus of Nazareth as a neocon.

These are the people who deny the mutability of truth even as they seek to change it.

Click on the document icon to download the full PDF of the Dover judge's summary of Monkey Trial II. Below is an excerpt that I find extraordinary for its directness:

Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board's decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.


Technorati Tags



Posted by jeff at 01:24 pm | Comments (2) | TrackBack

19 december 2005

Sparkling Conversationalism

Now, you all know or at least know of the dogpoet by now. He, of eloquence; I, of loquaciousness. He, sublime; I, subli[vote for godofbiscuits]minal. He, gorgeous; I, gorrrrly; Ithaca, gorges.

Anyhoo. I fully blame myself (even though he started it) for bringing our iChat conversations down to this level:

Piggy-V-Dogpoet

Columbia, Carnegie Mellon, New York, San Francisco. Oink. Woof.

Meow.


Technorati Tags


Posted by jeff at 01:28 pm | Comments (5) | TrackBack

18 december 2005

Frosty the Snowman

In my neo-anti-TiVo world of Comcast HD and its not-yet-TiVo DVR, I find myself channel-surfing instead of choosing programs from the Now Showing MyDVR listing. Happening upon a show you might want to watch has its merits. Same class of things as getting inspiration from looking at a bunch of random images or new ideas from looking at non-related books stacked or tucked in side-by-side on a bookshelf.

So I ended up at the start of Frosty the Snowman.

This, naturally, tripped a stream of consciousness that flowed, ebbed and splashed through memories: Frosty was always shown on CBS. Channel 22, WYOU was out of Scranton, PA and so the reception was almost non-existent, making Frosty one of the least-watched Christmas Specials for us. Ghosting of images was the best we could manage. Then, in my head, ghosted images went to remembering analog scrambling of the premium channels on cable TV. In turning the “fine tune” outer-ring on the channel selector, one could hear the movie on HBO, or see the picture on HBO in black-and-white. But not both. So enterprising protonerd that I was, I would “watch” Grease on the little black-and-white TV in the bedroom and “listen” to it by blaring the TV from the family room. The rooms weren't too far apart for the delay in audio-syncing to be unbearable. Ahh, the things you do when your folks won't pony up the money because HBO also showed R-rated movies.

I digress.

The picture tonight, was in HD, with every frame, every line, every space a perfect solid color. No ghosts. Just snowmen and bad dialog. Bad dialog in processed 5.1 Dolby Digital. With my iBook in front of me, I went hunting for the name behind the voice of Frosty. Good ol' IMDB. Found out the guy's name, Jackie Vernon, and what else he was in and when I looked up, the opening credits were playing and the man's name was there. I don't know why, but that made me laugh: I could have just waited, but it didn't occur to me to wait. Strange all the differences in how we approach such a thing. In the 70s, Frosty the Snowman was a Christmas Special! A Television Event! Today, it's just video content with lots of metadata wrapped around it and easy accessibility either through DVR, DVD or happenstance.

There's a more discerning eye these days, a function of being 41 and, I suppose, just plain better at observation. Or perhaps it's just that adult observations are more complete, more nuanced, more particular than a teenager's or child's. In any case, I noticed a rather existential, post-modernist view to Frosty's waking moments. Here's the dialog:


FROSTY
Happy Birthday! Hey, I said my first words! But snowmen can't talk! CHUCKLES. Alright, c'mon now...what's the joke? Could...could I really be alive? I mean, I can make words. I can move. I can juggle. I can sweep. I can count to ten....1...2...3...4...5....9...6...8....well, I can count to five! LAUGHS. Whaddya know! I'm even ticklish. In fact, I'm all livin'! I am alive! What a neat thing to happen to a nice guy like me!

Clearly the Christmas Snow (Three's Company anyone?) from which Frosty was constructed is not subject to the Bootstrapping Problem.

I also noticed that before Frosty starts counting, he has the standard-cartoon-issue 3-fingers-plus-thumb on each hand, but when he presents his counting (right) hand there's an extra finger! And his left hand still has only four digits! It's creepy, but it only lasts a moment: when he drops his counting hand, it reverts to four digits. That whacky-magical Christmas Snow, I tell ya.

Of course, IMDB told me later of this and two other “goofs” in the show, but I'd call the presti-extra-digitation something other than a goof. Like Frosty himself, Frosty was given the finger because it was necessary. All kids need a little magic in their lives. And all of us, in one way or another, are still kids.

<segue>Insert here</segue>

Oh, and Santa also blackmails someone in this show.


Technorati Tags



Posted by jeff at 11:52 pm | Comments (1) | TrackBack