Laughter Is a Sin

There is nothing more unattractive than laughter. It is possible to be angry, or cheerful, or pathetically sad and keep your dignity. It is not possible to look or sound good while laughing. It brings out the worst in people. They wheeze or snort or bray or choke. There are hundreds of attractive noises that people can make, and none of them are involved in laughing. I guess people who are trained opera singers could probably manage a nice laugh, if they didn't lose control of themselves, but they probably would. Opera singers laugh nicely. I think the only really sensible thing to do if you have a fit of laughter is to make no noise at all, like Uriah Heep. That at least will intrigue people.

Not to say that the noise is the only problem with laughter. People who are laughing either gape with their mouths, or crinkle up their faces up into some other horrible baby shape. Probably better to just cover your face with your sleeve. Then I am not offended. By you.

A Triptych For You

I Have an Enemy

In the factories where the cartons of berries are filled, there is a man in charge of making sure that the three non-mushy berries in the package go on top, to fool naive people like me. That man is my enemy and if I ever meet him I will hurt him.

[sic]

This is one of the prissiest things you can do today. In the past, when nobody made any typographical errors it might have been permissible, just due to the sheer transgressiveness of any misspelling. Nowadays everyone misspells. With blogging becoming a thing respectable professionals do (why did they ever put themselves in a class with cranks like me, that was the first mistake) even respectable people make mistakes now.

Putting "sic" after people's errors is a nasty thing to do. It says "I noticed the mistake this person made. I am a better person than him. I think he is scum." There are at least two better alternatives:

• Correct the error yourself, without calling attention to the fact that you did it. If someone has written "serendipitouss", it is usually pretty clear what he means. And unless he is the world's worst person, he won't object to your "misquotation" of him. Unless someone is really looking hard, they won't even notice that you've done it. They will only notice a perfectly written article, with no jarring "sic"s.
• Leave the error intact, without a "sic". This might make people think you are a misspeller. But as I say, that is becoming a less and less shameful thing to be. And in any case, you know you're innocent and that's what counts. This also has the advantage of honoring the original writer's intention, just in case he actually did mean to say "serendipitouss".
  

A Scientific Study I Am Looking Forward to Hearing the Results of.

Or rather, a scientific study I hope they will do some day. I don't read the journals, I don't know whether these things have been studied. I hope someone has already had this idea. It's not like I'm going to get credit for it either way.

Someone needs to do an in-depth study of how happy the average American (European, person) is. I know they already do those phone polls. They ask people "on a scale of one to ten how happy would you say you are?" I forget whether they do these as part of a larger psychology poll. In any case, it is not enough.

I seem to recall that the median response on those polls is fairly happy. This is probably misleading for a couple of reasons. First, people never ever rate anything lower than 4 on a scale of one to ten, least of all themselves. Second, people like to think of themselves as happy. If you start dwelling on how unhappy you are, you just make yourself worse. Better to tell the pollster that you're happy.

It would be so much better for a major institution, I am looking at you US government, to fund a study to find out what people really think. It would not be very expensive. I would be surprised if it cost over a million dollars and if it did so what? The government already spends millions of dollars determining the cause of Dutch Elm disease (Answer: Bugs) and this research would be so much more useful. Think how much public policy would be affected if we knew just how many people were unhappy, how that was changing over time, and what they were unhappy about.

It would not be a complicated experiment to set up. All you would need is a psychologist to interview so many hundred subjects, and report how happy he thought they were. It might have to be one psychologist, to eliminate bias error. Or it could be many psychologists with some kind of statistical analysis to weed out error. I don't know I am not a scientist. I just have better ideas than them.

Edward De Bono

... is a man after my own heart. Every week he has an important message for us. Sometimes these messages are about his religion but sometimes they are just for your benefit. I was wrong to say he was the next L. Ron Hubbard. While he does sometimes come out with grandiose and possibly evil schemes, he always seems to forget about them in a month and start over with nice instructions for envelope golf or salmon with Sambuca.

I am thinking either this is a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde situation, or he is just a very enthusiastic man, for good or ill. Like me. I am adding his website to my list of links at the right. Go read all his articles and you will have a good time.

Insomnia

If I were Jerry Seinfeld I would say "what is the deal with insomnia?" Now I know what insomnia broadly is. Insomnia is the inability to sleep. But before I can understand insomnia I need to know, are insomniacs sleepy? I think the consensus answer I have gotten from asking insomniacs is that they are not sleepy. Correct me if I'm wrong.

If insomniacs aren't sleepy, then what is the big problem with this disease? Is there some non-sleepiness-related symptom to this disease? I don't know about anybody else, but when I go too long without sleeping I get terrible backaches. Eventually the backaches and neckaches are what force me to go to bed, more than the sleepiness. Is that what it's like for insomniacs? I feel like I would have heard more about it in that case.

A lot of them tell me too that they really like to sleep. I think that is so weird. They tell me that they like to dream, and when they have insomnia they are being cheated out of their dreams. Are dreams really all that? Sometimes they're nightmares. That's bad. I would guess that the average dream is not much better than the waking life that it's in place of. Certainly not enough to justify medical intervention. The non-dreaming part of sleep is even less worthwhile. It's just unconcious.

Until someone can give me a better objection, I am going to continue to wish to be an insomniac. I lose nine hours a day to sleep. That's a lot of time, and it would take a pretty strong argument against insomnia to get me to willingly give it up.

The French Language is Redeemed

I used to think that French was the worst language in Europe. It is definitely the most obstreporous and mumbly language in the world. But I will never hate French again. I found out yesterday that the French word for wintergreen, translated back literally into English, is "wood tea." Excellent.

Two Observations About Lawrence of Arabia

One: It is fun to look at the camels in that movie and pretend that, instead of camel legs, they have sexy women legs. Four of them. It is especially fun when they kneel down.

Two: Lawrence of Arabia probably has more time on screen than any other character in any other movie. Could Peter O'Toole get typecast from this one appearance in one movie? I certainly haven't heard of him in any other roles since. And when I think of Peter O'Toole I think of T. E. Lawrence. I can't help it. That's typecasting.

Getting Animals Drunk

Funny or not funny?

I Have a Lunar Landing Question

You know those people who deny that the moon landing took place? The ones who think that the government staged it as a propaganda thing with the Soviets etc? The ones whose hair is either way too short or way too long?

What do they have to say about the other moon landings? Were they also fake? I suppose they couldn't admit that the other moon landings were real. But you never hear them talk about those. I am doing my part today to bring down conspiracy theories.

"I think it is difficult to build the metro, but it is not to cut the tape."

I think the most interesting thing about this article on the Pyongyang Metro is the guidebook (why did they translate it into English?).

Now everyone with warm blood loves totalitarian propaganda. The pictures are extremely stirring, if you approach them with the right spirit. For instance:


And the prose is so cheerful and fatuous. It almost makes you wish you lived in North Korea where the workers love the Great Leader and the Great Leader loves the workers and the workers love one another. It makes you surprised they aren't kissing one another in those pictures, really.

A lot of people will tell you that vicious tyrranical governments put out materials like this to make their citizens love the country and look past their own hardships. A kind of an idea that propaganda is stronger than your own day-to-day experiences. I'm sure that is part of it but I am not convinced that that is the real reason for things like this.

Charles Dickens as always supplies the key :

"...Squeers covered his rascality, even at home, with a spice of his habitual deceit; as if he really had a notion of someday or other being able to take himself in, and persuade his own mind that he was a very good fellow."

I think that North Korea and Stalinist Russia and all those other lovely governments put out this propaganda to convince themselves that their people are happy. Governments aren't really as full of cynical bloodless manipulators as everbody thinks, and non-meritocratic governments even less so.

Probably the functionaries in the Korean government get worried every now and then that their people are a little unhappy (I hear that Kim Jong-il is really very nice). To reassure themselves that they aren't that brutal, the North Korean government has to make itself some nice pictures sometimes. The people, as always, are purely secondary.

Special K

Did Special K become a lady cereal without anybody telling me? Was it always a cereal for ladies? Is there something about it that is especially ladylike? Apparently it is a "weight loss cereal" but I don't see how any more than cornflakes. It's just made with toasted rice flakes or something. I'm kind of upset about this. Special K is one of the only kinds of cereal I like. Does this mean I'm gay?

Graphing-Related Mission: Impossible

Go here --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoactive_drug
and scroll down a little to the graph.

You can just see how this graph happened. Someone said "there are three basic drug effects and three color modalities. I will make a Venn diagram." And I'm going to chart all kinds of drug effects on all kinds of axes that are not X-or-Y axes and I can do that because it's my graph. And then he realized oh drat the graph is not nearly big enough to accomodate all the drug names where I want them but that's okay we'll squeeze them in somehow. And then he decided I'm going to put some smaller circles in, just all over the place, for minor drug subcategories. And then he noticed that there was definitely not space for all the names and really nothing could go just where he wanted it. But at least he had the three colors and the three drug types it was so perfect man, such eternal threeness.

Then someone made two mistakes. He said "why doesn't this graph have an entry for antipsychotic drugs? They are important drugs. I am just going to add a category nobody will mind." So not only does he transform this three-circle Venn diagram to a four circle monster (Kids: Never make a four circle Venn diagram) but he then notices all the primary colors have been taken. No worry, he says, I'll use pink. It looks god awful but of course the original author knew that in the first place. A new and controversial addition to this chart. You can see them fighting about it on the Talk page if you care to look. If internet cooperative psychoactive drug graphs were tragedies, this one would be Hamlet.

Month of Fury

It is nice to know that even as the internet becomes our society's (and concurrently my) main way of communicating with the outside world that infomercials haven't died out yet.

TV programs are pretty good sometimes. They have a plot and characters and sometimes even funny jokes, but the simple fact that how well they do depends on something as fickle as ratings has made TV writers la-a-azy. As often as not, if a TV program does really well it's because it's on immediately after American Idol. Or because buzz builds up around it and that buzz sustains itself in that way pop culture stuff seems to do. (Why can't I have a buzz? I have way more content than The DaVinci Code.)

Infomercials are like TV programs would be in a perfect world. Why? Infomercials know what they want. TV programs are all about getting you to keep watching through the commercials so that you might see something you want and buy it and also if you are a Nielsen family then your TV viewing habits get sent to TV headquarters and someone gets cancelled depending on whether you watched the show (or was it its commercials?) or not. This is just an unbelievably stupid way of running a TV program. Pay-per-view is even worse because I don't like to sign up for things.

With infomercials you have cut the middleman so badly that he may never show his face in polite society again. They operate on an awfully simple concept. You like this? Give us a call. But wait! There's more. The sitcom may have the overweight husband and sassy wife but the infomercial's cliches are ten million times better. User testimonials, call-in-the-next-ten-minutes, scientific experts, peppy hosts and junk science I love it.

Even the products are exciting. You have Ron Popeil selling his latest piece of junk. These are definitely the blockbusters of infomercials. No expense spared there. Even a studio audience. Just set it and forget it. You have Cornerning the Real Estate Market. I have to confess I find these a little boring especially since I am not sure what they are selling you. Manuals? Anyone dumb enough to buy them is not going to make a killing. There are Medical Secrets they don't want you to know and for good reason.

And there are excercise routines you can do at home. I was watching one of these last night. They were selling a video of dance-the-pounds-away exercise moves. The main one was called "The Wheel" but I think a better name for it would have been "Atlas Shrugged". You were guaranteed to lose "ten pounds and ten inches in ten days." Think about that slogan for a minute.

Questions for Discussion:

1. Why are all the products shown on infomercials so crummy? Not cheap, or even designed for poor people, but just bad. Like internet spam ads. Is there something about the infomercial format that makes it most effective for selling bad products?
2. Why don't they show infomercials in the daytime? Yes the space on TV is more expensive, but only because they have that many more viewers. Then they could afford to put the effort into even awesomer infomercials.
3. Why is the range of products sold on infomercials A) so narrow and B) almost completely different from the products sold on spam ads? I realize some of the difference is due to decency standards and they can't go selling porn on TV that innocent children watch. But lots of non-sexy things are sold in spam. Why no overlap?
4. Why don't infomercials have ads? I realize that normal TV programs have ads because that is how they raise revenue. Infomercials raise their own money. But just think. How much more money they could raise if they ran ads in between their sales pitches. TV cannot get more delerious than that.
   

Your Tax Dollars at Work

The only thing better than the fact that this page exists is the fact that this page exists. Now God knows my time is not worth much, but I count about fifty Wikipedia editors being prissy and passive-agressive to one another here. I think the editors of Wikipedia hate one another more than any other people who do something fun together in their spare time. Just hate, so much.

Understanding Pronouns, or Felipe and Donna

As told in a French grade school student's English notebook that was abandoned on the sidewalk:

1.
2. felipe Garra was Donna's friend
3. Felipe told felipe's friend his head hurt.
4. The Garras told the doctors, "Felipe wanted to give his heart to Donna.
5. Donna's operation was a success.
6. Donna has to take medicine every day.

2. He had terrible headaches sometimes.
3. We can't save felipe," they said.
4. I'm going to give my heart to Donna.

Kleptomania

Oprah was on a jag today about kleptomania. Interestingly she went through the whole part of the show that I watched without actually using the term. Since there is no actual synonym for "kleptomania" this required some dancing, of doubtful purpose. Anyway. I don't watch Oprah a lot (no really) and this was easily the third episode I have seen on kleptomania. Oprah didn't let that bother her though, as she was as ignorant ("You can just stop whenever you want, right?") as ever.

The people on the show were pretty torn up about their kleptomania. I guess that is because they were religious and had some kind of moral hang-up about shoplifting. Now I'm not going to go advocating murder here but it seems like shoplifting is a pretty victimless crime. Well, almost a victimless crime, and certainly not worth getting torn up over. Especially if you have a deep-seated compulsion to do it.

If these kleptomaniacs are worried about getting caught, they shouldn't be. As Oprah so counterproductively demonstrated, it is almost impossible to be arrested for shoplifting. The women on her show who were caught were caught after 25 years. They claimed to be relieved.

I only wish I had kleptomania. Think about it. It is a compulsion to do something lucrative. Alcoholism or drug addiction should be so beneficial. Kleptomanics come out ahead and that tears them up. Losers.

Phobias -- Are They Reasonable?

If you look at a list of common phobias some will immediately strike you as, in fact, perfectly reasonable. For instance, even if you don't yourself have an irrational fear of spiders, it is not hard to understand how someone could; we are all a little leery around spiders, especially the biting ones. Just dial that up a little and you have a phobia.

Some phobias are clearly not so sensible. Let's do a survey:

• Phobias about unsympathetic animals: Lots of people fear snakes, spiders, or bees. Nobody really likes these animals, the claims of oddballs who don't know what a pet is notwithstanding. Animals that are basically little exoskeletal machines are intrinsically unsettling. Especially since they probably don't think and have sharp bits. Creepy. Conclusion: Reasonable.
  

• Phobias about sympathetic animals: A lot people are afraid of dogs or horses, and some people are even afraid of cats. I do not understand this. I know that dogs sometimes bite people, and cats sometimes scratch people but come on. It is very clear when a dog is interested in biting you. While being afraid of a dog who is running at you and snarling may be reasonable, being afraid of all dogs is not. A dog who is wagging his tail is harmless unless you are utterly stupid. Fear of cats is even worse. Is anybody actually afraid of cats? Why? Are there any cats in the world who are capable of harming someone who is not already rubbing their bellies? Conclusion: Unreasonable.

• Claustrophobia: I suppose I see how someone could be afraid of tight spaces. They're afraid that the walls will collapse in on them, right? But if it comes to that I'd be more afraid of a Gothic cathedral than an MRI machine. Or are they afraid that they'll run out of air? Does anybody run out of air except miners and austronauts? You hear claustrophobic fictional characters claiming that they can't breathe, but is that just a manifestation of their fear? I don't know. What do claustrophobes really fear? Conclusion: Semi-unreasonable.

• Agoraphobia: While I was researching this article (Gosh I like how that sounds) I learned that agoraphobia is the only phobia considered a medical problem. I guess that kind of takes it out of the question of whether it is reasonable or not, huh? But then again we are not dualists here, every phobia is a medical problem inasmuch as it is a problem. Okay. So what is agoraphobia? They say it is a fear of public spaces. Crowded public spaces, I guess. And it helps if they are confined spaces. So what's to fear? Anonymous stabbings? Humiliation in front of a crowd? Mob violence? Getting lost? The encyclopedia gives us no clue. I somehow doubt it is any of these things. Agoraphobia is definitely the archetypal Unreasonable fear.

• Fear of heights: I'm not sure about this one. On the one hand, it's obvious what can go wrong when you are high up. You might fall and break your bones. On the other hand, it's kind of silly to be afraid of heights when you can't possibly fall, for instance on the observation deck of a big building. That would lead me to say that the fear of heights was a little irrational, but then I got to thinking about vertigo, which is a brain problem that leads to disorientation in situations like these (not to be confused with those other kinds of vertigo). If what you are fearing when you are afraid of heights is these somatic effects, well you seem kind of sensible to me. Conclusion: Reasonable in some-to-most.

• Fear of social situations: Well it's hard to class all these together. Lots of people fear lots of different things about social gatherings. I guess the main thread in these fears is that other people will disapprove of you? Now this is something most people get a little nervous about. A major reason to interact with people is to make friends or win esteem, and in doing so we have to care what they think of us. Fearing that they will come to dislike or disapprove of us is entirely sensible. Of course social-anxiety types take it much too far, but the basic idea is perfectly comprehensible. Conclusion: Reasonable.

• Fear of needles. Oh come on. Needles hurt. They really hurt, if you get stuck in the right place. I don't think I have ever been stabbed with a needle when it didn't hurt (except that one time when I was having dental surgery and that might have been even worse). It's people who don't have this fear who are nuts.

• Fear of death. Is there anybody who in his heart of hearts is not afraid of death? Is there anybody who is afraid of death, per se, for a good reason? I guess hypocritical Christians might be afraid of death because death means Hell to them -- but aren't they really afraid of Hell (reasonable)? People who think of death as like blacking out, which I guess I do, have even less reason to be afraid. It's not like you'll even notice, after all. Fear of death is probably due to evolutionary psychology. It is a boffo thing to be afraid of if you are going to survive. And fears based in evolutionary psychology are seldom reasonable. And don't tell me that all fears are based on evolutionary psychology because we are evolved beings. You know what I mean.
  

Now that I come to think of this, having written it, maybe this is just an entirely subjective list of what I can imagine myself being afraid of. Maybe I shouldn't have written this one.

Old-Fashioned Things I Want To Bring Back Other Than Zeppelins

Paternosters. Great name and great concept. Like all great things they were phased out because lame-os can't use them.

An Electronics Fact I Just Found Out

Now that I come to think of it it is so obvious. You can use a pair of headphones as a microphone with no changes at all. Why didn't I think of that before?

North Korea

Well North Korea is in the news again now, maybe I had better write something about them. They are about to test-launch an ICBM. Now this is confusing in and of itself. The other countries that have ICBMs, Russia, France, the US, the UK and China are all vast countries, or have vast territories, with plenty of room to test an ICBM in without alarming their neighbors. If France wants to test its ICBMs it can easily do so by firing them from one end of Polynesia to the other.

How is North Korea planning on testing their ICBM? They are surrounded on all sides by countries that range from wary to hostile. They are not a large country. I guess they could fire the missile about straight up and back down, but that wouldn't test anything. If they fire their missile east over Japan, how are the Japanese going to know that they're not being attacked? I don't understand it.

Even worse is their nuclear program. At some point they are going to have to publicly test a nuclear weapon. All the declared nuclear powers in the world so far, US, UK, France, Russia, China, India and Pakistan, have huge deserts or deserted islands under their control, perfect for exploding bombs in. North Korea, as far as I can tell, does not. If they just wanted to be sure that their nuclear bombs worked the could explode one underground (as is the fashion these days), but then nobody would believe them. They need to do a public test, but they have nowhere to do it. What will they do?

I Wish I Could Faint

Okay, actually I am still not convinced that anybody can do this. I know that people faint when they have had severe blood loss. And I know they faint from heatstroke which I gather is what afflicted all overdressed Southern ladies back then. And I know that some weirdos faint when they see blood or some other phobia-specific thing.

But does anyone ever get so emotionally overwhelmed that they just pass out? That would be so handy. You would be able to escape from embarassing, uncomfortable, or just awful situations, and receive sympathy for doing so. When somebody is scolding you or you have done something humiliating, the *only* correct response is to faint. And that is just not an option open to me, as far as I can tell.

Is there anything you can do to make yourself faint? Hyperventilate? Hold your breath? I don't think either of those would really work. I wish I could faint.

A-1 Practical Joke

This can actually be either a straight practical joke, or an act of pure spite, depending on how you want to play it: All you need is a bicycle lock. It can be a cheap one, but of course the joke will go better if you shell out.

All you need to do then is find your victim's bicycle. Then lock it up. Hide the key, or throw it down the sewer. Congratulations. You have just played a practical joke. If you use a good quality U-lock, it will be impossible to get off without calling the fire department (or so I am informed on good authority).

I guess this would also work on motorcycles or hot dog carts, in principle. Try securing the lock around a car's axle. Really, the more valuable the item you can lock up the more fun you are going to have.

This is definitely the most efficient practical joke available to the public.

I Urge You to Read This

This list of things people found out late in life. About five of these came as actual revelations to me, and if you are about as ignorant as I am then your number should be the same.

You should watch out, because a few of these so-called facts are actually wrong. Also some of them are awfully stupid, which makes me worry that the people I see every day, and talk to (often intelligently) are completely misunderstanding me or vice-versa.

Has anybody else noticed that Mr. Cockerham has gotten completely lame-o since he got married and had a baby? Is it that his wife is personally dreary, or that marriage makes everyone vapid and irritating?

My New Favorite Word

My new favorite word is "shero". Apparently "heroine" is derived from "hero" and is therefore sexist. "Shero" is derived from... "hero" and is therefore not sexist.

I heard Oprah using it today. Christine Amanpour is her shero. When it comes to heroes Oprah is a slut.

P.S. Christine Amanpour has Neanderthal hair.

In Honor of My Hundredth Entry

Why I Cannot Drink Irish Cream

It is shelf stable cream. In my mental catalog, nothing is more perishable than cream. (Fun fact: I once had a pint of cream in my refrigerator for 6 weeks. It didn't go bad or sour but it did dry out. You had to chip off dried cream to get to the liquid stuff. Delicious. But not relevant to my mental model)

Irish cream reminds me how poisonous alcohol really is. It is the poison equivalent of something that can make red apples blue.

You wouldn't eat a blue apple and I won't drink Irish cream.

This Woman

is very tetchy.

Now I realize that perhaps there was no particular reason to ask a black person.
And I realize it is rude to grab the arm of someone who is not your close friend.
And I realize it shows very bad judgment to talk about race with someone of a different race.

But still.
It is something I myself wonder, whether black people get hotter in the sun than white people. That woman should be ashamed of herself for getting upset at a nice person trying to make nice, interesting conversation.

Eyeshadow

Of all the makeups, eyeshadow is the strangest. Traditionally the purpose of makeup is to exaggerate features through use of color.

Lipstick is red because lips are pink.
Mascara is black because eyelashes are gray.
Rouge is pink because cheeks are blushy.
Also hair dye, belladonna, face powder etc.

If someone abandons this Cardinal Rule of Makeup it is because she is emo and therefore prefers to wear black lipstick or blue rouge (never seen it why not come on counterculture).

Eyeshadow does not follow this rule at all. Sometimes eyeshadow is blue. Sometimes it is red. Sometimes it is buff. All of these colors on the right are considered reasonable eyeshadow colors. Eyelids do not come in these colors. Eyelids are plain and flesh colored. Flesh colored and unimprovable.

Why is eyeshadow the only makeup like this?

Flag Color Problem Solved

Do you know what are the best colors to put on your national flag? I am sure you do because it is not a very hard problem and anyone would realize if he put his mind to it.

The best colors to have on your national flag are black, white and wild card. Black and white are both good colors to have on a flag, because they are heavily symbolic, and they look very nice together. Moreover, any other color looks good with them.

Even hunter-jacket orange looks tolerable next to black and white. Whatever color you choose to go on your flag next to black and white, you can be sure it will look extra-vivid. You can choose whatever color you think best encapsulates your national spirit. You can even pick gray for bonus flag points. Yellow, blue, red or green would all look excellent on a black and white flag, and if the design was attractive you would have a flag for the ages. In a way it's too bad about Nazi Germany because they definitely had a winner in their flag.

Can you believe that only 4 countries have followed my advice so far? And only Botswana got a good flag design with those colors. People never listen to me and then I have to watch them suffer for being so stubborn. It is my curse.

I Have a Relevant Concern

What do dollar stores do in case of inflation? I guess if the inflation were severe enough they could rechristen themselves two-dollar stores and nobody would mind very much. But what do they do if dollar falls less than that? Do they have to recalibrate their entire stock? Sell 5 eggs instead of six? Or just make less profit on everything.

It must be annoying to run a dollar store.

A Fantastic Concept

If you are like me you love dollar stores. Unlike boring 18th century stores where the items sold in a store are classed by type or idea, dollar store items are united by their value. Just one dollar. Excellent. The one drawback of the dollar store is that while they can sell things that are worth way less than a dollar (by selling them in bulk) they have a hard time selling things that are worth more than a dollar. They can sell 2$ brooms by selling the bristles separately which is a nice idea. But you could probably not buy a good knife at the dollar store, since you can't disassemble knives.

Clearly what we need is to extend the dollar store concept. Let's position ourselves strategically ahead of inflation and pioneer the Fifty Dollar Store.

At the fifty dollar store, not only could you (in principle) buy all the things you can buy at the dollar store, you can buy them in huge cost-effective lots. Need 200 packs of Wrigley's gum for that quit-smoking retreat? The fifty dollar store is your place to go. You could buy whole brooms, no assembly required, and buy them 25 at a time because we all know how quickly brooms crap out. And you could buy things, whole things, worth more than a dollar. For instance you could buy:

Cheaply made furniture
Standing rib roasts
Medium quality wristwatches
Fresh durians
Passport renewal

Basically all the necessities of life are available, at some level of quality, for fifty dollars. That is certainly not something you could say about dollars. If there were a fifty-dollar store in my neighborhood you couldn't keep me away.

Two Words That Are Ubiquitous in the Political Blogs and Nowhere Else

Wonk
Wank

Is there a connection? I guess that makes political insults remarkably easy to pull off, so maybe it was planned that way.

Being a Farm Animal

Yes an "imagine what it would be like to be an animal" comparison. I know PETA has an insoluble patent on these. But I want you to think about this. Think about what it would be like to be a horse or cow. You would not be able to touch any part of your body except what you could reach with your tail or your tongue. I don't think I could stand that. Even dogs can gnaw themselves.

P.S. On Oprah today was a man with no forearms or lower legs. He waddled onto the stage on all fours. Like a little piggy. So cute!

Coordinated Houseplant Strategy

One of the onions was all sprouty, and a houseplant had died, so I uprooted the houseplant and replaced it with the sprouty onion. Doing any one of those actions alone wouldn't have made me feel very good, but I did all three at once and now I am walking on air.

Question: What happens if you plant an onion? Onions for eating are grown from seed, I know. If you plant a sprouted onion, I guess it will grow up into an onion plant? And then set seeds? Will the bulb ever be edible again? I doubt it. I do not like perennial bulbs. Either be a big old tree, or just set seed and die in the winter. Don't try to have it both ways.

Poor Dorothy Parker

It is a cliche where Dorothy Parker is involved but Poor Dorothy Parker. We all know how she lived 40 years longer than she had to and died an unloved alcoholic. But they couldn't even get her epitaph right. It is:

"HERE LIE THE ASHES OF DOROTHY PARKER [1893 - 1967] HUMORIST, WRITER,CRITIC. DEFENDER OF HUMAN AND CIVIL RIGHTS. FOR HER EPITAPH SHE SUGGESTED, 'EXCUSE MY DUST'. THIS MEMORIAL GARDEN IS DEDICATED TO HER NOBLE SPIRIT WHICH CELEBRATED THE ONENESS OF HUMANKIND AND TO THE BONDS OF EVERLASTING FRIENDSHIP BETWEEN BLACK AND JEWISH PEOPLE. DEDICATED BY THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE. OCTOBER 20, 1988."

This is a very well-meaning memorial but I feel like it was written by some senile lady wearing enormous thick eyeglasses. How can you write an epitaph, include a reference to the epitaph that Mrs. Parker wanted and then write a completely different epitaph? It's one thing to ignore someone's last request but to say "This is what she really wanted but we're not going to let her have it" is pretty awful.

I Have a First Amendment Question

The first amendment to the Constitution states, "Congress shall make no law... adbridging the freedom of speech". It could not possibly say this any clearer without tacking "and we really mean it" to the end. The fourteenth amendment, as we all know, extends this prohibition to the states. (This interpretation is slightly disputed but it doesn't matter.)

So why do people persist in saying that the first amendment does not protect the right to shout "fire" in a crowded theater, or words to that effect? It seems to me that the first amendment protects exactly that. That is, it protects your right not to be prosecuted for shouting that. The theater owner can still kick you out.

I am aware that people sometimes write bad laws. But there are so many better ways to phrase the amendment, so many easy ways ("political" speech, for instance) that we have to stop trying to save the framers from themselves, and just read the amendment the way they wrote it.

Consider: If they really had meant to allow shouting "fire" etc. what better language could they have used?

1) "This amendment is to be taken literally?" Isn't that understood in legal documents?

2) Enumerate a bunch of marginal cases and specify that they are legal? That's pretty undignified, although it would be a nice touch in all huge sweeping hard-to-repeal laws like this.

If I were a framer who was perversely committed to legalizing fire-shouting, I would have thought the language in the Constitution, as written, was a peach.

Some Inscrutable Body Parts

Wrist:

These joints are a lot more complicated than they need to be. *Almost* the only way I ever move my wrists is up and down, in a flapping motion. Notice that the act of twisting your hand, as to turn a doornob, does not happen at the wrist, but rather the elbow.

But there is a second motion that wrists can perform. They can rotate laterally, over a narrow angle. Why should they be able to do this? What do you use that motion for? It is such a narrow angle, you would think we could just as well do without it. All it means is that our wrists have to be packed full of tiny bones, any one of which could break at any minute and torture you for weeks. How is that evolutionarily useful?

All of this goes double for ankles.

Sinuses:

Medical science is still not sure what sinuses are for. The offered explanations mostly have to do with making the head lighter, like some hollow bird bone. This is nonsense of course. The real purpose of sinuses has to do with their likelihood of getting infected, and the handicap principle.

Toenails:

Okay I can understand how it happened that people ended up with toenails. Practically every mammal has nails. Like tails or legs, nails are an evolutionary adaptation that it is hard to shed. And toenails are useful for the "lesser" animals. Useful for fighting. And even fingernails are useful for us. It is very hard to pick up coins without the proper fingernails as I am sure you, you man of the world, are aware.

But toenails? Most of the time we don't even touch anything with our toenails. Occasionally the tops of our shoes, but that is a special occasion. They don't protect the toe from stubbing or smashing -- hitting a bony plate like a toenail would be twice as painful as hitting a soft fleshy toe. In fact, toenails are responsible for the second most common type of toe stub, what I call the Walkover Stub. I am just about done with toenails, myself.

Temple:

Why is this considered an interesting part of the body? Why does it have its own name? The other parts of the skull sure don't. Nothing much happens here, except a little artery that snakes over the surface. And sometimes headaches happen here (but not always). And I guess some jaw muscles are here, but most of them aren't? Think of all the more deserving parts of the body that aren't named.

Elbow vs. Knee:

I was talking just now about the difficulty of just losing certain body parts through evolutionary processes. They seldom just disappear. How is it then that we have kneecaps, but our elbows are left completely bare? Elbow joints work just like knee joints. I hit the nerves in my elbows all the time, and every time I do I wish I had elbow caps. Just think. If we had caps on our elbows, our opportunities for mafia torture would be doubled.

Sex Symbols I Cannot Believe Are Still Alive

Bettie Page
Lauren Bacall

Honorable Mention: Sex Symbols Who Died More Recently Than I Thought:

Lillian Gish
Greta Garbo
Fay Wray

Internet Poker

Continuing our series on "versions or formats of poker that I do not understand" let's have a look at internet poker. I understand that people play this on the internet. A lot of them are college students and it is a boon to the newspaper industry because they can write A) articles about how internet poker is corrupting our youth and B) articles about this internet poker prodigy who made a million dollars before he was twenty.

Like strip poker, this seems to be missing a lot of the essential elements of poker. I am assuming that someone who could program computers and had a half an hour to spare could write a little program that took all the data available to you (not much data) and told you how good your hand was, how many cards to draw etc. An even better program, which probably wouldn't take more than a month to work out, could tell you, based on your opponent's raising, calling, etc. how good his hand probably was, and what you should do, accordingly.

As I understand it, after all, poker is not a very complicated game. I am sure there are reasonably complex variants of it, but I am sure that there are none so complicated that they can't be solved (as much as a game of chance can be solved) by a savvy computer program.

So we can assume these programs exist, because there would be a huge advantage for whichever player owned a copy. But if every player has a copy, the game becomes trivial. Every player has a program advising him on the perfect strategy, and so the outcome of each hand depends solely on who gets dealt better cards. You might as well have an internet coin-flipping craze. What am I missing?

Do Not

Do not make lemonade with bottled lemon juice. You might think, bottled lemon juice is basically the same thing as what you get out of the lemons. Oh you are so wrong. Bottled lemon juice is what you get if you mix lysol and vinegar. I myself would not have thought there was such a difference between fresh lemon juice and stale, but ma-a-an.

I do it so you don't have to.

And the Award for Best Title and Opening Sentence Goes to:

PETA.

Take a bow, PETA.

Cats, Pt. 3

There are two things that would make cats better. One is if cats were much much larger. Not so large that they could knock you down and eat you if they felt like it (and you know they do), but maybe the size of a medium dog or lynx, like 5o pounds. (Side note: lynxes are adorable). There are a lot of things you can't do with a normal sized cat, or even a Maine Coon cat. You can't dress them up in people clothes and take pictures. You can't take them for a walk without creeping or dragging them. Things that are bigger than they ought to be are just inherently cute. If you only had a huge cat. You could do anything you could do with a dog.

The second one is if cats were much smaller. Everyone loves kittens. I know people like kittens *mostly* because they are puffier than adult cats and have pushed-in faces (grotesque = cute) but a lot of the appeal is that they are just smaller. Some people would say that cats are plenty small, but that is obviously not true. If cats were smaller they would eat less, would kill fewer songbirds, but would be just as loveable. As above, things that are smaller than they ought to be have an intrinsic appeal.

I am not saying that all cats should either be gargantuan or tiny. If you want a medium-sized cat that is your perfect right (how dull). But those of us who want more choice among our cats, shouldn't we be indulged? They make dogs in all sizes. They even make great big horses and little baby horses. But cats no no cats all have to be cat-sized. Is there really no demand in the market for specialty cats? I would buy one. I might even buy two, one giant cat and one dwarf cat. Do you think the giant cat would kill and eat the little cat? I bet it might.

How Does Strip Poker Work?

How does strip poker work? I know it has some of the elements of poker. I guess it has dealing cards, and straight flushes and full houses and all that. That seems like the only way to score the game, and I guess you could work that into a "strip" format. But does anyone like the "poker" format for games merely because of the hands? That three-of-a-kind scores higher than two pair is purely incidental. It is merely a convenient way to adjudicate who wins the pot.

But besides that, does strip poker contain any of the elements of real poker? The whole reason people play poker is to wager and bluff and call and fold etc. Is it possible to do that in strip poker?

Clearly if it is, the chips are going to have to correspond to clothes. The average person has about 7 articles of clothes on. You can't ante less than one article of clothing, and the wagering system breaks down entirely if players aren't required to ante anything. Requiring players to ante one seventh of their stake every round is not a good way to run a poker game, the ante *traditionally* being a nominal amount of money. A game with such a large ante would practically force players to bet away their whole stake in the first few hands, which is no fun and takes out most of the strategy.

Second, money or chips are way more fungible than clothes. You might think that if a player loses his pants, he could win back, if not his pants, then somebody else's in another round but that is not necessarily the case. Consider this scenario. First round, everyone bets their socks and shoes (Strip poker tip: wager your non-essential items of clothing first). Player 1 wins the pot. Second round everyone folds but players 2 and 3. Player 3 loses his shirt to player 2. Third round, everyone but players 3 and 1 fold. Player 3, even in the best case is not going to win anything but lots and lots of socks.

What is the advantage of winning clothes you cannot possibly wear? You might as well not be able to win back clothing at all, which is to say that you might as well not be playing poker.

Instead of poker here are some games that might work better in the "strip" format:

Checkers: Take off an article of clothing whenever you lose a man (or maybe two men)
War: Retain a piece of clothing for every 4 cards you have.
UNO: Have as many articles of clothing on as you have cards in your hand (reverse incentive style)
Tag: Take off a piece of clothing whenever you become "it". Naked people become out when tagged.

Flowers: Likes and Does not Like

Likes:

Maple
Daffodil
Lily
Rose
Daisy
Hyacinth

Does not Like:

Tulip
Iris
Orchid
Crocus
Goldenrod
Sunflower

I am sorry you had to have a look into my personal feelings on flowers like this but it *is* important if any of you were thinking of sending me flowers for Flag Day etc. In related news did you know that daffodils and narcissus are basically the same thing?

Street Lights

I know this is a time when we should all be concerned with conserving energy. I follow the news and I realize that we can't be using our scarce electricity on just every daydream of mine.

But do we really all think that it is worth the orange glow at night? There are better ways to save electricity. Sulphur lamps give off what is definitely the ugliest color in the universe. It is the color used for hunters jackets, specifically designed to be so ugly that other hunters can't avoid noticing it. I realize that they are the most efficient lamps available. And I realize that city planners *are* trying to acheive the hunter jacket effect -- if people's senses are being constantly assaulted they are less likely to fall asleep at the wheel.

But come on. That is a really ugly color. It is the color of the sky almost half the time. Is that the color we want a full quarter of our visual sensory experience (the up/night quarter) to be?

Gary Condit

Remember him?

Chopsticks Versus Forks

The two main utensil traditions in the civilized world are forks and chopsticks. Spoons were independently developed by both East and West. Was it independent? I think so. It is true that knives are only set out for the diners in the West. However, they are only properly used for slicing meat and hard vegetables. Using knives as pushers for loading food onto the fork has always been wrong. Since the slicing work gets done in the kitchen in East Asia, it doesn't matter whether knives are used at the table or not.

So which are better, forks or chopsticks? How you might answer, of course depends heavily on which you grew up using. If you are accustomed to forks then you will find forks easier for almost everything. But there are clearly areas in which an impartial alien (or robot) would prefer chopsticks to forks or vice-versa. Let's examine.

Chopsticks are better than forks for eating:

Croutons
Lettuce
Individual peas
Cherry tomatoes
Chicken skin
Bread
Whitebait

Forks are better than chopsticks for eating:

Rice (how did this happen)
Asparagus
Jell-O
Liver
Ice cream
Pie

Neither forks nor chopsticks are at all adequate for eating:

Noodles
Chicken legs
Very flaky fish
Full-sized tomatoes

I think it is interesting to note here that the main staple foods of the world (bread, noodles, rice) are very hard (comparatively) for the people who eat them natively. Why is that?

To My Loyal Fans

I am being boring lately because I got all caught up in myself. Don't worry, I will soon wall off my obligations and priorities and then it will be back to transcription of the chattering in my head and more fun facts. To tide you over, here is what you did not know.

You did not know that turkeys sometimes reproduce asexually.

A Sweet Thing to Do

Here follows a sweet thing to do if you are feeling especially whimsical sometime in the summer. Find a climbing plant preferably perennial like ivy. Do you think ivy is sad when it has reached the top of its fence or trellis or whatever and is just flailing around with its tendrils, dreaming of climbing higher?

The nice thing to do is to find some tendrils that are especially long and drag them over to an overhanging tree or gutter and twine them on. It's fun to see how easily ivy or sweet peas stick to new surfaces, even really smooth ones. And you are doing something that could be construed as a good deed in some anthropomorphicizing schema. And you are probably annoying whoever owns the tree in question. Double good deed. Nature against mankind.

H+ a New Religion?

You need to go read this right away. This could be big. Let's observe a few things about H+.

The name is a bad choice. It sounds like a cross between 4-H and C++. And the H's aren't all the same part of speech. They got in 4 good things to have (Humour, Happiness, Health, Hope) but for the last two had to switch to verbs and adjectives beginning with H (Help, Human). They couldn't use "Helpfulness" and "Humanity"?

Also I don't want to say this religion is a Scientology knockoff before I have all the facts but look at the evidence.

Made up words: Check (Also see "pons" tee hee)
Stupid founder: Check
So many books: Check
"Achieving Simplicity": Check. Notice the spooky language here. "Simplicity Officer". And "Des Moins, U.S.A"? Yeah this is definitely a slave labor camp.
Also Edward DeBono has the same malevolent smile as L. Ron Hubbard.

For extra fun read the children's story linked to from the main page. Also be sure to help the author with his traffic light problem.

I Have a Cheese Question

When is it possible to tell that blue cheese has gone bad? Does it even go bad at all? It kind of seems like the blue mold would out-compete any other invasive mold, that being how it got there in the first place. Not to mention bacteria (it is penicillium after all). Does it go bad when it winds up that there is too much blue mold? How would that be bad? It is basically what people want when they eat blue cheese.

Movie Review!

Somebody made a bad decision and I watched The Age of Innocence. Only one novel has ever been written. I watched the film adaptation of that novel.

Is This a Product That Even Exists

While thumbing through Wikipedia.org this afternoon which as perhaps you have noticed is where I get all of my fun facts I saw something upsetting. They said that chicle was the gum agent in "upscale chewing gum". Think about that. Where would you even buy upscale gum. Try to imagine the kind of store that would sell something like that. I am thinking of some kind of fancy liquor store, the kind that has the single bottles of cognac on individual shelves. Does that sound right?

Some Heavy Metal Songs I Hope You Will Love

"So Violently Sick" from The Rotten Stench of Early Days When We Raped Dead Angels
"Architecture of a Genocidal Nature" from Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia
"Funeralopolis" from Dopethrone
"Blood & Latex Terrortech War" from Sodomizing the Archedangel
"Return to the Son of Nothingness" from Come My Fanatics
"Chainsaw Gutsfuck" from Dawn of the Black Hearts
"The Black Drug" from Let Us Prey

Oh Man

I saw X-Men 3 last night. Oh man. One of the writers said to the other writers let's make a movie with an omnipotent character. Okay said the other writers. Let's make a movie that contradicts a couple of its own major premises in the last two scenes said another writer. Okay said the other writers again. We can do that they said because we have an omnipotent character in our movie. If you have to see one movie that I have also seen this year I would definitely recommend this one.

Cats, Pt. 2

Have you ever tried to pick up a cat by the scruff of its neck? Apparently this is something that can be done. Apparently the mother cats do it. I am also told that the adult cats like to be picked up this way more than any other way. I had heard all these things, but I had never tried to pick up a cat this way.

One day I put theory into practice and grabbed the cat by the skin between his shoulders. That is the right place I am sure. I am sure I was not pinching him because the mother cats do it with their teeth and come on. Cats are plastic beings. I pulled him upwards and he stood there, all four feet on the ground, nowhere near rising into the air. He cried. Have you ever heard a cat cry? It is this thin anguished noise that is not at all like a meow. What am I doing wrong? Did I have a bad cat?

New Interior Decoration Idea

Oh I am so excited about this idea. I am sure it will revolutionize etc. The idea is ivy. Everyone loves ivy. It is a pretty plant and it grows in about any orientation relative to the ground. It doesn't need much light and could probably get by in a room with big windows or lights on all the time. Just plant it in big pots, up against the wall and I can't see how you could go wrong. I love my new idea.

Crummy State Flags

Why are US State flags so bad? Most world flags are not really very bad. Some time in the past someone decided that flags should have your national colors on them, and maybe an emblem like a fleur-de-lis or something representative of your country. How did Americans get it so wrong? Ohio decided that the best flag would be some kind of clipped pennant. Tennessee does not seem to understand proportions and has three five pointed stars jumbled together all in the middle. And what is going on with this Indiana flag?

Most US states decided -- for some reason -- that the ideal flag was their state seal on a neutral background. Where did this idea come from? Was this something on the Puritan agenda? Illinois and Michigan split the pot for ugliness but the overall prize for worst flag in the US has to go to Kansas. Even aside from the "THIS IS WHERE YOU LIVE" font on the word "Kansas" and the coloring book graphics (notice the sunflower wisely making a break for it) who thought it would be a good idea to put mountains on the Kansas flag?

My vote for best state flag, and there aren't very many contenders, is the Alabama flag. I know it's a veiled reference to racism and secession but at least they get the idea of what a flag is supposed to be like.

Why I Support the DC Statehood Movement

If it succeeds, we will have a state called Columbia. Do you know how much confusion that will cause? That is probably why powerful interests have decided it must never succeed.