Cthulhu's Family Restaurant

Vernal Irreverence

2011-04-20T23:14:00.007-04:00

As yet another stint of long and difficult work hours in R'lyeh is coming to an end, I contemplate the activities to come this weekend when I travel back to the still damp and chilly northeast and final resting place of the greatest weird fiction author the cosmos has ever known. Since I am for a while at least still a servant of the empire and cannot pursue my true calling as a drug-addled fame hog and kick off my Bloviating Shoggoth of Truth Elder Signs Are Not An Option Tour I am forced to think of more temporary and important things.

"How about a little Heisman, motherfucker?!"

At first I decided to get all up in arms and write my kids' school a nasty letter telling them they had better not even think of pulling a "Seattle's Best Spring Spheres" or I would personally and violently find whatever misguided fellow non-believer suggested the name and shove that person's overly-sensitive head even farther up his/her ass. Oh wait, you didn't? Then forget everything I just said. We know the Easter Bunny poses no religious threat. Show me drawings of da' Ether Bunny weeping at the base of the cross, trying to shove jelly beans through the cracks into the tomb (saying "You'll need the blood sugar when you wake up!") or standing among the apostles pushing chocolate eggs through stigmata in awe-stricken awe and I'll re-evaluate.

That being said, I still have the mythological aspects of the weekend to deal with, which started last weekend (Palm Sunday or, "The day we all wave sticks at Jesus" as my youngest daughter explained) when I had to go to church (well, it's sort of a church - they're Anglican, you know ... "whatever your trip is" seems to be cool with them, very much unlike my Cat-Lick upbringing) to listen to my children sing. It's part of the "unspoken bargain" I feel I have with them that as long as my children are receiving excellent vocal training from them I should at least show up when they are singing so I can

a.) hear their voices
b.) know what to tell them to help them pick their way through dogmatic guidance and find their own way in the world
c.) feel like less of a hypocrite
d.) make sure my eldest (at 11 he sings a beautiful soprano) remains on track to be the next King Diamond

That and the family dinner should be enough of the "traditional" imagery and celebration for yours truly and his minions. While there is bound to be Sphere Hunt at mom and dad's (which will lead to the inevitable hip checks, high-basketing and "She found more than me so she's getting all the dollars!") the Chef's family will revert to a more heathen demonstration of Easter Pride that is worthy of Great Cthulhu...

Mutilation

It will taste and smell much better than four-day-old boiled eggs. Plus, we will ensure a large portion of our craft is pleasing to the Great Old Ones.

from cheezburger.com

Free with every kids' meal, while supplies last!

Beautiful

2011-03-12T08:08:00.001-05:00

Is how the patroller described the conditions on this, the penultimate day of the season at Whitetail. After today, I'm gearing up for the mid-Atlantic surf season.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Securement

2011-03-09T22:52:00.000-05:00

That's today's word. At first I thought they were making the shit up. But I looked it up. It's a word.

I guess "SECURE WHEELCHAIR HERE" is too ambiguous.

Zombie

2011-03-08T23:49:00.002-05:00

Okay, so I hafta’ admit. I’m becoming a big fan of the zombies. I’m not talking about the old band from the 60’s though it is the time of the season for loving … loving zombies.

At first I tried to resist, I really did. The only real thing I did was write a mildly zombie-esque piece for one of Splotchy’s story viruses some time ago and leave it at that. Then, a little more than a year ago, the then-president of one of the Armed Services’ senior war colleges recommended Max Brooks’ World War Z to the student body. “I know it sounds crazy” he said, “but this book deals with a lot of the things that we are struggling to come to grips with in shaping national and military strategies for the future”.

So I picked up the book and started reading it. Unfortunately, my studies soon overwhelmed me and reading for leisure soon took a back seat to reading for a master’s degree. I could see, however, from the first several chapters that this is a zombie book that is about anything but zombies. I only just recently finished it, and it’s truly an incredible book. The thing it really looks at is how might the current mechanisms, habits and trappings of a modern globalized society – governments, post-industrial economies, militaries, transnational crime and black markets, different cultures – easily aid and abet the spread of, fail to recognize, and ultimately face harsh choices in dealing with a truly global extinction-type threat that cannot be mitigated, but only destroyed. It is told in an “oral history” format from the point of view of the man who wrote the U.N. Commission report on the Zombie War ten years after it “ended”. I could write for hours on this book, but I won’t. I will only say READ THIS BOOK. You will not regret it. It is pop culture horror that makes you think long and hard.

Two things that got me off my ass to start reading it again. First, I wanted to start reading more fiction; while I love reading history, especially military history, non-fiction was starting to drag. I needed to start adding some quick-reading and more entertaining stuff to my life. The second thing I did was to watch “The Walking Dead”. I was bored and alone in my room on the Sunday night of the season finale, so I tuned in and watched from start to finish. Another good product that attempts to look at, on an individual and societal level, what could happen when faced with an un-stoppable, un-curable, non-negotiable bid for extinction. Unlike a book, on film you need to see the horror and the action in dealing with it. While there was enough brain-blowing creamy goodness to go around, there could have been more. Still, I’m waiting for Season Two; it is officially the only television series I am following.

Like Beach Bum mentioned previously, I have had some zombie dreams, one in which I actually stopped the zombies and explained to them that they weren’t acting like zombies (they weren’t responding to sound, they were hiding and setting ambushes and other things that require functioning intellects). During my recent trip to San Francisco I got to the airport very early, more than 90 minutes before my 7:40 am flight boarded. As I sat at my gate at the end of the terminal in the early morning I saw the first big push of humanity shambling toward me in that early morning fog – all walking in the same gate, mechanically, slowly, glassy-eyed and holding coffees and laptop cases. All I could think was “Here come the living dead. A sturdy M-4 and a clip or two and I’d have them all down with headshots before they came within 20 yard of me”.

In the world of science, zombies now live among us, terrorizing the insect world. We have discovered that zombie ants, their brains under control of fungi, are in the Amazon and zombie-creating fungi are potentially in rainforests all over the globe waiting to eat the brains of unsuspecting insects. Or maybe evil flies hell-bent upon zombifying them will let their larvae eat their brains.

Hell, serious authors on serious blogs like Daniel Drezner on Foreign Policy have even written about zombies:

Theory of International Politics and Zombies

Night of the Living Wonks

Note that academic papers have been written about the damned things – specifically stating that rapidly and aggressively dealing with zombie populations is the only way to avoid extinction. If you don’t read the body, at least read the introduction and the discussion at the end.

"Clearly, this is an unlikely scenario if taken literally, but possible real-life applications may include allegiance to political parties, or diseases with a dormant infection."

Classic. The neo-conservative ultra-right-wing Christian tea-partier is just a modern political zombie. It’s pretty freaking clear that their brain has been either destroyed or replaced with something – a fungus, a larva, what have you – that makes them mindlessly intent on devouring whatever is left of this country’s humanity.

Apathy

2011-03-07T23:39:00.000-05:00

That's a good word to describe how I feel about this right now. I could actually not care a lot less about making my post for today, given what has gone one. Yet, I obviously am taking the time to make a post. So maybe apathy isn't quite the right word. Or maybe it's not apathy towards posting as much as it is towards putting down anything even remotely meaningful.

A flu-like bug has its grips on me and even though I have some ideas that I'd love to expound upon I just don't have the motivation.

Youngest daughter tripped and nearly lost two teeth this afternoon, requiring an emergency trip to the dentist and oral surgeon to have them set back in place in hopes that she doesn't lose them. So that takes some mental energy out of you, or at least gives you an excuse to be mentally lazy and say "I got nuthin".

Still, I enjoy switching on the blog-o-sphere every day and reading what everyone writes down. What that has to do with me being fucking lazy, I have no idea.

Whatever. Seven days. Seven posts. Zero value.

Home

2011-03-06T23:25:00.000-05:00

That's where I am tonight. And tired. And sick. And done with this post.

Free

2011-03-05T23:55:00.001-05:00

...as Randal foresaw, I had this post planned since I posted the last time.

Been listening to a LOT of classic Maiden lately. Love their first album (from which this song comes) but their second album - "Killers" - is the most under-appreciated album in their collection, and among the most under-appreciated in the entire genre of metal.

But for now, I am runnin' free...more tomorrow.

Tomorrow

2011-03-04T23:44:00.001-05:00

...and tomorrow, and tomorrow, creeps in its petty pace from day to day...

Tomorrow is also the last day - for a while, I hope - that I'm working these crazy shift hours. So after tomorrow I'll be able (and have more energy) to take the time I want to spew a larger volume of meaningless crap than I have been the last few days.

But first, laundry.

Eddie looks pretty much about how I feel right now.

Boots

2011-03-03T23:52:00.000-05:00

...something made for walkin'

Twice is a ...

2011-03-02T23:48:00.000-05:00

TREND.

This can be either a good or a bad thing. Like in a screw up. "Two of the same mistakes is a trend." Two of the same mistake is a bad thing when you need to get the right info and the right answer to make decisions in a high-pressure situation.

However, today it wasn't a bad trend. I was able to get ahead of my schedule enough that I could work out a second day in a row. So I now have a trend. But to continue that trend, I'll need to crash right now so I can get up early enough to do it again before the long day ahead of me.

So good night.

In A Word

2011-03-01T23:58:00.000-05:00

That is the new theme for March on the NaBloPoMo site. I'm not going to bother explaining it. Because if you write these things I'm betting you can figure it out.

With the time I currently have in each day, it's a perfect theme. Since I'm working long shift hours without access to blogger, I can just come home before midnight and write a single word that describes my day. Maybe a sentence or two after it. And I'm done. If I have more time, I can expound. It's perfect. So I'm going to make a go of it.

Today's word is.....

UNDER-UTILIZED

It's pretty much what I felt until today, when my 12-hour shift team (of which I was the deputy team leader) got a new team leader. One who wasn't so anal-retentive-up-on-the-governor-get-ahead-of-tasking-and-invent-shit-to-do-and-make-me-some-slides-about-it-while-you're-at-it about everything.

The new guy let me actually be the deputy. Make decisions. Direct action. Make and answer requests for information.

So I no longer feel under-utilized.

Just a quick update...

2011-02-23T21:47:00.000-05:00

...to say yeah, I'm still around. Business travel last week to San Francisco (Always get an Irish coffee at the Buena Vista near Hyde Pier - you won't regret it!) then back to RI over the weekend.

I've had some great ideas I want to write about, but now that I'm back on a semi-regular schedule things are getting fast-paced and I'll be off-line for a week or more. So basically, I'm writing to say I'll write more in a while.

Fucking slacker.

A big part of my time issue is where I chose to rent a room. It's a couple of miles outside the Beltway, so the commute - whether I ride or drive - is a complete pain in the ass. I drove today and it took me almost 90 minutes as the 495 was more parking-lottish than usual from the GW Parkway to Silver Spring. I submit that in addition to everything else, the average Beltway driver is empirical evidence that the National Capitol Region does not attract our best and brightest.

So my quest, once this next (hopefully brief) chapter is closed, is to secure lodging that is closer to R'lyeh to regain some of the 2.5-3 hrs I lose commuting every day. Then maybe I'll get some of my life back.

I'll still be reading and chiming in when I can.

This is where the good times went...

2011-02-13T00:58:00.002-05:00

found here

Yesterday Crum introduced me to a band I'd never heard of before. Aside from really digging the music I enjoyed his reflection that

"...youthful rebellion is woven into our humanity more as a reality check for the rest of us than just the surface pain in the ass it seems to come off as."

How true. Even for those of us who were fairly straight-laced growing up. I think it's woven into our social development as we mature. The case in which this that made the most sense to me was presented in the book The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. I'm not going to cover it in detail because that's not really what this post is about. The crux of his argument is (and he covers it in his reasoning behind why teen smoking is such an epidemic) that once you start socializing with others - in school, etc. - you start taking more and more behavioral cues from your peers than your parents. There comes a point early on when your parents literally have almost no control over where you are taking your cues from. So I think that, even if you fall in with other "goody-goody" kids, there are bound to be behaviors you take up from them that your parents won't approve of. Rebellion, at some level, is always there.

Of course, it really took off for me when I got to college. Straight-laced ROTC guy started hanging out with a bunch of hippies, punks, Pink Floyd fans, and others who were antithetical to the "Reagan Youth" that I drilled with every week. The trick was balancing the assimilation of both groups. I didn't care that some of my friends smoked dope and they knew not to do it in my room/apartment, but there were plenty of times when they were taking hits from the bong I was at the other side of the room drinking my vodka. Such was the pattern of mutual inebriation.

The biggest thing I remember were the parties my junior year. My roommates and I had inherited (that is, we were lucky enough in the housing lottery to be able to choose) an apartment that some graduating friends of ours were in that was famous for its parties. We vowed to carry on the tradition.

The apartment itself was beautiful. Well, it was for a bunch of college age males who didn't know any better. It had a huge living room, and the previous tenants had put a huge mural of a moonscape on one wall. A great lunar landscape with the Earth high and in the background. They had taped up a cartoon pic of Starship Enterprise from Star Trek, and a floating head of John Madden. Enterprise was shooting Mr. Madden with phasers. We added to the mural - usually with whatever photos we thought were cool out of the Weekly World News. Aliens, 300 lb goat-headed babies, we even had Hitler giving the "Sieg Heil" to a bust of Bette Midler that was emerging from behind a giant moon rock.

They'd left the bar there for us. And all the alcohol. They had a rule - drink what you like, but if you finish a bottle you need to replace it. Over the three years they'd had it, a steady stash had built up, and since they reasoned none of it was their own by the time they graduated, they told us it was ours. What a great bunch of guys. So we had the bar, we had the new and improved mural, what could we do to improve the parties? We decided we needed a band to play our parties. This was our major rebellion.

Parties you could have - more than ten people was a party, and you had to register your party at least the night before. But campus rules prohibited bands from playing parties. We decided to push the envelope anyway, knowing that getting caught could get us kicked out, and that would have bad repercussions with my family and with the organization that was paying my tuition. Fuck it. We did it anyway.

The band was called "Dead Men on Holiday", taken from Koestler's Darkness at Noon.

"For all over the country there were small groups of men who called themselves 'dead men on holiday', and devoted their lives to proving they still possessed life."

They were a punk band, not to be confused with a country/rock/soul band named "Dead Men on Holidays" from Germany, that comes up when you google the name. They had the usual repetoire of original songs that sounded good to and would only have meaning to their fans, with cool titles like "It Must Suck To Be You" and "Store 24" because I guess every college band needed a song about the local convenience store, who the fuck knows. Anyway, they were popular. They had come out of nowhere and placed second in the battle of the bands the year before, turning the stage-front of our beloved and esteemed theater hall into a frenzied, thrashing pit to the horror of school officials and visiting families. The front man was a fellow ROTC cadet in my unit, known as "Stain" who went on to run nuclear reactors for the Navy and command submarines. Smart guy, great guy, showed me that just because I wore the uniform it didn't mean I had to grow up as some right-wing Niedermayer that my future charges would want to shoot. More bad influence to add to my pothead friends; I'm sure my parents would have shit had they known what their good little Catholic boy in ROTC was now doing.

The pattern was simple. Buy a keg, buy some cheap vodka for a Kool-Aid punch, advertise by word of mouth, charge two bucks at the door, and Bob's yer' uncle. They took off something huge. By the third party we were turning big profits, enough to finance the next two. Fuck, we could even start paying the goddam band! We started being less covert. Well, the band started being less covert. They would put up posters a week before they played, always tasteless. The mid-December poster showed Santa and Mrs. Clause in a threesome with Rudolph, almost every one had a beer / barf motif. People started coming from Boston, from Providence, the punks from the local scene started showing up. Even the fucking frat douche bags. It usually started with them knocking on the door. I'd answer and notice the usual gang of fucks who I didn't like and didn't like me.

"What can I do for you?"

"Hey, we need to (use the phone / use the bathroom / borrow a cup of sugar / verify what this week's physics homework is). Can we come in?"

"You need what? I can't hear you. The music, you know. Try a quieter place if you need a phone."

"Can we (borrow some dental floss / see if our escaped hamster is in here / gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today)?"

"Look, guys. For $2 you can come in."

"Oh." And $20 or so bucks later, frat douche bags were in. Whatever, it was a business. It was fun hearing what excuses they would come up with. I think they changed with every one and it became something of a game.

They had a rash of great covers, too. Mostly of the classic, "Oi!" genre. The favorite was "Someone's Gonna' Die Tonight" by Blitz.

What a great fucking song. The way it builds up, unleashes into a frenzy of sound and gives way to a crooning/shouting anthem to violence and football hooliganism. It usually signaled a high point in the party. They knew when the crowd was worked up and it put us over the edge a few times. The cops usually came after that.

One of our roommates wasn't really into partying so he holed himself up in the attic (Okay, there wasn't an attic. We cut a hole in the ceiling and put a table and chair up there...) listening to the police scanner to see if any complaints would come in and alert us to quiet down before the campus rent-a-cops got there. We normally could quiet down enough (i.e. - get the band to take a break) that they just drove by.

Until one day in mid-January when they finished up the song and we noticed that the air conditioning had kicked on. Except there was no AC. One of our buds had gone straight from the pit head first through our front window.

Shit. Fuck. We had blown it. The cops came, shut us down, party ended early. That Monday, the letter came telling us we were meeting with the housing administrator to discus the party, the damage, and our futures as residents at college. We thought we were done. I thought I was losing a freaking scholarship. Rebellion had backfired.

So the meeting came, and we all dressed in our best unwashed shitty college kid clothes and went to see the housing administrator, a lady in her mid-30's who immediately threw us for a loop.

"Now boys, you know the school policy is that you cannot have a band play at a party."

"Yes, we do."

"And you know that what you did was dangerous, and your friend could have got seriously hurt. This is entirely unsatisfactory."

"Yes...we're sorry."

"Well, you're going to have to pay for the window. And I'm going to have to ask that you please don't have any more bands play your parties and that you keep it down in the future."

Stunned silence for about 10 seconds. Is THAT it? We looked at each other. I think one of us managed an "Okay" or "Yes, ma'am", or "We've learned our lesson" or something equally mundane. The window cost about as much to replace as 1.5 future parties. Hell, the band even chipped in by refusing their cut for that night. So we took one party "off" and didn't have a band, and made enough cash to subsidize another one. A month after that, we proved we hadn't learned our lesson - or simply decided to say "fuck you" to the administration - and brought the band back.

We were back in business. And housing didn't seem to mind.

It's good that some people recognize rebellion is part of growing up. So, for old time's sake. Do you feel alright?

Conversion

2011-02-12T01:03:00.001-05:00

I sit here, this evening, a convert.

I converted.

But not how you might think.

Yesterday, seeking a break in my daily grind I proceeded to the gym for a workout. It looked like a pretty hard core workout and I was looking forward to it, as it had two of my favorite exercises - power cleans and kettlebell swings. So, like a good cross-fitter I scaled it to my ability - dropped the swing weight to 35 lbs (about 1 pood) and the clean weight to about 80 lbs and reduced the jump height to about 15" and only planned 5 rounds instead of 7. Cuz I'm older, still fairly new to cross-fit and knew I'd be working up a good sweat but didn't want to hurt myself. You know, throw out my back, blow a knee, that sort of thing.

I never thought I'd throw my ticker out of whack.

I got into a good groove - I was pushing myself hard, and getting enough rest between sets, so I thought. Going into my last circuit, I decide "Fuck it - I'm going to push it HARD". So I finish up my last round of swings and all of a sudden my sternum feels like someone firmly tapped it with a rubber mallet. I can feel my heart beating hard and a weird reverberation at the bottom of my esophagus. I get a little dizzy, and I know that that's it. I am done with this workout. So I calmly put everything away, ignoring how wobbly I am because I know that if I just cease activity and rest my heart will calm down.

After I put the gear away I go sit on a bench and try to take my pulse. It's freakin' funny. Not getting a very strong one, but fast. I'm getting several fast beats, a pause, and then two or three quick, arrhythmic beats. Here's where the tiny voice says, "Dude, this isn't right. Maybe you should go to the front desk and see if they can call someone from the clinic to come down and check you out." But the big, stupid voice said, "Look, you're breathing okay, you're not in pain, just clean up, go back to your cubicle, hydrate, and you'll be good." So I listen to the stupid voice.

Indicator #1 that I might be wrong is when I step in the shower and get dizzy again. I ignore it.

So I get back to the office and the Executive Assistant for my group reminds me that one of my wonderful "staff tasks" is "pre-due" today. Pre-due means the boss needs to look at it two days before it is due so that when it is coming up for approval when it is due then the approval will be expedited. We all know what that is. An artificial due date before the due date that adds pressure to you to get the job done faster, and makes you give less time to those who you need to delegate parts of the task to. In all fairness our office handles it pretty well; the product is not expected to be polished, just a "show me what it looks like as is" that can be reviewed at leisure in the two days before formal approval starts. And in this case the job was almost done anyway so it was fairly easy to gather everything together and get it ready. Indicator #2 came when I got up to go to the printer and got dizzy again. That's when I said as soon as I finish this I'm going down a floor and walking in to acute care.

Indicator #3 came when I had to get to the printer again. FUCK. THIS. I stapled everything together, handed it to the person in the cubicle next to me and said "I really feel like shit. I need to get to the clinic. When you hear about such-and-such being due today, this is it. Could you please give it to so-and-so?" She said yes; we are assigned as back-ups to each other on most of our work, so it's common place.

Let the fun begin. I walk down to the clinic, walk in, take my number, think "screw filling out the form" and walk right up to the civilian receptionist. She's doing something besides looking at me so I lean over and say "I took a number but I don't care. My heart is racing and beating funny and I almost passed out twice. I need to see someone now."

She looks at me and says, "I'm sorry, do you need to see someone?"

"Yes. My heart is in arrhythmia and I have almost fainted."

"Sir, did you say you feel like you are going to pass out?"

"Yes, ma'am. I need to see someone please." (My inner monologue: "I FUCKING TOLD YOU TWICE! CALL FUCKING TRIAGE YOU DUMB FUCK!!!") In all fairness, they are quite an overwhelmed staff most of the times. 20,000+ people working in the building, too small a staff to handle it all...but I was in no mood. Things seemed screwed up and I was getting scared.

So the nice nurse comes out, I explain to her what is happening and she asks "Do you want a wheel chair?"

"No"

"Sir, look at you, look at me. If you fall, how am I going to get you where I need to get you?"

"I ain't going to fall. I walked down here from the second floor, I can make it another 50 feet." Stupid, but I made it.

So they hook me up to the EKG, take my vitals and yeah, things are screwy. Heart rate is 170, in a-fib, BP 150/113, talking amongst themselves. Doctor comes in, looks at it.

"Are you feeling any pain?"

"Nope. No pain in my left shoulder area, no numbness in my left arm, I can breathe fine." And believe me, I'm constantly thinking about this..."Hey I'm 42, I work out, okay I haven't been eating as well as I could be in the last month or so, but come on! This can't be happening."

Cardiologist confirms I'm a-fib, I get a couple of doses of beta blockers, and that gets my HR down to about 85-100 within 90 minutes. The staff starts looking more relieved around me, and talking like things are going to be okay. "Sir, you're heart rate is down, which is good. That's the primary danger. But you're still in arrhythmia, and we need your heart rate to 'convert' back to a normal, sinus rhythm. Now we can keep you here until that happens on its own, but with the weekend coming up we want to make sure you aren't in any danger, so we're sending you to the ER."

Great, that's encouraging.

An hour or so later I've been in the ER, they've taken blood for all sorts of lab work, done a chest X-Ray and everything is clean. No heart damage, no thyroid issues, no blockages. A seemingly perfectly healthy heart in a-fib. Hey that's great, except it's fucking uncomfortable and what the heck are you going to do about that?

Doc informs me that they'll keep me overnight and see if I convert by morning. If not, they'll stick an endoscope down my esophagus to ensure there is no blockage, and then they'll perform a conversion by sedating me and giving a low-level shock to my heart to unfuck the rhythm. Kind of like a defibrillator but without the huge jolt.

Great, that's encouraging.

I think the doc notices this on my face and assures me that my current condition is not life-threatening and neither is the procedure. By now I've talked with my wife a couple of times and the big question is should she come down from Rhode Island? After many discussions involving dozens of variables we decide to wait until early morning to decide. If I haven't converted and want her to be here, she'd hop a flight. Until then, the best place was for her to be with the kids.

Why? Because this is not a big problem. I'm not in the ICU, the doc was very thorough in explaining what was going on (and believe me, I make them explain everything - the mechanisms at work in the body, the risks, everything. If they charge every time they talk to me as a consult, then I am going to get my fucking information!). I wasn't in any danger and I had come to trust the doctor so that I didn't believe he'd do anything risky to rid me of a low-risk condition, the reason part of my brain said "Hey, this is going to be an annoying 12-16 hours and then I'll go back to my room." Also, I could feel that the a-fib was slowing down. The events were fewer and farther between. I was pretty confident I was trending toward normal on my own and I'd convert before morning.

However, that wasn't guaranteed. And even though the risk in the "procedure" is miniscule it is still there. And it doesn't depend on how much good luck you've had in your life, or you being due to catch a break, or some being who may be looking out for you or deciding to turn a blind eye at that moment. It is sheer, unadulterated probability based on a number of factors. And if you fall within that small probability, then that risk gets bigger. Much bigger. So the question in my mind as I went to sleep - and it was really bugging me - was:

"Even though it is a very, very small risk, am I willing to accept that the last conversation or contact I have with my wife may be over the phone?" Really. I think when the lights go out, they go out. No afterlife, no nothing. The last contact with anyone I truly valued possibly being a phone call. In hindsight it seems silly, but in the moment it was a point to ponder. If I have the option to be with someone I loved in the moments before I could lose everything - even if the risk of doing so was so small - should I take it?

I wake up at 3 am, because I can't sleep and I need to "go" and can still feel the occasional fibrillation. Great.

At 5 am I was awakened by a knock and the nurse coming in to check my vitals. "Good news, our monitor shows your heart rate has converted to a normal sinus rhythm. As soon as our EKG techs can confirm that, you'll be able to leave."

Relief. Text my wife. Relief.

Realization that working here in DC while the wife and kids live 500 miles away SUCKS ASS. Things like this that don't entail serious risk but still benefit greatly from being able to be together suddenly become huge problems. Being a "geographic bachelor" could be the dumbest thing I've done in my 20+ year career.

Realization that damned near everything in life is a risk-decision. The decision to bump the intensity up just a little harder. The decision that something is happening but I'll "wait awhile and see what happens". The decision that it's too close to the weekend to just let you go without being sure. The decision that based on science and reason I'm going to be okay and I'm willing to accept that this is almost certainly not going to be the last time we talk, so just stay put.

And, strangely, I'm good with that. The only things I'm going to do differently are not "wait and see what happens" when I know something is really not right and, as part of that, not wait to tell my family when shit does happen, just in case it does happen to be serious.

Postscript: It turns out that, as I mentioned, I am fine. Of all the reasons a-fib could happen, this was "it just happened". I'm clear to resume my life. The doc recommended that, even though I'm healthy now, I get a stress test given that my family has a history of heart disease. Every indication is that it will be fine, but I should do it. So that is the next step.

Oh, and there is a third thing I'm going to do differently - make them shave the spots where they attach the electrodes.

Answering the Questions that Affect Us All: Obscure Midwest Rock Bands

2011-02-08T23:30:00.003-05:00

Research Question: What’s up with late-70’s / early-80’s obscure rock bands from the Midwest?

Thesis: Obscure and moderately successful Mid-western rock bands from the late 70’s and 80’s rock for a variety of reasons.

Case 1: Head East, “Never Been Any Reason” (1978).

Head East - Never Been Any Reason @ Yahoo! Video

What it’s got going for it:

1. Lots of cowbell, including a cowbell solo.

2. A key-tar solo.

3. Two vocalists trading off with some killer dude-harmonizing in a proto-Bruce Dickinson sort of way.

4. Drug reference from a time when drugs were cool, and even the kids who didn’t do drugs (like yours truly) pretended they did.

5. A damned catchy guitar riff.

6. A badass fucking pancake on the record jacket.

7. I was living in the Midwest at the time and rocked out to them.

What it’s got going against it:

1. A second key-tar solo.

2. Some lyrical non-sequiturs that make it seem as if my seven year old came up with a verse or two. Case in point: “You’ve been talking in circles / since I’ve been able to cry / there’s never been any reason / for never telling me why”. Apparently there’s never been any reason to make sense, either.

Overall Score: 3.5 Kumatoes

Case 2: Michael Stanley Band, “He Can’t Love You”, (1980)

What it’s got going for it:

1. Butt-cuts, mullets and skinny ties.

2. A damned catchy guitar riff.

3. Percussive keyboards that accompany the guitar well.

4. Two saxophone solos buy a guy who could probably kick Kenny G’s ass.

5. Sexy 80’s nurses in the video.

6. A message that spoke to a pre-teen living in the Midwest who had a crush on a girl who liked someone else.

What it’s got going against it:

1. 80’s beard combined with a butt-cut.
2. Designer jeans and white platform shoes.

3. A basist who looks like a car-bomber.

4. No key-tar.

5. He “almost made Cleveland famous” for which he should be held accountable at the ICC.

Overall Score: 15 kegelcisors and a Garbage Plate

Conclusion: While analyzing every obscure to moderately successful rock band that emerged from the Midwest in the 1980’s is outside the scope of this brief paper, the above two examples may indicate that despite sometimes numerous and serious flaws in instrument choice, lyrical talent and grooming, these bands can still rock based upon individual appeal.

Areas for further study:

1. While over-application of a key-tar may have a detracting effect, the lack of a key-tar is perceived as universally negative among the sample. How can an obscure Midwest late-70’s / early-80’s band employ a key-tar and achieve strictly positive results?

2. A comparison of food imagery vs. health care professional imagery in providing visual stimulation to enhance musical enjoyment.

3. Shooting Star as a candidate for the best obscure late-70’s / early-80’s rock band ever to emerge from the Midwest, and an accurate representative overall score.

Edit: Seems to be a theme running around about musical tastes. Check out Randal and one of Randal's regulars whose site I just decided to check out.

The view from the lift

2011-01-30T18:52:00.001-05:00

Whitetail Ski Resort in PA. Loving it.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Thank You For Your Service ™

2011-01-28T23:28:00.004-05:00

Journalists have been pointing out the growing divide - the lack of common ground - between the military and the population for some time now - how we have so few people under arms, how they are becoming economically and more demographically separate from the country, how almost nobody knows anyone in the military anymore, but most recently Bad-Boy General turned Yale Professor Stanley McChrystal hit the nail on the head, if you ask me.

We need to re-capture or re-define what service means.

We are now a nation that lives in the context of entitlement and victimhood. We're entitled to everything we want when we want it, and we're victims because ~~the government,~~ ~~the immigrants,~~ ~~the Democrats,~~ ~~the Republicans,~~ ~~the Gnomes of Zurich,~~ ~~the Tea Baggers,~~ ~~the economy,~~ ~~the university intellectuals,~~ ~~the Christians,~~ ~~the godless atheists,~~ ~~fucking China~~ we are making it hard to have cheap resources, ridiculously high paying jobs, government-funded everything, cheap cell phones, mansions and a huge powerful caveman-bombing military while just wishing the money to pay for it into existence because goddammit we're the most heavily taxed undertaxed nation in the world! We justify our sense of entitlement and sooth our sense of victimhood by doing two simple things:

1. Thanking the troops. Thank you. Thank you for your service. Thank you for protecting my freedom. Thank you for being there so I can thank you so now I can feel as if I don't have to do anything but continue to thank you and bitch about whatever group of people are bad Americans based upon what my favorite TV pundit posing as a good American tells me. Now that I've thanked you and my well-being is in your hands, all I have to worry about is whether I should switch to Verizon or wait for the iPhone 5 to come out. Thank you for keeping me safe enough to buy an iPhone.

2. Crying for the troops and their families and talking about how brave they are. Because they are the real victims. It's so sad that daddy has to go overseas and it makes me cry and I wish I could do something, but I need my iPhone and I've already thanked your daddy or mommy, so I'll just cry some more for you or maybe send you some money or some stuff so that I can feel better about the victim culture I live in because your are the real victim, having to get daddy's skull half blown off for iPhones. And freedom. Oh, and to keep those nasty turrrurrururuists from building houses of worship here in America.

DISCLAIMER - In case my poorly written attempt at sarcasm is unclear, read this. Otherwise, skip to the next paragraph: My intent here is not to belittle what anyone in our armed forces or their families go through or imply that they are undeserving of understanding, respect and sympathy. Their task is huge and unforgiving and after 20 years of active service I know very well what we are involved in and what our families go through. Rather, I believe the ubiquity of the Support Our Troops® mentality points to a certain "hollowness" of many of its practitioners.

I will not go into the causes or reasons for this as there are many, and blame lays in industry, in government, in the populace, in the military - no corner of this society is untouched.

But McChrystal's message went largely unheard. Because nobody wants to hear it. But then again, most people can't relate to the General.

So maybe someone people CAN relate to can get the message across?

NOPE

There was an opportunity here. An opportunity for Brokaw and Woodward, two well-known and thinking people to make McChrystal's point as well. Both had an opportunity, but decided to link involvement to having sympathy and compassion for a small segment of the population vice the entire population thinking about how they could take ownership for this place instead of bitching at each other.

Once Oprah picks something, you know the branding is complete. Not only America's fighting men and women are no longer even remotely accessible or understandable to most other Americans, but they are finally a trademarked message that tells the rest of the country "You don't have to be invested in this place anymore. You just have to feel bad for the troops." What a bunch of fucking crap.

The whole thought of what I'm getting at is pretty idealistic. It'd take leadership in places where we don't currently have the right kind of leadership. Just thinking that way probably makes me part of the problem. So I'm going to do something about it - tomorrow, I am going snowboarding.

I may get one of these.

Dead in the Water

2011-01-26T21:09:00.001-05:00

Ha. Good metaphor for a blog invoking the name of the Great Old One himself. After November's brief revival things again got bogged down as is wont with my job and the posting dried up pretty darned good. So I made a New Years resolution (yeah, that's it!) to start writing again sometime before the end of January. Sound like a good enough rationalization to wait this long to post anything? Yeah, well piss on you if you don't agree.

In all honesty I have been meaning to start writing / blogging again. The big question is whether or not to start doing so HERE. The place has been mostly abandoned because, for whatever reason, it is not meeting any needs or desires of mine.

But I have a need/desire to write, and here is where I can write. It's my own place, and I've had it for some time. It has lacked direction in the past - really never had any - but it can still be whatever I want. Or can it?

I remember back in November that Crummy was reminiscing about his own place and how it "violates all the rules" about "successful blogging" as far as theme, content, length of posts, blah blah blah. Like I've stated about this place, he admits that he doesn't really have anything he writes about. It's mostly blogging about himself - an exercise in narcissism. I don't think Crum would take that the wrong way (please don't). All personal blogging is an exercise in narcissism, this is no exception.

The thing that he has - and the other good ones that I read or have read (Randall, Beach Bum, okjimm, splotchy, my cousin the rabbit wrangler, nunly, and even recently my old college friend wombat) all have one thing going for them - they have a certain context, some sort of intellectual or cognitive rug that really ties their rooms together. I'm not sure I have that rug...or maybe some Chinaman came in and pissed on it.

I do know one thing - if I want to get that rug, or clean the piss off of it, I simply need to write, and do so regularly. For now this place will have to do.

I'm just not sure this is what I want my writing to be, other than something I'm happy with. I've thought about different ways I could go. I'm guessing the thing to do is write them down - make a list of "Shit I'd Like To Write About" and figure out how/when/where I will.

But in the meantime I just need to write. I can feel my brain atrophying.

So I'll call this a start.

Matchbox Cars - Feel the PWNAGE

2010-11-30T23:54:00.001-05:00

62 years ... 650,000 matches ... 430 ships.

Seems the Royal Navy ran out of ships about the same time he ran out of matches. Nicely timed.

More awesome pics here.

Bonus Thanksgiving

2010-11-30T00:16:00.003-05:00

One of (if not the) best parts of Thanksgiving is the leftovers. Having a big-ass turkey sandwich with stuffing, cranberry and gravy piled on is a great half-time snack for Monday Night Football. But it depends on getting good leftovers.

Last year we realized that we never really take home enough of the right kinds of leftovers. It would be easier if we hosted, but we never do. We get our little container, filled with a little bit of everything (typically too much green bean casserole and not enough turkey, ham and stuffing!), just like everyone else who converges on my parents' or uncles' house. We remedied that by buying a turkey breast and roasting it up with all the fixin's that weekend. Voila - leftovers galore! As an aside we never wont for desserts; my wife is an awesome baker and dessert is never scarce at Thanksgiving; so we almost always return home with plenty of her cake and pie to gorge ourselves on.

This year we absconded with the remaining half of the huge bone-in ham that my dad contributed, with the promise that he will get some split pea and ham soup out of it. The soup will come, but for the time being we've been frying it up with eggs, or just baking up a batch of homemade biscuits and having ham, biscuits and coffee for breakfast. He smokes a good ham. He doesn't make good pies. This year he tried to emulate a lemon pie recipe my aunt makes. I'd never had it before this past week, but I hope she makes it better. The filling is whole, sliced lemon with the rind zested off and part of the sweetened filling. The lemon pulp wasn't bad. Biting through the rind was too bitter. And the crust was thick and hard to cut. I believe he rolled it out with a Panzer III. To be fair, good pie crust is not easy to make. Unless you're my wife.

So we took a big-ass piece of ham and skipped the pie. But otherwise the container of leftovers was pitifully small. So we did it again - buy more turkey, stuffing, veggies, roast it all up with potatoes, gravy, hot rolls. Don't forget the cranberry sauce. We named it "Bonus Thanksgiving".

Bonus Thanksgiving is about one thing - maximizing leftovers. The logic is distinctly American (or, maybe 'murrikan) - consume more up front so it will go farther. Spend more so you can get bonus points and spend even more. Hell, it's even more American than the original Thanksgiving.

On a less sarcastic note, it's also a good thing; it's a chance for my family - I, my wife and my kids - to sit down and just enjoy each other over a meal without the additional ten people who make dinner a quasi-stressful event, without dad spending endless minutes detailing how he carefully constructed a Lemon-Panzer pie and describing things like "letting the dough rest in the fridge" as though he just discovered this long lost ancient trick before he shovels down huge mouthfuls of it while making "yummy sounds".

So yeah, Bonus Thanksgiving will be a Chef Cthulhu family tradition. I'm willing to bet Bonus Christmas will, too.

Another Prayer...

2010-11-25T22:48:00.001-05:00

There are now two prayers that I actually like (well, maybe three if you count the snarky drivel I wrote yesterday). The first is Lord Nelson's Prayer, penned by the Viscount himself before Trafalgar, where he met his fate. I like it purely for its historic value, rather than the glaring example of someone justifying his desire for victory in something as amoral as battle with an appeal to a higher moral authority. A couple of years back I visited HMS VICTORY and got to see the paper on which it was written. It was rather moving.

This morning, my cousin posted a prayer on his blog. This one I also like, a great deal. And I'll leave it at that.

If The Universe Could Hear You...

2010-11-23T22:20:00.002-05:00

Well, it's almost time for tryptophan with all the fixin's washed down with the alcohol of your choice, but that doesn't really change the fact that, like the last post I wrote, I have no earthly idea what the hell to write about. It kind of sucks. I started writing here again because I wanted to, but the dearth of motivation is preventing me from really making an effort.

Well, motivation is not really the word. I am motivated to write. I tried doing NaNoWriMo and got all of 400-odd words done. Yay, it says I win just for trying. There are about 6,000,000,000 things I read every day that I'd love to comment on or analyze, but I can never keep my thoughts straight.

QUAAAAAACK quackquackquack...

I've thought about crazy-ass things like how globalization has made it easy to travel and pass money around, and consequently has made it easier to spread pathogens throughout the globe as evidenced by Max Brook's excellent book World War Z, a zombie book that is about anything BUT zombies. And then I read about things like the Stuxnet Virus that brings to reality crazy things that Angelina Jolie could stop with her youthful collagen duckface just 15 years ago, when she was only just beginning to make shitty movies. After putting 2 and 2 together it seems that this computer pathogen could spread globally along similar vectors as zombies, or pandemic influenza, or whatever, given a motivated enough individual to start the process.

But then ... yawn. Maybe I'll burn the brain cells doing something more inane like configuring my fantasy football lineup for the coming week to keep my 4-game winning streak alive.

But I digress. Back to Thanksgiving.

Yes the white man came, across the sea, and brought them pain and misery...because, you know, they were already living in harmony and hadn't already been trying to slaughter each other for their land, food and women for the last however many centuries simply because the other injuns lived over the river and through the woods and not here. Doesn't justify shit, but face it - homo sapiens = bastards whether you have rifles or rocks tied to sticks.

So the Europeans prayed to God and used him as a convenient conversion sham to conquer and when that had petered out they shrouded expansion under his will. The natives prayed to the Great Spirit or a pile of sticks or whatever and it did them a whole shitload of good. At least in Innsmouth they pray to Cthulhu and once you get past the fish transformation you get to live forever.

So I found it kind of amusing when yesterday, at the office ~~just stuff yourself and believe you have it good~~ Thanksgiving potluck, a fellow of mine suggested "Let's have the biggest atheist here say grace." I snerked. That would have been him, because I'm still an atheist in denial holding on to what vestiges of his agnosticism can still get him by. But the reason I snerked was because he was standing behind my boss; a good guy, but a dyed in the wool Christian through and through. Which is probably why he said it.

So when we had broke to eat, I suggested he try this at his table this Thursday:

"Oh Universe, thank you for big-banging and expanding in such a way that your physical properties developed in such a way that I can experience and enjoy the life I have right now. But you can't hear or understand this, so why am I even saying anything at all..."

But alas, in the end, I will always be a sort of middle-of-the-road guy when it comes to beliefs. So enjoy the weekend in whatever way gives you the most benefit.

Don't just write something...sit there!

2010-11-17T00:11:00.002-05:00

..."What the fuck are you doing here?"

Not much, to tell you the truth.

So maybe you should write something.

I would if I had anything to write about.

But this place has been idle for 9 days and you told yourself you were going to keep maintaining it better.

Oh, all right...

It's amazing how you can get caught up in the whirlwind of the mundane, just doing shit as it comes. The problem is November. R'lyeh gets little done between now and ~~Decemberfest~~ I mean ~~Hey Buy Shit It's Winter~~ no wait ~~Put the Porn Back in XX~~Xmas and ~~Hey Let's Get Smashed On This Night That Happens To Straddle An Arbitrarily Determined Important Day~~ wait that's New Year's (I'll keep that because I actually like getting fucked up once in a while) so in anticipation of that all the little shit that can wait until after the holidays gets front loaded so you have to deal with it all early when it can certainly wait until later. So you end up working long days on the relatively mundane and insignificant stuff that would be perfectly suited to occupying those first couple of hung over days back in the office. And in the process, you have little time for anything else like writing shit or reading what other people write. I thought maybe this would go somewhere, but it doesn't. So kill it.

Whatever. I wrote something. Can I go now?

No.

But I need to. I have to pack for a trip to Atlanta tomorrow. And I really have nothing.

Fine. Whatever. At least you know your limitations, as mankind should. So just post a video or something.

No, dumbass! Something with less talent. And more boobs. And big Flinstone puppets.

Oh. Here y'go.

Barkeep! Prithee adimpleate me another homerkin of your finest ale!

2010-11-07T19:09:00.001-05:00

For tonight, I toast the Great Cthulhu's lordship over the icthyarchy! I beg your pardon? You refuse to serve me? Then you had best obarmate against my imminent pugnastics by which I shall immediately and impudiciously pudify thee in his great and terrible name!

No, "obarmate" does not mean to ruin the country, so you Tea-Tards keep that word off your signs.

Besides, most of you are obarmated enough already!

Won't you please donate just a few minutes of your time, and save the words?

(Heh, heh! I've finally figured out how to use "Randal words"...)

Enjoying...

2010-11-05T20:48:00.001-04:00

...the night at the Verizon Center. It'd be better if the fucken' Bruins were winning but they apparently forgot how to shoot. And Thomas forgot how to block shots...

Off for a weekend away after tonight. Back on Monday.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Election Night Whatever...

2010-11-02T21:02:00.001-04:00

Today and tonight will determine what sort of ~~spin the media puts on the abject legislative failure that is Congress~~ agenda will govern the American body politic in the next two years. My prediction?

PAIN!!!!

At least there is a small group of people that aren't crazy and ~~the stupid Tea Party c*** who won't touch her own because she can't find "separation of church and state" on her labia~~ the Republican lady from Delaware is (reportedly) getting trounced. Ultimately, it won't change much.

So, while you count percentages and wait for the world to be exactly the same tomorrow as it was this morning I might as well offer this item, brought to my attention by a Facebook friend, as a salve for whatever wounds you may be suffering tonight.

IA!! IA!!! Jack O'Thulhu F'taghn!

2010-11-01T00:10:00.000-04:00

Pattern by King-Reaper at Deviantart. My wife (who is much better manipulating printers and programs than I) got it to print out the right size so we could get it on the pumpkin. I used an Exacto-knife and a crab-picking tool to cut out the pattern and scrape it to about 3/4" deep. All in all about 3 hours of work but worth it.

Here's a pic of Jack O'Thulhu, Jack Skellington, and two more Jack O'Lanterns guarding our doorstep this evening.

Have a happy and Lovecraftian Halloween!

When Sarah Licked Christine

2010-10-30T11:15:00.000-04:00

Gay Tea Party Witch Sex

Discuss...or run screaming...

This fuckin' town is killing me

2010-10-28T22:13:00.002-04:00

I remember calling the guy who places me in new jobs (called a "detailer") many months ago, trying to figure out what I was doing next. I decided I needed to make up for a couple of years of cushy jobs by taking something hard. I told him Afghanistan, Iraq or Horn of Africa - I figured they're always looking for people to fill the slots, but I was wrong. They had nothing for me. A couple of years ago you couldn't beg someone into an augmentee job. So he told me he had a job for me in a certain ~~5-sided building~~ sunken city of complex, non-euclidean geometry.

I tried to explain the difference between the building and Afghanistan. "One place is a meatgrinder and a hazard to life, limb and career. The other is a country in Central Asia." It didn't work. Here I am.

And it turns out I'm right.

If it's not the whacko hostage takers getting gunned down right next to your bus stop...

...or the people shooting at your building in the morning before you show up for work...

...it's the (stupid) Al Qaeda wannabees looking for friends who will help them blow you up.

Of course, you'd be right to point out that I am a volunteer and I didn't have to stay in as long as I did to get to work where I do and when I do. And you'd be right. Then I could point out that we also wouldn't be here if our civilian leadership had had a better notion of grand strategy and the use of the military as part of the continuum of foreign policy and not the sole source of foreign policy for the last 15 years or so, and I'd be right.

But I wanna' play the victim today, and hindsight is always 20-20. Still doesn't change the fact that I eat my breakfast a mere few hundred yards from people who are trying to kill me. They won't succeed...

These chicks will, however.

I've been doing the Crossfit thing for the last month or so; it's been good for ripping about 15 lbs or so off my fat ass. I had to scale this workout though (did 5 rounds and only 20 reps of each exercise) because let's face it - I'm not in the shape these gals are in. Not even close.

Whatever. I'm out of time and out of bullshit. Long drive ahead of me tomorrow back up to the Land of Lovecraft to hang with the family this weekend. I'll have time to think about the (non-) plot of my writing next month.

Well shit what do I do now?

2010-10-27T23:45:00.000-04:00

Facebook Friend: "I've decided to do NaNoWriMo this year. 50,000 words in 30 days, blahblahblah..."

Me: "I thought of doing that once and writing a story that's sort of a combination of Patrick O'Brian and H.P. Lovecraft. I'd call it Master and Cthulhu."

Friend: "You must! I mean, come on: O'Brian even has a book call The Yellow Admiral which is already *this* close to the Admiral in Yellow. Ocean voyages...sunken cities of madness...this stuff writes itself! You owe it to the world, man! C'mon..do it! All the cool kids are!"

So now I'm thinking about it. Even slinging bullshit, can I get 50,000 words out in a month? I must admit, it's very tempting.

And even along the lines of what I discussed above. I wrote a short piece about 18 months ago that was accepted by a Lovecraft-inspired e-zine. I even noticed that Crum just found it a couple of weeks back. I figure a fictitious early 19th Century sea voyage of a ship named Innsmouth from the east coast to the Pacific Northwest - through the mysterious waters of the South Pacific, home to R'lyeh, and the big smelly mud-flat of Lovecraft's Dagon, with some native-bred-to-Deep-One intrigue (linking the Pacific-origin of the "Innsmouth Look" to the ship and the story), apeshit madness and mutiny, and throw in the discovery of some bizzare, artifact-driven combination of celestial navigation and ship propulsion that brings Yog-Sothoth into play and I could probably cobble together 50,000 words of crud under the "No plot, no problem!" mantra.

I must admit, it is tempting...since I'm living 400+ miles from my family and have no friends I have several hours a night. It would put that 18 month-old blog with just two posts on it to some use. I'm about 95% sold on the idea of it.

Tee-pee for your mental bunghole...

2010-10-25T22:40:00.000-04:00

Fourteen years ago yours truly was in graduate school, studying remote sensing, quantum mechanics, orbital mechanics, cosmology, semiconductors, optics, and a whole host of other brain-grinding classes to earn the title "Master of Science in Applied Physics" with a specialty in space systems. Long, had days of class followed by studying well into the evening; it's a good thing I was single then.

On a typical school night I'd study until 10 pm, then clean up and shower. Then I would de-compress my strained brain by seeking out what it desperately needed - Beavis and Butthead.

There was a certain brilliance to their imbecility. While their adventures were pure, unadulterated silliness, their running commentary while watching the music videos of the day was priceless and really quite insightful. Yes, the Stone Temple Pilots were a shitty Pearl Jam copy. Yes, Ace of Base sucked. Yes, Pantera rocked. It was, for a time, the sole redeeming program on MTV. It's cancellation in 1997 marked the day the channel went from 99% shit to 100% shit.

Music was at an interesting point then. Technology was coming on strong, but not so strongly that you didn't still need some modicum of talent to make it really, REALLY huge in the biz. I've often wondered what a Beavis and Butthead video critique would look like today. Would they wear meat dresses while they watched Lady GaGa spew her highly derivative, talentless crap all over the screen? How would they react to a System of A Down video? I no longer have to wonder.

THEY'RE BACK

Well, according to the New York Post they almost are. If Mike Judge can keep his comic and artistic integrity that's so evident in King of the Hill, Office Space, and Idiocracy - and why shouldn't he. I ... gasp! ... would actually be seen watching MTV!

In case you haven't figured it out, the first eight seconds or so of this short video should explain how I feel:

It's all Greek to me.

2010-10-17T02:33:00.001-04:00

While at one of America's mega-monopolizing book stores today I picked up some new brain food:

Image Source

Words had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given them. Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal ally; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question, inaptness to act on any. Frantic violence became the attribute of manliness; cautious plotting, a justifiable means of self-defence. The advocate of extreme measures was always trustworthy; his opponent a man to be suspected.

Man, sounds like they had some real Tea-Partiers on their hands in the days of "hallowed antiquity".

Yes, I'm going to read Thucidydes' History of the Peloponnesian War. I'm actually doing a good bit more. I'm embarking on a personal study of the war based upon three books:

The Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan, widely considered the definitive, single-volume source for the "general reader" looking to understand the event. It is still around 500 pages - a decent chunk by anyone's standards. From it I hope to get a reasonable understanding of the conditions that led to the war between Athens and Sparta and, as the book boldly promises, lessons and insights that are as relevant today as they were 2500 years ago.

The next book I plan to read is A War Like No Other by Victor Davis Hanson. Definitely a controversial author for his conservative views and support for the war in Iraq, Hanson is nonetheless one of the foremost military historians in the country. This book examines how both sides fought - on land and on sea, weapons, organization, tactics, etc. - within a somewhat disjointed (he admits as much in the preface) accounting of the history itself.

Finally, there is The Landmark Thucydides edited by R. B. Strassler, apparently the only amateur of the bunch. Unlike other translations, this has additional notes and appendices by classical scholars that will help put the text into context for the "uninitiated" reader. I used a similar annotated text when I read Clausewitz last year, and On War is only 150 years old, so I figure if I'm going back to Greece in the 5th Century B.C., I'll need much the same. My plan, in reading the above two books (which reference Thucydides extensively) is to refer to Strassler as a primary source to go back to and do all the extensive digging and thinking when I feel the need to do so.

I know I'm getting it backwards, I should probably read the primary source first. But as many academics will tell you, you smash your brain against the primary source only to finish it wondering "What the fuck did I just read?" until your secondary sources shed light. I'm not in school anymore, so I'm running straight for the light.

Why am I subjecting myself to this? Because Daniel Drezner told me I should. Well, not exactly. I have, however, deepened my interest in history in the year I was away from the blogosphere, and also gained a new interest in strategy, policy and decision-making, both historic and current. And to tell you the truth, in much of what I studied over the past year (unfortunately I did not get to study the Peloponnesian War) does echo still today.

In fact, my interest in these topics has expanded so much that I'm planning on writing about them more often, as part of a new policy think-tank. I think I'll call it:

The R'lyeh Institute for Policy, Strategy and Highly Incomplete Thinking, or RIPSHIT. Look for it, coming soon...

Every Child Left Behind

2010-10-16T00:41:00.000-04:00

I was wondering what to write about when I found this outstanding video on a friend's FB profile...so I'm going to be lazy.

Information, knowledge about HOW we learn, cultural assumptions about who can be educated and standardization / anaesthetization in an industrial-era education system are bad news for our kids.

Write something. Just...write something!

2010-10-11T23:31:00.005-04:00

Life pretty much revolves around commuting right now. Since graduating, I've been moved to a job in DC R'lyeh. Instead of ripping my family out of a house, community and school system (this time one we actually LIKE) yet again, we made the decision that I would be the one to go and I would visit the family as much as possible.

Driving to or from work in DC R'lyeh is a laughable proposition, so I take the train. For those who have never taken the Metro, please share in the experience:

The 6 am trains aren't that bad. Not very crowded, and it's easy to tune everyone out with headphones, put on some classical, and read a good book.

Weekends are a different story. For all but two since I've been here (the end of July) I've headed back north to RI. This is where you find out how much the I-95 Corridor FUCKING BLOWS. (Flights are fairly inexpensive; would that I had the $800+ per month to fly back every weekend.) So I've spent much of my time thinking about how to get from the Beltway to RI as quickly as possible by car. The best way I've found (north to Scranton, PA then east on I-84 to RI) still takes 8-9 hours depending on traffic. Until this past Friday.

The view from my weekend...

Average speed was about 1.5 mph for about two hours. When in the middle of a traffic jam I often find myself wondering if it was caused by someone being an idiot and, if it was, if the bastard who caused it "paid" enough. I guess this poor, dumb bastard did. Interestingly, knowing what had caused it made the situation easier to bear. No, not because I was glad the dude got shot and killed. (But, dumbfuck, don't pull a gun on a state cop unless you really, really mean it. And if you have a firearm, it helps not to draw attention to yourself by stealing vehicles.)

Coming back today was similar, but different. I need to take some rural side roads, and passing through a local Fall Arts Festival delayed me for an hour. Hmmmm...Fall Arts Festival. On Columbus Day. I wonder if it used to be a Columbus Day Festival. But not anymore. Now we all have to feel guilty about the course of history. I find recent bitching about holidays to be annoying. All the wingnuts want you to be suitably penitent and somber on any holiday dealing with the military, and want you to thank a vet for every single holiday. And if you're not a Christian you should remain in bed and only breathe just enough of their air so you don't die on December 25th. And if you're a moonbat then any holiday - period - is at its very root a celebration of genocide.

So I had contemplated making a handy-dandy do-it-yourself holiday admonishment mad-lib-like thingy where you could choose from three columns and mix and match to make a silly sentence like

"Don't wash your car on Labor Day because you're just celebrating genocide by giving money to the evil car wash", or

"Don't fart on Thanksgiving because this is a Christian country and Jesus will sic the veterans on your ungrateful ass."

Instead, I'd invite you to make up your own.

But where was I? Oh, back to the driving. I don't always mind the long delays or the long drive. It gives me time to listen to the classic hard rock / metal station on Sirius and remember my misspent youth. Lots of repetition, but lots of good driving songs. Like this old favorite of mine. For some reason, the pedal always hits the floor.

"Don't floor the accelerator when you hear Billy Squier. You're just memorializing Hitler when you do!"

So what the Hell do you write...

2010-10-07T22:45:00.009-04:00

...when you haven't written in forever?

An update? Naaaaaaaah...suffice to say I'm fine and nothing cataclysmic happened.

Hell I have no idea what prompted me to even look at this site again. I wasn't sure where to look for it but then again, you don't find R'lyeh on maps any more these days.

I did find I had received some recent hate mail dealing with Allah panties. Apparently I'm going to get VD from isrelain areal sharen in bed. I hope she's smokin' hot.

Wow. Maybe I'll change my mind and side with the Teabaggers on the whole Ground Zero Gay Wedding Mosque thingy.

Shit...that was an update. Oh well, I guess I'll start writing shit again. Or at least trying. Beats deleting this thing. Well, maybe not. It'd be easier if I hired a typist to take ~~dick-tation~~ - errr, the words I say and type them out.

I think her name's Isrelain.

Yes, I'm Still Alive

2009-11-14T23:29:00.003-05:00

Yeah, okay, I think I'm back. Took way longer than I thought it would be - I actually thought about coming back on November 1st, but then I'd have felt obliged to try for NaBloPoMo and I'm not sure I have 30 posts in a row in me.

Anyway...

Everything is cool. Finishing up in Boston was faster-paced and busier than I thought it would be, and immediately after I checked out of the net and went on vacation for a week at the beach in southeastern Mass.

Then between settling in to the new residence in Rhode Island (the master bedroom is finally 100% unpacked!), getting the kids into school and getting me into school, and returning to an academic environment myself, three months pretty much disappeared. I went "full bore" for the first trimester and I'm glad I did; I needed every minute I put into it, just to get into the habit of researching and writing again.

So, 3 months, thousands of pages of reading and 53 pages of writing later, I'm 1/3 of the way to another master's degree and I think I can finally start posting here again. This trimester is supposed to be much easier, so I plan on having more time in the evenings. That and I'm already half a week ahead on reading before the trimester even starts.

Yawn. Okay, enough boring bullshit. Reading nothing was probably more interesting. So I promise I'll be more interesting in the posts that follow.

Splotchy's Story Virus Is Back...

2009-06-20T00:01:00.001-04:00

It took me a few days to get over the virus the last time it got me. I was infected with this one about a month ago, decided to do it and promptly went on bloggy burnout. But as I said before, I would complete it. Think of it like H1N1. It showed up, it may go away, but there's a good chance it will flare up later.

Da' rules: Splotchy is patient zero. In his own words...

Here's what I would like to do. I want to create a story that branches out in a variety of different, unexpected ways. I don't know how realistic it is, but that's what I'm aiming for. Hopefully, at least one thread of the story can make a decent number of hops before it dies out.

If you are one of the carriers of this story virus (i.e. you have been tagged and choose to contribute to it), you will have one responsibility, in addition to contributing your own piece of the story: you will have to tag at least one person that continues your story thread. So, say you tag five people. If four people decide to not participate, it's okay, as long as the fifth one does. And if all five participate, well that's five interesting threads the story spins off into.

Not a requirement, but something your readers would appreciate: to help people trace your own particular thread of the narrative, it will be helpful if you include links to the chapters preceding yours.

Here is the first chapter:

The ground crunched beneath my feet. Besides my noisy footsteps, I heard only the sound of the gentle crackling fire behind me. Its faint orange light lazily revealed my immediate surroundings. Beyond the glow, there was total blackness. I whistled. I took the small rock I had been carrying and whipped it away from me, expecting a thud, crack or plop -- but a soft yelp of a cry answered. (by Splotchy)

Ice shot straight up my spine as my gut contracted in a terrified knot...he'd followed me. He always knew where to find his master. I heard him shuffling closer and knew what I had to do. Tears welled up in my eyes and my throat tightened as I remembered all the nights camping at this very spot, the hundreds of slobbery tennis balls and bags of Kibbles 'n Bits that had defined our lives together. I braced the butt of my M4 assault rifle into my shoulder and whispered, "Goodbye, old boy."

The stiffly-shambling form materializing at the edge of the darkness around the fire pit immediately drew my aim up, my finger squeezing as the sight swung to its cranium. A banana-clip-worth of brass arced its way to the base of the fire as a foot-long muzzle flash and the ripping sound of automatic fire broke the artificial silence of the night.

Making a sound like a baseball bat clobbering a rotten cantaloupe, the shadowy head disintegrated as the once walking corpse fell to its knees and slumped down into the light. Pongo - or, rather, Pongo's corpse - crawled into the light, his rotting innards exposed behind a the exposed right half of his ribcage. Half the flesh had been avulsed from his face, giving him a gruesome visage as his tongue hung over his mandible. He sniffed the stump of the rotting, headless thing before he dragged his broken, undead doggy body my way, his head lolling from side to side. Instinctively, I released the empty clip, shoved another one home and drew a bead. Pongo stopped and sat at my feet. Bowing his back and lifting his leg, and began licking a place I could never reach on my own body for about 5 seconds before the now cleaned organs fell off and settled a few inches from his hind leg.

Pongo looked up at me and I could read the eyes on his zombified face. They said, "My nuts! Can you believe this shit?" I lowered the weapon. I'd forgotten to chamber a round anyway. I knelt down and hesitatingly reached out to pet what had been Pongo. He offered no resistance. Of all the zombie apocalypses I'd been through since moving here, this one was by far the weirdest.

Something on the creature I'd just shot caught my eye. It had something odd-looking tucked underneath its arm. I looked from the shadowy object over to my truck and slowly back down to Pongo as he dejectedly contemplated his former genitals. I heard the dragging feet of several undead, man-eating motherfuckers approaching the fire...

Now, should I tag someone? Who the fuck knows if anyone's even reading this thing anymore...but I'm feeling all "follow the rules"-y tonight, so here goes:

Randal, because in the month since I first contracted it, it mutated enough that you are no longer immune.

Beach Bum, because you write well.

Briwei, because if you ever start reading your friends' blogs again you might see this. And I know you like to write.

Nunly, because you tagged me with a meme that I'll get to soon, and I don't want you to feel left out.

Anyone else who sees this and wants to give it a shot, leave a comment and consider yourself tagged.

Eating My Wife's Sweet Warm Pie

2009-06-19T22:39:00.004-04:00

...with ice cream. It's one of my favorite things to do...

The Stars Are Almost Right...

2009-06-09T21:42:00.006-04:00

Image found at LOLTHULHU.com

...for me to start posting again regularly. What have I been doing? Oh, nothing much...hanging out, laying back, drinking rum, and watching the economy and auto companies spasm under the weight of money that has appeared miraculously from thin air that will never get paid back while pundits debate the merits of Latina judges and some crazy guy figures God will be cool with him shooting someone in church as long as that someone is a sinner. It's been entertaining.

In reality work/life has been coming at me quite hard and fast these last several weeks - I've barely had time to notice the above - and I still have seven more very fast-paced weeks ahead before I roll out of here. And THEN I will be laying back for a week on da' beach before reporting to my next duty. It turns out my previous prediction was incorrect - I won't be heading on my Rudyard Kipling adventure straight away but instead will be going back into an academic environment for ten months. THEN I will most likely head to "The Sandbox".

Oh...and I just got burnt out. When it stops being fun, you just need to stop doing it for a bit.

I should be able to start posting here and there in the coming weeks, and once I'm a stoo-dent again in August I should be able to pick things up some more. Which is good because I have some catching up to do - Splotchy has a new story virus that is incubating in my list of draft posts, and nunly has tagged me to post some of my favorite things. Plus, I've lined up a whole bunch of shit I have yet to conceive.

Should be fun. Stay tuned.

Another Movie I Need to Review...

2009-05-19T21:15:00.005-04:00

Oh...

OOOOOOooooohhhhhh...

OOOOOOOooooohohohohohhooooOOOOOoooooohhhh...

BEHOLD!!!!

Behold that which is too good for theaters and was released into DVD just today!

And who might that big-nosed beauty starring alongside Lorenzo Lamas be? None other than...

Debbie Gibson - Only In My Dreams
Uploaded by jpdc11 - Explore more music videos.

Anyone guess what she has to do with these guys?

Click here to find out. (Oh...and FUCK YOU to MTV who won't let you embed the video. 15 years ago you didn't suck but about 12 years ago you turned into a piece of broadcasting shit.)

Uh...where was I? Oh yeah!!! Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus!!!

I've already reserved my copy...stay tuned for the review.

Mythos Monday - Cthulhu the Movie (2007) Review

2009-05-11T21:38:00.002-04:00

Here is the plot summary. It's pretty basic. After the final sentence you can add "shit goes steadily downhill for Russ from there".

1. Based upon the above, would you say that Cthulhu - Welcome Home to the End of the World is a ____________ movie.

A. Lovecraftian
B. Scary
C. Gay
D. Worthwhile

The answer is actually E. All of the above, as you probably guessed I would write. I will caveat that "All of the above" with "to varying degrees"...

How Lovecraftian? On a scale of 1 to 10, I give it the letter "Q". Because to me it really makes no sense to try and quantify just how much it is, because it is and is not at the same time. The trailer states that it is based upon the "Classic Tale" by H. P. Lovecraft although it really draws on two. The first and most obvious is The Shadow Over Innsmouth - from which the Marsh name, Esoteric Order of Dagon, some characters and the concept of going to "live in the sea" as servants of Cthulhu are drawn/adapted. The second is The Festival - from which the seasonal festival (Yuletide in the original story, "The May Festival" in the movie) and the main character's resistance to having a family legacy forced upon him as he uncovers its horrors. While things aren't revealed to the protagonist exactly the same way as in TSOI, it works in the context of the movie. The film takes many of the issues society deals with today - environment, climate change, resource overuse and infrastructure decay - and uses them as a backdrop of activity that alludes to the coming the Great Old Ones. While the film does not go deep into it or smoothly integrate it into the plot, it's not altogether a failure. I will say that you don't go through the whole movie feeling like your watching an H. P. Lovecraft story brought to life, it does have its moments.

How scary? A little. Not hugely. The movie does a decent job of moving the mystery along and revealing parts as Russ discovers them, but doesn't really reach any crescendo of horror that makes you jump out of your seat or anything. The ending is somewhere between okay and pretty good.

How Gay? There is a strong gay agenda viewed through an H. P. Lovecraft-inspired lens. How religions alternate between ostracizing and trying to "cure" homosexuals, homosexuality as not being in line with patriotism or community/family values, and outright homophobia. There are plenty more. Face it. Innsmouth, being isolated, under the thumb of a cult (religion), with a small homogeneous population that is wary of strangers or anything "different" is a fertile backdrop against which to express these issues. This should not be a surprise as the movie is a here! TV production. (It DID surprise me a little bit - simply because my brain didn't make the connection between the logo on the DVD case and the channel.)

How Worthwhile? It's worth watching. There are some parts that didn't work well for me - in particular Tori Spelling's part; I think the movie could have been just as good without her or her part in it. But then again I'll say that for most movie or TV productions that include her. It doesn't always flow smoothly, horror isn't really at the forefront, but...it works. While it's not even close to "in step" with the original stories, I think the attempt to draw on these stories written three quarters of a century ago to frame a social issue of today is admirable. The movie is definitely worth seeing.

A Chip Off the Old Crawling Chaos

2009-05-10T22:14:00.003-04:00

I got nuthin'...I mean I got more nuthin' than mortgage-backed securities. But still, press ahead I must. Think, write, try to put something down, even though I don't have to, to keep the blog-fires burning.

So when all else fails, tell a story about your kids that only you would be interested in. Yeah! That's it! Tell some mundane story about something cute or cool or silly...

...or insidious...or evil...or chaotic...

So while frantically running through the house this morning trying to transition from the Mother's Day breakfast and presents in bed for the wife to getting ready to jump in the car and head south for an hour to meet everyone for brunch and talk about the same old shit I notice something is different. I can't say wrong, but different. It's coming from downstairs where we have our kids corralled by plastic gates and waiting for the inevitable departure among their toys and a Comcast channel blaring kids music.

It's a weird noise. Muffled, crunching, pounding...strangely musical. The running around, jumping and general destruction of the living room has stopped. Wondering what is going on, I cautiously approach the stairs. A voice...strangely monotone, as though reading from some ancient tome, comes drifting up the stairs in snippets. I grow afraid, wondering what sinister fate has befallen my spawn, or - worse yet - what sinister deeds they may be performing on some poor passer-by, who was just coming through this historic landmark for a Sunday morning walk. The swift, grinding, screaming sounds swell and invade my brain, almost inducing panic as I reach the bottom of the stairs, turn around, and behold the genesis of what I was certain was fueling a ritual I did not want to witness...

The oldest...who answers to a range of nicknames, is sitting between his sisters, The Songbird and Rocker-Girl, reading to them the sacred text of Archie and Jughead while the youngest, whom I have previously referred to as Chub-Niggurath, bounces and practices his newly-found jumping skills to the newly-found metal.

My firstborn looks up at my puzzled face, "What? It's metal. You know."

I smile. He has come a long way...his education is almost complete, and he has earned himself a new name, one that commands fear and respect for the path of insanity that he is ushering his younger siblings down. I will now call him Nyarlathotep.

Free Comic Book Day Report

2009-05-06T22:38:00.002-04:00

No, no, no, no, no....this report isn't what's free, even though it is...just like everything else on this blog because if even if I charged half a dingleberry for this information I'd be ripping you off bigger than Bernie Madoff. It's the COMIC BOOKS that were free!

Between Little League for the boy, swimming for the girls, housework, taking the kids to dinner cuz we were too lazy to cook and purchasing tickets for last Sunday's NHL East Semi-Finals game (fucking Bruins...the ONE game I go to in years and they lose!) I didn't think I'd be able to get my son and me to the comic store to take advantage. But I did...and we walked away with some cool stuff...

The comics across the top are the free ones, chosen by my son. The ones across the bottom (and the Munchkin Cthulhu expansion pack) were most decidedly not free.

They were not all, in my opinion, good buys. I do not care for the Lenore comic; I read the back cover, flipped through a few pages to check out the art work, and it looked "cute" and novel enough, so I got it - actually for my wife of all people who said to get her something if the mood so struck me (The Tank Girl comic was also purchased with that in mind...her being the tough, independent Aussie Sheila and all).

The primary focus of the graphic novel is dark humor, with many of the stories having amusing twist endings.

Errrr...amusing is not what came to mind when we read the first episode. In it she babysits and takes the baby out to feed the birds. After she unwittingly leaves the seeds in the baby carriage, birds descend upon the baby and peck it to death. I haven't read anymore. I plan on seeing if they'll take it as a return (a gift for someone who didn't like it) and trade in.

The high point is definitely the Spider Man book the store manager gave my son. He'd got a stack of them to give away as promotions and had been "consistently forgetting to do so" as he said. So now my son has the "Ten Greatest Spider Man Stories Ever, Vol. 1". As I have mentioned before I was not a big follower of the Marvel Universe so I couldn't tell you if they are, but my son is happy, and loves reading the villain stats.

The Fall of Cthulhu and Cthulhu Tales graphic novels will probably wait longer than I want them to before I read them. But hey, I'm a busy guy for the next few months...

This Swine Flew ... Into My Mouth and Down to My Belly!

2009-05-03T13:26:00.008-04:00

Finally, we had the year's first grilling of an object larger than a London Broil. We've had a nice looking pork loin in the freezer for some time, and it just felt like the time to cook some pork again. The last time I blogged about pork loin I smoked it and attempted to shred it only to give up after maybe doing half of it...I was working too hard for my vittles. I decided to roast it instead, but on the grill.

I searched until I found a recipe that looked good (and was reviewed as such) and settled on it. I made some adjustments for preference and ingredient availability, so here is the complete ingredient list:

1 (4 pound) boneless pork top loin roast (single loin)
1 teaspoon olive oil

2 teaspoons brown sugar
2 teaspoons paprika
1 1/2 teaspoons garlic salt
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon seasoned salt
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon ground coriander

I did not have any onion salt, so I substituted onion powder and seasoned salt. I also prefer brown sugar to regular sugar, for a more caramel-like, barbecued flavor. After brushing the loin with olive oil and applying the rub I wrapped it and let it marinate in the fridge for about 90 minutes before grilling.

Instructions seemed simple enough. The grill is simple enough. Count on me to complicate shit. Temp was around 400°F when I put the loin on, with the fattier of the two sides on the grill itself. I resolved to check it every couple of minutes and at the first check I noticed the temp had gone up so I adjusted the flame ~~down~~ up because I wasn't freaking paying attention. A minute later the temp is still rising, so I turn it ~~down~~ up again, but realize I'm doing it this time and correct way down. I check again two minutes later and the temp is runaway, above 500°F but all I needed to see was the smoke pouring out of the grill to know there was a fire inside. After pulling it off the grill, knocking the charred bits off and flipping it (I figured that side had had enough!) the rest of the grilling went smoothly, as did the follow-on roasting. The only minor issue was that my grill wasn't able to hold 400°F (only about 380) with only two burners running.

We roasted up some peppers and onions to enjoy with it, and cooked some corn on the cob.

The meat was excellent! No sauce needed; marinating with the rub provided all the flavor it needed, just enough balance of sweet and spicy.

...and plenty left over for sam'iches!

Obligatory Swine Flu Post

2009-04-29T22:43:00.009-04:00

Groan...I almost can't stand doing this, but it's low hanging fruit and I'm out of ideas...and I feel obliged to somehow contribute to the struggle to save humanity from just another strain of the flu before we are all turned into mutants for Will Smith to kill.

I could just offer my economic advice...

or are people trying to kill us?

or am I being too glib?

Hmmmm...probably. I tend to scoff at the masses when they lose perspective...or when they appear to lose perspective...or when the media tries to push a loss of perspective. I wonder if that last bit isn't the most true. Haven't seen a lot of panic around here.

So...YOU ARE HERE:

What this means is we have

human-to-human spread of the virus into at least two countries in one WHO region. While most countries will not be affected at this stage, the declaration of Phase 5 is a strong signal that a pandemic is imminent and that the time to finalize the organization, communication, and implementation of the planned mitigation measures is short.

If you read the page you see that it doesn't matter if we go pandemic or not from here. We've already got community infections in the U.S. and Mexico - it doesn't matter where else it goes within or outside our WHO region.

So I officially don't care if we have a pandemic or not. I want to not hear people say the word "pandemic" like they have one in their neighborhood. Because what they really have is a virus.

I guess we'll see some widespread infections...infections with what?

Streiffer said it's important to keep the threat of swine flu in perspective. It's a new strain of influenza, so people haven't built up immunity and vaccines won't block it, but there is no indication that it is any more virulent or dangerous for normally healthy people than the more typcial strains of flu.

"What people don't seem to understand is it's not worse than the average flu, except there's no herd immunity -- which means there's no immunity in the general population -- therefore, everyone's at risk, but not necesarily for anything more virulent or dangerous than average influenza."

Oh...so, we could be seeing lots and lots more of what looks and acts like the flu, a virus that killed slightly fewer people last year than automobile accidents. (h/t DrMomentum for the link!) Crap. I was hoping I'd get night after night of feverish dreams of Cyclopean cities of Titan blocks and sky-flung monoliths, all dripping with green ooze and sinister with latent horror.

So maybe the H1N1 virus is just the slugger the influenza team needs to get out of the basement and into a distant third behind heart disease. Then again, maybe not...we may just see a bunch of people on Nyquil and anti-virals (buy stock NOW!!). We have a pretty damned good track record against the flu here in America.

Would it suck to see a widespread outbreak of a flu few could avoid? Absolutely. By all means, I'm taking precautions for an extended flu season, especially with my younger children, and keeping myself informed. But beyond that it's biz as usual.

Oh wait, this just in...it's not a government plot! They've found patient zero!

h/t @billmarrs

I've Tweeted My Meat...

2009-04-28T22:54:00.006-04:00

I've seen (that is, been followed by) people who are tweeting serial stories...I usually block them as soon as I read their twitter homepages because the stories are boring as shit and they seem to picture themselves as far more artistic than they actually are.

This one, however is a bit different:

“Where is it?” She grasps, fingers scraping. She yanks. It peels. A gallbladder. “Damn.” She reaches back in. _"Will you quit wiggling?"_

It's a sample tweet from one of the editors at Tweet the Meat, a Twitter-based horror e-zine that seeks to publish complete, 140-character-or-fewer horror snippets from its readers. And they even pay a buck per submission via PayPal.

Anyway, the concept sounded interesting enough so I submitted a tweet on Sunday, and it got accepted. As they have first digital rights to it, I can't reproduce it here for you, but I'll let you know when it's up. I don't want to sound like it was a monumentally difficult thing, but I did think about it for at least a couple of days. Trying to complete an action and create enough of an atmosphere to capture the imagination of a reader in 140 characters, while being grammatically correct, was an interesting task. Definitely fun.

I have a PayPal account, but I don't need the dollar. In this case, they will make a donation via PayPal to the charity of your choice in your name. I think that is an excellent idea. I believe I will choose Project Valour-IT, who help "provide voice-controlled/adaptive laptop computers and other technology to support Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines recovering from hand wounds and other severe injuries." They can use the dollar way more than I can, and maybe I'll try and do a submission a week to get them more money...

It'll be interesting when they start posting reader-submitted stuff, to see the quality that made the cut. It's definitely more interesting than some wannabe wovelist trying to feed you mediocrity 140 characters at a time.

On other publishing news, my "Monster Byte" was accepted by the Innsmouth Free Press, though it has not been published yet. I hope to see it soon, but I also had planned to make a couple more related ones to round the story out...I should get cracking. I had also wanted to write a piece of short fiction for them; something of a Cthulhu meets Patrick O'Brian in the Oregon territory circa 1820. I should get cracking on that, too. I was also going to set up an invitation only blog to display works in progress for comment. I should get cracking on that, too.

Mythos Monday - The Call of Cthulhu (2005) Movie Review

2009-04-27T21:39:00.005-04:00

Before I start, I'm going to say that I'm not much of a movie reviewer...at all. But since I say "Yeah, sure!" last week, I might as well keep my word. I'll also say you can find the IMDB page here, and some cool stills from the movie here.

The film itself is a black and white, silent film production of H.P. Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulhu. It's around 47 minutes long and goes to great lengths to faithfully re-create the story on screen. They succeeded amazingly.

I won't bother with a plot synopsis - read the Wikipedia link above if you want one. What I will do is point out that the story itself as written does not lend itself well to modern film. Since the story is a narration based upon the notes and experiences of people other than the narrator and contains little dialogue, addressing the story with a movie full of dialogue would (I believe) unnecessarily complicate the movie. The silent format was excellent for visualizing the three separate stories that make up The Call of Cthulhu, allowing just enough "dialogue" to be put in to fill in gaps and keep the story rolling. Taking only a small amount of license with events and people, the plot is adhered to almost exactly.

Highlights: I liked that the producers took the time to vary the images of Cthulhu used in the film - particularly the idols. The ones from the Louisiana Bayou, the Esquimax tribe in Greenland, and found aboard the freighter in the South Pacific are all distinctly different and horrid in their own ways. The cult scene was great - the battle between police and the cultists was carried out in true silent movie style. The Cthulhu stop animation reminds me of "The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms" with the exception that the detail put into Cthulhu itself is phenomenal. The DVD carries several minutes of bonus footage, much of which is stop animation creation and outtakes.

The DVD also has a behind the scenes feature, about 25 minutes with the producers, cast, crew, set designers, etc. Quite impressive. Being an independent film with a low budget (not to mention forcing themselves into a specific "era" of film making) they went about it "the old fashioned way" - though with modern equipment - and it was great to see how they put things together, created perspective with small sets, and built a two-story R'lyeh in the narrator's back yard and figured out how to make a sailor get "swallowed up" by the city's bizzare geometry. Watching it was just as worthwhile as watching the movie.

Quibbles are so minor, they bear no mention...really.

In short - this is DVD not simply worth seeing, but buying and enjoying again and again.

As a bonus, it was also an excellent way to introduce my 9 year old to the story (and the basis of the mythos) a few years before he can read at the level Lovecraft wrote.

Okay, I Admit ... I'm A Jumper!

2009-04-26T21:41:00.007-04:00

I'm mostly a baseball / football sort of guy; I admit I'll listen to the basketball talk on the local sports radio, and I almost never listen to the hockey news that's going around.

Not that I dislike hockey. I didn't watch a lot of it growing up here in Massachusetts, but in the early 90's when I lived in Long Beach and then in Monterey California, hockey was just starting to catch on, tickets were relatively inexpensive, and I started to take a liking to the game. I became a San Jose Sharks fan in 1993, and a die-hard fan after their against all odds playoff run of 1994 (even though they only made the second round). Even though I was from here, it just didn't cross my mind to become a Bruins fan. It would have seemed somewhat disingenuous of me. So I watched former Soviet Army players Makarov, Larionov and Garpenlov tear up the ice while Irbe overachieved in goal and had a great time going to the Shark Tank for games.

Getting married, moving around a lot more and going back on sea duty did a lot to cool my hockey fandom, and in reality I haven't paid attention to the game since about 1997.

But this year both my original "hockey love", and my local team the Boston Bruins are in the playoffs and, of course, it's hard not to get a face full of the local hysteria over hockey. So my curiosity has sparked again. And yes, I'll admit, I was stoked at the Bruins' sweeping of The Habs. I watched two of the games. And last night on "Versus" I watched Game 5 of the Sharks / Mighty Ducks of Anaheim (I'm sorry - FUCKING STUPID NAME, anyone? Never mind that the team was bought by Disney to milk the popularity of their stupid fucking movie. But it seams ANY team from Anaheim just has a shitty name...as proof, I also give you the "Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim". Cuz Anaheim is close enough to LA to be part of LA, even though it takes more than an hour to get from one shit hole to the other on the freaking freeway and nobody in shitty old Anaheim wants to be part of shitty old LA. Can we just nuke both cities and be done with it?) It was great watching the Sharks pull it off in OT, but to tell the truth, I think the Duckies will end up taking the series. Hope I'm wrong.

I guess hockey may be the only sport where I pull this crap. Football? Nope. If my Patriots aren't there, I don't give a shit. I don't "have" and NFC team. Baseball? Hah...don't even consider. There is but one team; all the others are trying hard. I had a guy who worked for me tell me, "If a team beats my team in the playoffs, I root for that team to go all the way." Aaaaaw, what a nice guy. If a team beats my team even in the regular season, I ask Cthulhu to fly their plane into a mountain on the way home. Preferably a mountain in Antarctica.

Now according to ESPN's Bill Simmons' 2002 Rules for Sports Fans, I am all kinds of wrong here and am going to Hell. Now he's from Boston, and his book Now I Can Die in Peace is a good read (he articulates his rules early on in the book as well), but fuck him on this one.

Besides...Jeremy Roenick was born in Boston.

And if they face each other in the finals well...I'll be happy with whoev-... no, that's just as fucked up as allowing Anaheim to have sports teams. Suppose I need go with Rule 19.

Maybe I'm just some English pig with no brain, you know...maybe I go to box for two minutes, all by myself and, you know...I feel shame.

THoroughly Useless (THU) Thursday - Really? Is Walking That Hard?

2009-04-23T22:20:00.003-04:00

We have evolved to do certain things well, and for long, sustained periods of time with little to no degradation to our capabilities.

The thing that comes most quickly to mind is walking. It's easy, it can wake you up, and while regular walking alone won't get you into shape, it does maintain a nominal measure of cardiac health. Okay, it's not a great way to get from Philly to Tampa, but it is a good way to enjoy a city for a day.

But not now, and not in Boston. Now you can pay $105 NOT to have to walk around Boston and see sights, many of which are free, for what used to cost you maybe at $10 fare card for the "T".

This shouldn't bug me so much...really. I saw one of these "tours" come cruising by me last week as I crossed the road in Charlestown. They looked like they were having fun. And all I could think of was "I guess walking is just too fucking hard."

And then there is what I saw today driving home from the market. A bumper-mounted towing platform for the Segway on a car. So now you can not only drive to a curb, you can now step off onto the sidewalk and not have to move any major muscles to go the rest of the way!

Now maybe there are some people who need access to technology like the Segway to overcome physical limitations. Maybe the guy with the Segway on his car bumper was one of them. However, whenever I pull up images of the damned things, it seems they are simply expensive toys.

Now I'll admit that they do not generate any CO2 like internal combustion engines, and as such can be useful for day to day business travel over long distances through city streets instead of taking cabs.

But...but...

I just can't.

Maybe they're just not badass enough...

There!!! Now go around and wipe out the rest of the Segway geeks...

Sci-Fi Movie Hangover

2009-04-21T22:13:00.006-04:00

My son really loved watching Forbidden Planet, as I mentioned yesterday. One of his favorite parts of the DVD was the "bonus" track of old Sci-Fi trailers. He was watching them this morning with his younger sisters (5 and 3) as part of his school vacation TV when I came downstairs at 6:30 this morning. His favorite trailer?

...and for your viewing enjoyment:

I guess I gotta' get "Them" next...

Other trailers he liked...

...and just because I felt like it, if anyone remembers Channel 56 Boston (or Channel 48 in Philly) in the 1970's...

Mythos Monday - Taking the Easy Way Out

2009-04-20T22:12:00.003-04:00

With little in the way of creativity or insight to offer, I'm just gonna' highlight the fact that I am, at heart, a consumer. Particularly of the two following things:

I ordered them this evening, should have them bu Thursday...Cthulhu Mythos mini-film festival is in my future.

Both films are fairly recent. The Call of Cthulhu is a 47-minute silent-film adaptation, that is by many accounts very faithful to the story. It was filmed by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society and released in 2005. Cthulhu: Welcome Home to the End of the World was released in 2007. It's unique among Cthulhu-inspired horror films in two ways. First, the protagonist is gay and second, it is the only film I've ever bought that features Tori Spelling. I wonder if Cthulhu's tentacles come out of that honkin' schnozz of hers? I mentioned this movie a few months ago, and even linked a trailer.

This was born out of a non-mythos-based endeavor; I decided to start watching some good sci-fi films with my oldest son, as a sort of weekly father-son movie night. We started tonight with Forbidden Planet. Hadn't seen it in years, and it's interesting to see a young...I mean YOUNG...Leslie Nielsen. But you hear old Detective Frank Drebin come out when CDR J. J. Adams raises his voice emphatically. Anne Francis wasn't bad, either.

Hubba, hubba!

Oh yeah...son loved it, too.

Meat Plans

2009-04-19T22:40:00.005-04:00

Last August I wanted to try smoking some meat, so over the course of a couple of weeks I made some kick-ass homemade barbecued pork and beef. I finished the summer vowing to get a smoker.

Here it is, April, and I still haven't got one. But I'm going to get one, and am trying to plan a few opportunities to put it to the test. I'll definitely re-do the recipes I did last year, but like I mentioned I'm going to use a cut of meat with more connective tissue - shoulder or butt. I'm salivating just thinking about it. This summer, this place will change from Cthulhu's Family Restaurant to Cthulhu's Smokehouse.

Oh...and there's no sense in doing it again if you don't intend to improve things or explore new things. So this year, I'm going to add homemade bacon to my list of smoking feats. I found that post when I was looking for a pulled pork recipe. Over the winter I found a local meat store that sells good-sized, good quality (non-industrial/corn/petrol-based) pork bellies. They cost a bit, but they look like they'll make great bacon.

I just need to figure out when...I'll probably need to throw a good-sized cookout at least once this summer. This will also be the second year we spend a week on the South Coast (Westport MA) at the beach, and I think smoking up the bacon for that trip (breakfast and BLT's) will be the thing to do.

Shit...it's 11pm and I need barbecue.

THoroughly Useless (THU) Thursday - Two Things

2009-04-16T22:28:00.003-04:00

First THoroughly Useless thing:

These two people.

Ugh. I understand they are facing charges. If you ask me, it's the wrong way to go. I think Domino's should estimate the business lost and litigate to get their wages - if they ever work again - garnished at 25% until the money is made up...which will pretty much be the rest of their lives. Apologies for the sound. It was the only one I could find that wasn't from a newscast, but apparently the poster thought it would be artsy to add the reverb.

Second THoroughly Useless thing:

My brain right now. My clunky, cement-filled, dry brain filled with painfully linear thought processes. Absolutely 0.0 on the creativity scale, so I have to resort to low hanging fruit like this shit.

Man, when you hit a dry spell, you hit a dry spell.

Tea-tards

2009-04-11T21:53:00.001-04:00

What do you do when your party's "raise spending and reduce taxes" plan is replaced by your rival party's "raise spending and reduce taxes" plan?

First, you act shocked...shocked, I tell you, that this horrendous unchecked spending is going on. Then, you grab on to as many general and hollow slogans as you can. Finally, you misinterpret an important American historic event by throwng a crybaby tantrum like my kids do and claim it to be a similar historic act of defiance and liberty.

When I first heard of the idea of a Tax Day Tea Party I was excited. I love a cup of fragrant Earl Grey and a fresh baked scone with clotted cream and jam. But the more I read, the more I realized it really had nothing to do with a tea party - either the nice kind I refer to, or the one in December 1773.

Andrew Sullivan had an interesting take on the whole thing, but instead of taking his word for it, I also spent a while going through their page and came to the same conclusion.

As a fiscal conservative who actually believed in those principles when the Republicans were in power, I guess I should be happy at this phenomenon. And I would be if it had any intellectual honesty, any positive proposals, and any recognizable point. What it looks like to me is some kind of amorphous, generalized rage on the part of those who were used to running the country and now don't feel part of the culture at all. But the only word for that is: tantrum.

And it's not a very focused one at that. But since when is a tantrum focused? I mean really. Look at the site. Try to find a coherent mission statement that explains EXACTLY what they are trying to accomplish...they've gone all "Mad Dr. Bernardo" on us.

They've gone all "Tea-tarded" if you will. Some gems...

(Rick Santelli) called for a “Chicago tea Party” where advocates of the free-market system could join in a protest against out of control government spending.

People speak as if Republicans are all free market advocates and Republican administrations are the free market administrations. This is absolutely laughable. We have not had free markets here since forever...

On February 27th, an estimated 30,000 Americans took to the street in 40+ cities accross the country in the first nationwide “Tea Party” protest.

That's about 750 people per city. Sounds a lot bigger than it is. Though I understand the group tantrums are getting much bigger.

And some of the various comments...

The Boston Tea Party was a protest, but it was more than that. It was a refusal to pay unjust taxes. ... I say, if everyone of you truly believes in this cause, then don’t pay your taxes.

Except the Boston Tea Party really wasn't about not wanting to pay taxes...it was about wanting the representation that came with taxation. These people want the opposite...representation without taxation.

If you love your country, and you want your tax dollars to be spent not only wisely, but ethically, then refuse to contribute tax dollars to this administration. Don’t participate in the system. Make a REAL statement, just like Samuel Adams and the rest of the men who met and did the right thing at the Old South Meeting House.

How can you ensure your tax dollars are being spent wisely if you don't participate? This is the exact opposite of what the namesake of my favorite commercial beer wanted. He WANTED to participate. He WAS participating, as much as he could, up until and after the Boston Tea Party. Oh, and the administration doesn't spend your money. Congress spends the vast majority of it.

Dear Patriots of this great country— Rise up to be heard not to be taxed. This is the way to be heard. We need to be united and show our flustration (sic) before it is too late.

Read that again...giggling yet?

I believe that we pay too many taxes but not that it is because people voted in Democrats and not Republicans. ... The Tax Day should be a way to do some action that will work to reduce taxes.

Funny...our taxes are the lowest they've been in a long, long time...

I think that we should do exactly this….don’t pay taxes on April 15th. If enough people actually did this, say 30,000+, they would have to change. ... I think that would send a greater message to our government that we don’t want our money spent this way.

Ahem...when approximately 10,000,000 people fail to file their income taxes annually, I don't think an additional 0.3% increase will be noticed.

And lastly...

I love the idea of these Tea Parties, but I think we need to be careful and not sound like a bunch of cheap bastards that just don’t want to pay taxes.

Oooh, too late. They already do. (In deference to the author of that comment, he does go on to explain why taxes are necessary.)

I could go on, but you get the idea. There is room for reasoned debate about taxes, spending, the current tax system and reform. There just doesn't seem to be any discussion going on there.

THoroughly Useless (THU) Thursday - Stone Temple Pilots Lyrics

2009-04-09T21:24:00.003-04:00

They always seemed, to me, like they were trying to hard to be "deep" and ended up being lousy.

When the dogs do find her
Got time, time, to wait for tomorrow
To find it, to find it, to find it
When the dogs do find her
Got time, time, to wait for tomorrow
To find it, to find it, to find it

or...

Feelin' uninspired
Think I'll start a fire
Everybody run
Bobby's got a gun
Think you're kinda neat
Then she tells me I'm a creep
Friends don't mean a thing
Guess I'll leave it up to me

...and other meaningless (or seemingly so) drivel.

Whatever.

I'll let Mike Judge do the talking:

Beavis : Is this Pearl Jam?
Butt-head: This guy makes faces like Eddie Vedder.
Beavis: No, Eddie Vedder makes faces like this guy.
Butt-head: I heard these guys, like, came first and Pearl Jam ripped them off.
Beavis: No, Pearl Jam came first.
Butt-head: Well, they both suck.

Well, I'm not that down on Pearl Jam...

Eulogy

2009-04-07T22:06:00.005-04:00

I said goodbye to my maternal grandfather this past weekend. He would have been 92 years old this month. He went peacefully in his sleep, surrounded by his four daughters and one granddaughter, Friday morning last. I had some small pangs that I could not be there with him when he stopped breathing, but I made the 50 mile drive the night before and two other times that week, and the week before. It was good to be with him, even though the last time I saw him conscious was two weeks ago.

My mother and her sisters asked me to give his eulogy. I would like to be able to write it here, but I didn't really write it before hand. I just put some notes down on note cards and went from there. But I will jot (or type) a few of the most memorable things about him here...some of it wasn't said, some of it was, but it's all true.

- my mother's side of the family is Lebanese. The Lebanese call their grandfather "Giddo" (JID-doo). He was my Giddo Joe.

- Giddo Joe was born in 1917. Interesting things that happened that year: doctors first linked lead poisoning in children to eating lead paint chips. Also, J.R.R. Tolkien began writing his first "Lost Tales" that eventually became The Silmarillion.

- Giddo Joe played amateur football in 1935. The team was called "The Roughriders". I remember him telling me that for protective headgear he wore not one, but two stocking caps. Apparently, it was enough protection. He remained sharp as a tack until the very end. He loved football til the very end, too.

- Giddo Joe joined the Army in WWII and served as a combat engineer in the Pacific, and the occupation forces in Japan. He left the service a Staff Sergeant and became a civil engineer for the state of Massachusetts. After he retired he was a freelance surveyor. He must have surveyed about 5 million-billion miles of road and property boundaries. Seriously...if you've driven a Mass. freeway, he worked on it. I used to help him during the summer and when I was home from college. It paid well; you'd be surprised what someone will pay to find out the four corners of his lot so he can scream at his neighbor for having a shrub 2" over the boundary.

- We would go around on these jobs in a 1971 Dodge Dart. I can still smell the vinyl and the oil, hear the loud, mechanical sound of the directionals, and visualize the array of tools - mallets, plumb bobs, hundreds of feet of steel tape, wooden stakes, nails, ribbon, spray paint, you name it - in the trunk. I remember how meticulous he was. If we did a job and he found out a week later he was half a degree off on an angle, or a foot off on a measurement, he'd call me up and say we needed to get back out there asap and re-measure. Close enough was not good enough. He was doing something for someone, and he was damned well going to do it right.

- He had the most beautiful singing voice, and led the church choir for 50 years. Even though I'd quite lost my religion by adulthood, I could still go to mass when Giddo was singing. There was little that sounded better to me than him singing a hymn in Aramaic. It would make the hair stand up on the back of my neck and give me goose bumps. I don't think he missed a mass or holy day in 50 years. I figure at least 60 masses a year, his audience was in the hundreds of thousands.

- Giddo Joe was the most humble and kind person I'd ever known. He was always helping people, encouraging them and mentoring them. What stands out the most is that he treated children - everyone's children, it didn't matter - like they were his own. He'd joke with them, play with them, and talk to kids like they were the most important and special people in the world. Last night my wife and I agreed that if everyone treated children like Giddo Joe did, we would have far fewer problems.

I am absolutely not doing him justice here. It was an emotional weekend for me, but in all, it's really a "good" and natural thing. He had 92 great years (his decline was rapid and spanned only the final 5 or so months), he got to know his great grandchildren (I never got to have a strong relationship with my great grandparents) and was never not surrounded by his family. I can't think what could have been left for him to do. When my time has come, if I could be judged as half the man he was I will consider my life a success. I love him, I miss him, and I'll never, ever let my kids forget what a great person he was.

...and with that, I'm back.

THoroughly Useless (THU) Thursday - A Day Late and a Buck Short

2009-04-03T22:27:00.006-04:00

There's been a lot of thoroughly useless shit surrounding Madonna lately.

First, there is her thoroughly useless bid to adopt a Malawian child to be a sister to the one she has already adopted. Thoroughly useless not only because it failed, but because of the thoroughly useless American adoption system that drives frustrated people to adopt children from overseas.

Okay, I'm going to take a break here and clarify a little bit. First of all, while I do not care for Madonna anymore - she has completely jumped the shark in my book - I give her credit for her charity efforts in Malawi. I applaud any private charity effort overseas, especially in this economy when the government needs to focus its money and energy here at home. Also, I am not against overseas adoption per se - it saves a child from poverty and (assuming the parenting is good) gives them a very good chance at a good life. However, it does nothing to relieve the burden on our own system or provide relief to hundreds of thousands of kids equally deserving of a shot.

Which brings me back to the celebs. They piss me off. King Brad and Queen Angelina and Madonna, while benefitting individuals, are doing harm to masses of people. If adopting underprivileged children is truly important, are they actively using their celebrity to push for adoption reform RIGHT HERE? Now I've researched this...meaning I've Googled the question like, three times...and can find no evidence of our most glamorous pushing to help kids right here. So, unless I can find some other evidence, I can blame these particular celebrities for not recognizing a real domestic problem and taking action.

I can also blame them for making shitty movies. And proposing thoroughly useless remakes.

In the name of the Blind Idiot God Azathoth and all his pipers this is a bad idea. Maybe the worst idea ever. In fact, I'm downright angry about it. Hasn't she fucked enough movies up already? Is nothing sacred?

Lovecraft, Age 9

2009-04-01T15:47:00.006-04:00

Old, untitled books should not be casually opened, for you never know what horrors you will find inside. Especially if you're a parent stumbling upon your kids' writing journal.

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl ch'ken fhtagn...

It's true. Why else would the Great Old One open a restaurant? I'd be pretty fekhin' hungry sleeping all those aeons.

Junior fancies himself a Lovecraft...

Mythos Monday - At the Wuthering Heights of Madness

2009-03-30T20:58:00.007-04:00

Great, I'm in for it now...because of H.P. Lovecraft, I have to read Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. How in the name of Yog Sothoth did this happen?

I vaguely remember the circumstances. It was yesterday, but it seems like a strange aeon ago. We were driving back from Fall River to Boston after visiting my ailing grandfather, and NPR's story on Pride and Prejudice and Zombies came on. I think I snarkily remarked about that being the only way pieces like Pride and Prejudice and Wuthering Heights could possibly be made interesting to me, because it's just a bunch of ye olde British people saying (insert blustering, throaty British sounds here).

My better half was quick to defend both books, stating I would probably like them, and mentioning that we have a copy of Wuthering Heights at home that I should read. I snickered, and tried to make like I was only joking, but I had already mentioned that I hadn't been reading enough fiction lately, so I was running out of escape routes.

"I'll tell you what," she says as I claw for a way out of this. Shit. I'm cornered now. She's gonna' challenge my manhood or something, "if you read Wuthering Heights, I'll read Lovecraft."

I smiled, because I'd been trying to get her to read Lovecraft, and also because I knew I was locked in, "Just tell me what I should read." I couldn't resist. It's a deal.

So I decided she'll read the stories of the Cthulhu Mythos. Much, much much easier said than done. There's about 4,000,000,000,000 different ideas of what stories and what authors make it up, so I had to narrow it. I decided to make her reading syllabus approximately as many pages as the Penguin Classics' version of Wuthering Heights (story text only), about 330 pages give or take. I would also limit her reading to stories written by Lovecraft.

Here is what she is reading:

At the Mountains of Madness
The Call of Cthulhu
The Shadow Over Innsmouth
The Dunwich Horror
The Colour Out of Space
Dagon
The Dreams in the Witch House
The Shadow Out of Time
The Whisperer in the Darkness
The Unnamable

Not completely complete...there are quite a few more, depending on how you slice it. I could have added The Nameless City simply to show where ideas for later stories like At the Mountains of Madness came from and it is, I believe, the first of his stories to mention Abdul Alhazred and the "That is not dead which can eternal lie..." line, but it shows up elsewhere. I could have easily added The Case of Charles Dexter Ward and/or The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath but it would have been almost another 200 pages, and would have necessarily meant cutting out many of the stories listed above. So the best I can hope for is that she reads the above and gets more interested. Not likely, but you never know. She resisted Patrick O'Brian for more than a year, and then got hooked. I know, I know, different genres, but one can hope.

When we got back I made one last attempt to find an easy way out of my part of the deal. They did it for Austen, maybe someone did it for Brontë. Could there be an At the Wuthering Heights of Madness? Maybe The Call of Catherine? Wuthering Heights and Fungi from Yuggoth?

No luck. Oh well, I guess I'd better grin and bear it. Stiff upper lip, you know. Wot-wot?!?!

A Random Task

2009-03-27T21:13:00.007-04:00

Whoda' thinked that Austin Powers' "Who throws a shoe?" question would be answered so resoundingly in 2008?

4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them...if you want to do this, consider yourself tagged. Link to yourself in the comments.

But this post has nothing to do with that. It has to do with fish. No, wait, with mummified horse penises. Ummmm...6.022E+23. No, hang on...shit. This stuff is random, but what does any of it have to do with me?

6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up. Hey CRUM!!!! It's up.

3. Under stress, I consistently bite my lip until it splits and then bite the dead skin that hangs off. It drives my wife apeshit.

random - adj. having no specific pattern, purpose or objective.

2. Post the rules on your blog.

So it's really fucking stupid to call this whole exercise random as there is a purpose and objective to it.

6. I'm supposed to be slicking an old iPod for my son to use instead of doing this.

A number of factors may influence the accuracy of semen analysis results, and results for a single man may have a large amount of natural variation over time.[3] For this reason, a subfertile result must be confirmed with at least two further analyses.

5. Let each person know they've been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.

1. I don't always feel like following all the rules of a meme.

Christopher Anvil (born 1922) is a pseudonym used by author Harry C. Crosby. He began publishing science fiction with the story "Cinderella, Inc." in the December 1952 issue of the science fiction magazine Imagination. By 1956, he had adopted his pseudonym and was being published in Astounding Magazine.

1. Link to the person who tagged you.

In 2006, for the seventh consecutive time, Allied Irish Bank (GB) won the title of "Britain's Best Business Bank" from the Forum of Private Business, being ranked top for customer service and maintaining its lead over other major banks.

2. I love to use the word "fuck". It also (rightfully) drives my wife apeshit.

The majority of trench maps were to a scale of 1:10,000 or 1:20,000 but maps of 1:40,000, 1:80,000 and smaller scales were printed. Many of the 1:40,000 maps show trenches but were of little use to front line troops. The infantry preferred 1:10,000 and the artillery, mainly 1:20,000 but 1:40,000 were used by the heavy artillery. In the Report on Survey on the Western Front 1914-1918, published in 1920, Colonel E.M. Jack wrote "The 1:20,000 was the map commonly used by the Artillery, and as trenches could be shown on it in sufficient detail to be of use to the infantry it was the most useful scale of all, and the one that could least easily be dispensed with." Colonel Jack was a key figure in Great War cartography.

4. Although I have had considerable success in my career and am well-respected, I feel I am of mediocre ability at best and perpetually not up to the task...to the point of self-defeat sometimes.

Procatalepsis is a figure of speech in which the speaker raises an objection to his own argument and then immediately answers it. By doing so, he hopes to strengthen his argument by dealing with possible counter-arguments before his audience can raise them.

3. Write six random things about yourself.

Izola Curry was an African-American woman who attempted to assassinate civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. Born in Georgia, she stabbed King with a letter opener at a New York City book signing on September 20, 1958. King was eventually assassinated about ten years later.

5. I met my wife over teh intarwebs 12 years ago, and drove from CA to RI with her three days after meeting her in person.

Should I use facts from random Wikipedia articles to mix this shit up? Sure...

100 RANDOMIZE
200 X = INT(RND*100)+1
300 PRINT X
400 GOTO 100

THoroughly Useless (THU) Thursday

2009-03-26T22:13:00.004-04:00

I tried formalizing the words in the chorus of this song, and this is what I came up with:

Because Diminuitive William, William refuses to return to his domicile
However, you will not force him against his will, William refuses to return
Attempt to inform all who have a vested interest, however, you will not succeed
Diminuitive William, William refuses to return to his domicile

When I repeated them to my wife she recommended I post it here, under this title.

Mythos Monday - Images

2009-03-23T21:52:00.005-04:00

...a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind. This thing, which seemed instinct with a fearsome and unnatural malignancy, was of a somewhat bloated corpulence, and squatted evilly on a rectangular block or pedestal covered with undecipherable characters. The tips of the wings touched the back edge of the block, the seat occupied the centre, whilst the long, curved claws of the doubled-up, crouching hind legs gripped the front edge and extended a quarter of the way clown toward the bottom of the pedestal. The cephalopod head was bent forward, so that the ends of the facial feelers brushed the backs of huge fore paws which clasped the croucher's elevated knees.

(from "The Call of Cthulhu" by H.P. Lovecraft)

It's a fairly descriptive paragraph by Lovecraft, and about 10 days ago Ectoplasmosis posted an picture that Lovecaft drew himself of Cthulhu, though it's hardly as fear-inspiring as many modern ones we see. I like that the link talks about the eyes...apparently clustered and spider-like vs. what is normally seen today, though I haven't seen any story text in "TCoC" to indicate they are spider-eyes. Spider-like eyes would add such an incredibly alien character to Cthulhu though...which is probably closer to the intent.

There is a further wealth of images of Cthulhu and mythos-related monsters and some film shorts here as well. Scroll down, lots of good pics.

There's yet another image and a lengthy explanation of Cthulhu, the mythos, and its impact on pop culture etc at How Stuff Works. Interesting picture on the first page...not much of a bloated corpulence there...I think Cthulhu had been hanging out with Brian McNamee and "Raw-jah" for a while.

Still, to each his own. This artist has the bloated corpulence down, but has undersized the wings a bit, methinks. It's still funny as Hell. I hope he produces something new soon.

Or, you could just dress your kid up and take a photo of his non-plussed ass...

Unconnected to the above, but still with roots in Lovecraft and the Mythos, briwei took the time to point me toward the web comic Shadowgirls by David Rodriguez and Dave Reynolds, about a mother-daughter team who discover they have "dark powers" as evil creatures invade their home town of Innsmouth. It's been running for a while now and there's a lot of it I haven't read, but I always dug girl fights. Magical ones are even better. Interesting the mother's name is Charon...

The Twitter-Blog Self-Licking Ice Cream Cone

2009-03-22T19:09:00.003-04:00

"I'm telling you this to tell you what I told you before about things I've already told you."
photo: suzukimaruti

So lately I've been seeing a lot of blogger posting their "Daily Twitter Roundup" under various titles. I mean, only in the last couple of weeks. Turns out the daily roundup is delivered by LoudTwitter.com.

Now, I don't see anything wrong with putting your Twitter feed on your blog. It's an interesting addition to the site. I have my feed up, many blogs I follow do as well.

But it's kind of a "side dish" if you will. I don't go to blogs to see what someone tweeted. I mean really, who is so important that you want to visit their site just to see what they tweeted?

And many people (myself included) tweet links to their blog posts...including these "Twitter Roundups".

Okay. That's enough. I like Twitter. I like blogging. But when you have a website post your daily tweets to your blog, and some of those tweets are about your blog posts, and then you send another tweet telling people to come to your blog to read a blogpost to review your tweets, some of which also tell people about your blog YOU'VE GOT A SOCIAL MEDIA SELF-LICKING ICE CREAM CONE.

I can't see why someone would do it that way. I try to think about it. Maybe you gather and tweet lots of links that people want to see. But they can just go to your Twitter home page...and there are better ways to push links via social media. I am by no means a social media ninja. Troglodyte is closer to the truth. If someone knows or has a better reason or gets utility, I'd like to know. I guess it's a good way to screw around on Twitter all day and still complete all your NaBloPoMo goals.

I post things here because they are, to me, worth more than 140 characters. If I don't have something worth pointing out or discussing, I don't bother. I would argue that a post generated by the LoudTwitter / Blog self-licking ice cream cone stands a good chance of not even being worth one of the 140-character tweets it lists.

Huh?

2009-03-17T20:51:00.006-04:00

I wonder if I'm overreacting or being a typical "my kid is smarter than you and can do no wrong" parent. I probably am, a little bit. But my (and my wife's) hide is slightly chapped. Last week, my son turned in what appeared to be a typical piece of homework, geared toward preparing for the state standardized academic tests he will go through later this year. We really have a problem with the outcome.

First, I have a problem with the entire process. I find that the homework, especially the math homework, is more geared toward teaching problem-solving mechanics than actually comprehending concepts. I've talked about this before. Teaching toward understanding concepts is more effective.

This time it was in a reading comprehension piece, not math. The story was an adaptation of the classic fable of Androcles and the Lion.

There were a series of multiple choice questions, and a final question requiring a written answer. The final question was "Did Androcles deserve to die? Why or why not?" My son's answer was very basic - No he did not, because he was escaping slavery, and nobody should be made to be a slave. My wife and I reviewed the answer, and agreed.

It turns out the teacher didn't and awarded 50% (2 of 4) for the question. Her comment was "What about helping the lion?"

What about it?

First of all, the question misses the entire point of the story - which is simply that kindness and friendship are repaid many times over. While it definitely influenced the lion's decision to let Androcles live, it has absolutely no bearing on whether or not he "deserves" death. Take the Lion out - does Androcles deserve to die simply because he is an escaped slave? Put the lion back in but assume Androcles is a child molesting AIG executive who routinely waterboards endangered polar bears. Does he deserve to live because he helped a lion?

Secondly, the grade automatically discourages thinking beyond the face value of the story. Which is bad because, as I stated, the very question was not germane to the moral.

But my wife and I were in an absolute funk over this. He wasn't happy either; he wondered what he could do and we told him he could always ask her about it and explain, which he did. Nope. He deserved to live because he took the splinter out.

Now I don't think we're going to press anything. It's small potatoes, really - it's not going to keep him from going to Harvard (the cost will, though), the state standardized tests are not "counted" at this level, and his teacher repeatedly sings his praises when we see her out and about. I'll just chalk it up to "It's those stupid standardized tests."

What we really wanted to do was write a letter and attach it to the paper stating that the actions of Androcles, while demonstrating friendship and kindness, have zero bearing on the ethical and existential question governing whether he retained or forfeited his right to continue breathing. I still might. Or, maybe I'll just write "What if Androcles were a child-molesting AIG Executive who routinely waterboards endangered polar bears?"

No, I won't do that either.

Mythos Monday - Better Late Than Never

2009-03-16T23:08:00.001-04:00

I meant to have everything put together long before now, but with a damned busy job, four young children, and a myriad of other things going on in my life, I usually can't sit down to start doing anything until around 10pm...but nonetheless, there is plenty to stick up here from the world of politics, entertainment, pop culture, and even academia...so here goes:

Paul of Cthulhu, creator of Yog-Sothoth.com points out The H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society's Dark Adventure Radio Theatre (DART). Radio re-creations of four outstanding Lovecraft stories: At The Mountains of Madness, The Dunwich Horror, The Shadow Out of Time, and The Shadow Over Innsmouth. You can listen to (or download) the trailers for free, but the programs themselves cost. I normally wouldn't point someone towards something you need to pay for, so I'll say that I'm not affiliated with HPLHS in any way, I can't vouch for what you're going to get and I don't get paid to do any advertising for them. The trailers are cool, and they were all I needed to hear.

Also in entertainment, looks like we may see Lovecraft's work on TV soon. Fangoria reported recently that Herbert West - Reanimator: The Series is currently in development.

What BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER was for Gothic storytelling, HERBERT WEST: RE-ANIMATOR will be for sci-fi and horror.

Little secret: I liked Buffy - the movie and the series. If you look at the pictures, however, it looks more like 90210 or The O.C. meets Lovecraft. I'll probably end up watching it anyway. And when I realize that it's too adapted to the youth of today, I'll probably still watch it, using my need to heap unimaginable amounts of scorn upon it as the rationalization...

Earlier this month the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka KS protested at the University of Chicago over some bullshit or other, dragging along their usual gang of fucktards. It turns out the Phelpsian douchebags were met with a ferocious counter-protest from all walks of student and staff life, including this young lady:

Immediate popularity among people who've actually heard the name Cthulhu on various social networks like twitter, flickr, etc. Hmmmmm...you know, I got to give the gal "snaps" for poking fun at Freddie and his gang of hatemongers, but I find the sign sort of lame...Maybe I'm just being a party pooper.

Since I just talked about goings on at a university, the final few links are going to be more "academic" in nature.

Jason Colavito is an anthropologist and journalist who enjoys debunking fringe science and "Ancient Astronaut" theories. On his website he takes some time looking at H.P. Lovecraft as a jumping off point for the whackos who actually believe in this stuff...

Dr. Justin Woodman is another anthropologist who studies the occult extensively and is also a Lovecraft fanatic. Look at his profile on his blog and you'll see what I mean. He apparently did a series of four lectures in 2007 concerning Lovecraft and his influence on the occult; I bookmarked the page on Yog-Sothoth.com some time ago, but have yet to get around to listening. You know...all that spare time I have.

Yokels Gone Wild...

2009-03-15T21:36:00.007-04:00

Aaaah, the local St. Patrick's Day Parade...the Sunday before St. Paddy's Day, it is the quintiessential reason for tens of thousands of people to line the streets, drunk, and scream "WHOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!" at anything and everything that walks by. It's such an amazing behavior...

They're just dumber (looking), drunker and have fewer teeth...but hey, they're standing around, with drinks, holding their hands up in any one of several gestures meaning anything from "Number One" to "Hang Loose" to "Sign of the Devil", and they're screaming. So they must be cool.

As it so happens, this year it fell today - the 72nd anniversary of the death of H. P. Lovecraft. Oh, and it's the 2053rd anniversary of Julius Caesar getting stabbed to death. Hmmmmm...Caesar stabbed, Lovecraft of intestinal cancer, the common thread? Massive internal organ damage. I think there's a connection here...but I digress. My point? None, really. I just wanted to do this...

Happy Death Day, Howie...

Great...Another One...

2009-03-13T23:44:00.007-04:00

Crummy talked about having more than one blog being like loving more than one woman. It sounds great but in the end, both end up being neglected. True, unless you use enough Viagra. But be careful, you might end up like this guy.

Or, worse yet, this guy:

And well, while don't plan on popping pills or "not having sex" with delusional interns (but the Secretary of State? Well...maybe for the notoriety) I do plan on spreading myself more thinly through the blogosphere by starting YET ANOTHER BLOG.

I've decided to try and write something (or things, if it ends up working out) for the Innsmouth Free Press website to which I alluded earlier this week...possibly even a piece or two (I have two ideas) of fiction for it; so this blog will be the place where I throw down story sections, go over ideas, and ask those whose opinions I value to offer criticism, if they feel so inclined.

The blog is called "Appreciable Mental Strain" and is lifted from the first sentence of Dagon, one of the first short stories Lovecraft wrote.

Invitations will be forwarded soon...by carrier nightgaunt...to those of you whose emails I have.

If you'd like to follow and I don't have your email please drop me a line at cthulhusfamilyrestaurant- at- gmail- dot- com. (broken up to protect from spambots...thanks for the tip, Crum!)

The Enemy...

2009-03-12T20:34:00.004-04:00

I've come to realize today that I have an enemy. Actually, I know I've had this enemy for quite some time now, I'm just finally realizing that I have to stand up, say "fuck you" and shoot the sum'bitch down. To say my enemy has made things difficult is an understatement - he has made my work suffer, and has intimidated me into near paralysis. My performance suffers because of it. My career could very well suffer because of it. And if that happens, my family will definitely suffer, all due to my enemy who has recently revealed himself to me.

Perfection...the enemy of good enough. Now I would not call myself a perfectionist - at least not "openly" so. I'm perfectly happy to get by on many things, particularly when I'm doing them for myself. I determine what is needed and get it done well and I am satisfied.

But when I have a requirement placed on me - to deliver "up the chain" - things can get out of hand in a hurry. I look at what needs to be done, determine the specified and implied tasks, and the mental mayhem begins. Question after question mulled over, detail after detail piled on, constantly looking to add more and more.

I feel that if I leave even the tiniest hole...anything up to question - "have you thought about?" - that I have failed. That I was not up to the task to begin with. Now this has a place - in a final product, presented to a customer, or a plan that places people and equipment "on the line" you need this level of attention. But in something like a proposal, an outline, a brief position paper, this is ruinous.

And I end up there often; I'm looking way too deep, doing way too much, and after stress, hand wringing and way too much work, I pare things way down and produce something more reasonable. It's usually what should be done in the first place, but the mental byproduct of my effort is that I am thoroughly unhappy with the product and myself, even if it is in itself correct.

Alternately, I'll let the thinking and "what if"-ing drive me into an overwhelmed paralysis, squander too much time, and produce something at or near the last minute that embodies too much effort for the result. Again, almost always "on target" but the net effect of the process is to deflate my opinion of my own abilities.

It applies to my writing, too. It's part of the reason I do not post as often as I want. Mentally I am reading and re-reading as I type, becoming unhappy with it while it's coming out, then deleting and re-writing. So that a piece like this that should take 20 minutes takes 45.

So...I need to break a habit. And that habit is striving for perfection when perfection isn't called for.

Sometimes, good enough is.

Mythos Monday - Cthulhu is Boring!

2009-03-09T21:23:00.004-04:00

Shortly after starting this blog I initiated a failed attempt to do a weekly link-dump for Cthulhu and things Lovecraftian. It only lasted a few weeks because...well...the shit can be really...BORING. And nothing is more boring than geeky boring. Like someone tweeting "Ia! Ia! Cthulhu Fthagn!" Gee, I've NEVER heard that before...how clever.

I guess what I'm saying is, impress me, make me laugh, show me something I never seen before. I love geeky, but it needs to not suck...or at least be original. So that's what I'm going to try to do here, every Monday. Take what I've seen over the past week that I like and just dump it here with some commentary. As much to catalog it for myself as for anyone else.

I can't remember who to hat tip for this one, and I'm not sure of the veracity of all the claims, but I am 100% sure that the claim as to Cthulhu's abilities are false.

Neo-con blogger Robert Stacy McCain invoked the Great One's name used some Cthulhu imagery as a harbinger of doom for "Mad Money" Jim Cramer.

I'm not a writer. But I did sleep at a Holiday Inn Express about 4 years ago when I moved my family from Washington to Rhode Island. Which is why the concept of The Innsmouth Free Press seems like a lot of fun. A fictional Loevcraftian publication that is actually generated by its readers. Assuming they take any of my drivel. @innsmouthpress. And in one of their latest tweets they point out this funny (and 3-year old) take on a popular late-70s' / early-80's maritime show...

And I'm saving the best for last. The Obscure Hollow posted some pictures and clips from a trio of Lovecraftian creations. The first was the 2005 movie "The Call of Cthulhu" available from the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society. I did not know this existed. But I do now, and as soon as I take a minute from this silly self-aggrandizing masturbatory publishing lark I intend to order the DVD. The second is a pair of Lovecraft video shorts just put up today. One is a silent film adaptation (from the 1930's) of The Other Gods that is pretty cool. My favorite there is the "A Lovecraft Dream" animated piece that brilliantly...well, just watch it - you won't be disappointed!

That's it for this first Mythos Monday. No, Cthulhu really isn't boring, if you know what you're looking for. Everyone has fun with the mythos in his own way...

If you see anything you think I'd like, get hold of me at:

cthulhusfamilyrestaurant@gmail.com
http://twitter.com/Chef_Cthulhu

The 25 Writers Meme Part I

2009-03-05T22:13:00.006-05:00

Like Dawn at Weldable Cookies who tagged me with this, I don't always take to memes right away, if at all. I've been doing quite a few lately though, so what's the harm in one more? Pretty simple - list 25 authors that have influenced my writing. I'm not sure I have that many influences lately outside The Naval Institute Guide to Writing. But I tried. I don't know if I see all of the below in my writing, but they all have/had a profound effect on me. Like my last "double digit" meme that required thinking, I'm publishing this one piece meal. Half today, half later...

1. H. P. Lovecraft - Duh. Nobody before or since has mastered the combining of science fiction and horror. I think the mythos he created is not only vastly under-appreciated, but also overdone in the silliest way. And many of us who appreciate it also overdo it...we all have. Hey, lots of people like to say "Cthulhu" and snicker like Beavis and Butthead.

2. J. R. R. Tolkein - The detail with which he created Middle Earth, combined with the eloquent manner in which he drew me into it. Very, very few could ever do that. He spoiled every other fantasy author for me. I could not get past 50 pages of any of them after I'd finished LoTR.

3. Patrick O'Brian - What Lovecraft and Tolkien are to fantasy and horror, O'Brian is to historical fiction, especially the great age of fighting sail. Forget the movie - though it is a reasonable representation of life in Nelson's navy - Master and Commander the book is such a phenomenal piece of literature. Instead of creating a world, he meticulously re-creates the world of two centuries ago, and goes to extreme lengths to preserve the actual history itself - if he puts Captain Aubrey in a particular event, he does so only when there is a logical avenue (i.e. he doesn't replace a Lieutenant with a Captain) and does not change the outcome (if the good guys lose, they lose); I've had arguments with friends who favor C. S. Forester's Hornblower to "Lucky Jack" Aubrey, but I prefer the historic accuracy and detail over the swashbuckling.

4. Michael Moorcock - Okay, I lied when I said Tolkien spoiled other fantasy authors for me. The Elric Saga showed me that fantasy can have a gritty, gut-wrenching anti-hero and still be damned good reading. It also turned me on to The Chronicles of Corum, a tale rife with mutilation, loss, slaughter and revenge. Oh yeah - and if you ever listen to Veteran of the Psychic Wars by Blue Oyster Cult, you have Moorcock to thank.

5. Denny Aaberg - If you aren't into surfing, surf history and the Malibu scene, you have no idea who he is. Denny Aaberg wrote two short stories about a 60's-era hot-dog surfer named "No Pants Mance" that are just brilliant. They embody the spirit of surfing to me. Maybe you've seen the movie Big Wednesday, directed by John Milius of all people. It's based upon the characters from these stories.

6. Stephen King - The second horror author on my literary trek to H. P. Lovecraft. He also cites Howie as a big time influence. His meshing of visceral, soul-shaking horror had a huge impact on me. His greatest work was done in a time when I was growing up and in the phase where I was just beginning the transition from boyhood to manhood. Everything takes on a deeper meaning then. Oh, and he's a Red Sox fan. So there.

7. Edgar Allen Poe - As with many people, he was my first literary introduction into the macabre and the dark side of human nature. The Telltale Heart and The Cask of Amantillado being early favorites. Though I think the latter would have been better if the main character had said "biatch" after "Nemo me impune lacessit" and "motherfucker" after "In pace requiascat!"

8. Earnest Hemingway - The courage and fortitude of the "Hemingway Hero" through pain and suffering, triumphing only to lose everything - as demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea and A Farewell to Arms - love it or hate it, it's powerful.

9. George Orwell - Yeah the books about piggies and the government running everything are really great, but I also admire his persistent quest for clear, and concise written communication that relies on the active voice. If more people would take this on board, the average yokel's writing wouldn't be so doubleplusungood.

10. Nathaniel Hawthorne - The Scarlet Letter. I swore I'd shoot myself before I read this again or allowed myself to write anything that even vaguely resembled it.

11. William Gibson - Pioneer of the cyberpunk and steampunk fiction genres. Think the movie Johnny Mnemonic sucks? It does. But the short story is pretty awesome.

12. Craig Stecyk - journalist who in the 1970's first exposed the whole "Dogtown" skate scene in Venice CA in a series of articles for Skateboarder. Written many times about the surfing / skateboarding scene and lifestyle, always with an incredible edge. From in your face, "Fuck you, we rule and we know it" reporting to breathtaking "man vs. ocean" short stories. Great stuff.

Uh, okay, that's half...roughly. And I'm actually going to tag people this time because I think this is a cool meme and a good mental exercise. So I'll tag half the people now and half later.

Randal at L'ennui melodieux - it's about time I tagged you back, and you're a damned good writer, so I wanna' know!

Dr. Momentum at Aces Full of Links - you may have read more than any person I know. I hope you take this one up.

The Shadow Over Innsmouth, The Musical

2009-03-04T22:43:00.004-05:00

First - movies.

Now, musicals...

h/t HPLHS

Further Complicating the Identity Crisis

2009-03-03T23:00:00.004-05:00

Okay so after starting up the new home brewing blog I've finally made the break complete. My other blog and Cthulhu's Family Restaurant are now separated entities in blogger, run by one guy through different profiles.

"Chef Cthulhu" is now the new admin name here. But you can still call me Bull.

Call it double life, whatever...it's all part of my vision.

Reality Imitates the Mythos...Again...

2009-03-02T20:35:00.008-05:00

There's got to be a reason that this story from the core of the mythos is so appealing on so many levels...

This could be one of them.

Geologists say that mountain ranges such as the Alps or the Himalayas form in collisions between continents. The last time Antarctica was exposed to such forces was 500 million years ago.

"The mystery here is that the Alps are only 50 to 60 million years old, while here we have a mountain range that may perhaps be as old as 500 million years," Ferraccioli said.

Hmmm...think they'll find any triangular slates with striated markings when the ice sheet melts?

It seems that he had pondered a great deal, and with alarmingly radical daring, over that triangular striated marking in the slate; reading into it certain contradictions in nature and geological period which whetted his curiosity to the utmost, and made him avid to sink more borings and blastings in the west-stretching formation to which the exhumed fragments evidently belonged. He was strangely convinced that the marking was the print of some bulky, unknown, and radically unclassifiable organism of considerably advanced evolution, notwithstanding that the rock which bore it was of so vastly ancient a date - Cambrian if not actually pre-Cambrian - as to preclude the probable existence not only of all highly evolved life, but of any life at all above the unicellular or at most the trilobite stage. These fragments, with their odd marking, must have been five hundred million to a thousand million years old.

I can't be sure. I wonder if we're going to see any aeons-old protoplasmic things or cylindrical, winged space beings. We just can't be sure. But he knows....

He knows...

Now this is religion in schools that I could be a fan of...

Wrapping Up the Album Meme

2009-03-01T21:36:00.002-05:00

I decided to do the 15 most significant albums meme in two parts because that's how I decided to do it. Since I did 8 covering through high school last time, we start off in the college years now. So 7 more albums to cover the last 22 years...and the more I think about this stuff the harder it is, but who cares, I'm not getting a grade on this. Yadda-yadda-yadda-bullshit-bullshit here we go...

9. The Wall - Pink Floyd. Yeah, like every college kid doesn't relate to this album. The part I related to the most was Track 5, Side 4, "Stop". No, I wasn't tired of being a fascist dictator. I was going through some tough adjustments entering "military life" as an officer candidate and the lyrics "I wanna' go home...take off this uniform and leave the show..." rung fairly true. In retrospect, I was being a wimp, and I'm glad I didn't cave.

10. Pornography - The Cure. By the time I'd graduated college I had every one of their CD's. Still do. Ranging from early Brit post-punk pop to fluttery, big-hair-and-lipstick wailing euro-whatever, this album is by far their best work. Dark, downbeat, guitar-based despair with a heavy dose of pulsating base drums, goth rock at its best. All you sniveling "emo" twits should understand where you came from. Then get a life.

11. Turn it Around! - Various Artists. Another compilation that is not really an album at all. It was a pair of 7" records. I found it at a used / indy record shop near campus while I was gaining interest in the whole "DIY" attitude of the late 80's punk/hardcore scene. The record was produced as a fundraising effort for 924 Gilman St. I'd never heard of the place at the time, but based on the band names and pics on the jacket it looked to be a good risk. Turned out to be a great choice - played it to death.

12. Southern Harmony and Musical Companion - The Black Crowes. The first music to really move me after I had left the dreamworld of college and got out on my own. After dealing with so much of the early 90's "alternative" stuff that was saturating the LA and Long Beach airwaves this was the first new thing I'd heard in years that just felt "real". As awesome today as it was 17 years ago.

I'd have to say the most significant albums have been the ones that point backwards. And like a couple of previous ones, they are all compilations. I like them because they condense the work of artists I enjoyed or caught snippets of growing up, but most of the time did not stop to take the time (or was just too young) to really appreciate them for what they were doing.

13. The Story of The Clash Vol. 1 - The Clash. Do people really know how much is "owed" to Joe Strummer and Mick Jones? Probably not.

14. Decade of Steely Dan - Steely Dan. With Donald Fagen, another graduate of the Heavy Metal Soundtrack. All of their greatest work (except "Hey Nineteen") was done before I really even had a fucking clue of what good music was about.

15. Anthology: Through the Years - Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Tom Petty. He may be ugly as sin, but his music is a fine wine...it only gets better with age. One of, if not THE, quintessential American rockers. Yeah Bruce Springsteen, maybe even more than you. Blasphemy? Depends on your point of view.

So there you have it...the last half. 15 is really a small number - I could easily double the number with honorable mentions, but I've spent enough time on this already, and my muse is departing...

Apeshit Music Memes

2009-02-27T14:29:00.010-05:00

Damn you, Randal and Briwei. DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!

I'm not sure why I'm starting my meme posts with movie references lately, but if you don't like it then screw you, nobody's making you pay to read my drivel.

Once again, I have a double dose of memes to get through courtesy of the above mentioned bloggers in arms. Both deal with music, both required work and thought (though in different ways) and both are pretty darned cool. In fact, I had wanted to get them posted well before now, but as luck would have it I had an overflow of work into my personal time, and that took priority. So without further ado, I'll get on with it...

MEME THE FIRST: THE 15 MOST SIGNIFICANT ALBUMS OF MY LIFE, PART I - BIRTH THROUGH HIGH SCHOOL.

h/t Randal

The rule is simple: list the 15 most significant albums in your life. The concept bears repeating; there is a big difference between significant and favorite.

What I would REALLY like to do is draw something of a diagram showing where they "popped up" in my life and what the links may be between them, but I just don't have the chops to do that right now. So I'll just list them, as close to chronological order as I can. Hold tight cuz this is going all over the place...

1. Disco Duck Dance Party - Irwin the Disco Duck and the Wibble Wabble Singers and Orchestra. Yeah. The first album that I ever owned, when I was about six years old. Significant in that it represents a significant disadvantage from the get-go. Sort of like being born a crack baby. But this story has a good ending...

2. Skip ahead to sixth grade, around 1978/9. Mr. Templin's music class was sometimes fun, sometimes a pain in the ass. Mr. Templin was 20-something, a hothead and a perfectionist. Sing badly, he got mad. Don't pay attention because you're a pre-pubescent thinking about going to your friends house after school and raiding his dad's Penthouse collection, he got mad. On the other hand, he cared about music. The coolest thing he did was spend about three weeks worth of classes going through Mussorgsky, Pictures at an Exhibition - Misao Tomita and compare it to the original composition as a demonstration of what "modern" electronic music was capable of. It was the one cool thing he did all year. The rest of the time he was an ass. I haven't heard the album in the thirty years since, but I do still love Mussorgsky.

3. Heavy Metal Soundtrack - Various Artists. The movie came out the summer between middle- and high school. My friends were going to go see it; one of them had a cool mom who would buy their tickets, take them in and then leave. Being a good kid I asked if I could see the film with them and dealt with the "no". I should have said "Hey, can I go see a movie with Mark and Stephen?" But as they say:
"Evil will always triumph, because good is dumb." Well, if I couldn't see the movie I'd get the record. There is little on it that could be called metal - Black Sabbath's "The Mob Rules" is just about it. It was really my first intro to serious rock, I played the Hell out of it, and some of the artists on it would figure in future significant albums.

4. Scant months later, early in my Freshman year, I went and saw my first honest to Gawd rock concert: One on One - Cheap Trick. Cheap Trick had a track on the aforementioned Heavy Metal Soundtrack. There are MUCH BETTER Cheap Trick albums with much better songs out there and you don't need me to tell you what they are. But the show was awesome - I loved watching Rick Nielsen play his 5-necked guitar - and turned me on to the album and other music of theirs. And I can still hear them everytime I turn on the Colbert Report.

5. Rio - Duran Duran. Go ahead - snicker. Laugh. Ask me if I'm gay. Plenty of people did in high school. This guy who sat next to me in Algebra - Skippy as he was known - openly ridiculed me. Their videos had hot chicks. They were not overly talented, musically. Simon LeBon was not, nor will he ever be, an accomplished singer. But freshman and sophomore year I was heavy into them, and stayed interested in the band even after I had moved on to other genres.

6. Skippy may have openly ridiculed me, but he was a good guy. And as we were the two smah-test kids in Algebra II, our love of math bridged our musical differences. Now Skippy was something of a sick guy. He listened to bands like Venom and Slayer, and liked to talk about how uncomfortable his girlfriend got when he played them as mood music for getting laid. He also told me he'd set me right when it came to music. Well, early my Junior year, during "Flex Study" in the cafeteria, he let me listen to a song on his walkman. That song was Ride the Lightning - Metallica. To quote Randal,

The descending progression in the title track? .... Genius.

Hooked. Immediately. And yeah, I still have to crank that fucker, too. With "For Whom the Bell Tolls", "Creeping Death", and "The Call of Ktulu" it formed the gateway into an adolescence that was defined by metal appreciation. I had "Kill 'Em All" within a month, the "Am I Evil?" EP shortly thereafter, and the wait for "Master of Puppets" was agony. The floodgates had opened - Slayer, Venom, Wasp, Exodus, Possessed, Accept, Dio...awesome stuff. When Cliff Burton died and their tour was put on hold I threw away my Ozzie tickets...fuck that bloated old sod singing about shots in the dark, I was only going to see his opening act! Vindication would be mine in a headbanging orgy however, when they would come back as headliners on the "Puppets" tour, when my buds and I would successfully move from our ticketed seats to THE FRONT ROW in a pile of people six feet deep pressed up against the rail at the orchestra pit that separated us and the stage.

7. Spreading the Disease - Anthrax. The first speedmetal album I bought (after Metallica). Great, great, GREAT album. "Stand or Fall", "The Enemy", "Gung Ho", "Madhouse" - they just don't write 'em like that anymore, uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-UH. Thank you, Greg Kihn. MTV pissed me off by banning the "Madhouse" video because they felt it denigrated the mentally ill. How could it? They were all buying the fucking album and going to the show! But MTV had standards to uphold - ones that eventually led to reality shows about a bisexual whore making brainless fucks eat bull penises for a chance to sleep with her. The "moment" for me on this album was at the very end, right after "Gung Ho", when Scott Ian and company break into this beautiful piece:

But much, much harder. They were the first metal show I saw, in a hole in the wall in Providence called "The Living Room".

8. Powerslave - Iron Maiden.Not my favorite Maiden album by far, but it was my first. Being a kid who loved military history I dug the "Aces High" video, bought the album for the song, and that was it. Dickinson's vocal range, the harmonizing of the guitars, and epics like "The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner" and other songs throughout their discography lay ahead. I bought all their albums - even the two with Paul Di'Anno on vocals. If you've never heard it, "Killers" is a ballsy song. Oh...and that "Heavy Metal" soundtrack? Nicko McBrain, Maiden's drummer, originally played for a French rock band named Trust, who had a track on it.

Okay! That takes me from my early years of being a snivelling wussy through full fledged head-banger in high school. Tomorrow I'll deal with college and adult life. I said these were a bit of work, and in the interest of keeping this from being a complete snoozer, I'll save the remaining paragraphs for tomorrow.

MEME THE SECOND: THE RECORD ALBUM MEME

h/t Briwei

This "work" is much more artistic, as you will see.

Rules, lifted right from bri's page:

1 - Go to Wikipedia’s “random” page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random

The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to Quotations Page’s "random quotations":
http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3

The last four or five words of the very last quote on the page is the title of your album.

3 - Go to Flickr and click “explore last seven days”
http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

It's nice to credit the photo source, but I lost the URL. So, whoever you are, thanks for the excellent picture! (This sentence is also lifted...but true! I tried going back through and finding it, but you can imagine how that turned out...IF, by some odd chance, you find this incredibly obscure and unworthy site, know that you took a great picture!)

4 - Use Photoshop or similar to put it together.

5 - Post your photo to your FB page with this text in the "caption" or "comment" and tag friends you’d like to join in.

Okay, so here are the results:

Band Name: The End of Medicine
Album Name: Neither Useful Nor Enjoyable

...and the album:

These guys are definitely late 70's / early 80's post-punk/new wave. Somewhere in the vicinity of The Tubes with some forays into Buggles-like synth-pop. It was their only album and it produced one hit, "Sex Placebo", that spent four weeks on the charts and topped out at number 22. The rest of the album was pretty forgettable, as was the rest of the band's career. In fact, a Rolling Stone review in 1981 declared "With the exception of their one catchy if mediocre single, Neither Useful Nor Enjoyable is a fair description of The End of Medicine's debut album."

The Power to Change

2009-02-24T22:34:00.003-05:00

I am so proud of what Americans can do. When faced with something obviously wrong, it heartens me to know that we as people will put aside our differences and force the change that is needed to set things aright.

Inspired by your courageous struggle to correct the horrible atrocities of Tropicana and rebuild an OJ container you can be proud of, I present you with the above piece to show how you are truly embracing a new spirit of change.

I know the word "Tropicana" written vertically in big letters can make a container seem just like a generic. And I know how hard it can be to actually pick up a container and read it to make sure you have the pulp concentration you so richly deserve. These words...this...thinking and interpreting. It's so hard. You are true activists. Just like idiots from Florida who punch every hole on the right side of a ballot out of habit and then cry on TV because they ended up voting for Pat Buchanan. It is your refusal to compromise, to actually take responsibility for parsing information, that McDonald's graciously allows us to say "Number 1" instead of "Big Mac, Fries, and a Coke" (Well, the dumb cashiers who don't know where to find individual keys are also part of this, but that came after the dumbing down of our favorite hyper-corn menu).

I have never felt better about how screwed we are.

I've Figured Out What Be Ailin' Me!

2009-02-19T21:09:00.002-05:00

Doctor Unheimlich has diagnosed me with Huzzahosis
Cause:	monkey bite
Symptoms:	screaming, grunting, abdominal swelling, sarcasm
Cure:	click heels together three times
Enter your name, for your own diagnosis:

h/t replicant

Board Gamey Goodness

2009-02-16T22:26:00.004-05:00

Once a game geek, always a game geek, I guess...

...but I was never quite that immersed. Well, there was this one time in college we were doing a live roleplaying game and I decided to dress the part; but it felt really stupid so I changed into my normal clothes after the first few hours.

I was browsing the comic store at the local mall a couple of days ago, waiting for my kids' haircuts to be done, not really into the comics this time. I either wasn't in to looking for the sequels to the ones I bought last time or, in the case of the Cthulhu-based ones, they were so awful that I didn't want to find the next issue. Comics never really caught on with me - I tried to love them, I really did, but the whole Marvel Universe thing never caught on. Judge Dredd comics were pretty cool...

and I dumped some serious cash into them in college.

But gaming was a different story - whether it was role playing, sci-fi or fantasy board games, or a good ol' wargame by Avalon Hill, it was a huge part of my life in college and as a young adult. I still have several hundred dollars' worth of them in totes in my basement and garage. In college we'd have at least one gaming weekend a semester, and at one point it almost became a certainty that my friend B.O.B. and I would set up a big-ass game of Squad Leader and duke it out. The battles were epic and the victories were truly Pyrrhic. I'm sure if you could zoom down and watch the last few cardboard tiles in action at the end of the last turn, you'd have seen one German and one Russian, out of ammo and beating each other with their canteens and pointed sticks.

As with most other fun things, as you get older you get less time for them. We still get together once or twice a year for games, booze and food. In fact, we need to do it again soon.

Okay back to the store. I was pleasantly surprised when I walked down the game aisle...so much so I bought a couple of games. Actually, game expansion packs:

Zombie Fluxx just looked plain fun. I've never played Fluxx before, though I think it's popped up at a recent game day or two. It plays stand-alone or as an expansion, and it's ages 8+, so I can play with my son. So it'll be getting some exercise this week.

The Arkham Horror expansion looks awesome as well. I used to own the original (1987) version. This to me is a great "bridge" between the role playing and board game world. It's cooperative (you and your fellow players vs. the mythos), you get a choice of many characters (though you don't get to build a personality) and the hundreds of events and objects ensure nearly endless variety. And it's difficult. In short, you and your fellows must prevent Arkham from being invaded by the Great Old Ones and their minions. Throughout the game gates to other dimensions open up, monsters come out, crazier and crazier shit starts to happen, and if the players can't close enough gates and effectively counter the monsters, a Great Old One shows up. Like Nyarlathotep (in which case you're fucked) or Azathoth (in which case you're fucked) or Cthulhu (in which case you're fucked) or Shub Niggurath (in which case you're fucked) or ... you get the idea! Lots of fun. Played it with my son once or twice, and since he's a couple of years on the young side I end up working most of the game mechanics for him and he gets to roll the dice and kill things, which he likes. Or get killed or go insane, which he also thinks is pretty cool.

There were plenty of other awesome games there. Many from the Catan series, and several of the Axis and Allies sub-games. I almost picked up the Guadalcanal game - one of the most gut-wrenching and pivotal campaigns of the Pacific War - but I've already got enough games without anyone to play them with. So what, I'll probably buy it next time.

Once a geek...

My First Valentine's Day Post

2009-02-14T20:53:00.002-05:00

...is very short because I'm spending V-Day with my bloggy valentine.

So go read something else.

Oh, and Happy Valentine's Day.

If You're Going to Attend Miskatonic U, Expect to See Some Elder-Signs

2009-02-12T13:29:00.006-05:00

...like this one...

...or this one...

...or, if you can get one of those sweet little eldrich coeds from the "Sisters of Azathoth" pledge class back to your room, you just may be lucky enough to see THIS ONE!

Now THAT's a portal in which I am sure no evil lurks...

Apparently, some students and staff at a local Catholic University don't feel that way. Now I've made it clear that my religious views are somewhere in the void between agnosticism, atheism and just plain not giving a shit (it's a little place I like to call "Beer") but this seems a bit ridiculous.

“There is no choice if you don’t think it’s appropriate. You can’t turn it around,” said biology professor Dan Kirschner, faculty adviser for BC’s chapter of Hillel, a Jewish student group. “I think it is being insensitive to the people of other faith traditions here.”

Ummm, lessee...private university...openly declares itself Catholic...wants to have a crucifix in every room...hey, you know, they can do what they want. It seems appropriate to me. And to me, insensitive (downright discriminatory in fact) would be not allowing a Hillel chapter. If the school goes Unitarian, feel free to bitch.

Amir Hoveyda, head of BC’s chemistry department, blasted the school in an e-mail to the Herald for “not being interested in an exchange with its faculty members.”

In an interview with the college newspaper, The Observer, which broke the story, Hoveyda described the crucifixes as “offensive” and the university’s actions as “anti-intellectual.”

Professor Hoveyda, I'm sure they are interested in an exchange with you - say, on, oh...I don't know...issues affecting the Chemistry department? Why did you agree to be a head of department for a Catholic university you find the Catholic "mythos" and its symbols offensive? And as for "anti-intellectual" you lose me there. For Yog Sothoth's sake, they put a fucking crucifix in a class! It's not like they invited Ben Stein and his gang of yahoos to teach creationism as a valid scientific theory to your classes under the guise of "academic freedom". As long as they haven't started telling you how to teach chemistry or to make sure everyone believes that supersaturated solutions can only come from God through the grace of Tiny Little 8-Pound, Six Ounce Baby Jesus, and that the tongues of flame on the bunsen burners are really the Holy Spirit, I'm pretty sure you can stave off the anti-intellectual brain rays emanating from a crucifix. There are plenty of examples of the anti-intellectual aspects of ultra-conservative, ultra-Christian institutions and movements. This isn't one of them.

Hey, per-fess'r...maybe you could go teach at a muslim college. I understand the sorority pledges are all Halal:

Ya' just can't tell 'em you'd like to PORK 'em!

Great Cthulhu's strap-on! Now THAT'S INSENSITIVE, if not downright sexist.

Double-Barrelled Boom-Stick Meme...

2009-02-05T21:37:00.005-05:00

Alright you primitive SCREWHEADS...

These...these are my MEMEs!

The first is the "Random Song Answer Meme" that circulates on Facebook, but I saw it here. It has 18 questions, and it works like this:

1. Put your iPod/Tunes on shuffle. Or, if you're a Luddite, blindfold yourself and stand in front of your record collection.
2. For each question, press the next button.
3. You must write down the title of the song, no matter how silly or embarrassing.
4. You may comment on songs in brackets after the song name. In this case, I listed the artist.

So here goes...

1. What do your friends think of you? 100 Punks (Generation X)

2. If someone says "Is this ok?" you say: Ogdru Jahad (The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets)

3. What do you like in a guy/girl? I Don't Like Mondays (The Boomtown Rats)

4. How do you feel today? Frank Mills (The Lemonheads)

5. What is your life's purpose? Rosealia (Better Than Ezra)

6. What is your motto? Not Sleeping Around (Ned's Atomic Dustbin)

7. What do you think about very often? I'm a Disco Dancer And A Sweet Romancer (Christopher Just)

8. What do you think of your best friend? People Who Died (Jim Carroll Band)

9. What do you think of the person you like? Ask (The Smiths)

10. What is your life story? I Ran (A Flock of Seagulls)

11. What do you want to be when you grow up? Whiskey Johnny (Traditional Sea Shanty)

12. What do you think of when you see the person you like? Moonlight Sonata
(Beethoven)

13. What will you dance to at your wedding? Waiting (Cake)

14. What will they play at your funeral? Never Say Never (Romeo Void)

15. What is your hobby/interest? Greenland Whale Fisheries (Van Dyke Parks)

16. What is your biggest fear? Die Walkure Act 2 - Wotan's Rage (Wagner)

17. What is your biggest secret? You've Got Another Thing Comin' (Judas Priest)

18. What do you think of your friends? St. Jimmy (Green Day)

The second is the "Single Letter Meme". Found here. Copy the below questions, erase my answers, fill in your own. Use the first letter of your name to answer each question. ~~No made~~ Make up shit if you want - it ~~has to be real~~ should be fun!

1. What is your name: W******

2. A four Letter Word: Wank

3. A boy's Name: Wanky McWankster

4. A girl's Name: Wendy Wankmee

5. An occupation: Wanker

6. A color: Wankjuice White

7. Something you wear: Wankstains

8. A food: Wanko Crusted Tilapia

9. Something found in the bathroom: Wanktowel

10. A place: Wankylvania

11. A reason for being late: Wanking

12. Something you shout: WANKER!

13. A movie title: Spanking the Monkey (aka - WANKING)

14. Something you drink: Wankshake

15. A musical group: Weird Al Wankovic

16. An animal: Wankodactyl

17. A street name: Wank Avenue

18. A type of car: Wankerati

19. A song title: Wank God I'm a Country Boy

20. A book title: Wank Waldo

21. A verb: Wank

And I tag....NOBODY! If you think it's fun, try it.

There...two barrels empty. Zombie blown away. Now where's my chainsaw?

What? I'm Here for Your Amusement?

2009-02-02T21:36:00.005-05:00

Because for the past couple of weeks, I've had more important things to do than amuse you. Not necessarily more fun, just more important.

For some years, my wife has suffered frequent chronic pain from a bulging cervical disc, and on MLK day it decided to go "full bore" and severely pinch a couple of nerves, leaving her unable to lift anything heavier than an coffee cup for a couple of days, and bouncing from clinic to ER to clinic getting X-Rays done and MRI's scheduled. She's doing better now, and we've finally got a doctor to start paying attention to it, so maybe instead of getting a new script for Flexeril every time this happens, she'll get TREATMENT, and maybe even permanent relief.

This last week brought business travel with it, and instead of blogging in the evenings I was in Florida drinking. So there. I thought for a bit I wouldn't make it back, too. First, there were a bunch of bored Floridian kids throwing molotov cocktails all over the place, slowing me up. As if that weren't enough, once I got to the airport i found out my flight was delayed, so late that my connection was in danger. So I cried out for magic - both to wreak vengeance on the teens and salvage my travel plans. Shortly a short, gnomish old dude came to the gate, made the Sign of the Devil and told me I would make my connection. I did.

Rainbow In The Dark @ Yahoo! Video

Now these two items don't account for 100% of my time, but they do account for a lot of it. The rest of the time I just didn't have it in me. But I think I do now.

Green Monkey Numb3r5 Mix

2009-01-24T22:10:00.012-05:00

Last month I was a contributor to the Green Monkey Music Project Volume XIV - Numb3r5 over at Splotchy's place. This past Thursday he posted the mix, and one of the requirements is that I explain my choices. Which is funny, because I had little rhyme or reason in the songs I chose, except that they deal with numbers and I love them. But I suppose I owe a better explanation than that, so here goes. I like Splotchy's idea of posting album cover art with the songs so I'm stealing it...

"Zero" by Smashing Pumpkins. My favorite song from their second album, "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness". I love everything about the song - the riff, the anger and despair in the lyrics, Corgan's vocal style. It was a very high high point on an otherwise forgettable album. ("Siamese Dream" was so much better!)

"Three Sisters" by Jim Carroll. Carroll's probably best known for the song "People Who Died" but this song is just as good. Three sisters, their lifestyles, and the words they say when they "go down on you"...

"Four Sticks" by Led Zeppelin. A band with four members, releases an album "Four" with a song on it that uses the word "Four". It was a sign that I had to include it. Zep IV was the first album of theirs I bought in high school, and I got it for Stairway to Heaven. This song quickly became my favorite.

"Six Pack" by Black Flag. Originally released on the "Damaged" LP in 1981. Seminal American hard core punk courtesy of Hank Rollins. What do we know about partying...or anything else? I love beer. Song about beer good.

"Louis Quatorze" by Bow Wow Wow. From the "I Want Candy" album it's a punked-up and naughty song about two teens (remember...Annabelle Lwin was only 14 years old when Malcolm McLaren discovered her) involved in steamy role-playing that includes firearms. Oh I love it when he says so seriously, with his gun in my back "Honey, close your eyes and think of England!"

"22 Acacia Avenue" by Iron Maiden. From what is probably their best album, "Number of the Beast". After nothing but new wave, prog rock and classic rock, I figured I needed some metal. A song about a prostitute named Charlotte (aka "Charlotte the Harlot" from their debut album) who lives on Acacia Avenue. It's not a happy song. I remember driving by an Acacia Street in my home town when I was in high school. I never turned down to see if "22" or Charlotte were there.

A mini-mix of the selections...you can see the entire mix at the above links to I, Splotchy and I recommend you do - eight different bloggers, six songs each, diverse musical tastes; plenty of awesome music to look over and download.

Num3er5

I was too lazy to upload Four Sticks by Zep to imeem, so I just found the Page and Plant version. Still pretty awesome. After putting this together I realized that 66.666666666667% of the songs dealt with either alcohol or deviant sex. I wonder if that means anything? I really don't think of myself as a dirty old man...

Thanks, Splotchy, for doing this.

Here's Why Obama's Economic Stimulus Plan for Education is So Important!

2009-01-20T21:21:00.006-05:00

After reading what a guy I follow in Twitter showed me, we need it to find and pay better teachers.

However, with an African American about to be inaugurated as president, Foley wonders whether 'Huck Finn' ought to be sent back down the river. Why not replace it with a more modern, less discomfiting novel documenting the epic journey of discovery?

"The time has arrived to update the literature we use in high school classrooms," Foley wrote in a guest column this month for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. "Barack Obama is president-elect of the United States, and novels that use the 'N-word' repeatedly need to go."

Hmmm, let's see, how can I put this delicately? Oh, I've got it...

No. You're wrong.

How about, "Only if every piece of literature that has any word that any race or demographic can find offensive, regardless of context, comes off reading lists with it."

See where I'm going? Honors 12th Grade English would suddenly consist of The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew.

"It's just my experience teaching, especially 'Huck Finn.' Every year, it seems to be a tougher sell to the kids. I have a lot of passion for 'Huck Finn,' and my enthusiasm usually carries the book. But I have kids come up to me, very smart kids, who say, 'Mr. Foley, I hate this book.' " They hate not only the difficult dialogue, he said, but what students -- usually white ones -- object to as "demeaning stereotypes."

First - your students need to grow up. Not everything they read has to be (or will be) easy. I read EVERY FUCKING WORD of The Scarlet Letter and Of Human Bondage without pulling my eyes out (though I wanted to) or whining to my teacher. So can they. Oh, and Huck Finn is a tough read? Are you sure these students are "very smart kids"?

It's sad you have to try and educate the "angry mothers" of your students on the meaning of context as well as try to get your students to understand. You shouldn't have to. But it makes it that much more important that you take the effort to make the students, not give them an easier read. That way, maybe future teachers won't have angry parents asking why a book has the "N-word" in it.

If you can't do it, won't do it, or are too tired to do it, you need to find something else to do.

My Girls Get Whiplash

2009-01-15T13:15:00.004-05:00

At some point, about 25 years ago, I became enamored with speedmetal, thanks to a kid who sat next to me in Algebra II. I'm making sure my kids don't wait that long.

Actually, it's "Hit the Lights". Same album, though.

Daddy's little headbangers.

Announcing - My New Project

2009-01-15T00:02:00.005-05:00

While I've enjoyed writing this blog very much, it never seemed quite the right place to talk about a few of the things that really interest me. It's always been sort of a personal dumping ground for whatever was on my mind, whether it was fully formed or not, let the eclectic subjects flow, and throw in some references to my favorite horror author to boot. And this it will remain.

In my newly launched effort to reinvigorate one of my passions - brewing - I've seen an opportunity to merge it with another one of my passions - ships and naval history. Sorry, but I just don't see those two things fitting here at Cthulhu's Family Restaurant. Maybe it's the title, maybe it's the tone of the place, maybe we don't serve good beer here, maybe Cthulhu or Dagon would rise and utterly fuck-up any ship full of beer-drinking sailors that came by. Maybe it was Crummy's excellent writing about hobbies and getting in the zone that inspired me to focus some extra effort. For whatever reason, I can't put it here.

Enter my new project, Man O' War Brewery. I'll be documenting my efforts to resurrect my dead-but-dreaming brewing hobby, while taking some time to talk about nautical and naval history. Hopefully I'll be able to blend the two fairly well. Nautical themes go good with beer; plenty of breweries put ships on their bottles. It's very much a work in progress, but I figured I'll launch it now, and screw with formats and all the blah-blah as I go along. Oh...and if you know anyone who likes beer and ships, put in a good word for me!

I'll still be posting here of course, and it will remain the same whatever stuff it has been since I started. This is, after all, too much fun.

There. I've done it. Because I don't have enough to fucking do already.

Search For A Free Web-Based Brewing Tool

2009-01-12T23:03:00.005-05:00

I've decided to start brewing my own beer again. I once entertained a thought of actually brewing and selling my beer someday, but right now I'll just settle for brewing. It's been about 4 years since I seriously (seriously meaning 2 or more batches a year...which isn't that serious!) brewed, and two since I've made anything at all! But it's fun and easy to do, and I'm hoping to get back on the horse.

I decided to look for an online and free utility for brewing, and after a couple of quick searches I saw mention of Brewtility on a brewing forum. The site first came online as a place to store and share recipes as well as communicate with other brewers. It has a recipe generator (more on this later) and will soon have the ability to log brew sessions. Sounds awesome to me - I'm tired of using pencil and paper, and besides my brewing notes are so scattered, it'll be good to put them all in one spot online.

I've had a couple of glitches with it. I can't seem to upload a profile photo, and the recipe generator crapped out once on me trying to select hops for the recipe. In its defense, it auto-saved what I had done, so I didn't have to go back and rebuild the malt bill. I've emailed support about the picture (Cuz it's that cool picture of sailors drinking beer on shore leave in WWII.)

My first recipe is going to be an IPA. I made one a few years back that came out okay, but I missed my target gravity (that means I didn't have the amount of fermentable sugar I'd planned when I started fermenting and therefore came out "light" on the alcohol content). So, as best I could remember (I have the notes somewhere!) I put together the recipe on the generator and was very impressed.
Adding and subtracting ingredients is pretty intuitive. It flows well from top to bottom, and you can play with everything from mashing efficiency to the alpha acid content of the hops you select. You can also work in whatever scale/measurement system you want to use by adjusting your preferences.

The menus for recipe items (grains, extracts, hops and yeast) are pretty good, they even have "generic" liquid extract values on there, but not dry ones, which I prefer to use. Still, assuming one is like the other I could pick a DME (I used Breiss vice Coopers which I prefer). It would be nice to see a way to submit new items for consideration. The generator will even go as far to predict the final gravity, %ABV and calorie content for your beer.

So all that's left is to verify what I put in with my old notes and go from there. Once I dig up my gear, figure out what I need to replace, and buy the recipe.

All in all, I like what I see so far in Brewtility. It's not a big network - only a handful of active users - right now, but it has what I need so far until I can find a full-blown social network for actual brewers. I'll keep looking.

Just Freaking Write Something, Already!

2009-01-10T22:04:00.005-05:00

So, with losing home internet from Wed - Fri and being unable to post you'd think I would have tons and TONS of things to write about once I got back on.

Yeah, right...I'm surprised at how much nothing I got. Except for this goddam' head cold. So I guess I'm going with random updates because, you know, I have a blog, and I feel somewhat obligated to write something because I'd be guilty of...well...something, I'm sure, after all I was raised Catholic, so guilt is kind of like a food group.

I mentioned I had a greater than 50% chance of heading to Iraq or Afghanistan after this job was up this summer. Apparently, that meant about a 50.1% chance because the guy who figures out where I go next tells me no, I need to go to a school for a year first. So it looks like 2010 for me to head overseas again. Looks like we'll still be moving back to Rhode Island.

And I still need to get into shape - been a good week, interested to see what my weigh-in tells me tomorrow. I work on a plan where I eat right six days a week, and eat what I want on the seventh. Tomorrow is that seventh day. Fuck yeah, pancakes, waffles, bacon, eggs for breakfast, pork chops for dinner, and a trough of gravy-covered twinkies and frozen pizza rolls to consume between the two.

I KNOW you've seen this poor bastard by now. But did you know Brian Kilmeade wants to put two fingers in his frigid crack?

I haven't done a "Songs So Cheesy I Had To Put Them On My iPod" post in a while. This one isn't cheesy, but packed with folksy-dirty innuendo. I have a penchant for old sea songs and chanties, and this is one of my favorites. I especially enjoy the use of 18th century naval gunnery terms as metaphors for post-coital complications. Because, you know, guns as metaphors for penises is a stretch...

While Cruising Round Yarmouth - Ewan MacColl & A.L. Lloyd

Speaking of "fair damsels, the wind blowing free..."

The 2009 Women of Maritime Calendar (H/T @petermello)is apparently available online. I just love a woman who can sweat a halyard and reef a spanker. Look, I didn't come up with the title cuz if I did, the women wouldn't be "of" an adjective. It's kind of like saying I'm a man of sleepy.

My Focus Has Been Elsewhere Lately

2009-01-06T22:24:00.003-05:00

As I mentioned a few days ago, I'm in for some big transition this year, and one of the things I must do to prepare for it is to get in shape. 'Cuz I'm fairly well out of shape. It sucks because I've had a pretty good "fitness" track record. I know how to eat and exercise to get into great shape, and I've "been there". But once I started slipping a couple of years back, the slide was gradual but significant. Yeah we know, you "used to be", blah-blah-blah.

Anyway, I'm back on it. The biggest difficulty for me has been putting everything together into a cohesive plan and TRACKING PROGRESS without it taking up my whole damned day. Writing in printed workout journals, making up spreadsheets to record and generate workouts and track nutrition, it just took up too much freakin' time. Of course, that was before I found out there is a social network that helps you track all that stuff in a fraction of the time.

I found out about it when I was poking around my good friend and cousin's blog and clicked on one of his friends' blogs while going through his blogroll.

I won't go through the technical aspects of it - if you're interested in a good review, go to the link above - but I guess I should try to say something about what I think of it...

The nutrition portion of the site is telling me to eat about 300 - 700 more calories per day than I am normally used to when "on my usual program". I don't think I am going to force them down. I work on a "grazing" scheme - that is, 6 small meals a day - that gives me around 2400 calories a day, and I am comfortable with that. Also, the nutrition recommends a 40/30/30 carb/protein/fat ratio, but I run closer to a 40/40/20. Like 40/30/30, 40/40/20 works well - you end up being a little tighter on fat and more liberal with protein, and I've seen the split recommended more for a muscle-gaining diet. However you chop it up, it makes it easy to see how you're doing. Also, as long as I'm feeding regularly (every 3 hours) my body will be able to sustain a slightly greater rate of fat loss with the greater deficit.

My favorite part of the workout portion is not only that I can actually take a printout of my weight training workout to the gym, but that each printout is in effect a 3-workout record, unlike other journals I've seen where one page is one day. It's good to have several at a glance.

Okay, there. I've managed to NOT go three days without posting, and even said what I thought about something. After two days I'm feeling great. Of course that's the easy part - I'm motivated and I know my first weigh-in will be a lot less than what I weighed Monday because of the excess water and bloat that flushes out when you start regular exercise and up your water intake (I'm probably drinking about a gallon a day).

Seriously, if you're like me - you like to (and CAN) work out effectively, but haven't been able to get motivated in large part by not having the right tracking tool, give this a gander. Look for huzzah70; that'll be me.

Surf, Stoke and Fish Tacos

2009-01-03T00:49:00.002-05:00

So this past Monday I get back into the office after an all-too-indulgent Christmas, and among the mail is this letter. I open it and this flimsy little fridge calendar from a Huntington Beach taco stand is the first thing I pull out. Suddenly, I am more stoked than I have been in years.

Photo from surfline.com

Suddenly in my mind I'm the guy in the lower right. I'm paddling out, maybe for the first time, maybe for the 20th time, it doesn't matter because on a day like that I'm surfing until I think my arms are going to fall off, and then I'm going to surf some more. If it's morning I've been in the water since just before sunrise, if it's evening and the form is still good, I'm going to be in for some time after it's gone down. If it's a weekday chances are I pulled up on the way home from Long Beach, stepped out of the car, wrapped a towel around my waist and pulled my uniform off and wetsuit on right on the side of the road.

It didn't matter what time of day I was in the water - because when I got out, I strapped the board back on the car and headed to Las Barcas for some fish tacos. The best fish tacos in the world. It's a fucking fact. Just look at the goddam thing! I could try to describe the taste, but I would fail miserably. There is good Mexican food, and then there is truly good Mexican food. These things were always fresh and made to order. The corn tortillas were always soft and warm without crumbling, the fish grilled (NOT fried!) to perfection, fresh chips and salsa made right there. Squirt some lemon, take a bite, and I...

Yeah. They're that good. I'm ready to get on a plane now.

My favorite ritual was Saturdays. Hit the water about 6am, get out about noon, head to Las Barcas. Get two fish tacos to go, grab a six pack from the bait/liquor store next door and head back to my apartment. Tacos and beer while I watched Bruce Brown movies until I fell asleep on the couch - salty, exhausted, satiated and mellow. Wake up about 4pm, get my ass back down to the pier and catch the "evening glass" before hitting the clubs with my friends.

That ritual ended for the most part in 1994, when I headed to central California to grad school, but new waves and experiences awaited in Monterey. Since then, I have NEVER missed a chance to have a Las Barcas fish taco. Driving from Rhode Island to San Diego in 97 with my new wife, I introduced her to them. Visiting my Best Man in HB in 03, we met there for lunch and I introduced my son to it. My last ship was in San Diego for a port visit in 2005. One night I decide I need one of these fish tacos so I drive two hours to Huntington Beach, order three, eat three, get in the car and drive right back to the ship.

So back in November I'm talking to an acquaintance and his college-age daughter who happens to go to school in California and living in Orange County. We get to talking about surfing Huntington Beach and I describe the above food of the Gods. Said acquaintance mentions he's heading out to California for some business, and makes note of Las Barcas, saying he'll see if he can get there.

Which brings me back to this letter. He thanks me profusely for my recommendation, completely agrees that they are the best fish tacos on earth, and states he ate three. He also mentioned that he bodysurfed at the pier a bit, and found himself in the rip current alongside the pier and got so tired he needed to hitch a ride in with a longboarder. I warned him about the rip at the pier.

But still...that calendar. That I could share this memory that means so much to me with someone, who in turn could experience it for himself and send me this tiny token of his appreciation that brings everything rushing back - the surf, the fish tacos, the beer, the trips to Mexico, all those memorable waves, the friends, the sheer stoke of youth...

That is truly special.

Change I Can Count On...

2009-01-02T13:39:00.003-05:00

Okay, so I have an incomplete post I'm working on, and really want to finish, because it's a great story (well, to ME it is!) but I'm putting it on the backburner for the obligatory "This is what's gonna' be different in the new year" post. No, I'm not talking about 20 January; because this year is going to be really different.

Change - in this case it will be closer to a complete transformation - in life is inevitable. "No change is un-permanent; but change is". Thank you, Geddy.

First, someone is coming this summer to take my job. That's the benefit of my line of work; you know (to within a month or so) when you'll be moving on so you can plan your life around it. The big career-managing office in the sky has paired names with jobs, and in that list is a name next to my job, and I'm just waiting to hear who it is so I can get to managing when it happens. Set a date, make a schedule, show him everything, sign the paperwork, and bam! The show is his. That's the easy part.

The really big change for us is going the transition to MY next job, which will prove ... interesting. I'm pretty sure (I'll give it better than even money) it will involve a place that ends in "-raq" or "-istan", (an outside chance of Southeast Asia or the Horn of Africa), for a year. Setting up my family to get along without me for a year is my top priority for the next six months. Even if I don't go straight out of this job, I WILL go out of my next one. Just the nature of the beast.

So I guess I don't have resolutions so much as I have plans. Get the rest of our debt gone, get the family back to Rhode Island close to our extended family, and set to move into our home once our renters leave, and figure out how the heck we're going to make more living space (either by finishing the basement or financing an addition) for a family of six.

And for me? Get the Hell into shape. While this old sailor's job probably won't be running around the desert or the mountains in "full battle rattle" I hope not to be sitting in cubicles sipping coffee and making powerpoint slides either.

I Will Start the New Year With A Blatant Plug...

2009-01-01T22:19:00.002-05:00

...for my better half and her new project, One Moment a Day (A Year of Moments, in Photographs).

Y'see, since I started taking this blog semi-seriously with NaBloPoMo back in November, I've been bugging her to start writing on her first blog again. Well, maybe that will (ahem!) happen again, but she's also started up this new one that showcases her mad camera skills, one day at a time. The first photo is of my four favorite minions; I can't wait to see what the other 364 are...

The Day New Year's Eve Really Started To Mean Something

2008-12-31T21:25:00.005-05:00

So once upon a time somebody decides arbitrarily (or maybe not so arbitrarily) that the planets current location in its orbit around the Sun is the beginning of its next orbit, and that day is called January 1st, the first day of the New Year. All these centuries later, as if we're passing "Go" and collecting another $200 we're supposed to celebrate it. I did for a while, until I realized that a drunk December 31st is just like a drunk (month/day here) only riskier because everyone else is out being stupid, too.

So New Year's Eve just became another night quietly spent, especially once I became a husband and father. Have some drinks, have them at home, relax...

Until 31 December 2003, when the fetus inside my 38-weeks pregnant wife failed a non-stress test/bio-physical profile. She was already transitioning into labor, so the doctors helped her along with some additional hormones and at 10pm EXACTLY my oldest daughter came into the world.

So for five years now, I've finally been given a reason to celebrate December 31st. That reason is a bright, artistic, athletic girl, who is an amazing singer (her whole life is a musical, to hear her tell-no, sing - it), a wonderful improvisational dancer, and a great soccer player. Oh, and she's hard-headed, knows what she wants, and is not afraid to ask for it or just go get it for herself.

Happy Birthday, my dear.

Love,

Dad

Miskatonic Institute of Shitty Poetry

2008-12-29T15:16:00.004-05:00

Today is a day of firsts. My first remote blog post from my iPod Touch (courtesy of overpriced coffee house wi-fi) and the first poem I've written in the strange aeons since high school, the last time I was required to do so.
So hold your nose:

Laughing poison of decay
We stare like helpless fools
Dancing broken
By trust in naked greed.

Thank you, thank you, I promise I won't do it again. But you see, a friend of mine pointed out this here site and I had to give it a try.

H/T @billmarrs

For Those Who Cannot Be Here

2008-12-25T00:45:00.006-05:00

The kids have long since fallen asleep, and the gifts are finally wrapped and we can go to bed. But before we do I'd like to share one more Christmas song, based on accounts of Christmas on the battle fields of World War I. I usually don't care for modern songs (or Christmas poems!) that support/thank/pay tribute to servicemen or put them on pedestals. Many of them just seem too contrived - drop some buzzwords like defending freedom, flags, etc., with a catchy tune and voila...people feel good an you make money. They seem more born of the desire to idealize and generalize than empathize with someone "standing the watch".

This song is more heartfelt, to me.

Christmas in the Trenches

It was interesting reading of these occurrences when I was young, though the meaning really didn't sink in until later in life. It's a hopeful song. If Christmas, whatever it is/means, is enough to get mortal enemies to put aside their quarrel for even a day, then there is hope.

To those of you standing the watch, walking a post, far away from your friends and family, Merry Christmas. Stay safe, and come home soon.

------
UPDATE: WOW!!! Check the history note for today! I had NO IDEA that's what it was going to be when I started writing!