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I read whatever’s close at hand when I’m on my exercise bike. Last month it was A Connecticut Yankee etc, last week it was Animal Farm, today it was Bachelor Boys: the Young Ones Book.

There’s this part called “the new kama sutra” where Mike The Cool Person is demonstrating sexual positions with a blow-up doll. His name for one position, “The Gentlemen’s Excuse-me,” nearly made me fall out of my seat.

Here are the complete scripts of the show, Seasons 1 & 2:

The Young Ones

Sort of related to the last post, in the book Neil ruminates on a method of cheating:

Well, like, I go along with Mike’s pizza method, except I would use only one lentil.

Yes I would carry only one lentil’s worth of information into that exam. Because I have been inside my head, and on that journey, I asked myself, ‘Oh Neil, how much information can be got onto one lentil?’ and my head replied, ‘All the information in the world Neil, if need be.’

And I pondered this long. Considering the camel and the eye of the needle, and the angels on the head of a pin, and finally I say the great truth that this idea implied. ‘It would have to be a fucking big lentil,’ I said, and my head replied to me, ‘Yes, it would.’

When I was 10 or 11 or so, and a Cub Scout, my mom was a Den Mother. I’m certain she didn’t want to be a Den Mother, responsible for 20 unruly thuglings in blue with yellow trim. I have to ask her about that. In retrospect, it seems as though it would have been an irritating gig.

My buddy in the Cub Scouts, Chris Bazar (who may or may not be one of the several Chris Bazars that can be Googled up at any time) and I, at one meeting, scoured the Cub Scout handbook for loopholes. Our aim was to scavenge as many Arrowhead awards—maybe that’s what they were called—as we could, while putting minimal effort into the scavenging.

For some reason, we were very rules-oriented, and consequently very loophole-oriented. Somehow, that is the Life Lesson that we learned in early elementary school. You didn’t write your name in the top right corner of the assignment? You didn’t make sure you crossed out the letter with a slash instead of an x? Minus five points for you.

I blame our teachers. Also, Society.

In the scouting handbook, we found an entry for code-making. As I recall it, for every two language codes that a child created, one arrowhead would be awarded. The codes were simple, just quick letter-transpositions of short, secret messages, eg: “Margaret is the funk-meister of the universe” would be transposed, by letter substitution, to “Nbshbsfu jt uif gvol-nfjtufs pg uif vojwfstf.”

Very simple. Chris and I were excited; even at our tender ages, we realized that we had discovered an Arrowhead goldmine. We had rejected several other Arrowhead tasks that we’d read up on, because they all had limits written into the explanatory paragraph on the number of Arrowheads one could acquire. This entry, this secret code task, had no written limits. A cornucopia of Arrowheads awaited us.

An hour later, toward the end of the meeting, Chris and I had churned out fifty different codes, good for 25 Arrowheads. Our chests would be heavy at the next meeting with small gold and silver triangles of cloth. We were pleased with ourselves.

My mother was not so pleased. Even after we showed her the limitations set on various other tasks, and the clear fact that the Secret Code task had no written limitations, she refused to approve our work. While being pulled and nagged by several other Cub Scouts who were clamoring for her attention concerning their piddling little tasks, she looked over our evidence, then ruled that—even though we were correct, even though there were no limits, even though we had adhered to the letter of the law—she was only going to give us credit for three Arrowheads.

Chris and I were appalled. Here we were, working within the system, cagily using it to achieve the greatest amount of glory for the smallest amount of work, and my own mother arbitrarily created a new rule that crushed our initiative.

Eventually, I forgave her. Over time, I even extracted a lesson out of the fiasco: Rules can be changed. Rules are mutable. Rules aren’t a priori notions that are lying about waiting to be written down, they are flexible things that real people create, and so real people can change them when they no longer work the way they were designed to work.

It was a hard lesson for a couple of Cub Scouts to absorb. I believe that it even led to several tawdry cheating incidents that came later, both discovered and undiscovered, through faulty application of the moral.

But in the end, I think I got it.

I must speak of Curling.

I actually enjoyed watching Curling at the Winter Olympics a couple years ago. The rules seemed to be obvious, and I could understand the commenters’ critiques of the various teams’ strategies. All in all, Curling doesn’t appear to violate any of my four laws (I’m giving it the benefit of the doubt on the hot dog rule).

But Curling’s out, obviously, so I have to make up a new rule that it does violate: “The use of whiskbrooms is not allowed in any Olympic Sport.”

There, I feel much better.

There is an alternate reality— you’re just going to have to trust me on this— wherein it’s finally my turn to be Galactic President. In this alternate reality, as Galactic President, I have definite views on what should and what should not be an olympic sport, and I have the power to turn these views into laws.

My first law, law number one, is that, if a competitor receives extra points for smiling, then that competition is not an olympic sport.

Therefore, synchronized swimming is out. Case closed.

Law number two states that, if a competition requires a panel of judges to issue an opinion concerning style, then that competition is not an olympic sport.

Therefore, gymnastics is out. So is ballroom dancing. I am fully aware that both gymnastics and ballroom dancing require extremely capable people to perform well. Doesn’t matter. They also require style judges. They’re out.

Law number three, an extremely important law, states that, if a competition requires a soundtrack, it’s not an olympic sport.

This means that floor gymnastics is disqualified on two counts. Maybe even three, though today I was watching this competition on NBC and couldn’t tell definitively whether the Chinese woman smiled, so I’m willing to allow that smiling isn’t a critical part of the event.

Faster, higher, stronger, farther. That’s what the Olympics in this alternate reality are about.

My rulings on chess and bowling are hotly debated.

They’re out, of course, but they’re out because of law number four, which states that any competition wherein one can eat six hot dogs before the event, and six hot dogs after the event, and still be a top competitor, is out.

Sumo wrestling is out; those people are killing themselves.

Competitive eating is out.

Judging “alternate me” by my laws, one could make a case that I have some inherent bias against gymnastics. That case would be solid. It’s not true, however, that I don’t admire what a top-notch gymnast does. On the contrary, they do amazing things.

Today, I was watching the women’s floor program. These women were clearly doing things that I couldn’t do in a million years. And they looked great doing it. However, “things I couldn’t do in a million years” should not be the litmus test for Olympic competition. Using that criterion, one should be able to win medals in octopus-eating and competitive cup-stacking.

These are not competitions you will find in the Olympics in the alternate reality wherein I’m finally Galactic President.

This place is in the middle of nowhere:

http://www.tristantimes.com/cat_32.html

There’s nothing wrong with Tristanians at all that a little experience wouldn’t help. It would open up their minds and the ability to work and develop new ideas and I think the Falklands, in many ways, are ideal for this because it’s a small community so they don’t get totally over-awed. They might do if they went off to the UK. The economies are similar. I mean, it’s fishing and agriculture. Though the Falklands are much larger, it’s very similar and it would make them feel at home so they wouldn’t feel over-awed when they got here.

Lucky Tristanian students are sent to the Falkland Islands to soak up real civilization.

This may be where I retire to.

So, like I said, this site provides musical graphs and pie charts. It’s looked at what I’ve played on the computer for the last couple of months, and here are several things that it’s noticed:

1) I’ve listened to a lot of Tenacious D.

2) I’ve listenend to a lot of Jonathan Richman and Wire.

3) I’ve listened to a lot of Janis Joplin and Dusty Springfield.

4) I haven’t listened to much Who at all.

It’s obviously a skewed sampling. First, it’s only music that I have on the computer. Mostly, I only listen to that when I’m riding my exercise bike. So, by God, there’s going to be a lot of Tenacious D to help me through. Second, it’s only a sampling of the last couple of months. There are many many bands I like, but haven’t listened to for a couple months.

There are, though, several interesting things that surfaced in the ‘rankings.’ One is that the Beatles are at #8. I can tell you that the Beatles got to #8 without breaking a sweat. I have zero Beatles albums on the computer; just a few isolated songs. They get played.

Another is that Dusty Springfield has nowhere to go but down. “Son of a Preacher Man” is on one of my ‘working out’ rotations; when that gets demoted—and it will, eventually— Dusty will take a dive.

Number 10? Elvis Costello. He’s got nowhere to go but up.

Number 20? The Soft Boys. I think that’s a pretty solid ranking; they won’t go anywhere.

I’m on this thing called audioscrobbler, which is, I think, based in the UK. Basically, it provides an add-on to Winamp that tracks what I listen to on the computer, crunches some numbers, then provides me with graphs and piecharts to show me what I listen to.

It’s all done automatically, of course. The graphs and numbers are interesting, but where audioscrobbler provides an actual service is when it compares me to other people in the database, and then provides me with a list of users that listen to similar things, and a list of the bands and songs that they listen to. So I can check their graphs and pie-charts to find bands that I don’t listen to, but who maybe I should listen to, because I might like them.

I’m certain audioscrobbler isn’t the only service that does this. It’s just the one I stumbled onto.

So, over the last several months, I’ve been checking the site haphazardly to find new stuff, because I’m bored. During one of those checks, I noticed that audioscrobbler had provided all the information that I’d automatically divulged to Winamp to this other site, “last.fm.”

Finding this out filled me with dismay. I certainly hadn’t told audioscrobbler that they could willy nilly give my Winamp info out to third parties. It was outrageous! This was the exact reason why I’m so loathe to hand out any information on the net; in fact, I’ll surf past a site that requires cookies without a second thought. If it requires cookies, I don’t want to see it.

So, as I was screwing myself into the ceiling over this egregious breach of manners, I was checking out “last.fm.” They had everything that I had supplied audioscrobbler. Hell, they even had my login, not to mention the same password.

Of course, that’s a good thing and a bad thing.

It’s good in that (I realized) this site was controlled by the same people as the audioscrobbler site. It was, in fact, almost the same site, only with a different url and a slightly spiffier look.

It’s a bad thing because audioscrobbler didn’t tell me this was going to happen.

It’s a good thing because (I think) audioscrobbler isn’t sophisticated enough to know they gave the appearance of supplying my data to a third party.

It’s a bad thing because any web service provider should be sophisticated enough to know this.

In the end, it’s pretty egregiously bad, but innocent, and I like the content, so I let it slide. And to top it off, the port to ‘last.fm’ provides me, the user, with access to a radio metaphor that isn’t on audioscrobbler proper. So I get to click a button and listen to music that users who appear to like music that I like listen to.

That’s how I’m listening to Tomorrow Never Knows by the Beatles as I type, which is, in the end, a very good thing.

This was a formative movie for me—the original, not the one with the bunny cast. I remember being at Brian’s house in the afternoon, waiting for HBO to begin its evening of programming— HBO used to have a daily beginning to its programming. I can remember what Brian’s house smelled like, with its big rooms and Teac tapedeck and pool beyond the sliding glass door: it smelled like the seventies.

We, of course, saw The Shining so many times that we memorized the entire script. It was one of my first infatuations with a work of art. I remember reciting the script of the entire movie with David at Tom Smith’s house, while we shot pool with Tom and surreptitiously ogled Tom’s luscious sister.

I can remember the smell of Tom’s house: a brilliant, pregnant smell. The smell of the seventies.

I suppose I’m frightened, for the first time in my adult life (and what am I? 41?) that things are spinning toward doom, or at least shittiness.

The only reason W is our president now is that we, as Americans, have short attention spans. We came through 8 years of Clinton, where life was pretty good; so good, in fact, that we started worrying about who was sucking the President’s dick.

That, I submit, is a pretty fine worry to have. It means that all the real problems are taken care of.

So there was this election, where people felt pretty good (except for the dick thing), so the people began to think that things just naturally work out for the best. And since things naturally work out for the best, it was our duty to fix the dick thing.

That’s what people thought. They forgot that there are bigger issues out there than the President’s dick. Who can blame them? Everything was ticking along so well, it was time to attend to the paltry things.

Now people are realizing that things don’t necessarily have to work out for the best. At least, I hope that’s what they’re realizing. Our environment is being raped, the economy is fucked; it’s time to get our minds off Clinton’s dick and start fixing this thing. You know?

I fear that W may squeak out another term. That’s my fear. I’ve never really had a political fear before, but I have one now. If he does manage to get another term, we are royally fucked. The environment’s fucked, the economy’s fucked, our safety’s fucked– I’ll say it: our way of life is fucked.

That’s what I fear.

Not a day goes by that I’m not eager to meet some man named “Aloysius.” I fear it won’t happen.

I did know a “Norbert” once. Also “Sunrise.”

I’m blessed to have met a man named “Sunrise.”

I almost named my second kid “Biko,” but my wife talked me out of it.

Unfortunate Names

I’ve spent the last three hours mesmerized by the free wireless connection that my laptop has tapped into. I was able to download many programs that I’ve come to depend on while using my regular ‘puter, but have been too lazy to transfer to the laptop via my linksys cables and paraphernalia.

And yet, 95% of these programs had to do with the web. Only one—winamp—had any use beyond it. So now that I’ve done all this, I’m left with a kind of embarrassing realization: this free connection doesn’t really matter. It’s not going to make me get rid of the dsl connection I’m paying for; it’s too haphazard for that (not to mention too fraught with concerns of morality, or at least courtesy). It does allow me to sit in a completely different room while I surf, true. Frankly, though, the comfiest comfy chair in the house is the one that I’m sitting in now, in front of my ‘mainframe.’

So what I’m left with is the sly joy of receiving something I already have for no more than I’m already paying.

I thought this was going to be more fun than that. One reads of actual people who drive around in their cars looking for unencrypted wireless connections, and I never had reason to question the sly motivation to do that before now.

I guess it’s because they’re up to no good.

Apparently my neighbor doesn’t have his computer turned on all the time, which is a travesty. I’ll have to talk up the benefits of continuous connections at the next block party, provided I can think of some, and provided we have a block party. Until then, the erratic nature of my freeloading connection will be cause for concern.

Today I fired up my laptop to make sure it still works. It does, but it also is doing a golden, golden, unlooked-for thing: it’s tapped into somebody’s nearby wireless connection. Some neighbor of mine has unknowingly picked up a freeloader.

How do I feel about this? I feel great. Great! My house is now a “wireless hotspot.” A very inexpensive wireless hotspot.

[cue diabolical laughter] Exxxcellent!