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When I was a kid I wondered whether I’d turn in to one of the guys I read about, guys who ordered hot toddies in cherry-paneled rooms. Guys who smoked meerschaum pipes or large cigars while waiting for the butler to bring them the toddies warmed to the proper degree. It was a possibility, like being a race-car driver or an astronaut was a possibility. It was a possibility the way anything’s a possibility to a boy who reads and imagines.

Just today, years later, I decided, even though I never did turn into that kind of guy (‘Huh.’), that I wanted a hot toddy. Or at least an Irish coffee, which always sounded, well, pretty good. Real things get done and real decisions get made over hot toddies. Or days of yore get affably re-imagined through warm, moist prisms. I just had a hankering.

So I stopped off on the way home at a Slidell convenience store I’ve been to that I know sells the crucial hot toddy and Irish coffee ingredients, and what’s more, sells them in the aisles so you don’t have to stare at the proprietor for any length of time while trying to make what is for me an out-of-the-ordinary decision, one I was put up to by the likes of meerschaum-smoking detectives from books I read long ago. I’m talking about Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson, of course; they put me up to this, put me up to it very specifically.

So I’m looking at all the whiskeys and whiskys and gins and rums in large bottles sitting in the aisle shelves, thinking, “My, that’s a lot of alcohol. Far too much for a toddy.” I pulled something called Old #7 off the shelf (which I could tell was superior toddy-makings because of the price), then put it back. It was too much of a commitment, especially for a beer drinker such as myself. I started toward the coolers, deflated, when I saw another whole row of toddy-makings behind the counter, over the proprietor’s head. These were much smaller than what I’d been looking at; I guessed about a fifth the size. Yes, pretty close to a fifth.

So I confidently told him I wanted a fifth of Old #7, there behind you my good man. And chop-chop! Hot toddies await the successful conclusion of this transaction!

He looked at me with fairly well-disguised contempt (at war with himself over whether he wanted more to make money from an imminent economic transaction or to delight in belittling the man who obviously fell off a turnip truck, then got hit by another turnip truck passing the other way) and directed my view back whence I’d come; “Those are the fifths over there.”

Needless to say, I was caught. Red-handed! My ignorance flopping around on the floor like some sort of half-hearted flopping thing. And the raft of liquor drinkers milling through the stacks suddenly stopped to look at me more closely. There was Skinny Pete and Smoking Joe, cornering the gin market. Delilah carting her wine out to her Impala, who missed a step but kept going since she didn’t want any trouble. Franklin Forsythe; Ed; Wall-eyed Sam, the baker man; they were all there.

In short, the ruse that I was a spirits drinker from way back, like everyone else in the store, of course I was, it went without saying, was exposed by my lack of knowing the first thing—the first thing—about the ethnography of the liquor people. And I think I truly dumbfounded them. Here was this, what, forties? fifties? …old guy who had somehow gotten old without knowing what a fifth of liquor looked like. How could this be? Where is he from? Why is he here? Who had put him up to this?

I fully understood how freakish I must have looked to them. Like the Elephant Man, if the Elephant Man didn’t know how to buy booze. But did I leave the store, tail between my legs, trunk swinging like all get-out, with no toddy ingredients, never to be seen there again? I certainly could have. That would’ve been pretty easy. It almost happened.

Here’s what really happened: “That’s a fifth over there? I don’t want that. it’s too venti. Venti! I’m looking for grande, the middle one over there, no, not the tall one, I know it’s tall; the tall one to the left. Grande is that one in th-, yes, that one. That’s the one! Whew! Thank you. And a pack of Marlboros in the box. No, not the 25’s, the, the, yes those. How much is it all? Here you are and a good day to you.”

Was I triumphant? No. No I wasn’t. I was the Elephant Man. But in the end, I did have a hot toddy of my own creation this evening. And I’m fully confident I can return to the same store and speak Starbucks to them and they will at least eventually give me what I want, with more a vague sense of unease than bald contempt. So call it a draw.

I could totally go for a kick-ass, homemade margarita right now. Right. Now. But I have no ingredients. I don’t even know what goes in a margarita; spanish-speaking persons in dimly lit restaurants make almost my entire yearly intake of margaritas. Probably there’s tequila in there, and triple sec. Do I know what triple sec is? I do not. But it’s probably in there.

I have some thousand island dressing and some grapes in the fridge. I’m pretty sure those don’t get me any closer to a kick-ass homemade margarita, which is the thing I could really go for. Right. Now.

No one talks about Fight Club anymore, you ever notice that?

Consider the classic hypothetical scenario: Your house is on fire and you can take only three things with you before the entire structure becomes engulfed in flames. What would you take?

This one’s pretty easy for me. There’s not a chance in hell that my brain would know what to do beforehand. I don’t have a mental rolodex of things ranked in any kind of way–importance, expensiveness, color, anything–that I can get to fast enough to affect my decision of what to take from my burning house and what to leave behind, once I get past the people and the animals. I’d have to think about it, and the scenario is set up, obviously, in such a way that I can’t think about it.

So in the end, when the firemen arrive, they’ll probably find me sitting on the curb in my smoking clothing holding a banana and a spoon.

I was listening to “Don’t Fear the Reaper” the other day
For probably the first time in a long time

My heart was in my throat, wishing them well
In their mighty trek

around all those helper verbs

Through that thicket, that rock n roll briar patch
Past the bleaching bones of stupid warriors

“She had taken his hand, she had become like they are”

Bless their hearts.

Adriano Celentano takes a stab at sounding like he’s singing English without really singing English:

If this is what Italians think English speakers sound like, we sound pretty frickin awesome. And talk about our dance moves!

You know how it’s said that a hybrid gets better city mileage than highway mileage because 1) the gas engine shuts off when the car is stopped, and 2) because of regenerative braking? That’s gotta be bullshit, and here’s why:  an object in motion tends to stay in motion. Newton, law-giver.

For example: say you’ve got your Prius cruising along at 40 mph. You see the light up ahead turning yellow, so you slow to a stop. Yes, the regenerative braking is recovering some percentage of the energy the car put into accelerating to 40 mph, but it’s not recovering 100% of that energy. In fact, a website I went to today (since navigated away from and lost) rates regenerative braking as delivering between 5 and 10% of a hybrid’s fuel economy (which translates into some unknown but less than 100% efficient energy conservation). In other words, if the stoplight hadn’t been there, the Prius would’ve continued merrily along at 40 mph without losing any energy to braking.

Second, at the stoplight, the Prius’ engine shuts down for the wait. Yes, no fuel is being used at the stop, but on the other hand, no mileage is being run up either. It’s a wash. But, you say, when the light turns green and the Prius accelerates back up, most of that acceleration is accomplished by the electric motor before the engine kicks back on; there’s your savings!

Im gegenteil mein freund!  The electric motor is solely charged via the gasoline-powered engine. Yes, in the several seconds after the stoplight, the energy is taken from the electric motor, but at some point down the road, that energy has to be replaced by transferring it from the gasoline engine back to the electric motor’s battery, with some concomitant loss of energy during the transference. Newton.

So why are hybrids touted to be so much more efficient in the city than on the highway? It just don’t add up. It just don’t add up. My guess (and it’s just a guess, albeit an incredibly educated and insightful one) is that it has everything to do with average speed and wind resistance. My guess–educated, insightful, and of an overall incredible nature–is that if a Prius were tested on the highway (meaning no starting and stopping) at an identical average mph as that achieved in city driving, its mileage would be significantly better than what it could achieve in the city, owing to reduction in wind resistance (from that at normal highway cruising speed to that at 40mph) and Isaac Newton. Because speed increases linearly, while the amount of energy necessary to overcome wind resistance increases exponentially (several of my brain cells swear this is a true statement based on graphs they remember seeing long ago, and that’s good enough for me).

Insightful, you say? Incredibly educated? Darn tootin’.

In sum: it’s obvious and goes without saying that a hybrid gets better gas mileage in city driving than a non-hybrid because of its ability to shut down its gas engine from time-to-time, as well as its being equipped with regenerative braking. But given the same average speeds (admittedly not going to happen) in highway vs city driving, a hybrid does not magically pull energy out of a hat to become somehow more efficient in the city than it is on the highway; the only reason that a hybrid achieves “better fuel economy” in the city is that, at average city-driving speeds, wind resistance is much less of a factor than at average real-world highway speeds. Therefore, the commonly-understood, commonly cited, but wrong, assumption that a hybrid’s better city mileage versus highway mileage arises from some laws-of-physics-defying aspect of stop-and-go driving is an often-parroted but chowder-headed massive misunderstanding of what is really going on.

And that’s the way it is, this eleventh of January, 2010. Courage.

I started riding my bicycle again this week for the first time in a long time. You’ve probably seen me on the road; I’m that guy you pass that you look at for a couple seconds, then say, “Well, good for him!”

I used to be the guy you passed on the road and said “Jesus, I’ve got to get in shape!” I’m not that guy anymore. It’s been a few years now since I was that guy. Maybe I’ll be that guy again, it’s hard to say.

At least I’m not the guy you pass and say “I hope he talked with his doctor before doing that” or even the “My God! Somebody call an ambulance!” guy. Nope, I’m not either one of them.

I’m hoping to go in the other direction, back upstream. Upstream was a nice place as I recall. I think the “Jesus” guy is the sweet spot (or, for this metaphor, the slickest rock in the creek). I liked being him, if only for a little while. It takes a little maintenance to be that guy (which is why he isn’t me right now), but I think it’s still possible. Sure; why not?

There is a guy who’s fitter than that guy: the guy you see riding along the side of the road, perfect form, even breather, lightning quick. The guy other people, as they pass him in their cars, prayerfully urge to eat shit and then immediately get to dying. Now that’s a guy!

But he’s not the slickest rock in the creek. That title goes to the guy who can eat a slice of pizza or have a beer whenever he wants to.

“Can people levitate?”
“‘Can people levitate?’”
“Oh, I knew I shouldn’t have asked.”
“‘Can people levitate?’”
“Don’t…. I mean, it’s ‘No,’ isn’t it?”
“…… Yes, it is ‘No.’”

You know how scientists and historians are liable to liken the total time civilization has existed versus the total time the earth has existed to “the blink of an eye?” At the drop of a hat? I’ve always taken their word for that. I mean, why would scientists and historians lie to me, or be so sloppy that they screwed up on such a common comparison? They’re not typically liars and slobs. But I, for no other reason than I’m here in Miami with time to waste, decided to actually check that comparison. You lucky, lucky people!

First, I want to make it clear that I believe I’m the first one to check this comparison ever, in the history of the world. I realize that’s a powerful statement, but a 50 second Google investigation leads me to believe it’s true, and that’s good enough for me.

Second, to even make sense of the “blink of an eye” statement as a comparison, I realized I needed to know what unit of time the blink was being compared to. I mean, you can’t just say “civilization is to blink of an eye” as “age of the earth is to blank” without providing options for “blank.” That would be thoughtless and cruel. That would also get you a vicious, well-earned beating at an SAT exam if you were proctoring the test.  So I had to apply a little common sense to this. What biological process would a scientist or historian pair with “the blink of an eye” when trying to stun the reader with how really big the time difference is  between  the lifespan of civilization and the lifespan of the world? What biological process could they use? It’s, of course, a gigantic differential, a geological one; no one’s disputing that. At least no one near enough for me to reach out and slap some sense into. In the end, the only thing that seems reasonable to put up against that huge disparity is the human lifespan. And I think that’s a reasonable conclusion for any non-slappable person, especially when I can now word it like this: “civilization is to blink of an eye as earth’s lifespan is to human’s lifespan.” See how pleasing and SAT-ish that looks?

Third, now that I’ve identified my terms, the only thing I have to do prior to figuring out if I’m being lied to is to rigorously define these terms, viz: 1)time-length of civilization, 2)time-length of eye-blink, 3)time-length of earth’s existence, and 4)time-length of human life:

1. The length of time civilization’s been around depends on your definition of civilization. That doesn’t really apply here, of course; I don’t personally care what your definition is. My definition depends only on googling “when did civilization begin?”, clicking through to 2 or 3 different sites that appear the least bit relevant, grabbing some numbers, adding those numbers up, then dividing by the number of numbers added. Civilization’s been around for 7,000 years.

2. Wiki-answers answers “How long does it take to blink an eye” as if the question were about how much time humans go between eyeblinks. That definition had never occurred to me. It seemed, in fact, like bullshit. On the other hand, it also seemed like one of those things that was obvious to everybody else in the world, yet I had somehow managed to get wrong for decades. Luckily for my sanity, searchengineguide.com timed an eyeblink at about a tenth of a second, which conformed to my previous thinking, so wiki-answers is indeed a-bursting with bullshit.

3. If I’d approached the age of the earth in the same way as I approached the age of civilization (1 above), I would’ve had to arrange for some mechanism with which to throw out the Jesus-freak estimates. Instead I relied on high school and college textbook memories of this amount of time that are so ingrained in me that I could probably access those brain cells before I access the ones that tell me how many legs a tripod has. And then I arbitrarily added 500 million to come up with the answer: 5 billion years.

4. 75 years, because I’m all agreed that that’s about what it is.

That settled, I was able to mathematically describe the comparison:

(time-span of civilization)/(age of earth) = (time to blink an eye)/(human lifespan)

or, filling in those statements with the rigorous numbers from above,

7,000yrs/5 billion years = 0.1 second/2.36682 billion seconds

(where 75yrs = 75yrs x 365.25days/1yr x 24hrs/1day x 60min/1hr x 60sec/1min = 2.36682 billion sec).

So, canceling out the units and typing out the zeroes to make my work look more impressive, we have 7,000/5,000,000,000 = 0.1/2,300,000,000, or

7/5,000,000 = 1/23,000,000,000, or even

1/714,286 = 1/23,000,000,000

which we can finally see is utter bullshit.

Therefore (or, if we spent an extra 2 minutes googling it up, and we did, ” ∴ “), the entire span of human civilization is 5 orders of magnitude larger than the blink of an eye, if by “orders of magnitude” I mean what I think I mean.  In other words, my friends, the metaphor is a lie.

To be accurate–and scientists and historians are nothing if not accuracy fetishists–they pride themselves on it, they live for that shit–the metaphor should really be phrased something like this: “Civilization began 7,000 years ago, which, in geological terms, is around 32,000 blinks of an eye” (computation available upon request). Or if that doesn’t float their boat, “Civilization began 7,000 years ago, which is like everybody in Tupelo, MS, blinking at once, provided 4,000 of them are on vacation at the time.”  Granted, the phrase has become kind of verbose and pitiful, but I didn’t make this bed, and I’m not the one who has to sleep in it.

In conclusion, “Beeyatch.”

And the sign said anybody caught trespassing would be shot on sight
So I jumped on the fence and yelled at the house, Hey! what gives you the right
To put up a fence to keep me out or to keep mother nature in
If God was here, he’d tell you to your face, man you’re some kinda sinner!

Ecto, 12 years old: “Yeah! There’s way too many signs! And I hate people telling me what to do all the time, too!”

Ecto, 45 years old: “Just keep off the man’s fucking lawn, a-ight?”

So when do you think the people who keep calling World Depression I “The Great Depression” will be considered old-fashioned and quaint? I’m thinking ‘12 or ‘13.

What am I, 45? I only now noticed that embedded in the rock group “The Beatles” name is the word “Beat.” Which is pretty much probably why they chose that name.

I know, it’s fucking inexplicable how I could have survived this long.

Today I retired my ‘GetYourWarOn’ link from its regular spot in the always-open ‘Humor’ folder in my bookmarks to its new spot in the almost-always-closed ‘Old Humor’ sub-folder. It was indeed a sad day, but David Rees left me no choice when he retired GYWO. What’s he got left at mnftiu.cc after GYWO’s gone? Ironic overuse of ‘lol’s and ‘rofl’s? That goes only so far. In fact, Wednesday Feb 11 2009 is as far as it goes.

So now the link is officially retired to a sub-folder. It had a good run, but now it’s over. And it’s not like it’s in bad company, either; lots of good old links creaking around down here, links that gave a lot of value once upon a time. Like ‘Cockeyed.com’ and ‘Halfbakery links.’ And ‘LILEKS (James) Welcome!’ And ‘SpinWeb’ and ‘FARK.com’ and ‘Fuck the South.’ And ‘What’s Wrong With This Picture…’ and ‘Institute for Naming Children H…’ and ‘GorillaMask.net: Updated d…’ and ’sometimes, Sigmund,’.  And even ‘Doonesbury;’ Doonesbury is down here in the Old Humor sub-folder, but only because my Doonesbury fix is now supplied from the ‘Chron comics page’ link in the main folder.

The Old Humor sub-folder has value; I open it from time to time. Every few weeks or months, I remember it’s down here, and roll through some of the offerings in four or five minutes, to see if the links still go somewhere. It’s not like the ‘really old humor’ sub-sub folder, which only gets an airing every year or so, and from which there’s nowhere to go but away. It’s not like that.

So now the Humor folder is pared back down to places I really do go every day or every other day, places like ‘Chron comics page,’ and ‘Comics I Don’t Understand,’ and ‘The Onion,’ and ‘Museum of Hoaxes.’ Except for ‘Museum of Hoaxes,’ which I really don’t click on all that much anymore. Not much at all anymore, really.

I guess I need to review the ‘Museum of Hoaxes’ charter soon, see what the hell that’s still doing up there.

Whenever I watch The Colbert Report, I find my eyes drawn to Stephen’s hands and the way he moves them. He has extremely graceful hands, fascinating to watch; like two nervous birds attached way out there on the ends of his arms. He appears to know exactly where each one of his fingers is at all times, and exactly where it’s going to go next.

On the other hand, Nick Cave in the video down below has hands that often appear to be controlled by two entirely different brains. They’re like two people learning to dance together to this one song they both kind of know. And sometimes they’re like one person reading the newspaper and the other person eating a ham sandwich, in two different houses on opposite sides of the planet.

And this is also graceful.

Bellamy salute – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Bellamy salute is the hand gesture described by Francis Bellamy 1855-1931 to accompany the American Pledge of Allegiance, which he had authored. The gesture was derived from the Roman salute.

This was originally what American kids did at school when pledging allegiance. They’d still be doing it if Hitler and Mussolini hadn’t happened. Here’s Bellamy’s directions for a proper pledge:

At a signal from the Principal the pupils, in ordered ranks, hands to the side, face the Flag. Another signal is given; every pupil gives the flag the military salute — right hand lifted, palm downward, to a line with the forehead and close to it. Standing thus, all repeat together, slowly, “I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands; one Nation indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all.” At the words, “to my Flag,” the right hand is extended gracefully, palm upward, toward the Flag, and remains in this gesture till the end of the affirmation; whereupon all hands immediately drop to the side.

In my heaven I get to ask Francis Bellamy and dicks of his ilk just exactly what did they think they were doing. Then it’s back to the beer and dancing girls.

114-year-old U.S. woman to be world’s oldest – CNN.com
Baines will not officially be given the title until after Guinness World Records completes an investigation, the organization said.

On the one hand I think it’s great that the governments of the world don’t keep any particular track of who is older than who. Apparently Global Overlord, Inc could not care less that a little old lady in the states has outlived all the other little old ladies and little old men from her time. On the other hand, who the hell gave Guinness Book the authority to say who’s ‘officially’ older than somebody else? “Sorry, ma’am, you’re not how old you are until we officially say so.”

This is one of the very few times where a registered trademark symbol thrown in there somewhere would make me happier. I mean, the woman already is the world’s oldest person; she’s just not The World’s Oldest Person®.

In some cars, the ’skip to the next song’ button is an arrow pointing right, and to the right of the ‘play’ button. Which makes sense for Western civilization, because that’s how we read. Things to the left are things you’ve already read; things to the right are things you’ll be reading soon. Very intuitive for a Westerner like myself.

But other cars–my car, for instance–my Nissan car, imagined and built by Easterners–place the ’skip’ buttons above and below the ‘play’ button. I suppose the metaphor used here is that, if you lay the faceplate down on the ground, the ‘up arrow’ button would be the one farthest away. The ‘down arrow’ button, when the faceplate is laid flat, is the one closest to you, which (being closer to you) metaphorically represents the beginning of the song you’re currently hearing, or the song that just happened. The problem with this metaphor is that I have to think about it sometimes before I actuate the button, because it’s not as intuitive to me as the other arrangement. I mean, there is another equally compelling metaphor for this arrangement that would require the ’skip to the next song’ arrow button to be below the ‘play’ button: gravity.

If Nissan used a gravity metaphor, the ’skip forward’ button would be at the bottom. Because gravity makes things fall. And before a thing falls, it has to be higher than it will be soon. But they don’t do that. They use the ‘lay the faceplate down on the ground’ metaphor. Which I have to think about before I do anything.

So I prefer the horizontal arrangement of skip buttons, because I don’t have to have an East vs West philosophical conversation with myself before I press them. Thank you.

First of all, Eddie clearly remembers picking on the boy, something I don’t recall ever having done. More importantly, he also remembers being hit with a surprise left. Eddie’s implication here is that, if only Jeremy had thrown a punch with his right hand, he’d have been ready for it. Haymaker, roundhouse, uppercut, jab, iron kite, sopwith meatgrinder, it wouldn’t have mattered: he would have been ready. The sole reason the blow connected was that it didn’t come from Jeremy’s dominant side.

Now, if it had been my jaw that was hit, it wouldn’t matter which fist the boy struck me with. They would both have been equally surprising. And the result–my being laid out like a Sunday dress on a Saturday night–would have been identical.

Eddie Vedder and I are clearly different kinds of people.