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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.

Roman calendar - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The fact that we use the same month names as the Romans encourages us to assume that a Roman date occurred on the same Julian date as its modern equivalent. This assumption is not correct. Even early Julian dates, before the leap year cycle was stabilised, are not quite what they appear to be. For example, it is well known that Julius Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March in 44 BC, and this is usually converted to 15 March 44 BC. While he was indeed assassinated on the 15th day of the Roman month Martius, the equivalent date on the modern Julian calendar is probably 14 March 44 BC.

I’ve noticed that historians put a lot of effort into figuring out what day things really happened. Was Caesar assassinated on the 15th or the 14th? Was Washington born on February 11th or February 22nd?

The thing is, I’ve always thought historians were barking up the wrong tree on this. To my way of thinking, it really doesn’t matter what day something really happened; what matters more is what day people thought it happened. So as far as I’m concerned, George was born on the 11th because his mother and father, the attending midwife, and the Smith family down the road  all thought of the day as the 11th.

Here’s another example: say I was born on March 8th. Fifty years later a congressional proclamation changes the calendar slightly, and now I’m told I was born on March 4th. But I’ve thought I was born on March 8th all my life; I’ve said “March 8th” about ten thousand times, and I’m very familiar with how it sounds. March 8th fits me like an old shoe. Now you’re asking me to put this squeaky new shoe on, this March 4th shoe. Thanks, but no thanks. I wasn’t born on March 8th because that’s what a calendar said, not really. I was born on March 8th because that’s what we called the day I was born on when I was born on it.

I guess it says a little something about the things I read that I recognize this as a very tired cliche.

A kid’s job is to figure out who he or she is as quickly as possible. A kid’s next job is to start being that person and no one else. That way, the kid wastes no time with people who are attracted to someone he’s not. It’s really the quickest way to surround oneself with people you can stand to be with.

Most kids don’t know that’s their job.

I don’t watch much television. It’s not that I’ve become an unbelievably productive person because I don’t fritter all that time away in front of the tube anymore–I haven’t–it’s just that the bulk of my frittering is done in front of a computer instead. Don’t get me wrong; I’m still pretty smug about it regardless of the fact that I haven’t really benefited from it.

But there are reasons, I think, to feel smug about it, viz: I just finished spending an entire month in Dallas because I had to. I spent the bulk of that time in a hotel room. The bulk of the time I spent in the hotel room, the television was on, because it was sitting there not 3 feet away from the bed. So during the last month, I probably spent more time watching tv than I have in the past 3 years combined. And I noticed several things that one may not have noticed had one been watching television more or less constantly during that time.

One of them is that television news–all of it outside of PBS–uniformly sucks. And when I say it sucks, I mean it’s not actually news anymore; it’s pre-digested opinions about people–personalities–who simply shouldn’t matter. It’s a vanilla milkshake, a naked pandering to the fail, the people who desperately want to be among the winners, who imagine themselves at the head table where nothing real matters anymore.

I saw several Dallas news shows, along with some morning news shows, Fox news (which you might think, and I would have thought a month ago, is kind of unfair of me to use to indict all news shows, but you and I would be wrong), and CNN. I saw Wolf Blitzer and Hardball and Tucker, 60 Minutes and 48 Hours and Face the Nation.

Do you know what I learned after watching all that? I learned that Britney Spears is totally fucked up. I learned that again and again and again. Everyone wanted to weigh in on Britney. Guests were empaneled on news shows so that the reigning talking head could canvas them on their Britney opinions.

Now, I care what Britney Spears does and says as much as the next guy, as long as the next guy doesn’t give a flying fuck what Britney Spears says or does. Me and him, we could not care any less. You could not underbid us on it. We simply don’t care what Wolf’s guests think about this. She’s some kid from Mississippi that got rich somehow; good for her, but that’s all we need to know.

What we do care about is the news. What is going on in the world? What happened in Sri Lanka yesterday? What’s Putin up to? How close we gettin on that frickin cancer cure? That’s what we want to know. But we don’t spend money the way the fail do, in clumps and gobbets that depend on the television for guidance. So (apparently) we don’t get television news aimed at us anymore.

Fox news… Fox news has been an evil tabloid since its inception, spewing vitriol and obnoxiousness 24 hours a day. But CNN? When did CNN become a tabloid? When did CNN begin to spew tawdriness and fail? When did that happen?

Okay, fine. Fine. Television is not aimed at me. I get it. But television is aimed at somebody, and it is huge and relentless. And it shapes people, and that shape is conformity, banality, and failure. I get it. So I’m smug, of course, but it’s not a happy smug.

Remember the scene in The Wizard of Oz where they all fall asleep in the poppy field?

So President Ford died the other day. [applause]. Yeah, he was, like, 93 years old or something. I found out about it on CNN and I thought ‘Wow, Gerald Ford. About time.’ [laughter]. Not to be mean or anything, but the man was old. So I drove to the post office later in the day and noticed that the flag was at half staff, which surprised me. Usually when I see the flag at half staff, a tragedy’s happened. Some kind of unplanned event, like 9/11 or Pearl Harbor. Or the Alamo. Remember the Alamo? But Ford dying… I’m surprised he lived as long as he did. They should have flown the flag at twice staff every day after he turned 90. ‘Did you hear? Ford’s still alive!’ [laughter, drinks water]. Who tells the flag-flyers when to go to half staff? I figure the color guard was out there the day after he died, kind of looking at each other, you know, inching the flag up the pole, glancing over at the state flag-flyers to see what they were doing. ‘Hey; Michigan’s going past 3/4 staff! Is that right? What do we do?!’ [laughter]. And that’s just wrong, because you can’t depend on Michigan to show you the way. It’s a state. When’s the last time somebody died for their state? The US flag they fold up neatly and burn when it gets tattered. It’s a tradition. Old state flags they traditionally wad up and toss into the trash compactor. City flags? What does Los Angeles do with its flags when they’re worn out? Reverently recycle them into Denny’s placemats? [applause] I don’t know. But, 93, man; that’s old. That’s more than twice as old as I am. Which is comforting, in a way: people twice as old as I am can still be alive. That’s good, right? I’m not looking forward to the day when I can’t say that anymore. A day’s coming when I can’t say that. Because people twice as old as me won’t be old, they’ll be dead. [applause].

Brian, have your people give me a call. We’ll do lunch.

Orgasm is to Little Death as

1. Pain is to Little Sphincter

2. Love is to Little Crime

3. Thought is to Little Sphincter

4. Sleep is to Little Oblivion

Answer 4. Sleep is to Little Oblivion, because the other three are stupid.

Yesterday a stranger-woman at work came up to me and said “You look just like this guy who used to work here.” [hmyeswellhrmphchortle] A couple minutes later I noticed her across the room pulling somebody aside and pointing at me. Her head bobbed, her friend’s head bobbed, and they smiled in agreement.

I think this has happened to me three times in my life. “You are the spitting image of Joe Blow! Isn’t he the spitting image of Joe Blow??” I don’t know how often it happens to other people; I can’t recall ever having personally witnessed it happening, and I can’t recall ever inflicting it on anybody. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe my face is so plastic and ordinary that it reminds people of other people more often than other people’s faces do.

It’s disconcerting working with people who think I look like somebody else. What kind of guy was he? Did he represent my body and facial features properly? Was he funny but reserved? Was he a hard worker and fairly competent?

Or was he a complete asshole? Do I have to overcome the impression made by my doppelganger on the people around him lest I be deemed an incompetent shithead by association?

You know sometimes that happens: one has to overcome impressions and prejudices squatting inside somebody’s skull that have no business being associated with you, but are anyway. And you also know that sometimes the thing squatting inside his skull is so large that you won’t be able to divert it by clean living alone. As long as your physical description matches the template, you will be unfairly tarred.

It’s why you don’t see anyone walking around with Hitler mustaches anymore.

I hope I won’t be forced to shave.

Sometime in the last year or two I suspect I’ve read about the malady that will kill me. It could be complications of osteoporosis, or some cancer, or emphysema, pneumonia, lupus, multiple sclerosis, or diabetes. It could be a lot of things. Elephants crush me to death at a circus. But in the end, it will be some certain thing, and I’ve almost surely read about it. Studied it in a clinical way, which means I studied it assuming it was some other person’s death. I’ve laid my innocent eyes on a paragraphical description of my own mortality.

And there are a lot of spectacularly shitty deaths lurking out there. Most of them, in fact.

Once upon a time I decided that I’d be the first person to live forever. Progress would be such that I could be the first to take advantage of the elixir, that lovely thing, that breaks mortality. I remember thinking that, when I was young.

I’d still like to think that, but it’s hard. For one thing, I don’t feel so good. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with me, but through the accretion of years I have various incredibly minor but apparently permanent disabilities that I have to compensate for. And there’s no stopping that parade; I’ll just get more and more of those. They’re like macabre fruitcakes doled out at Christmas parties. Nobody wants them, but we’re too polite to refuse.

I knew I was going to get old when I was a kid, I just didn’t really understand what that meant. I assumed I’d stay exactly the same except with more wrinkles and less hair.

Kids are insane. I watch my kids; they can’t wait to get on with the business of growing old. They don’t see how massive that rock is. It rolls, and it rolls at its own stately, awful speed. No matter how much they yearn for it to accelerate, it will not. I’ve told them there will come a day when they want that rock to slow down, but they don’t believe me. I’ve tried to explain to them how alarming that rock can be, but they don’t listen.

God love those crazy little people. It’s such a pity that they eventually become sane.

A sorrow that’s so sudden and huge and fleeting that there is no time to identify it as sorrow it’s a colossal wave colossal crashing overhead breathtaking because it takes your breath away and no time to savor it. The crash, the moment in the doctor’s office, the flames, the news of doom, an influx of sodium like a trillion tiny colossal waves crashing through a trillion tiny portals breathtaking because it takes your breath away.

When I come up with a concise term or phrase that’s well-formed, I naturally assume that someone else has already come up with it. Maybe it’s not used the way I use it, but I assume it’s out there, somewhere among the web’s data bits. Sometimes I google the phrase just to see how others have used it. It’s similar to how I didn’t expect “Like Swift Dead” to show up on a search; it’s a completely mal-formed stew of a phrase. Means nothing, comes from nowhere. Similarly, I don’t expect “Crackling Castle Porkpie” to return any results either. Hold on while I check that.

Nope, no crackling castle porkpies. But It’s odd when I google something that I know is well-formed and come up empty. It happens sometimes. In a way it’s gratifying to think I’m the first person who’s put these two or three words together and tossed them out on the web, but in another way it’s kind of spooky. Like I’m in a deserted hallway in a deserted hospital at midnight trying to keep my footsteps from echoing.

Anyway, here’s a short list of things that googled empty for me that shouldn’t have:

1. googled empty
2. nuts and hayseeds
3. crime and sanctuary

Actually, “crime and sanctuary” has started to google (although only as an innocent conjunction of clauses), but “googled empty” and “nuts and hayseeds” are still quiet. Even “google empty” and “googles empty,” as phrases with a meaning, are unlinked. Gratifying, but spooky.

I wonder how different history would be if, instead of having a man in the moon, we’d had a frowny-face in the sky. Or a tangerine. What we have up there now is the expression of someone partway between a surprise, a sneeze, and despair. Something Munch might have thrown up there. That’s got to have affected us.

I like being in a new place that has weird weather. It’s one of the main things I like about new places. And every place besides the place I live in now has weird weather, because I’ve gotten used to weather here. I don’t know when it happened, but it did, like it always does. It’s no longer exotic: hot summer days, humid summer nights, big thunderstorms, and cool late falls. Winters that can get cold, but not that cold. Beautiful springs. That’s now normal.

I’d like to live in several more new places with weird weather before I die. Maybe Montana; I bet they have some really odd weather up there.

I like living in a new place long enough so that the weird weather’s no longer weird.

Through cunning devices and methods, people found out what stars are, and what they’re made of. They found out how big they are and how old they can get.

I think that’s pretty amazing. Good for us!

When I was eleven or twelve or thirteen, my parents were freshly divorced, and my mother was barely scraping by on Markham with four kids. I remember knowing it was (relatively) hard times for us, and knew that some things we had to do without. But I was also a kid, with a kid’s insane view of reality.

I remember seeing a classified ad in some magazine, offering 640 acres of land in Canada for ten dollars. I must have sent off for more information, because I also remember reading a pamphlet that said, yes, the square miles are being sold by the Canadian government for ten bucks, but you the buyer have to agree to produce a specific amount of cordwood from that property yearly for a specific amount of years. I definitely remember my mother refusing to lend me ten bucks or cosign, despite the reasoning I carefully laid out: We could drive there every summer! It’ll be a vacation! We’ll chop down some trees for a week or two, then drive back home! I can hitch-hike! I know this guy! But there was no reasoning with her; she was a mule, unshakeable. I carried a grudge for weeks.

Eleven, twelve, or thirteen year-old kids are insane, and that’s important to remember. They have no real concept of odds, or luck, or even numbers. They don’t have a clue.

Kids grow up eventually. Come age sixteen or seventeen or so, most kids have sussed how the world really works. Because they never won a lottery or a raffle, or got invited to a chocolate ice cream eating contest, sanity arrives. It’s only one in a thousand kids, the lucky kid, that doesn’t get that.

So every once in awhile—in fact, once in every thousand whiles—a kid gets lucky to the extent that several unlikely, pleasant events happen to him as he grows up. He wins a thousand dollars by looking underneath his soda cap. His mother agrees to allow him to purchase a square mile of Canadian wilderness. That sort of thing.

That kid will be unbelievably clueless long after his friends have turned into adults. His understanding of reality will be childish (and therefore insane) much longer than normal. Why should it change? “The universe likes me.” Why make it complicated?

I didn’t win any “scratch n win” contests as a kid, if you don’t count the odd free milkshake or two. I mostly scratched n lost. But that’s the experience of the great majority of people, and it’s only the few away out there under the asymptote of the bell curve that didn’t share it.

I don’t envy them. Good fortune fucked them up at an impressionable (if not critical) age. Can a person recover from that?

That’s all I’m saying.

When a kid or a functionary asks me that question, I’ve had occasion to have to think about it: “How old AM I?” I really can’t remember. And when I do figure it out, sometimes I’m relieved that I’m not as old as I could’ve been, but other times I’m disappointed that I’m older than I would’ve guessed.

It’s an odd event.

Even the purest vegan will slap at a mosquito.

As I was reading the comics page in the newspaper this morning, it occurred to me that over half the comics on the page have been around at least as long as I’ve been around. Hi & Lois, Hagar the Horrible, Wizard of Id, Mark Trail, Funky Winkerbean, Dennis the Menace. Even, god help me, Peanuts, which is the seaweed-strewn immortal zombie of the comics page.

Because these strips have somehow tottered into my adulthood, I still see the same characters and names that I grew up with. And many of these names aren’t being regenerated in maternity wards. New mothers and fathers are naming their kids Joshua and Heather, not Dennis or Rex or Linus. Therefore, because these comic strips have the vampirish quality of continuing to exist despite everything, a time will come when the only place these names appear is on the comics page. Kids today, the Joshuas and the Heathers, will still be reading about the Dennises and the Heathcliffs when they are adults.

Which is really weird; it’ll be as if I had to read “Ezekiel the Menace” or “Hatshepsut and the Pirates” or “Nero Google & Marduk Smith.” Okay, Barney Google and Snuffy Smith is a bad example, but you get the point.

I have exactly two superstitions. Between them, I can explain the universe.

The first superstition is that if I talk about something, it’s not going to happen. The Pizza Gods superstition is a facet of that.

The second superstition is that if I talk about something, it IS going to happen. For example, if I were to say–and this blog entry should in no way be taken that I am saying that, because I categorically am not– that I’m going to die in an automobile accident in six months, I will die in an automobile accident in six months.

I live in a tidy world, populated by unspeakable horrors.