*

I don't really believe in childhood -- or, anyway, not the conventional understanding of childhood.  But, that said, the 80s were the best decade to be a "kid" in the history of the world.  My contemporaries and I are not part of the most culturally powerful generation living right now, but we are the beneficiaries of the most powerful generation.  

The baby-boomers have been everything -- they were the baby-boomers to start in the 50s, then they were the hippies in the 60s, then they were the yuppies in the 80s -- by the 90s they ruled the world.  One might argue that this pattern applies to every demographic over the course of a century -- except it doesn't.  My cousins who were born in the early 70s didn't get a title. (eventually they were generation X, but that's not REALLY a designation, it's just a recognition of their angst over not having an identity -- and that doesn't count.)  The children of the 80s aren't really anything either, but when the all-powerful baby-boomers were focused on little-kids, we WERE those little kids.  So, our cereal was filled with marsh-mellows, our mornings were filled with cartoons, and ninjas were everywhere.  

So, there was the baby-boomer thing.  Also, there was a lucky confluence of media forces.  The Production of cartoons transitioned from studios with strict codes of morality to toy companies who just wanted to sell toys.  The result was that creators had almost unchecked freedom so long as they kept the toy brands front and center.  Cartoons got really weird and violent and awesome.  But, because the creators had, themselves, grown up thinking about stories with strong narratives, the commercial aspect of their programs was just the McGuffin.  (By contrast, the people who were writing Pokemon grew up watching Transformers, so they were much more comfortable with the shilling aspect of cartoons than they were with the story part -- they didn't bother with heart or content . . . so Pokemon sucked.)

I have more to say about the 80s, so in that spirit, I'll have a sequel . . .  

*

We are not ready for time machines.  Before anyone even tries to rev up a time machine, he or she had better have a working teleportation machine.  It's imperative that the teleportation technology has all of the bugs worked out.  (Ha!  That was a totally accidental joke!  Honest, I didn't intend that . . . See, cause the Fly was about a "bug" in a teleportation -- get it?)  I got in a big nerdy argument about this with a friend of mine a few years ago.  He didn't think that a teleportation machine was necessary.  I never have understood his point of view.  Let me explain my thinking . . . Okay, so say you are sitting in your time machine on January 27th 2008; the flux capacitor is blinking; if you have the kind that looks like a big clock, then maybe you are winding it up; you haven't used it before, so you are just going to do a short test run -- not ancient Egypt or anything -- just 24 hours in the future; you don't want to end up getting hit by a car when you appear in the future, so you're out in the great salt flats or something like that; you turn the ignition or put coal in the furnace or meditate or whatever you have to do,  and you plan to appear in the exact same spot, but one day in the future -- January 28th . . . You have made a terrible miscalculation.  If it works, if you go 24 hours forward in time, but remain in the exact same spot, you would appear IN SPACE.  In 24 hours THE EARTH would have moved.  So, if you go to the same spot -- trouble.  Thus, I think that in addition to a time machine, it's necessary to have a teleportation machine that zaps you to a safe location.  That seems so obvious to me, but people disagree with me about stuff like that all the time.  Am I missing something?  (You know, other than science I mean.)

I ought to do something about my science/sorta-science credibility problem.  Unlike L. Ron Hubbard, I don't strike people as believable.  I thought that I had an awesome trivia question, and when I explained the answer AND my Nova program source, I STILL got flack.  The question was: from the time it's created, how long does it take light to get from the Sun to the Earth?  It's a great question because everyone will say 8 minutes.  But, that's wrong.  From the time that a photon is CREATED it spends MILLIONS OF YEARS bouncing around in the sun before it actually starts the trip to our planet (which takes 8 minutes).  The criticism that I got was that the photon changes forms while it's in the sun, so it doesn't count as light.  That strikes me as bullshit.  First of all, I'm not even sure if that's true.  Second of all, so what if it does change form -- it only counts as light if it's exactly the way it is when it gets to us?  How do I know that it doesn't change form at minute one two or three during its journey from the sun to the earth.  Also, people always talk about black holes and say that "even light can't escape" -- surely the "light" heading into the black hole is under conditions that are comparable in intensity to its experience during the week before it leaves the sun -- yet everyone counts the black hole stuff as light.  I think the truth is that people are very proud of their knowledge tid-bits, and when they don't get a chance to show off, they flip out.  

Or maybe people just want to wipe that smug look off of my face.  Bitches.  

 

*

Anger is fun!  Everyone tries to downplay this fact.  (Driving drunk has a similar stigma.)  To be honest, I resist the joys of anger myself.  But, anger MUST be fun.  Huge crowds of people pretend to be really stupid so that they have an excuse to be mad.  That's evidence.  For example -- several years ago, I was watching the Ricki Lake show, right?  (The topic might have been "Drop that Zero and Get with a Hero," or something like that.  I think that was a common Ricki topic . . . though, in retrospect, that might have been more Jenny Jones.  Maury did the paternity tests, so that wasn't his topic.  Montel rarely rhymed.  I guess it doesn't really matter.)  There was a girl on the stage who was complaining that her boyfriend was exactly like the stereotype of Puerto Rican men.  (I didn't know that there WAS a stereotype about Puerto Rican men before watching that episode.  Colorado doesn't have a large Puerto Rican community, so the stereotypes related to Latin America that I heard in my youth are more general.  Evidently, the Puerto Rican male stereotype has something to do with being lazy.)  So, when the girl said that her boyfriend's behavior resembled the stereotype, Ricki responded by asking -- in a really snarky tone -- "Are you saying that Puerto Ricans are lazy?"  The woman OBVIOUSLY didn't say that.  I heard her.  Ricki heard her.  The audience heard her.  It's not like her words were spun by pundits or taken out of context.  She had JUST spoken.  But, the audience went CRAZY.  BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!  I'm pretty sure that they were pretending to be stupid.  They can't ALL have been that stupid.  They just liked being mad.  The girl on the stage didn't defend herself -- she just sat their looking glum.  I think she was playing dumb too out of courtesy -- she knows how much fun being angry is, so she didn't want to deny the audience its opportunity.  

This pattern happens ALL THE TIME.  I heard a good example today.  John McCain or one of his people or someone must have said that he is the Democrats' "worst nightmare".  In response, CNN posed the Ricki Lake-like question: "When a country is evenly divided politically, is it wise to call yourself the opposing party's worst nightmare?"  The question wasn't super clear, so ironically, anyone who would fall for it probably isn't smart enough to understand it.  The gist, of course, is that independent voters wouldn't want to vote for the WORST nightmare of democrats and that, for the purpose of the general election, McCain should be more centrist.  The problem is that McCain almost certainly didn't mean that he is THE MOST reactionary conservative on the planet or that his PRESIDENCY would be the worst democrat nightmare . . . he meant that his CANDIDACY is the worst Democrat nightmare because he has a really good shot at winning . . . duh.  But, people love outrage, so there you go. 

My favorite example ever happened when I was in high-school.  My friends and I were in the drive-through line at Burger King.  One of my friends thought that he recognized a girl in the car behind us, so he waved.  The driver of the car behind us got out, shouted, "what the fuck?!" and threw a penny at my friend's car.  (I always kind of wished that the police had shown up: Now, how did this altercation start? -- well, officer, the guy in front of us smiled and waved, so I had to defend myself -- yes, well that makes sense.)  Anger is so much fun that people will Rickilakeify friendly smiles.  I should really give it a whirl.  The next person who, oh I don't know, has ears in front of me is really in for some trouble!  

*

It's time for a new religion.  And, I don't mean the messiah story warmed over again with a new star or a Mormonesque prequel religion.  (I don't want to get into the details of the LDS church: there are cartoons on youtube that explain Mormonism pretty well; but, even though it was a neat idea -- and better than the Star Wars prequels -- it's still derivative, and that's not what I'm calling for.)  Scientology has the right idea.  Nothing but originality there.  But, something about Scientology doesn't sit right with me -- it feels superimposed.  It's not organic.  A good religion explains the origin of the world around us and makes a connection between the material world that we can experience and (for lack of a better term) the spiritual world that we intuit.  Scientology has some cosmological spiritual stuff, but it doesn't explain the big picture -- to my limited knowledge, the aliens who get stranded in a volcano don't explain the origin of volcanos.  (I could be wrong -- maybe there is something really compelling at the multi-million-dollar level.)  The next big thing ought to have Scientology's wacky newness while hitting the fundamentals: why are we here, where did reality come from, what should we be doing, &c.  

The authors of our next belief system have to avoid an easy trap -- feigned ignorance.  The last time we were explaining our surroundings, we didn't know much about them.  People who make new religions sometimes fail to distinguish the fundamental QUESTIONS from early-man's knowledge.  The big questions are keepers, but it's no longer necessary to pretend that we wonder where the sun goes when it sets.  In other words, it's silly to come up with origin stories to explain mysteries that aren't.  The new gods (if we're going to use the god model again) will need mysteries to matter -- let's anthropomorphize quantum physics.  Of course, it's not necessary to be scientific purists when we tell our creation stories -- scientists won't ever get to be in control of religion because science tends to lack a narrative, and it is not especially concerned with society.  However, our current experience of the world is largely informed by scientists.  The ontological chunk of religion should no longer begin from the knowledge we get with our senses . . . we can begin from the knowledge that we have acquired with beakers and telescopes and math.  

I think bees would be a good symbol for a new religion.  For one thing -- as you all know -- experts don't know why bees can fly, so that's a good source of mumbo jumbo.  Also there is honey.  But, the best part of bees is their vision (I love that people know things about bee vision but not about bee flight despite the fact that bee flight is the issue that has made it into common knowledge.  Stuff like that is great -- it's sort of like the exasperated "we can put a man on the moon, but we can't do X?!?" question.  The complexity of a problem does not have a relationship to it's popularity.)  Bee vision is cool because it extends well beyond our range.  They see patterns in flowers that we can't see.  We get Roy G. Biv -- they get %^&4roygbiv)(~#!.  That's a great analogy for a religion based in part on the physical world that is beyond our senses but is nonetheless sensible.  

Feel free to use the bee thing new-bible writers. 

*

I had a creative writing professor who said that there is good nonsense and bad nonsense . . . he didn't elaborate:  

Scraevo puh puh puh naft!

Fweenie wiloshkunumpsence.  

Aipho dullupskudug.

Piskerene daive dutter. 

With no criteria apart from my own aesthetic sensibility, I feel that the above is an example of excellent nonsense.  That is the only kind of which I am capable.  

I challenge anyone to come up with superior nonsense.  I will judge you and critique your attempt.  Bring it.  Hit that comment button.  Do it!  

*

In the battle of the sexes -- such as it is -- I've historically been a staunch member of the male team.  Always very black-ops and deep cover about it, I don't think that many would classify me as a misogynist or even the less aggressive male-chauvinist.  Not seriously.  But, in fact, I was a true patriot of the XY nation, and I was happy for any opportunity to challenge what I perceived as a Bond-she-villain-like thigh grip on the social spheres of the world (presumably ruled by an intricate network of covens and sororities).  In my campaigns, I've even made some converts.  

My reasons for choosing the male side are many and varied.  Mostly, I didn't want to end up as a beast of burden.  Among numerous other places, I saw evidence of the female agenda at work in the routines of stand-up comedians during the 80s and 90s.  It's almost a cliche for a comedian to poke fun at the "fact" that women are intuitive, insightful, and high-minded while men are dull-witted and driven by purely carnal urges -- these jokes would get wild howls of approval from the female audience and, overtime, genial laughter from the cowed males.  (Stand-up comedians are an unconventional choice for propaganda machines -- ooooh, the covens are so insidious!)  I have in the last year or so, retired from the field of battle.  I've discovered that happy well-adjusted people rarely debate about which sex has it better -- they just live their happy well-adjusted lives and assume that everyone has it great.  I like that lifestyle better, so the XY nation will have to carry-on without me.  I've gone Ronin.  

However, I find myself in an unusual situation -- not unlike that of Frederick the Great of Prussia.  Frederick the Great, or Frederick II was kind of a fop in his youth and probably gay (we haven't reached the part that resembles me yet; this is just background).  His stern father, Frederick I, who had raised one of -- maybe the most -- disciplined and scary armies in the world at the time, did not approve of Frederick II's French speaking, flute playing, or poetry reading; and, they had a strained relationship until F1's death.  When Frederick II ascended to the Prussian throne, he was given the appellate "the Great" by his buddy Voltaire who regarded the Prussian king as the ideal ruler -- thoughtful, sensitive, a philosopher, probably gay, &c.  But, Frederick the Great inherited more than the throne; he inherited his father's badass war machine.  And, perhaps more significantly, he inherited his father's military genius . . . So, after tremendous inner turmoil and to the shock of the fancy salon attending world, Frederick the Great used his various gifts to attack weaker European countries, expanded Prussia -- and became just like his father (this would be an AWESOME movie.)  So, here is where this is like me: I have an arsenal of anti-feminist arguments at my finger-tips, and I have the talent to wield them like a Prussia of words (actually, I think that I have it even harder than FTG because my gay friends frequently agree with my barroom diatribes!).  But, I have chosen another path.  I am now a man of peace. 

This shit better get me laid . . . 

*

One would have to be kind of nutty to write out a zombie-attack preparation plan in any kind of detail.  "Zombie-attack?"  It's an absurd question.  Why would anybody waste time on something so impossible?  How could a planner even begin a strategy without knowing what KIND of zombie?  

There was a History Channel show (or maybe Discovery channel) about real life Voodoo zombies.  Voodoo is a real religion.  I don't know what it's all about, but there are evil sorcerers in it who kind of dress like Slash: top hat, dangily cigarette, open shirt -- the whole deal.  (Could Slash be a voodoo necromancer?  He was probably the top of his class in voodoo yeshiva or catechism or whatever they do; his parents were very proud; but, secretly he knew that his heart was in hair-metal -- put it underwater, and it's the plot of the Little Mermaid.)  These sorcerers make a concoction that kills you and then brings you back (A poisidote?) -- when you return from the grave, you're in the sorcerer's thrall.  There was a guy on the show who says that he is IS a zombie.  He remembers dying.  His family remembers burying him.  Now he's back.  I think he rents mopeds or snorkels or something to tourists.  He has a pretty impressive beer gut.  He's very sincere.  I guess he represents our "classic" zombie.  Beating this kind of zombie invasion is easy -- first of all, you have to take out the sorcerer in order to avoid new zombies.  To take out the sorcerer, you just offer him the chance to express himself artistically.  To take out the extant zombies, you have to appeal to their employers; with some creative scheduling, it's probably possible to give them each shifts that prohibit any chance to organize.  

Of course, the "classic" zombies are hardly the scariest.  The other breeds are the real trouble: brain-eating-supernatural-zombies and science-zombies.  The origin of the brain eaters isn't clear.  They definitely used to be dead, so they often have chunks missing.  Also, the rigor mortis makes them shamble.  For some reason, they like to eat the brains of living people. (The brain is also their weak spot.  They're probably symbolically anti-intellectual.  Unless brains really do taste good -- I'm no expert.)  They wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact that they are contagious.  Since they transmute everyone they bite, their numbers grow pretty fast -- also, they're already dead, so it's not like you can just force them to work double shifts.  Science zombies are similar in that they are contagious, but they aren't so brain focused -- they're usually just really really pissed off.  They come from government experiments gone wrong or freaky jungle diseases.  The good news about science zombies is that you can just kill them.  The bad news is that they run and and jump and fling themselves at non-zombies.  

The solution to the more dangerous zombie varieties is similar to the solution to the "classic" zombies.  It's just like removing the necromancers.  You have to get to the root of the issue.  Anti-intellectualism, government experiments, and all unknown plants and animals in the jungle must be eliminated.

*

Little kids say fuck.  They say it and they know what it means.  Or, anyway, they sort of know what it means -- they may have some outlandish theories on the details (when I was little, I had a tentacle theory of female anatomy that resembles a few Japanese animation movies I saw when I was 15 to such an alarming degree that I suspect the theory may be common among a lot of gynecologically ignorant young men.  Maybe it's some kind of ancestral memory -- could we all be related to the Octopus?)  Anyway, all ages are sure of the in-and-out part.  I'm basing my assertion on my own experience as a little kid -- that was in the 80s -- so, my knowledge came in large part from dirty jokes that I heard on the playground at the Little People's Landing daycare center -- like the one where the three soldiers comes back from war and stop at a farm house; there's a farmer who says, "you can stay, but don't put your dicks in any of those three holes"; the soldiers ignore the warning; the next morning, they find out that the farmer's wife was behind the first hole, his daughter behind the second, and . . . the butcher behind the third; hahahahahaha.  (That joke must have been on the playground since the civil war!  Since when do soldiers come WALKING home and pass farm houses?) Today, what with the internet and other porn outlets, I'm certain that little kids are on even more sure footing when they say fuck -- and, not only do they know the literal meaning, little kids know the more nuanced uses of the word too.  

So, I can't figure out who we are protecting from "bad" language.  The conversations that I had with my friends when I was 8 are not radically different from the conversations I have with my friends today.  Why am I the only one who remembers the first decade of life?  We weren't pure.  If anything we were MORE cruel -- when was the last time you and your adult friends captured and slaughtered a bunch of grasshoppers for no reason?  (In my defense on the grasshopper thing, I swear that I thought we were operating on them to save their lives -- which doesn't make any sense since I wasn't an entomology prodigy or anything, but that really is what I thought.  I can't speak for the other little sadists who are probably today's architects and firefighters.) We should drop the facade.  All language, including the F-word, is valuable (or at least interesting), and our culture's conventional beliefs about childhood are fiction.  I'll vote for the guy who advocates classes on effective swearing.  Poopy!

*

Our society does not have its priorities in order when it comes to alien abduction.  You can tell a culture's deep dark values by its knee jerk reactions.  For instance, whenever somebody mentions Soliel Moon Frye (Punky Brewster), six people chime in with the breast reduction factoid.  That reaction is indisputable proof that our society likes boobs.  This probably isn't a revelation to anyone, and I suppose that cosmetic surgeries make tabloid headlines frequently: the nose and chest on that chick from the Hills for one.  That doesn't really prove anything though -- the articles are just fun.  Breast augmentation stories will only last until the next gossipy blurb -- breast REDUCTION, on the other hand, becomes myth.  A willful transgression against a phenomenal rack?  Have the dead risen?  Is it raining frogs?  Clearly boobs mean a lot.   So, when discussions of alien abduction nearly always prompt somebody to mention anal probes, it says something -- it says that our society is missing the point.  

The anal probe knee jerk (9.8 degree of difficulty) basically tells me that people fear the asshole.  It's probably latent homophobia (though, to be fair, the asshole is stinky in its own right).  But, this asshole fear is clouding the issues -- if you are abducted by aliens, the probing is really the least of your worries.  Doctors probe for the sake of health.  Loving couples probe one and other recreationally.  Ultimately, anal probing is weird, but it is still potentially terrestrial.  A big eyed, thin necked, wobbily headed alien with long cold fingers -- THAT is messed up.  I submit that the abduction itself is inherently horrific: once you are dragged through your wall and on to a UFO, your freakout capacity will be in the red.  It's not like the experience will be pleasant up to and UNTIL the probing; at worst, an anal probe will take the terror from 99.5% to 99.7% -- nominal.  So, don't fail to see the cosmic forrest for the trees in your ass.  Get over your petty hiney prejudices and gird yourself for the REAL trouble ahead.  We can't lose focus.  If we can't tolerate a little personal invasion, what chance do we have when the invasion is on a planetary scale?  Go Team Earth!       

*

War war war.  It's obviously cool: swords, awesome explosions, flags, bonding . . .  You agree.  But, come on, we have plenty of source material around to create reasonable facsimiles.  So, we can mine what we've got for 1000 years and be fine.  War stories will abound forever.  (For example, as long as anyone can remember, mankind has been riffing on the theme put down by whatever it was that forged creation.  But, none of us have encountered any NEW deities recently, right?  So, obviously we're creative.  Similarly, new war stories don't actually REQUIRE new wars.)  In fact, if we are honest with ourselves, the wars that have already been fought and the wars that we imagine are, in most ways, superior to the wars that have been thrown together over the last 30 years by world governments anyway.  

REAL wars have reached their zenith. Vietnam was the last pop-culturally significant one: Doors music, homeless vets with cardboard signs, &c. The only good stuff to come out of the most recent military conflicts is a crop of badass Paralympic athletes. But, war doesn't justify super fast armored wheelchairs and bouncy metal legs -- shark attacks work for that too.  

There was a time when technology came from war -- that was a big argument for WWII's cache.  But, that era is over -- nowadays, it's the other way around -- the internet and whatnot enhances War's efficacy, but war itself doesn't actually generate any new toys anymore.  So, let's quit it.  We've moved from diminishing returns to net loss.  War is dumb now.  We don't even fight real stuff.  It's debatable whether Communism was a silly enemy, but Terror?  Really?  Even if someone is serious about that, the antidote to terror is not force of arms -- we should be using payloads of whimsy.  

People usually assume that there are reasons for war in addition to creating cool war stories and gadgets -- I sort of doubt that, but I'll entertain these "other reasons".  Those people also say that it's naive to call for the dismantling of the military.  That's what they said to John Lennon.  These people usually don't know anything more than John and I, so given a common ignorance, I don't see why it's MORE naive to believe that we aren't in any real danger from "enemies" than it is to believe that there are a bunch of bogeymen out to get us.  A more sophisticated bunch of people extend the argument from imminent but vague and nebulous threats to a discussion of the role military power plays in maintaining global stability.   I don't know.  Maybe.  But, if we're the ones making the best war gear, why do we need to continue to pump ourselves up?  Also, if we have an ethical obligation to use our might to fight tyranny abroad where others can't -- isn't that circular?  Can't we reduce that obligation by reducing our might?