Smoking Hickory

False Alarm. I've actually quit smoking. Cold Turkey. It's been about a month now, and the cravings have somewhat subsided to a dull throbbing, on the level of getting a tattoo, piercing, or sexually transmitted disease. Still, I persist, out of an unsubstantiated, vague feeling that it'll be worth it.

I miss smoking. I rather enjoyed it, and it gave me an excuse to get out of the office, or the house, or to escape from whatever awkward situation that I might find myself in. Also it keeps you thin, you catch fewer colds, and it makes you look cool. But there were many reasons to quit. Not least of which was Son. He's getting to an impressionable age (in fact, I may have left it a little late), and of the vast Augean stables of vice that may serve as "bad examples" to him, smoking was probably in the top ten.

But one sin that I absolutely will not abandon, and for which I refuse to feel guilty, is my enduring - some would say "unnatural" - love of bacon. To quote Jim Gaffigan, bacon is the fairy dust of the food world. There is virtually no food that cannot be improved by the addition of this delicious smoked pork product. It is single-handedly responsible for my ambivalence toward vegetarianism.

And so it was with semi-Pavlovian salivation that I read today's bacon-related post on BoingBoing. There was no lack of golden smoked-porcine deliciousness, but my favorite experiment has to be the recipe for bacon chocolate chip cookies with cinnamon frosting.

That's right. Wrinkle your nose, screw your eyes shut in disgust. You are not yet prepared for the sheer majesty of this maple-smoked epicurean madness. I will - I must - sample the forbidden delights of this latest appeal to my secret vice.

Yet I can't help but feel that some unexplored, deeper depravity beckons, perhaps in the form of some prosciutto-peppermint based fudge.

Anyhoo, I'll keep you posted.

Eureka!

Where is it? (For long-time readers)

Bucking The Hum

Ironman doubts my commitment. He thinks I can't do it. He thinks I'll bail, or lose interest, and in his defense, he has solid historical evidence to back up his claim.

To you, Ironman, I say: Suck it.

A Slice of Cliché

"MORE!", I hear you scream, as we crest this foothill on our climb to the peaks of math-metaphor ecstasy. Let us then ponder the infinite, O willing and supple pupil:

The constant pi, denoted π, is defined as the ratio of a circle's circumference C to its diameter d. You probably already knew that.

But pi turns up in a surprising number of places. It rears its head in the cosmological constant, Heisenberg's uncertainty principal, Einstein's field equation of general relativity, Coulomb's law of electrical force, the Magnetic permeability of free space, and Kepler's third law, to name a few.

As a whimsical example, imagine that you are shackled to a cold iron rack, in the cellar of a madman's château, watching a razor-sharp pendulum scythe through the air above your helpless nubile body. The evil Count asks only that you answer one question, and he will set you loose:

"Posit an infinite rectangular lattice of perfect 1-Ohm resistors, just so:


Calculate the resistance R between two nodes in the grid. To one node", cackles the Count, "we will arbitrarily assign the coordinates (0,0). In this coordinate system, the other node lies at (1,2). With each swing of the pendulum, my dear, my revenge draws ever closer."

Well it turns out that there's a whole branch of mathematics devoted to this sort of thing (natch), but the bottom line is this head-scratcher:


Where R is the resistance between the origin node, and the node described by coordinates (m,n). See the pi? No? Well for our current example of (m,n) at (1,2), it all reduces to this:


And so pi has reduced the infinite to an easily solvable, finite-boundary solution space. Well, "easily solvable" is relative here, I guess. I certainly don't understand a word of it.

What I do understand, though, is that here is a number with its hand in the infinite. The digits of pi basically extend on forever, a number with no end. Pi, like beauty, truth, identity and enlightenment, is ever incomplete, ever approximate. It has a head, but no tail. A starving ouroboros.

How sad.

The good news, though, is that it perfectly embodies proof of the human mind's ability to abstract the infinite. Oh sure, there will always be a bunch of literal-minded diehards trying to calculate pi to the umpty-billionth digit, to kill the magic, but the majority of non-insane individuals are capable of reducing it to a symbolic representation of that ratio, and to use the gestalt π as a placeholder for all the strange concepts it represents.

And now there's one more.

Mathemetaphor

There are a number of interesting (to me) opportunities for parallel between the pure abstract world of Mathematics, and the messy, sensual worlds of philosophy, art and thought. Like all parallels, they tend to converge toward infinity. Of course we can't just jump right into this feast of parallax without building up to it with a little digestif. So, by way of a cheese platter (and there may be some olives in there as well):

A Sierpinski Gasket is a type of ternary Cantor set, or self-similar set. It is constructed by taking a triangle, removing a triangle-shaped piece out of the middle, then doing the same for the remaining pieces, and so on and so forth, like so:



The result – if an infinite series can be said to have a result – is a pattern of infinite boundary, and zero area. This totally counter-intuitive concept is poetry in itself. To imagine that by recursive Swiss-cheesing, we can arrive at the Infinite, not by adding to the whole, in the gluttonous, possessive fashion of current North American consumerism, but by taking away, after the fashion of Francis of Assisi, Buddha, the Jain Dharmists:

"Trees renounce fruit and keep us alive. The mountains cast away stones and pebbles, which we use for our works and art. One should renounce worldly possessions devotedly within one's power (shaktistyaga)."

Hey. I'm not saying I'm ready to give up my iPod. This is all merely by way of illustrating that the path to enlightenment is multifold. There are many trail heads (We'll talk about Pi next time), and some of these lie outside the province of our personal expertise.

If you're catching what I'm pitching, throw it back in the comments.

Monday's Child is Fair of Face

So thirty-odd years ago today, I was thrust, cold, naked and crying into the world. I'm told it was a Monday morning, after seventeen hours of labour, followed by a Caesarean, due to my freakishly large head.

In observance of this momentous day, I give you The Birthday List. It's meme-tastic!

The rules:
1. Go to Wikipedia
2. In the search box, type your birth month and day but not the year.
3. List three events that happened on your birthday
4. List two important birthdays and one death
5. One holiday or observance (if any)

Three things that happened on my birthday:
1520 - Martin Luther burns his copy of the papal bull Exsurge Domine outside Wittenberg's Elster Gate.
1936 - Abdication Crisis: Edward VIII signs his Instrument of Abdication. [he did it for love]
1948 - The UN General Assembly adopts the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This Day is also International Human Rights Day.

Two important birthdays and one death:
1830 - Emily Dickinson, American poet (d. 1886)
1948 - Abu Abbas, founder of the Palestine Liberation Front (d. 2004)
1967 - Otis Redding, American soul singer (b. 1941)

Holiday or Observance:
Presentation Ceremony of the Nobel Prize

Tag, Boxer, and Erin! You're it!

Paper Tiger / Poolside Muse

A "Paper Tiger" is something that seems a lot more threatening than it actually is. In 1956, Chairman Mao introduced this poetic Chinese imagery to the English language, comparing the U.S. to a paper tiger, "unable to withstand the wind and rain".

He suggested that allegedly "imperialist" states, such as the U.S. and Russia, had a tendency to overextend themselves on the international stage, leaving themselves open to pressure from other players, who could cause their collapse.

Fifty years after Zedong's comments, the U.S. is overextending itself in Iraq, while it's sub-prime mortgage bubble collapses, bringing the rest of the economy and currency with it. China, meanwhile, holds massive amounts of US treasuries, and is wielding this economic power to forestall a reevaluation of the yuan. China could crash the US dollar, at a time when the economy is already struggling.

Schadenfreude aside, I really don't know who to root for here. An evil imperialist state that spies on, imprisons and tortures its citizens without trial, and kidnaps foreign nationals in violation of international law, or an abusive human rights trampling police state, king of the counterfeiting heap, and exporter of lead-poisoned children's toys.

In situations where I am forced to choose the lesser of two really quite impressively wicked evils, I find it helpful to ask the question differently, ie: Which victory would most benefit me?

We Do What We Must

On July 4th, 1934, Marie Curie, two-time Nobel laureate, discoverer (discoveress?) of Polonium and Radium, and pioneer in the research of radioactivity, succumbed to aplastic anemia due to her lifelong exposure to harmful ionizing radiation. She dedicated her life to scientific exploration, the thirst for knowledge, and the betterment of mankind.

In our time, this is how we explore the unknown.

For Science!

The Case For Case

What the hell is up with the ee cummings orthography? No capitalization, no punctuation. Do you think that makes you an artist? And how is that better than PEOPLE WHO SHOUT ALL THE TIME BY TYPING IN ALL-CAPS? Why is one acceptable, and the other, not?

Still, I guess if your muse is so controlling as to dictate the use of capitalization and punctuation, then you must obey. But just be aware that everyone else thinks you're an ee cummings rip-off douchebag. It is distracting, and detracts from whatever otherwise uplifting prose you might produce.

I mean, seriously, Why not Ezra Pound, or Robert Frost?

Gratitude / Forgiveness

Drooling
labial
dwarf-knuckled homunculus
defeated, spirit broken
can still press a button
for his food

Half blind
hairless
wounded by the worst of us
shivering in the corner
I still see the untamed
heart in him

And I
naive
indignant and well-meaning
loose the ties, unhook the latch
crack the door and show him
to be free

No sight
but caught
the scent of winter's promise
all unknowing, nothing
could hold back his momentum
when he ran

This cold
unkind
this bitter blasted landscape
promised nothing, but forgave
me that I freed him
to his death

What Do You Know?

Behind the curve as usual, I took a whack at the belief-o-matic, you know, because it takes a website to tell me my place in the cosmos, to tell me what I believe. I was raised Roman Catholic (sort of), got first-communioned and confirmed, went to Sunday school, learned my stations of the cross and all that. So I kind of expected that to be reflected in the results.

What actually happened is that Roman Catholicism came in dead last, even after Jehovah's Witness. So I don't know, is this yet another manifestation of my problems with authority? Am I rebelling against my childhood religious educational experience? Am I denying my cultural history? Chowing down on the flavorless pabulum of white, male, middle-class non identity? Are Catholics just plain nuts?

Results:

1.	Unitarian Universalism (100%)
2.	Liberal Quakers (96%)
3.	Theravada Buddhism (93%)
4.	Neo-Pagan (90%)
5.	Secular Humanism (90%)
6.	Mahayana Buddhism (86%)
7.	Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (79%)
8.	New Age (76%)
9.	Taoism (75%)
10.	Orthodox Quaker (70%)
11.	Jainism (66%)
12.	Reform Judaism (65%)
13.	Nontheist (61%)
14.	Bahá'í Faith (57%)
15.	Sikhism (48%)
16.	Hinduism (46%)
17.	New Thought (45%)
18.	Scientology (43%)
19.	Orthodox Judaism (38%)
20.	Seventh Day Adventist (36%)
21.	Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (35%)
22.	Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (31%)
23.	Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (30%)
24.	Islam (29%)
25.	Jehovah's Witness (18%)
26.	Eastern Orthodox (17%)
27.	Roman Catholic (17%)

Unitarian Universalism? What the hell is that? Turns out, it's a fancy way of saying "None of the above".

Story of my life.

The Second Rule of Fight Club

I recently told the 14-year old daughter of a close friend: "There are only two emotions that men are allowed to admit to: Amusement and Anger. If a guy talks to you about feelings other than these, he's probably in love with you."

Of course I delivered this in a sort of semi conspiratorial "don't tell anyone I told you this deep dark secret" - kind of way. I'm sure she didn't believe a word of it, which is good, because I'm not sure if it's true or not. Either way, it's sad.

Why do men hate "the talk"? Why, when Wife says "Sweetie, I want to talk" (italics hers), do I role my eyes and suppress a pained groan? Surely we could all benefit from getting in touch with our feelings and having a good cathartic buchke over lattes and facials?

Ick.

One of the many reasons primitive man-monkeys like me don't tend to talk about our feelings could be that we're not a hundred percent convinced it's going to solve anything. For me, talking is all about communication. Specifically, communication of a problem. Step 1, communicate the problem. Step 2, identify and communicate the solution to the problem, or if there is no apparent solution, solicit additional information. Step 3, high fives all around, followed by beer. Note the conspicuous absence of any discussion of my mood.

This is not what women mean when they ask you to talk about your feelings. In fact, this is the opposite of what they mean.

As a "for instance", when I come home at night, one thing my survival instinct has taught me is to ask Wife "how was your day?". During the course of the ensuing epic monologue, many conflicts will be introduced, heroes and villains will rise and fall, and the emerging topical thread will contribute itself to Wife's Bildungsroman in subtle and meaningful ways.

Here is a list of things I must not say during this conversation:

• "Hey, I had that exact same thing happen to me once, let me tell you all about it."
• "I know exactly how to solve your problem. Here is the answer..."

Here is a list of things I probably should say instead:

• "Wow Honey, that's awful! No wonder you're so upset."
• "That bitch! I hope you told her to go to hell!"
• ...and any other topical expressions of sympathy in that key.

This shows Wife that not only am I tuned into the conversation and actually listening to what she's saying (the male communication), but I'm also tuned into her feelings about the whole thing (the female communication).

And voila, we've just talked about our feelings. More specifically, she's talked about her feelings, and I've listened. You would think that this is only about 50% of what women want out of a conversation, but actually it's closer to about 90% (not to put it all in cold, logical, male numbers or anything, but there you go).

But before you walk away from the conversation feeling like you got away with something, be aware that the eventual "talk" gets longer and more traumatic every time you avoid it. Really, it's best to get it out in small, preferably daily, doses.

It's in our nature as men to think of this as a painful but necessary task in the maintenance of a meaningful relationship. Like replacing the brakes on your car. Costly but rare. We should instead maybe think of it as a frequent, automatic, almost instinctual thing, like applying the brakes on your car. We've just about evolved to the point where we can handle that.

And maybe someday, there won't even need to be a wife or girlfriend in the room to force us to talk about our feelings...

Fear of Heights

You were so much easier to talk to
when I didn't know you.

Easier still to drink
and laugh with
in that quiet burgeoning,
dawn of friendship

But all become,
once friends,
now heroes,
role-models,
teachers and masters

And now I must keep
a respectful distance
and look East
and wait for another sun.

Fly The Friend-Of-A-Friendly Skies

Alaskan Airlines and Horizon Air are pitching a 10% discount on flights booked through their website. The catch? This discount is only available when you book through the special (not to say "segregated") gay-friendly section of their website.

From WorldNetDaily:

Bryan Fischer, of the Idaho Values Alliance, told WND the company boasts of its "nondiscrimination" policies, but, "here they are blatantly discriminating against heterosexuals in their pricing structure."

Oh we poor, downtrodden, oppressed heterosexuals. When will the world treat us with equality and respect?

I'm Going To Hell

Erin's going to kill me, but check out these outrageous, hilarious, politically-incorrect ads from the "bad old days" of glaring gender stereotyping.

Men: "They weren't that bad".
Women: "They aren't that old".

I'm always taken by surprise at this kind of thing, firstly that anyone can look at this and see the humor, and secondly that anyone can look at this and not.

Time sure does a number on perspective.

Breaking News

Who says eco-activists are a humorless lot? Greenpeace is crowdsourcing the naming of whales travelling something called the "Great Whale Trail". Of the list of 30 names, twenty nine appear to be some computer-generated random phonetic babble. Japanese for "little love", or Arabic for "star", or Swahili for "hippy" or something. Those granola-crunchers love the Swahili. Anyway, the one name that doesn't suck: Mister Splashy Pants.

Guess which name currently has a 68% lead over its closest twenty-nine competitors?

Go vote now. I don't really know what you're voting for, but in a poll that contains "Mister Splashy Pants" as an option, I think the right choice is clear.

At The Pump

Did you ever play with Silly Putty™ as a kid? Silly Putty is a bizarre polymer, and seems to like switching back and forth from gooey almost-liquid to bouncy almost-solid. But like most polymers, it has a transition temperature at which its physical properties change. In this case, there is a glass transition temperature T_g, below which Silly Putty will behave like glass, and shatter instead of squishing.

Often, the viscoelastic properties of polymers have a rate dependence, and this is the case with Silly Putty. Do the same amount of work over a shorter period of time -- say, hit it with a hammer instead of squishing it between your butt cheeks -- and Silly Putty behaves as if its T_g has been raised. It'll blow into a million pink bits. Don't get it in your hair.

Another cool thing you can do with Silly Putty is squish it onto a comic book or a newspaper, and a ghostly reproduction of the image will be transferred onto the Putty. If you squish it around for a bit, the image will appear to dissolve, but your Putty is a little less pink now. Do this enough times and it'll turn an ugly shade of gray.

Silly putty also bounces, stretches and flows. It is very resilient.

So with all of these wonderful, seemingly magical properties, Silly Putty seems to me to be the perfect metaphor for ... something. But what?

I Never Claimed To Be

I'm not a trend-setter, not a leader, not a frame of reference, or a role model. I don't innovate, I copy. I implement other people's great ideas. I plagiarize shamelessly. Well okay, there's some shame, but not a lot.

So here's a riff on Boxer's non-meme, who got it from a friend, who got it from a friend, etc. Everyone's doing it, so it must be cool, right?

First ten songs on my randomly shuffled iPod:

1. Back In Black (AC/DC)
This is the kind of high-energy, brainless Guitar-God hard rock that just makes you want to yell "FUCK YEAH!" at random people on the street. Brian Johnson steps up for the late Bon Scott, and the band unleashes a guitar-fueled power pumping rocket up the charts, ending up in the number two spot for most successful hard-rock album of all time, and no wonder. Every track is legendary. For those days when I care more about Rocking out than listening to soulful lyrics.

2. Dirt Bag (Psycraft Remix) (Brad Sucks)
Hmm. My iPod says this is by "Brad Sucks", though I'm not sure that's accurate. To be honest, I don't know where the hell this song came from, but it sounds like the kind of thing you'd here on a depressing "Basketball Diaries"-type soundtrack. Still excellent lyrics, depressing vocals, swelling orchestral back, some acoustic jangle. I give it four awesomes.

3. Music Is My Hot Hot Sex (Cansei de Ser Sexy)
You maybe heard this song in a recent iPod commercial. A driving synth-pop booty-shaker with a familiar drum and baseline, the song gets my legs twitching within a bar or two. The video sucks, but I defy you to play this track and not break out doing "the Robot". Way too sexy for a Brazilian band whose name means "Tired of Being Sexy".

4. Man of Constant Sorrow (Soggy Bottom Brothers / Dan Tyminski)
This one's off the soundtrack for "O Brother, Where Art Thou". The movie version was better, but the twangy banjo, and low hooting of the jug just puts it over the top. Fantastic bluegrass, that makes me want to ride the rails with a stalk of wheat in my mouth.

5. Cha Cha Twist (The Detroit Cobras)
First track off their "Mink, Rat or Rabbit" album, this is a wicked, rocking cover of the Brice Coefield original, retaining all of the original 60s charm. For it's time, this was "bad boy" rock n' roll. Now it seems quaint, but the remake keeps the rock-quotient turned up to eleven. Perfect for karaoke, or nostalgia for a time you can't remember.

6. Let Go (Frou Frou)
Classic post-club chillout Europop. Imogen Heap delivers syrupy smooth vocals. Great for: Lying on your back looking at clouds in the sky; rekindling your love for humanity; de-greasing your curmudgeonly soul; coming down from an Ecstasy high.

7. Black Devil Car (Jamiroquai)
By far the best track on their recent "Dynamite" album. What seems at first like a bunch of hard-to-parse atonal progressions quickly smooths out into a sort of meta-funk cum badass rock vibe. Uplifting and energetic. Definitely a pick-me-up.

8. Re: Your Brains (Jonathan Coulton)
From the same guy who brought you the acoustic folk version of "Baby Got Back". Every track is a tongue-in-cheek gem of melodic folk crooning. When you feel like going on a zombie brain-eating rampage, pause for some mellow dining music.

9. Everybody Got Their Something (Nikki Costa)
From the opening "plinky" base line, this song just makes me so happy happy happy. I don't know if it's a remake or what. Don't even know what album I ripped this off, but it's consistently in my top 10. Perfect for sunny days, it'll put a funk-strut in your step.

10. Low Rider (War)
For some reason, I thought ZZ Top sang this song, but I guess I'm wrong. Makes me want to put a fuzzy steering wheel cover on my car and go cruising. Perfect for a blunt in the park, with sunglasses.

About halfway through writing this, I realized that I could just link to YouTube for most of these. It's Infringeriffic!

Also, I seem to have lucked out with this random selection, since a good eighty percent of my music library sucks balls.

In other news, I'm rockin' in the free world with Guitar Hero III. Buy it. Buy it now. Then call me. You can be my roadie.

Seriously. I'm a Rock God.

Losing You Could Mean... Something

What can I say? I'm being lazy and there's no excuse. I said there was no Universal Truth. But here is the truth.

Knife Goes In, Guts Come Out

One problem with writing on the internet, is that it's easy to fall into the trap of writing for yourself, and forgetting that anyone can read this crap. Including your wife, your co-workers, your boss, or your priest.

So here's a thing that I feel like I need to write down, but I have to be careful how I do it.

Earlier this week, during casual conversation with Ironman, I mentioned some trifling work-related concerns. Little by little, the conversation became less casual, the concerns less trifling.

I was basically asking for advice from someone who's natural (almost supernatural) people skills and raw management "talent" are tempered with a sort of "Muppet Babies" innocence, and basically eclipse my own amazing awesomeness. Like a sparkling diamond in a dark, depressing sea of vomit, Ironman stands out as, well, something of a niftiness, managerially.

Lest you think I embellish just because he happens to know where I blog, let me assure you that the bar is set relatively low in this regard. The majority of managers with whom I've had the pleasure of working might not inaccurately be referred to as "a hooting band of blinkering cockslots", to paraphrase Oscar Wilde.

At any rate, the upshot of the entire conversation was that, as usual, the problem is me. This stinging truth was delivered by diplomatic hammer, and as I lay on the ground, groping about for my missing testicles, I vowed to do a better job.

Of course, two days later, this promise exploded into festive confetti when I commiserated on the subject of the "bureaucracy" with my lackey. This was an unfortunate choice of words, and the hammer, this time, was less diplomatic. The phone, accursed instrument of Beelzebub, rang.

"If the delicate subtext of our earlier conversation has slipped you by, then allow me to hold your head under the putrescent waters of knowledge," began Ironman (paraphrasing here), and the thing just got better from there. My end of the phone conversation went something like "Yes. Yes. I understand. Yes. Yes." The message was clear. Be careful what you say.

Perhaps I'm a masochist, but I'm hoping for a "be careful what you blog" message. Perhaps this time I'll be able to take a few days off and claim workman's compensation.

Ironman knows I kid. "Just kidding, boss!"

Seriously. Great guy.

In the interests of Changing the Subject:

Son, having recovered from pneumonia, promptly contracted an ear infection. Once he'd finished his antibiotics, instantly broke out in hives, an allergic reaction to penicillin. While at the pediatrician's office (for the fifth time in as many weeks), Son managed to accidentally give the doc a good swift kick in the gnarbles.

This produced in me a strange mixture of emotions that I can only describe as embarrassment, cringing sympathetic pain, regret, and of course, hilarity.

Why is it that all of humanity finds a boot in the nads -- someone else's nads -- so goddamn funny? No other sort of pain or misfortune is witnessed with as much suppressed mirth as having your balls kicked so hard you could wear them for a hat.

Is there some deeper universal bond that joins us all in our appreciation of this phenomena? Some common thread that cuts across cultures? Can it be used to bring peace to the Middle East, as opposed to fodder for America's Funniest Home Videos?

These are the kinds of deep questions that keep me awake at night. Perhaps I should kick Lackey in the nuts, in the interests of improved professional communications.

Spoiler Alert:

Well, I saw this. Which made me think of this:

Which reminded me of something I forgot to mention. FTC insider trading regulations prohibit me from telling you this, but what the hell. Osaka Seafood Concern, the Japanese company that owns a controlling interest in PerpetualStartup, where I work, is undergoing a leveraged management buyout of it's publicly traded stock.

So, I dunno, go buy some stock or something.