myspace

A quick note to all zero of my avid readers. I am abandoning this wretched, unattended blog for the multifaceted utility of myspace.

The meek shall inherit the earth.

Always dirty.
Always Mike.
Peace out.

nature shows

There was a time, not long ago, when I would claim, without a doubt, that nature shows were the pinnacle of television programming.
Nature shows have grown weak.
This is not to say that nature shows, in and of themselves, are a weak medium. The market is merely glutted. The Discovery channel, once powerful, has succumbed to the pressure of the over-produced, scientifically insignificant programming targetted towards an unfocussed audience. Convinced that quick cuts, flashy CG, and informationally devoid graphics are their ticket to the younger, impatient generation, they sacrifice all that is valuable in the nature program.
The prolonged shot, tracing the beast at its speed, keeping in mind its agenda, conveys and expresses more than any trite, flashy production can hope to intimate.
Nova is a powerful show. Seldom do Nova producers succumb to this misguided approach.

So let's talk about journalism. A film is not great because it is a documentary.
The sad truth of the situation is that a documentary is not even necessarily truthful because it is a documentary. Any lover of truth should investigate a variety of Errol Morris films - namely, the Thin Blue Line, A Brief History of Time, and The Fog of War. And you must see Baraka.

Reason rules.

thunder

This morning, Len, you came in like rolling thunder.

That was the best thing I said all day.

self-employment

Witnessed the best panhandling operation on Friday at Justice Court.
A guy walks up to me, asks if I'm pressed for time, and offers a call ticket thirty numbers ahead of mine. That's like saving twenty minutes.
The hitch is, he's short on cash. He wants five dollars to trade.
I didn't bite, but given the length of the wait, I'm sure he gets a lot of takers.
All he has to do is go early in the morning, get a number, then keep selling and trading up. He doesn't even draw attention from the bailiff, because he only approaches the ticket printer once. I imagine he could sell one every twenty minutes to half hour.

Cheers for providing a genuine public service.

word fads 2

Here are some words I like:
toile - (twoll) monochromatic prints with a repeating pattern. They look like engravings. If you were to visit some old fashioned country club, you might see a brown sketch on an upholstered chair depicting a father and son hunting. They're hunting a runaway slave. At least the word and idea are nice.
transubstantiation - This word is long. The church thought that by making it long, they could legitimize it. Those damn cannibalist catholics.
ptyalism - I had to take Latin classes in Junior High. My Latin teacher was this fat guy named Mr. King who wore coke bottle glasses. Everyone in the higher grades advised me to claim a seat in the back row. I soon found out why. On the first day of class he introduced himself: My name is Mr. King (he scratches it out on the blackboard)You will notice that I salivate more than most people. (spittle flies into the front row as he tries to enunciate) This is perfectly natural. I have a medical condition called ptyalism which means my glands produce too much saliva. What an introduction. If you sat in the front half of his classroom, you would get sprayed. If you saw him late in the day, you would see the stain running down his shirt from all the drooling. Even if this man were the world's foremost expert on the Latin language, I can't comprehend how he got any job allowing him to speak before an audience. Poor guy.
Mahometan - along with Mohammedan, one of the old, ignorant terms for "Muslim." I love the sound of it. It makes Islam sound like a cult, which is weird, because "Christian" doesn't make Christianity sound like a cult. My cultural heritage probably dictates this. Maybe there's a secret rule that your religion can only be named after a person if that person was a god. Prophets need not apply.
precis - (pray'-see) a concise summary. I prefer this academic term to its inferior counterparts - summary, report, abstract... speaking of, how did abstract adopt this usage? It reeks of faulty generalisation, while precis cuts like a knife.
fissure - It sounds dramatic, looks sexy, it is a king among words.

Here are some words I hate:
subrogate - to substitute one person for another in reference to a claim or right. I have run across this word in a few legal documents lately. Though simple enough in definition, "subrogate" is unnecessarily confusing because its usage follows no clear grammatical rules. In different legal statutes, I have seen "subrogate" coupled with two different prepositions: "to" and "for." Now, if we were to follow common grammatical sense, "Mike is subrogated to Enron" would mean "Mike is replaced by Enron in reference to this claim", while "Mike is subrogated for Enron" would mean "Mike replaces Enron in reference to this claim". The former construction essentially makes the verb passive, while the latter makes it active; one construction means the opposite of the other. However, legal experts choose to ignore this common-sense distinction and regularly use "is subrogated to" in place of "is subrogated for," adding to the obfuscation prevalent in legal statutes. Legal writing suffers from an obsession with esoteric grammar, an obsession which probably grew from a demand for clarity, but which has blossomed into an ungainly beast that devours clarity with pretentious teeth.
epicurean - this is a high society word meaning "particularly fond of or characterized by extravagance, luxury..." It could have a deeper meaning, a meaning that recognizes its heritage, a meaning that embraces a worthy philosophy and a worthy understanding of pleasure, but it has been adopted by a culture that prioritizes the pleasures of consumption. Epicurus did indeed teach that one should orient one's life to the pursuit of pleasure, but his understanding of pleasure was far more incisive and life-affirming than this hollow word would suggest. He suggested that before we seek pleasure in fulfilling our desires, we should analyse them and come to understand what they really mean in our lives: Of the desires, some are natural and necessary. Others are natural but unnecessary. And there are desires that are neither natural nor necessary The heart of his argument for engaging our desires philosophically is the idea that our instinct for happiness may often err. If we think a private jet and collosal mansion will satisfy our desires, we misunderstand happiness and pleasure. For Epicurus, friendship, freedom, and thought encompass all that is and can be happiness. He established a commune outside of Athens so that he and his friends would be free from the constraints and false desires of everyday society. They grew most of their own food and lived with few of the luxuries that life in Athens afforded. I imagine that most of them were happy. Four hundred years later, Diogenes commissioned a billboard in Rome to extoll the wisdom he had gained through Epicurus: ..Luxurious foods and drinks in no way produce freedom from harm and a healthy condition in the flesh.. One must regard wealth beyond what is natural as of no more use than water to a container that is full to overflowing.. Real value is generated not by theatres and baths and perfumes..but by natural science.. Let us reclaim "epicurean" and reclaim our understanding of our happiness.

physical duties

Well, I guess I have to learn a Cuban accent. I am terrible at accents, can't even fake a passable British one. I guess my Southerner is okay, but it's a nondescript Western sort of accent like the one some television cowboy would use while he shoots up a bunch of injins. Real southerners, their accents are specific, precise, numerous. I just got a lazy drawl.
I've always entertained my family with my ability to recite lines from movies. I love doing Steve Martin and Michael Caine in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. That movie slays me. But the reason I'm good at this, I think, is that I have a great ear for inflection. The reason I'm bad at accents is that I don't have a good ear for intonation. Maybe I just need to practice more.
Does anyone have any Cuban friends I can talk to? know of any Cuban movies? For the time being, I'm just going to have to get my hands on a copy of Scarface and start practicing all of Tony Montana's lines. It's a physical, comedic duty.
What are your physical duties?

if you poke your eye

if you poke your eye
ever so gently
on one side,
(you do not have to touch your eyeball.
you can just push your skin.
but if you really want to touch your eyeball,
that is alright too,
and you might like it,
because your eye wets your finger with a silky fluid
which is unlike other fluids that you might feel
when you poke your wounds
or dab your cum
or pick your nose
or slide your finger inside her vagina
or up your ass.)
you will notice,
in your field of vision,
directly opposite that spot that you poke,
as you push carefully,
increasing the pressure slowly
and minding the pain
that bothers you because you do it to you,
a dark blindness, a grey void
that swells and ebbs
at your command.

it swallows things that you saw
a moment ago.

word fads 1

Here are some words I like:
Indeed - a formidible word that doesn't really mean anything. I prefer it to other ways of expressing agreement, as it sounds scholarly and can be inserted into nearly any statement.
decasualize - to reduce or eliminate the employment of. Godamnit Mike! You are the worst pork frier I've ever seen! Consider yourself decasualized!
chimera - For years, I read this word as shie-mare'-uh, because I had only read it. No one ever used it in speech. I'm going to start pronouncing it kie-mare'-uh as a compromise with the proper pronunciation, kie-mere'-uh. I bet no one will notice. If they do, I will reassure them that their misgivings are but a chimera.
agoraphobia - the fear of crowds. Because there are so many phobias, people confuse them all the time. The other day, despite my confident assurance to the contrary, some dude tried to convince me that this meant something else.
nemesis - the dude that tried to convince me. Nothing is worse than a person who likes to argue, yet concedes nothing. Such people forsake reason for conviction.
solipsism - I first encountered this in an article entitled "Education and Solipsism," extolling Deep Springs College. Primarily a philosophical term, it refers to the theory that only the self exists or can be proven to exist. The solipsistic individual forsakes social concerns for self-examination and betterment. Solipsism is a destructive, misguided ideology.
epigone - a follower, successor, or insignificant imitator of an innovator.
spongy parenchyma - the soft tissue on the underside of a leaf. The color is paler because it is largely devoid of chloroplasts.
escapement - This is a versatile word that describes a lot of mechanical devices. [the two-pronged claw that controls the speed of the going train (the ticking cog inside your watch) by rocking back and forth, the lever arrangement in a piano that allows the hammer to fall back into position after striking a string] Basically, an escapement is a device that offers other mechanical devices an outlet, a way of escaping. How beautiful.
hectare - Both larger than and phonetically superior to acre.
icosahedron - any polyhedron with twenty triangular faces. icosa is a great prefix, and I think this is the only word that uses it.
Dope - one of the finest ways to express interest and excitement. Since Zac has been a tireless advocate of its usage, dope is comin back at ya! Is psych next?

Here are some words I hate:
diva - This was first used in the 1800s to describe outstanding female opera singers. I don't know how it was reborn, but I can tell you that before 1996 I had never heard it. Two years later, when I got back from the ranch, every dumb-ass chick was a diva. To call someone a diva is to mistake popularity for credibility. "Diva" reeks of the miasma of false empowerment.
Darwinism - Don't people know that Darwin was only one figure in the history of a rich scientific discipline? The way people use this word is akin to replacing "chemistry" with "Lavoisier-ism." Evolutionary theory encompasses far more than natural selection.
punk rock - To some people, anything rebellious is "punk rock." Any nonconformist is "punk rock." But "punk" was originally used to describe vagrants, hoodlums, and prostitutes. I don't think it has earned the right to describe this nobler quality of defiance, especially when "punk rock" defines a style of music, dress, and behavior which is governed by its own rules of conformity. I think it is ridiculous that people call Johnny Cash and Thomas Paine "punk rock."

convictions

Many think it is important and good to have convictions. These people are wrong. A lack of convictions signifies one of two things: apathy, which really means laziness, or scientific thought. In response to this, many would say, "you are mistaken, because science teaches us that things can be known scientifically, and that we can believe in its facts with conviction. Ultimately, science is the pursuit of such convictions." They are right to recognize science as a pursuit, but they misunderstand the significance of this pursuit. The science they have studied is a body of accepted knowledge, and the experiments they may have conducted as part of their schooling are largely conceived as harmless exercises to illustrate known truths. While they are busy citing what others have discovered by doubting, criticizing, and examining, they fail to recognize that only this doubting, criticizing, and examining can be called science. Science, the pursuit of understanding, is a methodology, not a body of knowledge, and certainly not a field that harbors conviction.
Conviction is the belief that regarding a particular point of contention, one's own opinion is true. The man of conviction can be likened to the scientific dilettante. He may know and understand all sorts of established facts about the nature of things, but he lacks the skepticism that marks the mind of the true scientist. He is likely to grab hold of any idea either conceived or encountered and become its champion, parading his conviction through the streets, shouting it from the rooftops. In this way he becomes the enemy of science, the enemy of understanding, and the very opposite of what he claims and believes himself to be.

the science of pope funeral coverage

Last night I was unable to sleep. I shuffled into the living room and flipped on the tv to discover but one program worth viewing: the pope's funeral. I recognized the entrance to St. Peter's basilica from my trip to Europe years ago, and it took me back to when I first encountered that ornate church.

Michelangelo's architecture is stunning. The circular square seems to embrace and invite you inside. Once within you notice the ceiling sparkling with gold gilding. From a distance, you spy the images on the walls, each easily larger than fifteen feet square, that appear to be Raphaelite murals. You walk towards them only to drop your jaw in amazement when, from about fifteen feet away, you realize they are giant mosaics composed of tiny uniform tiles. And yet, they cannot hold your attention. You're drawn to the center - to the massive dome pierced by rays of sunlight. Vertigo overtakes you as you look skywards. But the focal point of Saint Peter's, its greatest artistic and religious gesture, is staring right there with you, directly beneath Michelangelo's dome - Bernini's altar. Sinister and wicked, it engulfs you in sin, a celebration of carnal pleasure that secretly usurps the holiness and pristine religiosity of the church that houses it. The crooked black pillars wind their way upwards like serpents slithering to swallow the light of the dome. You slither with them.

So I was sitting on the couch. Rome was overcast and windy, cardinals' robes and flags fluttered in the wind. Millions came to bury the pope. At first I watched out of curiosity, but my curiosity soon overtook the event and I became interested in the way it was being presented. I was really getting into the choral arrangement (it was the entrance canto or something) when some dumbass commentator on CNN started talking to explain some shit over the music. It pissed me off, so I changed to FoxNews and saw they were using the same live footage. Curious, I checked all the channels to see who was airing the broadcast. There were 7 channels: CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, FoxNews, Fox, and MSNBC. Headline News and CNBC stuck with their regular programming. PBS, it seems, doesn't ever air fresh footage in the middle of the night. So here are the interesting facts:
Everyone was airing the same footage - the same shots, the same cuts. This means only one video-mixing crew with its own cameras had access to the event. I never found out who this was, but since every news channel aired the footage, I imagine the vatican hired some independent film-maker and then sold broadcast rights to the various news entities. However, I overstated things when I said the footage was identical. This was true for the vast majority of the ceremony, but there was some variation during the less formal moments. During Cardinal Ratzinger's homily, towards the end of mass and during communion, the news organizations were clearly given optional camera shots from which to choose. What a logistical nightmare! How on earth did the video crew organize this feed that clearly stipulated degrees of freedom? If anyone can fill me in with technical details, let me know. I'm only incredulous because I don't know a thing about the process.
Scanning the channels, I discovered that different stations were employing different delays for this "live" event. FoxNews was airing the footage almost a whole second ahead of everyone else. CBS, NBC, and ABC were second, followed closely by CNN and Fox. MSNBC, for some reason, lagged slightly behind. Maybe Foxnews claims some sort of superiority by getting its footage out there so quickly. Maybe its screeners and editors are simply more efficient. Whatever it was, it made me wonder if all "live" programming is delayed and for how long. I realize that it takes some time for the signal to travel from earth to satellite and back to earth, but this delay should be uniform for all stations, as all communications satellites are in stationary orbit at the same altitude. The disparity must come from somewhere else. How live is "live?"
The growing prominence of station logos embedded in broadcasts offends me. Naturally, I examined the various logos as I surfed. The networks ABC, NBC, and CBS were the least offensive with small relief logos in the bottom right corner that blended in with the background. On the other hand, CNN and MSNBC were pretty annoying. Both stated the obvious - "funeral of Pope John Paul II" or something like that - in the bottom left corner, while obtrusive station logos occupied the bottom right. CNN even displayed "live" in the upper left corner. Fox and Foxnews were no better. Though they only used one corner, the bottom left, for their large station icons, they frequently displayed large banners across the bottom of the screen, giving a name to whatever ceremony was in progress. This brings me to another interesting observation. After some time, I realized that Fox and Foxnews were displaying the same banners at the same time. How closely affiliated are Fox and Foxnews, or NBC and MSNBC for that matter? Not that closely, it would seem. NBC and MSNBC were as dissimilar as any two stations on the list. The identical programming on Fox and Foxnews began and ended with the banners, and editorial differences appeared to be the norm, not the exception. They employed different translators, cut to different shots when given the freedom to, and felt the urge to interject bland comments at different times. Even their logos, both of which said "Fox News", were different. So why on Earth, amidst all this separate editorial control, did they need one guy in common, one guy to fill the most important position, one guy to synchronize their banners? It is most likely that he represented some attempt at efficiency, but banner uniformity is a ridiculous goal. Fox could have increased efficiency far more efficiently. Maybe I'm over-analyzing. Maybe one of the banner guys was sick.
However, screen appearance was only one facet of the funeral presentation. Some of the more substantive coverage choices certainly made me sick. The commentators for NBC, ABC, and CBS talked quite a bit more than their cable counterparts. They were far more likely to interject comments over ceremonial choral music or Latin readings, parts of the funeral that I think should have been uninterrupted to preserve the solemnity of the occasion and the effect of the experience. CBS's Harry Smith (I think that's his name) was the most egregious offender in this regard, but everybody did it to some extent. At one point, someone at Foxnews started translating a Latin reading only to stop abruptly once he realized it was being sung. At least someone realized his mistake. Didn't anyone stop to ask first: what is the nature of this ceremony? If they did, I think they would have concluded that the funeral was primarily designed to convey aesthetics rather than content, and, as such, any commentary was not only unnecessary but harmful to its conveyance.
The funeral dragged on, and the video liberties increased, and the networks attempted different things to make the broadcast interesting. NBC started jumping around the world to live shots of crowds watching the funeral on big screens. ABC interspersed their broadcast with photos of Karol spanning the history of his papacy. CBS split the screen so that in the upper left they could keep airing the live footage and use the bottom right for photos and world footage. Already too busy, they thought it needed more, so in the bottom left, they scrolled through the names of all the popes, which, altogether, made me vomit. To CBS's credit, I must say that the popes were listed in chronological order, enabling me to learn some history between heaves.
Which brings me to my final point: Remember OJ Simpson? I do. One of the first funereal broadcast disparities that I noticed invited me to revisit my OJ memories, of which I am quite fond. In particular, I remembered a mug shot that found its way to the covers of both Time and Newsweek. Some people (probably from Newsweek) raised hell about how Time had doctored the mugshot, giving OJ a darker (more sinister?) complexion. The media latched onto this, as they did all things OJ, and launched into a discussion of the ethics of "doctoring" photos. Conventional wisdom has changed considerably since then, to the extent that this sort of thing probably wouldn't raise any eyebrows today. After all, "doctoring" is a far looser term than it used to be. However, if you were to scan the various stations as I did on Thursday night, you would have noticed the broad range of color adjustments being made to the otherwise identical video feed. I don't think the saturation and hue reveal any political or emotional bias, but I noted the differences I could discern. MSNBC paraded the highest color saturation, so that the overly prevalent reds of cardinal robes and banners leapt like fire from the screen onto unsuspecting eyeballs. Their broadcast was also exceptionally bright, along with CNN and NBC. Both of these stations, however, toned down their saturation a couple of notches. Slightly more colorful, but considerably less bright, was CBS's coverage. They did a better job, along with Foxnews, of capturing the essence of the overcast morning. ABC was a bit of an anomaly in this category as their broadcast revealed a noticable yellow shift, causing robes of the cardinals to appear rusty orange and the walls of Saint Peter's to come alive in beige intensity. All in all, I favored Fox for their color scheme, which was clearly the dimmest. The contrast was high, the color saturation was low. It felt most like a tumultuous and overcast day in Rome.

Brett's best friends are all girls. 

fiery death?

When death comes for me, if I can see its coming, it will melt in my hands and transform into something extraordinary. For my hands work. They are fired by a furnace which moves my body this way and that. I fling open doors, rotate my body with the horizon, marvel at my limbs- one, two, three, four, obedient extremities - what regard for rhythm, what regard for willfulness. And so, my body fires itself. My body is a furnace, set into motion by a fire, a fire which is me, extended through fire into transmogrification. For the hands alive with my heat stoke the fire in all they touch, in all they level, in all they erect, so that this furnace may rage and grow with my courage, become an inferno, engulf sameness in firestorm. And yes. My hands will touch death. But is this extraordinary? To lift one up with fire? All the ashen deaths that cloud my vision, poison my air, suffocate my fire, forcing me to crouch down and fan - these, and these alone weigh down a fiery will with difficulty. The deaths undied, how extraordinary, and how mighty in the face of the death that melts.

valentine's on easter

I know you said you knew what I did.
But you do not know what I did.
I never touched her.

I know I lied and said I was free.
But he did not come inside me.
He splashed my eyelids.

I know just what to do to you
I'll throw you up against the door
I'll fuck you here and on the floor
I'll slap your face and pull your hair
I'll poke you through your underwear

Don't touch me or I'll grab that gun
You jealous prick I hope you die
I'm gonna go and fuck that guy
You'll wish that you were never born
So just go home and watch some porn

Foolishly I scramble for the gun,
I put the barrel in her mouth,
She bites down hard.
There's one more mound in my backyard.

my blender

if you thought your blender kicked ass, you were wrong.
there can be but one most ass kickin blender, and it is mine.

these things are meant to be eaten -
bananas, crab, steak, celery, cheese.
these things are not meant to be eaten -
spoons, carburetor, glass, clock, paper.
but I eat as I please,
because my machine wishes to satisfy my desires.

"Oh, please Mike, let me fix you a mercury cotton smoothie!
I promise it won't be lumpy."
"No! Go away! I'm trying to sleep.
What are you doing in my room?"
"It was cold on the counter and I was lonely, so lonely.
Plus, the coffee pot was lookin at me funny,
her eyes were all googly like she was on somethin,
and I started to get scared. I started to think
about how I awoke last night to freakish screams
only to look down in horror at the hideous, mangled wreck
that was once automatic can opener.
I swear it wasn't me!"
"You're sweating. Let me get a damp towel...
Oh dear, I'm afraid you might have a fever, blendie.
This just won't do. You have to start taking care of yourself."
"I know, but it's so hard! and you need me now more than ever!"
"That is no excuse. Now this is what we are going to do:
Take two of these xanax...there...now close your eyes...good...
Relax. I'm gonna carry you back to the counter, tuck you in,
and sing you a song as you go to sleep."
"Mike?"
"Yes?"
"Will you sing me some Gram Parsons? Your voice is so pretty."
"Sure."

...so don't play this crazy game with me no longer,
'cause I won't be able to resist my rage,
and the gun that's hanging on the kitchen wall, dear,
is like a roadsign pointing straight to satan's cage...
Goodnight.

bartender

bartender lady,
you are perfect.
to say what you said
is to melt my heart.

you know my mouth is not my own,
but mine to share,
and that touching my lips to yours
is a purpose.

But my heart sinks as it melts,
because I am not desirable.
I am wicked
and defeated.

silly beginnings

I like you, trout.
your eyes are weird.
you look at me,
but you also look at my foot.
what does that look like?
a foot-face?

Keep sucking at the air.
it's so cute.
if it wasn't so cute,
I might put you back in the water.
but you look like a teething baby,
which is cute,
so I will not.

Your gills are crazy.
they ripple and flex.
If I had a car,
I would want it to have gills
that ripple and flex
along each door.
and I would want them to be gooey and fleshy,
and I would stick my arm through the fleshy goo
while I was driving,
and flip you off
through my gill flaps.