Thursday, December 22, 2005

Poetry Thursday: The Christmas Episode




So here we stand, teetering on the brink of Christams Day, 2005. Another year has come and gone and blah blah blah. At least this year you all have my blog to keep you company at Christmas! The following poems are all about Christmas. Some are happy, some are not. Before you read them, try to guess which category the Thomas Hardy poem fits into!

The House of Hospitalities
by Thomas Hardy

Here we broached the Christmas barrel,
Pushed up the charred log-ends;
Here we sang the Christmas carol,
And called in friends.

Time has tired me since we met here
When the folk now dead were young,
And the viands were outset here
And quaint songs sung.

And the worm has bored the viol
That used to lead the tune,
Rust eaten out the dial
That struck night's noon.

Now no Christmas brings in neighbours,
And the New Year comes unlit;
Where we sang the mole now labours,
And spiders knit.

Yet at midnight if here walking,
When the moon sheets wall and tree,
I see forms of old time talking,
Who smile on me.



This Section Is A Christmas Tree
by Vachel Lindsay

THIS section is a Christmas tree:
Loaded with pretty toys for you.
Behold the blocks, the Noah's arks,
The popguns painted red and blue.
No solemn pine-cone forest-fruit,
But silver horns and candy sacks
And many little tinsel hearts
And cherubs pink, and jumping-jacks.
For every child a gift, I hope.
The doll upon the topmost bough
Is mine. But all the rest are yours.
And I will light the candles now.



The Sceptic
by Robert William Service

My Father Christmas passed away
When I was barely seven.
At twenty-one, alack-a-day,
I lost my hope of heaven.

Yet not in either lies the curse:
The hell of it's because
I don't know which loss hurt the worse --
My God or Santa Claus.





Christmas Trees

by Robert Frost

THE CITY had withdrawn into itself
And left at last the country to the country;
When between whirls of snow not come to lie
And whirls of foliage not yet laid, there drove
A stranger to our yard, who looked the city,
Yet did in country fashion in that there
He sat and waited till he drew us out
A-buttoning coats to ask him who he was.
He proved to be the city come again
To look for something it had left behind
And could not do without and keep its Christmas.
He asked if I would sell my Christmas trees;
My woods—the young fir balsams like a place
Where houses all are churches and have spires.
I hadn’t thought of them as Christmas Trees.
I doubt if I was tempted for a moment
To sell them off their feet to go in cars
And leave the slope behind the house all bare,
Where the sun shines now no warmer than the moon.
I’d hate to have them know it if I was.
Yet more I’d hate to hold my trees except
As others hold theirs or refuse for them,
Beyond the time of profitable growth,
The trial by market everything must come to.
I dallied so much with the thought of selling.
Then whether from mistaken courtesy
And fear of seeming short of speech, or whether
From hope of hearing good of what was mine,
I said, “There aren’t enough to be worth while.”
“I could soon tell how many they would cut,
You let me look them over.”

“You could look.
But don’t expect I’m going to let you have them.”
Pasture they spring in, some in clumps too close
That lop each other of boughs, but not a few
Quite solitary and having equal boughs
All round and round. The latter he nodded “Yes” to,
Or paused to say beneath some lovelier one,
With a buyer’s moderation, “That would do.”
I thought so too, but wasn’t there to say so.
We climbed the pasture on the south, crossed over,
And came down on the north.
He said, “A thousand.”

“A thousand Christmas trees!—at what apiece?”

He felt some need of softening that to me:
“A thousand trees would come to thirty dollars.”

Then I was certain I had never meant
To let him have them. Never show surprise!
But thirty dollars seemed so small beside
The extent of pasture I should strip, three cents
(For that was all they figured out apiece),
Three cents so small beside the dollar friends
I should be writing to within the hour
Would pay in cities for good trees like those,
Regular vestry-trees whole Sunday Schools
Could hang enough on to pick off enough.
A thousand Christmas trees I didn’t know I had!
Worth three cents more to give away than sell,
As may be shown by a simple calculation.
Too bad I couldn’t lay one in a letter.
I can’t help wishing I could send you one,
In wishing you herewith a Merry Christmas.

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Whatever and ever amen.

I don’t know what to write about today, but I also don’t want to let everybody down with a blank day so here goes…

An Imaginary Conversation Between Me and Me From Yesterday

Me From Yesterday: Whoa, dude, aren’t you supposed to be in Detroit right now?

Me: Oh, yeah, that. It got cancelled when I got a call from my company’s VP of Engineering last night at 11:00 PM.

MFY: That’s kind of late for a phone call, isn’t it? Wait a minute….does this mean that I didn’t need to rush to get so much stuff done earlier since I’m not going to Detroit now?

Me: Ah ha ha ha. Sucker!

MFY: Whatever dude. It’s not like you didn’t have to do it. We’re the same person you know.

Me: Man, this is weird huh?

MFY: Sort of like an existential temporal mirror in which we can see that which humans should never be privileged to see.

Me: I guess. This is kind of a boring conversation though. Can you think of anything more interesting to talk about?

MFY: Okay, how about this: Do you ever get annoyed when …

Me: Constantly.

MFY: What the??? I didn’t even finish my sentence!

Me: Trust me, I know what you were going to say, remember?

MFY: Oh. Yeah.

Me: So tell me, me, what are five things that you would pay good money for?

MFY: Some Black Butte Porter. Umm, maybe a flaming sword of truth? Six pieces of Almond Roca. For Maggie to get better, and my two front teeth. LOL! Get it? My two front teeth? Like the song?

Me: Good Lord! Am I always this stupid?

MFY: Well, yeah, pretty much, I think.

Me: Also, I have some bad news. Maggie still isn’t better.

MFY: Crud Muffins!

Me: So….Ummm… this seems to be going nowhere….

MFY: Okay, let’s kick things up a notch. BAM!

Me: I’m pretty sure that time traveling into the future makes one inherently more stupid, because there’s no way that I would think to say things like that in real life.

MFY: Except that I don’t exist and you’re thinking them up right now chowderhead!

Me: What? No, I, um, wait…That…..I…..Whooda…..What…..

MFY: Sucks to be you!

Me: I knew this phony self interview thing was a bad idea.

MFY [dancing around in a clown costume]: La La La La La La, I’m a big fat monkeyman, doing my little monkey dance!

Me: Somebody shoot me.

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

List Tuesday



Okay, so I'm busy today. You don't get any links this time. Also, I think that putting these lists on here sort of makes it a self-fulfilling prophecy that I get hits for these search temrs. Cool.


Things People Have Searched For That Somehow Led Them To My Blog (Part II)

1. Did Napoleon Bonaparte dislike bad smells?

2. Learn to draw a prince

3. “Maybe the rain will stop following me” Death Cab For cutie lyrics

4. virtual pedophilia

5. Bricks falling from a tall building

6. Stina Katchadourian Sodergran

7. p4ned

8. analyze pigtail- tadeusz rozewicz

9. Sweetheart’s Christmas

10. Glasses Bricks Pictures

11. Poetry on Land and Soil

12. Yakima Wa. Old Burger Ranch Employees

13. “Danny Gatton”

14. Cover over brick

15. riddle give the meaning of 0 degrees

16. Cobain Joplin Morrison Johnson Hendrix

17. Romeo Songs

Monday, December 19, 2005

A Brief History of the Universe

Rampant consumerism at Christmastime is the bane and the result of the baby boomers and the so-called "Greatest Generation."

There, I said it. Maybe it's not really entirely true, maybe I'm just trying to be provocative (okay, no maybe about that), but maybe, just maybe, there is a lot of truth to it. And I think it mostly stems from a horribly inaccurate view of childhood held by the older generations (and, I'm sure, my generation when our kids start to approach adulthood).

What do you remember about Christmas as a kid? Do you remember what you got as presents every year? Do you still harbor a grudge because you didn't get a specific gift? I doubt it. I don't think I can recall 5 gifts I ever got, outside of the traditional ones that is. What I remeber are the fun times, the advent calender and associated activities, the treasure hunts for our new ornaments (all us kids got a new one every year, a tradition we're keeping now with Levi) which meant we were going to get our Christmas tree that night. I remember making and painting Christmas cookies to take to my Grandma's house on Christmas eve. I remember trying to stay up all night because we were so excited about Christmas morning, a Christmas morning that I recall much less of than the time leading up to it. I remember my little brother, with whom I shared a bed, waking up around 1 AM one year and throwing up all over our bed. Too much candy at Grandma's I guess. I remember coming home with my new clock radio and setting it up and listening to a radio station out of Sacramento all night Christmas eve. I still don't know how I picked up a Sacramento station that night. At the time I didn't realize how far away Sacramento is from Yakima: about 800 miles. Anyway, that's enough reminiscences. I could go on for days, but I won't.

So that's what I remember. That's the kind of thing that most people remember. And that is exactly the problem. In our myopic and idyllic recollection, childhood was a time of purity and of wonderful unawareness of the crass commercialism surrounding Christmas. But if we're honest with ourselves, if we look back with a critical eye, I think we'll all find that this consumerist nightmare is nothing new, we just think it is.

So this hodgepodge of a post has been leading up to this: A Christmas Story. In my opinion,
this is one of the greatest Christmas movies ever made. Right up there with The Muppet Christmas Carol, Scrooged, and It's a Wonderful Life (which, to be honest, isn't really a Christmas movie per se). Have you all seen A Christmas Story? I hope so. It is a brilliant portrayal of what Christmas (and childhood in general) is like for kids. None of that whitewashing and ignoring of the heartbreak and stress involved. When Ralphie works so hard on a school essay about what he wants for Christmas (a Red Ryder carbine-action 200-shot range model air rifle), really puts his heart into it, only to get a C+ and a snide comment, you can feel his sense of desperation and frustration, like the world and his teacher and his mom are all out to get him. It's that glorious self-centeredness of childhood. You can completely identify with his fear of death when he does something wrong. I'm sure all of us, at one point in our childhood, actually thought we were going to be killed, or kicked out, or something because of what we did. I don't know, it's just so perfect, this movie. Childhood is often a great time, and there is an innocence to it, but there's so much more that I think is really important for us not to forget, lest we see kids today as ungrateful, selfish brutes. So were we. So was everyone, time immemorial. That's what being a child is about.

And seriously, back to my initial statement in this horribly illconfigured and confusing post, if I hear one more 80-something person tell the story of how, when they were kids, all they got for Christmas was a kick in the head from a hobo and they liked it, by God! I think I'll puke. If that's true, if Christmas was all about little baby Jesus asleep on the hay, lowing cattle and the whole nine yards (more like 900 yards in the snow you stupid little ingrates!) when you were kids, then guess what, it's your generation's fault that we are where we are today. You are the ones that went crazy in the 40's and 50's and started buying your kids all the stuff you never had. You are the ones that raised the most spoiled generation in history who then went on to raise the most spoiled generation in history, who will in turn (probably) raise a bunch more spoiled kids. Yee haw. So don't lecture me, Gramps, about consumerism and not knowing the real meaning of Christmas. Go back and take the log out of your own eye first. Kids these days don't come up with it on their own. They learn it from somewhere, and that somewhere is you, their parents and grandparents.

Friday, December 16, 2005

Riddle Me This

Can you believe it? This is my 153rd post on A Ton Of Bricks!

Oh.

Yeah.

I just mentioned this the other day.

Never mind.

Now on to this week's FUN WITH PHYSICS!

So, as I was meandering (side note: the preceding word has it's origins in the name of the Maeander River in Phrygia, which was famed for it's windiness!) the internet, I stumbled across a Random Insult Generator. An example: I'd like to see things from your point of view but I can't seem to get my head that far up my ass. Associated with this generator are several others, including a Random Fact Generator, and a Random Famous Quote Generator. But what really got me thinking was the Random Riddle Generator. The first riddle I got was (and this isn't an exact quote): if you were 8 feet away from a wall and with each step moved half the distance to the wall, how many steps would it take to come in contact with the wall? The answer? It was, of course, a pithy "oh, you'll never get to the wall, but you will be taking some pretty small steps!" Ha ha ha. Oh wow, like I've never heard of Xeno's paradox you stupid internet thingy. But I'm here to tell you that the answer provided is absolutely and unequivocally wrong. That's right, it's wrong.

Let me explain. There is a property of the universe called the planck length (named after, guess who, Max Planck!). This length is the smallest possible distance that makes any sense in the universe. I won't go into the gritty details of it here, though. I'll suffice to say that it is based on the planck mass, which is the mass of a particle with a Compton Length equal to its Schwarzschild radius (which I believe I've mentioned before). When those two lengths are equal, that is the planck length, or about 1.6 x10^-35 meters. Anything smaller than this does not exist, since no information can ever be gleaned from smaller distances (kind of like a mini black hole, but different). Anyway, what this means is that when two things are separated by one planck length, they are actually touching. It has to do with the quantum uncertainty in the position of the particles. Just trust me. Or not. You can read about it on wikipedia, too. When we apply this idea to the riddle, it's a simple calculation to find that, if you start at 8 feet (2.4384 meters) out, after 117 steps you will be within one planck length of the wall, meaning you are actually touching the wall. Now you could also make the argument that at one step prior to that (116 steps), the next step would be physically impossible since it would need to be smaller than one planck length, so that you are actually touching the wall (by that I mean you can get no closer to the wall than you currently are) at a distance of 2.94 x10^-35 meters. Either argument holds water with me, but both say that after just over 100 steps you WILL reach the wall.

Come on riddle writers, learn some physics.

This idea can also apply to Xeno's paradox where you have an arrow moving at a constant speed. There is a unit of time called (guess what!) the planck time that is the smallest meaningful period of time in the universe. It is equal to the amount of time it takes a photon in a vacuum to pass through the planck length: about 5.39 x10^-44 seconds. From there, the argument is analogous and eventually the arrow does come in contact with the target.


This post contain 12 links, 6 of which are nearly incomprehensible physics articles.

Roundup Playpen Friday






It's good to see that these fine Americans are doing what they can to control terrorism. Look at the one second from the left. You know,the one in the weird red hat thing? He looks pretty shifty to me. Better lock him up and fly him to an undisclosed location overseas to "interrogate" him, if you know what I mean. And don't even get me started on the one in the bear hat. What is he trying to say by that? Is it some sort of communist symbolism about the rebirth of the "Bear" Mother Russia? Lock him up, too.

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Lazy Days are Here Again

I hate having a head cold, well more of a severe neck cold than a head cold but whatevs. My brian gets all slow-moving and garbled. So in honor of that, I'm going to pull that old lazy-blogger trick out my hat: link to a story and/or article written by a real journalist. Side note: all you bloggers that think you're a real journalist because you write about the news and post links to actual news stories? You're not journalists. There I said it.

Anyway, the article was published in the Seattle Times last week in reference to the Happy Holidays vs. Merry Christmas "war" being fought by the inimitable Reverend Falwell. I think it's really funny, especially this part..

"I went into Macy's, with its blasphemous "Holiday Lane." Reverend, you'll be proud to hear I marched up to a clerk and barked your question: "Christmas, friend or foe?!"

She pretended not to know what I was talking about. She replied: "So, all ready for Christmas yet?"

She said "Christmas" as if it was something to ward off, like bird flu. I made a note to report her as a "foe," and ran out."

And on a second, sadder note, please see the follow up article that was published today.

Monday, December 12, 2005

A Celebration!

So folks, this is post number 150 for me, believe it or not. And what a long way we've come in those 150 posts. It's been a good time overall. Some ups and downs of course, but I've enjoyed it. And now for something completely different: a post in which I make sarcastic and denigrating comments about something-or-other! Ha ha. Just kidding. I do that every other post. This post will actually have some serious thought in it, not all jokes and off-handed comments meant to create an impenetrable shield of world-weariness and savoir-faire around me so that no one ever gets to learn anything about the real me.

So. There's this tree near the bus stop at Wisconsin and Albemarle. On the west side, in front of the Best Buy. I first noticed this tree early this year, probably around February. I noticed it again last week. It's a small tree of no significant type or import. Just a tree, on a street, near a bus stop. But what has me thinking is the fact that this tree doesn't lose its leaves. Oh, it will when the new leaves start to come in in the spring, but all winter, the dead, brown, crunchy leaves will still be hanging on for dear life, refusing to let go. Of course, one can't help but see the symbology in that. What are we hanging on to that maybe we should just let go?

But that isn't really what got me thinking. What got me thinking was when we let go and embrace the changes that are occurring around the world, what will we become. What are we changing into? What will it mean to live in a world that isn't dependent on fossil fuels? What will we do when the last source of cheap labor has been exploited? What will a "post-modern" corporation look like? How can we transition away from enslavement to the almighty dollar? And what can we transition into?

I feel like we're all living on the cusp of something. What is it? I don't know, but it's down there somewhere in that unknowable abyss called "the future." Our current way of life is unsustainable, I believe. Can our way of life ever be sustainable? What does sustainable even mean? Whatever it means, things are going to change. I can feel it. And soon, I would bet. It's always darkest right before the sun comes out. Or maybe not. Maybe it's always darkest right before things go completely black.

Friday, December 09, 2005

Random Puncture Friday








Ah, nothing like little kids celebrating the conquest and brutal murder of hundreds of thousands indigenous people. I love school. I think the Conquistadores in full battle armor are just that right touch in that little cartoon, don't you?

Thursday, December 08, 2005

Bad Poetry Thursday is Back, too!



Today's genre is, well, it doesn't really have a genre. It just sucks.

The Unendurable Repetition of Concrete

by Schuyler

Concrete.
Concrete Concrete Concrete.
Con
Crete
Concr-ete
Grey(concrete)
Cold(concrete)
Forever(concrete)
What is this?

Concrete

The(concrete)End

Poetry Thursday is Back!




The sage lectured brilliantly

by Stephen Crane

The sage lectured brilliantly.
Before him, two images:
"Now this one is a devil,
And this one is me."
He turned away.
Then a cunning pupil
Changed the positions.

Turned the sage again:
"Now this one is a devil,
And this one is me."
The pupils sat, all grinning,
And rejoiced in the game.
But the sage was a sage.

Friday, December 02, 2005

Hope for the Hopeless

Okay, first things first. In the comment section of a recent post, a certain "Kate" asked me to expound on my theory of German consumerism. Now, I would hardly call it a theory, but I'll expound just a little.

I've been to two German cities this week. I know, I know. That's not really enough to make an all-inclusive observation, but I'll say it anyway. Ulm is probably like the Cleveland of Germany in that it's relatively big, but not real famous for anything besides a tourist attraction (Ulm: tallest church in the world. Cleveland: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame). Munich, on the other hand, is more like the Chicago of Germany: not the biggest, not the capital, but still in the top three. And yes, I know that Houston is actually now bigger than Chicago, but I refuse to compare Houston to anything if it means Houston comes out looking good. Anyway, the two cities that I have been to both have definite town centers where the people congregate. And what are these town centers? Well, at their hearts, the both have at least one cathedral. And surrounding the cathedrals are vast, glitzy, exorbitant pedestrian malls. It's not just the US that has malls as cultural and social centers. It's Germany too. They like to buy things just as much as we do. I guess they are a little thinner on average (which is weird because German portions are HUGE), but that's probably because they all smoke like chimneys.

Well, there you have it. That's the extent of my theory. Take it for what it's worth: not much.


On to the real story. Last night, after the conference, we had a conference related dinner event. It was pretty cool. We all met at the Gluhweinstand at the entrance to the Christmas market downtown, had a little gluhwein, and then went on a brief walking tour of old Munich. It was pretty cool to see the "old" (more on that in a bit) buildings and hear the story of the founding of Munich. Basically, it's named after some monks that used to live there. It was originally called Monken, but eventually that turned into Muenchen. The city logo is still a monk. At one point, the monks had a wooden bridge over the river Isar and charged exorbitant tolls to cross it. The local Duke (or whatever) didn't like paying, so he had it burned down and built a stone bridge. Somehow, though, the monks got the money anyway. And that was that. After the tour, we went to Die Augustiner and had a pretty awesome dinner with some pretty awesome beer. Probably the coolest thing about dinner was that I was at a table with: two Dutch guys, one Belgian dude, one Spaniard, one Italian women, and one Indian-British guy. International conference indeed.

But back to the "old" buildings. Most of the buildings in Munich are no more than 60 years old, even the 650 year old cathedral. How is that, you ask? Well, apparently Munich was bombed all to hell during WWII. So after the war, they just decided to build everything back like it was. I'm not quite sure what to make of this. Yes, I understand the history, and the heritage etc. but to me, it seems almost like they are trying to cover up that tragic time in their history. It's almost like it never happened. Which is bad, in my opinion. If we cover it up, how will we remember it? How will we avoid the same fate next time? Rebuilding? Of course, you have to rebuild. But rebuilding so that things are exactly like they were before seems like a whitewash, a willful ignorance almost. I don't know.

The tragedy of the war really hits you when you walk into St. Michael's Cathedral and see the pictures of the bombed out church. This beautiful renaissance cathedral was burned down to the bare walls. I can imagine the art that was destroyed, the precious historical artifacts, the worshipful icons and statues. It just breaks my heart that this happened, makes me consider the point of war. But I know what the point of that war was. I can't say it shouldn't have happened. What else could the allies have done? I just think of all the hopeless citizens of Munich. The war was over, the Germans had lost, but Hitler wouldn't admit it. He kept the war going. He forced the US and the Brits to bomb the bejesus out of Dresden, and Munich, and Berlin, and Hamburg, and for what? Because he wanted to rule the world? It pisses me off, really. So here they were, getting bombed day in and day out for no reason at all. Their museums, their churches, the old king's palace, everything. Except the two weird steeples on die Frauenkirche. And they are weird. They are two magnificent completely gothic steeples topped with archetypical renaissance style domes. Something about the weird timing of the construction.
See? Aren't they weird?
In the 35 years between when the master builder died and the steeples were put on, Euro-style changed from gothic to renaissance. Anyway, these steeples became a symbol of the crown jewel of Bavaria, Munich. It had been said that as long as those steeples were standing, there would be a Munich. And after the bombing, those two steeples (and only those two steeples. Seriously, the actual city of Munich was about 95% destroyed. The suburbs about 70%) were miraculously (yes I really believe that) untouched. I guess it just goes to show that even in mankind's darkest hours, God can still give hope to the hopeless and courage to the terrified. Even if we don't think they deserve it.