Poetry Thursday

Cold Morning
by Eamon Grennan


Through an accidental crack in the curtain
I can see the eight o'clock light change from
charcoal to a faint gassy blue, inventing things

in the morning that has a thick skin of ice on it
as the water tank has, so nothing flows, all is bone,
telling its tale of how hard the night had to be

for any heart caught out in it, just flesh and blood
no match for the mindless chill that's settled in,
a great stone bird, its wings stretched stiff

from the tip of Letter Hill to the cobbled bay, its gaze
glacial, its hook-and-scrabble claws fast clamped
on every window, its petrifying breath a cage

in which all the warmth we were is shivering.

I Don't Have Time For This

Listen, everybody. I'm tired, sick and tired of your thought-provoking posts. I don't have time to have my thoughts provoked. Whenever I do, they end up being provoked for hours at a time and playing with my emotions. And I can't take it anymore. Can't you all just write silly nonsense?

Well, since my thoughts are already provoked.....

What if our whole way of life was a con? What if everything about "The American Way" is wrong? What do we do? Is it possible to opt-out of the rat race? How do you do it aside from being a subsistence farmer? Was our country founded on misguided ideals? Should we really care about "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?" Is pursuing our own happiness morally superior to pursuing the happiness of others? Or pursuing reconciliation even if it doesn't make us happy? Are our lives so important that they have primacy over everything else? Or is it true that whoever seeks to save his life will lose it? Am I being un-american by even suggesting that? And what about liberty? When we are locked into a way of life that demands total allegiance to the almighty dollar, can we ever be liberated? Should we even be concerned about liberty? Why not be concerned about peace? Why not worry about forgiveness? Is our own personal liberty more important than the betterment of the human race? And on and on ad nauseum until I've questioned every single thing that I've ever thought in my life.

So somebody please answer me on these points, or I quit. I just can't take it any more. I'm sick of having to think about this crap all the time. Can't we just pretend like it's not a problem and just chat about insignificant stuff? Like the weather, or the Redskins, or maybe something cute our children did the other day? What do you say? Can we just act like there's nothing to worry about? Hakuna Matata?

Very Important Statistical Analyses

Hold on to your hats and glasses folks, because this here is the boringest ride on the internet. I'm going to present to you some shoddy statistical analysis I've done that you can use to impress your friends and colleauges.

First, I wanted to point out that most bloggers are quitters. Stupid quitters. Well over half of all bloggers (at least those that show up in the profile viewer on blogger.com) have made less than 10 posts to their blogs. The overall average is about 38 posts, but that is highly skewed by the few that have made hundreds (yours truly is not quite in that rarified atmosphere yet. I'm at 163). The median number is actually 2. Here's a chart that shows the frequency distribution.




Now there are a couple things to note here. First, many of the people in the sample may not actually have blogspot based blogs and only have a username in order to comment. This would skew the data lower. Second, there are certain demographics of people that are much more likely to maintain their blogs. For instance, fans of The Shins, and The Postal Service (it says so in their profiles) are much more likely to keep up with posting than are fans of say, The Rolling Stones, though I have not quantified the relative differences. I think it's a generational thing.


On to the second analysis that I have been working on in fits and starts for quite a while now: How many pseudo-random clicks does it take to uncover a bomb in MS Minesweeper? In the chart a result of "2" means that I managed 2 clicks without uncovering a bomb, i.e. the bomb was found on the third click. Here are the results of 200 trials...



First, please note that there were no games in which I uncovered a bomb with the first click. I believe this is programmed into the game. The result of this is that I am slightly more likely than normal to find one on my second click, which the results tend to show. However, due to the presence of the non-bomb programming, my average number of clicks was slightly higher than would be expected if the program was totally random (4.98 vs 4.85). Also, take these results with a grain of salt becuase my clicks were not actually random, they were pseudo-random in that I was intentionally forcing an appearance of randomness by clicking all over the screen and very rarely in close proximity to the previous click.

A Ton of Bricks: doing pointless and ridiculous statistics so you don't have to.

Lizst Tuesday

All of These Things That I Have Done (And Two I Haven't)

1. Visited the ruins of an ancient civilization in the American Southwest while suffering from mononucleosis and got some kind of puking disease from brushing my teeth with non-potable water.


2. Tutored insufferably rich and ungrateful brats, and one insufferably rich sweet girl with overdemanding parents who will one day (maybe already) drive her to outlandish rebellion, on strategies to beat the SAT.


3. Climbed Mt. Adams


4. Trained myself to have a wicked good jump serve in order to intimidate the opposing teams in our recreational volleyball league.


5. Ran Hope Bible Fellowship's Children's Church program for about a year while in college.


6. Played a solo for my high school band's annual competition. I totally nailed the solo too. Even the judge singled me out for awesome.


7. Got in a fight at a bar in which I broke my friends rib.


8. Flown to Detroit, inadvertantly driven through the ghetto in a Buick, eaten dinner at Outback Steak House and flown home the next morning.


9. Played an entire season of baseball without striking out. Until my very last at bat.


10. Driven about 380 miles in one day on about 7.5 gallons of fuel.

Finally, a couple of notes.
First, please notice that it is American Idol week over at the Song O' The Day.

Second, Maggie, you're not allowed to guess which ones aren't true.

Random Philosophical/Picture Friday

Warning: This post will contain of several tenuously connected, not entirely thought out ideas, so if that's not your cup of trendy, yuppie, self-satisfied $4 tea, then you might want to bow out here. Or not. Whatever, geez.

These thoughts have been going around and around in my head like a punch-drunk dog chasing his own three tails for about 2 weeks now, essentially since we got to the west coast for Christmas. And now, as I sit here trying to think of the best way to express them, I'm not sure if they even make sense. But when has that ever stopped me before, right? So I'll fire both barrels and see what happens.

Here's my thesis. I think that most of our current societal malaise, or petty immigration arguments, our ambivalence towards our neighbors, our rampant consumption and worship of material goods all comes down to our (and by our, I mean the human race's, not just American/Western, though we have about reached the pinnacle here in the US) proclivity to seek comfort above all else, which in turn leads us to aggressively and insatiably seek to increase and defend our territory.

Sometimes it seems as though we hold our own comfort as the ultimate good in the universe. We want freedom from hunger, from want, from danger, from not having more than our neighbors, and in so seeking we force ourselves to worship at the altar of "how do I feel today? Am I satisfied with my current state, or could I be more comfortable?" thinking. All of our time is spent desiring something new, something that will make our lives easier, or more efficient, or more relaxing or whatever. And then, through this constant effort, we train ourselves never to be satisfied. We trap ourselves in a downward spiral of greed and resentment and vanity that is hard, nigh on to impossible to break free from.

What finally crystallized this thought in my head was a simple piece of construction paraphernalia that I saw yesterday while walking through Philadelphia. It was a concrete highway divider. You know the ones. They're about, oh, 8 feet long, three feet high and can be set in rows as temporary lane dividers. Anyway, this one was sitting alone, several yards away from where all the others were neatly lined up. On it was written the word "remove." And this brought that visceral feeling of being tied to a heavy weight of selfishness that is pulling me further and further down the spiral into sociopathy, total absorption in the self. How can we remove it? You can't just pick it up and toss it away, it's too heavy! Is it as simple and quick as untying the rope from your ankles? I doubt it. I think it is a slow, slow process. One in which we need to take our chisel and hammer and relentlessly and unceasingly fight against that weight. Not just soften up the edges a bit so that when our weight hits others on the spiral we don't hurt them quite as much, but to instead pummel it down to nothing, until we're free of that anchor. Now, I have my doubts that any of us, especially me, can ever truly be free of that weight, at least entirely, but I'm trying because if there's one thing I don't need it's a stress induced ulcer.

And look at where these weights are pulling us? Further and further into ourselves, away from human contact. We're learning to become completely self contained, with no need for or respect for others. We view others as competition, something standing in the way of our finally, finally getting that last thing we wanted and really being happy. Or maybe we just see them as getting in our way. They slow us down for three seconds on the metro escalator by not walking! They don't block the intersection and we miss a light! They buy the last copy of that DVD we really wanted! They're out to get us!

Do you see where this lead? The more we seek our comfort, our stuff, the more we get pulled into this awful, myopic worldview in which we become convinced that everyone is trying to stop you from achieving whatever it is you want. And in some cases this attitude is celebrated. It's the AMERICAN thing to do! It's self-reliance! It's independent! It reminds me of the Washington Examiner hander-outer-guy that stands at the top of the Metro Center escalator every morning. On the day before Christmas Eve his attention grabbing line wasn't "Spread the Christmas Spirit everybody!" No. It was "don't let anyone steal you joy!" Because that is what we've become worried about. Other people stealing from us, from using us, from taking advantage of us. And it makes me sad that I see that attitude so strongly in myself.

This attitude, this defensiveness brings me back to my thesis (you probably thought I'd never get back to that, didn't you?) in that I see most of our societal ills being caused by this selfishness and defending of our territory. We want to defend our nice, quiet neighborhoods against the encroachment of "those damn Mexicans." Why? Because they make us uncomfortable. They might live with 15 people in a three bedroom house. They might play loud oompah music. They just don't fit into our nice little corner of suburbia. We never talk to strangers because, well what if they try to rob us? What if they talk and talk and talk and take up all my reading time? What if they say something that offends me? I could go on and on and on with more examples of how I see our constant territorial warfare affecting our humdrum quotidian lives. But I won't, because I'm trying to be more positive, really I am.

I am a Christian (take that for what you will) and part of my particular worldview insists that I see the Kingdom of God in the world today, no matter how woeful things seem sometimes. So maybe the heavy rock analogy isn't a good one. Maybe (and this is where the picture at the top comes in) it's more like we're each in a room with one big window that looks out onto the windows of everyone else all lit by the beautiful sunshine of Christ. We can all see each other and communicate and share because we are united through God. This is what the Kingdom looks like to me; God and our neighbors are involved in every part of it. However, as time goes on, we see that other people are looking into our window, so we turn the shade-closer thingy so that a little less light can get in, I mean, we don't want to give up all our territory, right? It's good to have a little of "my own" space that's just for me and not for God or man, right? What if they tried to learn my secrets! And we keep progressively closing it more as we become more and more paranoid of "the others" until the shades are all the way closed. Maybe we even eventually forget that the shades were ever open. Maybe we even break of the shade-closer/opener thingy and throw it away. We try to seal ourselves off from each other. We try to seal ourselves off from God. And I believe we can seal ourselves off, irreversibly from each other. We can become so self-obsessed that we will never come back into community with others. But we can't do that with God. No matter how tightly we close those shades, light will still seep through the cracks between the slats, will still sneak in around the edges...

Just Another Poetry Thursday

A Postcard From The Volcano
by Wallace Stevens


Children picking up our bones
Will never know that these were once
As quick as foxes on the hill;

And that in autumn, when the grapes
Made sharp air sharper by their smell
These had a being, breathing frost;

And least will guess that with our bones
We left much more, left what still is
The look of things, left what we felt

At what we saw. The spring clouds blow
Above the shuttered mansion-house,
Beyond our gate and the windy sky

Cries out a literate despair.
We knew for long the mansion's look
And what we said of it became

A part of what it is . . . Children,
Still weaving budded aureoles,
Will speak our speech and never know,

Will say of the mansion that it seems
As if he that lived there left behind
A spirit storming in blank walls,

A dirty house in a gutted world,
A tatter of shadows peaked to white,
Smeared with the gold of the opulent sun.

Late Night Excitement at Your Local McDonald's (It Only Happens Once a Year)

Due to the random, roulette-style pricing of airline ticketing, the brickfamily ended up flying home (from the other Washington) late New Year's Eve. We landed at BWI at about 11 PM, stood around at the baggage carousel like cattle waiting to be fed for about 50 minutes, celebrated the new year with Gary the Parking Lot Shuttle Driver, and headed home about 12:25.

And as fun as all that sounds, it didn't even come close to how awesome it was to go to the 24 hour McDonald's on the corner of Wisconsin and Van Ness at 1:15 in the morning. On New Year's.

I've never seen so many sophisticatedly/sluttily dressed people in any fast food joint at that time of day before. Well, actually, I'm not sure if I've ever been to a fast food "restaurant" at that time before. Anyway, I also feel that I should qualify the slutty statement. The sophisticated and the slutty were two distinct subsets of people. The slutty ones were younger and haven't yet figured out that there is more to life than showing a lot of leg. And boob. In January. For instance, not dying of hypothermia. I hope they grow up someday. Funnily enough though, the more sophisticatedly dressed people (not tuxedo sophisticated, but still) tended to be more drunk. In the ten minutes that I was inside (there's no drive-thru) I actually saw two people spill sodas on themselves and several other people staggering around like they just ate a giant can of lima beans and cottage cheese.

But this one dude totally took the cake. Actually, it was an Oreo McFlurry, but whatever. I'm standing there, waiting for the brickwife's 5-piece chicken selects and I overhear this young guy ordering a McFlurry. The total comes out to $2.30. He only has $2.20. And then, I swear I am telling the truth, he says the following words in this order:

"Can I put the last ten cents on my debit card?"

"Is he serious?" I think with what I hope was disguised incredulity.

The cashier didn't understand him, so he says it again.

"Can I put the last ten cents on my debit card?"

Yes, he is absolutely serious. And I'm all, "okay dude, whatever."

So I turn to him and say "Here, I've got a dime." And I give him a dime.

And then he's like "Are you sure???" As if me giving him a dime were the most incredible and generous thing that's ever happened to him.

Not knowing what to say, I just answer "Yes." I mean, what else is there to say, right? It is a freaking dime man. Not a million dollars. Not a dollar. Not even a quarter. What am I going to do with a dime?

So, the moral of the story is...umm......

Okay, so maybe there's no moral. Is that such a big deal? Maybe you should just stop all you moralizing and let people ,like, LIVE, man! Why you always gotta be down on somebody with your bourgaeious morals and legalism and crap? Lighten up, dude!

Tears Are Falling

It's a sad day here in the St. Lawrence household. I'm not even sure if I should be writing this right now, given my current emotional state, but I'll go ahead.

We lost one of the six today.

I knew it was a possibility, what with the precariousness of the situation, but I never thought it would really happen. I just don't know what to do.

The first thing I saw was the sock, soaking and dark. I thought "Hmm, that's odd. I hope nothing is wrong!" But it soon became clear that something was terribly wrong. A closer inspection revealed that around a third of the lifeblood was already gone. The damage was irreversible. I had to take my precious friend and pour the remnants of her soul down the drain.

I'll miss you Alaskan Amber #5. I hardly knew you, but I already loved you. I promise that in the future, I will make sure your kin are more crashworthy. The Brickwife and I will drink a toast to you tonight with your brothers and sisters.

We miss you.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.