Farting French Bulldogs and Rubber Sprinkles

Surreal doesn't even begin to describe my week... and its only wednesday.

above: October Smiles

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First, on Monday I am walking down 3rd ave downtown on my way to my bus (after riding the S.L.U.T downtown... I do that sometimes, ride the slut downtown and then ride the bus back just for people watching, shits and giggles) and I notice some condoms lying around. Not the usual used-crusties, but still in wrapper. Then I see some more a little further down. Eventually I notice that they are sprinkled here-and-there all over the sidewalk for several blocks... many different kinds, flavors, colors, brands, sizes etc. What originally looked like the accidental spillage of prophylactics began appearing intentional. As this is along a stretch of 3rd that is noteworthy for the prostitutes and crack, I wasn't really sure if the condom thing was weird, or brilliant, or a totally random event that just happened to occur in oddly appropriate locale. I will probably never know.

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Below: "Bang!"

Then yesterday I swing by my neighborhood bar for a couple of $1.50 PBRs and sit next to this fairly cute girl who apparently is roommates with one of the lesbian owners (whether this is a reliable indication of sexual preference, I have no idea). She has a dog on her lap wearing a black and orange striped sweater with skull and cross bones on the back. Nobody appears to care, or even notice for that matter. What I did notice though was the pooter toots that this thing was cranking, raking my nostrils with an odor that might fall under the category of death itself. The girls apologized for the dog and explained that she changed his diet, to which I replied "switched to WHAT?!? Maybe you should switch back!". She politely took the dog for a little walk to air him out, but returned with a glass of ice and proceeded to let the still farting dog lick ice cubes off the bar!!! Holy fuck...

So (finally?) this morning I had this weird nightmare, the kind that starts off with basic innocent random adventures that make no sense, like riding on a city bus driving backwards... through a swamp. Then things got kinda creepy and a friend of mine had my two year old daughter pinned on a stump under his foot, about to crush her when my fifth grade teacher shows up to save her, only to to begin chasing me, which somehow turned into a deer that was chasing me. All I wanted was to get back to my daughter, and I couldn't find her. Then I find myself climbing into a tower made of sticks and grass and drop to the bottom where it resembles the alley behind my apartment, and I begin digging in dumpsters... looking for my daughter. It was really stressing me out, but somehow I snapped out of it and I suddenly sat up in my bed, and everything was fine. My daughter was alive, well and happy. I call an old friend and she told me to relax because things were fine, and asked if I wanted to get some beers later with my old pals from college. Then I realize that work is going awesome, and I was totally stoked to get going and start my 15 minute walk to work. I felt so good, the relief that everything was good made me happy. Then I woke up, because apparently, that was a dream too.

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Riding the SLUT

Above: Islands Of Influence

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So this week I started working at our new location in Seattle, which happens to still be walking distance from home (just in the opposite direction) and has a view of equal--but different--quality as the last. The most notable thing about the new neighborhood however is the S.L.U.T. (South Lake Union Trolley). This thing is a streetcar, which goes between whats becoming Seattle's mini research triangle that was previously known for abandoned warehouses, prostitutes, and lots of litter (usually condoms, or condom wrappers) and downtown, which is known for, well much of the same.

So the other day I decided I would ride the trolley downtown for shits and giggles and because, well, I needed to get downtown. The first thing worth noting is that nobody knows how to pay for it, and thus everybody just kinda gets on, and--apparently--doesn't pay. I have a pass that is supposed to work with the slut, but when I get on the slut nobody asks to see it, and there doesn't appear to be an obvious place to insert it. There are slut machines that accept money but don't appear to give anything in return except for a little blinking light that might indicate that you've "been served". Not sure what that means... but hey, its the slut.

So while riding the slut I encountered the usual technicians and research associates you would expect in a biotech neighborhood and I sat down next to one. I ask the guy I sit next to how to pay, and he just shrugs his shoulder and says "I just wave my thing around so folks now I'm not getting a free ride" while pointing to the same pass I have hanging around my neck.

Then totally unprompted he says to me: "This thing cost like a million a mile, that's 5 million on this stupid thing."

To which I replied "Oh, I thought it only ran like one and a hlaf miles?".

"Yeah, it goes both ways."

That prompted a blank stare. The guy was clearly some professional, and had some accounting shit open in Excel on his laptop. Last time I checked, 2 + 2 was 4. But hey, what the fuck... it was the slut.

Cheers.

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Untethered Genericism

Letting a two year old eat a snack in your bed seems pretty harmless as long as your talking about the usual crackers, granola, even cheese but WATCH OUT FOR THE DEHYDRATED STRAWBERRIES!!!

I know there is always a calm before the storm, because otherwise how would you know it was a storm? I mean, I grew up in a place where it rained 60% of the time. There were no storms per se, just "Breaks" when the sun came out. Its all about perspective.



An equally random rant:

I fully expect standardized testing to accomplish nothing. By definition, standardizing would imply everybody takes the same test... and the distribution of measured success will always be a normal one (normal distribution), because by skewing it low, you create the appearance of general failure, and if you skew it high, you create the appearance of general success (this is what schools do in order to "pass" national standards, or show "improvement") while essentially devaluing those that excel by swallowing up their scores in the critical mass of academic genericism.

And finally, why have so many people given up on our children? Its unnatural to love oneself above their own offspring unless their natural, evolved sense of instinct is compromised, say by drugs or alcohol, for example. What I can't figure out is exactly what in many modern cultures has compromised our instinct. I used to say religion, but now I am beginning so think that may be a symptom. So what is the cause? What instigates our need to be controlled? I know E.O. Wilson and R. Dawkins have good ideas on this topic--among others--and I can just say that if you follow through some of the arguments one may suggest that it all comes down to s sort of stunted intellectual maturation by enabling the sustainability of immature behavior and habits in modern cultures. In other words, instincts such as following instructions from parental figures blindly as a child (to avoid walking off of cliffs, sticking hands in fire, or 0predator territory) are eventually replaced by the ability to make educated decisions as an adult, or at least be able to educate oneself enough to then in turn make a decision.

There is currently very little cultural pressure to enable oneself to develop the skill of self teaching. Free enterprise makes teaching a business, and creates demand for dependence by propagating the institutional monopoly on education, a sort of positive feedback loop. From a more socialist perspective, teaching is directed by the masses which, like democracy, only works well if those masses are educated well enough as a whole to be an educator. One example would be the mistake of ignoring the difference between teaching people stuff, and teaching people how to teach themselves stuff. Some entities end up reinforcing the "teach stuff" as a result of self propagation, that is, entities comprised mostly of those who only know how to teach stuff, and not how to learn.

A third tether on intellectual maturation is economics. Economies drive supply and demand markets on skillsets that sustain the dominant economy. "Skillsets" is the key word here since the definition of that term is half assed, and done within the constraints of greater economic, socialistic, and religious machines that define only a few set paths that are acceptable to those that make up a bulk of the dominant cultural inertia. In other words, economic machines cater to the greater good and benefit from raw labor, people who know stuff.

The first sign of intellectual maturation is the ability to question. Not just to ask questions, but to question the answers. Entities such as governments and religion subvert any pressure for intellectual maturity by making people comfortable not asking questions (in the best case) or afraid of questioning (worst case). Eventually, some predict that modern culture will either fail catastrophically, or wind up re-inventing social systems that have long been used by some insects. These systems are very efficient, and benefit the population as a whole, but at the expense of diversity continuums among individuals.

So, I ask of you: Do you want your kid to be a person, or an ant? If it helps, I've taught my daughter to squish ants.

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Gornsplaff Crampet Skunkinhug

On a less crazy note, I have succeeded in convincing myself that I should become a teacher. Maybe not in the traditional sense, but I know I have a lot to offer, a lifetime of experience learning what not to do... like taking life too seriously.

My life in the city is beginning to feel like a cross between japanese anime and a spongebob episode.

go figure.

Transcendental Scars

Above: "Desert Eye"

"Hey ah na na
Ignorance is spoken
Spoken
Hey ah na na
Confidence is broken
Broken
Hey ah na na
Sustenance is stolen
Stolen
Hey ah na na
Arrogance is potent
potent

What I see is unreal
Ive written my own part
Eat of the apple, so young
Im crawling back to start"

from Alice in Chains, "Rotten Apple"

The summer of '08 is winding down, the abysmal and pathetic ride coming to an end. The awakenings, the losses, the barely noteworthy life changes that turned hope and disappointment into confidence and resolve. I guess you could say my priorities are now pretty straight, pretty simple actually. I have a daughter, I love her and I will be there for her. That's all there is to it. So what about everything else?

In the last three months I have seen almost weekly landmarks, little Deja vu's, snippets of things that were reminiscent of some point in my life over the last ten years... and they progressively retreat, further and further back.

Last night I was walking around my neighborhood at like 7:30pm because I really had nothing else to do. I wandered into the movie theatre to watch the new batman... "dark night'. I can't remember the last time I did that, you know just randomly walked into a movie, not so much because I wanted to but because I could (although, it was a great movie). The odd part is that I used to do it all the time, excessively so. It wasn't unusual for me to be running a random errand, and then just dissapear into a movie theater, maybe even a couple times a week.

About six weeks ago I started swimming every other day(-ish) and after a couple weeks of that, I started craving salad and raw meat. Okay, so I always crave raw meat, but fucking salad? Maybe say about 4-5 years ago when I was cycling a lot, and prior to that when I got a lot more exercise than I do have recently, I did occasionally crave stupid shit like broccoli, cucumbers and oil-vinegar dressing instead of ranch.
I started revisiting--touring--spots in Bellingham where I used to hang out in college, and it smells and tingles just like it did then, kinda like I was there in time, only now I'm there as two. I've even kinda lost friend, and in an uncannily similar way to how I found him.... through someone else. I won't go there right now.

These are just a few examples of little habits, life quirks that used to be... then for some reason, went away. Now they are coming back mostly in the reverse order of their disappearance. I started making a list, its two pages long now (and private so I won't post here)... but its fucked up how many things in my life changed for the worst, now are starting to trickle back in. Its like my head has been slipping into some alternate universe for the last 10 years, and now I'm swinging back.

I am not religious, and besides telling people 13 is my lucky number (which it is) I'm not superstitious either--but I could swear its a sign of a kind of rollback to... well, what? The beginning, the beginning of the end? the end of the beginning? Maybe this is just what it feels like to have your soul torn apart, chewed away, left for dead and then to suddenly start healing. You know, like getting skin back after getting burned. It certainly hasn't been withoug the scars.

Funny... I still have the scar on my finger from getting bitten by my pet piranah the day I moved to Seattle from Bellingham. I suppose, using this totally asinine logic that if I get bitten, by something or somebody, it will be that I soon retreat to hamsterland in the clouds.

I wonder what that scar will look like.

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Just a sober moment of silence

Just a reminder to remember all the lives lost on this day seven years ago, and all the lives that will be lost as a result of this day that I know, we will never forget.

peace.

Seventeen years ago tomorrow...

I began my first real experiment with getting really punch ass drunk. Totally inebriated. I guess it was a good experience to have: Three 16/17 year olds throwing back half gallon of Jose Cuervo and a full case of Rainier? Yeah. Well, tomorrow evening I am going to celebrate moving on to bigger and better things (I will be exactly two-fold older) and swing by my new favorite watering hole in hamstertown (dos padres) and order myself a Budweiser and shot of Jose Cuervo Tradicional.

Oh... come on, I'm fucking with you. I wouldn't allow another sip of Jose anything to cross my lips again. I'll probably stick with Dos Equis and A double shot of Patron. Does that sound better? Good. Cheers.

"Warped"
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Oh... and before I forget: We should all kiss the ground being that we're still here, and the power-up test of the Large Hadron Collider didn't blow us up (or at least not yet). Of course it'll be another month before we see if the real experiment was a bad idea when they actually collide stuff. Maybe getting sucked into an earth-born black hole will be fun, you know a real once-in-a-lifetime experience. Check out: "Why the Large Hadron Collider must be stopped".

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Pingeon holes and Leaky Squirrels

Sanity is tough to define. I know right from wrong, or at least I know how to interpret social norms (though I may not buy into certain justifications or lack thereof). I can say that I don't have voices in my head, and I don't believe I am paranoid in an unhealthy way (perhaps the line here does get pushed occasionally). I think where things get sketchy is when I have to think. I itry and focus on one thing, but shit leaks into my thoughts that compromises how I process them. I keep getting mixed up. I think I need a fucking vacation. I think maybe that apple I saw the squirrel bury in a yard the other day in hmastertown had the right idea: can't handle it right now? Bury it. Dig it up later when I have time to deal with it. But it doesn't work. I get stuck thinking about hibernating squirrels (probably because I was immersed in hibernating squirrel shit for almost three years) and then wonder where I would be able to find a siberian hamster for my daughter so that she could learn about hibernation by "storing it in the fridge (yes... you can do this, and no, its not cruel if the hamster isn't a mutt). Then I wondered what kind of apple the squirrel was burying, and what apple kimchi would taste like if there were such a thing. Better yet what happened to that awesome korean place in the u district that sold the best bi-bim-bop. And I wish people would stop asking me to make them assays containing beta actin, only to later complain that the beta actin is a bad control. Engineers make poor biologists. Of course, I must also admit that biologists dont' make good engineers. So what about Bio-Engineering? They are engineers. Period. So stop trying understand the formula for molecular evolution because THERE ISN'T ONE. And if I had a dime for everytime I lost track of what I was doing, I would be a rich bastard. I need a fucking vacation.


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Cheery Oh's and Cherry Ho's.

I learned that you can swim half a mile after eating McDonalds, but it requires the ability to swallow back puke with your head underwater (which apparently I have). I figured I'd try and make up for that ill judgement by eating cheerios and a pickle for breakfast (both are healthy, right?). That actually would have been fine except that the pickle was one of those gawd awfull 1.5 punders that you can get at the Boar's head deli. I should just stick to oreos and crickets.

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Right: 'Otherside'
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On a different note: Now that I can walk to work, I am beginning to miss all the great stories I used to hear from the regular prostitutes and drug addicts that rode my old bus (it stopped by both the county jail downtown and the methadone clinic, all between my on-stop, and off-stop).

I ran into one of them downtown yesterday and she started asking me how my daughter was, how work was going and that was fine (although it creeped me out that she knew all this) but the whole time I'm waiting there at the bust stop, she would be rambling and then occassionally mid-sentance ask some random passerby whether they were looking for a date or needed 'work' (not so code code for crack). This wouldn't normally bother me as I'm pretty friendly with all types, but this was in the middle of the business disctrict durring rush hour, and everyone around me was wearing suites and carrying briefcases, and somehow I just knew something was up, she was too comfortable and wasn't high.

This morning I saw her on my now current side of town getting out of the back of an unmarked van with three plaincloths, then hand them a manilla envelope. I guess she's a cop. Maybe I should find out how much that info is worth.

Weird.

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