Archives for June 2013

It was a week before Christmas. This stunning beauty got on the Fullerton bus. She was clearly upset. Listening to her rant on her cell phone I quickly figured out why. Her ex-husband had stolen her purse, but she had her wallet in her jeans so he didn’t get cash or credit cards, her car had broken down and ….. it went on. She put down her phone and, for reasons that elude me now, I spoke to her. What I said must have been one of my better openings since it elicited a huge smile. I would have paid good money to see that smile again. Anyway smiling led to talking and talking led to introductions and introductions led to me saying that I was headed to a bar to meet some friends. She got on her phone and made arrangements to be picked up at the bar and then offered to buy me a drink. Seeing no downside to being in public with a beauty like her and getting free beer, I readily agreed. A half hour later her friend arrived to pick her up. Numbers were exchanged and she left. I figured if I called her it would be stalking and if she called me it meant she as off her meds.

Two days later she called and didn’t sound the slightest bit nuts. We made arrangements to meet in public and eat food. It took me a while to realize that I was going on a date.

The date went well. I picked up the check and she said “Okay, but I get the next one.” So we made arrangements to meet at a different restaurant and eat food in public. I believe that qualified as a second date.

As our third date was coming to a close she said “It’s getting late. You should spend the night at my place.”

It was 8:00 PM.

I looked at her and laughed. She smiled and said “Too obvious?”

I said “Oh no, that was very subtle.”

So we finished our meal and left.

Stuff happened that you don’t want to think about so let’s move on.

Shortly after the new year her job offered her a promotion and a raise. It would, literally, double her salary. Her kids, who will enter this story in a bit, encouraged her to take the job. Since I hadn’t even known her a month I had no formal say but also offered my encouragements. She accepted the job. It meant that she would have to leave the country in the middle of June. But that was six months away and right then there was a very pretty naked woman in my arms.

About a week before Valentine’s day we made plans for a romantic get away. There is an old Irish proverb which states “If you want to hear God laugh, make a plan.” Her parents, who were watching her kids, had something come up so they returned them to the house around 7:00 AM. The kids, being normal teenagers, wanted breakfast. So they burst into the bedroom and ….

Thankfully we were both asleep.

I was woken by the sound of a young man’s voice saying “Mom, there’s a giant white man in your bed!”

My brain was agile enough to note there was not a third person in the bed so I opened my eyes and said “If you give us ten minutes I’ll make a breakfast that will prove the existence of God.”

Shortly thereafter they were being introduced to vanilla infused Belgian waffles with orange whisk. I don’t know if it proved the existence of God, but since their mom was smiling and laughing – something I found out later she had not done in years – I got a pass from the kids.

The next day I met with a nutritionist. She informed me that, had I gone on a fad diet I would have lost weight and probably died in two months. She said I probably had the same amount of time if I did nothing. Organs failing, protein and iron counts way too high, yada yada yada. So what I heard was I had a couple of months to make a decision.

Then I had a thought. If I lost weight it would make it easier for the pretty lady to find my penis.

Yes, that is how my mind works.

So I took the short list of foods I was allowed and went shopping. By the third day of the diet I was glad I did. I already felt better and was sleeping sounder.

Time went on, I lost weight and no longer looked like a parade float. As one friend noted, I’d “deflated.”

There was a certain rhythm to my life now. And it was pleasant. Then June 1st arrived and she got a call asking her to come down a week early. They were willing to fly her and her family down and put them up if need be.

So Thursday night her kids spent the night with their grandparents and we had some alone time. Friday morning I left before sunrise and went home. I work from home on Fridays so I set up my office, made sure everything was live and then sat down and cried.

Not a lot, but enough to remind me that I’m human.

Friday night she was gone.

Her parting words to me were “Thanks for teaching me how to laugh again.”

I didn’t respond then but I should have said “Thanks for teaching me how to care again.”

Since we knew we had a finite amount of time together we didn’t spend much of it with other people. Still for the few who met her the below video will be hysterical. For everyone else it will just be confusing.

Live with it. We’ll get back to Florida and stuff tomorrow.

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A long time ago in a land far, far, away, I wrote a silly little story about God. Well, it wasn’t really about God, it was more about a pseudo-dude who wanted to be God. Unfortunately for it, that position was taken. In the golden days of yore that story would have been read, put on a shelf and forgotten. Or maybe passed around to a few people and then shelved. But we live in the days of the old-fangled interweb. Things get taken off of figurative shelves all the time, whether they need to be or not. Heaven knows what twisted verbiage people are plugging into their search engines but, every now an then, someone comes across my story and asks me a question. It is always the same question. “Do people like you even believe in God?” What they mean by “people like (me)” is left undefined. My best guess would be people unlike them. Which, based on their emails, would seem to be a pleasant type of person to be.

Normally I ignore people who speak in certitudes and define the universe narrowly no matter their ideology. I find fans of Richard Dawkins just as irksome as religious fundamentalists.

However last night forced me to soften that stance. At least a little bit. You see last night I met a pleasant couple who questioned everything. That, to me, is a fun way to spend an evening. But it also got me to thinking. If nothing else I should try to clearly answer those people who keep coming by here and trying to get me to bite on their drool laden ball of vitriol.

So, here goes.

Yes, I believe in God.

Why? Because I’m not arrogant enough to think I’m the most evolved creature in the universe.

I believe in a God who gave us free will. I believe in a God who gave us the tools to build our own futures and to shape our own destinies. I believe in a God who did not make mistakes. Which means that all those who are different than me are still part of Its divine plan.

Which means it’s up to us to deal with them in a positive manner.

Lord knows I am trying here today.

I also believe in a God who clearly understands the motivations It laid deep within our genes.

Breasts are a good example. All the lower, i.e., non sentient, mammals have them but only human females have the glorious works of art that stimulate the soul. Boobs are God’s gift to intelligence. They are meant to be lauded and appreciated. That are also meant, like all God’s creations, to be respected. That means no touching without permission.

Yes, it’s okay to gawk for brief periods of time. After all, you are only appreciating the Lord’s work.

I believe in a God who wants us to question the universe and our place in it. I believe in a God who wants us to challenge the status quo.

Why else would we be gifted with the ability to think if we weren’t supposed to use it?

I believe that God truly did makes us in It’s image. It is simply that we have not evolved enough to see that simple truth. It is only when you look past the color of someone’s skin that you see the true nature of God. Then, and only then, can you begin to recognize our common soul.

I believe that you can distill the Ten Commandments to a single statement; Thou Shalt Not Steal. Don’t steal a life, a home, a marriage and so on. If it’s not yours you don’t have the right to take it. Just leave stuff where it’s at and deal with it.

I believe that the entire New Testament can be summed up with Matthew 7:12. That whole “do unto others” bit works for me.

So there you have it. I believe in a God who wants us to respect others and not steal.

Oh, and I believe in boobs. Big fan of them too.

Which just proves that I am wisely using the intelligence God gave me.

Stars – Changes (nsfw) from Spy Films

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Every year, whether people want them or not, high schools release yearbooks. These annual compendiums are meant to honor the year’s accomplishments of students and teachers And, in some cases, they attain that lofty goal. Or so I have heard. More often though they are either so vanilla that they are rendered meaningless or they provide so many levels of unintentional humor that the students will require therapy for decades. The mere phrase “class reunion” can cause them hours of twitching. My yearbook picture in 1979 featured me with uncombed hair wearing cool half tint glasses. As you can imagine I looked like I was stoned out of my mind and my family was traumatized. A buddy of mine decided, erroneously as it turns out, that looking like Elvis was cool. His parents were apoplectic.

Yeah, good times.

Last year, NASA’s next rocket scientist, a young Colorado lady named Syndey Spies had her photo rejected from her yearbook because she looked like a hooker. Her mother, a gem to be sure, complained loud and long that her daughter was a paragon of virtue as was the whole family and that the young lady was merely expressing herself. As I noted when the story hit, Colorado police disagreed with them vehemently. Mostly because mom and daughter thought it was a great idea to dress like whores and then get a bunch of teens drunk and let them drive around town. As I said, paragons of class and virtue.

If you want a cool yearbook story you need to hang out with the Nguyen gals who pulled off one of the best pranks I’ve ever seen.

They may have different friends and different interests but nothing brings high school students together like alphabetical order.

For the eight students at a California high school with the same last name-Nguyen- it was obvious their wallet-size snapshots would be sharing the same yearbook page.

So instead of exerting their individuality with the standard Grateful Dead quote and a prom-worthy up-do, they decided to join forces for the ultimate prank. Alexandra, Angela, Angelica, Elizabeth, Emily, Isabella, Madeline and Vi Nguyen all wore the same black off-shoulder dresses and the same hairstyles. Then they went for the win.

Eschewing the optional yearbook one-liner under each of their photos, they divided up two sentences that made fellow students and administrators think twice before making any stereotypical assumptions. Altogether, the words under the Nguyen girls’ eight pictures read: “We know what you’re thinking and no we’re not related.”

Now that’s funny right there I tell you what.

But, the one humorous yearbook story that has people wavering between appalled and amused comes from Hoosic Valley New York.

Danielle Sanzone has the 411.

A yearbook is used by graduating students to remember their time in school, their friends, teachers and fellow classmates. But for some students in Hoosic Valley, the latest edition of the school’s yearbook won’t bring back such good memories.

A “non-intentional, honest mistake” resulted in some student-athletes being labeled in a high school yearbook caption as “Creepy smile kid” and “Some tall guy” in the Hoosic Valley Central School District, acting Superintendent Amy Goodell said.

“The yearbook editor and staff are devastated. Apologies are being made,” she said about the yearbook known as the “Totem Pole” in the small rural district in Rensselaer County.

The track and field page of the 2012-13 yearbook included a caption that names students as “Isolation kid”, “Creepy smile kid” and “Some tall guy”, and the word “Someone” is used multiple times to label those pictured.

“As many books as possible have been held and are being amended,” Goodell said in an emailed statement. “The Yearbook advisor, staff, administration and board of education are very sorry that this occurred. Parents that have a student who was not referenced to correctly have been contacted. The parents and students affected by the error have been understanding.”

The high school has a total enrollment of about 377 students with an average of 94 pupils in each graduating class, according to district information obtained from the state Education Department.

Some students contacted at the school, who wanted to remain anonymous, said they did not know too much about what happened with the yearbooks. And one student on the track and field team said he was not too concerned with what happened.

The yearbook club is made up of more than a dozen students and a yearbook advisor. The advisor and editor in chief of the yearbook were contacted, but they did not return requests for comment.

Meanwhile, some in the surrounding Capital District community have felt this could be considered a form of bullying, and others wondered if the wrong draft page went to print.

“[This is] unreal and disturbing,” said Stacy Lee of Schaghticoke. “I hope disciplinary action is taken on the yearbook committee and whichever adult was in charge of the committee and reviewing the book before printing.”
A few others thought this was likely meant to be a joke, including Hoosic Valley alum Matt Woelfersheim.

“Obviously this was meant to be funny,” he said. “They are, after all, high school kids.”

But other alums were not laughing at what happened.

“[This] makes me embarrassed to be a 2010 graduate from Hoosic Valley,” said Brianna Paradis.

Goodell said the issue is being remedied as much as possible.

Dear Amy Goodell:

You are the Superintendent of a school. In case the meaning of that is unclear to you, that is a place where children go to learn. Therefore it is incumbent upon you, as a leader and role model, to know that the word is “unintentional” and that non-intentional is simply nonsense.

Secondly, are you completely daft? Or do you truly believe that we are all mouth breathing morons? Those can be the only two explanations for your lame excuse. You expect us to believe that a room full of students and an adult supervisor all missed these captions?

Do you also expect us to believe that the Easter Bunny is real?

As Brianna Paradis noted, she being the only graduate who still resides in town apparently, this is embarrassing, at best.

Sincerely yours,

WNC

Oh, and we all know that “The Creepy Kid” is keeping his copy as fuel for his revenge fantasies that I’m sure will all be harmless fun.

Tame Impala – Mind Mischief from Blink on Vimeo.

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When I was 18 I was excited by the many possibilities the world offered. And, by possibilities, you understand that I mean boobs. At that tender age we could drive to Wisconsin for beer since having teenage drunks navigating the highways late at night seemed like such a good idea. So essentially, at 18, I was a beer loving horn dog. Who played bass. I wasn’t a complete drain on society. Anyway, I was, in many ways, a typical 18 year old kid. I had done well in high school, graduated on the honor roll, was taking some classes at a community college and holding down a real job in a warehouse. I had my own car and some cool stuff. You might not have wanted me to date your daughter but I doubt I would have impressed you for good or ill. I was just one of a zillion other teenagers getting ready to face the 80’s. And, yes, I rocked me some serious 80’s hair.

What I did not do, and what none of my friends did, was head on out to the garage and build a nuclear reactor. Conrad Fanrsworth, on the other hand, did exactly that.

A US teenager has built a nuclear fusion reactor in his dad’s garage, he told RIA Novosti on Monday, adding his name to a select group of a dozen high school students from around the world who have achieved fusion with homemade devices.

Conrad Farnsworth’s reactor is small and built with parts he ordered online.

The 18-year-old from Newcastle, Wyoming, built the device as his entry for the prestigious Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF), in which thousands of high school students from around the world compete for $4 million in scholarships, prize money, prestige and things to put on their resumes.

Farnsworth’s homemade reactor did not win the ISEF competition, but it did allow him to add his name to a very short list of youngsters who have created nuclear fusion reactors. Most of them are American, with the exception of Michal Racko of Slovakia.

As Farnsworth’s achievement made the news in the United States, older science nerds wondered if the Wyoming teen and the other youngsters had, in fact, built their own reactors and achieved fusion, or if the US media were getting it wrong.

“…Fifteen high school students in the world have built nuclear fusion reactors. How is this possible?” asked Joel on a physics chat forum.

“It’s possible that the newspaper reporters didn’t understand the distinction between an accelerator and a reactor,” said Ben Crowell on the forum.

Farnsworth told RIA Novosti in an email that the reactor he built “is an accelerator of sorts, using electrostatic attraction (- attracting +).

“Sometimes collisions between hydrogen (deuterium) nuclei occur and sometimes those collisions actually fuse the nuclei together. It’s all a game of probability,” he said.

Back on the grown-up physics chat forum, Terry Bollinger wondered if the homemade reactor was able to generate “useful net outputs of energy.”

“That you cannot do even in the most advanced fusion test center in existence,” Bollinger noted.

Farnsworth says on his website that “amateur reactors will never produce power; their main purpose is education.”

He told RIA Novosti on Monday that “there will never EVER… be a net power output or anywhere close to a net power output” from his reactor.

“If I were ever able to generate useable power out of this, I would be long dead from the radiation poisoning that would ensue,” he added.

That’s not to say that nuclear power achieved by fusion is unsafe. The energy form has been touted as having the potential to provide almost limitless supplies of clean, safe and sustainable energy without the downsides of nuclear power produced by fission.

Today’s nuclear power plants produce energy by splitting apart the heavy atoms of uranium fuel – fission — while fusion reactors fuse together atoms.

Unlike nuclear-fission power plants, fusion reactors do not produce high-level radioactive waste and cannot be used for military purposes.

“But the reason it would kill me is because I have no way of shielding myself from the radiation coming from my device, other than using distance,” Farnsworth said.

“A professional, power-generating reactor would be shielded and much safer.”

Among the other teens who have built nuclear fusion reactors are 15-year-old Thiago Olson, whose device produced just enough heat to warm up a cup of coffee, and Taylor Wilson, who is, so far, the youngest fusion reactor builder, completing his at the age of 14.

That’s right, while your kids were trying to hack into your Skinamax account these kids were auditioning for NASA. So where do kids go to learn how to build a nuclear reactor when their friends are being challenged by the TV remote? Why, they use the internet of course. Yes, it’s true, there is stuff online that isn’t porn.

You may have noted above that Conrad did not win the science fair. The reason was that a jealous adult ruled him ineligible on a technicality that even the event’s organizers were stunned to find out exists.

It seems Conrad had competed in too many science fairs.

Because, God forbid we encourage a kid to make himself and the world better. What if that craziness caught on?

Who would be left to watch Maury?

2013 from hiorganic on Vimeo.

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Until the 1950’s international travel was limited to a select few. It wasn’t just the cost it was also the commitment. It took two days to get from Chicago to NY by train and then another 7 to get to England by ship. So you needed 18 spare days just to go and come back. People didn’t have that kind of free time. Not ones with jobs anyway. So international travel was rare. By the 1950’s that changed. Safe air travel made it possible to go across the continent in an afternoon. Businesses took advantage of multiple flight options to hold annual conventions in a single location thus ensuring that the entire company was on the same page. Families could see each other more often so kids no longer needed to stay in a small town to keep in touch. The world expanded and shrunk simultaneously. Companies sprang up to deal with the largess of travelers who were, for the most part, ignorant of the world around them. That led to a funny movie called If It’s Tuesday This Must be Belgium. It also led to the stereotype of the “ugly American.” We were a country fresh off of a victorious war, we had money and we had the best technology. What did little things like manners or couth count for anyway? Most of the world found us rash and annoying but they also found they liked taking our money. The whole affair could be summed up by what my late Aunt used to say; “We have buildings older than your country.”

Eventually, though, Americans learned some manners and the rest of the world leaned to tolerate us.

For the most part.

Now China faces the same problems we faced back in the 50’s. But they are compounded by their citizens facing the internet age. China’s version of the internet is severely truncated compared to the rest of the world’s so it’s not like they were prepared for this. Also, now is the first time in Chinese history there has been a middle class. As Li Hui and Ben Blanchard point out, it’s not surprising that things haven’t gone well initially.

From faking marriage certificates to get honeymoon discounts in the Maldives to letting children defecate on the floor of a Taiwan airport, Chinese tourists have recently found themselves at the center of controversy and anger.

Thanks to microblogging sites in China, accounts of tourists behaving badly spread like wildfire across the country, provoking disgust, ire and soul-searching.

While in the past such reports might have been dismissed as attacks on the good nature of Chinese travelers, people in the world’s second-largest economy are starting to ask why their countrymen and women are so badly behaved.

“Objectively speaking, our tourists have relatively low-civilized characters,” said Liu Simin, researcher with the Tourism Research Centre of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

“Overseas travel is a new luxury, Chinese who can afford it compare with each other and want to show off,” Liu said. “Many Chinese tourists are just going abroad, and are often inexperienced and unfamiliar with overseas rules and norms.”

When a story broke recently that a 15-year-old Chinese boy had scratched his name into a 3,500-year-old temple in Egypt’s Luxor, the furor was such that questions were even asked about it at a Foreign Ministry news briefing.

“There are more and more Chinese tourists travelling to other countries in recent years,” ministry spokesman Hong Lei said on Monday.

“We hope that this tourism will improve friendship with foreign countries and we also hope that Chinese tourists will abide by local laws and regulations and behave themselves.”

Other incidents have attracted similar anger, including that of a mother who let her children defecate on the floor of Kaohsiung airport in Taiwan, just meters (feet) from a toilet. She did put newspaper down first.

Embarrassment over the behavior of some Chinese tourists has reached the highest levels of government, which has tried to project an image of a benign and cultured emerging power whose growing wealth can only benefit the world.

“TERRIBLE RACKET”

This month, Vice Premier Wang Yang admonished the “uncivilized behavior” of certain Chinese tourists, in remarks widely reported by state media and reflecting concern about how the increasingly image-conscious country is seen overseas.

“They make a terrible racket in public places, scrawl their names on tourist sites, ignore red lights when crossing the road and spit everywhere. This damages our national image and has a terrible effect,” Wang said.

The central government has reissued guidelines on its main website on what it considers acceptable behavior for tourists, including dressing properly, queuing up and not shouting.

To be sure, the influx of newly wealthy Chinese travelling around world has bought economic benefits widely welcomed in many countries, and many tourists are well-behaved and respectful.

More than 83 million Chinese tourists travelled overseas last year, and Chinese expenditure on travel abroad reached $102 billion in 2012, the highest in the world according to the U.N. World Tourism Organization.

By 2020, about 200 million Chinese are expected to take an overseas holiday every year.

Criticism of bad behavior has in the past been leveled at American, Japanese and Taiwanese tourists, when they were also enjoying new wealth and going abroad for the first time.

Eventually, experts say, the criticism will fade.

“Travelling is a learning experience for tourists,” said Wang Wanfei, a tourism professor at Zhejiang University. “They learn how to absorb local culture in the process, and get rid of their bad tourist behavior.”

A friend of mine, who was born and raised in China, says the biggest thing to consider is that Chinese tourists are going to be importing some very alien cultural and social ideas when they return home. Even before the communists took over China was not exactly a hot bed of tourism so a working knowledge of the world around them is going to take a while to develop.

But they are trying.

Guangzhou’2012/CHINA from zweizwei |motion timelapse| on Vimeo.

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