Nano Yesno?

Never had the stomach to try and tackle nanowrimo, but the current Shallow Guild thing, along with Daniel's encouragement and my newfound tendency to experiment with caffeine and alcohol is allowing me to at least entertain the possibility.

Copy House

This is not a Starbucks, but if you’ve been to a Starbucks you can imagine where I am right now. Earth tone leather chairs, a frescoed Billie Holliday on the wall and brushed metal polygons smartly backing the tracklit menu. It’s a local California chain, and locals prefer it over the identical Starbucks- an absurd notion predicated on the supposition that things taste better if people in Iowa haven’t heard of them. The soundtrack isn’t the first thing you notice, but sit here long enough and it becomes the predominant aspect of the atmosphere. It’s not saccharine to the point of being nauseating, but it has a very filtered quality; Singer-songwriters spinning up-tempo acoustic soul, but never really saying anything of substance. There’s also Sinatra for the sake of Sinatra, because- even after all this time- there is something that feels hip about mouthing the words to “Fly Me to the Moon.” I’m not unimpressed, but I do wonder when WiFi Hotspots that serve Blended Ice Mochas and Scones became an American institution. I’ve been in the other kind of coffee shop, the originals that birthed these comfortable cookie-cutter curios. My favorite was in upstate Michigan… it isn’t a chain. They played obnoxiously avant-garde World Music, the place smelled like dreadlocks and espresso, and they sold homemade vegan soup. A coffee bar with the balls to be a coffee bar. Sitting in one, thinking about the other, it is easy to imagine the word “chains” taking on a more concrete meaning. So says the guy who just finished his Brazilian Berry Smoothie. So sue me. I’m thirsty, and Michigan is very far away.

Every Reverie

I had a dream again. Here goes.

I'm a child. It is the morning, my sister and I have crawled into bed with our parents, (which was very common before we started school,) and we are watching a news report on a new movie being made in Hollywood. The movie is based on a book written by Linda Blair, documenting the fearsome supernatural phenomena she encountered while shooting The Exorcist. This supposed autobiography was called "Then Falls the Veil," which is an apparent reference to The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. (What the hell? That's pretty out there, even for my subconscious.) Then Falls the Veil was apparently popular in the mid 1970's until Blair admitted she fabricated many of the events described therein, but a small subset of the population remained convinced the stories were true. My sister pulled an old autographed copy off the shelf as we were watching the segment, and my dad had the first chapter memorized word for word. As we watched clips from the new movie, I began to experience the events in the book, I was sitting in bed with a lap full of candy which turned into snakes and lizards and spiders. I was terrified but my dad told me I couldn't move because this was all being filmed for use in the movie. I cried as I reached down and grabbed a wiggling lizard by its tail and ate it. It tasted like a mix of lizard and gummi worm. Linda Blair became angry and turned off the TV.

Maybe by the time I'm fifty I'll have enough of these for a book.

The Cake is a Lie

Everyone's favorite misanthropic organization, PETA, recently released a Cooking Mama ripoff, ostensibly to protest of the original game's inclusion of delicious, nutritious food. Since most of the dishes in Cooking Mama are traditional Japanese fare, PETA might actually be protesting Japanese culture here; the distinction is unclear. In any case, they've actually managed to improve the game a bit, and I doubt even PETA cares enough about real animals to not enjoy savagely eviscerating their respective digital avatars. While the cartoonish supervillainy inherent in PETA's typical list of suggested environmental improvements ranges from eliminating millions of jobs to displacing thousands of homeowners, I draw the line at the ham-handed inference that murdering something in a video game should make me feel the least bit guilty, (unless you count the Weighted Companion Cube.)
I suppose one could take this whole thing as a sign of our larger success as a species. The rationalization process for PETA's existence starts with the idea that humans are so well adapted for survival that we have to engage in self-sabotage just to keep our numbers down. Follow that line of thinking through to its' logical conclusion and you end up with PETA. The E in PETA is supposed to stand for Ethical, (which is as hilariously subjective as the M in FEMA,) a term that PETA has broadened to include the promotion of under-aged drinking on college campuses in an apparent effort to reduce dairy consumption. That's right, PETA hates milk enough to suggest Milwaukee's Best as a suitable replacement for enjoying your Captain Crunch. PETA's been working overtime paving the road to hell of late, but I can't imagine the "Got Beer" campaign was all that well-intentioned. I know half a dozen hot girls who can stand to drink Silk, and seem no worse for the wear. Put a beer in their hands, and suddenly they're dry humping the fridge door. Subtlety, it seems, doesn't evoke enough outrage. Like most organizations whose membership numbers less than the distinct subset "people who went to see Meet Joe Black," the disdainful public perception of PETA is eerily accurate. In an ironic twist, Shithouse Squirrels everywhere locked arms in protest.

What follows is an actual transcript of the events around 3AM, on November 7, 2008 in the Belmont Shores area of Long Beach, California, in the alley near the intersection of Ocean and Bay Shore.

The author was up late, writing, and began transcribing the events as he heard them.

*Tires spin and an engine revs. The sound is very brief, lasting less than a second.

First Male Voice: Come here.

Second Male Voice: Uhh… Are you serious?

FMV: Come down the stairs now.

SMV: Seriously? I live here man.

FMV: Come here now.

SMV: Jesus! You’re pointing a gun at me!

FMV: Come down the stairs and get on the ground now.

SMV: (emphatic) YOU. ARE. POINTING. A. GUN. AT. ME!!

FMV: Put your hands behind your head.

*Several seconds of silence follow and then..

*The unmistakable crackle of an electrical arc.

Female Voice: Oh my god, they killed him!

SMV: (Screaming, not dead but clearly in intense pain)

FMV: (speaking in a low murmur, indistinguishable)

SMV: (Still in obvious pain, through tears) I fucking live here man, I fucking live here. This is my door. Twenty Bay Shore, Apartment Nine.

*followed by roughly thirty minutes of “I live here” and several other police cars arriving. In the end nobody was arrested and they all drove away.

So I don’t know exactly what happened, but I’m guessing one of my neighbors got tazed tonight. Gosh don’t you wish you lived here.

Perchance Nothing

(I just discovered this post that was saved as a draft but never submitted. Better late than never I guess?)

I don't dream very often. I've always suspected this is a consequence of the copious amounts of medication I took throughout my youth, but who knows whether or not that is true? In any case, I just had a rare dream, and will now attempt to relate as much as possible to you.

I have just finished up a conversation with some minor comedian whose name I wouldn't be able to recall in the waking world anyway, we are standing on a tree-lined street by my old elementary school playground. Up walks Last Comic Standing host Jay Mohr, and I flag him down and tell him how I can't believe my incredible luck meeting two comedians in one day. We talk briefly about comedy and television, he says he hasn't heard good things about the previous comic, and then goes on his way. Across the street from me is a garage sale, so I cautiously wander over and who should I find but Robert Stack. Wow, I think, this is a real celebrity, not just a TV celebrity like Jay Mohr or the first guy. I notice a brown box full of old records, the one on top is the soundtrack to an experimental feminist film produced by Disney in the early seventies, called Dau Fratham. It is an operatic musical about a futuristic society where women are second class citizens. It tells the story of a man who hunts and kills four criminal women before committing suicide, and is told through the eyes of a fifth woman, the title character, who ends the film with a melancholy aria. We don't talk about the details of the film, but they're all there in my memory anyway, as though I'm some expert on Disney's experimental feminist movement. Stack comments that he knew the woman who played Dau Fratham. I haven't seen the film but I do know her from her voice work on a much more family friendly Disney film. Stack ends up buying the record for fifty cents, telling me that it is probably the last copy in existence and is worth much more than that. As he departs I leaf through the brown box of records but find nothing else of value.


So yeah, good luck interpreting THAT. Go on, I dare you.

YA Website

I'm posting twice on the same subject, so you know I'm serious.
An oft-cited maxim is that you're either part of the problem or you're part of the solution. I've never been a fan of these kind of polarizing statements because they promote the kind of "Us vs Them" mentality that leads to unpleasant things like College football fans, Political protesters, and suicide bombers.
However.
The idea is not totally without merit, and there is a yawning gulf between the Young American's internet potential and its' actual online achievements.
It is my intention to clearly outline my proposal for the Young Americans digital experience, with the clear understanding that in this instance, those with the power to change things are a decidedly different subset than those with the desire to change things.

1. Fix the YA website.

The YA Website is a perfect online representation of the YA Warehouse. The comparison is both unflattering and instructive: it exists as an outmoded, cumbersome, and generally embarrassing front for what is in reality an international non-profit entity. Someone's "best efforts" aren't commendable just because their services come cheaply, and even improved aesthetics and design principles won't fix the site's architecture problems.
The front page should load quickly and act as nothing more than a hub to other places. Send convention show clients to a place where they can look at publicity photos, short performance clips, and see a list of the groups long and storied success as entertainment for corporate events. Keep it simple and quick, and let your corporate clients know that hiring you puts them in the esteemed company of some of top corporations in the world (Coke, IBM, Dodge, etc.)
The Outreach section should be subdivided into specific sections for teachers and students. A simple feedback section will ensure a constant string of positive testimonials, (with incorporated editorial control of course,) and the site needs a much, much more efficient submission medium for photo submission other than email.

More to come if I still care later.