Food as identity

It was this year's Thanksgiving that my wife and I reinstated an age old tradition for me; solitude.

During my career in the Air Force, I looked forward to the holidays, not having any commitments to friends or family or to The Mission for a day of quiet reflection. I'm not religious, but I still believe in the power of ritual. A good stiff drink, and a long quiet walk thinking about what's gone right & what's gone wrong during the past year was a perfect way to spend the holiday. My wife prefers the excitement and interaction of preparing and sharing a feast, so she went to a friend's house to help him get ready.

Growing up, the household was always bustling with activity, and I always yearned to get out and go. I'm an adventurer, it's in my DNA. My family was very close, and we had traditional family dinners during the holidays; turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, etc. followed by watching the Dallas Cowboys beating the Detroit Lions. I hate football, but it always seemed to be playing on the tv.

Last year, I went to visit my dying father in LA. I stayed with my sister and cousin in West Hollywood. My sister's boyfriend made modern interpretations of the traditional meal, Turkey with a cajun rub, corn on the cob, and a few other dishes that escaped my notice. I don' remember the other guests, I do remember the old sensation of wanting to escape. so I guess it was just like growing up. No football on tv though.

This year, we were invited to a friend's house. In the afternoon, my wife picked me up, and we went over. It was a family, though nontraditional, but very Bay Area affair. There were several kinds of stuffing; vegetarian, vegan and low carb as well as regular stove-top variety. Vegan Fake turkey was side-by side with a free-range bird. for 12 people, there were 15 bottles of wine.

As we age and grow, we find ways to incorporate our traditions with our current identities. And for that I am very thankful.

Thankful

First and foremost, I am thankful that I am one of the Chosen Few. An American white male. I have it better than most of the planet, and I know it. It was just an accident of birth, but there you go.

I am thankful that my predecessors have survived no less than four major extinctions. I come from a long line of badasses. So do you.

I would like to thank my ex-wife for bearing the Girl Cub and the Boy Child. I would also like to thank my first wife for the time we had together. You both deserved better than who I was at the time and I wish you well.

I am thankful that I have no moral qualms whatsoever in protecting my family. I know how lucky I am and how good I have it and I will do whatever is necessary to ensure their safety and happines.

I am also thankful that I am morally flexible enough to do whatever to whomever is foolish enough threatens the only reason I have for being alive.

I would like to thank Rachna. I know he's a handful, but Malcolm's worth it. I am also glad you two kids had a baby. She is beautiful.

I am glad there is no god, no supernatural explanation for the wonderful world I live in and the things therein.It makes the days more precious to know I have free will and that in an infinite universe, all things are possible. I am thankful that I am the only one responsible for my actions.

I am thankful for the existence that chemical compounds like MDMA exist. I am also thankful that, while illegal, there are suppliers here in this part of the world who produce clean, reliable products.

I am very grateful to have tried other things. I am fortunate to live in a time when access to information is at an all time high. I am thankful I have easy access to the Internet, and the public library. I only wish I could donate more to the library systems.

I have never tried smoking, and I am thankful both my parents did, so that it removed any allure that habit might have held.

I would like to thank NPR for their series of essays called "This I beleive", and I am especially grateful for Penn Jillette for his essay on NPR.

I am thankful neither of my parents had to bury any of their children. I am glad I got to say good bye to my father. I am also glad he went on his own terms.

I am thankful that my mother died instantly. I will try to do the same for her killer when I get around to it.

I am also very thankful I have been proven wrong about the nonexistence of true love. Thank you so much, Janet, for being in my world.

Thank you.

Raymond Chandler

William Gibson, the cyberpunk author, has been compared to Chandler's gritty work. Tight dialog, tighter descriptions of scenes, making every word count.

The name came to me this morning, in the shower. For all the good it does me now.

It's the name of the author I couldn't remember, when I was making the comparison at the store I purchased my comics.

I blew it on that one line.

The line where I compared the last time I played D & D was with a bunch of Drama students. It was like something out of "The Grifters," we were all con artists.

Even the guy behind the counter couldn't help on that one. How can you work at a comic shop and not know that kind of useless information? If we met at the video store down the street, this wouldn't have happened.

That was the second thing I said to her. The first was a comment on fuzzy dice. It was how I had seen someone the other day, weeks ago actually - with fuzzy dice hanging from their rearview. Twelve-sided dice. Talk about geek - chic.

She had some in her hand, said she was buying them for her brother. I knew it was just a MacGuffin. An excuse to come into the store, a reason to wait in line, to create a chance to talk to me. Yeah, me. Go figure.

Earlier, she walked past me as I was looking at the comics on the rack against the wall. She was browsing, looking around at the stuffed animals and stuff behind me.

I saw her walk into the store and knew she saw me looking at the comics. I tried to be surreptitious, looking at her. I didn't want to come across as a stalker. Even though she followed me, it's a concern I always have. You only need to be pepper-sprayed once to be gun - shy. True, it was my sister who'd done that, and she did it just tot see what it really did to people. I would never visit a gun store with her.

I knew she had seen me walk into the store. i walked slowly enough into it, and wondered if she'd follow.

I passed her on the street going into the store. I smiled as she passed, she smiled back. We did the eye thing.

When you make eye contact, look away, then look back to see if they do the same. That's the eye thing. Shows that you are both interested. Like when Cranes dance in step with the other, mimicking each other's moves. Showing synchronicity. A common goal, a desire for the same thing. The eyes, then the pause, then the smile, then the looking away again. Circling steps around each other.

I had noticed her looking at me at the bank. I smiled at her when I was in line, too. Just being polite when we made eye contact.

I went to deposit some cash I had just come across.

I finally sold something I'd been trying to get rid of, and I had some spare cash. So I decided to treat myself after depositing most of it.

Inside every grown man is that awkward, geeky 12 -year-old boy, no matter how you change and grow and mature, that 12 year-old is there, tripping over his lines and his shoelaces. I never even learned the woman's name.

I ended up buying an Ice cream cone and calling my wife. She chided me on not keeping the conversation simple, and not keeping the game going. My wife recommends I go out for coffee around the same time tomorrow to see if she's local.

I love her so much. Who else could laugh at that? As she's fond of saying, "Nothing fuels desire like being desired."

A brief history of blowing up Smurfs

Here is the ad about the smurfs for UNICEF that caused a storm a few weeks ago.


This one's a bit close to me for a few reasons. I'm a dad, but also, I used to plan bombing missions for the Air Force. My official job title was Target Intelligence Specialist.

You see the ads showing the cool high-tech steel grey planes and the blue skies, but I used to do Bomb Damage Assessment to see if the missions' were accomplished.

I had an interesting time during the first Gulf War. I was assigned to a tactical reconnaissance unit. These are fighter jets that have cameras in the nose and they take pictures instead of dropping bombs, or shooting other planes out of the sky or taking stuff from one place to another. Those are basically the things the Air Force does. That and marry the locals, make friends in foreign countries and have free air shows by flying these cool looking planes around.

Some of those planes are classic examples of that one rule of evolution; current use does not equal original intent. The B-52 for example, was developed in the 50's to fly slim Whitman, James Earl Jones, and the rest of the crew on a one-way high altitude trip to the Soviet Union and the end of the world thanks to the foreign policy of Mutual Assured Destruction, We didn't launch on Them, because They would retaliate and blow the whole planet up, and They knew We were willing to do the same if They launched against Us. Dangerous game, but with all the failsafes developed for the missiles, bombers and subs, they started coming up with other reasons to use some of the expensive gear we taxpayers paid for.

Viet Nam became the excuse for dropping bombs on people, so they would fly B-52s from some little island like Guam or even North Dakota, and be home for dinner.

When the powers that be got tired of killing our grunts, we still had these expensive planes, and the nuclear commitment was still helping us out-spend the Soviets.

Over time though, air defenses got better and better, so the B-52; a plane that was developed for flying high altitude missions, had to come up with new tactics for survivability. Pilots learned to fly these buses at about 200 feet off the ground with improved radar, and Infrared sensors. so that they could slip in under enemy radar, and avoid all the missile defenses.

During that time, policy changed and the thought of Low Intensity Conflict, or as they call it today Asymmetrical Warfare, where the End of the World wasn't the objective, just blow up a few Bad Guys until CNN got tired of covering the war.

These happen in places that aren't Europe. Where the client countries can't afford expensive things like the latest radar-guided missile systems. They bought Anti Aircraft Artillery (AAA), because you can jam electronics, but bullets are dumb, and are obey only the laws of physics. And they can be repurposed to shooting things on the ground too.

That's what happened in Iraq. Pilots of any plane that dropped ordnance and that was invited to the party had to re-learn their jobs. Instead of fast and low, the had to fly fast and high. For fighter planes like the F-16, dive bombing became popular again instead of tactics like a maneuver that would loft the bomb toward the target like a slow pitch softball.

B-52's would drop their "stick" of bombs from six miles high, and about six miles away, blowing up a rectangle about one mile by about a mile and a half. You never heard anything until the first bombs hit.

No shrieks.

No whines.

Nothing. The smoke and flames were also minimal.

The earth would shake and everything went to hell.

I don't regret what I did. Never will. The batter I and my peers did our job, the fewer people had to actually die. We blow up headquarters or a communications center, we could cripple thousands of troops without having to kill them.

Niccolo Macchiaveli once remarked that war was an extension of politics, and I couldn't agree more. We dominated Iraq both times, and yet we're losing more than we could have ever hoped because the political effort was nowhere nearly as effective nor as well-planned as the military part.

Pet Peeve

I love a well-done advertisement. They should entertain, inform, and persuade.

There's a site, Trunk Monkey for an auto insurance company, where you push a button and a chimp comes out of the trunk and does some pretty handy things.

I also loved the Superbowl ads for an employment agency that used the lone guy working at Yeknom Inc., an office full of Chimps. Hilarious. Well written.

Just one thing: Chimpanzees are Apes, not Monkeys. A great wikipedia article is here gives all the basics, and any search the word chimp, and Goodall will give you all manner of cool information. Our very own Oakland Zoo has a page devoted to them here.

The best summary of the way to tell the two apart are found here at a site refuting some Creationist garbage. And all Creationist stuff is garbage, by the way.

" Apes are more similar to humans than monkeys are in many anatomical features of the skull, skeleton and dentition (teeth). The most obvious difference between apes and monkeys is that apes lack a tail."

Pretty much sums it up. We're primates, and along with us, there's two other main groups, apes, and monkeys. There's only a handful of apes; chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, orangutans, and gibbons. Gibbons are the loudest, singing to mark their territory. I used to take my favorite two primates, the dirklings to watch the two at the Seattle zoo. the male was missing his arm from the elbow down, and he and his mate would swing and howl all day. Always wanted to sample them and do something with it.

Some other interesting facts about chimps I''ve picked up over the years.

The Genus Pan is our closes living relative, sharing over 97% of our DNA. They are omnivorous, eating both plants and animals, have a complex social hierarchy and have an astounding %50 success rate when hunting monkeys. Compared with so-called "super predators" like canines and felines which usually have a one in six chance or one in twelve chance of success. These are animals that have evolved specifically to chase, catch, kill and eat other animals, yet Chimps are more successful. The two troops observed doing this do so using differing methods. One troop cooperates, and shares in the kill according to status; the other competes for the kill and the spoils are divided by who makes the kill to cement alliances and vie fore status. Both groups are equally effective.

Bonobos, the other species is known for being matriarchal, more egalitarian, vegetarian, and sexually promiscuous. It's been rumored they play hackey sack and like tie dyed clothing.

Draw your own conclusions.

In the original series of Batlestar Galactica, the kid had a cool robot called a daggit, the pet's name was "Muffit"

Here's a picture:






Who wouldn't want on of those? When I found out it was a chimp in the suit, I wanted one even more.

When my wife and I are out and about, we'll occasionally see some cute kid, and she'll say, "I want one of those. Only I don't want the to get much bigger, where can we get one." We live next to The City, which has more dogs than children in it, so it's becoming more and more of a rarity to see them in the streets.

I would love to see some biotech company making a new kind of pet, one that kind of looks like a kid, but is really a marmoset or a macaque or something like that. Has to have hands with opposable thumbs, to get beer and stuff. Bigger than a mogwai, like in gremlins, but smaller than about a meter. I don't see why it couldn't be done. Look at what we did to something like wolves, give us a few hundred years, and we make all sorts of shake and bark dogs like Chihuahuas and Yorkshire terriers. They were done with no knowledge of genes, and no computers.Imagine what could be done with a little imagination, some Venture Capital, and sojme very influential Harajuku teens to influence demand. With the aging Baby Boomers, there's a market for companion and assistance pets.

Just a thought

Grandiosity is undervalued

The comedian Chris Rock had a routine that went ""Do you know what the good side of crack is? If you're up at the right hour, you can get a VCR for $1.50. You can furnish your whole house for $10.95."

That's the way I feel about the whole bipolar mess. I know my particular flavor of Bipolar/ADD/ whatever they decide it is this week is very mild. Especially compared to some people, like the guy who wrote "Electroboy" (I'm not linking to something I haven't read) which, when I'm bummed out, highlights the fact that I can't even be bipolar right. I don't get crazy manic where I don't sleep for days on end. I don't get crippled when I get The Blues. I don't want to do anything, and Grey is a more appropriate color for the way things feel, but that's another story for another time. Even my Grand Visions aren't all that grand. I get bogged down in trying to make them work, so I realize when my fantasy machinations come most of them are going to pass soon, so it's nice to daydream.

In all fairness, I'm nowhere near as Fair and Balanced as I portray myself, just ask anyone who knows me.

In this cased though, I can see why Advertising is the right field for me. Were I to follow my other passion, Industrial Design, I'd have to make things that really could possible work in Real Life, or at least look like they could. I'm horrible at rendering and illustration. Horrible. But in Advertising, I can think as big as I want, and roll with it, and then run those crazy ideas through the hecatomb of the pitching process to my teachers.

It kinda sucks when they say go for it, but it's a good kind of Suck. More like a Challenge.

I have a student assignment, for creating a campaign piece for Doctors Without Borders, a very worthy organization if ever there was one. I saw a rather offbeat way to cut through the traditional images of starving babies and haggard doctors, and all that greyness. I ranted for a bit, talked to a friend who's in the business, he loved it, then I ranted on the keyboard, emailed it to my class to get some feedback.

My teacher loved it. He added the caveat that it has to be relevant, and respectful, not just some Art Director's Wet Dream.

I'm a copywriter. So of course it'll be relevant. It might not be pretty, but it'll work. As the week has progressed, my grandiosity has turned a simple print campaign into a full-blown marketing blitz, complete with a proposal for internet, and guerilla pieces and promotional tie-ins with potential partnerships form the commercial world. Like the old Adobe slogan, "If you can dream it, you can do it"

When I get more along with the Idea, I'll post an addendum to this, and a link so you my Beloved Reader can check it out and let me know what you think.

deal?

Staring into the Void

Yesterday something historical happened. We had cable installed. My lovely wife broke down because Mr. McGruder's creation, The Boondocks, was coming to Cartoon Network and we just had to see it. The official reasoning is that, as an Advert student, I need to keep current with the popular culture, and a great deal of my classes ask for critiques of commercials being produced.

I could just do what I've been doing, and going to Advertising Age(http://www.adage.com/) and a few other sites and just watching htem there, but the school's logon is used by every advertising student past and present, so that logging in is difficult most times.


Of course, the contractor that came by from the cable company didn't connect us properly, so we didn't get to watch The Boondocks, but we had cable.

And that was more than enough.

We watched approximately 3- 4 hours of the stuff. All animation, all comedy. Started off with King of the Hill, then The Simpsons, then The Family Guy, finally a show from the creators of Family Guy, American Dad.

Not watching too many episodes of Family Guy, I was in awe of the pacing, and pure viciousness of some of the jokes. IT started off with the baby, Stewie taking out Osama Bin Laden in a cave in Afghanistan. Which we know would never happen, Osama's in Vegas. Cheeky bastards.

American Dad required no foreknowledge of the characters, but had a great premise. The main character worked for the CIA, and his wacky family, complete with talking goldfish and Grey Alien who sounds like Paul Lynde. I had to write down a couple of his comments.

- My "Tanqueraydar" tells me there's gin nearby.
The alien said this when they were transferred to Saudi Arabia, and he found out there was no alcohol in the country.

Great stuff.

I'm not sure who said it, it might have been Ernie Kovacs, but "TV is a medium, because it is neither rare, nor well-done."

I know the rest of the week won't be this entertaining.

In Vino Veritas

Even good wine will get you drunk. I was reminded of this fact last night. A friend of mine was being honored for his contributions to the Renaissance community last night. This gentleman has a wonderful wine collection, and pulled out all the stops.

So did I. The wine flowed easily, and I was swept away with it. I enjoy the Ren scene sometimes. While every other guy was being William Wallace, or Rob Roy, I was Pepe' Le Pew, making all the ladies giggle and feel warm and wanted. Which is one of a man's job in life. I ate and drank and danced and Made Merry. And Jezebella, and Bebhain, and even Siona. But that's another story for another time.

It was when I was picking up this one lady when it happened. I let the other guys toss a caber, my sport is the Wench Press. I had her over my shoulder, and tried to lift, but,... I couldn't. I've never not been able to toss someone around. I know the physics involved and have done it enough times both friendly and in anger. So I tried again. No luck. When this lovely young Amazon told me how much she weighed, I understood, and then proceeded to grab my glasses, so we could go.

They were nowhere to be found. My wife insisted we go home, not like they would have turned up anyway. I have a spare pair, and they are nowhere to be found.

So, now I'm blind, unemployed, and have no real options to get any new ones any time soon.

I'm so over Faire.

Archetypes and Stereotypes

deFINing

Just saw "Batman Begins" for the first time tonight.

I hate ninjas.

I hate that batman has to have that ninja background. He's more than just a gear-headed ninja badass. He's also the World's Greatest Detective. Says so on his business card.

At least they put his training in the Asian Mountains (Himalayas) it ties in nicely with his 30's heritage. Shangri La is the mystical asian hideaway the shadow went to learn his trade.

I really hate white guy ninja masters. It was okay when Lee Van Cleef did it, but that was a long time ago. If they had to have the Asian Ninja Mountain Fortress with the society of black jammied badasses, they could have used Ken Watanabe. He's an excellent actor in his own right he made "Last Samurai" enjoyable. (That and watching Tom Cruise get hit with a stick repeatedly was cool too.) Why go with a haoli like Neeson. The silly beard was understandable, the comic character was coined during the late sixties, early 70's Brave and the Bold era. But the name Ra's al Ghul is a mash up of Middle Eastern Arabic sounding name. If I remember he was a bit swarthy at that.

So, Mountain Fortress, okay. I'd have preferred Iran or somewhere like where the original Assassins came from. The followers of Hassan i Shabbah. Look it up, it's cool stuff.


I do love the gadgets. Total gear porn.

And the cape. Loved the cape.

I've always had a certain delight in movie props and the like. If I could draw better, I might have been an industrial designer. I' better at explaining my ideas with words and pictures.

I don't like most of the Batman titles. Mostly because as a property, they have numerous segments to market to, so there's the kids Batman, The teen angst-y batman and robin or "Nightwing", the Chick-Flick- meets- Kill- Bill Batgirl and Catwoman is okay from time to time. I've gotten a few for my daughter. Then there's the dark stuff, for the more adult tastes


This all happened because Frank Miller had some fun with reviving him a few years back. Miniseries was called "The Dark Knight Returns" where an aging Bruce Wayne comes out of retirement and into a dystopic world. That miniseries sparked all this interest in the Batman franchise and that interest is was what prompted Warner Brothers to make the Batman movie with Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson. After that came the Animated Series.

Thank you Mr. Miller