July 08, 2005
Look at me, I can be on the news!!
There are some things to be said about the subway and bus bombings in London. It is another high-stakes terrorist attack, and so it's open season for journalists and pundits to strafe their ideas on a global public starving for answers. To me it's as though the more attacks happen, the easier it becomes to see through the speculation and rhetoric, and build an opinion about the whole global terrorism problem.
Terrorism is a way to push a cause and get a point across, and it works extremely well. A narrow example is the kidnapping of the Italian journalist which precipitated Italy's pull-out from Iraq. The Italian people got sick of fighting somebody else's war and when one of their own was endangered, it was enough stress on the government to abandon their work in the Middle East. A wider example is bringing Jihad to to American soil by crashing planes into our prized New York skyline. The effects of that attack are exactly as intended by the attackers:
1. Economic strength is the first of America's trump cards. We rely on our economic strength to control the markets, and so control the world. However, America has been on shakey economic ground ever since the attacks. To lose our credibility in this arena is to lose our grip as a superpower.
2. Relatedly, we are now, more than ever, a country of military prowess. With so much funding tied up in military spending, there is alarmingly little wiggle room in which to take care of our own social system. Bush bills our country as a nation responsible for spreading "freedom" and "liberty" throughout the world, but what he has done is embroiled us in a never-ending battle that acts like a stone tied to our nation's ankle. As Europe has no such need or desire for a military like ours, they can focus on improving their social and economic systems while we're out fighting their battles. It's thereby not entirely out of the question for a united Europe to overtake the United States in global commerce.
With our two strongest cards removed from the deck, money and military, what do we have left? Certainly not American values. The fetid PATRIOT ACT shits so thickly on our rights that in the name of porous security from terrorists, we surrender the very things we feel make us different from other countries.
So yes, I would say the terrorism of 9/11 had its desired affect.
And terrorism isn't getting any better. As Bush marches his crusade across the Middle East, Al-Qaeda's cause (though not necessarily the group itself) is getting more support. Take the Earth Liberation Front (ELF). It's is a highly de-centralized eco-terrorism group. Acts are commited in the name of its cause, rather than as orders handed down from the top ranks. Even if its founders were thrown in jail forever, the cause would continue. I see the same thing happening with Al-Qaeda. The only hint of responsibility for the bombings in London was some post on a message board, giving culpability to some "secret Al-Qaeda in Europe" group that nobody's ever heard of. The media flips its shit thinking a new, previously unknown chapter of Al-Qaeda has been sitting dormant in Europe. "OH GOD there's so much we don't know!" they scream. No, I think somebody fell in love with Bin Laden's ideology and decided to do some attacks on his own.
If this is the case and A-Q becomes this spector of violence, our gigantic military dong will be nothing but a flaccid appendage hanging off our weak and sickly body.
We're taking the wrong approach to terrorism. Every nation that follows our orders in the matter is taking the wrong approach. The deaths of our known enemies will not change this, for if Al-Qaeda becomes a concept, no amount of military bombing will snuff it out.
Posted by Alchemae at 05:58 PM | Comments (0)
July 06, 2005
hiccups
I'm back from my stay in the DC area and it's back to the routine of working, eating, sleeping and making vacuous plans to camp out some night.
It was a really good time since I had such a great host to show me around the place. The only problem is that starting the moment she drove away, a string of minor misfortunes has befallen me.
I had a lot on my mind just after she dropped me off, and in that fog I ended up leaving my backpack at the apartment where my other friend was staying. Camera, house/car/work keys, raincoat, knife, sunglasses, lip balm, razor, 2 pairs of pants, 2 shirts, 2 pairs of boxers, and a sack of responsibility all sit 5 hours away. Bummer. I climbed into my 2nd-story bathroom window to get inside.
This morning, I had some time before work so instead of going straight there after dropping the mother off, I went home. The screendoor handle got jammed. I gave it a good strike and jammed it worse. Locked out, and now I had to contend with a broken door handle. The usual option of climbing in through the bathroom window was off-limits, since my neighbor was in her kitchen tending to her infants and I didn't want to freak her out. Instead, I went over to the side and stacked some miscellaneous big square shapes so I could clammer into the living room. Success. I set about fixing the door handle and that was that.
Then some roads closed for construction tried to fuck with me, but I got around them. I just keep getting handed small shit to deal with. Minor misfortunes.
Man, I wish I had my camera. When I get it back, I'll probably mention something about the trip and give some pictures. I think I got some good ones.
Posted by Alchemae at 01:51 PM | Comments (0)
June 30, 2005
change
I'm going to make some changes around here.
Jatol is out, and Media Temple is in, and I have to move stuff over. The idea I've had is to move over and make some layout changes, since I want to spruce up the site before I go to Germany. It's amazing how a site can look pretty cool and appealing after finish messing with it, and a year or so on, it looks incredibly bland.
I had more to say, but I lost it, so I'm going to go read more about mushrooms.
Posted by Alchemae at 01:12 PM | Comments (0)
June 29, 2005
i made them up
It was park inspections at work last week. I was up in the main office and so I got to meet all these state-executive types from Harrisburg, the career state workers who actually hold rank in various parts of the bureaucracy that runs the PA State Park system.
I was given the task of keeping track of who came, and so had to meet everybody personally. As I was meeting these people and learning their names, it felt like I was taking some sort of standardized test, with names diverse in their almost artful political correctness. So I decided to make up some names of my own.
What followed was a short list of names of ficticious people that I imagine to hold state civil service jobs somewhere in Pennsylvania.
Read over them and if nobody is around, say them aloud. The cadence of the names is what makes them funny.
Greaver Landsdowne
Wendel Cupsmarth
Landie Funboard
Gross Veloit
Dunderbachs Alcko
Elizabeth Handers
Esqualez Detorinio
Delequate GeRouts
Orville DeGrouts
Hunter Dolmeigh
Corbel Hedonrichter
Gloria Whore
Tucker Flambesten
Jables Durkdetturk
Viacci Elbania De Los Volcatos
Vimted Hungrentenstensson
Rourek Himples
Damal Rappaport
Bethany Ruthers
Jumpok Tokbok
Yolanda Burth
Marv Blamecheck
Fenton Basek Datorque
Ulag Veevil
Horst Bettaglinus
Hollidai Thrush-Andrews
Imagine these as the names of those classic office personalities.
Greaver Landsdowne, for example, is not particularly apt at anything. He fancies himself a woodsman, but he would be unable to take care of himself in the wild. He decorates his home with things he finds in the woods behind his house, and wood-working tools that he never uses out of fear of injury.
Dunderbachs Alcko is currently working in a secretarial capacity since being fired from a respectable long-term position at a sea-salt processing facility. He's vaguely bitter and difficult to embrace as a friend; he is impersonal and choses to lose himself in whatever menial task he's involved in.
Landie Funboard is lank, weak, balding, and has a noticably pointy head. He is enthusiastic about telling bad jokes and is known around his office for unusually ripe body odor. He has a heart of gold, but he's a person of no remarkable traits.
Delequate GeRouts is an office assistant. She hates her grandchildren because she disapproves of the the wife her only son took. She has been known throughout her life as a snitch and a spoil-sport and refuses to ever eat Tiramisu for the fact that it is her favorite food in the world.
Orville DeGrouts works in the same office as Delequate and constantly makes jokes and rhymes about the similarity of their surnames. A charming older man, he is living out the last part of his life simply, and contentedly.
Hunter Dolmeigh is 18 years old, frighteningly obese, and even more frighteningly short-tempered. On more than one occasion, he open-hand slapped the person he was talking to out of unrestrainable frustration. He broke the jaws of three different people this way. Hunter also has an insufferable crush on Wendel Cupsmarth's wife, and expresses it with awkward, often crude quips.
Wendel Cupsmarth is a small, unassuming man in his mid-fifties. He couldn't say exactly why he chose to work for the state; he would seem to fit much more behind the counter of a general store renting out oars in some charming little hamlet in northern California. His wife is, and has been beautiful her whole life, the kind of enchanting, true beauty that leaves you glowing after you talk with her. She is undyingly faithful to Wendel, who goes to sleep each night thankful that he is with her.
Hollidai Thrush-Andrews is the office harlot. Without shame, she flaunts her last remaining beauty to anybody who will take the bait, and infuriates her coworkers by never actually doing any work. If a handsome man happens to come to the office, she forces herself upon him and demands a monopoly over his attention. Unfortunately, she is at once only vaguely pretty and terribly unhelpful. She should have been fired long ago, but all of her superiors, older neglected males, are much too fond of the coquettish attention.
Gloria Whore was recently awarded her masters in child psychology. She is a stocky but spry young woman. In spite of being noticably overweight, she is still considered by most to be very attractive and charismatic, commanding essentially universal respect from her peers. She's famous for coming up with unlikely and delicious dishes when she has company.
Posted by Alchemae at 11:12 AM | Comments (0)
more filler
so tired, but i don't want to sleep.
why the hell not?
you know, it's because of the whole process of getting into a position that is both comfortable and good for regulating temperature. it's a long time before my body is ready to shut down once i put it up for the night.
Two of my friends have set off to faraway places in the past week. My one friend will spend on a month walking the Appalachian Trail, my other friend up and moved to Chicago.
Sorry these entries kind of suck of late. I usually write them when I'm tired, and they're not entertaining at all.
Posted by Alchemae at 02:32 AM | Comments (0)
June 25, 2005
clerk style
My eyes are dry.
::rub scratch::
Yeah, they're all red and sandy.
I worked till 10pm tonight, just late enough to catch the "Star Party" at the State Park. A bunch of people from a local astronomy club--that is, a gaggle of slouchy curmudgeons with dobsonian-mount telescopes--set up their equipment for the enjoyment of us stary-eyed young-uns. I thought it would be a great chance to photograph people enjoying themselves, something I wish I did more of with my camera. As is always the case, I walked away with about 25 pictures, only one of which was even salvagable, let alone beautiful.
It put me in a great mood though. Such a beautiful frickin day.
The only thing that sucks is that I'm about to go to bed, and the sky is getting blue already.
Posted by Alchemae at 04:23 AM | Comments (1)
June 22, 2005
Most Definitely
I did a lot of excellent things last night. Most of everything between waking up on the 20th and going to sleep 6 hours into the 21st was something that I will remember.
I ended up writing it all down in a hidden entry so I can go back and read it a long time from now; In the future I'll know exactly where to dig up a summer memory if I ever want to.
Some of what I did was driving around the most neglected areas in the area around where I live, the rural areas of the rural areas you could say. Featured in this entry is one of the pictures I snapped of a building somewhere by East Benton. My friend and I were actually questioned by somebody "with the township police" but we were able to play it off as student photographers, since I had my whole tripod set up for the shot. It wasn't the only adventure we found that night.
I also finally nailed manual transmissions. I can drive stick now, which is a really huge deal for me. I've wanted to get it for years now, but I especially wanted to learn before I go to Germany, where automatics are common the way 11th fingers are common. It came effortlessly, naturally. Makes me wonder why we even have automatics.
A plan to go to DC is beginning to crystalize, but I already know I'm going to feel guilty about it. Because of the bus schedules, I really need to leave Sunday July 10th and leave Tuesday the 12th if I am to see anything cool while I'm there. Finding decent fares hidden on the Greyhound site, combining different days and different fares and different stations; it feels like doing factorials manually. Just a huge pain in the ass that makes you convinced there must be an easier way that eludes you.
I either pay $78 dollars for the convenience of leaving and arriving from the nearby Scranton station, or I ask somebody to haul my freeloader ass to Wilkes Barre, 30 minutes away, so I can land a $58 fare. Either way, I'm going to be seriously inconveniencing people and spending money that I simply shouldn't spend.
All for DC. Photographs, museums, photographs of and in museums. Chipotle. Heads of State. Showing my ass to heads of State. Driving down that long ass fucking road that everything is on. I don't know what it is, but I lust for the place like normal people lust for New York City. Besides, I'll get to enjoy at least some of it with a good friend of mine. It's been a long time since I've played tourist with a good pal.
And the picture from some forgotten corner in Pennsylvania
Posted by Alchemae at 03:45 AM | Comments (3)
June 21, 2005
I'm fully aware that I shouldn't spend money.
But I'm thinking seriously about a trip to DC for the hell of it. I found a 58 dollar fare on Greyhound, which would be possible pending a little negotiation at work.
Come on, 58 dollars. That's nothing! I'll pack a couple bag lunches, my camera, and drink from water fountains.
I want to take pictures down there, and get the lay of the land before I go down there for my CBYX orientation.
Must begin plotting.
Posted by Alchemae at 12:30 AM | Comments (2)
June 15, 2005
Moviez
There's one thing I know I'm going to miss when I'm in Germany, and that's America's unique brand of pop culture. It's special because it's not even so much the media itself, but rather the uniquely American way in which it's consumed.
In a rare example of being a happy little American consumer, I went with my friends to see the 12:01 showing of Batman Begins, opening night. They allocated what was probably the biggest theater in the building for the movie, and still the place was almost totally packed. We got there a little into the previews and were assisted by a ready frickin' usher just so we could sit in the same general area together. Looking over my shoulder (we were relegated to right-most wall, the last seats above the stairs, right behind a rather tall banister) what I saw was a huge basin of mankind, a wave of vaguely human shapes that moved and shifted like a honeycomb. It was really pretty amazing to be in a room with a ton of people who were at least somewhat interested in Batman.
The movie sucked though. To be scathing goes to far, since I did leave the place entertained after all was said and done. But as a film, wow. The film seemed to be really caught up on its role as backstory. Most of the film just felt like a protracted trailer, with jumpy cuts back and forth through unrelated sequences, capped off by inexcusable one-liners.
What also struck me was how Hollywood was somehow able to wring one last drop of water from the dry stone of "character versus appearance." Whereas I thought everything was finally cut and dry having been taught a thousand times over, "it's who you are on the inside that counts," it turns out that it's not true at all. In the words of the ever doe-like Katie Holmes: "It's not who you are inside, it's your actions that define you."
Shit. This upturns my whole worldview now. This is an example of what one of my friends deftly explained as one of the 'unnecessarily edifying' moments of the movie, of which there were a few. Regardless of how thickly ladeled the edification was, the audience was still compelled to burst into applaus as the credits started.
I'm going to miss this about America. The way that we can pay $7.25 to watch a terrible movie, to be left unchallenged and at times insulted by shameless product placement and vacuous plots, that we happy gobble up every remake and dead-horse sequal that comes down the pike, and do it while gorging on popcorn that costs as much or more than the film we're watching...that's American. And in some funny little way, that's charming.
Posted by Alchemae at 11:37 AM | Comments (4)
June 05, 2005
scrotum
I couldn't be satisfied until I did justice to the silliness of last entry's title. So now you all get to bristle at the title of this one.
A couple weeks ago there was a real big, real fast brown spider crawling around the desk. "Damn," I thought. "It might be a brown recluse," a spider whose bite, depending on your physiology, could burn a large painful crater in your flesh the size of a man's fist or larger.
I did a little investigation. It probably wasn't a recluse. It was out in the open, skittering across a busy desk. I learned that in the US, it's mainly found in the south-central region. There have been encounters elsewhere, but that's usually due to human interaction of some kind.
I'm suddenly fascinated with spiders. I found a nice looking one today and snapped a shot, hoping to identify it later. When you're a total novice, identifying a creature as diverse as a spider is a little mystery hunt itself, and I learned a bunch of cool words already. See below:
Wikipedia taught me the word "laterigrade" which refers to those big outward-held crab-like legs, the second pair of which are usually the longest. I looked around for pictures of spiders with laterigrade legs and finally found the Xysticus genus. Another search for Xysticus and there he was in his crabby glory: Xysticus Elegans. Of course, to confirm the identity of some spiders you need to dissect their sex organs, but I'm pretty confident that I got the right one.
It's a pretty unremarkable spider, but I only say that because there are no real in depth resources on this spider in specific. Contrast this with the cult following of the black widow or whatever.
. . .
I'm working on the photo requests. It's tough to get images that convey a specific, sought-after emotion. But I think I'll find something soon.
Posted by Alchemae at 01:47 AM | Comments (0)
June 01, 2005
photum
Thanks to my dad I now have the second to last piece of my photo arsenal, a real sweet tripod. I know have the power of extended exposures of anything I want, which for me is huge because I love extended exposure.
In case anyone is feeling generous, the last piece I need is a wide angle lense. Olympus WCON-07. Yes. That's the one.
I thought it would be a cool idea to take requests for pictures. Leave a comment describing anything you'd like to see a picture of. My surroundings, my town, things...whatever. If you have an idea, drop me a line.
Posted by Alchemae at 08:57 PM | Comments (4)
May 30, 2005
someday man.
someday man.
Posted by Alchemae at 04:16 AM | Comments (0)
May 19, 2005
A summer of lasts
Gross. When I started typing this entry I put my fingers in a thicket of cobwebs and crusty hatched spider eggs.
Since May 2nd, I finished school. New graduates always have a way of saying that so frankly. In a way I think it's trying to give a nice firm punctuation mark to the really long sentence of college. If I remember correctly, I think my last words as a student were "Well, that's that."
So now summer has started. I'm employed again, with the same job as last year, only now I'll probably have a lot more to do and keep track of. The two main jobs are pool clerk and a clerk at the contact station. The pool is heaven. It's so easy, and so delightfully boring, and you even get to meet some interesting people. I taught a girl how to ride a bike last year, and her grandmother fed me hotdogs whenever I wanted. The contact station is different. It's am actual building, as opposed to a shanty. I've only worked there a couple of times, but up there there's paperwork. And instead of excited crusty kids and their parents, there's campers. People who want to go swimming are easy to deal with; you can play them. The grand equalizer over which I have complete control is the pool and the small fee they have to pay to use it. Campers are different. You have 42 foot phallic symbols pulling up to the building, driven by domesticated men who are having a "rugged spell" and decided to take the RV out for a weekend. They are self-assured pretend woodsmen who "dunna have time for this civilized-world paperwork shit. ders a STORM a'COMMIN'!" Paying for their campsite threatens their wilderness fantasy or something.
I am glad to be employed though. Almost every cent, save for a small beer budget, goes to Germany.
I want to push my Flickr page which has all the better stuff I've captured with my new camera. You can see it here. A lot of it is shit, but some of it I'm really happy with. Enjoy those.
Maybe I'll write more entries.
Posted by Alchemae at 11:54 AM | Comments (0)