Forwarding Address [Tue 3rd May 2005 - 05:25pm] I've moved my journal so that I could post photos. Point your browsers to http://thohooke.blogspot.com crack wise

Expostulation and Reply [Wed 26th January 2005 - 02:15am] My old friend trayfnyak has lately written that "It's normal to be bored ... Anyone who thinks otherwise has been reading too much uplifting literature, which, like Baudelaire, is for the feeble minded and pretentious only." What Trayfnyak perhaps hasn't had as much occasion as I to note is that literature is such a reliably effective way of becoming bored. Take the edifying case of Sir Walter Scott, whose rather dubious literary legacy is the historical novel. Right now, I'm on a forced march through Scott's Waverley (1814), a novel of not inconsiderable length whose main selling point, according to the promotional copy on the back, is its "highly readable story." Trust Scott, the old killjoy, to take adventuresome gallantry as his subject matter and render it in chapters titled "An Incident Gives Rise to Reflection," "Rather Unimportant," and "More Explanation." Clearly, Scott is reaching from beyond the grave to poke at me with the Bony Finger of Contempt. I picture him at his desk, hunched over his spittle-flecked manuscript, eyes burning dully as he stutters out a long, low, unmistakably cruel laugh, and scratches out the following: Shall this be a long or a short chapter? -- This is a question in which you, gentle reader, have no vote, however much you may be interested in the consequences; just as you may (like myself) probably have nothing to do with the imposing a new tax, excepting the trifling circumstance of being obliged to pay it. Vox Populi 3 wisecracks | crack wise

Without a rifle-toting ninth-grader, I was left to my own devices. [Thu 23rd December 2004 - 11:52pm] Do to weather-related delays, I spent ten hours yesterday in the icy clutches of the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. Here are some things that I learned. Airport bookstores can be interesting. Amid the usual horrors (The Five People you Meet In Heaven) and the Special New Embarrassments to American Letters (I Am Charlotte Simmons), I saw, of all things, four copies of Finnegan's Wake. With so many unexpected and deliciously varied forms of literary torment availiable, I wound up with a copy of The End of the Affair. It occurred to me while reading the introduction that one of the nice things about being Catholic is that if you ever decide to quit, then you can refer to yourself as a lapsed Catholic, an identifier that carries with it a degree of panache simply unavailable to ex-Protestants. There's a certain mystique about the lapsed Catholic--people, I imagine, would assume that you had a bad experience with priests, or that you couldn't stomach the theology anymore, or that you've suffered some harrowing existential crisis and you'd rather not talk about it. It's romantic; New York sophisticates and French intellectuals are lapsed Catholics. Lapsed Catholics are allowed to get a bit too drunk at office parties and make awkward confessions of a vaguely inappropriate sexual nature. Lapsed Catholics can allude casually to the horrors of their repressive religious upbringing, even if they grew up in cheerful suburban families. If, on the other hand, you decide to quit being an evangelical Protestant, you have none of these options: you aren't a "lapsed Protestant," you're just plain lame. Lapsed Catholics are suspected of being angry at God; former Protestants are suspected of owning Thomas Kinkade "paintings." Behind the Lapsed Catholic's appearance of strained social convention, you'd expect to find a heady broth of suggestively Byronic emotional problems; underneath the veneer of the ex-Protestant's rebellious apostacy, you'd expect to find a mundane mixture of apathy and laziness. I have always felt faintly contemptuous of the sort of person who makes free with disparaging remarks about Oakies/Republicans/ladies with fake fingernails/and other forms of subhuman life from the red states, from the perspective of a presumed sophisticated-man-of-the-world status assumed on the basis of living in some cosmopolitan place. The mere fact of living in a city with a mass transit system and a choice of Starbucks, I want to tell these people, does not automatically make you less ridiculous than the average resident of Oklahoma. We have met the enemy, however, and he is us--one peculiarity of the Dallas airport is that if you want to go to an out-of-the-way airport (say in Shreveport or Lubbock or Abilene) you have to leave the mighty, tram-infested terminal and go to a lesser terminal which services the planes which go to commuter airports. The Mighty Terminal is host to the normal crop of airline passengers: your businesswomen, your dreadlocked Austrailians, the ever-present men in "sportshirts" and loafers with no socks. The Dinky Terminal, where I spent the bulk of those ten hours, is a different world entirely, one inexplicably redolent of barbeque sauce. Men wear giant hats and too-tight jeans; women have sweatpants and giant earrings or hair. Most of the passengers were middle-aged or older, and frequently fat. A rotund, red-faced man and his dumpy wife carried on an altercation in an exaggeratedly slow drawl with the Asian-American employee behind the airline counter. ("No. No. No. No. No. No. No" said the wife, pausing between each to show the awesome magnitude of her disapproval. "Just give us a voucher and a rental car and we'll DRIVE home" boasted the man, apparently somewhat unclear about whether he was proposing a mutually convenient solution or manfully demanding satisfaction for a personal insult. "uh uh. ridiculous. no way" continued the wife.) A more affable fellow looked at me and said "Time to spare, you go by air; when you gotta get there fast, you better drive!" (this he repeated to several times, chuckling at himself in between). Later, while I sat next to a trash can reading a book for about an hour, and no fewer than four different men spat into it. I sat with my back to a couple of old Abilenians returning home for Christmas. As it turns out, Man #1 had moved to New York on a lark with no place to stay and no job lined up. Now he works in residential real estate (average cost of home in New York: "over a million dollars") and lives in Manhattan. He didn't have any immediate prospects for marraige in the works, but, finding himself now past thirty, his "mind is more open to something like that." He had this easy, Texas way of talking, though, impossible not to like, and people who can make small-talk, especially about themselves, without sounding frivolous or self-centered or dull always impress me. His voice reminded me of those straight-shooters with short blonde hair from my grade-school days, who went out for little league and knew how to make casual chit-chat with grown-ups and pretty girls, and who had been popular in high school because they managed to be athletic without being thuggish or vulgar, and intelligent without being weird or socially awkward. Whereas most people who enjoy worldly success clearly deserve contempt (read: envy and resentment), this was a man who could speak about his long-term ambition of making "a pile" and retiring young to a big house in the suburbs without implying that such an accomplishment was noteworthy, or that his confidence in achieving it was a sign of awesome masculinity. As I had morally shriveled to dwarvish proportions in the shadow of this paragon of Texan virtue, I turned to get a look at him and was shocked to find myself facing a balding and rather badly dressed man of the Jason Alexander variety. There's something I find unaccountably unsettling, even slightly disturbing, in the appearance of such offhanded grace in an unattractive person; maybe it's only an instance of slavish attachment to an adolescent belief in the importance of beauty and good taste. Vox Populi 2 wisecracks | crack wise

A cereal as crunchy as Milton's Paradise Lost [Wed 15th December 2004 - 02:35pm] At a bar on monday night I got very drunk and had an odd conversation with this hairy guy who produced television shows for New Jersey public access television. He seemed sad, so I grabbed a napkin and quickly made for him a crudely-drawn sketch of my new imaginary aquatic friend, Beauregard, the dolphin of exquisite despair. Then, after spending Tuesday recovering from the hangover I had incurred, I put in the CD that my brother Old Monkeybags sent me one morning after his weekly brunch with Charles Barkely. The CD contains some tracks from Momus' Stars Forever, a project he completed on commission--each of the songs is about fans who paid him $1000 each to write a song about them. Here is a sample, from "Brent Busboom": And if you want to know a bit about prejudice Just ask an old Creationist Like William Jennings Bryan Who got Darwin banned in schools Brent Busboom, his descendant Took paintbrush and amended The Nevada state motto to 'A great place to get screwed' The counterintuitive moral of this story is that Momus is very good for a hangover. And now: A story about the sort of things that can happen when this man obtains access to my bedroom: My punishment for sleeping late--so late that both Morning Edition and BBC Radio Hour are over by the time I get up to turn off the clock radio--is that I end up laying in bed listening to NPR call-in talk radio, where I heard today, on the nearly intolerable Brian Lehrer Show about Google's project to make all the books in the world web-searchable. This is Very Cool Thing, I guess, except that it will render the research skills that I have earned, at irreparable damage to my immortal soul, completely obsolete. But it got me thinking about how nice it is to have old books text-indexed and instantly availiable. If you happen to be rich and exccentric, or if you have access to a well-funded research library, you can use the Gale Group's Eighteenth-Century Collections Online, a database which is supposed to contain the searchable full-text of every book published in England between 1701 and 1800. This is very exciting if. like me, you are both quite lazy and sometimes overcome with a burning desire to read that clever thing about brandy that Samuel Johnson said that one time. Which, if you were wondering: On Wednesday, April 7 [1779], I dined with him at Sir Joshua Reynolds's. [...] Johnson harangued upon the qualities of different liquors; and spoke with great contempt of claret, as so weak, that "a man would be drowned by it before it made him drunk." He was persuaded to drink one glass of it, that he might judge, not from recollection, which might be dim, but from immediate sensation. He shook his head, and said, "Poor stuff. No, Sir, claret is the liquor for boys; port, for men: but he who aspires to be a hero (smiling) must drink brandy. In the first place, the flavour of brandy is most grateful to the palate; and then brandy will do soonest for a man what drinking can do for him.-- There are indeed, few who are able to drink brandy. That is a power rather to be wished for than attained. And yet (proceeded he) as in all pleasure hope is a considerable part, I know not but fruition comes too quick by brandy. I guess serious people could probably find important reasons to use giant databases like ECCO or the one proposed by Google. As far as I see it, though, these things are the adult equivalent of the P volume of the World Book encyclopedia in my fourth-grade classroom: full of useful information, should one need to do a report about Parrots or Paraguay, but, far more excitingly, also conaining pictures of naked ladies (under "painting"). And so I spent the better part of this afternoon in improving reading: Here are some choice bits from this seminal text, which I shall publish for the better information of my readers, that they may know the dangers of Onanism. You of loose morals, however, I urge you proceed with caution! There are, our virtuous author tells us, "lascivious People of such corrupt Minds, that at no time excepted, they may be rais’d to impure Thoughts by bare Words without Coherence, and the Names of Parts, even when made use of in the Description of Calamitous Cases and Nauseous Diseases; Therefore as I shall be forc’d to make use of some Expressions in this Chapter, which, tho’ spoke with a Design the most remote from Obscenity, may, working by the reverse, perhaps furnish the Fancies of silly People with Matter for Impurity; therefore I say, I beg of the Reader to stop here, and not to proceed any further unless he has a Desire to be chast, or at least be apt to consider whether he ought to have it or no." ( Read more... ) Vox Populi 2 wisecracks | crack wise

Coxcombery [Fri 10th December 2004 - 12:18am] from The Metrosexual Guide to Style, a "national bestseller" by Michael Flocker. To change the course of history, you'll probably require more than the amusing little handbook you now hold before you. But, regardless of your origin or your chosen path, knowing a little bit about a lot of things is far preferable to staggering blindly through life with goofy shoes and a napkin tucked into your shirt collar. After all, your personal style extends beyond your wardrobe and the contents of your medicine cabinet. Knowledge, social skills, character, and a sense of humor are all part of the complete package. (xv) You've got the expensive haircut and the silly pants: why not go the extra mile and express your modish metrosexuality through cultivating a taste for fine literature? Fortunately, Flocker has already done the hard work for you: here is Flocker's list of absolutely essential reading for the Metrosexual, which I've taken the liberty of arranging under headings which explain the probable criterion of selection: Books that Flocker feels comfortable chatting about in a bar over $14 cocktails Maus & Maus II (graphic novels by Art Spiegelman) Perfume (Patrick Suskind) On The Road (Kerouac) Barrel Fever (David Sedaris) Fight Club (Chuck Palahniuk) The Berlin Stories (Christopher Isherwood) Books that Flocker remembers from high school The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald) The Turn of the Screw (Henry James) Books that Flocker saw in the bookstore and thought had cool-sounding titles and/or authors Myra Breckenridge (Gore Vidal) Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe) The Sun Also Rises (Hemmingway) Underworld (Don Delillo) The Stranger (Camus) Love in the Time of Cholera (Gabriel Garcia Marquez) The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Milan Kundera) As a palate-cleanser, here are some things from another, and completely unrelated, writer who is much funnier than you'd think. What we call happiness in the strictest sense comes from the (preferably sudden) satisfaction of needs which have been dammed up to a high degree, and is from its nature only possible as an episodic phenomenon. [...] Unhappiness is much less difficult to experience." --Freud, Civilization and its Discontents. This statement probably still holds true, but a state of Freudian happiness has become much easier to achieve now 64-oz. fountain drinks and long commutes have become commonplace. Also, consider the following, as you go to be with your families over the holidays: One may suppose that the founding of families was connected with the fact that a moment came when the need for genital satisfaction no longer made its appearance like a guest who drops in suddenly, and, after his departure, is heard of no more for a long time, but instead took up its quarters as a permanent lodger. Vox Populi 2 wisecracks | crack wise

[Wed 8th December 2004 - 06:55pm] New from the Arts-n-Crafts desk of Ubermaus Industries: Looking for a gift for that hard-to-please someone on your holiday gift guide? Try these: Celebrate the human anatomy with a knit uterus-doll. OR, you can celebrate the products of the human anatomy with this fun new gadget. (I can't believe this actually exists). Vox Populi 2 wisecracks | crack wise

Where There is Weeping and Gnashing of Teeth [Thu 2nd December 2004 - 01:50am] What--I flatter myself that you may be wondering--has happened to the UberMaus? Well, dear reader, I have become ever more deeply embroiled in the various forms of existential horror of a PhD program. Here are some things that I have written about it. Chapter One: Animadversions Being a grad student may be bad for my old practice of posting aimless nothings on livejournal, but it does give me interesting dreams now and then. When I used to wait tables, I'd have nightmares involving ranch dressing and angry fat people. Now I dream in the senselessly abstruse language of literary theory. Last week I woke up on two separate occasions with comically nonsensical thoughts rattling in my head, coded in professional jargon: "One cannot expound a new order of rationality without already being its exemplar in some sense." "The interesting and important thing about images is that they have no content." This one actually came supplied with an illustration: "Like, if you see a picture of a man holding a box, you'd wonder what was inside it, but the crazy thing is that there is no inside! It's just a picture!!!" Also, I've started rewriting famous works of nonfiction prose as limericks: Friedrich Nietzsche - The Birth of Tragedy This delectable treatise by Nietzsche Explains that Apollo is peachy And Dionysus Justly despises Socrates and those who are preachy Sigmund Freud - Civilization and its Discontents This work by the psychologist Freud Argues civilization employed At least in some measure Our instinct for pleasure And our penchant for death has annoyed. Walter Pater - The Renaissance The Victorian aesthete Walt Pater Was a critic and art contemplator "the thing as it is" Was tops in the biz 'Till he made subjectivity greater Chapter Two: Signs and Wonders Some of the locales I frequent these days: My new apartment, located in dismal, poverty stricken New Brunswick, NJ (shockingly unironic motto: "The Healthcare City"). The New Brunswick telephone book lists 15 different cocaine rehabilitiation hotlines, each with a different spelling, begining at "Cocaaaaine AA Abuse AAAAAA A 24 Hour Access Helpline & Treatment." Also, I just found out that I live on the same block as several registered sex offenders. I'm sure one of those things explains the strange shrieks of rage and despair that can occasionally be heard from the street out front in the early morning hours. The Rutgers campus, a hothouse in which all forms of the college experience flower into strange and wonderfully unnatural expressions. Easton Ave, the main drag through the college slum section of town, transforms nightly into an animalistic miasma of sex and substance abuse, the likes of which I've never seen before. A friend who lived in campus housing claims that he used to find underwear on the street in front of the dorms on a regular basis. On one campus parking lot are several mobile food vendors--more idiomatically, 'Grease Trucks' or 'Roach Coaches'--where you can buy the world's most offensive sandwiches. The Fat Darrell (a Rutgers classic; voted America's Best Sandwich by Maxim Magazine, or so the sign says) includes fried chicken tenders, mozzarella sticks, and french fries coated in marinara sauce and stuffed into a submarine roll. If that's too tame for you, you can also get the Fat Bastard, the Fat Fucking Drunk, the Fat Bitch, or the Fat Dyke. (Those conservative ideologues who tell you that college brainwashes Our Youth with liberal/politically correct pabulum: they haven't seen what I've seen). Across from the grease trucks, the city has posted a sign informing passersby that there is a $130 fine imposed for public urination. Also, the bathrooms in the library have signs posted by the campus police that say "loitering or other conduct unrelated to ordinary restroom use is prohibited." Dolls place, the dive frequented by grad students of various stripes. Bathroom graffiti includes "90.3 THE CORE rocks!" and "ZAGAT SURVEY rates DOLLS #1 place to piss in a mop bucket" and something about "Whale Vaginas." We go there to imbibe invariably warm pitchers of Pennsylvania-brewed Yeungling, and have conversations on everything from the current state of country music (with a befuddled African student) to monkey brains (with a guy doing neuroscience research at Princeton). Speaking of drunken intellectuals, here is a lovely little aside from a book I read, describing the difficulties that New Critics had in establishing themselves in university English departments closely guarded by literary scholars (scholars and critics being hostile to one another at the time): At Harvard, Delmore Schwartz and John Berryman took consolation in drink for the uncertainty in which they were kept by the senior faculty about their future: "Both of us felt crushed," Berryman said, "but gradually we drank more and more and talked about Shakespeare and verse and in the end we were as happy--in the context of despair and humiliation--as I ever expected to be." Chapter Three: Invasion of the Body Touchers I am also looking forward to meeting, at long last, the Velcro Dog's parents, who are supposed to be in Tulsa over Christmas, on leave from their missionary work in Beirut. As though to offer badly needed reassurance on this anxiety-causing relationship occasion, The Velcro Dog phoned last night to offer the most hair-raising tale about them to date. The Velco Dog's Dad -- who shall, for purposes of this journal, henceforth be known as The Fluffy Necromancer -- is part of a tiny church in some villiage in southern Lebanon. Recently, this congregation suffered a good deal of grief at the unexpected death of one of its members. So they did what any true believers would do in this situation -- They decided to ask God to raise him from the dead--They gathered 'round the dead man's sarcophagus (apparently the Lebaneese favor above-ground internments) every day to pray for his return to the land of the living. At some point, they bored a hole in the sarcophagus, so they could keep an eye on their progress. It was The Fluffy Necromancer's job to reach inside the coffin and feel the corpse every day to see if the anxiously awaited event had transpired. Day after day, my girlfriend's father reached in and touched its leg and felt ... firm, lifelike flesh! And, after about three weeks, he reached in and felt .... obviously rotting flesh! Still, everyone agreed, 'twas a miracle indeed, that the corpse survived -- for so long in a state of non-squishiness, and they were glad to know that God hadn't simply ignored their request. Vox Populi 3 wisecracks | crack wise

The Demographic-Naming Contest [Wed 13th August 2003 - 05:49am] It's now past 5 in the morning and I have undoubtedly ruined myself for work, or anything else productive, tomorrow. The main reason for this is because I discovered, to my chagrin, that the grandissimo-sized "value" meal at McDonald's now comes with a beverage the size of an oil drum. I celebrated my safe return home -- noteworthy because this involved operating the foot-pedals of my Honda with this monstrous soda wedged between my legs like some malevolent arctic behemoth threatening icy revenge on my defenseless groin -- by immediately consuming the caffeinated contents of this obscene vessel. In short order, I became so agitated I could barely sit still, let alone engage in anything worthwhile. So, I turned to the Internet, my stalwart friend in this age of dire procrastination; and came upon Transom.org, which would be the second, and more pertinent, reason why I am still burning the midnight oil. I have decided that the only reasonable course of action for a person of my ever-so-remarkable abilities (and, let's not forget, a most Pleasant Masculine Voice) is to scrap my literature degrees and become ... a radio reporter. What I'd like to know is why a sudden transition into broadcast journalism seems like a completely reasonable goal, when comparatively simple tasks -- say, stocking the refrigerator with non-rancid food -- are too difficult and time-consuming to be bothered with. Even now that the time I actually manage to spend doing "work" (that's "work" expansively defined as including necessary non-remunerative duties, such as eating) has dwindled to an embarrassingly unprofessional two hours in the late afternoon, it still seems to me that an ambitious and self-motivated career is not only desirable, but is actually a reasonable self-expectation. I ought to lower my sights a bit, you know, practice the art of the possible. If I really put my mind to it, I think I could find time to break into an exciting career in Unemployment, which seems to be a booming industry among people like me. Our demographic -- we who have failed to immediately translate postsecondary education into anything more occupationally satisfying than data entry -- really ought to have a catchy name. I'm convinced that there must be a lot of people out there like us who have slipped under the marketing radars because we don't dress fashionably enough to be hipsters, are too devoted to our favorite hair care products to be hippies, don't own enough furniture to be yuppies, and are too confused and frightened by prime-time television to fit in with everyone else. This week's contest is to see who can come up with the best name for our little demographic. The person with the best suggestion gets an nice 8X10 photograph of me, posing in a majestically windblown fashion. Vox Populi 3 wisecracks | crack wise

the UberMaus Dialogs: Bird Watchers [Sun 23rd February 2003 - 12:06pm] Lunar Goat: You know my weird roomie? the UberMaus: Well? Lunar Goat: Some of us were talking in the room and she just starts knocking on the wall. The louder we talk, the harder she pounds, and vice versa. Instead of talking like a normal person, she beats on the wall. She never stops moving and she is always picking at her head and pulling things out to look at them. Also, she is constantly twisting her watch or pulling stuff off of her sweater or twitching until she all of a sudden freezes and starts staring. It is so creepy. I have to tell her to stop looking at me like I'm in the 3rd grade. I think she is mildly autistic or something the UberMaus: AWESOME!!! Lunar Goat: ... because she can remember every single line from every single movie she has ever seen. She remembers every single fact from class. AND!!! the UberMaus: THIS IS GREAT!!! Lunar Goat: Her mom and dad are here. I walked over to the other house and there was this strange little lady sitting on the front steps with huge binoculars and I thought that she was spying on the neighbors. Come to find out, she was "birding." Her mother and brothers are avid bird watchers. the UberMaus: Hoo. Bird-watchers are always freaks. Lunar Goat: ALSO! she goes around saying in a half-whisper voice "I'm so tired. I'm so sleepy, I'm so tired." Over and over again. the UberMaus: redrum! Redrum! Lunar Goat: ooooooo! the best yet!!!! She writes down every single thing she purchases. I mean EVERYTHING. I asked her why she doesn't just write down how much she withdrawls, but she didn't like my idea. She also writes down every single picture she takes, in detail, thus lagging behind the group everywhere we go. She is the noisiest eater, and she only eats powdery soups that come from little bags that you add hot water too. She gets the cheapest thing on the menu, regardless of what it is. She is scrupulous with borrowing things. I borrowed a pen and didn't give it back for a few days and she asked me about it every day. Every day she asks me and my other roommate if we've showered, even if we have soaking wet hair and we're wrapped in a towel. We tell her no. Vox Populi 5 wisecracks | crack wise

Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam [Thu 20th February 2003 - 04:58pm] Given the fact that through most of Western history, much of the greatest art was produced by and for the Church, I find it amusing that Christianity, as currently practiced, is so inexplicably eager to borrow its sacred iconography from the dismal cesspools of mass-produced "culture." I have a sick fascination with these tawdry and/or vulgar products for consumer-christians, which is probably why I have received so much religious kitsch as gifts during the last few years. So, if the UberMaus is on your shopping list this spring, you might want to consider some of these tasteful gifts: The Pet Baptising Kit Maybe all dogs don't go to heaven, but yours can, thanks to this handy kit. I wonder: does it take an ordained minister to get it to work? Are pet sacraments Ex Opere Operato or Ex Opere Operantis? Do they have anyone on staff to administer last rites at the vetrinary hospital? Troubling. the Crucifix Tie The Passion, now rendered in inoffensive earthtones to go with your polyester-blend short-sleeve button-downs. This is clearly a resounding retort to the oft-repeated charge that we Evangelicals are incapable of dressing ourselves in ways that are attractive or stylish. Shoes of the Fisherman Personally, I think this is a great way to let strangers how much Jesus Loves Them without having to put forth any actual effort. Another great idea is to write "Jesus Loves You," or similar inspirational messages, on inexpensive non-biodegradable objects--perhaps styrofoam packing peanuts--and spread the Good News by scattering them wherever you go. the "Repent" Wristwatch I can't tell if this is meant to be a constant reminder to the wearer or a polite suggestion to those around him. Either way, I want one. The Fire Bible This "Bible" produces actual flames with the help of lighter fluid and a battery-operated ignition system. Being something of a pyromaniac, I think that more products should be capable of shooting out a six-inch flame at the touch of a button. The potential usefulness of, say, a flame-throwing cheese grater is obvious. But a Bible? There is no amount of explanation that can render this product comprehensible to any rational person. Job Action Figure This Job action figure comes complete with desolate "play scenery," ragged plastic clothing, and all the festering sores you'd expect from a Job action figure. If you were expecting a Job action figure, which is a pretty strange thing to expect if you ask me. I've never quite understood what kids are supposed to actually do with action figures, but this one is really confusing. Are they supposed to use "Job" in conjunction with other action figures in order to imaginitively re-create Job-oriented narratives? Would Job stand by and make small whimpering noises as his wife and children (played, perhaps, by barbies and a tickle-me-elmo) die slowly and painfully from incurable bible-times diseases? Or perhaps Job could be posed sitting on a small pile of ash pilfered from the fireplace while visited by a series of beanie babies who try to convince him to curse God and die. In any case, it seems clear that this is a much better way to "train up a child" than with violent secular playthings. Vox Populi 5 wisecracks | crack wise

the UberMaus Dialogs: the Sex Pistol Test [Wed 19th February 2003 - 07:48pm] TheUberMaus: Howdy, buckaroo. The Lawn Robot: Hello, old sport. How fares it with thy happy dead? TheUberMaus: Heard you had some kinda Texas tour with a bunch of rambunctious females. Ain't ya gonna spill, cowboy? The Lawn Robot: Yeah, these two girls were going to Austin and said "HEY DO YA WANNA GO?" and I said OK ... I watched girl movies and shopped for an afternoon. I had to sleep on a hard portion of the floor in the corner of a very small room in Dobie dorm. TheUberMaus: Oh, that's right. You hit A&M, didn't you. Pretty wild, isn't it. The Lawn Robot: A&M and U.T. TheUberMaus: UT is good. A&M is evil. The Lawn Robot: UT was like a big festering ball of city. It was great. I agree with your condemnation of A&M. It was weird and scary. TheUberMaus: They bleed maroon out there. Plus, I heard girls go there so that they can marry those robotic beer-bonging Corps guys. That freaks me out, man. The Lawn Robot: Robotic? I thought robots had a moral code. TheUberMaus: Not robots that have been programmed by the military-industrial complex. The Lawn Robot: O. I see. That does change things then. Oh, yes...Those two girls insisted that we listen to musical soundtracks all the way to Austin. But that was before Malinda put the car in reverse going 60 mph down the highway. TheUberMaus: They didn't like, go for The Music Man or (O HORROR) Les Miserables, did they? The Lawn Robot: Yes. Both. And Moulin Rouge. And so forth. I did like the Sound of Music one, though. It was laughy. TheUberMaus: You should institute the Sex Pistols test. The Lawn Robot: What that be? TheUberMaus: You play the Sex Pistols. If it bothers them, you should not ride in their car. Vox Populi 1 wisecrack | crack wise

Fitter, Happier [Fri 14th February 2003 - 02:33pm] An excerpt from the Velco Dog's life-changing birthday gift, How to Goodbye Depression, by the great prophet of health and good complexion, Hiroyuki Nishigaki. I think it is effective to cure or prevent depression and become happy-healthy-effecient that you (1)constrict anus 100 times in succession and dent navel 100 times in succession after constricting anus 100 times in succession everyday following the life style of long-lived British as possible (2)sometimes turn to bay throwing away pride-welcome a insult or fall into the hell voluntarily or occupy your time with something else (anything would do) (3) enjoy taking advantage of a petty tyrant to temper yourself (4)do 3-week fasting and excrete a bucketful of old black solid excrement which has stuck to your small intestine for long years (5)reduce the frequency of sex or masturbation to less than half if possible (6)rotate your energetic vortex of your body. Vox Populi 4 wisecracks | crack wise

Weapons of Mass Distraction [Sat 25th January 2003 - 06:14pm] I like that you can pick up an anti-war yard sign at the UConn bookstore, free of charge. I think it really sends out the right message: "Yes! I take the moral high ground! I excercize my god-given right as an American to engage in ineffectual sloganeering! At least long as I don't have to pay cash money to do it!" Now that, Friends and Neighbors, is a political position that I can, and do, endorse heartily. In fact, I am going to leave right now and obtain one of these yard placards so that I, too, can share my deeply felt conviction that killing Iraqi children, particularly cute disabled ones, is Wrong and Bad. ... Well, I would, but it's cold outside and I'd have to put my shoes on first. Also, I like that the UConn bookstore is sponsoring a more tasteful and environmentally-friendly anti-war program for those who find the yard-sign campaign a bit too froward: rock piles for peace. It's a brilliant idea, really. Instead of uglifying your home with a tacky "War is a Bad Idea" sign, or wasting your valuable time writing a letter to your congressman, you can instead erect a small pile of stones in your front yard to register your distaste for the war and the increasingly marketing-driven American political system in general. Two birds with one heap of stones, you see. The real genius of this idea, however, is that no-one but other peace-loving rock pile-ers will have any idea why you have erected what appears to be a stone altar in the midst of your garden gnome collection. Not only will you signal your noble politcal altruism to your right-minded compatriots, but you'll also confirm your insanity to that knavish bunch of jingoistic warmongering flag-wavers that lives across the street. Ha! Take that, you nasty unscrupulous Buick drivers! This is such a great idea that I would like to propose an entire battery of Non-intuitive Activities for Peace (NAP). To show their support of the anti-war movement, NAPers could engage in as many of the following activites as their level of commitment allows: Refuse to Hire a Graphic Designer for Peace Hug a Foreign Convenience Store Clerk for Peace Abuse a Telemarketer for Peace</i> Pleather Pants for Peace (it's not just a fashion statement anymore!) Write Cynical Journal Entries for Peace Accumulate Navel-Lint for Peace Make Soft Cooing Noises When Riding in Elevators for Peace Shameless Acts of Public Indecency for Peace Wear T-Shirts Proclaiming Bizarre and Disreputable Special Interest Groups' Antiwar Stance for Peace e.g.: "The Coalition of Sexually Deviant Civil Engineers and the Society for Creative Anachronism Say 'NO!' to Bombs and 'YES!' to Leotards." Uninvited Acts of Awkward Self-Disclosure to Strangers for Peace Don't Make the Smug Guy's Head Explode for Peace</i> Vox Populi 5 wisecracks | crack wise

Obligatory anti-war plug [Fri 24th January 2003 - 01:22pm] A further ingredient in the hostile reception the plan to attack Iraq has met in the European—to a lesser extent also liberal American—intelligentsia is the justified fear that it could strip away the humanitarian veil covering Balkan and Afghan operations, to reveal too nakedly the imperial realities behind the new militarism. This layer has invested a great deal in human-rights rhetoric, and feels uncomfortably exposed by the bluntness of the thrust now under way. The entire New Left Review article, "Force and Consent" by Perry Anderson, in HTML or .pdf format. (Also reprinted in the January 2003 issue of Harper's Magazine.) crack wise

Building a dream, one robot at a time. [Mon 16th December 2002 - 02:56pm] I sometimes have dreams about robots, but they usually involve getting attacked by armies of ruthless-killing-machine-type robots, or being chased around the cotton-candy machine at the county fair by enraged gigolo-type Jude Law look alike robots, both of which cause me to wake up screaming, covered in a cold sweat. But perhaps I should back up and start by explaining that I like the Honda company. It's not just because I expect to drive Rhonda the Honda to the grocery store and sometimes to Texas well until past its zillionth mile, or until I can afford a new car in fifteen years or so. Oh no. Let me tell you a story about the American Honda Motor Company... In the 1970's Honda (along with Toyota and Nissan) introduced to America the then-revolutionary concept that cars didn't have to be behemoth gas-guzzlers that wouldn't live past their fifth birthday. Detroit looked at the geeky new imports, scratched it's head. "Ha!" they laughed. "Ha Ha! Who would want to drive a car that is not only cheap but also reliable and fuel-efficient?" They laughed all the way to near-bankruptcy, and since have never really recovered from the staggering blow dealt them by "imports" in the 1980's. Then Honda (along with the other Japanese manufacturers and Volkswagon) came up with another silly idea. "What," they said, "if we started making cars that were not only cheap, reliable, and fuel-efficient, but also fun to drive?" Detroit thought that was pretty funny, too. "Who would want to drive a car that's both sporty and sensible?" "Those wacky Japanese!" they would say. "Those performance cars only have 4-cylinder engines!" they would mock, their voices dripping with sarcasm. "I bet they get more than twenty miles to the gallon!" Then, they would point to the coupes' front-wheel drive design; "I bet they're even easy to drive in the snow!" Then, they would roll around on the ground laughing, and muss their expensive suits. Ford has always been a bit slow on the uptake, but they did, in the end, learn their lesson -- although not without the ghastly Pinto mistakes of the 1970's and the "economical but lame-ass" model on which they sold a lot of Escorts in the 1980's and 90's. They now have a sporty front-wheel drive hatchback that is selling like hot cakes. GM, on the other hand, kept right on making their sports coupe on the "big ugly cars with bigger uglier engines" model until this year, when they figured out that they couldn't make Camaros anymore because no one wants to buy them. Duh. Then, in the late 1990's, Honda and Toyota came up with another silly new idea. "What," they said, "if we could make cars which were pretty much like normal cars, only used half the gas?" (Volkswagon does this fuel-efficient diesel thing that's pretty cool, too.) Once again, American manufacturers have been slow to recognize the appeal of anything that doesn't fit the big, heavy, and pollusive model. So I like Honda. You can imagine how confused I was, though, when on pages 62 and 63 of the December issue of The Atlantic Monthly, between ads for Morgan Stanley and $75 scotch (Atlantic Monthly: toilet reading of the Ivy League set), I found an ad for a Honda product. Not a car; not even an industrial-strength lawn-mower. No. It was for Honda's latest, most revolutionary technological wonder. ASIMO, the Humanoid Robot. There was the photo of ASIMO, waving mechanically, four feet tall and looking remarkably like a friendly humanoid-robot version of the space shuttle. ASIMO is standing in the midst of some suburban WASP fantasy-land--on the brick-paved walkway in front of a painfully large and treeless suburban home. ASIMO is surrounded by its ur-WASP family: prosperous mom and dad, cute teenage daughter, smiley teenage son in Abercrombie football jersey. There is an overgroomed golden retriever sitting in the foreground. It's as if Tony Soprano's stockbroker neighbor had a mysteriously unexplained helper-robot out onto the front lawn to be a part of the Thanksgiving family photo. Naturally, this was far too surreal for my overheated brain to handle, so I quickly turned the page to satisfy my unbearable curiosity about the secret health problems of some rich guy that died a long time ago. But, a few days later, the Velcro Dog called me to bring to my attention what she had found in her copy of the New Yorker (ha! She reads the New Yorker! What a snob!). Apparently, Honda's secret evil plan is to bombard the wealthy with targeted advertising so that when ASIMO is released to US markets, everybody with MAGI above $150K will rush out and buy one. So I turned back to the ad to see what the big deal with ASIMO is. This is the deal with ASIMO: We're building a dream, one robot at a time. The dream was simple. Design a robot that, one day, could duplicate the complexities of human motion and actually help people. An easy task? Hardly. But after more than 15 years of research and development, the result is ASIMO, an advanced robot with unprecedented human-like abilities. ASIMO walks forward and backward, turns corners, and, amazingly, goes up and down stairs with ease. All with a remarkable sense of strength and balance. The future of this exciting technology is even more promising. ASIMO has the potential to respond to simple voice commands, recognize faces, carry loads and even push wheeled objects. This means that, one day, ASIMO could be quite useful in some very important tasks. Like assisting the elderly, and even helping with the household chores. In essence, ASIMO might serve as another set of eyes, ears and legs for all kinds of people in need. All of this represents the steps we're taking to develop products that might make our world a better place. And in ASIMO's case, it's a giant step in the right direction. As you can imagine, this confused me. The ASIMO web site confirmed the ad copy: The latest version of ASIMO walks more smoothly, more flexibly, and more naturally, and is able to move more freely in ordinary environments, including climbing and descending stairways and slopes. Further, it can receive voice input. So, evidently, ASIMO has the ability to walk around and follow simple voice commands. (Note that the web site contains no notice of ASIMO's vaunted wheeled-object-pushing capabilities). What I can't figure out is what the frighteningly happy family pictured in the ASIMO advertisement is doing with an ASIMO, since they already seem to have availed themselves of God's patented GOLDEN RETRIEVER technology. Note that, unlike ASIMO, this revolutionary and environmentally-friendly GOLDEN RETRIEVER technology already has the capability of recognizing faces, following commands, carrying small loads, and, if sufficiently motivated (perhaps with patented DOG BISCUIT accessories), could push or pull a wheeled object. See, I don't know if Honda is going to be able to beat its competition here. Sure, GOLDEN RETRIEVERs might be more likely to fart or eat your Easter candy than an ASIMO, but, on the other hand, they are low-priced and provide loving companionship for children as well as the aged and infirm (also, unlike that creepy Haley Osmet kid, they die after about 10 years or so). Plus, they come in appealing fur-lined packages, and can be programmed for complex user-defined tasks, such as intruder-biting and retrieving dead birds from the middle of cold bodies of water. ASIMO, on the other hand, does not appear to have teeth. The web site has no information about whether or not they are water-resistant. Also, as Isaac Asimov told us, even the friendliest humanoid robots sometimes go berserk and go on killing rampages, which would make me uncomfortable. As for ASIMO's potential future uses as helpers for the elderly and infirm, I am anxiously awaiting reisdent LiveJournal primatologist variegated's report on this new HELPER MONKEY technology I've been hearing so much about: UPDATE pendulous writes, I just can't figure out why Honda, a leading manufacturer of automobiles, is teasing us like this. They clearly have the technology to make both a car and a robot. Why aren't they combining the two to create everyone's fantasy: A car that turns into a robot. And fights evil. Of course, consumers will have a bit more incentive to buy evil-fighting robots next month when Ford's new SUV, The Destructobot, rolls off the line. Each one is programmed to incenerate native flora and steal babies which will be liquified and fed interveniously to Bill Ford as he hybernates in his arctic fortress of terror. Well, the thing is that Fighting Evil in the form of Bill Ford's congressionally approved army of mechanical DestructoBots is damned difficult when creating a robot that can push wheeled objects takes 15 years of R&D. I think that they should focus their sights on more reasonable evil-fighting goals, such as marketing a robot that refuses to shave its armpits and goes door-to-door distributing GreenPeace and PETA propaganda ("So you don't have to"). If this works out, perhaps they could come out with a line of low-cost LawyerBots to be public defenders, thus upgrading our existing court system into an unstoppable Justice Machine. Then, we could gradually replace our elected officials with DemocracyBots, thus phasing out a useless and annoying segment of the population. The DemocracyBots could be connected directly to their constituents via the Internet, thus ushering in a golden age of grassroots democracy. On second thought, I'm a bit ambivalent about the value of true grassroots democracy, in that what the public is really interested in is a bit disturbing. By google logic, there is about three times more public interest in "sex with animals" than in "grassroots democracy." The potential legislation boggles the mind. Vox Populi 10 wisecracks | crack wise

LiveJournal Reflections [Sat 14th December 2002 - 01:24pm] I have always thought that LiveJournal exists for two reasons: to remind me that my deepest, innermost self, including my agonizing spiritual quandaries, is in fact utterly unoriginal, shared by that vast, unwashed horde of hairy-backed troglodytes that, among other disgusting personal habits, take to airing their dankly innermost selves via the Internet like so many urine-soaked and inadequately laundered sofa cushions. to legitimate this innermost self by allowing me to feel superior to said troglodytes by letting me feel vaguely guilty about #1. Gee, UberMaus, what brought that on? Vox Populi 2 wisecracks | crack wise

I like this: [Sat 16th November 2002 - 04:57pm] Vox Populi 2 wisecracks | crack wise

Upcoming Releases from UberMaus Records [Thu 7th November 2002 - 11:22am] UberMaus Records is proud to announce our first-ever foray into the local music scene with the signing of our first two bands: Father Jones and the Laymen and Implied Fornication. We saw these bands play down at The Drunk Tank last Saturday night, and, ladies, these boys are HOT!!! Also, check out these Fun-For-The-Whole-Family releases, just in time for the Holidays! Plaintive Songs of Yuletide: Christmas at the Shady Valley Nursing Home ...and... Uncle Remus Sings: A Treasury of Racially Insensitive Tunes for Youngsters Does your band of sweaty, talentless hacks need a record deal to help you score "club bookings?" Contact UberMaus Records: UberMaus@LiveJournal.com crack wise

Journal Announcement [Mon 4th November 2002 - 05:38pm] Though it is an event of some magnitude, trayfnyak's LiveJournal debut has been marked by very little fanfare. The excitement of midterm elections must've distracted the press. Vox Populi 1 wisecrack | crack wise

why everything is wrong [Mon 21st October 2002 - 02:12am] Google search results: "Squirrel Lovers" - 459 "Chinchilla Lovers" - 161 "Fruitcake Lovers" - 45 "Fungus Lovers" - 7 Vox Populi 4 wisecracks | crack wise

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