Sunday, August 25, 2002 4:48 PM
Knock Knock?
Who is there?
I’ve been thinking lately. I know and confess it is a danger to cogitate so. Especially for me, who in my inchoate mental states often come up with monsters entirely out of my depths which tend to confuse far more than frighten me. Such is the laughable state of my internal turmoil that I can’t dream up a good multiheaded dog or some antediluvian slime with tentacles and a beak that snaps and rips.
You see here is the horror of television and the movies! I hear argument after argument by good natured Christian men and afternoon soccer beleaguered child guardian mothers who state with all gravity that the crime of media is manifested in the crime in the streets. If they are right, it just shows how tainted and unimaginative even the evil, squalid elements of our society have become.
We buy the dead flesh of animals from the refrigerated portion of our supermarket shelves. We don’t think of it as dead flesh, that guilt ridden disgusting image only comes from the moronic pining of animal rights activists. We don’t think of it as much. We don’t connect it with the miracle that buzzes around us each day. We don’t pin it in the nature and rhythm of our lives. It is just another activity, this driving, taking from stock, scanning across the bar code and slipping it eight minutes on high into the microwave, in our quotidian lives. I am not so full of “old-time” religion (those that know me only marginally accuse me of being full of an entirely other matter) that I would have us praise the dead spirit of the animal that yielded its life so that we may have a TV tray, but there is something to the notion.
I was recently at a poultry processing plant located on a road about a mile off the two lane black top in the Amish section nowhere Ohio. The plant personnel were made up entirely of guys and gals named Juan and Juanita, probably wishing they worked in more southern climes. What, I thought, must Friday or Saturday night look like in downtown Kidren (for so it was called) Ohio? Wild roving bands of mariachis strumming Tex/Mex stringed musical instruments, drinking Pulque and singing to Johnny Cash black attired, Old Testament bearded, simple folk grudgingly admiring the unplugged Dionysian nature of the music as they fled homeward in their surreys. On the tour of the plant we stood squarely in front of a piece of machinery called a water chiller. The purpose of this chiller was to take the freshly slaughtered chicken from the “kill” floor and drop its body temperature to a cool 40 degrees or so. It was called; it turns out a common name in the industry, a “red water” chiller. Jason and Michael Myers don’t have anything on our food chain. You and I have enjoyed just such chickens at many a Sunday American meal. (Actually my mother makes tomato sauce with meat balls and sausage.) This death, this wholesale slaughter is an okay part of our lives. We really don’t have to cower from it.
And that is the problem that set me to thinking. We do all that we can to become abstracted from these procedings. We think of the slaughter of adorable pecking little chickens for our sustenance as disgusting and evil. We let Hollywood give us our monsters, animated, full almost three dimensional, with special effects gore dripping galore, instead of dipping into our own deep little pools of dark psychic energy. We abstract ourselves from our jobs. Think of work as the enemy. Yearn forever for our leisure time. We let the nightly news and thoughtless political pundits fill up our opinion. We let formulaic preachers interpret our spirit. We let media psychics and pysch-o-logists inform our psyche. Each night lying on the couch in a funk after a terrible day.
I, for one, am going to stop it. Right after the HBO movie! Say, hon, grab me an ax. I’m gonna go kill a turkey!
Sunday, August 25, 2002
Wednesday, August 21, 2002
Wednesday, August 21, 2002 6:03 PM
Is there a doctored greek in the house?
At the end of my very last Blarticle (I have come to call these little exercises in mind baloney, Blog Articles or (see above incautious appellation) for short, I took a great deal of time to find the correct Greek letters to write down an aphorism from Aristotle, just so I could look like a big deal guy who can read Greek in its most ancient and Attic form. I can’t, at least I can’t much more than that phrase from Aristotle and Sing Goddess, the wrath of Achilles… After the tedious work of picking the letters one by one from the Insert>Symbol menu in this version of Word office, I copied the whole blarticle and pasted it to the Posting section of my dot blogger dot com. It looked beautiful so I passed it on to dub dub dub the Blog. Went to sleep a satisfied smile on my face.
Upon awakening, middle of the night, fire in my belly, my brain unbalanced, I hastened virtually to the web page. My horror was full realized when I looked at my last beautiful reference. There were, instead of those crisp, full bodied, sensuous Greek letters, a hodge podge of German-English looking symbols with umlauts and grave accents far too horrible to contemplate. Especially at about 2 Ayem. ¼ Öéëüò åòôéí Üëëïò áìôïò.
I give you now the English letter version of Aristotle’s beautiful Greek, “ha philos estin allos autos.” Uninspiring, no? Even less inspiring is the translation. The friend is like another self. Man, how can you generate mystery and wonder with stuff like that?
So I called Dean today, who by the way knows the Bishop, but I’ll let him tell you that eye popping tale, and really he tried to help but through my obstinate opacity I still can’t figure how to make the Blog sing Greek, or at least not that easily. It has to do with Unicode and when I am able to understand the whole business, hell I might be writing in Arabic or Hindu or maybe even Christian HellsaPoppin Tongues. Of course, I will have to watch out for ever vigilant, lurking Home Land Security.
“Bailiff read the charge!”
“Mr. Coluccio of his own free will and accord, with malice aforethought and behind mast has transmitted the works of Aristotle in a foreign looking alphabet via hypertext protocol. Aristotle as you know taught Alexander the Great who afterwards conquered Persia which is now in the hands of some Ayatollah or other.
“Guilty as charged.”
And off I’ll go in manacles to write my great prison book. Say, maybe I’ll become a famous religio/political martyr and will eventually end up on prime time TV hawking prison garb. Less likely things have happened here in America. Little pink houses for you an’ me!
There is no real lesson (and far less reason) here. Just my bitter disappointment. I made an attempt (albeit lame, silly and of no consequence) to show a certain je ne sait quois (See you can write French with little trouble) (Pronounced for those in the know like jin say kwa, Was that Chinese? Nope you can’t write Chinese either), a small smattering of …I guess… intellect.
No wonder I stumbled!
Is there a doctored greek in the house?
At the end of my very last Blarticle (I have come to call these little exercises in mind baloney, Blog Articles or (see above incautious appellation) for short, I took a great deal of time to find the correct Greek letters to write down an aphorism from Aristotle, just so I could look like a big deal guy who can read Greek in its most ancient and Attic form. I can’t, at least I can’t much more than that phrase from Aristotle and Sing Goddess, the wrath of Achilles… After the tedious work of picking the letters one by one from the Insert>Symbol menu in this version of Word office, I copied the whole blarticle and pasted it to the Posting section of my dot blogger dot com. It looked beautiful so I passed it on to dub dub dub the Blog. Went to sleep a satisfied smile on my face.
Upon awakening, middle of the night, fire in my belly, my brain unbalanced, I hastened virtually to the web page. My horror was full realized when I looked at my last beautiful reference. There were, instead of those crisp, full bodied, sensuous Greek letters, a hodge podge of German-English looking symbols with umlauts and grave accents far too horrible to contemplate. Especially at about 2 Ayem. ¼ Öéëüò åòôéí Üëëïò áìôïò.
I give you now the English letter version of Aristotle’s beautiful Greek, “ha philos estin allos autos.” Uninspiring, no? Even less inspiring is the translation. The friend is like another self. Man, how can you generate mystery and wonder with stuff like that?
So I called Dean today, who by the way knows the Bishop, but I’ll let him tell you that eye popping tale, and really he tried to help but through my obstinate opacity I still can’t figure how to make the Blog sing Greek, or at least not that easily. It has to do with Unicode and when I am able to understand the whole business, hell I might be writing in Arabic or Hindu or maybe even Christian HellsaPoppin Tongues. Of course, I will have to watch out for ever vigilant, lurking Home Land Security.
“Bailiff read the charge!”
“Mr. Coluccio of his own free will and accord, with malice aforethought and behind mast has transmitted the works of Aristotle in a foreign looking alphabet via hypertext protocol. Aristotle as you know taught Alexander the Great who afterwards conquered Persia which is now in the hands of some Ayatollah or other.
“Guilty as charged.”
And off I’ll go in manacles to write my great prison book. Say, maybe I’ll become a famous religio/political martyr and will eventually end up on prime time TV hawking prison garb. Less likely things have happened here in America. Little pink houses for you an’ me!
There is no real lesson (and far less reason) here. Just my bitter disappointment. I made an attempt (albeit lame, silly and of no consequence) to show a certain je ne sait quois (See you can write French with little trouble) (Pronounced for those in the know like jin say kwa, Was that Chinese? Nope you can’t write Chinese either), a small smattering of …I guess… intellect.
No wonder I stumbled!
Monday, August 19, 2002
Monday, August 19, 2002 6:46 PM
Anyone with an A.P.P qualifies for a P.P.M under the R.G.H.
It is perhaps time for us to take back the planet. I received, via the original mail the other day a flyer from a University here in the Pittsburgh area, which shall go unnamed but is on the bluff and very Catholic that communicated a message much like the one in the heading. The initials have been changed not to protect the innocent, but because I can’t possibly remember them.
At first I tossed it in the garbage can at my feet, but some warning, like the time I threw away my bank debit card because it had the name Omaha Something or other emblazoned on the envelope, thus masking it from me, the honest customer and letting every mail fraud thief, who were surely on to the bank’s game access, stopped me. Or the time I innocently threw out the bill for the company web site, which consequently went unpaid which caused our email accounts to lapse which caused problems when customers tried to reach us. We had purchased the email and web site from a local ISP (I know, more idiotic initials) who merely administered the account not billed it.
I have been, in short, forced to peruse junk mail.
Further I find that our answering service has the wisdom to be blocking their phone number so that they look the world like a telemarketing firm. (Which is what I suspect they do in the hours that they are not answering our calls.) Forcing this spawn of Italy to now answer all telemarketing calls. “Hello, Mr. Coluccio….” Hang up! Or worse the bastards that call me up and put me on hold. Would that they were within the reach of my clenched fist! On the other hand the violence that I would apply would make me feel guilty and small.
Is this the promise of technology? And is it any surprise that any such noble promise should be so easily subverted by the mean bean counting spirit of America. My guess is, No! At heart, as a species we are irritating money grubbing insects and I only mean this as the highest praise. Remember, tell Michael it was only business!
So, Duquesne, oops, I let the cat out of the bag, University sends an envelope to me! Not Dear Customer or Dear Resident or Dear Manager, but to my very name proposing that I could, for a fee of several hundred dollars, bone up on the A.P.P. And who might qualify for this boon? It says any C.P.M. with an eye toward the C.P.A.E.
I frankly go into a state that looks much like shock, because never have I been so foul of reality. I do not have a clue what this is all about. Further, as I look down paragraph after paragraph of the muddle of jargon and obfuscating initials, I become even more confused and befuddled. I feel like an infant who only has a cursory grasp of language. My grip on reality is pulverized. I am reduced to moving my index finger between my slobbering lips and making infant noises of joy. I actually drool!
Eventually, after I very careful reading, I discover that this day course has something to do with becoming a professional purchasing agent. Now I am truly horrified. I have been a purchasing agent for most of my business career. Sorry, Duquesne, if I felt it at all necessary, I could teach this course. Purchasing has now become a college level activity. I can only conclude that I have gone mad.
¼ Öéëüò åòôéí Üëëïò áìôïò It’s all Greek to me!
Anyone with an A.P.P qualifies for a P.P.M under the R.G.H.
It is perhaps time for us to take back the planet. I received, via the original mail the other day a flyer from a University here in the Pittsburgh area, which shall go unnamed but is on the bluff and very Catholic that communicated a message much like the one in the heading. The initials have been changed not to protect the innocent, but because I can’t possibly remember them.
At first I tossed it in the garbage can at my feet, but some warning, like the time I threw away my bank debit card because it had the name Omaha Something or other emblazoned on the envelope, thus masking it from me, the honest customer and letting every mail fraud thief, who were surely on to the bank’s game access, stopped me. Or the time I innocently threw out the bill for the company web site, which consequently went unpaid which caused our email accounts to lapse which caused problems when customers tried to reach us. We had purchased the email and web site from a local ISP (I know, more idiotic initials) who merely administered the account not billed it.
I have been, in short, forced to peruse junk mail.
Further I find that our answering service has the wisdom to be blocking their phone number so that they look the world like a telemarketing firm. (Which is what I suspect they do in the hours that they are not answering our calls.) Forcing this spawn of Italy to now answer all telemarketing calls. “Hello, Mr. Coluccio….” Hang up! Or worse the bastards that call me up and put me on hold. Would that they were within the reach of my clenched fist! On the other hand the violence that I would apply would make me feel guilty and small.
Is this the promise of technology? And is it any surprise that any such noble promise should be so easily subverted by the mean bean counting spirit of America. My guess is, No! At heart, as a species we are irritating money grubbing insects and I only mean this as the highest praise. Remember, tell Michael it was only business!
So, Duquesne, oops, I let the cat out of the bag, University sends an envelope to me! Not Dear Customer or Dear Resident or Dear Manager, but to my very name proposing that I could, for a fee of several hundred dollars, bone up on the A.P.P. And who might qualify for this boon? It says any C.P.M. with an eye toward the C.P.A.E.
I frankly go into a state that looks much like shock, because never have I been so foul of reality. I do not have a clue what this is all about. Further, as I look down paragraph after paragraph of the muddle of jargon and obfuscating initials, I become even more confused and befuddled. I feel like an infant who only has a cursory grasp of language. My grip on reality is pulverized. I am reduced to moving my index finger between my slobbering lips and making infant noises of joy. I actually drool!
Eventually, after I very careful reading, I discover that this day course has something to do with becoming a professional purchasing agent. Now I am truly horrified. I have been a purchasing agent for most of my business career. Sorry, Duquesne, if I felt it at all necessary, I could teach this course. Purchasing has now become a college level activity. I can only conclude that I have gone mad.
¼ Öéëüò åòôéí Üëëïò áìôïò It’s all Greek to me!
Friday, August 16, 2002
Number One with a bullet
I used to work in the Record Business. Not those things that businesses eventually put in white cardboard boxes with neat black block magic marker headings. Nope, not the yellow and pink grease marked pieces of flimsy that decay away in a storage space because the newer gentler IRS, your grouchy CPA and some august legislature want you to keep for just the amount of years that moisture and rodents can turn that pulpy mass into a cheesy mold. Nay, I say, t’was the Phonograph Recording business. BCD! Not too many years after I had managed to loose my college education and my way all at the same time. Where the hell was Virgil?
The building stood and stands in what has come to be known as The Lower Hill District. I think it now displays kitchen and bathroom tile. A sad replacement if you ask me.
In that brick with boarded window three storied building there were four or more separate businesses, mostly owned by the same guy. Partnerships were rife and companies created at the drop of a phonograph needle on unscratched vinyl. One business was a one-stop shop. Mostly it served the tristate juke box operators. Each stack of 45 RPM records had a pile of red and white juke box cards with perforated labels that would tab neatly into the chrome steel holders on the the Wurlitzer and Bally machines. Another was called a rack jobber. 45 and 33 RPM phono records were delivered and stocked at your local emporium. And last there were a couple or three record distributors. Here was my bailiwick. First floor among the boxes of singles and shelves full of LP's. Stock, receive and ship is what I did. I was and am pretty good at it although if you've had the dubious distinction of looking at my basement living quarters and library, you could come away with some doubt.
In the basement was a room for the salesmen. These guys had the glamorous jobs of going to the DJ's in town and getting them to play hits from the Labels that we represented. Just for the record (this time the moldy kind), payola, now back in vogue in another guise, was deemed unethical and illegal in those days when I worked in that rather energetic and corrupt business. I am not as old as Dick Clark.
My world revolved around numbers. Joe send 25 of Gordy 3365 and 50 of Motown 11567, 60 of Tamla 67765 and 10 of Atlantic 4890. I thought I would never forget those numbers, but the years have dimmed them for me. I can no longer tell label or number or what is on the flip side of Baby Love by the Supremes. There was a time when I knew them all. Used them everyday. I am not even sure if the above listed numbers are even close in sequence or appearance. I am now plagued, another industry new familiar designations, with GFE1C or KALB-0150-TAC (Sporlan TXV and Copeland Compressor respectively)
The fourth type of business was that of artist’s representatives and agents. The owners of the distributorships, one-stops and rack jobbers also managed many of Pittsburgh’s rock and roll talent. I was therefore by association part of the scene! A lowly part to be sure, but the top DJ’s knew my name, at least my first name. None other than, the “Bossman”, Porky Chedwick used to come in and say "Hey, my man, the body!" point at me and then walk downstairs to sales. No, I have no idea!
At the side door, by the loading dock, you would find, for most of the day an old black guy who answered to the name Mose. I don’t know if Mose was his name or if we just called him that. Mose was, blunt, to the point, a wino. He dressed in shabby clothes, had a wiry gray beard, wore the kind of a hat you sometimes see on a horse in an old movie and was truly skunked most of the time. He was, despite his shortcomings, a very pleasant fellow. Lived on the streets and in the various charity houses of the Hill.
Old Mose taught me a lesson one spring morning.
He appeared before us with new clothes and new shining shoes. He really couldn’t communicate how he had come by them. About an hour later I was receiving some new “sounds” and I saw Mose sitting next to the dumpster. Bottle in hand. His new shoes had large cuts in them. What happened to your shoes, Mose?
He spoke in his soft southern drawl like I imagined Robert Johnson or Huddie Ledbetter or Bukka White would have as they pattered between songs. He looked down at the razored slashes, “Well, better that the shoe should hoit, than that I should hoit!”
Follow me down to Mr. Tom Hughes’ town!
I used to work in the Record Business. Not those things that businesses eventually put in white cardboard boxes with neat black block magic marker headings. Nope, not the yellow and pink grease marked pieces of flimsy that decay away in a storage space because the newer gentler IRS, your grouchy CPA and some august legislature want you to keep for just the amount of years that moisture and rodents can turn that pulpy mass into a cheesy mold. Nay, I say, t’was the Phonograph Recording business. BCD! Not too many years after I had managed to loose my college education and my way all at the same time. Where the hell was Virgil?
The building stood and stands in what has come to be known as The Lower Hill District. I think it now displays kitchen and bathroom tile. A sad replacement if you ask me.
In that brick with boarded window three storied building there were four or more separate businesses, mostly owned by the same guy. Partnerships were rife and companies created at the drop of a phonograph needle on unscratched vinyl. One business was a one-stop shop. Mostly it served the tristate juke box operators. Each stack of 45 RPM records had a pile of red and white juke box cards with perforated labels that would tab neatly into the chrome steel holders on the the Wurlitzer and Bally machines. Another was called a rack jobber. 45 and 33 RPM phono records were delivered and stocked at your local emporium. And last there were a couple or three record distributors. Here was my bailiwick. First floor among the boxes of singles and shelves full of LP's. Stock, receive and ship is what I did. I was and am pretty good at it although if you've had the dubious distinction of looking at my basement living quarters and library, you could come away with some doubt.
In the basement was a room for the salesmen. These guys had the glamorous jobs of going to the DJ's in town and getting them to play hits from the Labels that we represented. Just for the record (this time the moldy kind), payola, now back in vogue in another guise, was deemed unethical and illegal in those days when I worked in that rather energetic and corrupt business. I am not as old as Dick Clark.
My world revolved around numbers. Joe send 25 of Gordy 3365 and 50 of Motown 11567, 60 of Tamla 67765 and 10 of Atlantic 4890. I thought I would never forget those numbers, but the years have dimmed them for me. I can no longer tell label or number or what is on the flip side of Baby Love by the Supremes. There was a time when I knew them all. Used them everyday. I am not even sure if the above listed numbers are even close in sequence or appearance. I am now plagued, another industry new familiar designations, with GFE1C or KALB-0150-TAC (Sporlan TXV and Copeland Compressor respectively)
The fourth type of business was that of artist’s representatives and agents. The owners of the distributorships, one-stops and rack jobbers also managed many of Pittsburgh’s rock and roll talent. I was therefore by association part of the scene! A lowly part to be sure, but the top DJ’s knew my name, at least my first name. None other than, the “Bossman”, Porky Chedwick used to come in and say "Hey, my man, the body!" point at me and then walk downstairs to sales. No, I have no idea!
At the side door, by the loading dock, you would find, for most of the day an old black guy who answered to the name Mose. I don’t know if Mose was his name or if we just called him that. Mose was, blunt, to the point, a wino. He dressed in shabby clothes, had a wiry gray beard, wore the kind of a hat you sometimes see on a horse in an old movie and was truly skunked most of the time. He was, despite his shortcomings, a very pleasant fellow. Lived on the streets and in the various charity houses of the Hill.
Old Mose taught me a lesson one spring morning.
He appeared before us with new clothes and new shining shoes. He really couldn’t communicate how he had come by them. About an hour later I was receiving some new “sounds” and I saw Mose sitting next to the dumpster. Bottle in hand. His new shoes had large cuts in them. What happened to your shoes, Mose?
He spoke in his soft southern drawl like I imagined Robert Johnson or Huddie Ledbetter or Bukka White would have as they pattered between songs. He looked down at the razored slashes, “Well, better that the shoe should hoit, than that I should hoit!”
Follow me down to Mr. Tom Hughes’ town!
Wednesday, August 14, 2002
TriVia or The Fork in the Road.
As yins of you who live (or who have lived an at) in Picksburg know, Dawntawn lies at the confluence of da Monongahela, de Allegheny an ne Ohio Rivers.
And if that ain’t trivia I don’t know what is.
I invented a game. It is definitely derivative and positively logical.
Calls it, I did! , Consequential Pursuits. It is an inexpensive game to manufacture but has a few ironclad and fearful rules that make it likely so unpopular that I gave up the idea of pocketing any gelt and print it here with little fear of copyright infringement. It is a game that belongs to the world.
If you choose to read on, I (and a cadre of tough legal professionals) will accept that as an affirmation that you have agreed to pay me, in a lump sum, a couple million bucks, at least, and out of concern for my physical, mental and spiritual well being let me retain all rights, including motion picture in the Orient. Make out said check to my favorite charity, J-O-S-E-P-H A. C-O-L-U-C-C-I-O (Get the picture? Sly devil, eh?). If you stop reading you do so at your own peril of ignorance, perhaps eternal damnation and, of course, you relinquish all rights in any case and I’ll probably cry or feel bad. Whatever the outcome make the check payable to me. As a sign of good faith!
The game consists of a few cards. Perhaps as few as five. Perhaps less. Depends on how comprehensive a universe I conceive, or do you conceive? At the beginning of play, several and many as a few but far less than a conclave of folks sit around a Formica kitchen table with one of those fifties Yves Tanguy Surreal yellow background patterns of pink and tan paramecia. (I have a deal with a furniture firm in Augusta, Georgia. Buy the game and get a kitchen set at 50% off.) The collective player ship should have a jelly glass (more than likely Stop n Save A Lot Grape, but StupidValu Orange Marmalade or those Peanut Butter and Jelly combinations will do as well. It is, of course, your choice whether or not the glass has been emptied of its sticky sweet contents and if emptied, washed) in their hands containing a fine mellow Merlot or a rather peppery Cabernet at the ready. Failing the wine, an option for a Grappa that makes your eyes cross can be seriously considered.
Play goes to the person who is most pot faced. Or snotfaced or snoodfaced or perhaps even straight laced. Make the choice democratic, (unless you live in Florida), see if I care. This is the realm of oligarchy; after all, you can beat the hell out of each other if it suits you. The game is yours to win! But someone must, I Repeat (with Capital Offense), SOMEONE must turn over the first card.
If the first card is blank, the cruelty of this universe is evident, the game is afoot and you must all drink to the Pope Puff. After any members of this Particular Pursuit game are exempt from life, liberty, but they may still pursue happiness! In most cases luckily the card will consist of a single word.
An Aside: I don’t really like to tip the scales one way or the other so I will suggest a word for example here that is at once so plebian and so tempestuous that I suggest it not be included in the official Consequential Pursuit Set of Cards.
The card could say: Love!
Now for the next twenty years or for those of you who, like Hans Morovec, plan to have your mind downloaded into a device, perhaps a Hoover Vacuum Machine, eternity, or until the warranty runs its course, you must contemplate that exposed for the all the world to see word and all the concept it contains.
You can only win by gaining tenure at a University as the Chair of some odd School or by having your name end with an ism.
Bon Chance! Good Luck and keep those flags a flyin’ !
As yins of you who live (or who have lived an at) in Picksburg know, Dawntawn lies at the confluence of da Monongahela, de Allegheny an ne Ohio Rivers.
And if that ain’t trivia I don’t know what is.
I invented a game. It is definitely derivative and positively logical.
Calls it, I did! , Consequential Pursuits. It is an inexpensive game to manufacture but has a few ironclad and fearful rules that make it likely so unpopular that I gave up the idea of pocketing any gelt and print it here with little fear of copyright infringement. It is a game that belongs to the world.
If you choose to read on, I (and a cadre of tough legal professionals) will accept that as an affirmation that you have agreed to pay me, in a lump sum, a couple million bucks, at least, and out of concern for my physical, mental and spiritual well being let me retain all rights, including motion picture in the Orient. Make out said check to my favorite charity, J-O-S-E-P-H A. C-O-L-U-C-C-I-O (Get the picture? Sly devil, eh?). If you stop reading you do so at your own peril of ignorance, perhaps eternal damnation and, of course, you relinquish all rights in any case and I’ll probably cry or feel bad. Whatever the outcome make the check payable to me. As a sign of good faith!
The game consists of a few cards. Perhaps as few as five. Perhaps less. Depends on how comprehensive a universe I conceive, or do you conceive? At the beginning of play, several and many as a few but far less than a conclave of folks sit around a Formica kitchen table with one of those fifties Yves Tanguy Surreal yellow background patterns of pink and tan paramecia. (I have a deal with a furniture firm in Augusta, Georgia. Buy the game and get a kitchen set at 50% off.) The collective player ship should have a jelly glass (more than likely Stop n Save A Lot Grape, but StupidValu Orange Marmalade or those Peanut Butter and Jelly combinations will do as well. It is, of course, your choice whether or not the glass has been emptied of its sticky sweet contents and if emptied, washed) in their hands containing a fine mellow Merlot or a rather peppery Cabernet at the ready. Failing the wine, an option for a Grappa that makes your eyes cross can be seriously considered.
Play goes to the person who is most pot faced. Or snotfaced or snoodfaced or perhaps even straight laced. Make the choice democratic, (unless you live in Florida), see if I care. This is the realm of oligarchy; after all, you can beat the hell out of each other if it suits you. The game is yours to win! But someone must, I Repeat (with Capital Offense), SOMEONE must turn over the first card.
If the first card is blank, the cruelty of this universe is evident, the game is afoot and you must all drink to the Pope Puff. After any members of this Particular Pursuit game are exempt from life, liberty, but they may still pursue happiness! In most cases luckily the card will consist of a single word.
An Aside: I don’t really like to tip the scales one way or the other so I will suggest a word for example here that is at once so plebian and so tempestuous that I suggest it not be included in the official Consequential Pursuit Set of Cards.
The card could say: Love!
Now for the next twenty years or for those of you who, like Hans Morovec, plan to have your mind downloaded into a device, perhaps a Hoover Vacuum Machine, eternity, or until the warranty runs its course, you must contemplate that exposed for the all the world to see word and all the concept it contains.
You can only win by gaining tenure at a University as the Chair of some odd School or by having your name end with an ism.
Bon Chance! Good Luck and keep those flags a flyin’ !
Monday, August 12, 2002
Monday 8/12/2002 6:45 PM
Mind Mapper becomes Mind Manager and I don’t really Mind!
For better or for worse I am addicted to listening to audio books as I travel the autobahn, as I shower and shave in the morning and yea and verily even as I cardio exercise on the treadmill. So I found this audio tape at Book Country, a discount and remainder book store here in the Pgh area. It was about Mind Mapping.
I was familiar with a computer software program that purported to use mind mapping and I found the idea intriguing enough to plop down the less than half price of the two audio cassette package. This on Sunday, I waited till this morning to set the cassette in my jet blue sport edition cassette player and cranked up the volume as I strode through the six am open doors for my rendezvous with the tortuous machine that pretends to give you a cardio workout. After 4 minutes my heart is pumping a breath taking 130 beats on its way to 140 as I listen to the mind mapping pleasures that are arrayed in my ear and hence virtually in my head and I literally gasp for breath.
What can you use mind mapping for? Well it turns out for everything. Need to organize the food in your refrigerator. Mind Map. How about a trip to Antarctica? Mind Map. Plan the intricacies of your entire life for the next hopeful fifty years. Yep, a short sketch away on a note pad or in my case, as I shall inform you all presently, on the computer keyboard. Mind Map!
Now what is mind mapping really good for? Well the guy hits the nail on the head with a sledge when he mentions that we often use outlining as an organizing kind of principle without really having any topics to outline. As we fill notions in, some move to the bottom, some to the top and our organization which is never reasoned and linear starts to look pretty ghastly. It becomes untidy, dirty, without reason, out of sorts, mean, out of focus and …get the picture? (It is hard for such an undisciplined, undisciplinable and rebellious lout as me to really care, feel, or talk much about the virtues of organization.)
So mind mapping, in which you on a piece of paper put a topic that is key to the idea at hand and then you free form lay in lines of connections which lead to sub topics off sub tropics which all in all helps to give you the kindling for the fire of your organized outline.
Intrepid I go off to the internet to look for the program that I had once used and abandoned. I don’t find it. Rather one called Visual Mind and it does upon trial download some spiffing stuff. I try a topic. And damn! It works plenty good. I look further. It turns out that Mind Mapper, the program that I originaly sought, has become Mind Manager, a far more imposing title and even more grandios yet there is a Standard, a Business and an Enterprise Edition.
I with grave alacrity download the trial business edition and am more than pleased with the features which include ready linking with most of the Microsoft Office Programs that I use. So (I must admit after an abortive attempt at finding a crack) I buy the program for my company. It is now on this computer which just tickles my mind in erotic places.
I can now plan my entire life with circles and colors and subtopics and images and files from the computer. I am one happy fellow.
It really takes so little.
Mind Mapper becomes Mind Manager and I don’t really Mind!
For better or for worse I am addicted to listening to audio books as I travel the autobahn, as I shower and shave in the morning and yea and verily even as I cardio exercise on the treadmill. So I found this audio tape at Book Country, a discount and remainder book store here in the Pgh area. It was about Mind Mapping.
I was familiar with a computer software program that purported to use mind mapping and I found the idea intriguing enough to plop down the less than half price of the two audio cassette package. This on Sunday, I waited till this morning to set the cassette in my jet blue sport edition cassette player and cranked up the volume as I strode through the six am open doors for my rendezvous with the tortuous machine that pretends to give you a cardio workout. After 4 minutes my heart is pumping a breath taking 130 beats on its way to 140 as I listen to the mind mapping pleasures that are arrayed in my ear and hence virtually in my head and I literally gasp for breath.
What can you use mind mapping for? Well it turns out for everything. Need to organize the food in your refrigerator. Mind Map. How about a trip to Antarctica? Mind Map. Plan the intricacies of your entire life for the next hopeful fifty years. Yep, a short sketch away on a note pad or in my case, as I shall inform you all presently, on the computer keyboard. Mind Map!
Now what is mind mapping really good for? Well the guy hits the nail on the head with a sledge when he mentions that we often use outlining as an organizing kind of principle without really having any topics to outline. As we fill notions in, some move to the bottom, some to the top and our organization which is never reasoned and linear starts to look pretty ghastly. It becomes untidy, dirty, without reason, out of sorts, mean, out of focus and …get the picture? (It is hard for such an undisciplined, undisciplinable and rebellious lout as me to really care, feel, or talk much about the virtues of organization.)
So mind mapping, in which you on a piece of paper put a topic that is key to the idea at hand and then you free form lay in lines of connections which lead to sub topics off sub tropics which all in all helps to give you the kindling for the fire of your organized outline.
Intrepid I go off to the internet to look for the program that I had once used and abandoned. I don’t find it. Rather one called Visual Mind and it does upon trial download some spiffing stuff. I try a topic. And damn! It works plenty good. I look further. It turns out that Mind Mapper, the program that I originaly sought, has become Mind Manager, a far more imposing title and even more grandios yet there is a Standard, a Business and an Enterprise Edition.
I with grave alacrity download the trial business edition and am more than pleased with the features which include ready linking with most of the Microsoft Office Programs that I use. So (I must admit after an abortive attempt at finding a crack) I buy the program for my company. It is now on this computer which just tickles my mind in erotic places.
I can now plan my entire life with circles and colors and subtopics and images and files from the computer. I am one happy fellow.
It really takes so little.
Friday, August 02, 2002
Friday, August 02, 2002 6:31 PM
I proclaim this territory in the name of, well… Me!
A funny sort of thing happens to me when I finally drag myself to the monitor and double click the icon in order to play some computer game. The ones that I am most fond of, (none of them thrill me that much, for that long, I continue wasting money on differing companies and strategies in hopes of finding an interesting one.) are the simulation games. I adore the Flight Simulator and continually thrill and finally slaughter whole plane loads of passengers as I try to bring that 747 down in a thunder storm at the Champaign-Urbana Airport. I manage in my Train Simulator to jar the line up and break the linked connections between the cars by flooring the throttle and neglecting the task of tightening up the individual cars of the train. (Did you know that even the most modern diesel engines have what is called a sander? It is very simply a device that can drop sand onto the metal track for added friction. Injudicious use, run out of sand, run out of friction and run out of stop, yes I have! Just another crash coming out of Baltimore through the tunnel heading for New York.)
There is Sim City (up to Version 3000 now) in which we have the control of the building of a city from the terrain up. My cities are sadly unsuccessful. The citizenry rails against the rapid increase of taxes (It’s for their own good and swells my neglected coffers) without giving them adequate fire and police protection. Once I had a perfectly good nuclear power plant render a whole area of my kingdom (I prefer the title King Joe to Mayor Joe) irradiated and uninhabitable for the rest of the game. (Hey, it’s the small price cheap power and progress!)
I dally with any number of Simulator Theme and Roller Coaster Parks, which don't, because of lazy graphic programming, run all that well on Windows XP. Oh well! Those damn park patrons are constantly kvetching because I don’t give them enough clean rest rooms! Go urinate in the bushes!
The funny thing that happens which prevents me from moving forward in the game is that I am far less interested in the rules of play than I am in the territory and wonder of the place. I want to start out on foot and explore this great land or plane or roller coaster. I want to meet people who are traveling and living there. In short I want a narrative to happen in combination with the creation of the cyber land. I want Story!
AHA! You may say, divining my direction. In Cyberspace I want an autonomy as well as some story. I suspect that I have found my guiding principles. The ways to proceed. My vision! Understand please that the cyber world doesn't yet have the technology and I in particular can only partially manipulate the programming code that is needed to achieve this end. It is a challenge. Which I will rise to meet, however flat footed and lame.
In cyberspace everyone can hear me scream!
I proclaim this territory in the name of, well… Me!
A funny sort of thing happens to me when I finally drag myself to the monitor and double click the icon in order to play some computer game. The ones that I am most fond of, (none of them thrill me that much, for that long, I continue wasting money on differing companies and strategies in hopes of finding an interesting one.) are the simulation games. I adore the Flight Simulator and continually thrill and finally slaughter whole plane loads of passengers as I try to bring that 747 down in a thunder storm at the Champaign-Urbana Airport. I manage in my Train Simulator to jar the line up and break the linked connections between the cars by flooring the throttle and neglecting the task of tightening up the individual cars of the train. (Did you know that even the most modern diesel engines have what is called a sander? It is very simply a device that can drop sand onto the metal track for added friction. Injudicious use, run out of sand, run out of friction and run out of stop, yes I have! Just another crash coming out of Baltimore through the tunnel heading for New York.)
There is Sim City (up to Version 3000 now) in which we have the control of the building of a city from the terrain up. My cities are sadly unsuccessful. The citizenry rails against the rapid increase of taxes (It’s for their own good and swells my neglected coffers) without giving them adequate fire and police protection. Once I had a perfectly good nuclear power plant render a whole area of my kingdom (I prefer the title King Joe to Mayor Joe) irradiated and uninhabitable for the rest of the game. (Hey, it’s the small price cheap power and progress!)
I dally with any number of Simulator Theme and Roller Coaster Parks, which don't, because of lazy graphic programming, run all that well on Windows XP. Oh well! Those damn park patrons are constantly kvetching because I don’t give them enough clean rest rooms! Go urinate in the bushes!
The funny thing that happens which prevents me from moving forward in the game is that I am far less interested in the rules of play than I am in the territory and wonder of the place. I want to start out on foot and explore this great land or plane or roller coaster. I want to meet people who are traveling and living there. In short I want a narrative to happen in combination with the creation of the cyber land. I want Story!
AHA! You may say, divining my direction. In Cyberspace I want an autonomy as well as some story. I suspect that I have found my guiding principles. The ways to proceed. My vision! Understand please that the cyber world doesn't yet have the technology and I in particular can only partially manipulate the programming code that is needed to achieve this end. It is a challenge. Which I will rise to meet, however flat footed and lame.
In cyberspace everyone can hear me scream!