the astrofreaks
» Monday, February 26, 2007

This morning I found a link on Boing Boing to a news story on a NASA document that details procedures for restraining and drugging astronauts who get violently uncomfortable with their surroundings during space flight. Combined with the recent story of Lisa Nowak's breakdown and subsequent cross-country astro-diaper journey, it's become pretty clear to me that astronauts, whatever other qualities they may have, are stone fucking nuts.

Not convinced? Here's your first clue: they go into space. Do you know who wants to go into space? Children, schizophrenics and astronauts. Children dream about it, schizophrenics believe they've already done it, but astronauts are the only class of people who actually put a suit on and get their faces shoved back by high-g forces.

I'm also willing to bet that if you sat a child or a lunatic down and told them the odds of survival, they'd think twice:

RECRUITER: Hey, how'd you like to go into space?
CHILD: My mother says I can do anything I want.
CRAZY HOBO: You the sonofabitch stole my Buick?
RECRUITER: You could really really die on a space shuttle mission. 1 in 75 chance. Just putting that out there.
CHILD: I'm not supposed to leave the playground area.
CRAZY HOBO: Yo-ho, smoky Joe, I gotta hot potato for you. You sell me my Buick back, I'll drive you to Jupiter.
RECRUITER: Ew.

You think I'm making that dialogue up, don't you? Anyway, according to the AP story, "Would-be astronauts are carefully screened and tested to eliminate [Eliminate? Shouldn't that be 'disqualify'?] those who are unstable":

RECRUITER: How'd you like to go into space for a living?
NUTJOB: Sure.
RECRUITER: With each flight you have an official 1 in 75 chance of dying.
NUTJOB: Bonus.
RECRUITER: But it actually shakes out to 1 in 60.
NUTJOB: Will there be sadistic hazing as well? 'Cause that would be gravy.

Space programs constitute the kind of insanity that goes very well with discipline and order. It's a bit like the military - you're joining an organization that provides sanction for taking the lives of human beings similarly charged to take yours. Everyone knows that's grade-A nuts. It's a circle of nuttiness, an endless loop of defense, aggression and recrimination that bends moral space into a Mobius strip. While we are captivated by its strange arguments, we lose a dimension, and eventually its fundamental strangeness becomes accepted. And people by the foddery millions, from time A (caveman with club) to time B (bomber in Ramallah) have signed up for it.

RECRUITER: Say, what is your most precious possession imaginable?
NUTJOB: My life.
RECRUITER: I have a persuasive argument to part you from it.
NUTJOB: Go on.

Really, I'm amazed that our highways aren't crowded with diaper-clad astronauts, their minds finally broken from walking that Mobius strip, on their way to exercise their psychosis on someone or other. I bet if we put up drive-through fast food joints catering to hungry astronauts on the go, or maybe diaper exchange huts, we could draw them out by the dozens.

Labels: science, space

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atomised!
» Thursday, February 22, 2007

Today I am sick. I’m pretty sure I’ve been sick all week, but today my body figured it out, and has gone ahead with the whole procedure: muscle ache, sore throat, slight dizziness and that febrile remove from reality, which is a bit of a blessing, since otherwise I’d be too pissed off at my body for getting sick to reflect on the experience.

Maybe my body is merciful. I had two job interviews this week. Not informal, sit-down interviews, but full-on suit-wearing cramped-room sessions with government employees writing down everything you say in spidery longhand. Everybody looks slightly orange under the fluorescents and all the questions are framed in abstract terms that hinder more than help. Followed up by sessions in cubicles, written exercises on hypothetical policy questions. By this point there’s a mist of sweat trapped between your skin and your shirt as you plunk out your answers on a ten year old IBM with a pebbled beige skin. There’s no time for physical sickness in these situations.

Being interviewed makes you feel insubstantial, like a cloud of coherent dust in a beam. To everyone else you look opaque, but you can see straight through yourself. It’s much like being sick: your outer surface is a shell, but inside you’re atomized. A little part of you flies around inside the shell, gathering necessary bits here and there, passing information between lost motes: a messenger that takes temporary duty as consciousness.

That’s definitely what it felt like on Tuesday, when I was being interviewed for my own job. That may sound strange, but this is the government, where you get the job for six months, then another three months, and then you get the interview.*

I thought that having the job would make the experience easier; after all, who knows a job better than the one who holds it? It turns out that an interview is an interview: small rooms, unexpected questions, and the unshakeable feeling that you have come not as a free agent to offer your services but as a half-drunk hobo looking for a handout. I choked on a couple of easy questions at the start of the interview and felt lost for the rest of it.

It turned out that I had done extremely well, and what had seemed to me like a full-on breakdown appeared to my interviewers as a slight case of nerves. My freshly shaved and suited shell kept me going. What really surprised me is that I performed particularly well on the financial analysis questions. To say that I’m not very good with numbers is an understatement akin to saying that water is not very dry. So when I was given the financial statements fifteen minutes prior to the interview, I studied the living hell out of them.

At first the numbers swarmed in front of me, a cloud of dollars and percentages. After a few minutes I stopped paying attention to the numbers and decided to look through them, at the behavior of the institution that had produced the numbers. This, apparently, was the right thing to do. Screw all y’all, high school math teachers! Yeah, I’m talking to you, Mr. O’Connor! You with the Kramer hair and the glass eye. You were weird.

On Wednesday I did the whole thing all over again for another position in the department, but this time I was inured to the fluorescent inhumanity of the whole process. I refined and perfected the shell, putting on a new white shirt under my suit. I felt more confident walking out of that interview, but in truth I was more in the position of enthusiastic and gifted amateur than an experienced professional. I came home and dropped my suit on the bed, shucked my new shirt and let the air crawl over me. I should have guessed from the tingling of the air on my chest that I was sick, but I was too busy sinking into solidity once again.


*I hyperbolize: when I first started working here, I was awarded a six-month term at the executive director’s discretion. Tuesday’s more rigorous process was part of an open competition for my existing job on a permanent basis.

Labels: autobio

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cowpeepen
» Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Early morning or maybe late at night. The sun is up or the sun is down; who knows when the covers are pushed up in a heap over your head? Schmutzie and Palinode mumbling in bed, trying as always, like all the other people out there, to just get it right.

S: I’m nearly finished my scarf.
P: Mmm-hmm.
S: I’m thinking of putting a fringe on it.
P: Yeah, you could do that. If you wanted.

(pause)

S: What’s wrong with a fringe?
P: Nothing. It’s a great option for knitted neckwear.
S: What would you do to finish off the scarf?
P: Sew in jujubes.
S: No.
P: Yes. Jujubes make an excellent addition to any accessory.
S: Then my scarf would be all sticky.
P: Only with misuse. You could take it camping.
S: You could not.
P: There’s nothing stopping me from taking a scarf full of jujubes on a camping trip.
S: It would disintegrate in the rain.
P: You could heft an umbrella.
S: Heft?
P: The fact remains that the jujube scarf is an invaluable tool for surviving the wilderness, on account of you can eat the jujubes.
S: You’d have bears tearing down your tent to get at your scarf.
P: That’s why it’s important to wear pyjamas, so you can run in case of bear attack.
S: Pyjamas won’t help you survive in the woods.
P: These ones will. They’re made of beef jerky.
S: You’d just be extra-appetizing snack to bears. You’d be human being wrapped in beef. If you ate chicken, you’d be like a turducken for bears. You’d be a cowpeepen!
P: Everyone knows that bears are more scared of cowpeepens than cowpeepens are.

Labels: conversations

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Yarrrghhh yargh
» Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Hey people, here's a flat contradiction of God's message of love in the Christian scriptures:



It. is. to. puke. and. such. Billed as a "smooth and creamy dessert tea," when it should be marketed as the latest harbinger of the end times. Even now News Testaments all over the world (even those boxfuls they left on the moon) are rewriting themselves to accommodate the nihilus ex omnio of Vanilla Nut Creme Decaf Tea Pointless Shit. I'll go get my Bible and show you. From John 3:16 -

"For God so loved the world that - what? Really? Oh that is just sick."

And in 1st Corinthians 5:1-2 -

"It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not found even among pagans; for a man is living with his father's wife. And you are arrogant!"

Okay, there's no reference to tea in that passage. But those Corinthians were some kinky freaks. Oh heck, since we're here, let's see what else Paul has to say about that immoral guy who's been shtupping his stepma:

"For though absent in body, I am present in spirit; and as if present I have already pronounced judgment in the name of the Lord Jesus on the man who has done such a thing. When you are assembled, and my spirit is present with the power of the Lord Jesus, you are to hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord".

Of course, this should not be taken at face value. What it means is that they'll excommunicate the the poor bastard (stepmotherfucker?) and force him to drink vanilla nut creme decaf tea.

UPDATE: You know what? Forget the tea schtick. It's just some stupid tea. Right now I'm really fixating on Paul saying that he's absent in body but present in spirit, and therefore able to pass judgment. I think there should be an afternoon TV religious drama: Judge Paul: the Astral Projection Judge! You need the exclamation mark or it all falls apart. Every week someone would come to court with some biblical crime or other (ate leavened bread while neighbour's wife was menstruating on the third Sabbath of the year or something) and the floating spirit of Paul would pass judgment. Bonus laughs when he tries to strike his incorporeal gavel! At the end Satan comes out and destroys the offender's flesh. Possible alternate title: GhostPaul's Tuff Love Court.

Labels: useless

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oh hey
» Monday, February 12, 2007

Lookit this. A blawwg. I bin, yaknow. I bin deprest. cant rite, lookin for inspraytion. but bizzy. no sunlite. too cold. gainin wait, getting old. nearly forgot about blawg.

Update soon, rill soon. letya know when update comes. kinda fun, ritin like this. maybe keep it up a while. maybe post whole entry like this! okay. thats wut ill do. rite entry all sleepy like.

applied for new job. communications. heh. today wrote 1rst ever communications strategy and speech on top. cant believe i pulled it out my ass in time for the dedline. gonna get the job, you bet.

saw clerks 2. funny. awkward. when is kevin smith going to use a camera rite? i couldv thrown a pd-150 across the room and got better shots. yeaaahhh. thats my ticket. ill be the guy that makes the flicks that makes the peoples sick from the camera gettn thrown.

and then what
if i came apart bit
by bit when i was riting
a letter to my mother
to say Dear ma
u made good soup adn pruvided
beneficiall lessons on living
in this turvy scurvy age
but i never liked that spinach pie
yuo made
when i was eight
yuck
oops there goes
a finger
a tooth
ah my tung


This has been very therapeutic.

Labels: useless

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proclamation of links
» Wednesday, February 07, 2007

AS I have done nothing all week but write briefing notes and letters of exquisite politeness to the hopeful, the hopeless, and someone who, despite functional illiteracy, chairs a music festival committee; and

AS the increase in bureaucratic writing, combined with a cold snap that has kept me indoors for a week to deal with restless cats and the constant sting of static electrical shocks, have worn me out and left me unwilling to write anything besides;

THEREFORE go read Jonathan Lethem’s article on plagiarism, which all the folks enjoy, regardless of demographic. But like the pirate said, “Hey, that’s a long article, so make sure to budget the appropriate amount of time before committing yourself to it”.

FURTHERMORE read the tragic and bebaffling tale of a woman who took the wrong bus and went missing for 25 years.

MOREOVER you want to check out the new album from Of Montreal with the totally non-pretentious title Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? Featuring snappy-finger slap-happy pop tunes like the 12-minute “The Past Is A Grotesque Animal”. Al-right.*

AND ON TOPPA THAT SHIT comes my love for the innocuous and ubiquitous forms that junk up the landscape. Some time ago, designer Paul Lukas published a zine called Beer Frame: The Journal of Inconspicuous Consumption, which focused on strange goods found in hardware and grocery stores. Products doomed to a nanosecond shelf life. Products that should have vanished years ago but persist in their same old packaging. Specialized items that you will never use but long to own for the perfection of their design. The zine is gone, but you can visit the Inconspicuous Consumption website. Updates to the site appear to have died a few years ago, but there’s much chuckly material to go through. All I know is, I would never have known about Pork Brains in Milk Gravy otherwise. Or that Kraut Juice came in cans. Or in any container at all.

*I can’t seem to stop the mock today, but it’s a really good album.

Labels: useless

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folks at the bar
» Saturday, February 03, 2007

Last night I started sketching people at O' Hanlon's. I decided to sketch ugly people, because I'm good at making pretty people look grotesque. I figured that my propensity for deformation would work in my favour if I stuck to the strange.

The first picture features a guy who was just stunningly ugly. No matter how he turned his face, he was startlngly unattractive. I don't believe he said "So fucking pretty" at any point in the night. The scarred pinhead guy above him is a fanciful redrawing with an emphasis on getting ahead in today's tough singles scene.

The second picture is of the "funny table" that sat across from our table at one point in the evening. They weren't particularly ugly, but they all had a strange unfocused quality, as if they'd dressed and styled themselves with the aid of a random number generator. They were like a pile of mismatched socks in a drawer. If I had to guess, I'd say they were a group of live action role playing gamers who first met at a call centre.

Labels: art

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trailer trashing
» Friday, February 02, 2007

Last night, when I went to see the enormously excellent Pan’s Labyrinth, I had the fun of sitting through some of the lamest trailers I’ve ever seen in my young life. Trailers are a constant source of irritation for me, but I get so excited when I see a decent preview for a worthwhile-looking movie that I forgive all the boring trailers, the ones that go for the same tired tricks, the ones that give the whole movie away, the ones that cull the best jokes, such that the movie itself turns out to be even less than the sum of its parts. These trailers tested my devotion. First the Diane Keaton bonfire o’ snores Because I Said So, which can’t hide how crappy the movie actually is; then Adam Sandler’s attempt at Dramatic Actorhood in Reign Over Me, and lastly the exquisite agony of Joel Schumacher directing Jim Carrey in the freaky numerological what-reality-are-we-in-now horror film, The Number 23.

The trailer for 23 starts off relatively coherently and then dissolves into frenetic but swampy overediting, which I’m guessing mirrors the film’s structure. Carrey’s character discovers a typeset red-bound book called “The Number 23” in a bookstore and starts finding the number woven throughout his life in increasingly unsettling ways. The paranoia mounts and then explodes into gibbering insanity. As far as I could tell from the trailer, he may be living two lives, or he may be crazy, or who knows. And who cares. My favourite part comes when Danny Huston, in one of those Well-Dressed Expositor roles, says, “… and 2 divided by 3 is 0.666, the number of the beast”.

Actually, I think that’s the number of Talking Out Your Ass. Two over three isn’t 0.666, and anyway, the number of the beast is actually 666, which beats outs 0.666 by 665.334. To be fair to Schumacher & Friends, I can see how that would lack dramatic punch: “Bad news, sucker – two over three is oh point bar six, the world’s most evil repeating decimal!”. Maybe 2/3 is the fraction of the beast, and the root of negative 666 is the imaginary number of the beast. I’m glad I paid attention to my high school math lessons. It’s given me the power to mock a Joel Schumacher film.

My other favourite bit features shots with Carrey in black jeans and dyed black hair, topless and greasy-gaunt, a Goth of Great Depravity. Just as 8mm made up a ridiculous world of underground porn connoisseurs – a kind of pornographic fantasy of porn – 23 seems to be prey to the usual misunderstandings about Hard-Boiled people. I don’t if Carrey’s alter ego is supposed to be evil or just bad-ass, but pretending to be an East Village hustler circa 1970 doesn’t convince me. Sat-e-llite of Looove!

Labels: film, scorn

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ask palinode: alterity edition
» 

Oh great and powerful Palinode or Rock Hyrax,

My question for you is this: What if the universe had been different?

If you'd like, I can ask the question again. What is the minimum number of askings that will qualify my question for your Frequently Asked Questions page?

Respectfully and in greatest anticipation,
Lauri

Oh. So it's Palinode or Rock Hyrax now, is it? Like any of you get to choose who answers the Asks that you pose me? Note that's me that you ask, not the rock hyrax. The rock hyrax is exceedingly busy with filing duties. Also, some people think that the interrogative statements for Ask Palinode are questions. That's not so. The proper term for an Ask Palinode submission is an Ask. It sounds a bit odd, but it's traditional.

Forgive my surliness. The truth is, I'm a little worried about the rock hyrax lately. He's having trouble with language, and I'm starting to worry that he's stuck in a Flowers-for-Algernon situation. Let's drop in on him right now and see what he has to say on alternate universes:

YESTERDAE I HADDA STICK A BROKLI IT WAS AL FUZZIE ON WUN END I HAD TO BITE FUNNY AND FUZZ GOT AL UP IN MY NOSE I BITE! I BITE! BAD HYRAKS I BITE A FINGR.

See? He can't even spell right when he speaks now. Sad. I'm hoping it's a case of the flu or something.

So what if the universe had been different? That’s a good question, Lauri: seductively imprecise, convex and nearly splitting open under the pressure of its possibilities. And strangely reminiscent of a Strong Bad email. I can’t compete with that crazy Flash animation and those kooky characters, so don’t follow that link yet. Just wait. Until the end of my answer.

Anyway, since the rock hyrax is out of commission, I’m going to pass this question over to Joanie. Joanie is in the Accelerated Program at Middledew Elementary School. She is eight.

Lauri there are many ways for the universe to be different. One way for the universe to be different is to be very small, but we are the same size, so we are always having to bend over. This would cause many back problems, like Bill has. He is always on the couch and watching sports and mom is crying about it because he doesn’t go to work. If the universe got very small then mom would have to stay home and sit on the couch with Bill and they would both be happy but I would have to go out and make money for the whole family, maybe my little brother would have to make money as well. He is too stupid though. He is my half-brother. I made him a card for Valentine’s Day.

Another way for the universe to be different is to have my real dad in my house and not Bill. Bill farts ALL THE TIME and mom makes me talk to him and tell him about my day. It’s gross when I talk to him and he says Wait A Sec and then he farts and laughs. If my real dad came back he would beat Bill up and give me a PONY because mom says my real dad is Jesus. She says I’m going to meet Him in heaven but I don’t care I want him to come back NOW and KICK. BILL’S. STUPID. BUTT.

BUTT.

I hope that clears things up for you.


Do you need to have a question's big stupid butt kicked? Ask Palinode! askpalinode @ gmail . com.

Labels: ask palinode

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