A Side Note From Dutch

I may be the only one on this one, but I've got a little rant that I have to express. I'm getting a little tired of being directed to do obvious shit in public. I don't carry cash as a practice, mainly on the advice of my accountant. But I use my check card a great deal every day. After making a purchase of a Red Bull, or some cheddar Sun Chips, I go to the register and present my card. I indicate that I wish to pay debit, and as I reach for the PIN device I hear the attendant state, "now enter your PIN sir." I don't know why, but that aggravates the shit out of me. I go to the same gas station every morning and I have even developed a method to have my card back in my hand and begin entering the PIN on the device even before the words have left her mouth. If you don't know the deal with debit yet at this late stage, and you need to be prompted for that, you need to have all of your accounts liquidated and invested in a minor's checking account, a piggy bank, and some coloring books.

Grammer in this age

What is it about our society that we train our young in the ways of writing? These people grow to be lawyers and business owners. They write eloquently, but then open up an email message and then proceed to abandon about 95 percent of the training and experience in the English language. Some of us have decided even that punctuation is optional. One is supposed to assume where the breaks in thought are.

High pressure candle sales

I want to know when the Yankee Candle Company turned into Glenngary Glennross sales team of the month. The person that I share this floor with decided to leave some fast food out to long so I figured a candle would be a prudent investment. I went there for a candle, and decided on a flavor that was sufficiently manly. I'm suddenly face to face with one of these shiny happy people advising me that, "you can get the next size up, it's only three dollars more." I said I was good, and she moved on to the car bobbers. "Great holy ghost I'll take the damn bobber just let me leave!" Then as she is ringing me up, her associate approached. I guess she did not hear the conversation I had just had with her coworker, which is understandable in a four foot by four foot kiosk, so she looked at what I had bought and exclaimed, "you know you can get the next size up for just three dollars more." I grabbed my extraordinarily elaborate bag of scented things and rushed out of there with a passion, knocking over several sales displays of mango votives in the process.

Still A Classic

I just watched The Big Lebowski for the first time in a long time. That movie is still a classic. If you have not seen it you should. Really you should.

When you love to hate Clinton, but you're scraping off the W from your bumper

I found myself in a very interesting position today, reading Newsmax.com. This site is what Laura and Barney will be reading when every single American finally turns against the President. To say that it is right of center is to say that Strom Thurmond was old. As I read I was actually surprised to find some bit of reason among the right wing nut cake that fills the site. Yet it did strike me that everything bad that happens is always attributed to a Democratic administration, yet everything that has gone right in a Democratic administration was really only for the effort of the last Republican President. When you remind conservatives that it was a Democratic President that won World War II, they contend it was really a Republican general that did it. Clinton's economic boom is really the after effects of the Reagan years, but George W. Bush "inherited" the Clinton recession. So he essentially rode out Reagan's wave and then managed to set the beach house on fire in just one year. To most conservatives even today we are living with the insidious after-effects of the Clinton years, and the rest of America just only wishes that were possible.

Yet today, when even the blurplest of conservatives have trouble defending the President, I have the perfect marketing way out. Blame it on Clinton. I could see Mitch McConnel on the floor of the senate excoriating the Senator from New York for the odious scourge that her husband had brought. He had by the sheer force of his overwhelming popularity a full six years after he laid down the reigns of power, pushed down the President's approval rating. He did this because he hated America and wanted to aid a comfort the enemy, whoever that might be.

Yet as most conservatives begrudgingly admit that G-Dub is not quite Teddy Roosevelt, they arise in disgust when you discuss the 42nd President of the United States. William Jefferson Clinton inserted a cigar into the vagina of a consenting and of-age woman and then lied to a grand jury when asked about it in a trial that had nothing to do with said cigar. George Walker Bush violated a federal law that states any wiretapping of a call that occurs in the United States has to be cleared by a secret court that has approved almost every warrant application in it's history save for 6 that came from the Bush administration. They told no-one and they even went to a half comatose John Ashcroft in the hospital and forced him to approve the plan. Clinton received oral sex in a hideaway office to the side of the Oval Office in the West Wing of the White House. George W. Bush recreated the horrors of Vietnam in all new High Definition for the new millennium. The Federal budget was balanced under Bill Clinton. George W. Bush spends like a drunken French socialist. Bill Clinton is more of a Republican that George W. Bush ever will be. But they just enjoy hating him so much the just can't let go.

The War On Terror, and Howie Mandel

How can we as a society hope to win the hearts and minds of the world back after the disaster of the Bush administration, while millions of us watch Deal Or No Deal. This shows more than any of the many myriad examples of cultural rot, that we have given up as a society. We don't even care any more. That waste of shaving products Howie Mandel, a man I thought we had left of the cultural dust heap of the 1980's, stands there and has people pick out briefcases with models standing next to them. I'm shocked that they even bother to clothe them. Why not light the briefcases on fire. The screaming family members and the I.Q drain that is Mandel may make for drama for some, but they are missing valuable time that they could be finger painting and we shouldn't keep them from that. I think if we follow the natural progression that took us from the Price is Right to Deal or No Deal it means that soon we'll all be riveted to the new game show where two people scream at each other, and the one that screams the loudest wins a million. At least I have a shot of winning that.

Tiger Mask

It's been a lazy day and I have not accomplished much, which must attest to the fact that I was caught watching professional wrestling. Professional wrestling is not the game it was in the past. There are many up and coming circuits that have major television deals. So I am watching TNA Wrestling, and they have a tag team match featuring a character names Tiger Mask. Just a dude in a mask that looks like a stuffed animal you would secure with one of those Carny style robot arm racket games. I don't have any more than that. Tiger Mask. That's just ridiculous.

Post #351

It's 1:01 in the morning here and I should go to bed, but there are so many topics worth discussing. Can Rudi Guiliani take as many positions on abortion as Hillary Clinton does on the Iraq War? Can we just drop all the fucking non-sense and call Joseph Lieberman what he is, a Republican? You can switch parties Joe, I did it. Is this starting to sound like one of those Larry King USA Today columns? Is American Idol still going on? Does Alberto Gonzalez speak like a cartoon character? Did the Reagan Administration have any idea of the whereabouts of The A-Team in the mid to late '80's, and did they assist in ending the cold war? I think it's time to call it a night.

The Victim In Culture

The horrible tragedy in Blacksburg has brought out the usual media roving plague of Satellite trucks and plastic people. The Sunshine Empire understands that in our new culture of media warfare the opinions have come from the talking heads. Wing nuts say this proves guns are good, and the liberal wack-jobs say it means to ban them. There again we are witness to yet another George W. Bush tragedy speech. When discussing the speech with our friend Jolemite it occurred that he seems to have made twice the average of a normal president. Reagan had the Challenger, Clinton had Oklahoma City. George W. Bush has presided over September 11Th, The Columbia, Hurricane Katrina, and now this. They are not his fault but they do seem to give his presidency a somber mood. They seem to fit the pattern of things out of control. But there are even those who have blamed the victims for not seeming to have fought back. Many have correctly criticized the left for worshiping at the alter of victim hood. There are big evil bad guys lurking to destroy you. But it seems the right has a nasty opposite to this. Individualism made my country great, but this is militarized individualism. If you did not get out of Katrina's way, it was your fucking fault. You may not have the luxury of spending a week out of town by way of your car that you don't have, but fuck you you should have worked harder. If you didn't get out of that gunman's way then you must have been week. He cant possibly been a good shot, he only killed 32 people. But those people were weak, and deserved to die for their sheer un-adulterated meakness. The meak are supposed to inherit the Earth, but you would not know it looking at us today.

A For Sale Sign on the House of God

I'm generally heartless when it comes to massive commercial garbage like the movie Titanic's attempts to pull at my heartstrings. Yet there is sadness that you can observe in regular life that lives just below the surface and is never to be heard from. Like the dog that goes under the porch to die. But I was thinking of one such thing while talking with a friend in Colorado. She showed me pictures from an establishment called "The Church." This was a club that you could turn the lights down, play harsh house music, walk through in a trench coat and feel like you were balls deep in the movie Blade standing next to Wesley Snipes. But it made me think of how churches lose their flock. When was the last time you remember seeing a closed church, other than every science fiction movie with a team of people fighting evil always having a base in an old abandoned church. Not the old sanctuary that sits next to the gleaming new Church tower. This is the lone church house that sits with a for sale sign out front. I used to live on Sunbeam road, and their was a small church not to far from my place. One day their was a for sale sign in the front lawn of the church. It later became an annex for a Hospice in the area. From the house of God, to a storage facility. Now for clarification one must know that it is hard to throw a rock from anywhere and not strike the broadside of a church house in Jacksonville. If you miss you'll hit the 9Th green.

Question Time

Is there a body wash or soap primarily for men that does not center their product's commercial around having random half naked women rape you? It really does make you wonder that there was a time you could not say pregnant on network television. Now the term "an erection lasting four hours," is as common as "where's the beef" was during the '80's. One of these fantastical body sprays once had a commercial that boiled down to women were coming close to having sexual intercourse with common household items because too many men were recycling the cans that this body spray came in. That is a ballsy claim for a commercial. And body spray is a mannish word for dude perfume. It's just two steps removed from mango watermelon kiwi body splash at Bath and Body Works. It is a hero story those body wash commercials are. To think that the stock clerk could bang four rabid Swiss models is an uplifting story.

Sunshine Empire Grab-bag

Just some assorted thoughts and observations. They will have some cohesion though. I will not allow this space to devolve into a Larry King USA Today column.

This U.S. Attourny firing scandal is interesting for a few reasons. Republicans and conservatives have a minor point in that this really is not a gigantic deal, nor horribly suprising that the same White House that promised to change the tone in Washington would be involving Romanesque politics in this matter. Yet they have seen the triviality of their 12 year reign come to roost. They had no problems with witch hunts until it was found that they to do indeed weigh as much as a duck(Monty Python fans better get that). The simple fact remains, that Alberto Gonzales told the Senate that he had no involvement and saw nothing. His very public schedule states that he was part of a meeting about this and only this very subject and signed off on a detailed plan to execute it. He lied to Congress. He had no reason to. And had any Clinton official come to the Hill and took the fifth on some of the absurd investigations they had, like the travel office firings, Republicans would have come un-glued. Both are pointless, but Republicans are just fantastically absurd as they prance around and say nobody cares so lets do the people's business.

I was watching the Florida vs Oregon Regional NCAA Tournament Championship and something that James Brown said on TV struck me. He stated of one of Oregon's players, "he's really got a nice package down below."

If you know who Sanjaya is, go to your room with no tv.

Some would be suprised if you told them you could sell the curse of your life away for no money at all. I can tell you that today. This past week I sold the curse of my life to someone when I gave away my accursed Cavalier. I love my country, and I think we are the most innovated and advanced cultures and business nations in the world, but we can't fucking make cars anymore. My cavalier can be traced to many many memories. But that think can be traced back to the most difficulties in my life. I feel like the middle guy in all of those curse stories. Like the accursed mummies paw in a glass case that brought horror and misery. Yet that one guy gets rid of it in time so that his life doesn't end. Those guy's are usually the protagonists of the movie and all. But I say goodbye to the old black lady.

Ban The Exclamation Point. Join The Revolution

Personally things have been going well for the contributors on this blog's editorial board. A marked improvement on many levels has made for positive feelings, but I feel we've lost our edge. I think I may be slipping into a state in which the only things that I have to rant about, are punctuation. This has become the most insidious thing I encounter every day. I mentioned in a previous post that I wanted to ban the exclamation point once and for all. It does have merit as a piece of punctuation, but it has been spoiled by a segment in the population that really should be brought up on war crimes charges in The Hague or something. Punctuation is meant to stand alone. It is never to be placed multiple times alongside itself. The only time this is permissible is when a quote ends in mid sentence and you have the multiple periods...
If you think that it is right to put three questions marks just to hammer home that you are totally clueless and not just a bit confused, you are overreacting. And if you are angry and confused the !?! The thing that most bothers me about that is that those two keys are on opposite sides of the damn keyboard. You have to go out of your way to do that. That deserves a bat to the side of the head, and if you don't agree I want to see some handwriting samples.

I see that everyone went back to their true ancestry today.

Gators are in the Sweet Sixteen.

Leave a comment on this message if you wish to join The Sunshine Empire's Official "Ban the Exclamation Point" petition. Join us in our noble and just cause.

Dear Diary

I was mindlessly looking through youtube and I have noticed on several video sharing services of this one vexed young teenage boy. He seems violently bi-polar, dresses somewhere between Gothic prince and college basketball coach from the mid-seventies, and apparently pretty popular on the net. I noticed he had posted a new video, and mentioned that some had left nasty comments. I did not look at them, but I'm sure there are nasty ones there. What drives people to comment on such sad material. The one side effect of this video generation on the net is that every awkward terrible moment seems on the internet for all the world to see. But are these people just the next generation of those who would go into public bathrooms with pens to engage in literary battle with those others who preceded them in that noxious space? These are the people who fill mid-day talk show audiences. Not that I have any love for this kid whoever he is. He looks fucking bat-shit.

Punctuation

I'm discovering that as I age new things bother me like they have never bothered me before, and one of them is punctuation! I only read editorial pages when I read a newspaper, and I answer emails from sometimes frustrated people all day! I have after careful thought come to my decision on what the best course of action is, and that is to ban use of the exclamation point! Every indignant person who rights a letter to the editor of the paper uses this piece of punctuation in an excessive and absurd matter! Have you noticed how I have ended every singe sentence with an exclamation point? Yeah, that's what I mean. But some emails that I receive have ended with this punctual combination!!!?!! I think whoever does that should be shot for the benefit of our greater good. Or at least beaten about ones head with a giant wooden exclamation point. All the time screaming, "see what it feels like? That's what it's like to read your writing!"

Technology

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages, I am conflicted. I am obsessed with gadgets and technology. I am still amazed when I pay my insurance bill with a quick cell phone call and talk to a robot to do it. I have 7 days strait of digital entertainment on my ipod, and more than three days of stand up comedy in the palm of my hand. I even liked somewhat the hands free cell phone feature with the cord in the ear if I was in the car, but I have had enough. Those bluetooth earpieces make me shudder. Memo to all of you. Just because you have some gadget jammed in your ear with a fancy blue light does not make us all think you are important as all get out. If you just start talking to no one in the middle of the produce section at Publix (Ralph's for you west coast people) you are not with it, you are just faux psycho. Looking like Uhura from Star Trek does not have everyone thinking you are at the cutting edge, we just want to slap the shit out of you. In my neighborhood I saw a man with a bluetooth in one ear, and a handset in the other. I wanted to run him over, and if I hadn't been drinking I would have. Its just as bad as those who wear their cell phones on that obnoxious holster bullshit. You have a cell phone asshole, big fucking deal. Four year olds have cell phones now. Maybe I'm just a traditionalist. My cell phone goes ring ring like phones used to. But I can't help feeling that the technology is still amazing. I have to slap myself out of that feeling.

A Night At Eclipse

When DJ Black decides to leave your town for bigger and greater things, you make sure that you are there to see him off. Whoever DJ Black is. I don’t really know. In all reality when you are done playing trivia and drinking beer watching basketball you need a diversion, and that’s when you go to see DJ’s at Goth clubs. Now I have a particular soft spot for girls all in black, in gigantic leather boots and wearing tons of white makeup. Biggus Rickus does not share my fondness for the darker ladies, but we were invited by an old friend to see her up there so we set off. We arrived, purchased our beverages, and took a perch overlooking Eclipse. Eclipse is a small establishment that holds a goth night every Saturday night in Avondale. As we realized that our long lost friend had become long lost, we took up the role of Statler & Waldorf from the old Muppet Show. While gothic girls can be among the most original and stunning beauties that walk the earth, the men in this subset don’t live up to that level. They all wear one of the following; gigantic baggy pants with an assortment of buckles, mesh undershirt, black shirt. They are great people, but they don’t get as flamboyant as a Trent Reznor or whoever the lead singer of Sisters of Mercy is. One near us was wearing a Hawaiian shirt, and ran out to an empty dance floor and started dancing with two glowing balls like he was one of those sad little women that do the rhythmic gymnastics in the Olympics. But the ladies are where Biggus and I departed company. I think the women there where right out of my dreams, and to Biggus they came from nightmares. To each his own, but they aren’t for my friend from Rome. Sometimes though, a woman attempts to be so unique, that she travels back around from dark back to fourth grade innocent. For some reason there was a woman carrying around a stuffed monkey. No explanation. Stuffed monkey. This Rickus could not get past. “What the fuck is up with the monkey?”
“I don’t know”
“No really, what the hell is up with the damn monkey?”
“I don’t know”
“I can’t stay in this place. We need to leave.”
And with that, our evening was over. Another night at Eclipse.

TSE Remix, DJ Dutch spinning

My good friend B. Rickus has quite an affection for DJ's. He loves 'um. But I ask this question, is there a song out there that even the most delusional DJ would look back in aghast and say, "heavens no you can't remix THAT song"? Do they have limits? I don't quite share the visceral fear that some of my compatriots do. That being said I watched an interview of Norah Jones. Not my favorite artist, but I would say she's a talented singer. She spoke of being approached for one of her jazzy slow songs that apparently was popular on TRL for five seconds. That says it all for me. I found I was the only person who did not know that she is Ravi Shankar's daughter. I think the late Mitch Hedburg said it best, "I remixed a remix, and it was back to normal."

Synesthesia

I was reading I-am-bored.com and they had an article on Diseases that can give you super human powers. One of them was called Synesthesia. I have included a bit from Wikipedia.com on the subject.



Synesthesia can occur between nearly any two senses or perceptual modes. Given the large number of forms of synesthesia, researchers have adopted a convention of indicating the type of synesthesia by using the following notation x → y, where x is the "inducer" or trigger experience, and y is the "concurrent" or additional experience. For example, perceiving letters and numbers (collectively called graphemes) as colored would be indicated as grapheme → color synesthesia. Similarly, when synesthetes see colors and movement as a result of hearing musical tones, it would be indicated as tone → (color, movement) synesthesia.

While nearly every possible combination of experiences is logically possible, several types are more common than others.

[edit] Grapheme → color synesthesia

Main article: Grapheme-color synesthesia

How someone with synesthesia might perceive (not "see") certain letters and numbers.
How someone with synesthesia might perceive (not "see") certain letters and numbers.

In one of the most common forms of synesthesia, grapheme → color synesthesia, individual letters of the alphabet and numbers (collectively referred to as graphemes), are "shaded" or "tinged" with a color. While no two synesthetes will report the same colors for all letters and numbers, studies of large numbers of synesthetes find that there are some commonalities across letters (e.g., A is likely to be red) ( Day 2005; Simner et al. 2005).

A grapheme → color synesthete reports, "I often associate letters and numbers with colors. Every digit and every letter has a color associated with it in my head. Sometimes, when letters are written boldly on a piece of paper, they will briefly appear to be that color if I'm not focusing on it. Some examples: 'S' is red, 'H' is orange, 'C' is yellow, 'J' is yellow-green, 'G' is green, 'E' is blue, 'X' is purple, 'I' is pale yellow, '2' is tan, '1' is white. If I write SHCJGEX it registers as a rainbow when I read over it, as does ABCPDEF."[2]

[edit] Music → color synesthesia

In music → color synesthesia, individuals experience colors in response to tones or other aspects of musical stimuli (e.g., timbre or key). Like grapheme → color synesthesia, there is rarely agreement amongst synesthetes that a given tone will be a certain color, but individuals are internally consistent. Tested months later, synesthetes will report the same experiences as they had previously reported.

Color changes in response to pitch may involve more than just the hue of the color. Lightness (the amount of black in a color; red with black may appear brown), saturation (the intensity of the color; candy red is highly saturated, while pink is almost unsaturated), and hue may all be affected to varying degrees (Campen & Froger 2003). Additionally, music → color synesthetes, unlike grapheme → color synesthetes, often report that the colors move, or stream into and out of their field of view.

On the news of the week

I will not pretend to bore you with some retread Anna Nicole joke, but the entire legal battle that was waged for that poor old oil tycoon's money just seems creepy Shakespearean. Much like those stories in 7Th grade English class that are meant to impart a lesson on the reader. Like greed is bad. Something like a group of explorers discovering a cursed golden monkey. They all come home and end up killing each other over the monkey, and the monkey wins in the end. Kind of like that, just with a robo-bimbo and a 900 year old man, and fried chicken.
Our culture watches 100 hours of this coverage and then criticize the media for putting it on. I think it's just war weariness. We've reduced ourselves to watching a British man berate teen girls on TV for fun. But my favorite part of whenever something like this Anna Nicole thing comes up is seeing the panel of guests on Larry King. He will switch from interviewing a President, to a panel with former wrestler and Surreal Life all star cast member China Doll. "Tonight, King Abdullah of Jordon, and tomorrow night Screech from Saved by the bell will share his thoughts on the Middle east and President Ford's passing." God Bless America.