Everyday Life – Page 114

Another Reason to Love NYC

April 15, 2009 by John 6 Comments

Tweenbots are human-dependent robots that navigate the city with the help of pedestrians they encounter. Rolling at a constant speed, in a straight line, Tweenbots have a destination displayed on a flag, and rely on people they meet to read this flag and to aim them in the right direction to reach their goal.

Given their extreme vulnerability, the vastness of city space, the dangers posed by traffic, suspicion of terrorism, and the possibility that no one would be interested in helping a lost little robot, I initially conceived the Tweenbots as disposable creatures which were more likely to struggle and die in the city than to reach their destination…

The results were unexpected. Over the course of the following months, throughout numerous missions, the Tweenbots were successful in rolling from their start point to their far-away destination assisted only by strangers.

My favorite bit:

One man turned the robot back in the direction from which it had just come, saying out loud to the Tweenbot, “You can’t go that way, it’s toward the road.”

I hope that guy’s having a great day. He earned it with that little bit of altruism. (Ditto Kacie Kinzer, creator of the Tweenbot experiment.)

Programmed Dyspepsia

April 15, 2009 by John Leave a Comment

[This is the second of three brief(ish) posts on the experience of being sick, sorta-kinda-like, for four (sorta) days. (Here‘s part 1.)]

So I was sleeping quite a bit. Going online or otherwise sitting at the computer, almost not at all. Beyond that, pretty much, I was on the living-room floor, with The Pooch. Watching daytime television.

Two highlights, if that’s the word, and disregarding all the low spots (like ’50s-game-show re-runs, infomercials, and talk shows/soap operas whose unintelligibility to me would be helped not at all by closed captions, since everyone (including the captioners) speaks a language other than English): (1) the MD show, and (2) the Food Network (daytime edition).

Disclaimer: Yes, I know, I know: this is television I’m ranting about here. It’s not a rant about the great issues of the day, of which there are many. Give me a break. I was sick(ish). When little Billy has a fever or Susie can’t keep her porridge down, surely you don’t rebuke them for wanting to read comic books all day. (Or do you, you wicked old witch?)

[Read more…]

“Not Quite Jaundice”

April 14, 2009 by John 9 Comments

[This is the first of three brief posts on the experience of being sick, sorta-kinda-like, for four (sorta) days.]

From Catch-22:

Yossarian was in the hospital with a pain in his liver that fell just short of being jaundice. The doctors were puzzled by the fact that it wasn’t quite jaundice. If it became jaundice they could treat it. If it didn’t become jaundice and went away they could discharge him. But this just being short of jaundice all the time confused them.

A little over a week ago, I first noticed a not common but still familiar sort of weakness of the limbs. Flu, it said to me. You’re getting the flu.

Which I didn’t really want to be hearing: I didn’t want to hear it from the lips of someone knowledgeable, with pursed lips and horned-rim glasses and the overall demeanor, coincidentally, of a pharmaceuticals salesman, and I really didn’t want to hear it from a vague muscular sensation with no medical diplomas at all hanging behind its desk.

[Read more…]

Riding the Now

April 10, 2009 by John 6 Comments

[Today’s image is of the literal-minded “Now Watch,” widely believed to be the most accurate timepiece ever. Found it at Wired’s Gadget Lab blog.]

From whiskey river:

And if there is not any such thing as a long time, nor the rest of your lives, nor from now on, but there is only now, why then now is the thing to praise and I am very happy with it.

(Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls)

Not from whiskey river:

If on earth there be
a Paradise of Bliss,
It is this,
It is this,
It is this.

(Firdausi)

This brings me to one of my favorite E.E. Cummings poems.

[Read more…]

The Sound of Two Words… uh… Doing Something

April 8, 2009 by John 4 Comments

Above image is Figure 1-1 from the Chinese-language edition of Just XSL,
one of my tech books. For the translation, see this page.

Recently, I received an email from a friend and distant relative, a trained hypnotherapist, counsellor, and general all-round wellness therapist. (The Missus and I once ordered a couple of self-help CDs from her, one on smoking cessation and one — not coincidentally — on weight loss.)

The email, obviously distributed to her professional mailing list, describes some steps you can take to calm your fears in jittery times like these. Early on, it includes this passage:

The Chinese symbol for CRISIS has two parts: one represents danger and the other represents opportunity. It’s a beautiful symbol of how every event in life is really an invitation to practice choice.

Wow, I thought, what a cool thing to know about the Chinese language. Just one more example, as if we needed more, of the wisdom of the Orient. I could easily envision dropping this little tidbit into conversations.

But then I started to wonder: what is the “Chinese symbol for CRISIS”? So, unsurprisingly, I turned to the Web. And, unsurprisingly, as with a lot of Web-based research, I found a muddled story:

[Read more…]

Drafting a Beer

April 5, 2009 by John 7 Comments

Every now and then The Missus and I look at each other over a meal or while rambling through cable TV’s Food Network and wonder, Who first thought to do X with this recipe?

Okay, reasonably, I know we’re beneficiaries of tens of thousands of years of trial-and-error. Somebody in a grass or furry loincloth didn’t just suddenly see one of those tan or white or etc. objects appear in a bird’s nest and, out of thin air, conjure up the notion of a three-minute egg, perhaps with sliced white bread alongside and a few strips of bacon. More likely, he or she was thinking along these lines (translation from Primordialese via university-trained Babel Fish):

Jiminy Crickets, but I. Am. Starving. I think I’ll eat the very next thing I can catch — oh, wait, it’s one of those feathery things with the hard pointy noses and attitudes, think I’ll wait and really, no fooling, the next thing I see… Huh? That wasn’t there before! Wow. It doesn’t have any sharp edges at all! It looks like the sun! or the moon! Maybe I should worship it— No, goddammit, I have never been this freaking hungry in my life and this, this is not a god, it is something from a god and it is meant to satisfy my hunger, so I’m just gonna take a little bite to start and—

Gaaaaa! My mouth! My mouth! My mouth is bleeding and ooooh my gummmmmms…!

Something like that, anyhow.

[Read more…]

Choose Your Own Poisons

April 3, 2009 by John 14 Comments

From whiskey river:

We’re fools whether we dance or not,
So we might as well dance.

(Japanese proverb)

…and:

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.

(Richard Feynman [in his 1974 CalTech commencement address])

Not from whiskey river:

Fool’s Money Bags

Outside the long window,
With his head on the stone sill,
The dog is lying,
Gazing at his Beloved.
His eyes are wet and urgent,
And his body is taut and shaking.
It is cold on the terrace;
A pale wind licks along the stone slabs,
But the dog gazes through the glass
And is content.

The Beloved is writing a letter.
Occasionally she speaks to the dog,
But she is thinking of her writing.
Does she, too, give her devotion to one
Not worthy?

(Amy Lowell [source])

Now let’s look back a few years, to the revivification of John Travolta’s career, post-Pulp Fiction. In 1996 he took the title role in Michael: a vacationing archangel. In fact, this is the last vacation Michael may take (according to some rulebook which angels must follow), so he wants to make it a good one. (An angel who wants to vacation on Earth? you’re thinking. He replies, “Whatever they say, you can never have too much of Earth.”) He travels across country with a group of staffers for a gossip/tabloid magazine, and on the way they stop at a roadhouse…

A fun blog post probably awaits me, or somebody, on the subject of “classic scenes from non-classic films.” This scene in the roadhouse is wonderful — I was very surprised I couldn’t find it anywhere online but at an Italian site. In any case, it answers pretty definitively the question an alien might ask: “Why do people dance, anyway?” (Michael is like a flystrip which, when dangled in the air, catches only females.)

It doesn’t hurt that the music (lyrics below) likewise ties into the theme of this week’s Friday post, especially the Japanese proverb.

Lyrics:

Chain of Fools
(words and music by Don Covay;
performance by Aretha Franklin)

Chain, chain, chain, chain, chain, chain
Chain, chain, chain, chain of fools
Five long years I thought you were my man
But I found out I’m just a link in your chain
You got me where you want me
I ain’t nothing but your fool
You treated me mean oh you treated me cruel
Chain, chain, chain, chain of fools

Every chain has got a weak link
I might be weak child, but I’ll give you strength
You told me to leave you alone
My father said come on home
My doctor said take it easy
Whole bunch of lovin is much too strong
I’m added to your chain, chain, chain
Chain, chain, chain, chain,
Chain, chain of fools

One of these mornings the chain is gonna break
But up until then, yeah, I’m gonna take all I can take
Chain, chain, chain, chain, chain, chain
Chain, chain, chain, chain of fools

Fiction Writers*: Discuss

April 2, 2009 by John 8 Comments

Said noir/mystery author Jim Thompson:

There are thirty-two ways to write a story, and I have used every one of them. But there is only one plot: things are not what they seem.

(Cited on the Facebook page for Neko Case.)

So tell me: We could go around and around forever regarding what he meant by “ways to write a story,” let alone whether there are only 32 of them, or not even 32, or whatever. (I found one citation on Google Books which said the number Thompson gave was 37.)

But is the plot of all stories, in fact, “Things are not what they seem”? What do you think?

__________________________

* And of course readers, editors, agents, drive-by commenters, vagrants and vagabonds, rabbis, priests, and ministers, and the duck they walked into the bar with as well as the bartender who gave them a hard time… anybody, really.

When Appliances Weep

March 31, 2009 by John 11 Comments

In his standup-comedy days, forty-plus years ago, Woody Allen did a routine called “Mechanical Objects.”

It was a narrative about the highly mixed blessings of living at the tail end of the Machine Age, at the start of The Age of Electronicus. I found the following transcript of the routine on the Web; I can’t swear to its accuracy, but it conforms to what I remember:

I have never in my life had good relationships with mechanical objects of any sort. Anything that I can’t reason with or kiss or fondle, I get into trouble with.

I have a clock that runs counter-clockwise for some reason. My toaster pops up my toast and shakes it, burns it. I hate my shower. I’m taking a shower, and somebody in America uses his water. That’s it for me, y’know, I leap from the tub, scalded.

I have a tape recorder, I paid a hundred and fifty dollars for, and as I talk into it, it goes, “I know, I know.”

About three years ago I couldn’t stand it anymore. I was home one night. I called a meeting with my possessions. I got everything I owned into the living room. My toaster, my clock, my blender. They’d never been in the living room before. And I spoke to them.

I opened with a joke.

And then I said, “I know what’s going on, and cut it out!…”

And I spoke to each appliance. I was really articulate. Then I put them back, and I felt good.

Two nights later, I’m watching my portable television set, and [the picture on] the set begins to jump up and down, and I go up to it. And I always talk before I hit, and I said, “I thought we had discussed this — what’s the problem?” And the set kept going up and down, so I hit it, and it felt good hitting it, and I beat the hell out of it. I was really great, I tore off the antenna, and I felt very virile.

And two days later I go to my dentist in New York. (I had gone to my dentist, but I had a deep cavity, and he’d sent me to a chiropodist.) I’m going into a building in mid-town New York, and they have those elevators, and I hear a voice say, “Kindly call out your floors, please,” and I say, “Sixteen,” and the doors close and the elevator starts going up to sixteen.

And on the way up the elevator says to me, “Are you the guy that hit the television set?” I felt like an ass, y’know, and it took me up and down fast between floors, and it threw me off in the basement. It yelled out something that was anti-Semitic.

I thought of this story the other night while helping The Missus with a bit of the evening’s dinner preparations.

[Read more…]

Our Own Little World

March 27, 2009 by John 6 Comments

Life Magazine cover (1952-12-08), The World We Live In - Part 1 From whiskey river:

Each of us literally chooses, by his way of attending to things, what sort of universe he shall appear to himself to inhabit.

(William James [source])

Not from whiskey river:

I Live in Music

i live in music
is this where you live
i live here in music
i live on c# street
my friend lives on b♭ avenue
do you live here in music
sound
falls round me like rain on other folks
saxophones wet my face
cold as winter in st. louis
hot like peppers i rub on my lips
thinking they waz lilies
i got 15 trumpets where other women got
hips
& a upright bass for both sides of my heart
i walk round in a piano like somebody
else/be walkin on the earth
i live in music
live in it
wash in it
i cd even smell it
wear sound on my fingers
sound falls so fulla music
ya cd make a river where yr arm is &
hold yrself
hold yrself in a music

(Ntozake Shange [source])

[Read more…]