Manga as propoganda?

I’m a comicbook fan, unapologetically so but, I never caught the Manga bug. Some of tha Manga drawing style has seeped into mainstream comics and I don’t have a problem with it as some of the old guard do. However, Manga is something that mainstream comics is not, it’s more popular, reaches a broader audience and manages to embody more than the comics themselves.

So, is it any kind of surprise when an art form is used for the purposes of propoganda?

The reality that South Korea had emerged as a rival hit many Japanese with full force in 2002, when the countries were co-hosts of soccer’s World Cup, and South Korea advanced further than Japan. At the same time, the so-called Korean Wave — television dramas, movies and music from South Korea — swept Japan and the rest of Asia, often displacing Japanese pop cultural exports.

Here are two panels from a very popular and recently released Manga book in Japan (I’m just putting the images up, it’s in no way an endorsement of the views expressed):



The two comic books, portraying Chinese and Koreans as base peoples and advocating confrontation with them, have become runaway best sellers in Japan in the last four months.

Many of the same influences are at work in the other new comic book, “An Introduction to China,” which depicts the Chinese as obsessed with cannibalism and prostitution, and has sold 180,000 copies.

The book describes China as the “world’s prostitution superpower” and says, without offering evidence, that prostitution accounts for 10 percent of the country's gross domestic product. It describes China as a source of disease and depicts Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi saying, “I hear that most of the epidemics that broke out in Japan on a large scale are from China.”



In one book, crazed Chinese communist guerrillas spray benevolent Japanese troops with cyanide. In another, savage Korean immigrants massacre innocent Tokyo residents in the wake of World War II...

“These books finally depict history from a Japanese perspective, and there is nothing wrong with that,” says Atsushi Iwata, 22, student at Tokyo’s prestigious Waseda University who attends a weekly seminar by a co-author of “Introduction to China.”

“It’s the right of any nation to interpret history as it feels it should,” he said.

Yes, proof once again that a-holes come in all sizes, shapes and colors - well, they say you can’t argue with an idiot.

When the subways stop.

Before the workers are cursed, take a moment to read this editorial in the Daily News:

The great and growing disconnect between white-collar and blue-collar workers in our town makes it hard for office workers to see, understand or respect what is at stake in this labor standoff. Few riders know, for instance, that transit workers have to ask for a day off 30 days in advance. Back in October, in an annual ritual, some MTA workers slept on cots in bus depots so they could be first on line the next morning to ask for permission to take Thanksgiving off.

Nosing around.

Tonight I was nosing around the local 100 website, while I was doing it I found this little tidbit on the calendar about an event scheduled:

Dec. 20: Citywide Bus and Subway Strike

Submitted by eddie on Mon, 2005-12-19 05:39.
Start: 2005-12-20 06:01

So, I called channel 7 which was on the air to let them know. Seems like it could be nothing or it could be something. If channel 7 does wind up being the first to break the story, you’ll know where they got the tip.

...’tis the season to be jolly, fa la la la laa...

“They came in, said ‘Merry Christmas’ and then helped themselves,” store owner Changa Manakynda said.

A group of 40 people dressed in Santa Claus costumes, many of them drunk, rampaged through New Zealand’s largest city, robbing stores and assaulting security guards, police said Sunday.

The horror... the horror... (LOL)

Priceless.



I was looking around for material for another post when I came across the image above. It’s just struck me as a very funny image. I thought maybe about having a contest for the best caption.

The end is near?

I imagine, since we’re only a week or two away from the New Year.

Sounds rather dramatic though doesn’t it?

(Cue foreboding music) THE END IS NEAR!

What does a New Year mean anyway outside of the changing of the calendar, the marking of days? Do we wake up New Years Day to a new and suddenly different world?

I think not.

Depending on what we did the night before, we wake up either at the start of another day or with a terrific hangover if we’ve overdone it. Not much else happens really on New Years Day when you think about it. People are just bracing themselves to get back to work, having made it through another holiday season.

Oh, I guess it means stores will be putting up decorations in the next week or so for Valentines Day but outside of that, what else?

Over the next week or so, they’ll be lots of retrospectives about the year just passed on TV and in Newspapers. Lists of events that happened, people who died, those kind of things. It’s this onus that we burden ourselves with, a forced reflection due to a change in the calendar. In the coming weeks they’ll be talk about whether or not it was a good shopping season for retailers and then we’ll quickly move on.

I don’t like the calendar, never have. Calendars, clocks, all these human inventions to try and enforce a rigid structure to the world around us, are just off-putting. They force us to approach life in a very different way and I don’t know if it’s a good way. For example, did you know that:

On November 18, 1883, four standard time zones for the continental U.S.A. were introduced at the instigation of the railroads. At noon on this day the U.S. Naval Observatory changed its telegraphic signals to correspond to the change. Until the invention of the railway, it took such a long time to get from one place to another that local “sun time” could be used. When traveling to the east or to the west, a person would have to change his or her watch by one minute every twelve miles.

When people began traveling by train, sometimes hundreds of miles in a day, the calculation of time became a serious problem. Operators of the new railroad lines realized that a new time plan was needed in order to offer a uniform train schedule for departures and arrivals.

Since every city was using a different time standard, there were over 300 local sun times to choose from. The railroad managers tried to address the problem by establishing 100 railroad time zones, but this was only a partial solution to the problem.

Imagine that!

Sun time. Can you think of how different life would be if based around Sun time? All those late nights at the job - do they still happen when you’re on Sun time? Thing is, we’re not talking about such a long time ago, a mere 122 years. This is the world my grandparents were born into. A world were Sun time was becoming a thing of the past and the world was entering the brave new frontier of “Time Zones.”

The pace of life is speeding up, getting faster and faster as the world becomes a smaller and smaller place. Does this mean one day, instead of the four time zones our country straddles, it will become sixteen time zones because having time zones of an hour will be a value far too large to use as a measure in such a fast-paced world.

I shudder at the thought.

If you focus so much energy on measuring something, of keeping track of it, are you able to enjoy it?

So, as the calendar turns over once again like an odometer on our lives, let’s take a moment to try and downplay its significance. Not that I don't think everyone shouldn't have the most wonderful holiday imaginable, just let’s try to move the focus away from the structure we try to impose on the world. We might all be a bit better for it.

More on time and its history can be found here.

Speaking of They Might Be Giants.

It really is worth it to go over and check out their site. Currently, they have a series up called Venue Songs with some wonderful listening.

Click here to check it out.

Fingertips

Cleaning out my drafts, unfinished snippets, entries that I started and never really got around to finishing. Take them as you will:

From September...

You should try everything once.

At least that’s what they say.

So, Friday night I found myself at the Garden. Someone, who is a very important person to me, asked me if I wanted to go with them to this “event.” Seeing as how they are always there when I need them, what small price was there in spending a few hours of my time? Plus, I enjoy the person’s company greatly.

The event was a motivational lecture by Joel Osteen. The way things had been laid out to me, I imagined it would be some kind of Tony Roberts slanted event - “Discover the champion in you!”



You get the idea.

I’m not big on things like this, I don’t know why but I can’t say I’ve ever been much of a joiner. I actually do my best to shy away from anything which even remotely looks like “group think.” It’s just the way I’m built, I don’t put too much stock in the whole “school of fish” type of attitude - whether it be driving, or just finding ways to get around when I’m walking around Manhattan - if I see a group of people heading a certain way, my first instinct is to go the other way. I don’t like crowds. Funny thing is, for whatever purpose there have been more than a few instances where I was very happy that instinct kicked in and it saved me from being stuck in a mess of people not able to get out of some kind of bad situation or worse.

The last few days have been very hectic but, I was looking forward to this in any case because again, it’s an excuse to spend some time with someone who’s important to me.

We get to the Garden.

And it is just a madhouse! I cannot begin to tell you how many people are at this place. It’s like it was a Knicks game or something. Most of my energy is consumed in scanning around the lobby and the rest of the facility and taking in the signage and the graphics around the place. At one time being a designer for MSG, I look around to see what the caliber of the work on display is (yes, I have as much of an ego as anyone else). Invariably I am comparing the work that is up to the work I did during the time I worked there. Also, I am looking at different things that have been done to the building, installation of video monitors and the like.

Well, we get to our seats which are pretty good and then the show starts...

...and what a show it is. Lots of music, big glossy video shot in the gauzy, fuzzy manner showing lots of sunny skies, smiling happy people, titles skewed and moving across the screens with all kinds of positive messages. Everybody is just Stepford happy and while I’m watching all of this I can’t help but try and see if I can remember all the different commercials where I’ve seen the same kind of tricks used (I’m fairly certain one was an Insure commercial and another a Chase commercial).

It is at this moment I know I have signed up for something I wasn’t anticipating.

I turn to my companion and let them know I will stick it out but, not to be surprised if I do not suddenly burst into flame or happen to have an errant lightening bolt descend through the roof of the Garden obliterating me on the spot. The other thing that’s creeping me out at the moment is how I have this really strong feeling of programming but in a hi-tech way. Maybe programming is a bit strong, more aptly put it was the strong sell. A lot of touchy feely messages wrapped up in a Madison Avenue, this very strange amalgam of religion


Many Christian readers will undoubtedly be put off by the book’s shallow name-it-and-claim-it theology; although the first chapter claims that “we serve the God that created the universe,” the book as a rule suggests the reverse: it’s a treatise on how to get God to serve the demands of self-centered individuals. Osteen tells readers that God wants them to prosper, offering examples of obtaining an elegant mansion or a larger salary (“don’t ever get satisfied with where you are,” he cautions).

From mid October...

The other day (last week actually), I was treated to a wonderful lunch and good company in the form of Ed and Brian (author of the cat fumettis). The restaurant we ate at is a personal favorite, the menu feature a combination of Southern foods I love so much - Fried Chicken, Catfish, Jambalaya, greens, that kind of stuff. A few other restaurants in the same neighborhood serve this cuisine but, they fail in ways the place we dined at never has.

A side benefit of eating at this restaurant, is the very distinct trend in the hiring of wait staff. I imagine this is a result of the rumor the place is a business venture of professional models. Each time I have eaten there, I find myself waited upon by an enticing and demure member of the opposite sex. Our lunch the other day was no exception. The last two times we’ve been there - the servers have been just about the nicest, prettiest ladies one could ever hope to encounter.

Of course, the three of us sit there and talk about all the banal things which create a link between us. Things of interest to one and other but, not likely of great interest to any female within earshot. The three of us are sitting there, contentedly scarfing down our meals, punctuated by animated conversation and every once in awhile our server will alight making the meal much better by both her grace and charm.

Each time, she wanders off about her duties her brief visit turns the discussion to the subject of her beauty. It is at these moments, Ed will prod me in a good natured way to try and entice our server into expanding beyond our patron/server relationship (I am trying to be so delicate here). Specifically, the conversation centers around her healthy bosom which through the combination of her choice in wardrobe and the necessity to lean forward when engaging in any conversation with her patrons presents aforementioned bosoms front and center in a manner where they cannot easily be ignored.

I find myself a bit embarrassed by this - yes, surprisingly as much of a letch as I consider myself to be, I am always highly reluctant to *** but there really is no denying the wonderful vista which is being presented.

Now, Ed is just about one of the most amazing people I know. He’s a huge bear of a man who greets you by clubbing you amicably on the shoulder when he sees you. The amazing thing about it is the force of his greeting could actually knock you sideways were you not braced for it, that’s how strong the guy is. This would not be something of note were it not for the fact Ed is slightly older than my own father.

So, as we sit there - during the course of the meal, I am prodded (good naturedly) by who even though he is advanced in years cannot readily ignore our servers charms and... (that was as far as I got)

From late November/early December...

Where does the week go?

I’m not really big on holidays much anymore.

I’m trying very hard to combat the curmudgeonliness that comes with getting older but, it is a battle. Holidays, birthdays, all those kinds of celebrations seem to have a bit less import for me. Most birthdays over the last few years have been spent just trying to have a kind of a good day instead of some all out gala celebration. Holidays are another thing altogether. I’m making the passage from the small table to being one of the older generation at the big table and finding myself wondering too often where all that time has gotten to.

This year Thanksgiving just appeared for lack of a better term. To a lot of people, the holiday is a big event on the calendar mainly because of the four day weekend and the big absence from work. There can be travel over a long distance involved in the Thanksgiving odyssey as well. This week had so much crammed into it, Monday seemed like it had been a week or two ago and by the time Thursday rolled around I was deep in the fugue state.

Basically there’s just so much going on lately - it’s hard to keep track of where we are in the calendar. The only thing I do think of being important at this point is counting the number of days until pitchers and catchers report heralding the return of warm weather once again.

From early December...

The December slide.

So, we’re in the tunnel now at the end of the year. That few week period between Thanksgiving and New Years where life is supposed to be all wonderful (It's A Wonderful Life!).

Ahem.

You’ll have to ’scuze the Scrooge like attitude but this is probably my least favorite time of year. I imagine part of it is that I focus on all the things I didn’t get done through the course of the year or how imperfect life seems when I keep running up against all those idealized holiday images that are plastered everywhere you look.

Fa-la-la-la-laa...

The best holidays I’ve ever had have involved being down in Florida for the New Year. Twice, I’ve been somewhere where the weather is warm and it is without a doubt the absolutely best way to soften the blow of the years turning.

This year, I’m a little (at a loss for words, obviously)

From mid December...

Some people...

...get up in the morning to take care of business,
other people get up just to be in the way.

—Norman Soloman (dec)

Busy week last week, lots of stupid drama. Most of it unnecessary but, drama to be sure nonetheless. When I have a week like the one I had last week, I have to remind myself of what Norman used to say.

Norman was a large man, tall and carrying a fairly large belly - you would occasionally see him stuffed in obscenely tight fitting and garish bicycle clothing as he laboriously pedaled his way around the rolling hills of Tarrytown. On warm days, he’d be standing outside the Y, chatting away with Carlton another longtime resident of the male only dormitory housed in the facility.

Much of their conversation would center around how various other residents and mutual acquaintances from around town were full of shit. If it wasn’t that then it was just your regular dog talk about women. It was however always entertaining, certainly for me anyway since I was in my late 20’s at the time and the world that Carlton and Norman lived in was very different and their conversations offered a glimpse into that world.

Carlton and Norman were both around the same age (at the time in their late 40's). They were men of a different generation, both born in the late forties or early fifties and both black, they had witnessed and been a part of the significant change the country had gone through during the course of their lives. It had tinged their perceptions of the world around them - they both were plain speaking men, men who didn’t hide behind the mask of guile, who looked a person in the eye and said what they thought. An more than anything, they were nice, they were gentlemen, saying that they were doesn’t mean they were impolite because they weren’t. They just didn’t suffer fools gladly and after everything they had experienced during the course of their lifetime saw no point in doing otherwise.

As I clock more time on the planet, I see the wisdom in their outlook - although I often have to remind myself it’s not an excuse to fail to exercise impulse control. Lots of the drama in the last week was the work of fools (actually one fool in-particular). When it first jumped off, I was in my own special brand of hysteria but, working through the five stages of grief I wound up at acceptance in fairly short order.

Just as Norman said, there are people who get up in the morning just to “be in the way.” We all encounter them but, of course it’s how we handle them that makes life different for each of us. That’s something I’ve been trying to do over the last few months, figure out better ways to handle things. A lot of my life has been spent around a person or people who were unhappy and found that the only way they could derive joy was to get others aggravated or annoyed. What happens though when the end result of it is you don’t get angry? You take away the power the person has over you.

More from December...

My life mopping floors.

A lot of what I’ve been doing lately is a thankless job. Thankless in the sense that there’s a lot of dirty work to do, big messes to clean up. Most of these messes center around the EYOC. This is nothing new, I’ve been cleaning up his messes for a long time now but, I had hoped it would get a little easier with time instead of the inverse.

I have conflicting feelings about things too at times, never the less somewhere along the line the whole dutiful son thing was indelibly stamped on me. I imagine it was from my fraternal grandparents and my uncle who I still hold in very high esteem and always considered people of great character. Even though all three of them have long since passed, theirs is the standard I measure myself by, their expectations, their outlook and the way the lived their lives and treated the people around them.

So, I keep expecting the messes to get easier but, no they just get harder and harder. The EYOC has always been somewhat abusive to put it mildly would probably be better described as a bit of a sadist - there I’ve said it. This is a guy who took some delight in grabbing the snout of the family dog and twisting it until the canine yelped in pain. You can’t make stuff like this up, you can only wonder where along the lines things went of the rails where someone would think that the dog is somehow digging on the moment.

Over the last decade plus as I’ve cared for him he’s alternately been nice in moments of weakness and nasty and vindictive in others. The nastiness and vindictiveness is something which I’ve taken in stride more or less - not that it’s been easy but, life gives you lemons and all that.

So, lately the EYOC has become nasty and vindictive yet again.

Sweeeettttt.

________

Fingertips by the way, is a reference to a series of songs at the very end of They Might Be Giants Apollo 18. It’s just a beautiful potpourri of tunes and lyrics that the band never quite got around to fleshing out. If you haven’t heard it, it’s worth a listen, somewhat in the vein of that second side of Abbey Road by the Beatles, another great sampling of unfinished ideas.

...I’m sure monsters must meet the most innnnttteeeeerrrresting people!

image from RobotJohnny.com

The faux Chinese proverb kept echoing through my head this past week. The last two or three months of life might be considered very interesting by most people’s standards. I have alternately found myself at the heights of elation and the depths of depression over that period of time. Good stuff for afternoon soap operas but, not fun stuff to live through, I can tell you that.

It’s exhausting.

I’ve said it before, I don’t need a life of excitement, it isn’t something I seek out or crave. A life of excitement doesn’t necessarily infer one will be living a life of happiness, just one of drama.

Happiness, yes there’s something I crave, something I can never get enough of but, excitement, interesting times? No thanks.

Every bit of encouragement I receive, being in the company of friends, speaking to people I care about on the phone, getting some mundane task off my to-do list - just having a nice day - I am thankful for but more often than not, none of these things I find rewarding, joyful and satisfying could in any way be considered exciting.

Just something to remember the next time a bit of “excitement” comes your way... excitement is rarely a good thing and better left to others.

Sandy ass.

via Flckr


I got an email from Brian, just an amazing photo of a sand sculpture - I found it very difficult to tell whether it was real or not. I got to thinking and I would venture the poor bastard who is so incredibly talented as to sculpt this probably has a hard time rubbing two nickels together trying just to survive. I could be wrong but, doesn’t life seem to work that way? More the pity.

Check out the photographer’s Liberoliber’s photostream for yourself (he’s not the sculptor) - some beautiful work.

Ironic.

I was looking around for something to do with another post (which will be up later) and as a result of my searching, I came across the Jump The Shark thread for the Bugs Bunny Road Runner show.

One of the reasons cited for the show jumping the shark was networks’ concern about the violence inherent in all the old Warner Brothers cartoons and how much wound up being edited out. It got me thinking, nothing in any old cartoon could begin to compare to what a kid is able to get his hands on with something like Grand Theft Auto.

Given the choice between the two, I wish they would bring back the unedited cartoons.

Yes Virginia, there will be a transit strike.

New York transit authorities and union leaders held last-ditch talks on Thursday against a midnight deadline to avert a subway and bus strike the city's mayor says could cost $400 million a day.

“There has been no progress whatsoever,” Transport Workers Union chief Roger Toussaint told a news conference eight hours before the contract with the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) was set to expire at 12:01 a.m. (0501 GMT) on Friday.

And you know what... there should be.

A lot of people will probably balk at such a comment but, before you do try and remember a few things.

A few years back, the MTA pointedly told the public it was facing a historic, looming budget deficit. The MTA used said deficit as an excuse to raise transit fares across the board. Then, it turned out that MTA had engaged in some very creative accounting and had in fact a rather large budget surplus. Amazingly, even though the deficit was the main justification for a fare hike, the discovery of a budget surplus didn’t mean the MTA would roll back fares.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is facing a crisis of credibility. In just a few days, subway and bus riders will be hit with the largest fare hike in history. Earlier this year, when talk of a fare hike was growing, I urged the MTA to delay consideration of an increase and open its books – so all New Yorkers could know if such an increase was necessary.

Why should they? They already got approval to raise fares no need to give back money they’ve already gotten.

Now, we’re the riding public - MTA’s customers. The MTA is supposed to be a public agency with the interests of the public inherent in their charter. It would stand to reason, that they wouldn’t be running a business for profit but, then there’s that tricky little part about a budget surplus. The point I’m working at is this, if the MTA is dishonest with the riding public about their books, if management doesn’t come clean with the very people whose interests they were formed to protect, is there a reason to believe they would be more open and honest with their employees?

While we’re talking about those employees, let’s take a moment to remember a few other things. The subway (and buses) run better now than at any time in recent memory. Why would all the credit for that be laid at the feet of the managers of the agency and not the employees? Why wouldn’t you give credit to the people who spend their lives operating, maintaining, cleaning and servicing the public? Is their contribution any less significant than the people who are in charge?

There’s been a long period in this country where organized labor has taken a series of hits, as if organized labor was somehow a hinderance or a problem. Of course, it would be foolish to fail to recognize the abuses that have occurred within the organized labor movement and corruption of various union organizations through the years. Still, organized labor and unions are responsible for some very beneficial actions taking place for the American worker. This is not the zero-sum game management shills would have you believe - while I was writing that the thought flashed through my mind you might swipe out management for Republican but I think this goes beyond the two party system.

Gas prices go up, milk prices go up, corporate robber barons abscond with bigger and bigger windfalls and in the meantime, American workers are expected to work longer hours, shoulder more and more of the expense of their own medical benefits and fund retirement without the benefit of pensions. Corporations demand loyalty and fealty on a one way street, expecting employees to live, breathe, eat, sleep and die for their jobs only to be discarded like an obsolete piece of equipment when they break down.

I hope the transit workers do strike and I hope they win - the pendulum in our country needs to swing back in the other direction (towards the American worker) because it’s been swinging towards managements’ side for far too long.

Just for fun.

The interactive NYC transit map - just hours of aimless fun for geeks like me.

A Santa to be proud of!


click on the above image to see the NY Post story.


“Christmas has religious origins. It’s in the Bible. Santa is not in the Bible. He’s not a religious symbol. Santa Claus has become a piece of Americana,” Krupnik explained yesterday.

...and Mr. Krupnik is dead on with this one and as a Christian I have absolutely no problem with it! The whole commercialization of the holiday has gotten way out of control with ornaments and store display being put up right after Halloween. The only thing that gives me pause is I’m afraid it will spark anti semetic remarks from those who object to the display but, for my money Mr. K is spot on!

from Gawker:

The New York Post has a field day with the macabre Christmas display in front of an 18th St. brownstone, delighting in Yuletide puns like “’tis the season to be creepy” “Christmas jeer” and “ho ho....no!” But hm, a closer look reveals that the placement of the “BAD SANTA” block lettering is covering up an integral part of the display... doll’s head, check; bloody St. Nick, check; large curling snakelike phallus, cleverly obscured by a well-placed headline. Oh, NYP, you ARE a coy one, aren't you?

Wrong profession?

I should have become a proctologist because it sure seems like I spend most of my life dealing with assholes.

Just sayin’.

100,000 Iraqis died because of the war.

About a year ago, a study estimated the number of Iraqi casualties since the war began. It came up with a number – 100,000 dead – that was higher than any other estimate, and was mostly ignored. This week, Alex Blumberg revisits that study to look at the reality behind it. In Act One he reports that not only is the study probably accurate, but it says that most of the deaths were caused by Coalition forces (despite concerted efforts to avoid civilian casualties). In Act Two, we hear U.S. forces trying to cope in the aftermath of some of those deaths.

Prologue. We're a nation at war, but it hardly feels like it. That contrast is especially jarring for people like Hannah Allam, who just returned home to Oklahoma after two years in Baghdad running the Knight-Ridder Newspapers bureau there. Ira talks with Hannah, and Army Captain Chuck Ziegenfuss about what it feels like to come home from a war that nobody's paying much attention to.

Another episode of This American Life - certainly worth a listen. (requires RealAudio)

Appealing to me on so many levels.

I have a link up on the sidebar to Masuimi Max who is a fetish model of some note. The fetish model thing appeals to me although I am much chagrined to admit it. I imagine it goes back to the days of watching those Bettie Paige loops on channel J. Something about the page boy haircuts and the outfits... ah, but I digress.

The point I had wanted to make was that I really like the design of her site a great deal. If you can get by the fetish model thing as content, I have to say it’s really a beautiful site and worth checking out. Whoever worked on the design of the site has a love of those old 50’s movie posters and it shows. Lots of good color and type selection. Take a look but not if semi clad women offend.

Look here.

On another note, as I eventually get around to setting the Flckr account up - maybe I’ll even wind up posting the photos I took of NetMichelle from the session I shot at MoSex.

The ball and the wall.

So, I went up to visit the EYOC today - this after the longest break I’ve taken from him in over a decade, a whopping 10 days! Imagine if you will for a second - I haven’t taken that kind of break from the care and feeding of the EYOC in that long a period of time.

After the hell that was Thanksgiving week and being up there 3 times making sure he wasn’t alone on the holiday, I needed a bit of a break myself. There’s just a limit to how much you can go, go, go all the time and being in crisis mode for a period of two months wears on you. So, most of last week was just spent doing maintenance. It sounds so mundane but, very, very necessary.

I kept meaning to get up for a visit but, when all was said and done I figured if anything truly bad was happening I would know. In the interim, things were stable - I imagine it was the calm before the storm, why not take advantage of it.

Without droning on about the visit which was generally uneventful, although I was glad to learn there are other people visiting, the truly unique thing was what happened afterward. Once again it was a reminder of just how necessary it is to always have the camera (and damned if I didn’t and was cursing myself afterward).

The facility where EYOC has been spending his time lies between what could be called bedroom communities and the true rural part of the state. It’s developed to be sure but, there are swaths of woods here and there. One such swath surrounds most of the facility which has a fairly large campus and a good deal of undeveloped land.

So, as I’m walking back to the car, I see a flash of movement along the pavement making it’s way towards the sanctuary of the parked vehicles. As I get closer, I can see just the other side of the fence is a beautiful long haired tabby, big fluffy tail and all looking for all the world perfectly in place in the snow dusted woods. I call to the cat (like I do to all kitties) but, to no avail - like lots of felines it’s a bit wary of strangers and although it stops to see where the call is coming from there isn’t any sign of heeding my call, instead just insuring there isn’t any pursuit.

Well, a cat running away in and of itself isn’t ever really much to talk about. Pretty cat and all that in picturesque surroundings but that’s about it. No, what made this interesting was the youngish doe off to the side out in the same woods not that much farther out from where the kitty was (maybe about 50 feet or so).

Watching the doe take sudden interest in the small cat and track the cat’s progress through the woods with great interest was something to watch. The movement had caught the doe’s eye and she hesitantly made her way closer, quietly shadowing the cats’ steps through the woods. It was like watching domesticated nature come into contact with wild nature. Nothing earth-shattering, just something that was really fun to watch in the dim afternoon sun of a cold December day.

Georgie Junior gives James Buchanan a run for his money?!?

Just was reading this rather interesting article and thought I would pass it along...

He was the guy who in 1861 passed on the mess to the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln. Buchanan set the standard, a tough record to beat. But there are serious people who believe that George W. Bush will prove to do that, be worse than Buchanan. I have talked with three significant historians in the past few months who would not say it in public, but who are saying privately that Bush will be remembered as the worst of the presidents.

Just think, three more years to secure that place in history - just lovely!

Fuzzy logic.

I purchased a monitor awhile back:



I’ve got a couple of monitors around the house here - some I’ve had for over a decade if you can believe it and they are still useful. Specifically the ones that come to mind are my old SuperMac monitor and this B/W jobbie I picked up from a client a few years back. I could still use the things if I chose to so I keep them around with the thought one day I will run a small program on them and use the things for video kiosks.

The monitor above is a La Cie Electron Blue IV - 19". I got it at the same time I purchase a Sony G400. I had gotten another Sony monitor for the tower and figured on matching it with a slightly smaller one. The La Cie I obtained was for use with the laptop. I have a docking station for the laptop and I actually find myself using it more than the desktop just because I’ve gotten into the habit. I just slide the laptop into its dock and I have the luxury of having a larger screen along with the laptop’s built in screen.

The laptop was a gift from the ex and it was one of (if not) the best gifts I ever got. In the years since I received it, I’ve gone through a few hard drives (they don’t really talk about wear and tear when they’re selling you on a laptop) but overall I’ve been really happy with the thing. I’m the kind of guy who doesn’t have a problem maxing out something to get the most you can out of it especially when it comes to computers. I’ve put memory into the laptop and maxed it out, got external drives hooked up to the thing and even this external monitor.

Well, getting back to the monitor. I will never, I MEAN NEVER buy another La Cie product ever again after the experience I have had with the thing. It has to be about the most finicky monitor I have ever had. Every so often the screen just fuzzes up - there’s no rhyme nor reason to it, it just happens. I’ll be working away and all of a sudden the picture will just go on me.

Here’s the rub though - turn the thing off and then on again, and the picture will clear up... sometimes. Sometimes it will take a few tries, sometimes you just have to leave the thing off for awhile. I wrote the tech support people at LaCie and they wrote back telling me I had something by the monitor that was screwing it up - speakers, a hard drive - something far too close which was causing the magnetic field on the thing to go all screwy.

So, I move everything as far as I can from the damn monitor.

No change.

I now have the thing over on a corner of the desk as physically far as possible from anything which might cause interference but it still craps out. I’m just about to toss the thing in the garbage although part of me just wants to take a hammer to it to vent my frustration before I throw the damn thing out. I’ve got a few smaller Sony monitors around I’m not currently using and even though the screen size is a bit smaller I’m at wits end.

Never will I buy another La Cie piece of crap again.