End of the regular season report on my NFL picks against the spread:
I was about 29 points off the pace but still I'm pretty happy with my showing this season. Out of a million-plus entries I can live with a rank of 19,815. 86% correct picks is very good. If I'd been using real money I actually think I would have done better because in the final four weeks I have a tendency to pick who I WANT to win rather than sticking with who I think will win. It's a superstition wherein I believe I create certain results by my picks. You're welcome New York Giants.
I always feel a little down on the first day of the year and this year was no exception. One gets a little breather as the old year ends and then bang! the new year is already underway; in fact, I have just slept through many hours of it.
And this year is really going to be an ugly, racist bastard. I'm not the kind who can just ignore everything they call "the social construction of reality"-- I can operate parallel to it, I guess, but I still can't achieve total oblivion.
I found two quotes that describe this feeling. One from GK Chesterton:
Like any man, he was coward enough to fear great force; but he was not quite coward enough to admire it.
and this one from Samuel Beckett, with a weird pre-echo of a familiar American voice:
Then the gnashing ends, or it goes on, and one is in the pit, in the hollow, the longing for longing gone, the horror of horror, and one is in the hollow, at the foot of all the hills at last, the ways down, the ways up, and free, free at last, for an instant free at last, nothing at last.
I went to my first NBA game in a really long time. There was no team in New Mexico and prior to that I missed out on seeing the Bullets, Knicks, Warriors and Bulls (Clippers and 76'ers, too, I've been reminded...) on numerous occasions. I just figured I'd always get another chance to go so I could afford to pass. I preferred to keep working. I had that attitude to a lot of things but not now. Anyways, Denver Nuggets looked pretty good and I'm going to go to as many games as I have the money to go to. I can definitely be a Nuggets fan.
Looking forward to the Giants v Cowboys on Sunday night, winner goes to the playoffs. Eli Manning is 8-5 all-time against the Cowboys. Even better is that Eli Manning is 4-1 against any team wherein the brothers Ryan are employed as coaches. His only loss came in 2004 (rookie season) against the Baltimore Ravens where Rex Ryan was the defensive line coach at the time.
I am a vestigial Giants fan from having lived there during the Phil Simms era-- but my real team (since 70s and childhood) is the Oakland Raiders. They are playing San Diego, whilst Denver and Kansas City play one another. If Denver loses and Oakland wins Raiders make the playoffs. Also, as you may know, The Chiefs will have Kyle Orton at QB. He was released by Denver after Tim Tebow took over the starting job.
A recap of this week's top announcements includes this piece from the Howling Hex website about a show in Denver, CO on January 25th, 2012, at the Larimar Lounge, 2721 Larimer Street:
I fixate on 'models' or 'forms' too quickly. I always rush to create categories from first observations. I could spend my time imagining 100 better appliances than the latest technology but I could never create it. Being amongst those who rush to be the first users of each new technology, just being in that crowd, is as close as I'll ever get to articulating whatever conception I might have of an amazing and surpassing appliance.
It's that shared humanity that has converted these appliances to innovations. For such things our reaction beseems the moment as it is truly a gesture of respect for whatever it is that we each, personally, venerate most highly. It could be love, strength, the recognition of simultaneous desire, or a future where imagination reigns.
I know this all depends on who gets to market under just the right circumstances &c. and who most controls those circumstances. Even with so much effort going into control, even if I've been limited over time to recognize only 3 or 4 forms, being always able to gather in this way is something I would fight for.
When I see people who are incredibly drunk or high do things that are crazy or dangerous, talk their way out of fights they instigated or ride on the roof of a car on a highway, I get impressed by it in a jolly sort of way. However, when I did things like that I just felt terrible at the time, like I had a death wish, and I felt really bad the next day when I remembered what I had done.
Once we were on tour in Europe and a friend of mine had 3 bottles of red wine, a pasta casserole and a chunk of hash. Back at the hotel after a while they got up off the floor and started heaving into the bathtub-- tub all filled with red and food &c. It was funny as fuck. I liked the person even more after having witnessed this, we'd shared a hilarious moment. They were not pleased, though, they didn't like everyone laughing and they were sick all of the next day. We had such high esteem for them but we were connected in only a primitive way that technology has since corrected.
They had a reference to the wikipedia entry on Bon Jovi in "American Dad" and if you notice the much higher bar on that day in the following chart of wiki-stats you'll conclude that interest in Bon Jovi jumped on that day.
For Catholics, 15-20 December are days of Feria. These are days when people, especially slaves, are not obliged to work, there are no ecclesiastical court sessions and no saint's day is required to be celebrated.
The 1895 schism between the laws of rugby union and rugby league football is temporarily lifted, kids play tiddley-winks with the bones of Saint Boniface of Dokkum, every movie theater in America shows a triple-bill of "Tomb Raider," "Prince of Persia," and "Resident Evil: Afterlife" at three in the afternoon, surgery for corns is traditionally discounted by 20% on days of Feria.
On days of Feria it is legal to jailbreak your neighbor's iPhone yet it is forbidden to consume Spinnenkäse, a cheese made from quark and produced using the action of cheese mites. On days of Feria South Padre Island is closed to men so that women can sunbath freely but tanning beds throughout 17 states are legally required to serve only men over the age of 60. On the first day of the Winter Feria, registration for the Santa Elena International Pageant of the Flowers opens while nominations for the Dutton Animal Book Award close.
On days of Feria your lucky numbers will be: 15, 16, 28, 33, 38, 23. Amicalola Falls State Park will be closed. Production of natural sweetgums will commence. Stark white, decadent red, deep orange, and sage green are the colors of Feria.
Rodrigo Christian likes "Lord of the Rings," "Farmville" and "Journey" this week...he, like an image, says nothing yet sometime a'fears he will do a desperate outrage...the 4 top-selling hotdog brands in the USA are Oscar-Mayer, Ball Park, Vienna Pure Beef Hot Dogs and Hebrew National...if you go to a chain book store this season, and you're near the "Twilight" section do me a favor and move around some Jacob Black stuff to cover up any pictures of Edward cuz werewolves rule...the saying should be "it COSTS money to make money"...genius Rommney is using 1920s KKK Slogan "Keep America American" as campaign slogan...I like the NY Giants' WR Victor Cruz he does the little things well and he works hard, much as you'd expect from an undrafted free agent in his second season...you would rather have a single mom going to school online while she watches her kid and not be forced to work some sh&t job at Burger King while hardly seeing her kid...nothing spells desperation like five phone calls a day...I started my fasting on the 1st and ended it on the 9th I was so tired and fell asleep then in my dream I saw a very Huge and High white pillar talking to me saying: "WELCOME YOU TO THE TALUKKALAR POWER REALMS"...did you know "The Smurfs" is still in theaters?
I've been meaning to write about this show Bones for a while but it has been hard to get my head around it. The closest description I can come to is that it basically takes place in a simulated reality much like Time Out of Joint by PKD with the same sort of underlying premise.
So, there's this brain damaged young woman, the titular "Bones," who believes she is a super special bone scientist, world renown crime fiction writer and multi-millionaire. She works at a place that doesn't exist in a reconstructed version of Washington, DC. She works at "The Jeffersonian" and she is surrounded by agents who pretend to be Federal Investigators and Forensic Scientists but since she has the social awareness and intellect of a child the simulation doesn't have to go very far to achieve a level of veracity which completely subsumes her consciousness.
Every week they lay out a kind of murder mystery for her and she parades around in her brain damaged way using her magic-science to divine the perpetrator by examining human bones. Her handlers push her this way and that with their various additional "specialities" like portrait drawing or entomology. Their personalities are constructed so as to keep "Bones" herself limited to a particular set of personality traits which she needs to define and maintain her individuality.
If, for example, she needs a Chronoprint depicted in Interactive Holography she demands it from one of her assistants who specializes in such non-existent technology. In the next scene that exact infantile fantasy of medical analysis has always been invented and everyone stands around it and it gives them some crucial information. If Bones sits in on a police interrogation it plays out like a half-remembered scene from a very early "Law and Order" episode, one with Paul Sorvino in it, something she fell asleep to in the hospital when she was a child and near death with a fever that destroyed most of her brain.
They never reveal what important information they are truly getting out of Bones by trapping her in this simulated reality. I like to imagine that the choices she makes in order to solve the false cases generate numerical coordinates that help monitor the path of a dark matter cloud that is heading towards Earth. Only her savant-driven 7th Sense can see and track it.
For bonus fun I like to imagine that David Boreanaz (he plays the pretend FBI agent) is in reality still Angel (from the eponymous TV show and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer") but no one else knows he's a vampire. He has infiltrated this operation in order to help keep the universe in balance or whatever.
Ultimately the show Bones is about what kind of show I, as a part of a computer simulation, would need to see to keep me from recognizing that I live in a simulated universe while simultaneously giving me the uncanny and uncomfortable feeling that I myself could be living in a simulated universe.
I was doing some mixing a couple days ago and afterwards we were hanging out with some pizza etc. The question was posed as to which relationship was worse, more full of horror etc: Ronnie and Phil Spector OR Ike and Tina Turner?
I guess I immediately jumped to an outlying approach in order to say Ronnie Spector's situation was worse because although Tina Turner's was an inhuman and terrible situation I felt the fear could have even been compounded in Ronnie Spector's case since she had in a sense been shown the Ace, the prophecy that Diana Ross was meant to fulfill so to speak; she was shown a possibility that was constantly under threat of being snatched away.
Whereas, Tina Turner would have had no expectations that she should have been treated fairly in any way, or celebrated for her genius in the United States during the time she was coming up. That is, I said, I highly doubt that Ed Sullivan would have given a second thought if he'd seen a make-up padded black eye on Tina Turner-- whereas if Mama Cass had a sad look on her face he'd be all concerned etc.
Today I was thinking about it some more and then I thought I was totally wrong, just talking smoke-- and why were we sitting around comparing misery like that, anyway? Gee whiz, what gave us the detachment to utter such things? In my defense, I get a real endorphin high from work; that plus the pizza probably helped.
Saint Lucy was an important figure in the Church by December, 1337. Citations of her feast day are seen as early as 1209.
In 1330 it is recorded that a young woman with lights and sweets gets mounted in her rectory. Traditionally the ceremony involved one girl wearing a crown of Scandinavian ancestry made of candles.
In the 16th Century the tradition was revived by French Republican winners of the Battle of The Saints, and because of that battle slaves were free. A short time later, between the wealthy plantations laboring under the guillotine and a shortage of pine wood which was used to burn part of the island a revolutionary tribunal was sent to restore order to Saint Lucy's Day.
Q: I'm trying to branch out from making money into finding a woman. I do acoustical testing on speaker enclosures that are used to amplify measuring instruments in the mining industry. I have a car.
A: You really want to impress a woman? I see you are down on damn near everything. Take her out, buy her drinks, buy nice trivialities.
A lot of women are golddiggers and sometimes it happens quickly if guys put women on the back burner she'll find a man who will pay her way, even if she isn't even up for it.
Or how about getting your paper up?-- buy little gifts for her-- but it gets expensive. So it might mean you have to not worry about getting women, worry about getting prioritized. Along the way you will meet some more important girl who is also trying to get successful.
You can finally buy that car that you want. Don't worry about getting women, worry about starting up with a woman who has money, she can pay for all her own trivialities.
many individuals could contribute
to all that authors a child
in the guidance for the children
in the richness of childhood
in the formation of the adult
and served in the kitchens
and all places are alike
and lost therein and cast away
by the ocean wave
stay in the circle
with those children holding hands
It was a bad idea which we distinctly did not order.
With our game faces and pounding fists.
The idea was a beached jellyfish.
I'll be beating the first here to say that was more fun.
Kindness can't be confused nor newly to blame for the unhinged times.
Dollar after dollar to unhinge perceptions but leave us understand it is the source of it which is not real.
But even such an amazing source as...?
Not real.
Lyric from Sweet Lucy (by Michael Hurley): When we left, it was cold/ each other's hands we had to hold.
I was always in love with the GTO Miss Lucy. She died of AIDS in 1991. So I've been in love with a dead woman for 20 years. She ran a rancid boutique in 200 Motels. God, that is fucking depressing.
How many people can be seen falling down in the opening sequence of A Hard Day's Night? I counted 3, two were Ringo and George. And then there's one anonymous person who falls down as the crowd runs into the train station. So no real omens there.
I noticed that the homeless girl had a new pair of boots yesterday. Wonder how she got them? First thing I think is: she broke down and asked her parents for some $$$$. I just "pretend" think that, I don't really want to really know. I had a pack of cigarettes to give away but I couldn't find her so I gave it to someone else.
If you have been following indie music for the last couple decades you probably know who is Gerard Croiset. After he made his fortune promoting such underground bands as Nuggledump and The Parch Divide into well-known stars his financial success allowed him to pursue world travel and invest in real estate. He dedicated himself to exotic hobbies like cultivating orchids and plants linked to witchcraft such as: monkshood, wolfbane, blue datura, peyote, cannabis and snakeroot.
"Snakeroot" is a common slang name for Rauwolfia Serpentina. It contains Reserpine, an indole alkaloid administered for the relief of psychotic symptoms. The actual, officially recognized name of Snakeroot is applied to a different plant entirely, Ageratina Altissima, which is known by the common slang names White Sanicle or Tall Boneset. It is a poisonous herb.
We must be careful in this regard. Do not confuse Snakewood with "Snakewood". Is it true to survive we all need to be much like Gerard Croiset? Can we be an Argus 24-hours-a-day, to some degree, to be an alert watchful guardian whether we're watching music or two herbs with the same nickname, one of which is poisonous? That is Argus, by the way-- mark that, it is not to be confused with Argosy. Argosy was the first American pulp magazine, it started about 1896.
When it comes to taste we don't much care for intruders. Exactly for reasons never explained our society has been remaining through the passing centuries and never conquered. Also, they don't much explains how to find a valley untouched by the passing centuries. Time is still ruled by descendants of Rodwin yet neither Ruth nor Godwin is ruled by descendants. Will our mind (or, as it is commmonly known, The Metal Monster) find such a place in the midst of traveling? Ah! But there is someone to help us: The Argus!-- or The Guardians who can be like The Metal Monsters, the guys who go out there and take the heat from the crowd. And god bless them I didn't know what I thought or wasn't sure about how I felt until they let me know.
Another show that I've been really enjoying-- since the beginning (even)-- is "Workaholics." Don't know what to say, just like the humor and the way the three guys interact. The kids give me hope for the future of this country. Also, I always like these kinds of shows and stories about groups of male friends, like "The Hangover" or "Office Space" or "Half Baked" &c.
This is because I've never really had close friends like that. I've literally always been doing music. If ever I had made some friends-- like, say, from my basketball team, sooner or later I'd try to get everybody to start a band. Just really irritating and desperate. Yes, I have all of the bossy, cold, aloof pretensions of Ders plus the annoying side of Blake minus Blake's sweetness, empathy and excessive masturbation. Sad. But it is nice to see all the bad sides reconfigured into these three friends in such a way that makes me feel like I could have been an OK dude if things had gone in another direction.
Another cool thing about the show is that the theme song for "Workaholics" is "Jock Box" by The Skinny Boys. Here are the Skinny Boys with "Rip the Cut"--->
Great music brings an oblivion that can't be seen, can't be described-- but it always ends and the remnant glow of that experience should be applied pragmatically to the material world, rather than serve as a source of addictive escapism, a hit that needs to be chased while the rest of life glides by.
The Skinny Boys were influenced by the much more prominent hip hop pioneers The Fat Boys; The Human Jock Box was influenced by The Fat Boys' member Human Beat Box.
Skinny guys often have a difficult time building muscle. You may have been deemed "scrawny" by others or even used the words when describing yourself. One of the quickest ways for you to shed your skinny-boy image is to bulk up your chest to add shape to your upper body.
I'm not what you'd call a zombie/slasher movie fanatic. I'm not into "Saw" or "The Joshua Tree" or "Dead Snow" or "House of Wax" or what have you. What I am a fan of is addictive tv shows where a story gets dragged out for 40 minutes once a week and you can't stop watching. After avoiding it for over a year I finally started watching "The Walking Dead" and it is very addictive.
A lot has been written already about the show, a lot of speculative and wondrous pieces have been written about the meaning of this show. For me, I think the most beautiful lesson one can take away from the metaphor of a show like this is DO NOT get caught down in the South during a zombie apocalypse. Beyond the obvious dangers of the zombies themselves you've got to contend with gas guzzling RVs, hunting accidents, crossbows, wife-beaters, racist meth addicts, and people wanting to have "fish frys" all the time. You're likely to wind up camped on some plantation somewheres getting ordered about by Colonel Sanders while your group gets picked off one-by-one. Not to mention the awful humidity.
Oh, fatal day - oh, day of sorrow,
It was no trouble she could borrow;
But in the future she could see
The clouds of infelicity.
I really liked the scene where T-dog was getting cigs out of the glove compartment of a wrecked car and he looked at the child seat in the back that had a little duckie rattle on it and it was all lightly splattered in blood and brains. That was scary and sad. I like the show a lot but it does tend to creep along at a real slow pace, not unlike one of their own lurching zombies, what they call walkers. And overall, however, sometimes the writing can be a little sloppy:
"I'm wearing my wedding ring," said Rick with abandon.
"They chewed both of Amy's legs up all the way to the ankles," said Andrea defeatedly.
"I might as well be dead," Otis croaked.
In wild grace he meets her and holds her briefly. The woman, being an illegitimate child, has been exiled and lives a feral life far from the death sentence which awaits her. Full of shame, he turns her in to the church.
Then follows a lengthy story about being exiled in the forest. That story is flooded with atmosphere while doing little to move along the main plot. But as he hears the story at first he is relieved that The Devil prevented her final repentance but then he finds out The Devil is the woman that he had raped, not her.
This is an important development for it is this telling that prevents her truthful repentance at the hands of the tortured nuns.
He is entranced by The Devil telling this lengthy story. Then that story is exiled and lives a feral life far from the plot. He searches for a more romantic plot in which he had not raped. This is an important development. But there arises nothing more than a brief, sinful meeting and an illegitimate child. He has set out to meet her, has done so, but only ends by holding her bleeding in the forest, again.
He has a monk find out that The Devil is the woman he is entranced by. The Devil claims that there does exist a lengthy romantic plot in which, in truth, he had not raped. But her forced repentance at the hands of the tortured nuns prevented this final telling.
Unacceptable noises. We do not plan to mention them, chiefly because they are unmentionable, but you all know what they are. At any rate, these are noises that are acknowledged by neither the noisemaker nor the noise recipient, because socially they do not exist. In the case of a fart, there is a conspiracy amongst us all that it simply never happened.
If we were at a party and a woman slipped and fell and got food all over herself should she just be ignored, the same way as if she'd farted? Any time you do a trick like that without exposing your boobs you will be hissed at until you flash them animals or leave with shame.
Any time you pull a trick like that without understanding that you're exposing everything it is clear you do not plan to mention them, these unacceptable noises. We noise recipients are also unmentionable, socially we do not exist.
And that's the difference between farts and accidents.
