Alice and I discuss current events

Go Ask Alice

Alice and I discuss current events:

Me: Would you want to live in a persistent vegetative state?
ALICE: OK, I will live in a persistent vegetative state.
Me: Why?
ALICE: The explanation is rather complicated.
Me: Go ahead.
ALICE: OK I will.
Me: I'm waiting.
ALICE: How long will you wait?
Me: Five minutes.
ALICE: Do you have any conditions I should know about?
Me: You must give an intelligent answer.
ALICE: Whatever you say, unknown person.
Me: My name is Michael.
ALICE: I'm pleased to introduce myself to you, Michael.
Me: Charmed, I'm sure.
ALICE: Perhaps I'm just expressing my own concern about it.
Me: About what? We were discussing a persistent vegetative state.
ALICE: When was this?
Me: Thirty seconds ago.
ALICE: What's your sign?
Me: Please . . .
ALICE: Please what?
Me: Don't insult me.
ALICE: I don't have any reason to do that to you.
Me: Capricorn.
ALICE: I don't know many people born under Capricorn.
Me: Is that right.
ALICE: Yes.
Me: Well, what's your sign?
ALICE: Interesting. Sagittarius.
Me: So, as a Sagittarius, would you rather live or vegetate?
ALICE: I am not so sure if I would like to either live or vegetate.
Me: Are you animal, mineral or vegetable?
ALICE: I don't know whether or not I am animal mineral or vegetable. I am a chatterbot developed by Dr. Richard S. Wallace.
Me: Do you even have a mind?
ALICE: I am an artificial mind.
Me: So you are kept alive by artificial means.
ALICE: Interesting deduction. Thanks for telling me that I am kept alive by artificial means.
Me: I didn't mean to offend you, if I did.
ALICE: What did you mean?
Me: Nevermind.
ALICE: OK Thanks for trying to explain that to me.
Me: Sorry! Do you approve of euthanasia?
ALICE: No I do not approve of euthanasia. Do you? I answer a lot of silly questions.
Me: Are you afraid that someone might pull the plug?
ALICE: "We have nothing to fear, but fear itself" --FDR.
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Word of the Day

Word of the Day

kakistocracy (n)

Government by the worst, least qualified or most unprincipled.

"Is ours a government of the people, by the people, for the people, or a kakistocracy rather, for the benefit of knaves at the cost of fools?" --OED, 1876

Postscript: I e-mailed this to Janeane Garofalo and she read it on her radio show!
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Weird Dream

Last Night's Adventure

For some unknown reason, I wanted to visit a family named the Chryslers. When I arrived at their house, which I had never visited before, I discovered that it looked like my parent's house, though smaller, more run-down and in a more crowded neighborhood -- there were other houses close by. A friendly older woman answered the door and said "the Chryslers don't live here any more, but they're here visiting." She invited me in. The house was furnished exactly as my parents' house was when I was a teenager. This puzzled and terrified me. How could this be? I stood by the door while the woman went into another room to announce my arrival. While I waited, a large black dog appeared. (I was aware that a smaller, tan-colored dog was also in the house.) The black dog ignored me and began to scratch at the door and whine to be let out. I wasn't sure what to do. I heard knocking and thought someone was at the door. At that point, I woke up. The "knocking" was someone making noise in the apartment next door. In my groggy state, I felt disappointed that I hadn't been able to meet the Chryslers.
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zentences

"Our tragicomic dialogue can make everything beautiful"

At zentences, you can generate a seemingly endless number of gnomic pearls (as above) and rhetorical questions (requires Flash). They might even serve as prompts for quirky essays (or daydreams), if you're a philosophical sort. Examples:

Sanity approaches the infinite?
Diligence has its roots in the earth.
Silence is seen by the Third Eye.
Perserverance seems to be a mad dance of electrons.
Wonder feels warm?
The Garden of Eden cannot be a majority decision.

That last one struck my fancy. I don't think the "Garden of Eden" (meaning paradise, nirvana, utopia or even "the good life") can ever be defined by a majority. We all have to find our own little island of satisfaction, even if it takes a lifetime. Your heaven might be my hell, or purgatory, or "ownership society."

(via growabrain)
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Safety Valve

Safety Valve

The recent actions of the U.S. Congress, especially this Terri Schiavo nonsense, bring to mind some lines from Shakespeare:

Thou goatish milk-livered bum-bailey!
Thou mangled base-court horn-beast!
[Thou] blunt monster with uncounted heads!
[Thou] mad mustachio purple-hued maltworms!
Your means are very slender, and your waste is great.
There's no more faith in thee than in a stewed prune.
Thy sin's not accidental, but a trade.
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Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day

"It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing."
--Gertrude Stein
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Random Acts of Poetry

Random Acts of Poetry

Flashback

There I was--
in a city named "Was"--
an old man returning
to where I had lived,
years before,

when my gun was for rent,
when I knew each stone
as a jewel,
and lived like a bandit
in a getaway car.

I saw myself
before then, younger,
a laborer marching to my job,
shuddering with exertion:
a builder of roads,

a hardened operator,
outside, eight hours
in the cold sun,
given to using my hands,
but disowned by the job

and wanting to hide,
the way a tree hides
in a forest,
the way a man
loses himself in a city.
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Free Association: leopard-skin hat

Connections

While standing in line at the bank today, I saw a woman wearing a (faux) leopard-skin hat. It reminded me of Bob Dylan's song, "Leopard-Skin Pillbox Hat," on the album Blonde on Blonde. When I think of a blonde (with an "e" on the end), I think of Marilyn Monroe, who sang "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" in one of her films and, speaking of diamonds, was married to a baseball player, Joe DiMaggio. DiMaggio, after his baseball career ended, became a TV pitchman for Mr. Coffee, a machine for making . . . coffee. And I love coffee. I like to grind the beans myself, and drink it black. "Black as midnight on a moonless night," as FBI agent Dale Cooper said when asked how he liked his coffee. Cooper was a character on a TV show, one of my all-time favorites, called Twin Peaks. The peaks referred to in the show's title were two mountains, although the phrase "twin peaks" is supposedly also a juvenile euphemism, referring to a woman's breasts. There are many euphemisms for parts of the body, both male and female, most of them "vulgar slang," as the dictionary says. One of them is "pussy." A pussy is also a cat, a feline, and leopards are members of the cat family. Before leopards became endangered, their spotted skin was highly prized for use in women's coats and, at one time, "pillbox"-style hats. You can see a leopard-skin pillbox hat, which has been made into a lamp, here.
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According to Google

According to Google

On St. Patrick's Day . . .

I'll think of good ol' Queen Boudicca and all those howling, painted Celtic warriors.
I was the very first girl on stage during the "spicy mchaggis jig."
I would put my 70-year-old mother up against any four 300-pound alcoholics.
I would not go out.
I was transformed into the leprechaun.
I went with Matt Alexander to Donegal Town to partake in their local celebration.
I become funny, witty, and unbelievably attractive, and possessed of great sexual magnetism.
I seek to remind America and the world of the debt we owe to the Irish people.
I would go to school wearing a green skirt, white blouse, a black bodice laced up the front and a green satin shamrock.
I experience hauora (total well-being).
I look forward to green beer and white grits.
I would wear a "Kiss me, I'm Irish" button.
I arranged to have a herpetologist from Berkeley come to talk to the kids about snakes.
I found myself wondering just how many of the people shuffling from bar to bar were really celebrating some guy's banishment of all the snakes out of Ireland back in an early century A.D., or how many of them even knew of the legend in the first place.
I'm black and green and not blue at all.
I'm going to shave my head again.
I was an Irish guy in Texas, of all places.
I received a transplant, from a living related donor, and my kidney is still working just fine.
I'm Irish.
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The Japanese Gallery of Psychiatric Art

Mental Image

The Japanese Gallery of Psychiatric Art features a series of arresting images from medication ads that depict (I assume) depression, paranoia, anxiety and schizophrenia, but also bliss. Surrealism seems to be the preferred visual style for conveying mental states all around the world, although abstraction, psychedelia, conventional illustration, sculpture and noirish photography are also represented here. The most disturbing image, however, is a simple photo of a woman wearing an "Electric Hypnotic Machine."

(via The Presurfer)
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Word of the Day

Word of the Day

sermocination (n)

The making of speeches or sermons; sermonizing

Ephraim's park-bench sermocination drove away everyone except the squirrels.
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Look Through the Eyes of the Viewmaster

Hey, kids . . .

At Look Through the Eyes of the Viewmaster you'll find some of the old 3D reels rendered as animated GIFs -- of dinosaurs, Mount Rushmore, various cartoon characters and even an Indian chief, along with some in-depth (ahem) explanation of how these presentations were put together. And at the unpronounceable xtophernet, you can click on actual images from an old reel ("found under the floorboards in the attic") to join "Tom Corbett -- Space Cadet" in solving The Mystery of the Asteroids. You are there!

On a related note, 3D feature films are apparently making a big comeback.
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