http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/ i am no friend of mine - LiveJournal.com dave@raincannon.com Wed, 08 Jul 2009 05:18:01 GMT LiveJournal / LiveJournal.com shadowofsummer 162820 personal http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/84189731/162820 http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/ 100 100 http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/311084.html Wed, 08 Jul 2009 05:18:01 GMT dave@raincannon.com http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/311084.html Latest comic is taking longer than expected because I appear to have had all the Art punched out of me. Drawing basic things like two people in a room is a daunting Herculean task where I have to redraw every line five times to get it in place. Photoshop isn't helping by refusing to run properly when I have anything else open, because dammit Adobe products need 100% of your processor time, not 95%. This will become a bigger problem tomorrow when I start colouring the thing, because the act of converting one of the greyscale comic pages into RGB immediately makes the machine stutter to a halt and causes long, Kasparov-like pauses between each action.<br /><br />In other news, I finished reading 'The Kite Runner' by Khaled Hosseini today. It's not bad. Not as good as I was led to believe, but not bad. I think a large part of its success is owed to cultural slumming, whereby middle class white intellectual idiots like me read books about other cultures and horrible poverty before fluttering our lashes, cow-like, and imagining that we're somehow attuned to a more noble culture than this horrible Western capitalist materialist society we despise and depend upon so much. The worst part of 'The Kite Runner', without a doubt, is the story's climax in which a story about a weak-willed, shy chap trying to come to terms with never living up to his father's expectations while struggling with the discovery that his father did not live up to his own expectations suddenly takes a left turn and spends three scenes as a Hollywood blockbuster in which astronomical coincidence and cosmic irony draw multiple threads together. It's such a jarringly badly-written plot point that it completely brings you out of the story and destroys the emotional intimacy you've made with the characters.<br />It's not so much Chekov's gun being brought out of the drawer as it is Chekov's desk being bought by someone's uncle while simultaneously an orphan girl who found the key to Chekov's desk drawer grows up and marries the nephew, at which point a wild tiger attacks the nephew only to have him realise that not only is he holding the key, but is standing in his uncle's study, with just enough time to get the gun out of the drawer and shoot the tiger. Well, okay, maybe it's a little less blatant than that, but it's really just an improbability too far to maintain suspension of disbelief.<br /><br />Tomorrow: a new book, and colour for the comic. http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/311084.html public 0 http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/310741.html Thu, 02 Jul 2009 03:56:59 GMT dave@raincannon.com http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/310741.html <div align="center"><img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v230/raincannon/infinitejest.jpg" border="0" title="YEAR OF GLADI am seated in an office, surrounded by heads and bodies. My posture is consciously congruent to the shape of my hard chair. This is a cold room in University Administration, wood-walled, Remington-hung, double-windowed against the November heat, insulated from Administrative sounds by the reception area outside, at which Uncle Charles, Mr. deLint and I were lately received.I am in here.Three faces have resolved into place above summer-weight sportcoats and half-Windsors across a polished pine conference table shiny with the spidered light of an Arizona noon. These are three Deans — of Admissions, Academic Affairs, Athletic Affairs. I do not know which face belongs to whom.I believe I appear neutral, maybe even pleasant, though I_ve been coached to err on the side of neutrality and not attempt what would feel to me like a pleasant expression or smile.I have committed to crossing my legs I hope carefully, ankle on knee, hands together in the lap of my slacks. My fingers are mated into a mirrored series of what manifests, to me, as the letter X. The interview room_s other personnel include: the University_s Director of Composition, its varsity tennis coach, and Academy prorector Mr. A. deLint. C.T. is beside me; the others sit, stand and stand, respectively, at the periphery of my focus. The tennis coach jingles pocket-change. There is something vaguely digestive about the room_s odor. The high-traction sole of my complimentary Nike sneaker runs parallel to the wobbling loafer of my mother_s half-brother, here in his capacity as Headmaster, sitting in the chair to what I hope is my immediate right, also facing Deans.The Dean at left, a lean yellowish man whose fixed smile nevertheless has the impermanent quality of something stamped into uncooperative mate­rial, is a personality-type I_ve come lately to appreciate, the type who delays need of any response from me by relating my side of the story for me, to me. Passed a packet of computer-sheets by the shaggy lion of a Dean at center, he is speaking more or less to these pages, smiling down._You are Harold Incandenza, eighteen, date of secondary-school gradua­tion approximately one month from now, attending the Enfield Tennis Academy, Enfield, Massachusetts, a boarding school, where you reside._ His reading glasses are rectangular, court-shaped, the sidelines at top and bottom. _You are, according to Coach White and Dean [unintelligible], a regionally, nationally, and continentally ranked junior tennis player, a po­tential O.N.A.N.C.A.A. athlete of substantial promise, recruited by Coach White via correspondence with Dr. Tavis here commencing... February of this year._ The top page is removed and brought around neatly to the bot­tom of the sheaf, at intervals. _You have been in residence at the Enfield Tennis Academy since age seven._I am debating whether to risk scratching the right side of my jaw, where there is a wen._Coach White informs our offices that he holds the Enfield Tennis Acad­emy_s program and achievements in high regard, that the University of Ari­zona tennis squad has profited from the prior matriculation of several former E.T.A. alumni, one of whom was one Mr. Aubrey F. deLint, who appears also to be with you here today. Coach White and his staff have given us —_The yellow administrator_s usage is on the whole undistinguished, though I have to admit he_s made himself understood. The Director of Com­position seems to have more than the normal number of eyebrows. The Dean at right is looking at my face a bit strangely.Uncle Charles is saying that though he can anticipate that the Deans might be predisposed to weigh what he avers as coming from his possible appearance as a kind of cheerleader for E.T.A., he can assure the assembled Deans that all this is true, and that the Academy has presently in residence no fewer than a third of the continent_s top thirty juniors, in age brackets all across the board, and that I here, who go by _Hal,_ usually, am _right up there among the very cream._ Right and center Deans smile professionally; the heads of deLint and the coach incline as the Dean at left clears his throat:_— belief that you could well make, even as a freshman, a real contribu­tion to this University_s varsity tennis program. We are pleased,_ he either says or reads, removing a page, _that a competition of some major sort here has brought you down and given us the chance to sit down and chat to­gether about your application and potential recruitment and matriculation and scholarship.__I_ve been asked to add that Hal here is seeded third, Boys_ 18-and-Under Singles, in the prestigious WhataBurger Southwest Junior Invitational out at the Randolph Tennis Center —_ says what I infer is Athletic Affairs, his cocked head showing a freckled scalp._Out at Randolph Park, near the outstanding El Con Marriott,_ C.T. in­serts, _a venue the whole contingent_s been vocal about finding absolutely top-hole thus far, which —__Just so, Chuck, and that according to Chuck here Hal has already justi­fied his seed, he_s reached the semifinals as of this morning_s apparently impressive win, and that he_ll be playing out at the Center again tomorrow, against the winner of a quarterfinal game tonight, and so will be playing tomorrow at I believe scheduled for 0830 —__Try to get under way before the godawful heat out there. Though of course a dry heat.__— and has apparently already qualified for this winter_s Continental In­doors, up in Edmonton, Kirk tells me —_ cocking further to look up and left at the varsity coach, whose smile_s teeth are radiant against a violent sunburn — _Which is something indeed._ He smiles, looking at me. _Did we get all that right Hal._C.T. has crossed his arms casually; their triceps_ flesh is webbed with mottle in the air-conditioned sunlight. _You sure did. Bill._ He smiles. The two halves of his mustache never quite match. _And let me say if I may that Hal_s excited, excited to be invited for the third year running to the Invita­tional again, to be back here in a community he has real affection for, to visit with your alumni and coaching staff, to have already justified his high seed in this week_s not unstiff competition, to as they say still be in it with­out the fat woman in the Viking hat having sung, so to speak, but of course most of all to have a chance to meet you gentlemen and have a look at the facilities here. Everything here is absolutely top-slot, from what he_s seen._There is a silence. DeLint shifts his back against the room_s panelling and recenters his weight. My uncle beams and straightens a straight watchband. 62.5% of the room_s faces are directed my way, pleasantly expectant. My chest bumps like a dryer with shoes in it. I compose what I project will be seen as a smile. I turn this way and that, slightly, sort of directing the expres­sion to everyone in the room.There is a new silence. The yellow Dean_s eyebrows go circumflex. The two other Deans look to the Director of Composition. The tennis coach has moved to stand at the broad window, feeling at the back of his crewcut. Uncle Charles strokes the forearm above his watch. Sharp curved palm-shadows move slightly over the pine table_s shine, the one head_s shadow a black moon._Is Hal all right, Chuck?_ Athletic Affairs asks. _Hal just seemed to... well, grimace. Is he in pain? Are you in pain, son?__Hal_s right as rain,_ smiles my uncle, soothing the air with a casual hand. _Just a bit of a let_s call it maybe a facial tic, slightly, at all the adrenaline of being here on your impressive campus, justifying his seed so far without dropping a set, receiving that official written offer of not only waivers but a living allowance from Coach White here, on Pac 10 letterhead, being ready in all probability to sign a National Letter of Intent right here and now this very day, he_s indicated to me._ C.T. looks to me, his look horribly mild. I do the safe thing, relaxing every muscle in my face, emptying out all expression. I stare carefully into the Kekuléan knot of the middle Dean_s necktie.My silent response to the expectant silence begins to affect the air of the room, the bits of dust and sportcoat-lint stirred around by the AC_s vents dancing jaggedly in the slanted plane of windowlight, the air over the table like the sparkling space just above a fresh-poured seltzer. The coach, in a slight accent neither British nor Australian, is telling C.T. that the whole application-interface process, while usually just a pleasant formality, is probably best accentuated by letting the applicant speak up for himself. Right and center Deans have inclined together in soft conference, forming a kind of tepee of skin and hair. I presume it_s probably facilitate that the tennis coach mistook for accentuate, though accelerate, while clunkier than facilitate, is from a phonetic perspective more sensible, as a mistake. The Dean with the flat yellow face has leaned forward, his lips drawn back from his teeth in what I see as concern. His hands come together on the confer­ence table_s surface. His own fingers look like they mate as my own four-X series dissolves and I hold tight to the sides of my chair.We need candidly to chat re potential problems with my application, they and I, he is beginning to say. He makes a reference to candor and its value._The issues my office faces with the application materials on file from you, Hal, involve some test scores._ He glances down at a colorful sheet of standardized scores in the trench his arms have made. _The Admissions staff is looking at standardized test scores from you that are, as I_m sure you know and can explain, are, shall we say... subnormal._ I_m to explain.It_s clear that this really pretty sincere yellow Dean at left is Admissions. And surely the little aviarian figure at right is Athletics, then, because the facial creases of the shaggy middle Dean are now pursed in a kind of distanced affront, an I_m-eating-something-that-makes-me-really-appreciate-the-presence-of-whatever-I_m-drinking-along-with-it look that spells professionally Academic reservations. An uncomplicated loyalty to standards, then, at center. My uncle looks to Athletics as if puzzled. He shifts slightly in his chair.The incongruity between Admissions_s hand- and face-color is almost wild. _—verbal scores that are just quite a bit closer to zero than we_re comfortable with, as against a secondary-school transcript from the institu­tion where both your mother and her brother are administrators —_ reading directly out of the sheaf inside his arms_ ellipse — _that this past year, yes, has fallen off a bit, but by the word I mean __fallen off__ to outstanding from three previous years of frankly incredible.__Off the charts.__Most institutions do not even have grades of A with multiple pluses after it,_ says the Director of Composition, his expression impossible to interpret._This kind of... how shall I put it... incongruity,_ Admissions says, his expression frank and concerned, _I_ve got to tell you sends up a red flag of potential concern during the admissions process.__We thus invite you to explain the appearance of incongruity if not outright shenanigans._ Students has a tiny piping voice that_s absurd coming out of a face this big._Surely by incredible you meant very very very impressive, as opposed to literally quote __incredible,__ surely,_ says C.T., seeming to watch the coach at the window massaging the back of his neck. The huge window gives out on nothing more than dazzling sunlight and cracked earth with heat-shimmers over it._Then there is before us the matter of not the required two but nine sepa­rate application essays, some of which of nearly monograph-length, each without exception being —_ different sheet — _the adjective various evaluators used was quote __stellar__ —_Dir. of Comp.: _I made in my assessment deliberate use of lapidary and effete.__— but in areas and with titles, I_m sure you recall quite well, Hal: __Neoclassical Assumptions in Contemporary Prescriptive Grammar,__ __The Implications of Post-Fourier Transformations for a Holographically Mimetic Cinema,__ __The Emergence of Heroic Stasis in Broadcast Entertainment__ —__ __Montague Grammar and the Semantics of Physical Modality__?__ __A Man Who Began to Suspect He Was Made of Glass__?__ __Tertiary Symbolism in Justinian Erotica__?_Now showing broad expanses of recessed gum. _Suffice to say that there_s some frank and candid concern about the recipient of these unfortunate test scores, though perhaps explainable test scores, being these essays_ sole indi­vidual author.__I_m not sure Hal_s sure just what_s being implied here,_ my uncle says. The Dean at center is fingering his lapels as he interprets distasteful com­puted data._What the University is saying here is that from a strictly academic point of view there are admission problems that Hal needs to try to help us iron out. A matriculant_s first role at the University is and must be as a student. We couldn_t admit a student we have reason to suspect can_t cut the mus­tard, no matter how much of an asset he might be on the field.__Dean Sawyer means the court, of course, Chuck,_ Athletic Affairs says, head severely cocked so he_s including the White person behind him in the address somehow. _Not to mention O.N.A.N.C.A.A. regulations and inves­tigators always snuffling around for some sort of whiff of the smell of im­propriety._The varsity tennis coach looks at his own watch._Assuming these board scores are accurate reflectors of true capacity in this case,_ Academic Affairs says, his high voice serious and sotto, still look­ing at the file before him as if it were a plate of something bad, Til tell you right now my opinion is it wouldn_t be fair. It wouldn_t be fair to the other applicants. Wouldn_t be fair to the University community._ He looks at me. _And it_d be especially unfair to Hal himself. Admitting a boy we see as simply an athletic asset would amount to just using that boy. We_re under myriad scrutiny to make sure we_re not using anybody. Your board results, son, indicate that we could be accused of using you._Uncle Charles is asking Coach White to ask the Dean of Athletic Affairs whether the weather over scores would be as heavy if I were, say, a revenue-raising football prodigy. The familiar panic at feeling misperceived is rising, and my chest bumps and thuds. I expend energy on remaining utterly silent in my chair, empty, my eyes two great pale zeros. People have promised to get me through this.Uncle C.T., though, has the pinched look of the cornered. His voice takes on an odd timbre when he_s cornered, as if he were shouting as he receded. _Hal_s grades at E.T.A., which is I should stress an Academy, not simply a camp or factory, accredited by both the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the North American Sports Academy Association, it_s focused on the total needs of the player and student, founded by a tow­ering intellectual figure whom I hardly need name, here, and based by him on the rigorous Oxbridge Quadrivium-Trivium curricular model, a school fully staffed and equipped, by a fully certified staff, should show that my nephew here can cut just about any Pac 10 mustard that needs cutting, and that —_DeLint is moving toward the tennis coach, who is shaking his head._— would be able to see a distinct flavor of minor-sport prejudice about this whole thing,_ C.T. says, crossing and recrossing his legs as I listen, com­posed and staring.The room_s carbonated silence is now hostile. _I think it_s time to let the actual applicant himself speak out on his own behalf,_ Academic Affairs says very quietly. _This seems somehow impossible with you here, sir._Athletics smiles tiredly under a hand that massages the bridge of his nose. _Maybe you_d excuse us for a moment and wait outside, Chuck.__Coach White could accompany Mr. Tavis and his associate out to recep­tion,_ the yellow Dean says, smiling into my unfocused eyes._— led to believe this had all been ironed out in advance, from the —_ C.T. is saying as he and deLint are shown to the door. The tennis coach extends a hypertrophied arm. Athletics says _We_re all friends and col­leagues here._This is not working out. It strikes me that exit signs would look to a native speaker of Latin like red-lit signs that say HE leaves. I would yield to the urge to bolt for the door ahead of them if I could know that bolting for the door is what the men in this room would see. DeLint is murmuring something to the tennis coach. Sounds of keyboards, phone consoles as the door is briefly opened, then firmly shut. I am alone among administrative heads._— offense intended to anyone,_ Athletic Affairs is saying, his sportcoat tan and his necktie insigniated in tiny print — _beyond just physical abilities out there in play, which believe me we respect, want, believe me.__— question about it we wouldn_t be so anxious to chat with you directly, see?__— that we_ve known in processing several prior applications through Coach White_s office that the Enfield School is operated, however impres­sively, by close relations of first your brother, who I can still remember the way White_s predecessor Maury Klamkin wooed that kid, so that grades_ objectivity can be all too easily called into question —__By whomsoever_s calling — N.A.A.U.P., ill-willed Pac 10 programs, O.N.A.N.C.A.A. —_The essays are old ones, yes, but they are mine; de moi. But they are, yes, old, not quite on the application_s instructed subject of Most Meaningful Educational Experience Ever. If I_d done you one from the last year, it would look to you like some sort of infant_s random stabs on a keyboard, and to you, who use whomsoever as a subject. And in this new smaller company, the Director of Composition seems abruptly to have actuated, emerged as both the Alpha of the pack here and way more effeminate than he_d seemed at first, standing hip-shot with a hand on his waist, walking with a roll to his shoulders, jingling change as he pulls up his pants as he slides into the chair still warm from C.T._s bottom, crossing his legs in a way that inclines him well into my personal space, so that I can see multiple eyebrow-tics and capillary webs in the oysters below his eyes and smell fabric-softener and the remains of a breath-mint turned sour._...a bright, solid, but very shy boy, we know about your being very shy, Kirk White_s told us what your athletically built if rather stand-offish youn­ger instructor told him,_ the Director says softly, cupping what I feel to be a hand over my sportcoat_s biceps (surely not), _who simply needs to swallow hard and trust and tell his side of the story to these gentlemen who bear no maliciousness none at all but are doing our jobs and trying to look out for everyone_s interests at the same time._I can picture deLint and White sitting with their elbows on their knees in the defecatory posture of all athletes at rest, deLint staring at his huge thumbs, while C.T. in the reception area paces in a tight ellipse, speaking into his portable phone. I have been coached for this like a Don before a RICO hearing. A neutral and affectless silence. The sort of all-defensive game Schtitt used to have me play: the best defense: let everything bounce off you; do nothing. I_d tell you all you want and more, if the sounds I made could be what you hear.Athletics with his head out from under his wing: _— to avoid admission procedures that could be seen as primarily athletics-oriented. It could be a mess, son.__Bill means the appearance, not necessarily the real true facts of the mat­ter, which you alone can fill in,_ says the Director of Composition._— the appearance of the high athletic ranking, the subnormal scores, the over-academic essays, the incredible grades vortexing out of what could be seen as a nepotistic situation._The yellow Dean has leaned so far forward that his tie is going to have a horizontal dent from the table-edge, his face sallow and kindly and no-shit-whatever:_Look here, Mr. Incandenza, Hal, please just explain to me why we couldn_t be accused of using you, son. Why nobody could come and say to us, why, look here, University of Arizona, here you are using a boy for just his body, a boy so shy and withdrawn he won_t speak up for himself, a jock with doctored marks and a store-bought application._The Brewster_s-Angle light of the tabletop appears as a rose flush behind my closed lids. I cannot make myself understood. _I am not just a jock,_ I say slowly. Distinctly. _My transcript for the last year might have been dickied a bit, maybe, but that was to get me over a rough spot. The grades prior to that are de moi._ My eyes are closed; the room is silent. _I cannot make myself understood, now._ I am speaking slowly and distinctly. _Call it some­thing I ate._It_s funny what you don_t recall. Our first home, in the suburb of Weston, which I barely remember — my eldest brother Orin says he can remember being in the home_s backyard with our mother in the early spring, helping the Moms till some sort of garden out of the cold yard. March or early April. The garden_s area was a rough rectangle laid out with Popsicle sticks and twine. Orin was removing rocks and hard clods from the Moms_s path as she worked the rented Rototiller, a wheelbarrow-shaped, gas-driven thing that roared and snorted and bucked and he remembers seemed to propel the Moms rather than vice versa, the Moms very tall and having to stoop painfully to hold on, her feet leaving drunken prints in the tilled earth. He remembers that in the middle of the tilling I came tear-assing out the door and into the backyard wearing some sort of fuzzy red Pooh-wear, crying, holding out something he said was really unpleasant-looking in my upturned palm. He says I was around five and crying and was vividly red in the cold spring air. I was saying something over and over; he couldn_t make it out until our mother saw me and shut down the tiller, ears ringing, and came over to see what I was holding out. This turned out to have been a large patch of mold — Orin posits from some dark corner of the Weston home_s basement, which was warm from the furnace and flooded every spring. The patch itself he describes as horrific: darkly green, glossy, vaguely hirsute, speckled with parasitic fungal points of yellow, orange, red. Worse, they could see that the patch looked oddly incomplete, gnawed-on; and some of the nauseous stuff was smeared around my open mouth. _I ate this,_ was what I was saying. I held the patch out to the Moms, who had her contacts out for the dirty work, and at first, bending way down, saw only her crying child, hand out, proffer­ing; and in that most maternal of reflexes she, who feared and loathed more than anything spoilage and filth, reached to take whatever her baby held out — as in how many used heavy Kleenex, spit-back candies, wads of chewed-out gum in how many theaters, airports, backseats, tournament lounges? O. stood there, he says, hefting a cold clod, playing with the Velcro on his puffy coat, watching as the Moms, bent way down to me, hand reaching, her lowering face with its presbyopic squint, suddenly stopped, froze, beginning to I.D. what it was I held out, countenancing evidence of oral contact with same. He remembers her face as past describing. Her outstretched hand, still Rototrembling, hung in the air before mine._I ate this,_ I said._Pardon me?_O. says he can only remember (sic) saying something caustic as he limboed a crick out of his back. He says he must have felt a terrible impending anxiety. The Moms refused ever even to go into the damp basement. I had stopped crying, he remembers, and simply stood there, the size and shape of a hydrant, in red PJ_s with attached feet, holding out the mold, seriously, like the report of some kind of audit.O. says his memory diverges at this point, probably as a result of anxiety. In his first memory, the Moms_s path around the yard is a broad circle of hysteria:_God!_ she calls out._Help! My son ate this!_ she yells in Orin_s second and more fleshed-out recollection, yelling it over and over, holding the speckled patch aloft in a pincer of fingers, running around and around the garden_s rectangle while O. gaped at his first real sight of adult hysteria. Suburban neighbors_ heads appeared in windows and over the fences, looking. O. remembers me tripping over the garden_s laid-out twine, getting up dirty, crying, trying to follow._God! Help! My son ate this! Help!_ she kept yelling, running a tight pattern just inside the square of string; and my brother Orin remembers noting how even in hysterical trauma her flight-lines were plumb, her foot­prints Native-American-straight, her turns, inside the ideogram of string, crisp and martial, crying _My son ate this! Help!_ and lapping me twice before the memory recedes._My application_s not bought,_ I am telling them, calling into the darkness of the red cave that opens out before closed eyes. _I am not just a boy who plays tennis. I have an intricate history. Experiences and feelings. I_m complex._I read,_ I say. _I study and read. I bet I_ve read everything you_ve read. Don_t think I haven_t. I consume libraries. I wear out spines and ROM-drives. I do things like get in a taxi and say, __The library, and step on it.__ My instincts concerning syntax and mechanics are better than your own, I can tell, with due respect._But it transcends the mechanics. I_m not a machine. I feel and believe. I have opinions. Some of them are interesting. I could, if you_d let me, talk and talk. Let_s talk about anything. I believe the influence of Kierkegaard on Camus is underestimated. I believe Dennis Gabor may very well have been the Antichrist. I believe Hobbes is just Rousseau in a dark mirror. I believe, with Hegel, that transcendence is absorption. I could interface you guys right under the table,_ I say. _I_m not just a creatus, manufactured, condi­tioned, bred for a function._I open my eyes. _Please don_t think I don_t care._I look out. Directed my way is horror. I rise from the chair. I see jowls sagging, eyebrows high on trembling foreheads, cheeks bright-white. The chair recedes below me._Sweet mother of Christ,_ the Director says._I_m fine,_ I tell them, standing. From the yellow Dean_s expression, there_s a brutal wind blowing from my direction. Academics_ face has gone instantly old. Eight eyes have become blank discs that stare at whatever they see._Good God,_ whispers Athletics._Please don_t worry,_ I say. _I can explain._ I soothe the air with a casual hand.Both my arms are pinioned from behind by the Director of Comp., who wrestles me roughly down, on me with all his weight. I taste floor._What_s wrong?_I say _Nothing is wrong.__It_s all right! I_m here!_ the Director is calling into my ear._Get help!_ cries a Dean.My forehead is pressed into parquet I never knew could be so cold. I am arrested. I try to be perceived as limp and pliable. My face is mashed flat; Comp._s weight makes it hard to breathe._Try to listen,_ I say very slowly, muffled by the floor._What in God_s name are those...,_ one Dean cries shrilly, _...those sounds?_There are clicks of a phone console_s buttons, shoes_ heels moving, pivot­ing, a sheaf of flimsy pages falling._God!__Help!_The door_s base opens at the left periphery: a wedge of halogen hall-light, white sneakers and a scuffed Nunn Bush. _Let him up!_ That_s deLint._There is nothing wrong,_ I say slowly to the floor. _I_m in here._I_m raised by the crutches of my underarms, shaken toward what he must see as calm by a purple-faced Director: _Get a grip, son!_DeLint at the big man_s arm: _Stop it!__I am not what you see and hear._Distant sirens. A crude half nelson. Forms at the door. A young Hispanic woman holds her palm against her mouth, looking._I_m not,_ I say.You have to love old-fashioned men_s rooms: the citrus scent of deodorant disks in the long porcelain trough; the stalls with wooden doors in frames of cool marble; these thin sinks in rows, basins supported by rickety alphabets of exposed plumbing; mirrors over metal shelves; behind all the voices the slight sound of a ceaseless trickle, inflated by echo against wet porcelain and a cold tile floor whose mosaic pattern looks almost Islamic at this close range.The disorder I_ve caused revolves all around. I_ve been half-dragged, still pinioned, through a loose mob of Administrative people by the Comp. Director — who appears to have thought variously that I am having a sei­zure (prying open my mouth to check for a throat clear of tongue), that I am somehow choking (a textbook Heimlich that left me whooping), that I am psychotically out of control (various postures and grips designed to transfer that control to him) — while about us roil deLint, trying to restrain the Director_s restraint of me, the varsity tennis coach restraining deLint, my mother_s half-brother speaking in rapid combinations of polysyllables to the trio of Deans, who variously gasp, wring hands, loosen neckties, waggle digits in C.T._s face, and make pases with sheafs of now-pretty-clearly-superfluous application forms.I am rolled over supine on the geometric tile. I am concentrating docilely on the question why U.S. restrooms always appear to us as infirmaries for public distress, the place to regain control. My head is cradled in a knelt Director_s lap, which is soft, my face being swabbed with dusty-brown insti­tutional paper towels he received from some hand out of the crowd over­head, staring with all the blankness I can summon into his jowls_ small pocks, worst at the blurred jawline, of scarring from long-ago acne. Uncle Charles, a truly unparalleled slinger of shit, is laying down an enfilade of same, trying to mollify men who seem way more in need of a good brow-mopping than I._He_s fine,_ he keeps saying. _Look at him, calm as can be, lying there.__You didn_t see what happened in there,_ a hunched Dean responds through a face webbed with fingers._Excited, is all he gets, sometimes, an excitable kid, impressed with —__But the sounds he made.__Undescribable.__Like an animal.__Subanimalistic noises and sounds.__Nor let_s not forget the gestures.__Have you ever gotten help for this boy Dr. Tavis?__Like some sort of animal with something in its mouth.__This boy is damaged.__Like a stick of butter being hit with a mallet.__A writhing animal with a knife in its eye.__What were you possibly about, trying to enroll this —__And his arms.__You didn_t see it, Tavis. His arms were —__Flailing. This sort of awful reaching drumming wriggle. Waggling,_ the group looking briefly at someone outside my sight trying to demonstrate something._Like a time-lapse, a flutter of some sort of awful... growth.__Sounded most of all like a drowning goat. A goat, drowning in some­thing viscous.__This strangled series of bleats and —__Yes they waggled.__So suddenly a bit of excited waggling_s a crime, now?__You, sir, are in trouble. You are in trouble.__His face. As if he was strangling. Burning. I believe I_ve seen a vision of hell.__He has some trouble communicating, he_s communicatively challenged, no one_s denying that.__The boy needs care.__Instead of caring for the boy you send him here to enroll, compete?__Hal?__You have not in your most dreadful fantasies dreamt of the amount of trouble you have bought yourself, Dr. so-called Headmaster, educator.__...were given to understand this was all just a formality. You took him aback, is all. Shy —__And you, White. You sought to recruit him!__— and terribly impressed and excited, in there, without us, his support system, whom you asked to leave, which if you_d —__I_d only seen him play. On court he_s gorgeous. Possibly a genius. We had no idea. The brother_s in the bloody NFL for God_s sake. Here_s a top player, we thought, with Southwest roots. His stats were off the chart. We watched him through the whole WhataBurger last fall. Not a waggle or a noise. We were watching ballet out there, a mate remarked, after.__Damn right you were watching ballet out there, White. This boy is a balletic athlete, a player.__Some kind of athletic savant then. Balletic compensation for deep prob­lems which you sir choose to disguise by muzzling the boy in there._ An expensive pair of Brazilian espadrilles goes by on the left and enters a stall, and the espadrilles come around and face me. The urinal trickles behind the voices_ small echoes._— haps we_ll just be on our way,_ C.T. is saying._The integrity of my sleep has been forever compromised, sir.__— think you could pass off a damaged applicant, fabricate credentials and shunt him through a kangaroo-interview and inject him into all the rigors of college life?__Hal here functions, you ass. Given a supportive situation. He_s fine when he_s by himself. Yes he has some trouble with excitability in conversation. Did you once hear him try to deny that?__We witnessed something only marginally mammalian in there, sir.__Like hell. Have a look. How_s the excitable little guy doing down there, Aubrey, does it look to you?__You, sir, are quite possibly ill. This affair is not concluded.__What ambulance? Don_t you guys listen? I_m telling you there_s —__Hal? Hal?__Dope him up, seek to act as his mouthpiece, muzzling, and now he lies there catatonic, staring._The crackle of deLint_s knees. _Hal?__— inflate this publicly in any distorted way. The Academy has distin­guished alumni, litigators at counsel. Hal here is provably competent. Cre­dentials out the bazoo, Bill. The boy reads like a vacuum. Digests things._I simply lie there, listening, smelling the paper towel, watching an espadrille pivot._There_s more to life than sitting there interfacing, it might be a news­flash to you._And who could not love that special and leonine roar of a public toilet?Not for nothing did Orin say that people outdoors down here just scuttle in vectors from air conditioning to air conditioning. The sun is a hammer. I can feel one side of my face start to cook. The blue sky is glossy and fat with heat, a few thin cirri sheared to blown strands like hair at the rims. The traffic is nothing like Boston. The stretcher is the special type, with restrain­ing straps at the extremities. The same Aubrey deLint I_d dismissed for years as a 2-D martinet knelt gurneyside to squeeze my restrained hand and say _Just hang in there, Buckaroo,_ before moving back into the administrative fray at the ambulance_s doors. It is a special ambulance, dispatched from I_d rather not dwell on where, with not only paramedics but some kind of psy­chiatric M.D. on board. The medics lift gently and are handy with straps. The M.D., his back up against the ambulance_s side, has both hands up in dispassionate mediation between the Deans and C.T., who keeps stabbing skyward with his cellular_s antenna as if it were a sabre, outraged that I_m being needlessly ambulanced off to some Emergency Room against my will and interests. The issue whether the damaged even have interested wills is shallowly hashed out as some sort of ultra-mach fighter too high overhead to hear slices the sky from south to north. The M.D. has both hands up and is patting the air to signify dispassion. He has a big blue jaw. At the only other emergency room I have ever been in, almost exactly one year back, the psychiatric stretcher was wheeled in and then parked beside the waiting-room chairs. These chairs were molded orange plastic; three of them down the row were occupied by different people all of whom were holding empty prescription bottles and perspiring freely. This would have been bad enough, but in the end chair, right up next to the strap-secured head of my stretcher, was a T-shirted woman with barnwood skin and a trucker_s cap and a bad starboard list who began to tell me, lying there restrained and immobile, about how she had seemingly overnight suffered a sudden and anomalous gigantism in her right breast, which she referred to as a titty; she had an almost parodic Québecois accent and described the _titty_s_ present­ing history and possible diagnoses for almost twenty minutes before I was rolled away. The jet_s movement and trail seem incisionish, as if white meat behind the blue were exposed and widening in the wake of the blade. I once saw the word KNIFE finger-written on the steamed mirror of a nonpublic bathroom. I have become an infantophile. I am forced to roll my closed eyes either up or to the side to keep the red cave from bursting into flames from the sunlight. The street_s passing traffic is constant and seems to go _Hush, hush, hush._ The sun, if your fluttering eye catches it even slightly, gives you the blue and red floaters a flashbulb gives you. _Why not? Why not? Why not not, then, if the best reasoning you can contrive is why not?_ C.T._s voice, receding with outrage. Only the gallant stabs of his antenna are now visible, just inside my sight_s right frame. I will be conveyed to an Emer­gency Room of some kind, where I will be detained as long as I do not respond to questions, and then, when I do respond to questions, I will be sedated; so it will be inversion of standard travel, the ambulance and ER: I_ll make the journey first, then depart. I think very briefly of the late Cosgrove Watt. I think of the hypophalangial Grief-Therapist. I think of the Moms, alphabetizing cans of soup in the cabinet over the microwave. Of Himself_s umbrella hung by its handle from the edge of the mail table just inside the Headmaster_s House_s foyer. The bad ankle hasn_t ached once this whole year. I think of John N. R. Wayne, who would have won this year_s WhataBurger, standing watch in a mask as Donald Gately and I dig up my fa­ther_s head. There_s very little doubt that Wayne would have won. And Venus Williams owns a ranch outside Green Valley; she may well attend the 18_s Boys_ and Girls_ finals. I will be out in plenty of time for tomorrow_s semi; I trust Uncle Charles. Tonight_s winner is almost sure to be Dymphna, sixteen but with a birthday two weeks under the 15 April deadline; and Dymphna will still be tired tomorrow at 0830, while I, sedated, will have slept like a graven image. I have never before faced Dymphna in tournament play, nor played with the sonic balls the blind require, but I watched him barely dispatch Petropolis Kahn in the Round of 16, and I know he is mine. It will start in the E.R., at the intake desk if C.T._s late in following the ambulance, or in the green-tiled room after the room with the invasive-digital machines; or, given this special M.D.-supplied ambulance, maybe on the ride itself: some blue-jawed M.D. scrubbed to an antiseptic glow with his name sewn in cursive on his white coat_s breast pocket and a quality desk-set pen, wanting gurneyside Q&amp;A, etiology and diagnosis by Socratic method, ordered and point-by-point. There are, by the O.E.D. VI_s count, nineteen nonarchaic synonyms for unresponsive, of which nine are Latinate and four Saxonic. I will play either Stice or Polep in Sunday_s final. Maybe in front of Venus Williams. It will be someone blue-collar and unlicensed, though, inevitably — a nurse_s aide with quick-bit nails, a hospital security guy, a tired Cuban orderly who addresses me as jou — who will, looking down in the middle of some kind of bustled task, catch what he sees as my eye and ask So yo then man what_s your story?"></div><br /><br />Having been reading David Foster Wallace's 'The Infinite Jest' since, oh, last September/October or so, it's a relief to finally finish. Admittedly, I took several months off in between when we were doing the comic a couple of times a week so I really didn't <i>have</i> free time. Now I can read some of the shorter, less dense works that have been piling up in the meantime: 'As I Lay Dying', 'The Kite Runner', the <i>dictionary</i>...<br />Perhaps the biggest problem the Infinite Jest has is that it doesn't quite make it to the end without tipping its hand and letting you in on the joke, or, indeed, the jest. It's got some great concepts, a lot of comedic scenes, and some major foreshadowing of the depression and eventual suicide that was apparently eating away at Wallace like a cancer for much of his life. It poses more questions than it ever answers, yet still probably answers more than it should. A large amount of effort is put into deliberate attempts to disorient the reader, be it with the shifting/overlapping mass of the hundred-plus characters, or the intentional obfuscation of the timeline via 'subsidized time', flashbacks, dream sequences, hallucinations, or the copious amount of footnotes that serve to jag you back and forth from the narrative to the endnotes of the book like a literary tennis match.<br />I'm left with the overwhelming impression that this is the kind of book that grows on you, and once it gets inside your head you're doomed to have it gestate in there until one day you can't stop yourself from picking it up and, provided your spine can hold out, devouring the whole thing in a fraction of the time it took you the first time around. http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/310741.html public 3 http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/310417.html Tue, 30 Jun 2009 04:14:56 GMT dave@raincannon.com http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/310417.html Hello! Some of you might remember me from such times as When I Used To Post and When I Used To Be Funny.<br />Here is a meme; feel free to comment with your answers, or not. All comments screened unless specifically requested otherwise. If screened, the only one that will see them will be me. Well, I'll probably read any funny bits to Mary, but you should expect couples to talk about you behind your back by now anyway, and if you're anything like me you find it completely impossible to write anything anywhere without assuming some audience is reading it and, like Tom Cruise, silently judging you.<br /><br /><a name="cutid1"></a><br />1. Your Middle Name:<br />2. Age:<br />3. Single or Taken:<br />4. Favorite Film:<br />5. Favorite Song or Album:<br />6. Favorite Band/Artist:<br />7. Dirty or Clean:<br />8. Tattoos and/or Piercings:<br />9. Do we know each other outside of LJ?<br />10. What's your philosophy on life?<br />11. Is the bottle half-full or half-empty?<br />12. Would you keep a secret from me if you thought it was in my best interest?<br />13. What is your favorite memory of us?<br />14. What is your favorite guilty pleasure?<br />15. Tell me one odd/interesting fact about you:<br />16. You can have three wishes (for yourself, so forget all the 'world peace etc' malarky) - what are they?<br />17. Can we get together and make a cake?<br />18. Which country is your spiritual home?<br />19. What is your big weakness?<br />20. Do you think I'm a good person?<br />21. What was your best/favorite subject at school?<br />22. Describe your accent:<br />23. If you could change anything about me, would you?<br />24. What do you wear to sleep?<br />25. Trousers or skirts?<br />26. Cigarettes or alcohol?<br />27. If I only had one day to live, what would we do together? (If you have no idea, just say something crazy, it'll entertain me!)<br /> http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/310417.html public 0 http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/310203.html Thu, 18 Jun 2009 03:35:56 GMT dave@raincannon.com http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/310203.html Twitter has a chequered history of breaking the second the wind blows too hard; how the hell has it managed to stand up to the last three or four days of mass usage and remain intact? Especially given that they put off scheduled maintenance in order to act as the de facto pigeon post of Iran's post-election blowup?<br /><br />Also:<br /><a href="http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v230/raincannon/?action=view&amp;current=WASTE.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v230/raincannon/WASTE.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a> http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/310203.html public 1 http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/309793.html Wed, 10 Jun 2009 23:33:55 GMT dave@raincannon.com http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/309793.html The subject of religion came up at work and one of my co-workers made it apparent that she thought I was, as a matter of course, a Christian. It was an unspoken assumption on her part: whether I went to church or not or read the Bible didn't really enter into her assessment, but the implication was clear: <i>unless you've said different and you're not visibly from a different culture entirely, I'm going to assume you're a Christian.</i> I gently corrected her on the point: 'I'm an atheist, but yes, I'm familiar with the Bible.'<br /><br />The first question she asked was 'Why are you an atheist?' We'll come back to that one later. The second question she asked was 'So when something bad happens, something terrible, then you don't pray or ask any god for help?' My answer was no. I went on to explain how that's one of the things that sucks about being someone that was raised Christian and later became atheist. The whole time I was growing up, when something bad happened and there was nothing I could physically do to change what would happen, there was always this comfort I could retreat to. Put your hands together, ask God to help. When you said 'amen', then no matter how crappy things were before, you could at least feel like you'd done something. You weren't helpless.<br />Later on I was asked, when explaining this to another co-worker, why I don't just start praying. If it sucks so bad to know that I can't do anything now that I'm an atheist, why not just become a Christian again? My answer was that it's not that simple. Even if I wanted to become a Christian again, which I don't, then I can't just suddenly start believing in something that I don't believe in. I'd be saying words to an empty sky.<br /><br />A better analogy is this: the reason I don't pray for help when things go wrong is the same reason I don't call to Superman. I can read books from before I was born that tell me how Superman is able to leap tall buildings in a single bound (and later, fly), how he can stop bullets with his body, how his father sent him to Earth and how he grew to love and embrace humanity before eventually, in 1996, dying to save the world from evil before miraculously being born again. And I can see the power of Superman doing good through his followers. I've heard about how the Superman radio show brought the secrets of the Ku Klux Klan out into the open and revealed them for the silly, superstitious idiots they were, effectively ending any kind of degree of seriousness that people placed upon them. I know these things, and yet I don't call Superman for help because I know he isn't real.<br />The big difference is, of course, that Superman was created in 1938. We know who invented him, we know all the various creators that have written and illustrated his adventures. The Bible goes back a lot further. It contains a mixture of historically verifiable fact and more dubious narrative. (By comparison, we know there was a historical Adolf Hitler, but are pretty sure Superman never punched him while hawking war bonds.) Evidence that parts of Biblical stories are true does not necessarily mean that the whole of the story is true. And that's all an aside anyway. It doesn't matter if I believe that the narratives of the Bible played out that way in real life, because I don't believe there's a God. That's a major sticking point no matter which of the big three religions I go into. That's where this Superman point came in: I don't believe in Superman. It doesn't really matter why I think Superman isn't real, bottom line is I'm not likely to suddenly start believing Superman is real and entreating him for help.<br /><br />All of which makes me sound like one of those militant atheists fucks like Bill Maher, Christopher Hitchens, or Richard Dawkins. I don't want to convince people to become atheists. I firmly believe that I have no more right telling someone what they can or can't believe in than I do in telling a woman what she can or can't do with a parasitical clump of cells that's taken up residence in her uterine wall. If you don't like abortions, fine. Don't have one. If you don't believe in God, ditto.<br />Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are all perfectly good belief systems. They're built around books that have historical narratives and little stories about being nice to people and not being a dick and how people should behave to each other. The problems come in when people get involved and want other people to follow the rules in their books. Medical, legal or fiscal policy should no more be made on the strength of one religion's storybook than it should on a Superman comic. To me, this seems like common sense. To a lot of religious people, this also makes perfect sense. It's only the people who want to make laws based on their own dogma that I have a problem with, be they Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, atheist or any of the other many, many, stances you can take under the umbrella of 'personal beliefs'.<br /><br />The fact that I don't believe in your God does not mean I think you're an idiot, which is perhaps where the Superman analogy falls flattest. I don't believe. You do. But neither of us know. If either of us says that we <i>know</i> - 'I know God is real and loves me'/'I know there is no God and life is essentially meaningless' - then <i>that</i> makes us fools. You <i>believe</i> you know there is a God, at most.<br />No-one can say for certain that there is or isn't a god, they can only attest to their own belief on the matter. The important thing is that you have that choice: to believe, or not to believe. If you're basically a decent person and aren't trying to impose dogma on people based on the Bible or the Torah or the Qu'ran or the Superman 80-Page Giant, then I'm just glad you have something that lets you be that decent person.<br /><br />And that brings me back to the first question I was asked: 'Why Are You An Atheist?' There's not really a good answer, just bits of answers. I'm an atheist because I don't believe in a deity, that's a pretty big one. Because I was a Christian for the first sixteen or seventeen years of my life and in that time there was enough that didn't add up or make sense or hold together with catch-all proverbs like 'God has a plan' that it finally made more sense that there is no god, never was, never has been. Because I learned, probably most importantly, about stories, and about the power of stories, and the value of truth in stories whether the story itself is true or not. It's not my lack of a cohesive answer that is flawed; it's the question.<br />I can't imagine myself, with a straight face, asking someone 'Why are you a Christian?' The question itself seems geared towards making someone apologise for something, justify something that's essentially a personal choice you shouldn't really have to justify to anyone outside the darkness of your own skull.<br /><br />Why am I an atheist? I am that I am, that's why. http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/309793.html public 2 http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/309538.html Wed, 03 Jun 2009 03:30:33 GMT dave@raincannon.com http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/309538.html <div class='appwidget appwidget-qotd' id='LJWidget_8'> <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td><div style='border: 1px solid #000; padding: 6px;'><p>What's the story behind your username?</p><p style='font-size: 0.8em;'></p><br /><p><input type="button" value="Answer" onclick="document.location.href='http://www.livejournal.com/update.bml?qotd=797'" /> <a href="http://www.livejournal.com/misc/latestqotd.bml?qid=797">View other answers</a></p></div></td></tr></table></div><!-- end .appwidget-qotd --> <br /><br /><div align="center"><img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v230/raincannon/summershadow.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></div><br /><br />Seriously. http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/309538.html usernames writer's block public 2 http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/309426.html Fri, 29 May 2009 02:51:59 GMT dave@raincannon.com http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/309426.html <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/technology/8070790.stm">Microsoft, in partnership with Matthew Perry, are relaunching their search engine at Bing.com</a>.<br />Search engines are one of those notoriously odd beasts in web terms: they're pretty much the backbone of internet from a user point of view. I remember back in the day it used to be Yahoo, Ask Jeeves and AltaVista fighting for our affections. Nowadays, Ask Jeeves dropped the butler's name and spends most of its budget advertising to confused non-internet users who like the idea of typing a question into a box and having a friendly animated Wodehouse character help them gently along the way. Yahoo is a shadow of its former self, having had pretty much every trick stolen out from under it and improved upon by Google, once the new kid on the block and now a verb in its own right. (Speaking of Yahoo, by the way, anyone else hear that GeoCities is closing its doors forever later this year? It's as if a million shitty 'my first webpage' pages cried for attention with badly-looped animated gifs at once and then were suddenly silenced.) Is AltaVista even around any more? I could just check the URL, I guess, but I'd probably get a better answer if Googled it first.<br />In fact, about the only thing approaching the ubiquity of Google these days is Wikipedia, which is the top search result for so many things that at this point I'm sure most people after general information on a topic will ask Wikipedia first and Google specifics.<br /><br />Microsoft's biggest stumbling block with Bing is - in addition to naming the site after the most expensive machine in the whole hospital - a recent lousy track record with innovation. Microsoft have become pretty adept at taking someone else's concept and making it their own. Is the Zune a resounding success? No, but it's got a radio, it can sync wirelessly, and it doesn't run off god damn iTunes, upon all of which the iPod trips.<br />Microsoft's forays into innovation usually include disastrous debuts, followed by six months of nightly updates that work like a cabin boy trying to stop a holed ocean liner from sinking armed only with his bucket. Microsoft really only come into their own on the second version of a product, and unfortunately, by the time they've got that far, someone else has taken their idea and worked out the kinks before they did, thus becoming the first workable version on the market.<br /><br />If Bing somehow defeats the odds and becomes the wonderfully accurate search engine they claim it will be, that gathers and presents relevant information without extraneous clicking, could they implement the same technology for their help menus? Every damn day I have to go look something up in the help menus of Access, and every day it takes me four times as long as it needs to because the entire layout of help is like having a blind man look things up in a dictionary in which the letters are arranged according to a Dvorak keyboard layout.<br /><br />In fact, it's so bad, I usually just turn to Google. http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/309426.html public 2 http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/309183.html Thu, 21 May 2009 02:55:14 GMT dave@raincannon.com http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/309183.html <div align="center"><img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v230/raincannon/lisaswe15.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></div><br />...and that's how I met Mary. http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/309183.html public 0 http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/308772.html Tue, 19 May 2009 03:34:44 GMT dave@raincannon.com http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/308772.html Q. Why shouldn't you ever have children, David?<br /><br />A.<br /><a href="http://cgi.ebay.com/I-Heart-Love-IAN-T-Shirt-Cool-Luv-Name-White-Tee_W0QQitemZ200336957792QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUS_CSA_MC_Shirts?hash=item2ea5036160&amp;_trksid=p3286.m20.l1116#ebayphotohosting" target="_blank"><img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v230/raincannon/7de5_1.jpg" border="0" height="300" alt="Photobucket"></a> <a href="http://cgi.ebay.com/I-Heart-Love-MYRA-T-Shirt-Cool-Luv-Name-White-Tee_W0QQitemZ200337561379QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUS_CSA_MC_Shirts?hash=item2ea50c9723#ebayphotohosting" target="_blank"><img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v230/raincannon/BRjMwWQmkKGrHgoOKjIEjlLmWpluBJ-kFZO.jpg" border="0" height="300" alt="Photobucket"></a> http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/308772.html public 9 http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/308498.html Sun, 17 May 2009 01:35:58 GMT dave@raincannon.com http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/308498.html According to a newsletter by cult leader <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Alamo">Tony Alamo</a> that was left under our windscreen wipers while we were eating dinner -- windscreen wipers being where I get most of my reliable news -- I am apparently a devil. To wit:<br /><br /><a href="http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v230/raincannon/?action=view&amp;current=imthedevilnow.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v230/raincannon/imthedevilnow.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a><br /><br />If there's one thing that's probably going to guarantee I'm not going to join your cult, it's calling me a devil before you've even met me. How rude! http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/308498.html public 7 http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/308247.html Sat, 02 May 2009 03:01:44 GMT dave@raincannon.com http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/308247.html <div align="center"><img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v230/raincannon/wickerman3.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></div><br /><h2>Happy May Day, everyone!</h2> http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/308247.html public 4 http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/308026.html Thu, 30 Apr 2009 03:59:31 GMT dave@raincannon.com http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/308026.html This week's 'Open-Ended' isn't exactly a question, more a prompt. It's also a classic! Answers-plus-responses posted next week; comments are screened in case you run out of room in the text box.<br /><br /><div><a href="http://www.livejournal.com/poll/?id=1392217">View Poll: Open-Ended 3</a></div> http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/308026.html open-ended public 0 http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/307938.html Wed, 29 Apr 2009 00:43:59 GMT dave@raincannon.com http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/307938.html Last week, I asked you the question:<br /><b><h3>Cake or death?</h3></b><br /><table cellpadding="8"><tr><td valign="top"><span class='ljuser' lj:user='little_dinosaur' style='white-space: nowrap;'><a href='http://little-dinosaur.livejournal.com/profile'><img src='http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif' alt='[info]' width='17' height='17' style='vertical-align: bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;' /></a><a href='http://little-dinosaur.livejournal.com/'><b>little_dinosaur</b></a></span><br>Oh god, it's like I'm back at birthday parties of my childhood. I really don't like cake okay, Kailyn's mom! Do with me what you will but you'll never make me eat it.<td valign="top"><span class='ljuser' lj:user='deathboy' style='white-space: nowrap;'><a href='http://deathboy.livejournal.com/profile'><img src='http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif' alt='[info]' width='17' height='17' style='vertical-align: bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;' /></a><a href='http://deathboy.livejournal.com/'><b>deathboy</b></a></span><br>I'll have the chicken, please.<td valign="top"><span class='ljuser' lj:user='joellevand' style='white-space: nowrap;'><a href='http://joellevand.livejournal.com/profile'><img src='http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif' alt='[info]' width='17' height='17' style='vertical-align: bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;' /></a><a href='http://joellevand.livejournal.com/'><b>joellevand</b></a></span><br>Um...death. No, I mean CAKE!<br /><tr><td><img src="http://pics.livejournal.com/shadowofsummer/pic/0000w8z8"><td><img src="http://pics.livejournal.com/shadowofsummer/pic/0000xc78"><td><img src="http://pics.livejournal.com/shadowofsummer/pic/0000yg4c"><br /><tr><br /><tr><td valign="top"><span class='ljuser' lj:user='serizawa3000' style='white-space: nowrap;'><a href='http://serizawa3000.livejournal.com/profile'><img src='http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif' alt='[info]' width='17' height='17' style='vertical-align: bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;' /></a><a href='http://serizawa3000.livejournal.com/'><b>serizawa3000</b></a></span><br>cake<td valign="top"><span class='ljuser' lj:user='rick_day' style='white-space: nowrap;'><a href='http://rick-day.livejournal.com/profile'><img src='http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif' alt='[info]' width='17' height='17' style='vertical-align: bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;' /></a><a href='http://rick-day.livejournal.com/'><b>rick_day</b></a></span><br>DEATH BY CHOCOLATE CAKE!<td valign="top"><span class='ljuser' lj:user='ashton_blaze' style='white-space: nowrap;'><a href='http://ashton-blaze.livejournal.com/profile'><img src='http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif' alt='[info]' width='17' height='17' style='vertical-align: bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;' /></a><a href='http://ashton-blaze.livejournal.com/'><b>ashton_blaze</b></a></span><br>why can't we have death by cake?<br /><tr><td><img src="http://pics.livejournal.com/shadowofsummer/pic/0000z2ff"><td><img src="http://pics.livejournal.com/shadowofsummer/pic/00010sbx"><td><img src="http://pics.livejournal.com/shadowofsummer/pic/00011yx9"><br /><tr><br /><tr><td valign="top"><span class='ljuser' lj:user='the__seeker' style='white-space: nowrap;'><a href='http://the--seeker.livejournal.com/profile'><img src='http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif' alt='[info]' width='17' height='17' style='vertical-align: bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;' /></a><a href='http://the--seeker.livejournal.com/'><b>the__seeker</b></a></span><br>This girl at work who praises me endlessly for my cooking (i come in early three days a week and cook breakfast for a bunch of us) says that i should look into becoming a cake decorator as it is apparently serious kaching. So i choose cake.<td valign="top"><span class='ljuser' lj:user='evil_egg' style='white-space: nowrap;'><a href='http://evil-egg.livejournal.com/profile'><img src='http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif' alt='[info]' width='17' height='17' style='vertical-align: bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;' /></a><a href='http://evil-egg.livejournal.com/'><b>evil_egg</b></a></span><br>"Well, we're OUTTA cake! We only had three bits and we didn't expect such a rush!"<td valign="top"><span class='ljuser' lj:user='wreakjavik' style='white-space: nowrap;'><a href='http://wreakjavik.livejournal.com/profile'><img src='http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif' alt='[info]' width='17' height='17' style='vertical-align: bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;' /></a><a href='http://wreakjavik.livejournal.com/'><b>wreakjavik</b></a></span><br>Death please.... oh, I'm sorry, I meant cake.<br /><tr><td><img src="http://pics.livejournal.com/shadowofsummer/pic/0001286t"><td><img src="http://pics.livejournal.com/shadowofsummer/pic/00013964"><td><img src="http://pics.livejournal.com/shadowofsummer/pic/00014gke"><br /><tr><br /><tr><td valign="top"><span class='ljuser' lj:user='haltedgrace' style='white-space: nowrap;'><a href='http://haltedgrace.livejournal.com/profile'><img src='http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif' alt='[info]' width='17' height='17' style='vertical-align: bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;' /></a><a href='http://haltedgrace.livejournal.com/'><b>haltedgrace</b></a></span><br>Death cakes?<br /><tr><td><img src="http://pics.livejournal.com/shadowofsummer/pic/00015a7z"><br /></table> http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/307938.html open-ended public 6 http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/307465.html Tue, 28 Apr 2009 18:16:42 GMT dave@raincannon.com http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/307465.html Arlen Specter may have just temporarily elevated Al Franken to the position of being the most important figure in US party politics. That's weird.<br />No weirder probably than, say, a cowboy actor becoming President, or an Austrian bodybuilder (who was once the world's first pregnant man!) becoming Governor of California, but it's still an odd thing to happen in anyone's book.<br />I only ever saw one Al Franken movie, and I hated it from beginning to end. I never saw him on SNL, never listened to his radio show or read his books.<br />So, opinion time: if Al Franken becomes the key 60th Senator siding with the Democrats, what are the best and worst things we can expect? http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/307465.html public 2 http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/307252.html Thu, 23 Apr 2009 01:04:41 GMT dave@raincannon.com http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/307252.html It's time for another open-ended question!<br /><br /><div><a href="http://www.livejournal.com/poll/?id=1388352">View Poll: Open-Ended 2</a></div><br /><br />I know a choice between two different options doesn't seem very 'open-ended', but here's why it is, for two reasons:<br />1. It's a text box, not radio buttons for the express purpose of Showing Your Working should you wish;<br />and<br />2. Comments are enabled, but screened for this post only, because looking at other people's answers ahead of time is <i>cheating</i>. http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/307252.html public 0 http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/307112.html Tue, 21 Apr 2009 04:42:08 GMT dave@raincannon.com http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/307112.html <a href="http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v230/raincannon/?action=view&amp;current=movie_apocalypto.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v230/raincannon/movie_apocalypto.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a><br /><br />...one of the best movies I've seen in a long time. http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/307112.html public 2 http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/306788.html Fri, 17 Apr 2009 16:09:20 GMT dave@raincannon.com http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/306788.html <a href="http://www.philly.com/inquirer/front_page/20090417_Cigarette_smuggling_may_be_on_the_rise.html">Cigarette smuggling may be on the rise</a>, reports the Philadelphia Inquirer.<br /><br />Who would have thought that the more you hike tax rates up to artificially increase the price of something, in order to both plug budget gaps and 'punish' unpopular groups (in this case smokers), the more likely people are to exploit this in order to make a profit?<br />See, the thing about this is that states are abusing the ability to set cigarette tax. They need to strike the happy medium where the tax rate is going to be profitable, but not so high that it puts people off altogether. As long as you can buy cheap cigarettes from out of state and untaxed ones online, the tax rate is little incentive for anyone to quit, so that argument's gone. If you say you need the tax revenue to offset healthcare costs, that's all very well, but if you're driving people to buy untaxed and out of state cigarettes, that argument has all the buoyancy of a sieve as well.<br /><br />I like the level of pot-kettle-black being shown by the states in this case: <i>You can't tack your own profit margin onto something and resell it; that's </i>our<i> racket.</i><br /><br />Given that we're accepting that socially unpopular activities can be taxed in order to punish people going against the majority view, what else can we tax that would a) be a good way of making money for the state and b) have this level of acceptance by the public as a whole?<br />I'll get you started: much as I disagree with it, I'd have to go with caffeine. It's a widely-used substance, but has definite health drawbacks and isn't a necessity.<br /><br />Any others? http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/306788.html public 5 http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/306573.html Fri, 17 Apr 2009 11:53:19 GMT dave@raincannon.com http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/306573.html <i>Previously:</i> I asked the question <b>Any questions?</b><br />There were six takers. Here are the answers:<br /><br /><img src="http://pics.livejournal.com/shadowofsummer/pic/0000ktwb" alt="" width="178" border="1" /><br /><img src="http://pics.livejournal.com/shadowofsummer/pic/0000pc9y" alt="" width="178" border="1" /><br /><img src="http://pics.livejournal.com/shadowofsummer/pic/0000q1ah" alt="" width="178" border="1" /><br /><img src="http://pics.livejournal.com/shadowofsummer/pic/0000rry4" alt="" width="178" border="1" /><br /><img src="http://pics.livejournal.com/shadowofsummer/pic/0000scad" alt="" width="178" border="1" /><br /><img src="http://pics.livejournal.com/shadowofsummer/pic/0000t8yf" alt="" width="178" border="1" /> http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/306573.html public 2 http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/306417.html Thu, 16 Apr 2009 05:05:42 GMT dave@raincannon.com http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/306417.html <div><a href="http://www.livejournal.com/poll/?id=1384508">View Poll: #1384508</a></div> http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/306417.html public 1 http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/306078.html Thu, 09 Apr 2009 02:52:24 GMT dave@raincannon.com http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/306078.html Well, researchers are finally saying they found the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/health/7988619.stm">link between traffic pollution and low birth weights.</a> Guess it's time to start banning people from driving like they banned people from smoking in public. I mean, shit, if traffic pollution is this hazardous to people's health, we need to make sure no-one is exposed to traffic fumes, right? It's all very well to say people should just not be near heavily trafficked areas if they're in a risk group, but fuck that! What if tollbooth operator is the only job someone can get? Don't they have a right to not be exposed to traffic fumes? http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/306078.html public 1 http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/305686.html Mon, 30 Mar 2009 15:04:27 GMT dave@raincannon.com http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/305686.html This one will take some explaining.<br />I just went to the vending machine for something to snack on, since I didn't eat breakfast, I'm on my second cup of coffee of the morning, and my stomach acid was saying 'give me something to digest or I'll start digesting your stomach lining.' In our vending machine, amid the rest of the overpriced junk food, is a column of packets of Wheat Thins. I put my money in. Punch in the code. The spirals turn, pushing the packet forward, and... nothing. It's hanging there. Mocking me and gravity both.<br />This is not an unknown problem with vending machines. It used to happen all the time at Circuit City, so I tried the old standby of kick-the-machine-as-hard-as-you-can-on-the-side. The whole thing shook, teetered. No drop. I tried it again. Still nothing. At this point the people downstairs are probably wondering what the hell is going on, and the woman sitting on the other side of the break room gets up and leaves. Up until she got up I assumed she realised that my product was stuck and I was trying to dislodge it. It wasn't until she stood up and grabbed her white stick that I realised, shit, she might not have a clue why someone is kicking the shit out of the vending machine. If she needs the stick, even if she's partially sighted there's a good chance she can't see the pack of Wheat Thins leaning over the edge of its column like Michael Jackson's baby hanging over a balcony.<br />I briefly think of leaving before she alerts someone, but damn it, I want my Wheat Thins. The kick method usually works, so I examine the pack and realise the top end of the bag is folded back and has hooked itself over the spirals holding it in place. There's just no way kicking the machine will dislodge it short of tilting the machine to a 45 degree angle. I know enough physics and have read enough Darwin Awards to know why this would be a bad move.<br />Fine, I say to myself, Plan B: buy another bag of Wheat Thins, get both, save one for another day. And if Plan B fails, and both packets are stuck, there's always Plan C: get something long enough to either dislodge them or else knock something else out that equals the amount of money I just put in.<br />This is not a novel concept: at Circuit City we had a coat hanger stashed under the vending machine that was, in theory, there for when something refused to fall. Though in practice we all knew people were stealing shit with it. The guy who had to fill the machine always got pissed off about the front two rows of any item being empty. It's probably why they'd go months without filling the machine.<br /><br />But Plan B works: both bags fall, I haven't lost any money in the deal. But then it occurs to me: I didn't really want the second bag. I had to spend money I otherwise wouldn't have spent just to get my initial investment back. And maybe it's the effect of the acid eating at my stomach lining or maybe it's just the adrenaline pumping from where I was vigorously kicking an inanimate object and probably scaring the shit out of a blind woman, but I vow revenge. I will equal the score! I will recoup the extra money I spent and also keep the second bag as compensation!<br /><br />I get back to my desk, write a note in big, scrawled letters and stick it to my monitor. I go file some papers, calm down, and eat my Wheat Thins. Then I go back to my desk, more clear-headed, and sit down.<br />Staring me in the face, in full view of anyone walking past my cube, is a note that reads:<br /><b><i>BRING COAT HANGER FOR PLAN C.</i></b><br /><br />Because when Plan B fails, it's time to break out the coat hanger. http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/305686.html public 2 http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/305496.html Fri, 20 Mar 2009 19:58:18 GMT dave@raincannon.com http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/305496.html I just came up with a great idea: admins of message boards should, much like scripts that auto-replace swearing with bowdlerised versions of the same words, institute a Godwin filter that, upon recognition of the word 'Hitler' in a post to said board, replaces every subsequent word with 'GODWIN'.<br /><br />For example: when run on the first paragraph/sentence of this post, it would read:<br /><i>"I just came up with a great idea: admins of message boards should, much like scripts that auto-replace swearing with bowdlerised versions of the same words, institute a Godwin filter that, upon recognition of the word 'Hitler' GODWIN GODWIN GODWIN GODWIN GODWIN GODWIN, GODWIN GODWIN GODWIN GODWIN GODWIN 'GODWIN'."</i><br /><br />Obviously in some boards this might prove problematic, like discussion of World War Two, or the DYFS vs. Campbell case, or synopses of old issues of Captain America. But if you have a Godwin problem, if no-one else can help, and if you can code it, then maybe you can use -- THE GODWIN FILTER! http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/305496.html public 0 http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/305164.html Wed, 18 Mar 2009 02:20:17 GMT dave@raincannon.com http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/305164.html <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/03/17/cameroon.pope/">Pope visits Africa, reaffirms ban on condoms</a><br /><br />Yeah? Well fuck you, The Pope. I hope you get bummed by an AIDS-infected pit bull. I'm still amazed that someone this opposed to protection drives around in a little bulletproof bubble on top of an army-grade 4x4. http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/305164.html public 3 http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/305079.html Sat, 14 Mar 2009 21:30:35 GMT dave@raincannon.com http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/305079.html We saw the Pogues last night.<br /><br />Shane looked... surprisingly healthy, actually. Not as bloated nor incoherent as the last time I saw him on telly (though the incoherency was certainly still in force). We spent most of the gig up until the end of the main set in the second row (well, Mary was second row; I was directly behind her) and just before the encores we drifted back through the crush to the more open regions inhabited by the slamdancers.<br />Highlights included:<br />* The whole crowd going apeshit for 'Body of an American', which surprised me until I realised it has the refrain 'I'm a free-born man of the USA', and if there's anything Americans like more than getting drunk and pretending to be Irish, it's patriotism.<br />* Sally MacLennane, which is a pub singalong song if ever I've heard one (I think this is the song where I finally fucked up my voice after singing along with most of the others throughout the night)<br />* Rainy Night In Soho, my favourite Pogues song and just, in general, one of my favourite songs by anyone.<br />* Fiesta, the way to end a gig with a bang. You can't not get up and dance when Fiesta comes on. It's physically impossible. Scientists did tests. Even cripples can walk when Fiesta's playing.<br /><br />Also after the gig, one guy went down a flight of concrete stairs head-first, and another guy came rolling out of a set of doors covered in blood, punch-drunk, and taking swings at the staff trying to get him to lie still until the ambulance arrived. Two other guys lying there covered in blood behind the door, from what Mary saw while I was lining up for coat check. The guy who was taking swings at people eventually got held down and tased by the NYPD, who don't take shit from fools.<br />When we were leaving, one of the staff was freaking out about people 'just stepping over a dead body', presumably the man at the bottom of the stairs. Which is terrible and all, but there's a horrible part of me (okay, that's MOST of me) that can't help thinking <i>'we went to a gig that was so awesome someone literally died afterwards.'</i> http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/305079.html public 2 http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/304697.html Fri, 13 Mar 2009 04:01:32 GMT dave@raincannon.com http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/304697.html I think this may be the most accurate depiction of the writing process that I've ever seen:<br /><br /> <br /> <table> <tr> <td><strong></strong><br /> </td> </tr> <tr> <td><a href="http://pics.livejournal.com/shadowofsummer/pic/0000hfak/"><img src="http://pics.livejournal.com/shadowofsummer/pic/0000hfak" alt="" border="0" /></a></td> </tr> </table> <br /> <br /><br /><br />(from James Kochalka's wonderful <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Peanutbutter-Jeremys-Best-Book-Ever/dp/1891867466/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1236916669&amp;sr=8-2">Peanutbutter and Jeremy</a>, a comic about a cat who thinks she works in an office, and her best friend Jeremy, a mean crow with a thing for hats.) http://shadowofsummer.livejournal.com/304697.html public 0