Friday, October 28, 2005

CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?
The Bystander has clearly been sleeping on the job lately because he failed to pick up on an exciting story from Lasi, Romania. According to the daily newspaper, 7 Plus, police picked up a woman stepping off a bus after passengers said she'd stolen a mobile phone. Unable to find any evidence of the missing item, they decided to make a call.

A muted ring sounded - from under her skirt. Still unable to spot the cell, they took her to the police station for a strip search, whereupon the phone was found - stuck up her ass.

I suppose some kudos has to be given for the sheer bravado needed to use such an unusual hiding place. However, the story has a twist: once the phone had been removed, the police simply gave it a quick rub down with disinfectant and returned it to the owner. I wonder if he or she was made aware of where the mobile had been?

Thursday, October 27, 2005

YES, BUT IS IT REALLY ART?
According to David St. Hubbins, lead singer with Spinal Tap, "There's a fine line between stupid and clever." There's also a fine line between Art and Crap - unless the Art is actually constructed from crap.

Tomoko Takahashi is a Japanese artist living in Cardiff, Wales. And according to a report in the UK's Daily Telegraph (10/26/05), in an effort to produce a masterpiece of artistic creation, she managed to convince the Cardiff Arts Council to supply her with some $8000 to create a performance at a local arts center.

The act - if that's the right word - was to spend three hours walking across a plank of wood while drinking beer, the aim being to see how long she could do this before falling over smashed out of her tiny brain.

Following criticism from local council members (no, really?) a representative of the arts center said "This wasn't just about a woman drinking a lot of beer. This was a powerful piece of art."

Er, no. It was, in fact, about a woman drinking a lot of beer. And if this is Art, there are millions of artists in the country who regularly perform a similar piece every weekend as they leave the local bars. And they don't get a $8000 grant to do it.

But should any arts committee be looking to see a unique performance piece where a man drinks Starbucks coffee for a whole day with a view to seeing how long it is before he throws up, please send an e-mail to the Bystander and he'll be glad to help.

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

WRITING STYLE AND THE CURSE OF MULTILINGUALISM
"Prefer the Saxon word to the Romance," said Henry Watson Fowler in his The King's English; "Anglo-Saxon is a livelier tongue than Latin, so use Anglo-Saxon words” offered William Strunk and Elwyn Brooks White in The Elements of Style. Good advice if you're Aelthelred the Unready, Edmund the First, or Alfred the Great, but much more difficult to follow if you're a native speaker of the bastardized English language of the early 21st century.

If you also try to "use short words" rather than "utilize condensed vocabulary" then there's a fair chance you're going to be opting for the Anglo-Saxon by default. Apparently, in the early days of English, folks were a lot dimmmer and grunting out single syllable words was about the limits of their lingusitic capacity.

Following the arrival of those awful Latin types - Eyetalians and Frenchies - the intelligensia of the day (those with teeth and who didn't always smell of shit) began to pontificate extensively by exercising vernacular of a polysyllabic nature. No more "Oy, dick weed - shift your wagon" but a more gentile "peasant, remove thy vehicle from my immediate presence."

Invasion after invasion tossed new and even more exotic words into the nascent language until it became the lingua franca of today, resplendent in its many variations.

So expecting the average person to know whether a word derives from Anglo-Saxon or Arabic is optimistic. How about the origins of the hangings in the following Rogues Gallery?

alcohol, bandit, boulder, duck, history, hurricane, kidney, tomato, tulip, umbrella, wagon, window, zero.

How did you do? Here are the answers:

Arabic: alcohol, zero
Danish: boulder, kidney, window
Dutch: duck, wagon
Greek: history
Italian: bandit, umbrella
Spanish: hurricane, tomato
Turkish: tulip

No, the Bystander did not pluck these straight from his head - he's not that smart. But then again who is? Apart from a handful of academics and the various staff members working on the world's great dictionaries, who needs to know?

So go ahead and write as you need to write. English is a patchwork quilt of words forged in the fires of Empire, constantly changing with every breath a speaker takes. If you can't find the Anglo-Saxon, just make do with the English.

Sunday, October 16, 2005

BRAINS BEFORE BRAWN - SOMETIMES BEING SMART IS BETTER
"Excuse me, sir, but could you help me?" I was drinking coffee at my local java spot when the gal from behind the counter came toward me clutching a jar of pickles twice the size of my head. I sensed a Fox reality show physical challenge coming on.

Just as I feared, she couldn't get the top off the new jar and thought I might have an answer, based on nothing more than the fact that I was a male and therefore genetically adapted for jar opening.

Wrong! Five foot six inches and 160 lbs of wiry muscle, padded generously at the waist with some extra carbohydrate reserves, doesn't qualify me for any task that requires strength, stamina, or agility. Sure, as long as I keep my balance on my motorcycle I can look like some macho biker dude ready for a bar fight, but if the damn thing was ever to fall over, I'd be the first to shout for the help of a cheerleading squad to pick it back up.

Needless to say, I responded as any insecure weakling would - "Sure, no problem, let me have a try." My mighty left hand gripped the top tightly, my right held firm the jar, and the beads of sweat rose to my forehead like a soggy mark of shame.

"Mmmh," I said, "This is on pretty tight. Maybe it's stuck."

Yeah, and maybe you're a pussy, wimp boy!

Clearly brute force was not going to get me out of this situation. Maybe I should have simply feigned a heart attack when she asked the question in the first place. No, what was needed was charm, wit, charisma, and intelligence. And I was worried that all of these were inside the jar.

"Try running it under hot water - that will help loosen it."

Physics, when used properly, can certainly help. Many times at school I asked myself, "Who the hell cares about coefficients of expansion? Will that help me buy a motorcycle, score with a chick, or get a free trip to Los Angeles?" Well, here was a chance to test the theory - and if not exactly helping me score with a chick, I might at least get a smile of appreciation.

As she ran the water, I dredged up another piece of physics trivia from my moribund mind - the reason the cap wouldn't turn had something to do with friction. Somehow I had to apply more force than my twisting wrist was able to do. But how?

"Give me a lever," said Archimedes, "and I will move the world." Moving the world is one thing, but I needed to move a jar lid, something a little smaller but at this point, much more important.

Aha! The idea hit.

"Any luck? I asked, glancing over to the counter after the sound of running water had stopped?

"No, it's still stuck."

With that air of confidence only the truly egotistical can exhibit, I strode across to the counter and began removing my belt.

"What we need," I explained, "is something that can grip the jar and then let us twist. And this belt is just the thing."

I looped the belt over the top and pulled it tight so that the leather and jar seemed stuck together. I wrapped the free leather around my left and and began to twist. As I pulled, the belt tightened, increasing the friction, and thus providing more force.

Pop. The lid gave and air was released. A couple more tugs and the reluctant lid gave in to the leverage and opened.

Maybe I hadn't dragged a baby from a burning building or saved a basket of kittens from being drowned in sack - both of which can have women blubbing at 20 paces - but it was close.

"Oh my goodness, I've never seen that before! You are so smart!"

Ego stroked. Masculinity restored. Intellectual judo at its best.

"You're most welcome, ma'am," I said as I headed jauntily back to my coffee, "Most welcome indeed."

Thursday, October 13, 2005

BAD PARENT - TAKE MY KIDS
After working hard on me for some months now, the caring, compassionate people at General Motors have convinced me that I am indeed a bad parent. I hadn't realized until now just how negligent I have been and how much danger I am subjecting my sweet, innocent children to.

The TV ads show it all: cherubic children with frowns of disapproval looking to camera and asking, "But daddy, what would happen if we were in an accident?" or "But Daddy, what if we were pulled over by a gang of drug-fueled perverts with guns who laughed as they raped mommy over the hood and shot each of us for fun before turning their attentions - and sharp knives - on you?"

Yes, I admit it: I do not have OnStar. Let me say that again, loud and proud: "I do NOT have OnStar!!"

Bolstered by magazine ads where even more angelic offspring point the finger of blame at the heartless parent, I now realize that OnStar is no longer a luxury item to help Hummer drivers navigate the 101 around Los Angeles, but it is now an indispensible part of good parenting. Why, anyone who hasn't installed OnStar in their cars might as well strip their kids naked and put a bullet through their heads right now rather than have them endure the day-after-day trauma of knowing that their car cannot be tracked by satellite.

And imagine the taunting that goes on at school: "Ha ha ha, look at him! He doesn't have OnStar - let's report his parents to child services."

And imagine: "... and as if no further proof of negligence were necessary, your Honor, this man doesn't even have OnStar in his car. I move for having his children taken into care, his house being burned, and ritual flogging to death for the miscreant on live TV to ensure such blatant child abuse does not ever happen again."

It's no longer enough to have a cell phone: after all, the first thing the marauding gang of sex-crazed junkies-on-wheels will do - when they stop you in some Arkansas backwoods that you have accidentally driven down because you're too cheap to have GPS, let alone OnStar - is take you phone and insert it into one of your bodily orifaces. Then they'll move onto your wife and kids.

Yup. Folks in Iraq are living without water, power, security, or health care, and folks in Pakistan are having to live through earthquakes that wipe out over 30,000 people in a single hit - but the supportive folks at OnStar want to make sure that I can feel safe in my car for a mere $200 per year. What price true fatherhood? ("But daddy, what if the car breaks down 100 miles from anywhere, and your cell phone is dead, and there's no-one going to come along in 6 weeks, and there's a tornado heading straight for us, and the waters are rising on the road, and I'm out of heart medicine, and mommy's just gone into labor, and the alligators ...")

No sirree, I'll be signing up for the safety of OnStar just as soon as I can get through on their busy hotline. Lucky for me it isn't an emergency.

Tuesday, October 11, 2005

SO MUCH CRAP - HOW CAN THIS BE?
I can't believe how much absolute drivel there is in the blogging world. My previous tirade against inanity still stands, but I can't help randomly selecting blogs and reading them in the same way you can't help picking the scab off a sore and then wonder why you keep bleeding.

Here's a classic example of pseudo-philosophical, pretentious slurry that the writer clearly thinks is profound. How far off the mark can he/she be?

http://skeptikos.blogspot.com/

If you don't want to click - and I wouldn't blame you for giving it a miss - here's an example of meaningless rambling of the highest order:

"essence - what makes 'x' - x and not y - can be tracked down
within limitations - we can give 'increasingly approximate'
descriptions of x such that x is x and -y -

but all this will finally come down to making certain
philosophical /methodological decisions about how
to regard x and its descriptions

all finally (in terms of 'essence') arbitrary but - nevertheless
not without point or significance

individuation therefore is finally a decision - and the journey
to definition which is never complete - prompted originally
by veridical perception - another fact of the world - and
one that does not bear too much scrutiny
"

Dear God, will it never end? What the fuck is he/she talking about? For some strange reason, there are folks out there who think that this sort of loquacious diarrhea is "intellectual," whereas in truth, it is flaccid verbal masturbation of the highest order. Spare me the "Well, maybe it's too complex for you to understand" response. No, it's hard to understand because it is devoid of content!

Am I being unfair to Skeptikos? Hell no. You put yourself up on the web in a public forum and you shouldn't be surprised if someone takes a pot shot with a wet sponge or a dead fish. Along with the "look how exciting my life is because I've traveled everywhere but still remain a regular person" blog, the "read how erudite and learned I am, and marvel at my depth of knowledge" blogs are guaranteed to make me gag - and I'd like to think that this vomiting reflex is just as likely to be elicited in other readers of such blogs.

So tell me, Bystander, how do you really feel?

Monday, October 10, 2005

SO WHAT'S THE TRICK WITH BLOGGING?
Number one on the list of "skills you must have" is the dogged determination to write something day after day after day. As is evidenced by the majority of blogs, it doesn't particularly matter what you write as long as it is something. You new haircut; the cat's herpes; George W. Bush is stupid; how wonderful I am - all these things and more are typical fodder for the blogger.

The second has to be an absolute faith in your own ego. You have to believe, above all else, that somehow what you have to say actually MATTERS! It does no harm to have an over-inflated sense of your own importance, and by all means feel free to talk about any topic under the sun, even if you know nothing about it. In truth, facts are something of an anathema in the blogging world. Toss them aside if they get in the way of whatever you want to spout about.

The third skill is to develop your own, unique style - and that's not necessarily a tautology. Some bloggers have their own derivative style, based on reading too much Drudge, Coulter, Limbaugh, and that chick who wrote the awful Washingtonienne book.

Finally, the blogger has to post on a daily basis. Yes, I said that for number one, but it's such an important skill that it bears mentioning twice.

On the evidence of the current state of affaires, clearly the Bystander is not a good blogger, with new blogs appearing only sporadically. However, in the Bystander's defence, there are other things in life that are more important than blogging.

Although the good blogger may disagree.