The 100 Greatest Things Of All Time: #89

#89: Dinosaur tributes

Friend MM alerted me to this odd little subculture on YouTube. As he put it, "If we act now, we could be among the very first to make fun of these people. Now is not the time for timidity!" And so we press forward boldly, heedless of the perils that threaten from every side.

As a lover of dinosaurs since the tender age of 5, I realize that, in a counterfactual realm in which I swallowed several lead fishing weights during childhood development, I could have become a prolific auteur of dinosaur tribute videos set to Gwar. Actually, wait a second. There is nothing stopping me from doing so now. Prepare to be rocked by a tribute to Compsognathus; music by Viking Love.

Here's a quote from the annotation to a video tribute to Spinosaurus:

"There is absolutely no point in arguing about Spinosaurus vs. T. rex. Especially on this video. I'll just remove your comment without hesitation. I'm bloody sick of people fighting about this. It's an endless cycle, and you can't win it. Nobody is going to change other peoples' minds."

An endless cycle without resolution. The only way out is in.

The 100 Greatest Things Of All Time: So Far
100: The 1989 Honda Civic LX sedan (manual transmission)
99: Weird dream that a Merychippus had one time
98: The sun
97: Pharrell Williams
96: A shack near San Gregorio, CA
95: The breakfast sandwich
94: Antimony
93: Seeing through Melville's bullshit
92: The scrappy white guy
91: Barack Hussein Obama
90: Foam
89: Dinosaur tributes

The 100 Greatest Things Of All Time: #90

#90: Foam

There was a vigorous internal debate about this entry; that's why it took so long. Corn Chips & Pie staff members-- a team of rivals-- were bitterly divided, turning this seemingly inoffensive substance into ground zero for the culture wars. There were harsh words, resignations, even low-grade violence (slap fights). Not even time may heal these wounds. The figurative ones, I mean. Allow me to recap the various arguments:

• Pro: Ocean foam (or, if you prefer, "turgid, roiling sea-cream") is lovely.
• Pro: The line "...to the oceans, white with foooooaaaaam" is the high point of "God Bless America."
• Pro: Foam is a comfortable substance upon which to sleep.
• Pro/Con: The very fabric of space-time may be a type of foam.
• Pro: Foam "#1" fingers allow sports fans to convey a sentiment otherwise inexpressible, freeing the hitherto unrealized notion from the nebulous aether outside the gates of human communicability.
• Pro: Prior to the invention of foam by Jesus Christ, people shaved with menstrual blood.
• Pro: Some people enjoy foam on their twee little coffee drinks.
  

I really don't see what the fuss was all about. Foam!

The 100 Greatest Things Of All Time: So Far
100: The 1989 Honda Civic LX sedan (manual transmission)
99: Weird dream that a Merychippus had one time
98: The sun
97: Pharrell Williams
96: A shack near San Gregorio, CA
95: The breakfast sandwich
94: Antimony
93: Seeing through Melville's bullshit
92: The scrappy white guy
91: Barack Hussein Obama
90: Foam

Good article

Andrew Sullivan on Sarah Palin.
Here.

The 100 Greatest Things Of All Time: #91

#91: Barack Hussein Obama
He would be higher on this list, but I'm waiting to see if he's an Islamo-Marxist who screws white women and kills their babies. If so, #1.


The 100 Greatest Things Of All Time: So Far
100: The 1989 Honda Civic LX sedan (manual transmission)
99: Weird dream that a Merychippus had one time
98: The sun
97: Pharrell Williams
96: A shack near San Gregorio, CA
95: The breakfast sandwich
94: Antimony
93: Seeing through Melville's bullshit
92: The scrappy white guy
91: Barack Hussein Obama

The 100 Greatest Things Of All Time: #92

#92: The Scrappy White Guy
Having long since passed into the realm of cliché, one might justifiably wonder about its eligibility for the List. Fear not, pilgrim. American cities will always prefer the white guy with the .290 / .358 / .425 line to the black guy who is Barry Bonds. Todd Heap still occupies billboards in Baltimore, despite a recent level of performance that could not unjustifiably be described as "LeMasterian". Ryan "The Riot" jerseys outsell those of Aramis Ramirez. Probably.

Hey, who isn't a little "spooked" by the primal rhythms of your Terrell Owenses, your Doug Glanvilles?

The 100 Greatest Things Of All Time: So Far
100: The 1989 Honda Civic LX sedan (manual transmission)
99: Weird dream that a Merychippus had one time
98: The sun
97: Pharrell Williams
96: A shack near San Gregorio, CA
95: The breakfast sandwich
94: Antimony
93: Seeing through Melville's bullshit
92: The scrappy white guy

The 100 Greatest Things Of All Time: #93

#93: Seeing Through Melville's Bullshit
From Variety comes welcome news: the folks who brought you "National Treasure" and "Wanted" are planning to "re-imagine" Moby-Dick. Quote:

Ahab will be depicted more as a charismatic leader than a brooding obsessive. "Our vision isn’t your grandfather’s ‘Moby Dick,’ " Cooper said. "This is an opportunity to take a timeless classic and capitalize on the advances in visual effects to tell what at its core is an action-adventure revenge story."

The 100 Greatest Things Of All Time: So Far
100: The 1989 Honda Civic LX sedan (manual transmission)
99: Weird dream that a Merychippus had one time
98: The sun
97: Pharrell Williams
96: A shack near San Gregorio, CA
95: The breakfast sandwich
94: Antimony
93: Seeing through Melville's bullshit

The 100 Greatest Things Of All Time: #94

#94: Antimony

A late surge of online votes from Japan pushed this ahead of the breakfast sandwich. We really need to review our voting procedures; this kind of phenomenon violates the spirit of The 100 Greatest Things Of All Time list. I mean, yes pentavalent antimony used to be the first-line treatment for leishmaniasis, yes it has utility in the semiconductor industry, but-- let's face it-- it does not fracture evenly, and it is a poor conductor of electricity and heat. I mean, it makes bismuth look good, for Christ's sake. Antimony: the Kosuke Fukudome of elements.

The 100 Greatest Things Of All Time: So Far
100: The 1989 Honda Civic LX sedan (manual transmission)
99: Weird dream that a Merychippus had one time
98: The sun
97: Pharrell Williams
96: A shack near San Gregorio, CA
95: The breakfast sandwich
94: Antimony

The 100 Greatest Things Of All Time: #95

We're back online here at Corn Chips & Pie with the countdown of the 100 Greatest Things Of All Time. The honeymoon was lovely; thanks for asking.

#95: The breakfast sandwich

I've asked my reclusive neighbor, who also happens to be a published author beloved by children of all ages 21-29 (male), to write a few words about one particular breakfast sandwich. Here goes:

Wilmer Ochocinco was a Dominican immigrant and Washington Heights corner store employee with a taste in paranoia that borrowed heavily from, indeed was being crushed under an unsupportable debt to, childhood memories of Spanish-language translations of In Search Of, with a peculiar focus on the Rosenheim Events of the late 1960s. Ochocinco spent most of his time waiting for a shadowy dispensation neither feared nor even secretly desired, when you got right down to it, which left his nerves in a state that less seasoned hands might dismiss as benign boredom, but whose silences and empty spaces could be inhabited by spores with baroque potential and sinister intent, if intent could even be read in those mindless, antic, and ultimately relentless algorithms borne on the winds of daily life, eager to settle into just such an empty little vessel as offered by his ennui. So he kept vigilant and active, making eggs and frying bacon with more than the customary degree of vigor.

On the morning in question, a rather doughy, if not in fact porcine, customer was sniffing around the deli counter but had as yet failed to place an order. Ochocinco, a true pro, continued his prep work alongside the other deli-counter cooks with apparent inattention but quietly flexed his leg muscles, waiting to leap toward the grill in cheery solicitousness. Then he felt it: an undeniable chill passing through his right arm. There was the far-off sound of wind chimes. An egg cracked… the egg seemed to fry itself, a piece of thermodynamic mischief entirely unaided by any visible sources of combustion, in what the few observers who would willingly discuss the phenomenon would come to describe as an act made in the spirit of self-improvement prevailing during the decade.

A slice of Boar’s Head Vermont Cheddar cheese joined the fun by leaping unbidden upon the auto-fried ovum, and two bagel halves spilled out of the toaster oven, a pleasing golden brown. Ochocinco had no memory of toasting this bagel.

“A-and a slice of ham, please!” added the customer, rapidly acclimatizing to the day’s miracles and moving quickly on to the day’s salted protein demands. And so it was done, but not by human hand. Not by living human hand. Ochocinco and the boys, faces flushed and nerves pleasantly jangled by the presence of this spectral helpmeet, began to sing:

Oh, we’re – the –
Cooks at your bodega,
Breakfast is served!
Whippin’ up an egg, a
Slice of cheese,
If you please!
Throw on some ham
And toast that buttered roll
Poltergeists welcome,
But please don’t steal my soul!


The 100 Greatest Things Of All Time: So Far
100: The 1989 Honda Civic LX sedan (manual transmission)
99: Weird dream that a Merychippus had one time
98: The sun
97: Pharrell Williams
96: A shack near San Gregorio, CA
95: The breakfast sandwich

personal note

I got married on Saturday to The Special Lady. She is wonderful, and I am very happy.

The countdown of the 100 Greatest Things Of All Time continues after the honeymoon.

The 100 Greatest Things Of All Time: #96

The 100 Greatest Things Of All Time! As decided by your votes, my wisdom, and a random walk ranking algorithm as per Freschi (2007)! But really decided by the cold empirical facts of greatness as made manifest since time began! Go!

# 96: A shack near San Gregorio, CA
I think it was my friend and fellow sushi chef Dug who told me about this barn/house/shack, sometime in the mid-1990s. A friend of his had shot a film inside it, or something. It was just off a country road that led out of the town of San Gregorio. I usually remember it as Pescadero.

One fine spring San Francisco morning my girlfriend and I drove down the coast and managed to find the shack despite somewhat vague directions. It just sat there beckoning young city folk, ignoring the sneers of the nearby artichoke fields. Young people are welcome and you can just mind your own damn business, is what it said.

It kind of made you work for it, that was the appealing thing. It was hidden behind a thick fog of blackberry bushes and other thorny vines, and plus it was on someone's property. The state of neglect, which I'll get to, might make you think that the owner cared little about such matters as trespassing, but a little experience had hinted at a positive correlation between disrepair and shotgun-brandishing.

So we kind of had to sneak in, parking well down the road and then wriggling through blackberry bushes. In truth, this was not much of a tourist destination. Nobody had been here for a long time. Spider webs crisscrossed the open doorway. Sunlight shot through the broken roof like security lasers in movies. There were flowers growing on the floor. There were vines and prehistoric empty jars. Lots of dust motes waiting for decades to be cleared for takeoff. Apples sat on the floor, having fallen from an overhanging tree and jounced around, eventually finding a nice patch of sunlight to rest in. It was dark and cool but the effect was bright and green.

What really made it was the nearly pristine Model A sitting right there in the middle of the shack. I am no old car expert but I think that's what it was. There were no signs of the Late Twentieth Century or of recent trespass by hooligans: no condoms, no graffiti, no disused jetpacks or postmodern novels.

There were other rooms, too. The kitchen had ancient appliances and peeling old wallpaper: behind the wallpaper were pages from 1883 issues of the San Francisco Examiner. There were classified ads for all kinds of old-timey things that would make hipsters' moustaches stand on end. Somewhere in the kitchen there were probably articles by Ambrose Bierce and Mark Twain clamoring for sunshine.

Shacks like it probably exist all over this great nation, but no other shack was there for us in 1996 when we needed it.

The 100 Greatest Things Of All Time: So Far
100: The 1989 Honda Civic LX sedan (manual transmission)
99: Weird dream that a Merychippus had one time
98: The sun
97: Pharrell Williams
96: A shack near San Gregorio, CA

The 100 Greatest Things Of All Time: #97

The 100 Greatest Things Of All Time! As decided by your votes, my wisdom, and the power of prayer! But really decided by the cold empirical facts of greatness as made manifest since time began! Yaaaay! Literally everything is eligible! Stay tuned!

#97: Pharrell Williams
I saw him at the airport the other day and asked Cormac McCarthy to write a short description of our interaction in the first person.

I looked to my right and saw a man wearing a flat-brimmed yellow baseball cap. He appeared rich. His presence drew the postures of his entourage inward, forming a nexus of celebrity attention that was fuel for some kind of subtle radiation. It blew outward beyond the baggage claim area and through the reinforced concrete and rebar of the airport walls. Its strength did not ebb but remained soft and strong like an undertow. It went out through the parking garage and the rental car dropoff area and out into the wide open godless stretches of low warehouses and traffic islands and pavement covering the soil whose opiate embrace kept the brittle bones of our past in repose.
Excuse me but are you Pharrell Williams, I said.
Yes I am.
You dont know it but you and I are not so different.
Pharrell Williams fiddled with his cell phone and looked wary. What do you mean, he said.
Well I guess I'm taller.
He looked at me and indeed he saw the truth of this observation, as I was taller. He looked back at his cell phone and started to send a text message. After some time he thought to himself: So I guess we're kind of different after all.

97th best!

The 100 Greatest Things Of All Time: So Far
100: The 1989 Honda Civic LX sedan (manual transmission)
99: Weird dream that a Merychippus had one time
98: The sun
97: Pharrell Williams

The 100 Greatest Things Of All Time: #98

The 100 Greatest Things Of All Time! As decided by your votes, my wisdom, and the power of prayer! But really decided by the cold empirical facts of greatness as made manifest since time began! Yaaaay! Literally everything is eligible! Stay tuned!

#98: The sun
It provides hope each morning and encourages amateur photographers each evening. It sustains life on our planet, and is the reason that all of us (except some shitty little bacteria hanging out near thermal vents) are here today. Not bad, right? The only thing keeping the sun from ranking higher on this list: it hasn't really shown me very much recently. No innovation. It's kind of a celestial Stereolab, cranking out the same thing over and over, content in stasis. Some critics might say "stagnation." Enjoyable, yes, but only 98th best.

The 100 Greatest Things Of All Time: So Far
100: The 1989 Honda Civic LX sedan (manual transmission)
99: Weird dream that a Merychippus had one time
98: The sun

The 100 Greatest Things Of All Time: #99

Here at CC&P we're counting down the 100 Greatest Things Of All Time, using your votes, my noxious prejudices, a random walk ranking algorithm as per Freschi (2007), and the cold empirical facts of greatness as made manifest since time began. What's eligible? I'll tell you, you fat fuck. Everything. Everything aggregated or elemental, corporeal or conceptual, that one might modify with an adjective: in short, any noun.

#99: Weird Dream That A Merychippus Had One Time
About 12.7 million years ago, there lived a Merychippus (an early ancestor of the horse), in present-day Nebraska. Its high-crowned cheek teeth allowed it to become the first grazing horse; its previously unsurpassed hight (4 feet) made it rather uppity. One night, it was sleeping in a matted swirl of high grass. It had this really weird dream. It was in a familiar grove of trees along a river, only it wasn't really the familiar grove-- it's hard to explain. Anyhoo, the dream progressed into an explosion of proto-horse eroticism suffused with a kind of questing mysticism. There were revelations, nocturnal emissions, synesthesia. It seemed totally real. It was weird, but awesome.

The 100 Greatest Things Of All Time: So Far
100: The 1989 Honda Civic LX sedan (manual transmission)
99: Weird dream that a Merychippus had one time

The 100 Greatest Things Of All Time: #100

Here at CC&P we're counting down the 100 Greatest Things Of All Time, using your votes, my noxious prejudices, a random walk ranking algorithm as per Freschi (2007), and the cold empirical facts of greatness as made manifest since time began. What's eligible? I'll tell you, you fat fuck. Everything. Everything aggregated or elemental, corporeal or conceptual, which one might modify with an adjective: in short, any noun. So let's begin:

#100: The 1989 Honda Civic LX sedan (manual transmission)
Who better to merge fuel efficiency with comfort than the wizards at Honda? This 4-door humdinger of a sedan, though not spectacularly novel in any single way, nonetheless perfected disparate mechanical and design challenges to create the perfect package. 92 horses, 1.5-liter 16-valve engine, double-wishbone suspension, and power windows. 98.4-inch wheelbase: a stretch limo? No-- the 1989 Honda Civic LX, haterz!

"The apogee of the economy car," proclaimed the renowned sculptor and unlikely automobile critic Ann Hamilton in a special article for Car & Driver magazine. Hamilton was not alone in her devotion to the 1989 Civic LX. Lenny Dykstra drove his Civic from New York to Philadelphia following the trade that brought him to the Phillies, later recalling the dreamlike drive down 295: "To be honest with you, I didn't think I could do it. I really didn't. I loved the Mets; I really loved them, you know? And the Phillies seemed a little, I don't know, kind of frighteningly masculine. So I thought I'd quit playing for a little while, maybe get into origami or something, I don't know. I had a faggoty little cousin who was really into making paper cranes. It sounded peaceful. But somehow-- I don't know how-- I got myself into that car sometime around 10am and drove down to Veterans for a night game. I always felt real good in that car. Safe. And guess what? It was a real ruminative drive. The engine purred at a resonant frequency with my thoughts, allowing me to see the trade in a wider perspective. I thought, fuck it. I'll play. And I did, and you can read the rest in the history books. I loved that god-damn car." It should be noted that Dykstra was driving a Mercedes when he drunkenly crashed into a tree two years later.

Plus, my Civic has 260,000 miles on it and is going strong.

The 100 Greatest Things Of All Time

I'd like to take a moment to thank all of the enthusiastic readers who sent in their votes. Your participation and engagement keeps Corn Chips & Pie a vibrant community resource. I know a lot of readers get a kick out of our annual "100 Greatest Things Of All Time" feature, and-- to tell you the truth-- it's a lot of fun for us too!

I notice that our email is still being flooded with votes from regions as far-flung as McMurdo Sound and Cupertino, so I should just reiterate that the final vote tally was recorded last night. But don't lose heart-- save your votes for next year!

It's your support and your generous donations that allow us to bring premium Corn Chips & Pie content to you, for absolutely free, year-round. We want you to continue to enjoy this public web-log in perpetuity, or at least until the blacks take over the internet. So please, please consider a modest donation. You may contact our ombudsman for details on how to donate.

For $100 (that's only 100 divided by 12 dollars per month!), you'll receive as generous recompense for your largesse an authentic whipsaw emblazoned with the CC&P logo (designed by Chip Kidd). For $1000 (that's only 1000 divided by 52 dollars per week!) we'll send you the goat's bladder canteen carried by Dr. William Brydon on his tragic retreat from Kabul to Jalalabad in 1842 . For $10,000, which is a whole lot of money, to be honest with you, we'll send you three items from the Top 100 Greatest Things Of All Time. Our choice.

The countdown starts tomorrow with #100. Let's get ready to have some fun! But let's also be ready to learn.

Semioticians: They're Just Like Us!

Interviewer:  Are there any shows that you particularly love?

Eco:  The police series.  Starsky and Hutch, for instance.

Interviewer:  That show doesn't exist anymore.  It's from the seventies.

Eco:  I know, but I was told that the complete series was just released on DVD, so I am thinking of acquiring it.

It's time for a new post

I hadn't been to Dublin since 1996. Things had changed.

Twelve years ago, walking across a bridge that spanned the Liffey, I looked down and saw a seal happily munching on a salmon. At the time, I knew this was quite an unusual sight. I was happy to see it.

This time, every time I crossed over the Liffey, I would glance into the river and fail to see a seal eating a salmon. This would cause a brief, highly irrational flicker of disappointment.

I know you believe that this is merely a throwaway vignette with no larger significance, but no. No. I am about to spin this flax into some seriously spun flax. There is a deep lesson here: avoid anything interesting as if it were a strain of hemorrhagic smallpox. Buffer yourself from all pain.

High food prices = bad

Of course you don't need reminding-- not from this blog, anyway (but apparently this blog needs reminding*)-- but now's a good time to donate money to the World Food Programme.** If you like squinting at the horizon, you can invest in rural infrastructure by building a road or founding an institution like a small farmers' grain cooperative. Just kidding. Food aid will do for now.

*I heard my old boss, Per Pinstrup-Andersen, on NPR today with his weird Danish accent, making good Danish sense. Yesterday I talked to a friend who's teaching a course on the world food economy in Minnesota, and who related a story about getting a bit agitated in front of her students re: the food crisis.
**By the way, hats off to whomever coined "silent tsunami" over at the WFP. Marketing genius.

conversation transcript

Friend: Has anybody ever fucked a bear?
Me: No.
Friend: Dead bear?
Me: Yes!

2 important milestones

First appearance of an infectious disease epidemiologist in The Wire: season 3

First appearance of Mr. Boh's smiling visage glowing eerily above Baltimore: season 4

Motoring in the north

I don't know if you are aware of this, but it turns out that you can do a lot more with the internet than leaving agitated, punctuation-free comments on celebrity blogs.

A mildly interesting story follows. Read on only if you like old things.

I had some people over one recent night for some good old-fashioned drinking and garlic-eating, and I was cleaning my apartment in the morning. Picking some spent National Bohemian cans off my mantelpiece, I noticed something protruding through the bottom of the mantel, wedged between it & the wall above the fireplace. Upon fishing out the filthy thing, I realized it was an ancient postcard.

The front of the postcard features a pastel-colored photograph of a dull low skyscraper, with the caption "The John B. Starks Building. Louisville, KY." The rear of the card informs the inquisitive reader of the Building's size, location, and date of completion (1918). Apparently the choice of postcard didn't merely reflect an odd appreciation for the omnibus speculative office building: the entire text of the postcard reads "New Year's Greetings from 'The Starks.'"

Indeed, the postmark reads "December 31," but the year is illegible. It is addressed to a certain John S. Gibbs, Jr., at 1026 N. Calvert St. in Baltimore, MD. I live in a carriage-house, and enter from an alley running parallel to N. Calvert; 1026 is the address of the apartment building attached to the rear of my place. So this was John S. Gibbs, Jr.'s carriage house (and, apparently, postcard-storage facility).

30 minutes of Googling followed. To narrow down the date, I identified the stamp on the postcard. Not being a philatelist, this was kind of annoying, but still relatively easy: it's a 1c Washington of the Washington-Franklin series, issued from 1912-1922. So 1918-1922, probs.

Next, Gibbs. His dad was a fancypants finance man; he was a receiver of the derelict Baltimore Iron, Steel, and Tin Plate Company in 1897, and a director of the Union Trust, which had some trouble in 1903 when its railroad ventures in Mexico collapsed. The guy was a canning magnate: founded Gibbs & Co., Inc.

Our boy Junior was an usher at the Carr-Brown wedding in 1902, as covered by the New York Times. He had a lovely socialite wife. From the Baltimore Sun in 1918: "Mrs. John S. GIBBS, Jr., who has been occupying a cottage at Chatham, Cape Cod, since the early summer, where Mr. Gibbs joined her several times, is returning by motor and stopped over at Providence, R. I. On her return she will go over to the Eastern Shore, where she will visit her mother, Mrs. DIXON at her country home for the late season. Mrs. GIBBS, who was the beautiful Miss Anne RANSON, is with Mr. GIBBS motoring in the North. She has recently had her portrait painted by Mr. Alfred Partridge KLOTS, one of the most charming that he has done. It is to be placed in the home of Mr. and Mrs. GIBBS at Roland Park." Stop the presses.

By 1921 he was a director of the Fidelity and Deposit Company of Maryland. By 1946 he was the President of the Board of Trustees of Johns Hopkins Hospital. Hats off, Junior.

He died in 1953. His NYT obituary tells us that he was 77, that he was president of the board of Gibbs & Co. canners, that he died at his "Baltimore County estate, Tyrconnell," and that he was fancy in various ways. One may trace his surviving relatives on the web in a similar fashion.

Finally, the John Starks building: it still stands, on Fourth & Muhammad Ali in Louisville. It was sold in 2006. It is on the National Register of Historic Places, and has its own unspectacular Wikipedia entry.

30 minutes of Googling. I realize this is all fairly boring, but the notion that all this was easily recovered from one dusty postcard? God-damned amazing.

Au Clair de la Lune

If you haven't seen it nor heard it yet, here is the oldest sound ever recorded. 1860.

Happy World TB Day

9 million active cases per year. Rising.
Almost 2 million deaths per year.
#1 killer of those with HIV.
5% of cases multi-drug-resistant.
Most currently available drugs about 40 years old.
About 2 billion people-- 1/3 of the planet-- with latent TB.
Etc. Go wiki the hell out of it.

Correction

I did not survive the Holocaust running drugs in an East Baltimore tower with my mother, who does not have Asperger's. The queue forms on the left for publishers who would like to offer me book deals for my traumatic journey through the hell of attention-whoring.

Memoir

I survived the Holocaust running drugs in an East Baltimore tower with my mother, who has Asperger's.

In Praise of Cumin

I praise you, cumin.

Kool-Aid Dreams

Today's the first day that I actually believed-- momentarily, drunk & stoned & addled by thousands of neurofibrillary tangles-- that Barack Obama will be the next president of the United States.

Nuggets: let's be great in 2008!

• Power out here. A tow-truck driver in Canada once told me of how he lived "off the grid" for a year, starting on the highly symbolic 20th of April. (4.20!) He kept his beer cold by snaking an extension cord into his neighbor's electrical socket, and similarly powered his computer and desklamp. "It's actually really easy to go without hydro [in English: electricity]; I don't know why more people don't do it."
  
• Dead branches on the tree of possibilities: Paleo-Future.
  
• Lacking power (GIANT STORM! DID YOU HEAR?), and needing to finish an epidemiology paper by tonight, I have spent the past few days in Bay Area cafes with my laptop. Hmm. There do seem to be a number of people on their laptops who are "young, male, decently attractive and successful in a way that doesn't seem correlated to any kind of virtue" on their laptops. Notice the careful phrasing that stakes out a neutral position on the question of my membership in the group; I report, you decide. There are secret signs. There is a highly structured social order, saturated with ritual, that has almost surely been described on This American Life. Most surprisingly: cafes here give out free beef jerky to anyone toting a laptop.
  
• I've overheard un-gilded gems like, "Oh, he's your typical Sufi mystic..." [knowing chuckles].
• And a Lycra-clad man attempting to start a conversation with some Germans, using a tone more appropriate for 2-year-old retarded children: "I work with your leaders. The leaders of your country. They do not think about the future. They are very slow in adopting the e-lec-tric caaaarrrr." Here he turns an imaginary steering wheel, thereby creating a word-picture. One German says, "We are not fresh off the boat. We have lived here for 40 years." They subsequently ignore him.
  
• Also: "I want Obama, like, so bad." Memo to Barack: the voters of the SF Bay Area are spreading their electoral legs for you.
  
• Gawker has linked to Corn Chips & Pie. I now face a challenge previously confronted by countless bloggers before me: getting one's girlfriend to give a shit.
  

TIGER ATTACK UPDATE

The fact that it is now raining in the San Francisco Bay Area has resulted in a lamentable suppression of tiger attack news. For those of you unlucky enough to be elsewhere-- and thus starving for information-- I can report that each day here has brought a new banner headline, a new stunning revelation, a new angle to this horrorshow horror show. The world will long remember the date of December 25th, or "12/25," as some have now dubbed it. It was Day One of the tiger uprising, ushering in a spirit of justifiable fear and dread. Silent Night, Deadly Night, indeed.

In the experimental spirit of such 20th century writers as Stein, Joyce, Barth, and Larry King, I shall now run down a list of tiger-related "items." I hope these trifles amuse you and help to shepherd you into personal growth in 2008.

• At least two news organizations on the East Coast have run stories with the title "Tiger Attack-- Could It Happen Here?" (1) (2)
  
• The San Francisco Chronicle ran a story titled "Talking to Children About the Tiger Attack." Indeed, what do we tell our children? We must teach them to face hard truths. We must teach them that everything-- even things we think are cute, harmless, and friendly-- literally everything can tear you to shreds and devour you. Parents, please put photos of angry tigers mauling deer above your babies' cribs. Fear is a useful emotion; eternal vigilance is the only solution.
  
• You may not be aware that there have been reports suggesting that the kids who were attacked had been "taunting" the tiger, making roaring noises & such. Because of this, I have repeatedly heard people saying things like, "Well, I have no sympathy. What did they expect?" MM has noted that, despite the intrinsic hilarity and meaninglessness of the suffering of strangers, it does seem as if death-by-mauling may be excessive punishment for taunting. Normally it's 15 yards, tops.
• In any case, what did they expect? We can never know the answer. Nonetheless, I posit that they expected the tiger to remain in its enclosure, and not to leap out and maul them. This is a naively common expectation in zoos.
• Why, you may ask, has the tiger attack so gripped our imaginations? I suggest that one explanation may be that we have a deep, primal need to shit ourselves for no good reason.
• Bruce Chatwin once suggested that our fear of the dark, and our fear of the other, derives from our evolutionary struggle against predatory big cats (back when natural selection liked to do weird shit with our psyches, apparently). I dunno. I recently found out that the elder Mr. Chatwin used to dress up in a tiger costume and scare the crap out of 5-year-old Bruce, if that helps solve the puzzle at all.