sexy zombie santa

I went to the drug store this morning to get some last minute items. My girlfriend had previously purchased a bunch of candy that looked like it was made in Russia during the Stalin era, so I had to get some of the good stuff that they make in Pennsylvania. And more fake blood. I have long worked as a special effects designer for theatre and film, and let me be clear, you can never have enough fake blood. Now granted, 9:00 A.M. on Halloween day is close to the outside of the availability window for giant bags of candy and stage blood. If you wait till the last possible minute to do something, you can't really complain too much about dwindling supplies. Well the aisle where Halloween lives was easily identifiable, just look for stacks of hollow plastic pumpkins. But in the aisle where the vampire teeth should be, stood mechanized snowmen, and inflatable Santas. Giant blue plastic tubs full of Halloween sat out on the floor being hastily replaced by Christmas fare. Ornaments, lights, tinsel and Santa hats. Instead of the Halloween stuff I need. For Halloween. Tonight. Shouldn't you at least wait 'till the event is over before you start the new one? Are we planning to entirely forego Thanksgiving this year? It must be the snow. It makes people crazy.

fear itself costume

Going through the news this morning, there was a story about a lesbian couple from California. They have a four year old son who wants to dress-up as a princess for Haloween. The comment section below the piece was full of people spewing vitriol and hate. Hatred toward the boys choice of costume, hatred toward the parents, hatered toward their lifestyle. It was disturbing. In America you are allowed to be whomever you want to be. Liberty and the pursuit of happiness are guaranteed rights here. It is sad that because of so much ignorance and hate, someone has to explain to a four year old that people are going to hate him and make fun of him for being what he wants to be. In America, where freedom and liberty are our most sacred principles, people should remember that these are not just words on an aging piece of vellum. Defending freedom isn't only waging wars against our enemies in Mesopotamia, it is also about defending the right of someone whom you've never met, to marry whomever they want. And to raise children if they want. And here in America, little boys and girls are allowed to grow up to be whatever they want. Be the best princess you can be, kid. I'm cheering for you.

I am the water buffalo, you are the alligator

On October 29, 1929 the stock market went right into the toilet. President Hoover, reluctant to call the Wall Street crash a "panic", which is what it was, referred to it as a depression. The label stuck, and today politicians will go to great lengths to avoid using the word depression to describe the current state of the economy. Now the case has been made that the success or failure of our economy is related to people's perception of that economy. If investors feel positively about the future, they spend. If they are uneasy, they don't. Things are only bad if people think that they are bad. Beautifull simplicity in economics. If you can convince people that things are going well, they will go well. And vice versa.

how did you become king? I didn't vote for you

People seem uneasy with the occupy movements reluctance to have a stated objective. Beyond pointing a finger at the criminal behavior of the financial sector, and the duplicitous role of government, the movement has not embraced a common theme. I submit that this is deliberate.
If you ask 100 people if they think that Washington is broken, the majority will say yes. But if you ask them what to do about it, you will get 100 very different answers. The problem gets worse the more people you ask. Just try to get five people to agree on a pizza.
But I don't think it's the protestors job to find the solutions, that duty belongs to those in Washington who were elected because that's what they told people they wanted to do.
So don't get mad at the people who are trying to point out the problem to the people who caused the problem, and can't seem to admit that there is problem.
I never liked the financial district anyway.

the moment of singularity

The popular term for the actual beginning of the Universe has come to be the "big bang", which actually describes the moments afterwards.
The actual moment in time, umpteen Billion years ago, when literally everything in the Universe could fit into an oven is described as the event horizon, or the singularity.
A time when this small superdense object had so much mass, it would bend time like silly putty, so the concept of time is less easily applied. And the math tends to break down around then as well.
This singularity, this beautiful bundle of energy, probably wasn't around for very long, (again, the whole concept of time becomes an illusion) before it exploded more violently than we can imagine.
This is referred to as the expansion, or inflation. When the everything blew apart from itself, and began to grow very big, very quickly. (The math gets buggered up here as well.) This shining sphere of everything blew up much faster than it should have, and it is expanding faster than it should be.
There, as they say, is the rub. We know enough to know that there are unknowns. That even though we have figured out a great deal about how everything works, we still can't explain some very troubling questions about the Universe. Our brains aren't yet sophisticated enough, or some of the equations are flawed, or observation changes outcome more than we thought. We don't know.
That answer is difficult to accept for a species with such an inquisitive brain, so we will continue to search for answers. Contine re-working theories, and developing new ideas. We are aware of our ignorance, and we endeavor to learn.
This gives me hope that people will come to identify with each other as a species, and relate to their fellow man in a way that better reflects our interdependence and our ultimate commonality of purpose.
Then I like to think about the singularity.

everybody is everything

Politics has become who can scream the loudest at whoever is in power at the time. Anyone will tell you that washington is broken, but after identifying that there is a problem, they fall back into the time honored tradition of blaming someone else and denying any culpability. No one is immune. Republicans blame Democrats, the rich blame the poor, the whites blame everyone else. I submit that this current state of affairs is not working well for anyone (except the rich and white)

Web log year zero

So now everyone in the world has a blog. I want to see if this can go anywhere, writing for the ether, hoping that somebody somewhere is reading it. You can allow advertisers on here, to raise money, but since nobody is looking at it yet, I'm not gonna get ahead of myself. Maybe later BMW and Coke will jump on the cakewagon, but for now we're non profit.