Kong Is Racist?

Admittedly, I never thought of Lord of the Rings or Narnia as allegories for the Bible until the recent spat of articles on the subject, and I haven't seen the original King Kong since I was a mere scrub of a boy, but Kong as a depiction of the black man raping a white woman?

I guess.

If Aragorn is Christ, and Azlan is Christ, I suppose Kong could be "the black man." The funny thing about Peter Jackson's latest version is that Andy Serkis plays Kong, and from what I've seen, Andy is a white man. Does that mean that all white men aspire to be angry, oversized black men?

The movie poster for the 1976 version of King Kong shows Jessica Lange in the palm of Kong, with his giant hand coming down from above as she cradles his finger. I have to admit, the profile lends a startling similarity to a black man's cock and balls.

Was Star Wars another depiction of a black man (Darth Vader, voiced by James Earl Jones, and with a helmut like a penis) trying to take over the whiny little white dude's world, namely, his own son Luke?

Not to mention Kong finally climbs to the symbol of the white man's status: the Empire State Building, perhaps signifying that the angry black man is still just a little bigger than the biggest the white man has to offer.

Then again, maybe it's just a story of a big ape who dies.

The other argument is the pool table, where the white ball controls all colors, and in the final standoff drops the most elusive and dangerous color of all: black.

These are interesting arguments, but are they valid? Research shall show.

The Culture Box

Laptop computers are nothing new, and yet they are the device which attaches with a frequently more prolific wi-fi umbilical cord to the world.

It's interesting, if one thinks briefly of the history of information. How the scribes in Egyptian days created language (after the carving of stone) and the data was carried thither and yon over trade routes and through castles and over massive land holdings in order to determine how many cows, concubines, and corn the monarch might have.

Now we have laptops, complete with their own energy source, and with the proper location the ability to connect instantly to just about any possible type of information one can imagine.

These culture boxes are, according to the psychological argument, the end of personal interaction. This is actually quite a contradiction. Think about it, with computers and internet access and email and instant messaging and sites like My Space propogating peoples pictures and thoughts and bands and pets; how is this the end of personal interaction?

There has never been more personal action.

It's a culture unto itself, this internet phenomenon. Do you have your box?

Everything Is Slightly Unbearable

There come days when nothing is as it should be, when everybody and everything is in your way.

Waiting in line at the gas station is a deplorable waste of time. You sit there, idling, or with your engine turned off, and finally the old farmer guy with his giant F250 informs you five minutes later that he's still got to fill his second tank.

You drive around the building to wait in the other line. Suddenly the truck in front of the F250 pulls away, leaving a spot you could back into, had the jackass behind you not pulled so damn close he might as well be attached to your trailer hitch.

The man in front of you with the Cadillac finishes pumping. Stoked, you think. But no, he is one of the three people on the planet who still pay cash, and he's physically debilitated--maybe even diabetic. Instead of first moving his car, he leaves it as is and ambles over to the paymart. The day wears on, all the more exacerbating due to the lack of sunglasses over your eyes. Everything is impossibly bright.

Finally Old Man Gimp pulls away, narrowly sliding by the kid with his brand new GMC Sierra, who winces as the man drives by, walking over to check if the old man has enough room. Puss.

The gas finally pumped, (and realizing you had less than half a gallon left) you seek to exit away from the main light, only to be bombarded by oncoming traffic on the "sneaky" way out. Carefully, you assess every driver's head as you navigate the lot, realizing that not one of them has any spatial knowledge of anything beyond the front window of the car.

The Big O!

This from the New York Times:
Oh, Oprah, 20 Years of Talk, Causes and Self-Improvement
"Ms. Winfrey has released a six-disc DVD collection of her greatest moments - a maudlin, self-congratulatory video memoir that is entirely deserved and mesmerizing to watch.
The whole extravaganza is embarrassingly lavish and over the top, and not nearly enough."

I don't know. Oprah appeals to women, and to Dr. Phil. She is easily the modern world's Johnny Carson. The four times I had to sit through her shows I was with women who were on the rag. Oprah is undeniably rag material. This does not make her less important, nor is it meant to belittle those ladies who feel comforted by Oprah in their time of bleed, but I can't stand watching the woman for more than four minutes.

This may be an abitrary time thrown out by me, with no psychological underpinnings other than it makes for a nice round number for the sake of a narrative, but it is a very close estimate to the amount of time it takes me to want to run from the television.

Oprah is a force, there is no doubt, but she is also self-important. The fact that she is the living embodiment of a rags to riches story verges on saccharine. I only hope I can write a novel before she retires that she deems worthy of the Oprah book club.

I'm torn between a deep revulsion of the woman and a profound respect. A friend of mine used to call her the whale, back when she was a colored woman. Now that she's homogenized herself, I might even consider her sexy, as long as I don't have to spend more than four minutes with her.

Three Holes

An ad campaign by Pentel (pentel.com) claims their new pen, the impulse, is a vehicle for the best use of three holes since ... the bowling ball. Clever sexual innuendo there.

Additionally, the ad finally ends with an animated line drawing of a person grooving in excited, sexual exhortations, with the pen hung around their neck as a lanyard--thus the use of one of the three holes. The dancing gyrator is mildly ripped off from Apple's iPod silhouette campaign.

Anyway, I've always liked pens, and in general utensils created for scribing, but I never knew just how incredibly perverted a pen could be. I might get one simply to spend hours with my newfound collection of holes. Think of the possibilities.

As of this posting, even Google didn't have an image of the pen. Apparently Pentel is hoping to keep the pen in your hands only.

Helping Hands

There is a non-profit organization based in Boston, Massachusetts called Helping Hands (helpinghandsmonkeys.org)which provides highly trained capuchin monkeys for handicapped people. This is awesome. At the same time I want to laugh. Monkeys are so badass and clever it must bring a tear to the eyes of the 'patients' every time their monkey turns on the light or picks up that dropped paper or brings them a glass of water.

I hope if I'm ever unfortunate enough to need assistance that I will be the lucky recipient of a capuchin monkey. I would call him Chico.

Paying for Content

Trying to Wean Internet Users From Free
The New York Times is trying to make up for declines in its traditional revenue by charging for portions of its Web site.

I find this slightly amusing. The NY Times has a portion of its online content as subscriber only. Recently, under this new pay content, demarcated by a nifty orange "T", is an article on just that subject--namely, how the NY Times is trying to charge for content.

The catch is that as interesting as the article looks, one can only read it if one is already a subscriber. Thus, paying to read an article about paying to read articles.

Is that ironic? I'm not sure. Dave Eggers (who apparently used to be a regular writer for salon.com) had some "author's notes" in the back of his book "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius". In the notes, which are written in about a five point font, just big enough to cause chronic squinting, he goes on about the overuse of the "ironic" situations one might confront. I don't even want to try to encapsulate the breathtaking spin he put on ironic, but he offers alternative words for almost any situation that people would feel inclined to call ironic, but would be better served by those alternative words.

It makes you realize how much of a cliche "ironic" truly is. So, is an article about paying to read that is accessible only by those who have already paid ironic? Maybe, but more likely it's genius marketing ploy.

Blog Unknown

Hmm. It seems strange that a blog program created by Google, (namely, the one you're reading), has a spellcheck that offers alternatives to the word 'blog' precisely because it doesn't recognize the term.
Alternatives for 'blog': bloc, Bloch, blows, bloke, blocky

Junk Mail

It seems junk mail is as prevalent as belly button lint these days. The junk is so 'there' that my internet service even has a junk mail attached to every regular mail I get. (Although technically this is a virus on the server side, which they have yet to address.)
My favorite junk mails are those that have the literary drivel at the bottom of the message. Gibberish designed to get past the spam blockers. For every message I block, another three arrive, seeking to sell me watches, Viagra, real estate, stocks, or offering closeout wholesale prices on old software.
My other favorites are those clever mails that borrow from somebody else's email, and send you a message claiming the undiscovered fun of sharing pictures or text messaging with your friends. I mistakenly went on one of those one time, put in my first name, and the site immediately filled in the rest of the blanks with all of my information, then froze and disappeared. I later checked with the person who I thought had sent the original message, but they claimed to have done no such thing.
Now I look on my blog, which no one reads but me, to discover I have a comment on a post I left back in June. Joy! I thought. Someone read my genius. But no, the comment was junk. One of those stock offerings where it starts at 25 cents, and they claim it'll go up to $1.25 overnight.
Didn't anyone see Boiler Room? Are there people out there who are duped by these solicited scams? Are they making money off of these phenomenal stocks?
Another junk mail I've been getting is supposedly from Paypal and eBay. Each of those sites sends a realistic message claiming my account is about to dry up, or somebody has messed with my identity and I'd better go quick and give them all my information again, just so they can confirm that I actually am who I say I am. The catch lies in the final warning of the message:

If you do not respond within 48 Hours! you risk the chance of losing your account.

They almost got me with that. But when I failed to respond within the dangerous 48 hour limit, I got another message with that very same warning. I've received them regularly every few days, each with that harried 48 Hour! boosting fear at the bottom of the message.

I'm still here. And they're still out to get me.

Dress Shirts and Danishes

I dreamt of the Kona side of Hawaii, except I was in Santa Barbara working at the Business College. I was starving and thirsty, and halfway through the class I realized I wasn't wearing a shirt. I wasn't naked, just shirtless.
I gave the class some assigments, and went out to buy a shirt. Unfortunately, it was only 9 in the morning, which meant nothing would be open. On my way out, the dean of the school asked me to get some danishes on my time out. This was especially weird for two reasons:
The first was he didn't mention I was shirtless (and it was at this point in the dream I became aware for the first time that I was shirtless--the early mention in the first paragraph was for narrative purposes); the second weird reason was he wasn't at all concerned I was leaving the campus, and my students, unattended in the classroom.
I hitched a ride to Sears, because for some reason my truck wasn't working. Obviously the store wasn't open, so I went to get the danishes. As I stood in line, several frat boys got offended that I was shirtless, even though all the workers and everybody else seemed oblivious to the fact. I ordered a giant sugar cookie, and the hot little worker girl put it on a plate, which one of the frat boys started to eat with a fork.
I called out the girl about misplacing the cookie, but she didn't care. I confronted the frat boy, but he ignored me. Then, as is sometimes the case with dreams, I fought him and his three friends, or I had a verbal altercation, or I smashed the cookie in his face, or I screamed at the hot cookie girl.
Finally I stood in the checkout line, and some lady cut in front of me. Seven different altercations took place, and each time I put a raisin english muffin in my bag of danishes. My bill came out to $82.95. What? More altercations ...
This all took an hour and a half, and Sears was still closed, or they didn't have any shirts that didn't need ironing. I drove my truck (which I now had and worked) back to work, still shirtless, which still didn't seem to matter.
The danishes went untouched, as I'd lost my appetite. The dusty bag now sits on the back table with the danishes untouched inside, or not.

The Four-Minute Bike Ride

I pulled my bike off the hanger, lubed the chain, and began the task of gathering my bike gear. It was so much easier when we didn't have gloves, clipless shoes, padded bike shorts, synthetic workout shirts, and hip-packs to hold my iPod. As I was adjusting the headphones, running the cord up my back, I forgot the pod was still attached to the wire, sitting on my bed. I turned, and flung the pod onto my cement floor three feet down. Oh christ.
It still worked, and I remembered reading that the little buggers can take a fall or two. This was good, because as I was trying to zip up the crusty zipper on my hip-pack, with my pod in it, I dropped it. Goddamnit. About an hour later I had my gear on, after digging through my unused socks for the special bike socks, rifling through my athletic wear for the padded shorts, and the same for the shirt.
Finally, I got on my bike, after wiping the crusted dirt off my helmet. Careening down the driveway I noticed my brakes felt especially squishy. I made it into the shade of the canyon, with the intention of adjusting the handlebar tweakers to tighten the cable. I then squeezed the brake, testing for tension, and instead broke the brake cable.
I rode back home, and upon reaching my front yard looked at my little bikometer. Four minutes. Sixty-seven hundredths of a mile. I hung my now decrepit bike back up, removed the gear, and got in my truck. At least I didn't drop my iPod again.

Just a Minute

It is a common sighting to see people in Montecito go about their business as if everyone within their general vicinity were on their payroll, and all the roads were merely an extension of their private driveway.
A lady was driving her brand new, 745i BMW along Coast Village Road. Her car was in the middle of the intersection near Bank of America and Chevron; already she was exhibiting symptoms that indicated her complete lack of regard for anybody but herself.
Coincidentally, we both pulled into the Montecito Von's parking lot at the same time. I parked, and as I was walking to the mailbox near the pharmacy (which does not carry condoms, by the way) I overheard her say, "I'll just be a minute. Why don't you drive around the parking lot a time or two while you're waiting for the spot?"
The situation was this: she had parked in one of the two handicapped spots, and an old man in his Chevy Tahoe, with his blue handicapped rearview mirror placard displayed for all to see was genially trying to get the clearly non-handicapped lady to get out of his spot.
She ambled in to the pharmacy, her back turned to the man.
He parked in a regular spot, across the lot, and walked over to stand in front of her BMW. He was livid, and visibly shaking, staring at her license plate. Obviously, he was running the situation through his mind of calling the cops to report this rude lady to the sheriffs. In the end his sense of decency prevailed. I watched as he walked over to his car, opened up the back, and gingerly placed the bouquet of flowers he'd just purchased on what must have been his wife's wheelchair. It was obvious he was making a point to anybody watching that he did, in fact, have a legitimate excuse for parking in the handicapped zone.
He finally got in to the truck, his back hunched with age and tension, shaking his head. I believe that confrontation will last him a week's worth of griping. Had he waited for the lady to exit the store, it would have taken much longer than a minute. While she left him hanging, I'm willing to bet he had her minute hanging.

Dreams of Nightmare Jobs

I've been broke for most of my life. Ten years ago it was a chore to dredge up enough money to go out for a decent meal. Nothing's changed. I think I might be the problem. Then again, I've also been told I don't fit in. Not fitting in means I've got to somehow come up with my own means of success. Somehow I don't think this success will arrive in my lap by sitting around on my unfinished patio reading pithy books about traveling families: The Laments.
My stepdad bought me a wrought iron table for my patio recently, because the winds took my plastic table and completely demolished it. The new one's nice. Anyway, I had to pick it up from the neighbors, who then mentioned a job as a book keeper for a local tile company. That night I had a dream about the job.
It started by walking in to the dark, air-conditioned building. The wife of the owner was a good-looking curly blonde of average height, with a perfectly proportioned nose. She took me in to the office, which was a converted closet, where the computer sat underneath some overhanging clothes.
The computer was small, like an original MacII, the kind where the screen is about the size of a modern-day in-dash GPS. The brain was sluggish, and they were still operating with floppy discs. The screen was blurry, and the program was nothing I'd ever heard of. She mentioned that the dress-code was from some obscure clothing line that fit, fashion-wise, somewhere between the Gap and Old Navy.
I sat down to punch in a few numbers, staring at the minute, glacoma-inducing screen with dread that hung over my shoulders like the dark rack of clothing just over my head. Within minutes I stood up and told her I couldn't do this unless they purchased at least a new screen. She said it wasn't in the budget. I told her the job wasn't in my budget. Which is why I'm still broke.

Biodiesel Follies

So Zac found this guy Matt who apparently is the nephew of oil moguls.
This guy Matt claims he read a bunch of public domain government funded concepts for creating biodiesel, then patented the idea. He also trademarked "biofuel". Now, he says, he's waiting for this one company to check on his formula for beef tallow biodiesel, and if the company likes it, they're going to buy his filtration plant for half a million dollars.
Meanwhile, Zac spent $3000 on some fuel-fibrilator out of the back of a Real Goods catalog; the same catalog that sells recycling toilets, where the picture depicts a guy with a big shit-eating grin on his face as he sticks his hand in the manured waste--mere inches beneath the toilet.
Zac somehow talked Rivers into setting up this biodiesel cooking operation in Rivers' driveway. "Just so long as you don't get grease all over my driveway," Rivers warned. " I don't want to smell a bunch of cooking oil all over my driveway."
Zac's machine is apparently rather clap-trap. A conglomeration of pipes barely tightened, and put together with teflon tape. As they were cooking the first batch, with lye and methanol, the lye was a bad mixture, and one of the hoses popped due to pressure. Matt got oil blown all over his head and shoulders (a commercial?), and Rivers pointed out there was a kink in the hose. "A kink?" they asked. "What's a kink?"
The next batch went much smoother, with a better mixture of lye, and after they spliced one of the hoses from a different part of the fuel-fibrilator, which "wasn't really doing anything."
Matt also recently claimed he wanted to run for mayor of Santa Barbara.
My question is if this guy has venture capitalists behind him to help him build his filtration plant, and is in the running to get half a million dollars from this as yet unnamed company, why didn't he know how to work the fuel-fibrilator? Shouldn't someone in the running for half a million dollars be able to avoid the calamity of having biofuel explode in your face?
Zac came over last night, apparently needing a truck to move his fibrilator, which still has 17 gallons of liquid fuel sloshing around in it. I told him my truck wasn't going to be the answer. I also couldn't figure out why he needed to manually extract his finished fuel out of the $3000 fibrilator with mason jars, rather than having some clever spigot dispense the "liquid gold" as easily as maple syrup.
With all due respect to Zac, who's definitely on the right track with this alternative fuel thing, the process of getting to the finished fuel is downright calamitous.
1. Obtain vegetable oil. In this case, Santa Barbara City College cooking oil from the culinary department.
2. Procure enough space to cook your fuel. This requires:
A. A fifty gallon drum for the oil, which must be boiled at 120 degrees to purify the leftover coagulants.
B. A fire pit big enough to rig a fifty gallon drum over, preferably with enough wood to cook the oil for several hours.
C. A fuel-fibrilator. Which, ironically, will need a generator or an electrical outlet to run. (This might cut into your "alternative, off-the-grid" status.)
3. Get some methanol. In Zac's case, a fifty gallon drum's worth, and hope to store it somewhere relatively close to your operation.
4. A batch of lye.
5. A big, hearty dose of unbridled enthusiasm.

Good luck.

Dream Job?

It's interesting when you realize that it's all about knowing people. Sure, early on in corporations or businesses or anything you can come in and be a nobody for some time, and in no time you're the CEO or the president. But today, if you don't know someone who knows someone, you're no one.
This is okay. Being chagrined about nepotism is silly, because that is how the world is run. Bush didn't become president because he's the best candidate. He is now the leader of the free world because he knew the most people who were willing to pay the most money.
Read Oil! by Upton Sinclaire. His depiction of an oil magnate and his son is a grim depiction of what has always gone on in politics. Politicians are bought and paid for before they ever show their stock grins to us, the people, the supposed voice of the nation.
Just knowing people will not always help either, obviously. Two examples:
Years ago I was listening to a talk radio show in Kauai, where a Diva was on air, explaining to callers how she got into the business of opera, radio jingles, and whatever. One caller claimed to have an eight-octave voice, which is phenomenal, and mentioned to the diva that her teacher and everyone else told her to pursue a similar career as that of the diva.
The diva was suddenly a jealous, position-holding snake. She basically told the caller to lose all faith in her voice, that the job was demanding, the producers cut throat, and that any newcomers in the business would quickly lose their sole, their hope, and any talent they might once have had. She was brutal because she did not want the competition.
Similarly, when you are using whatever nepotism you can call upon, you can only hope that the position you are pursuing does not conflict in any way with the current position of your contact. If their is conflict, you will be snubbed, a back will be turned upon you, and you will be told, "Good luck." Or you'll be told with a smile, "It's so competitive. There's really no room for anyone right now. I'd love to help."
Whatever. If you get a job because of nepotism, then right on, my phantom reader. If you get a job because you are truly talented and were "discovered," then damn, you rock, you entrepeneurial freak of nature. May you have more money producing brain farts in the future.

A Year Later

Here I sit in computer class, "working" for a living, mentally biding my time and quietly chastising myself for still not having the job of my dreams. Then I laugh at myself, because I haven't done a damn thing to get after the job of my dreams.