The Clog

BYE BYE BLOGGER, I'VE GOT A NEW GIRLFRIEND

2010-02-21T14:38:00.000-08:00

Google-owned Blogger has decided to stop supporting users who use FTP to store their Blogger sites on their own domains. Apparently, at only 0.5% of the total user base (that's 225,000 blogs using the 2006 figure of 4.5 million Blogger sites), we don't rate anymore. Thanks, Google. Wordpress is happy to host me and to give me all kinds of FTP control over The Clog. So, to my hundreds of millions of followers, find the new and improved and wickedly cooler Clog over here.

WELL SAID, MY BROTHA

2010-01-25T20:42:00.000-08:00

On why the term "African American" is silly twaddle.

REALITY 1, HOPE AND CHANGE 0

2010-01-21T18:27:00.000-08:00

It's astonishing to watch Barack Obama's presidency flame out so loudly and so quickly. With his contemptible health-care reform evaporating like a glass of water in the desert, all eyes are on what he's done in the last year, and what he plans to do in this critical mid-term election year.

It's been all about the surprises. Chicago will host the Olympics because no one can resist Obama's charm. Not. Obama in Copenhagen plus a bunch of glue-sniffing consensus scientists will take nature by the throat and make her do their bidding. Not. Obama and Nancy Pelosi will ram expensive, mandatory, socialist health coverage down Americans' throats. Nope. Obama will throw mind-boggling amounts of money he doesn't have at the recession, causing a measurable drop in unemployment and a China-style recovery. Nope. Guantanamo is closed. Um, no. Escalations in Afghanistan and increasing tension with Pakistan. Check.

By my count, he's broken approximately 6 campaign promises, 4 of them central to his getting elected. The carcass of health-care reform isn't even cold, and he's out selling more federal power, more regulation, more economic engineering in the form of controlling those bastardly banks. Naughty naughty banks! Papa Obama doesn't approve.

At this point, who cares?

Although it irks my vestigial liberal organ, the Supreme Court today rightly struck down a century of bad precedent related to political free speech. I would rather corporations have no more say in the political process than they already do, but that is my problem, not theirs. The Constitution allows for all forms of free speech except those that can be construed as fraudulent and felonious (screaming "fire!" in a crowded theater, for instance, or threatening to assassinate a president). This will change the way the mid-term elections shake out. Why? Because the only entities -- other than the electorate itself -- powerful enough to combat bad government are those with equally vast resources to combat it. (I am opposed to unfettered corporate lobbying power, but not to what corporations do to voice their opinions about who should be elected. There is a difference.) Politicians are a weak species, so no matter how you look at it, the sway is in.

To think that this clown (Obama) had the gall to demand a Second Bill of Rights (the right to health care, the right to a job, and other specious shit a socialist would spew) when he wipes his butt with the ideas enshrined in the original Bill of Rights is preposterous. Who does he think he is?

I loathed Bush, but he was an enemy I could define; laughing at him soothed the pain. Obama is something else entirely...he's so unqualified and unconvincing it hurts to watch him in action.

FUCKING AROUND AS A PLOT DEVICE

2010-01-16T21:39:00.000-08:00

I'm watching an incredibly irritating movie. One of those movies you can watch while folding laundry -- five loads of it. It's called Gone and the entire plot so far hinges on whether one character reveals to the girlfriend of another character that the boyfriend had a one-night stand before meeting his girlfriend on holiday in Australia. That's the plot. No, really.

It's billed as a thriller because we're supposed to be thrilled that young people -- already predisposed to sleeping around -- magically have the moral queasiness of conservatives three times their age. It's a disgusting display of moral immaturity, and it's been infecting Hollywood movies for as long as I can remember. It's never been stronger than in the Naughts, however, and I wonder when we'll get back our sense of sex as fun, void of guilt, the sort of thing normal people do with each other that doesn't turn into wafer-thin fodder for silly little thrillers.

If you were a 25-year-old straight guy and you arrived in a new country, went out to a club, got drunk, and slept with a really pretty girl, tell me -- please -- how you could squeeze 90 minutes of drama out of the possibility that your girlfriend might find out that you had a good root? Why is that entertainment? What is so insecure and petty-minded about the filmmakers that they thought this would "thrill?"

It's this sort of normative, traditional, conservative bullshit that keeps a useless movie like Gone from simply evaporating before the end of the first reel.

A character just said -- no kidding -- "I don't think I know who you are, anymore." Enough. I'd rather watch Fatal Attraction, a movie that knows how to milk drama from the otherwise completely boring conceit of infidelity.

THE BACKGROUND MOVIE

2010-01-02T23:19:00.000-08:00

Are you one of those people who can't stand the sound of silence? If you're by yourself, do you play a radio or stream audio/video all the time? Or do you love the sound of absolute silence?

I'm somewhere in between. I love the sound of absolute silence, but when surrounded by it (can an absence surround you?), I tend to pay attention only to it.

Let's take baseball. Best background white noise mankind ever created. These days, I watch about 500 hours of baseball during the spring and summer. Baseball is great background activity when you're working, although I am much more efficient when I just stream music or play it off my Zune.

When I'm writing, music, again, is the best medicine, but there's something about the background movie that makes it perfect for felling silence while you're working on mundane tasks like email, cooking, or non-creative documents.

The beauty of the background movie is that I can write a post like this while watching one. There is no competition between that part of my brain that needs to focus on forming or typing thoughts and that part that can listen to unimportant dialog, looking up only every minute or so to see what some dramatic swell in the music means. I'm watching some dumb movie called June 9. It has teenagers running around in the woods acting like assholes and any minute, some of them are going to start dying horrible deaths. The perfect movie for getting productive things done.

So, what makes a great background movie? First, it has to be inconsequential, one of those movies many people wasted parts of their lives producing. It has to be of interest to me, meaning it has some subject-matter appeal. Often that means people get killed or are in some regular state of terror or are being eaten, blown up, or stepped on by monstrous giants. It also has to have no cerebral, artistic, or innovative aspirations. Although that last sentence describes 97% of all movies made, I can't just background-watch any old piece of trash. If a trashy, cheap, shabbily made movie has any brains, any originality, it instantly becomes a foreground movie and I just pay attention to it.

[Hold on, someone's getting killed.]

OK, that took a few seconds, but I'm back to finish my post. See how easy it is?

THE ADVENTURES OF DARWIN & DR. WATSON

2009-12-29T01:36:00.000-08:00

When you've tried your literary hand at comic-book scripts, screenplays, verse, prose poems, short stories, novellas, and novels, what do you turn to next?

For many years, I've marveled at the genre of children's fiction. I grew up on Curious George, Hardy Boys, Maurice Sendak, Beatrix Potter, J.M. Barrie. Something about children's fiction -- whether it's ultra young like Dick and Jane or more modern and mature like Harry Potter -- still enchants me, even though I'm a middle-aged man with no kids.

Many people I know are parents of young kids, from newborn to 5 or 6. That's gotten me thinking about what I would write if I wanted to entertain older young'uns, whom I'll define as the 7-to-10 crowd. Those were critical reading years for me, a cross section of Superman comics and books like Red Planet, by Robert Heinlein.

But before I made the leap to Heinlein, John Christopher, Verne, and Wells, there were the books with lots of pictures and big words. Where the Wild Things Are is emblematic of that experience, although there were no doubt dozens of less memorable but equally fascinating fictions of the time. Many of them I can't recall, other than their impressions: the large eyes and fantastic creatures, the sense of suspense and joy with each new page of discovery.

So, I come in my life to a place where I can write The Adventures of Darwin & Dr. Watson. The premise is simple. Take Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, make him a Beagle called Darwin, outfit him with a scrappy little brother named Dr. Watson, and moor them in a world shared with two 9-year-olds. What about Lastrade? And Moriarty? The Hounds of the Baskervilles? I'll get to all that soon enough.

I'm so looking forward to this. The first story -- or case -- is called The Beagle Knows. I'm putting out a call to illustrators who will collaborate with me. By jove.

DEAR BARBARA BOXER, YOU IGNORANT SLUT

2009-12-28T19:20:00.000-08:00

From Barbara to my junk-mail folder:

I am pleased to let you know about Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood�s recent announcement of a new rule to protect airline passengers� rights. The new rule includes much of the Boxer-Snowe legislation, the Airline Passenger Bill of Rights, which addresses limits on tarmac delays.

I first introduced the Airline Passenger Bill of Rights with Senator Olympia Snowe in 2007, following several incidents at airports where passengers were forced to remain on airplanes for as long as 11 hours. The Boxer-Snowe Airline Passengers Bill of Rights (S.213) is currently pending before the full Senate as part of the FAA Reauthorization bill.

Specifically, the Department of Transportation�s new rule limiting tarmac delays includes three central components of the Boxer-Snowe Airline Passenger Bill of Rights:

* Airlines must give passengers the option to deplane after they have been stuck on the tarmac for three hours.
* Airlines must provide food, water, access to medical treatment and working restrooms while passengers are trapped on the tarmac.
* Airlines must provide passengers with delay information on their websites as well as information on how to make formal complaints.

This is a victory for passengers who have been mistreated, and I thank Secretary LaHood for acting to protect passengers� rights. This shows that the Department of Transportation understands that no passenger should ever be held captive for hours on an airplane without food, water or sufficient restrooms.

As good as this new rule is, it doesn�t give passengers permanent protection because it could be overturned by a future administration. That is why I will keep working to see that the Boxer-Snowe Airline Passenger Bill of Rights becomes law.

Sincerely,

Barbara Boxer
United States Senator

My response to Barbara on her web site:

What I'm interested in is you spending less of your time on ridiculous airline rights and more on getting out of the airline business all together. I'm interested in you spending less time fussing over "rules" and "laws" that don't really mean anything (or which put bandages on much larger problems) and allowing the Fed-whipped airlines the ability to recover from decades of regulatory subservience. It is a tedious perennial lie that airlines are free to engage in business without overwhelming Federal regulation. That lie is evident every time I look at the taxes/regulatory fees I pay when buying a plane ticket.

Your newsletter about the Boxer-Snow intervention is smoke and mirrors. You think we're stupid enough to think that these fool bills protect us, when all they do is enshrine the problem at the heart of a massively powerful federal government: the way to solve problems is with more regulations.

Quick question: who had a larger role in informing your proposed legislation, lawyers and lobbyists or your voters? You are beholden to only one of those groups, but I suspect you paid more attention to the other.

EMPTY WEB

2009-12-28T16:19:00.000-08:00

Here, I wrote about my little friend, the spider. After many weeks of watching his peculiar and delightful life, I discovered that he was gone. The only trace that he had ever been there is the wreckage of his web.

What happened to him? Was he eaten? Did he skedaddle after a moth massacred his web? I'll never know, but there is a haunting loveliness to the broken geometry of his carefully constructed home. The heart of the web, that place where he would pluck the filaments to further ensnare flies, is gone. The long filaments that anchored the web's heart in mid-air are all that remain, runners that begin to thicken with dust.

I thought of clearing these scarcely noticeable remains, but something in me says wait. Perhaps he is in hiding after a middle-of-the-night attack that failed. Maybe little spider will return, rebuild. Or perhaps time will turn over those last strands to other creatures, bugs or birds adapted to recycling abandoned spider webs.

SICK AS A DOG

2009-12-26T16:17:00.000-08:00

It wasn't until today that I set out to see how the term "sick as a dog" originated. Woody has been sick for a couple of days -- vomiting, diarrhea, lethargy -- and it's really brought out the daddy instincts in me. We've all had dogs or known people with dogs, and many of those dogs have become sick at one point or another. Just like people. It's not the end of the world.

But watching a beautiful and beloved animal lay in one spot all day because his intestines are in a knot is not easy. I find myself altering my routine, checking on him every twenty minutes, trying to gauge -- in the absence of his usual array of physical indicators -- whether he needs anything.

The worst thing about having a sick dog is trying to understand 1) how he got sick and 2) precisely what he's feeling. As precious as my dogs are, they don't have acute human memories, our developed sense of discernment, or anything approaching the ability to explain. I've backtracked through the last four days, trying to detect my way to a solution, but without Woody's participation, the investigation is nothing more than me trying to be in control of a situation I don't really understand.

Were I a true detective, I could tell you this: On Christmas Eve, he had a sandy poo. Sandy poo always means that Woody or Darwin ate dirt at the park while out with their dog walker. I cooked all day; throughout the day, Woody would sit in the kitchen doorway, waiting for handouts. He got a few pieces of carrot, which he loves, and a tiny piece of rutabaga, which he's never had before. I've also been stuffing their Kongs with chicken jerky from the local pet store. They've had digestion problems in the past related to this jerky, something I hadn't really put together until this weekend.

Still in detection mode, I conclude the following:

Woody ate something foul at the park.
Woody is fiercely allergic to rutabaga.
Woody got a bad piece of jerky.

Conclusion 1 is fairly likely, but I can't be sure. Conclusion 2 is unlikely, since Darwin had no reaction whatsoever and I can't determine any chemical quality of rutabaga that would contribute to an allergy. Conclusion 3 is also fairly likely, since I recall a time when Darwin had explosive diarrhea after eating their jerky a few months ago.

Unfortunately, just by looking at the pathetic little sack of listless dog in my bed, there's no way to tell. So, today Woody will fast. That's a great way to let the body get rid of impurities or toxins. Tomorrow, he'll start on a diet of soft rice and soft unseasoned chicken. By Monday, he'll be back to the bright-eyed, eager-to-please tail wagger.

BEST CHRISTMAS GIFT EVER

2009-12-25T11:37:00.000-08:00

My beautiful boyfriend knows this artist named Matthew Atkins, who illustrates children's books. For months, boyfriend has been conspiring to have Matt create this fantastic illustration of me. What can I say? Is this me, or what?

ON OVEN-BAKED OMELETTES

2009-12-08T22:52:00.000-08:00

I had a large link of sweet Italian sausage and 8 pastured eggs lying around and wondered what to do with them. I looked up "sausage omelettes" and encountered this.

I didn't have any milk or onion, and only cheddar cheese. Fine, milk and onions are usually optional for cooked eggs, and I would just wing it with the cheese.

The dish baked beautifully in a 9-inch cast-iron skillet, but I learned a few things that would turn this into a spectacular small dish for 4 (also works well as 2 hearty helpings for dinner).

The cooking time says 20-30 minutes in a 400-degree oven. If using pastured eggs, think about pulling the whole thing out of the oven at 20 minutes -- the 5-minute difference dries the eggs out. Why? In my experience with them, pastured eggs are firmer, creating a denser omelette finish, which brings me to points about creaminess and moisture...
Use milk.
I think the addition of the mozzarella would have added a moist cheesiness that cheddar just doesn't provide.

SAVORY ROSEMARY-THYME TURKEY DRUMSTICKS

2009-11-27T22:02:00.000-08:00

I grew up with dry turkey, no matter who made it: family, friends, family of friends. So, I'm not a big turkey fan. I eat it for Thanksgiving, but rarely otherwise unless it's a random package of turkey bacon or a sandwich worth of turkey salad. Turkey is like the utilitarian domestic bird: big enough to feed an impressive number of people. It lacks the oily richness of duck, the variety and ease of chicken, or the fat succulence of goose. I've been around for fantastic turkey dinners, but they have been rare: common among all of them is preserving the earthiness of the flesh and keeping it moist.

Here is a terrific recipe (found near the bottom of the page) for drumsticks that braise for 2+ hours. Schwing!

EVOLUTION TV

2009-11-27T20:15:00.000-08:00

The wonderful zoologist and evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins, has a central location for video of his visits to the Galapagos, as well as other shorts on topics ranging from Hawaii's drasofilus fly to the fossil records of diatoms. Good stuff, although not nearly as rich or detailed as his books.

SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FRIEND

2009-11-27T19:18:00.000-08:00

In the corner of a dirty window in my laundry room, a spider thrives. I take my smoke breaks near this window, so I've had regular opportunities to watch this amazing creature from its first arrival. When I first noticed it (six weeks ago?), it was perhaps 2 millimeters in body length, with legs extending its overall length to about 4 millimeters. It is now about a centimeter long in the body, with legs that draw it out to an inch.

I have no idea what kind of spider it is, but it has clearly evolved to excel in non-windy spots that receive lots of sun, the sort of area where gnats, mosquitoes, small flies, and small moths are wont to gather, trying unsuccessfully to pass through the glass.

While I've witnessed many wonderful behaviors of this little spider, none is so revealing as its methods for the subjugation of bugs who snare themselves in its web. Yesterday, I watched while a fly about 2 millimeters long got caught. Swiftly, the spider skated across its web, bouncing gently to cause the fly to wriggle harder and therefore trap itself more fully. Within 3 seconds, the spider had wrapped the tips of its legs around the fly. Using the two rear legs, the spider immediately spun new webbing, which, with fore legs, it wove in some imperceptible pattern around the fly's body. Most interesting about all of this was that the spider saved the wings for last. It allowed them to flap, the fly's last struggle for freedom, before it then trapped them with filaments.

The spider then held very still and let the fly exhaust itself to death. After less than a minute, I could see the spider's maxillae as they, like pistons in a tiny machine, moved up and down against the fly's body. I wished then for superior vision, but the meal took place at a level of magnification beyond me.

"FAT FANCY WORDS"

2009-11-27T19:06:00.000-08:00

I sat the bar of a local oyster house, eagerly awaiting my assorted kusshi, wellfleets, and miyagis, when a very old woman sat down beside me. Although she hadn't yet opened her mouth, around her hung the fog of a person who is always on the edge of saying something, anything, whether it makes sense or not.

She was a regular and apparently had a running gag with one of the dishwashers: they liked to argue about the value of Barack Obama. He was the straight man to her antic hilarity. "When he opens his mouth," she said excitedly, while waving a vinegraitte-sopped salad green on the end of her fork, "yakety, yakety, yak, fat fancy words, and nothing gets done!" Oh, how she laughed, an air-splitting cackle that caused everyone nearby to turn and look.

After ordering breaded sole (whatever that is!), she settled into the topic of Obama's pardoning of the Thanksgiving turkey. "He said, 'I'm gonna eat that sucker.' Can you believe that? His daughter said a president can't say that. Can you believe he said that?" The waiter (whom she knew) diplomatically told her to chill out and get over it, which lead her to regale us with her 60-year old conviction not to eat meat. She was hardly a vegan, if the cream in her chowder or the sole on its way were any indication. But boy did she understand CAFO beef and chicken, apparently from having lived near one, in a farming community that depended on the economy of thousands of animals crammed into shit and sickness every day.

My oysters arrived. I now could wrap myself in a pardonable anti-social cloak, that of the single-minded hungry male who's about to chow down. At this point, the woman patted me on the shoulder, bid me watch her purse, and slid down the aisle behind me. It took me a while to figure out that she had stepped outside the restaurant and was bending over my Beagles, who were waiting beyond the door.

I stepped away from my plate to get a better look and just caught the old hag closing a jar filled with cat kibble!

She had been fast, that one. I was going to chastise her for feeding my dogs without my permission, but I just wanted to eat my oysters and leave. Did I mention how inappropriate it is to approach strange dogs with food, let alone cat food?

Just as I was waving for my check (good food, slow service at Anchor Oyster & Seafood Bar), I saw the old woman scoop some of her breaded sole into a napkin in her hand and head for the front door.

This time, I was ready. I practically knocked down two patrons trying to intercept the speedy little hag, but I reached her at the door, tapped her on the shoulder, and asked her not to feed my dogs.

She looked like a foiled child who had just been caught pooping on the carpet.

Following me back with her little parcel of dripping fish, she started to tell me how much she loved animals. I wanted to tell her I love animals too, especially when I'm not feeding them a diet of cat kibble and breaded sole. But my check had arrived. So sorry it couldn't have lasted longer. Gotta go.

SIGNS OF STUPIDITY

2009-11-24T22:50:00.000-08:00

After the smashing international success of the People Who Should Be Killed* series of Clog posts, I am spawning a whole new series called Signs of Stupidity. SOS is dedicated to actual signs -- like a stop or do-not-enter sign -- developed by idiots or developed for idiots. Sometimes, both.

The series will showcase photos of signs from airports, bus stops, grocery stores, subway stations, hospitals, you name it. The series will also make a compelling case for the ungodly prevalence of dolts. If you have submissions to the series, just send a photo and some description of where you found the sign.

* I don't have search active on this blog because, um, because I'm a loser. I'm working on it...yawn.

CRYBABY

2009-11-24T19:45:00.000-08:00

Why do certain movies make us cry? I don't mean manufactured weepie dramas, but ordinary movies that don't make anybody else cry...even though you weep every time you see it. Or perhaps it's just me. I cry when I watch Raiders of the Lost Ark and Marion Ravenwood first unleashes that massive anime grin of hers. I cry when I watch the new Star Trek and Leonard Nimoy appears. I cry when Dick Van Dyke and his rugrats sing Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, or when John Travolta belts, "I've got chills...they're multiplyin...'" I don't cry during Krull, but I cry during Dragonslayer.

Is it nostalgia? Probably. My mother can listen to Casablanca and sniffle through half of it.

While watching Escape to Witch Mountain, the 1975 Disney sci-fi flick, I found myself riveted and often teary-eyed at the travails of intergalactic moppets Tony and Tia as they used their psychic/telekinetic powers to evade the scheming ham villain portrayed with ghastly histrionics by Ray Milland. I was ten when that movie came out, and I remember 10 being a most excellent age, filled with wonder and no idea of the horrors of the world.

Perhaps nostalgia is just a lament to the remembrance of things that are dead.

THE GAY GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING

2009-11-24T19:18:00.000-08:00

I participate in political discussions at a handful of online communities, dedicated to economics, individual rights, and other libertarian concerns. Although I had hoped to stake in the heart my impulse to write further about gay marriage, it just keeps coming back to bug me.

The following is an interesting exchange I had with a gentleman about libertarians wasting their time on ideals rather than on practicalities. On reading his post, my hackles raised. I remembered a bit of wisdom from Stephen King in his book on writing where he says, if you get upset by a piece of criticism, it's probably true.

But then I remembered Christopher Hitchens' Letters to a Young Contrarian, one of the best mini-books I've ever read. In it, he says that the dissenter must always be prepared to be boring. Milton Friedman said that one man plus a correct opinion outvotes a majority. Together, their statements suggest that you cannot let the illusion of what is good substitute for what is even better, and you'd better be prepared to constantly defend that position. Even if you start to sound like Charlie Brown's teacher.

I have mildly modified the posts from their original only so that they make sense without the rest of the surrounding thread.

Post author
What [right-leaning libertarians] usually say is that government shouldn't be in the business of handing out marriage licenses, which is a high-minded, principle way of stepping aside and letting all the anti-gay laws continue without challenge...

...Theories about how things ought to be are important but of limited usefulness. You have to deal practically with what actually is. What I was describing above is commonly known as a "cop out."

Andrew Lynch
Your stance on this issue is commonly known as "giving in." "Limited usefulness" is precisely what a coercive state hopes that its dissenters' positions will degrade to. Paine: A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom.

It doesn't really matter for how long or in honor of how many traditions the government has been involved in marriage, it (the feds and, by virtue of its own constitution, Rhode Island) has no constitutional authority to engage in these (and so many other) acts. Saying that it's just the way things are is precisely the couch-potato thinking that prevents Americans from keeping their government(s) in check.

I'm a gay man and I'm adamantly opposed to queer activists relying solely on equal protection to keep up with the Joneses. It's unprincipled. Oh, it's "useful," by your definition, because that's the way things are, but it simply pits bad legal recourse against bad legislation.

Post author
You can think something wrong, but still deal in what is practically possible. I tried and tried, but finally realized the futility of trying to work with "idealist" Libertarians long ago.

Andrew Lynch
I share that sense of futility every time I try to reconcile my small-government beliefs with Austro-anarchism. I don't think I'm a neo-libertarian, but I think there's a role for government, one that even involves degrees of regulation (gasp!). But when it comes to contracts and negative rights -- all of which more than handily cover the aspects of public gay life Americans get so apoplectic about, I have to side with the ideal rather than the convoluted machinations and compromises of (often normative) practicality.

SUCK IT, COCA COLA

2009-11-24T17:50:00.000-08:00

I grew up a Pepsi kid. Somewhere in my 20s, I converted to a Coke guy. Cokes never made me fat and I really paid no attention to what was in one. They did give me pimples -- rather, drinking two or three over the course of two days would give me one superpowered zit, which is much worse than having little zits evenly distributed across one's face.

Reading Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma opened my eyes to what #2 corn products are, how they are used, and what their nutritional value is(n't). Compounding the nutritional emptiness of Coke and Pepsi (and Nestle) products are their international water practices, which go something like this: Coke approaches a government with money in exchange for rights to some kind of premium water source. The government, which will sometimes not be accountable to its citizens, grants these rights. Coke or Pepsi builds plants, modifies local water tables, creates huge emissions by bottling and then transporting the waters across land, in the air, or by oceanic freighter, and you get to buy them at the local Safeway.

Frankly, there's nothing so special about Coke or Pepsi that would make me want to contribute to their coffers. What, then, is the alternative?

A few weeks ago, on the wonderful Mise Economic Blog, I discovered John Nese, the proprietor of Galcos Soda Pop Stop in Los Angeles. The video where he talks about his obsession with soda is a standalone piece of free-market brilliance. He's also an infectious enthusiast, a regular guy plying his trade in a country that favors the sort of government-induced corporatism that Coke and Pepsi enjoy. Thanks to his influence, I've been seeking local stores that cherish variety and offer it to their customers.

Ever tried Fentiman's Curiosity Cola? It's delicious, with a dash of ginger for more richness than you'll ever get out of a can of Coke. Or how about Boylan's Orange Soda, which is so carbonated that you'll burp with delight after every other sweet cane-sugar swig. I can also recommend Whole Food's 365 brand of Cola, which is sweet and fizzy-satisfying. I've just purchased Virgil's micro-brewed Real Cola and Esteban's Cola Oogave, which sounds frightening, but we'll see.

Only some of the sodas I've cited are free of industrial products like sodium benzoate, citric acid, or the notorious "natural flavors." It's up to you to decide how much mystery ingredient you want to tolerate, and to understand how ingredients may or may not collude to form carcinogens.

In the meantime, enjoy a break from high fructose corn syrup by branching out into a land of flavor and sensation not owned by Coke or Pepsi.

I AM CHER, I AM LAZARUS, I AM JET LI

2009-11-24T16:25:00.000-08:00

Cher is famous for her comeback tours, Lazarus for his return from the dead, and Jet Li for saying that Fearless would be his last-ever, final final film -- before turning around and making a few others. In my previous post, I killed the Clog because I thought that I'd have already moved to New Zealand and be whipping up entirely new posts on an entirely new blog. That move hasn't happened yet, and I'm hungry to write about things that are on my mind.

So, I draw the Clog from the dead the way necromancers revive even the most corrupt flesh, so that I can work darkness on the world and have some fun in the process.

THE DEATH OF THE CLOG

2009-07-21T18:36:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was my 44th birthday. To celebrate, I'm killing the Clog.

It was never my intention that the Clog should become a measure of my unhappiness living here in the U.S. Instead, I always meant it to be a vehicle for writing, a way to chronicle exciting times and random interesting observations that might be of interest to people who know me. Accidentally, it became a lamentation of the Bush years, punctuated here and there with moments where I felt genuine excitement about a phenomenon, whether linguistic, ideological, artistic, extraplanetary, or historical.

I occasionally look back at old posts, like this one, which captured the way I still feel about Americans, or their paucity of cultural richness, and find that I really have nothing new to observe. I've pretty much said all I have to say about what has become before. As I follow my slow and deliberate plans to leave this forlorn place, the Clog becomes something that interests me less and less.

Despite the success of MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and any other trendy form of white noise, less and less is said using ever more bandwidth.

So, I am subtracting the Clog from that consumer-driven equation that yields complexities with no substance. I, like so many others out there, really have nothing to add to the Great Argument. My sound bytes are no more special than any others, although they are often better written. And since analysis or introspection has no real place in the Great Argument, why bother continuing? There are other ways for me to spend this energy. My plans for that energy require that I stab the Clog in the heart.

Thanks, dear readers. It's been a great 6 years. Therapy without the bills, if you will.

THE NEW DR. WHO IS A PYT?

2009-07-20T22:24:00.000-07:00

I think I've just about had it with the prettification of the adult male. Decades of Dr. Who have given us a wide variety of doctors, from the old and cranky to the youthful and dorky. Never have we been handed an out-and-out pretty boy. I would love to have been at the meetings where someone decided -- yet again -- that to improve ratings, you must make your star a) young and b) easy on the eyes. I suppose that gets girls and gay boys gushing in their panties, but it doesn't demonstrate any creativity.

New Dr. Whos are a regular part of the mythology, but never have I responded with such eye-rolling disinterest as when I saw this photo of Matt Smith. Wait until you see the new companion. Physically, she's pretty. You know, pretty like any chick you've seen ten thousand times in a middle-of-the-road high-school drama.

One of these days, somebody is going to realize that crows' feet and a slightly crooked smile are far more interesting than milky skin and bleach-white teeth. When are we going to see an Indian Dr. Who, for fuck's sake? Somebody as ugly, but as unique and fascinating as, say, B.K.S. Iyengar?

GIRL DRINKS FOR TOUGH GUYS

2009-07-19T17:13:00.000-07:00

Anybody remember Zima, that awful girlie drink from the 80s designed to get girls drinking bottled liquor that they then threw up after one too many?

I haven't followed the girlie drink industry since then, but today, at the Nationals ball park, I discovered a new, slightly more disturbing, phenomenon: Bud Lite Lime. It is exactly as it sounds, a horrible low-rent beer gussied up with "a splash of lime" and packaged in a faggy lime-green bottle. You'd think just girls were all over it, but no, it appeared to be a favorite among big tough guys, too.

The effeminization of American men is almost complete.

ONE MORE REASON YOU WON'T LIKE LIVING IN NEW ZEALAND

2009-07-18T22:36:00.000-07:00

I hate to disappoint my American friends, but you won't like New Zealand because they aren't really interested in military porn. They are savages, those kiwis. They think about things like peacefully coexisting with their neighbors, avoiding conflicts with folk who have nothing at all to do with their affairs. Obviously, they have a problem, what with their chronic capacity for military underachievement. Have you seen their tanks? Yugos, every last one of them. I think their missiles, if properly aimed, could reach -- prepare yourselves -- Tasmania, perhaps even Fiji. Scary, eh?

How do they survive? How can they possibly exist, let alone thrive? It's a mystery with which you should not concern yourself. You'll be bored to tears. God knows I am.

TOM CRUISE

2009-07-18T22:22:00.000-07:00

Oh, and by the way, as I sit here writing blog posts, my dad is firing up Valkyrie, that movie with Tom Cruise as a Nazi somethingorother. Its opening "trick" to explain away the fact that Tom Cruise is soooo not German is one of the weakest I've seen, um, ever. On this topic I have nothing else to say.