Experience has always shown, and reason also, that affairs which depend on many seldom succeed. -- Francesco Guicciardini (1483-1540)

Late on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, and I actually braved a mall, and did my part to help the American economy. Here in Mpls, it was not so crowded, although there was nary a bored cash register operator in sight. Saw video of a pre-dawn line of some 200 people at a Best Buy in Denver, but I'm unaware of anything like that here. But I did run into my cousin, Sue S., with her mother (Lucille H.) and our aunt the nun (Sr. Marci B.). They had been shopping since 6:30 a.m.! I guess that's what you do early mornings in the suburbs.

Happy U.S. Thanksgiving (a day early, but I probably won't get here tomorrow). Okay, I'll try to put up a good quote (assuming I can find one) each day. Today's:

Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently. -- Rosa Luxemburg

Gonna have to go get subscribed to Salon.com, just because it's so cheap, you get so much access to stuff and you can skip the ads! Mostly, though, because I really want to see what all of the Garrison Keillor hullaballoo is all about. For example, today's Mpls Star Tribune had an editorial commentary chastizing Keillor's Salon article. Lots of watercooler (and other) talk about this topic here in the heartland.

Goofball marriage of 2002 is over. For Nic Cage, that's 2 divorces in 2 years, while for Lisa Marie, that's the second pasty-faced weirdo she's split with in the past decade (Wacko Jacko being the other).

Back after a short absence -- here's what's been going through my head:

Miss World Violence: I do not understand Islam, at least the way it is practiced by some Muslims. Although the Nigerian goverment claims authority, according to what I've read (and I'm absolutely NO authority on anything relating to Islam), issuing fatwa isn't part of their job description. It has made me desire to read the Qu'ran, which I have just ordered.

This is where your educational testing dollars go. Executive overpayment hits educational "non-profit."

Okay, I'm scared when I agree with Microsoft. But in this case, as it turns out, they agree with me. I've been saying for a while now (and posting on my favorite message boards) that music distribution must use the file-sharing model, ideally with some pay component (if musicians don't get paid, they will still create music, but they won't be able to afford to make the kinds of music we've come to expect, at least in pop-land). Thanks to the MSFT folks for doing some deeper research on the topic than I was able and willing to do. The RIAA can keep fighting this battle, but evidence is building that they will ultimately fail.

Ah, the perils of being honest! Just one more reason I can't work in any position that requires me to comment publicly on the performance of elected officials.

I hate free verse. I really do. So many people think they are accomplished poets, when in fact the overwhelming majority of them just spill words on a page that have no assonance, alliteration, rhyme, meter (yes, I know it is free verse, but rhyme and meter are useful tools), onomatopoeia, and other interesting and provocative written language techniques. I find most of these to be very self-centered, non-instructive, non-useful, and non-interesting. Yes, yes, much like the writings on this blog!

So why am I ranting on this? Well, the blog is mine and for me, mostly. You are invited along, but I make no disclaimer as to amusement value or lack thereof. However, by publishing in a form like a poem (even a vers libre poem), certain expectations are raised. A certain level of quality and effort is implied (to me, anyway). Whereas, with the blog, I think there is, at least at this point, no such thing as a standard of quality -- i.e., no established, decently-funded prize exists for blog quality, no one pays money for the privilege of reading blogs, and blog contents are not taught to students in school. In short, I have (luckily) chosen a medium in which mediocrity is standard, so I have no requirement to only practice it at a given level of quality. Poetry, on the other hand, does have certain standards of quality which have been defined (notably by Matthew Arnold and Helen Vendler, among many others). It is as if every 42-year-old weekend softball player insisted on playing in a major league stadium to showcase their "talents." This rant led me on a short but enlightening internet search, culminating in utter frustration for me:

So, again, apparently I am alone in this feeling, as there do not exist the following website registrations: ihatefreeverse.com and .org and .anything else, ihateverslibre.com and .org and .anything else, freeversesucks.com and .org and .anything else, etc. You get the direction this is going. Does everyone (but me) like free verse? Meh.

I really like Robert Thompson, Director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University. While he rarely criticizes the medium to the extent some others might, he provides a welcome voice of reason in the face of network hype. Take this quote, for example, about a show that HBO will air in December:

"We've created this population of people who just have this unbelievable urge for slobbering attention. It used to be you had to be good at something before you could get onto TV. Now ... if you simply sacrifice your privacy, and perhaps a bit of your dignity, there's a little room for everybody."

No sense in me railing against the direction broadcast video is heading: (a) nothing I say will change it and (b) a large number of American viewers want this kind of programming, as the ratings rise and content proliferation shows. I just don't understand why anyone would go to a brothel, negotiate and pay for service, and allow himself (or, surprisingly, herself) to be filmed doing it (the negotiation and payment, not the service itself). Does dignity no longer have value in our culture?

Okay, I love Weekend Journal, but sometimes it annoys me. For example, Laura Landro, who writes The Informed Patient column, also writes The Finicky Traveler column, which could easily be titled Snobby Bitch's Guide to Making Even the Most Luxurious and Elegant Places Seem Like Flophouses. I'm not sure exactly what it is that irritates me so much about her Finicky Traveler columns, nor why I insist on continuing to read them, but they do, and I do. In the old, pre-political correctness days we used to call her a JAP (short for Jewish American Princess, which came to take on a meaning of its own unrelated to the religious observations of the person it was describing). But she is beyond that. She is finicky beyond all reasonableness, and thinks nothing of dropping $700 a night on a hotel room and then complaining that it was a lousy place to lay her head for one night. Meanwhile, Laura, you could have, for example, stayed in the Holiday Inn for $120 like the rest of us and sent the remaining $580 to a battered women's shelter or a homeless shelter.

Anyway, enough of that rant -- I'm sure I'll get back to "Dr." Laura soon enough. What got me off on this digression was an article in today's Weekend Journal on an unscientific poll they took about how much money survey respondents are planning to spend on holiday gifts for family, friends, service providers, etc. Here are the opening two paragraphs:

With Christmas on the way, Ann Hyatt Logan is making a list, checking it twice -- and chopping it down. Her sisters will get second-hand books and photos plucked from around the house, while a longtime friend can expect a tray from eBay.

But the doorman? He's getting $80, just like last year. The hairdresser won't be disappointed, either. "There's no reason they should have a hard year," says Ms. Logan, a 54-year-old lawyer from New York.

Now, I admit to knowing about Ms. Logan only what the writer has chosen to reveal, but let's review: she is 54 years old, female, probably unmarried (gifts for sisters and friend, but no mention of gifts for children or spouse), attorney, from New York, lives in a doorman building. I know nothing about her current financial situation, but let's be honest: if you can afford to live in a doorman building (probably in New York City), are employed as an attorney and have no immediate family to financially support, how do you justify spending more money on a gift for the doorman than on your sisters or a longtime friend? As I wrote above, I have only the writer's words to judge this woman by, but given this limited universe of knowledge about her, let me make clear that I am appalled at this.

Where are this woman's priorities? Am I the only person who feels this way? It is all about priorities, and if I use The Wall Street Journal as my guide, apparently I have my priorities all screwed up. According to the Journal, doorman > sisters, hairdresser > longtime friend and, by inference, me > anyone else. I must be dumb, because I still don't get it. No, I get it. I just don't like it.

I had an enlightening experience (enlightening to me, anyway) with music over the past couple of nights walking the dogs. Each evening, I take Callie and Indy for a walk around my neighborhood, and I put on headphones and listen to music as we walk. Two nights ago, I dug out some older CDs just to mix up my playlist a bit (I tend to get stuck on a specific CD that I play repeatedly, which lately has been Mike Doughty's Smofe & Smang). So on Tuesday night I listened to The Chemical Brothers' Dig Your Own Hole (by the way, The Chemical Brothers' official website is one of the most annoying websites I've ever visited). The album isn't that old (1997), but I hadn't listened to it in a long time. Coincidentally, the next evening (yesterday), I swapped it out for The Smiths' Singles. Now, each of these musical entities got their start in Manchester (The Smiths in 1982, and The Chemical Brothers in 1989), and yet they have almost nothing else in common. The CBs were a short-time favorite of mine at some point in my past -- perhaps 1997 or 1998 -- while The Smiths were a favorite of mine in the mid- and late-'80s.

Surprisingly, I found that -- for me -- The Smiths retained their charm, while The CBs had lost theirs. I will always have a place in my heart for "Block Rockin' Beats" and "Where Do I Begin?" (the Beth Orton vocal contribution), but for some reason it sounds tinny and droning to me. Whereas, at one point in my life, I couldn't hear enough of The CBs. What changed in me to alter my enjoyment? Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy good house/d&b/techno from time to time, but it seems to be only in a different context. Everything is contextual!

There is a new restaurant opening in Pittsburgh, PA, which describes itself thusly:

We're a robot-themed restaurant open for lunch and dinner. You don't need to be a member to enjoy a great meal while you see famous and soon-to-be-famous fighting robots.

We're also the world's first permanent robot fighting facility open to the public seven days a week. We rent robots, sell parts, give classes, and provide members with a safe place to test and fight their own fighting machines.

I have no response to that.

Hugely interesting concept coming out of the Millenium Project of the American Council for the United Nations University relating to Wireless Energy Transmission. This is a tantalizing idea -- beam energy wirelessly from satellites to the power grid on Earth, allowing for (a) ubiquitous energy and (b) a global market for energy broadcast. Here's an excerpt:

Wireless energy transmission converts electricity to microwaves, which can then be beamed over long distances via satellite, and then reconverted back to electricity. NASA demonstrated the feasibility of such technology in 1967. (Emphasis added.)

If electric cars catch on over the next 20 years, and current urban growth trends continue, we will need far more electricity than today. “Instead of exporting oil in giant tankers, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Venezuela, and other oil producing nations could use their own oil and gas that is currently flared away to produce electricity locally and then beam it by satellite to other countries’ receivers attached to local power grids,” explained Jerome C. Glenn, Millennium Project director. “This has the great benefit of reducing potential catastrophic oil spills, managing pollution more locally, and eventually opening up new energy sources such solar panels in earth orbit.”

Ultimately, one possibility could be the generation of energy in space, through huge, high efficiency solar panels attached to satellites, which could then beam the energy wirelessly down to the power grid, thereby eliminating emission of greenhouse gases in energy generation, transmission and conversion. I am interested in as much information on this as anyone out there has. E-mail me with info and links.

A related announcement from the Millenium Project involves carbon sequestration -- the elimination of the CO2 emitted by cars, trucks, buses, etc. -- through "new, creative high-risk approaches." Seems the options on the table include injecting carbon dioxide into the Earth or into coral reefs (which thrive on it), or planting many trees to utilize the gases. MP proposes the possibility of reconverting CO2 to fuel for fuel cells.

Al Gore: From the Associated Press: "In the past few days, Gore has made numerous TV appearances, including interviews with Barbara Walters, David Letterman and Larry King." (Sorry, Larry.) For a guy who says he isn't sure about running in the 2004 Presidential election, he sure is getting his face out there. I heard him on MPR this morning, and I have to admit he said the right things about not looking back to the 2000 election, letting the Democrats choose who runs in 2004, etc. He came off as much more intelligent than our current President (not hard to do). But, for fun, check out this quiz, in which you have to guess which statements were written by Al Gore and which were written by the Unabomber.

Good morning! Day 2 of the blog ... way so exciting (to me, if not to you)! You'll have to hang with me for a while as I (a) grow this monster and (b) get better and more interesting (despite your protestations to the contrary, it could happen!).

I realized that I should provide some warning that many of the topics here will have been generated from articles in The Wall Street Journal (I think a subscription is required to view it). I am a daily reader of WSJ and although I don't agree with it's editorial stance, I am a believer that it is the one US paper that is national in scope and both interesting and informative (don't even get me started about McPaper).

In that vein, here is an interesting juxtaposition of articles on how America is viewed by non-Americans. Gerald F. Seib's Capital Journal article from WSJ (I'll quote some of it for those of you that aren't subscribers), posits:

"Here's the problem: The U.S. sees itself as highly vulnerable, standing in the cross hairs of every terrorist group in the sphere of radical Islam. The rest of the world sees the U.S. as invincible, and sometimes arrogant in its invincibility. . . . It has become a superpower of striking proportions, simply dwarfing everyone else in both economic and military power. . . . This makes America the New York Yankees of the world scene: the franchise with all the money and all the advantages. To others, the idea that the U.S. would feel seriously threatened by, say, Iraq is hard to comprehend."

Having read that within 15 hours of reading an interesting interview with Peter Schwartz on scenario planning brought to my attention by John Robb's excellent blog has made me think about bullies and power brokerage in the world arena. Should the United States be a "benevolent dictator," as one poster to Robb's blog suggested (supposedly facetiously), actively managing it's interests in the world through economic and military force, or should it act as more of a broker of the desires of NATO, the expanding coalition of nations which theoretically holds the interests of its member nations above the interests of any single nation? if you have an opinion, e-mail me. I'll post thoughtful responses (and maybe even some knee-jerk, reactionary responses). Be advised that I may edit them for content suitability (e.g., no unbridled profanity), length, etc. I promise to attempt to maintain the spirit, if not the letter, of your missive, but note that I will be the judge of what gets posted -- after all, this is my blog, and you are a (welcome) guest here, dear reader.

Here's an idea that may or may not be legal: when selling your home, structure your deal with your selling agent(s) on a variable commission basis. Let's say, for example, that you and your agent(s) agree that a reasonable asking price for your house is $150,000. If you structure a commission arrangement so that the agent(s) will receive, say, 6% if the house sells for between $147,500 and $152,500 (inclusive), and something less (say, 4%) if it sells for less than $147,500, you will give the agent(s) a strong financial incentive to market your house in a manner you would prefer. For example, your $150,000 house could probably be sold in a day for $140,000, but the agent(s) will receive commission of only $5,600 (vs. a commission of $9,000 if the house sold for $150,000). Likewise, it is reasonable (and desirable) to offer a higher commission rate for a higher selling price. So if the agent(s) were able to sell the house for $160,000, the commission received would be 8% of the sales price, or $12,800. Effectively, then, the agent(s) are paid an additional $3,800 for selling your house for $10,000 more than the asking price. That is, of your supernormal gain of $10,000, you would keep 62%($6,200) and the agents would receive 38% ($3,800). That may be kind of generous, but it is in keeping with the risk/reward trade-off I am advocating here. CAVEAT: This idea just came to me, and I have done no research on the legality and/or ethical nature of this proposal. If you know anything about this, please e-mail me to advise. Again, I will post thoughtful and/or useful responses.

And the numbers keep on circling me . . .

fkaJames

Today (Tuesday, November 19, 2002), is fkaJames's The Numbers Keep on Circling Me Grand Opening! Welcome! Come on in! Make yourself at home! Put your feet up! Have a cuppa joe!

Having read many blogs but never actually mustering the courage to put my hoo-hah on public display, I have now decided to face the demons that vex me -- the pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed and, especially, sloth -- that have prevented me from partaking of this communal knowledge-sharing (and sometimes fighting, flirting or showing-off) that is a web log.

I won't deign to be untruthful and agree to faithfully post daily here (it won't happen), nor will I ensure that I won't needlessly post useless and/or tedious information about any topic, including but not limited to myself and my family. It is your duty, gentle reader, to sift the sand for the valuable nuggets that may or may not be there. I will only concede to making an attempt to amuse or enlighten myself, and in the process produce the same response from you, dear viewer.

Now that I've laid out some of the aims and limitations of this blog, please be advised that a few of the likely topics in the future are:

my expanding family, including my wife of 13 years, Evelyn; daughter of 3 years, Camille; daughter-to-be, Claire (who is due to breathe her first on or about March 3, 2003); dogs, Callebaut (a year-old chocolate Labrador Retriever) and Indiana (an eight? year old white and black Border Collie/??? mix); and cats, Maggie (12 years old) and Hope (4? years old);

the music of Mike Doughty and his former band, Soul Coughing;

the amazing cheeses of the world;

fun links, like The Advertising Slogan Generator;

time wasters;

current events, sometimes with commentary (or just sarcastic remarks); and

assorted other good information and crap.

buenos dias!

fkaJames