messiestobjects

... But Resistance Is Character-Forming Might Be My Favorite Mind Name

"In all the human societies we have ever reviewed, in every age and in every state, there has seldom if ever been a shortage of eager young males prepared to kill and die to preserve the security, comfort and prejudices of their elders, and what you call heroism is just an expression of this fact; there is never a scarcity of idiots."
-Iain M. Banks

It's time for an ode to another of my favorite Sci-fi authors, Iain M. Banks. The above quote is from one of his novels, Use Of Weapons. What's great about Iain is his use of politics and social structures in front of an unusually intriguing hard sci-fi backdrop. He believes that in space, a form of Anarchistic society is not only desirable, but inevitable and necessary for survival, and to that end he's created a series of novels about a Galactic humanoid race known as The Culture. Rather than boring you with any further descriptions of The Culture, I suggest you follow the link to read a fascinating biography on them, if you care about such things. It's long, but entertaining.

I first discovered him while living in Germany; He's a Scottish author and until recently, his books were relatively unavailable or at least unknown in the US, so I had been surprised to find such a well-regarded sci-fi author with such a large body of work that I hadn't yet heard of. I picked up a book called Excession in the Englischer Book Shop in Munich by the University, and proceeded to be blown away. The main characters are not so much the humans as the spaceships that carried them, which are equipped with Artificial Intelligences known as Minds and are vastly superior to the human minds in both intelligence and humor, with distinct personalities of their own and have names such as Fate Amenable To Change, It's Character Forming, Unacceptable Behaviour, Shoot Them Later, Just Another Victim Of The Ambient Morality, A Series Of Unlikely Explanations, Well I Was In The Neighbourhood, We Haven't Met But You're A Great Fan Of Mine, Inappropriate Response, Experiencing A Significant Gravitas Shortfall, Lapsed Pacifist, You May Not Be The Coolest Person Here, Demented But Determined, Charming But Irrational, Hand Me The Gun And Ask Me Again, Another Fine Product From The Nonsense Factory, Ravished By The Sheer Implausibility Of That Last Statement, All Through With This Niceness And Negotiation Stuff, God Told Me To Do It, and many others of similar ilk. (Actually, some of those names are characters in other Culture books, but I love them.) The humans are essentially benignly looked upon by the ships that carry them in the same way as we look upon our blood cells; part of us and necessary, and we encourage them to be healthy and lead meaningful lives, but we don't let them tell us where to go or what to do, at least not without a vote... Ok there are subtle differences in the two relationships, but you get my meaning. The book was about the discovery of a Trillion-year-old Sun, in a 15 Billion-year-old Universe.

If you're intrigued enough to give him a try, you should start with Consider Phlebas however, which is the first in The Culture sequence and is equally astonishing. See that funnel-looking thing appearing to come off of the planet on the book cover? That's actually part of the planet. Strictly speaking, it's not a planet but a 'ringworld', which concept Iain freely admits to having lifted and adapted from Larry Niven, but it's the adaptation that makes all the difference.

For anyone who is into those 'Halo' video games, apparently it's fairly obvious that they in turn stole quite a few ideas from Iain's books and simply renamed them, without any real original adaptation, but whatever. I've never seen those games, myself, but I understand that they are essentially shoot-em-up games for people who enjoy blowing up aliens. And with that in mind, I'll close with another fabulous quote from Mr. Banks:

"To fully appreciate the beauty of a weapon was to admit to a kind of shortsightedness close to blindness, to confess to a sort of stupidity. The weapon was not itself; nothing was solely itself. The weapon, like anything else, could only finally be judged by the effect it had on others, by the consequences it produced in some outside context, by it's place in the rest of the universe. By this measure the love, or just the appreciation, of weapons was a kind of tragedy."
-from Excession by Iain M. Banks

I Know, There Are Bigger Problems Out There. It's Just One More Tiny Little Complaint.

"Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages."
-H.L. Mencken

So I just received my Christmas bonus from work, and I have to say that there is a good indication there of something deeply schizophrenic in the USA. Don't get me wrong, I think it's lovely that companies give their employees Christmas bonuses. It's certainly not something that they really owe their employees.

Winter is a hard time of the year for people: heating costs go up, (It costs $1,000 to fill my oil tank. 5 years ago it probably would've only cost like $300.) Christmas means buying presents for lots of people if you're, you know, Christian, our country's official religion. But the Christmas bonus is a traditional way for your employer, who is cold and heartless the other 364 days of the year, to show that they're not such bad people and that they want to help defray your higher Christmas time expenses, even if only a little. So in my mind, $50 or $1,000, it's not something to be complained about, because it's not a law that they have to give you a bonus. It's just nice, and even helps the company a little by generating some extra good will.

My Christmas bonus this year is $500. Nice, right?

But here's the problem. I received my Christmas bonus by company check, or in modern parlance, by Direct Deposit. Know what that means? Yeah you do. It got taxed. So $500 now becomes just under $350. Still not too bad, really, considering that it's $350 I didn't really earn. But what kills me is that I would think that my employer would ideally prefer that I got that $150 rather than the government, because instead of being entirely grateful that I got a nice Christmas bonus, I'm slightly bitter that I got robbed. Not necessarily towards my employer because, assuming that my previous statement is true, I have to believe that it is illegal for a company to pay an employee any money that doesn't get taxed, otherwise someone at the head office could just withdraw a bunch of cash and hand it out in envelopes at the party, right?

So what this means is that someone in the IRS, at some point in the past, actually made the decision to tax Christmas bonuses. "No toys for the children!", he cackled. And not only that, our freedom loving, commercially insatiable, (especially at Christmas time) consumer mad culture went along with it. We agreed that the government should have nearly a third of our Christmas bonuses instead of say, Sears, Toys-R-Us, or Penn Oil.

That's kind of schizophrenic, isn't it? You would think that someone in big business would lobby against taxing Christmas bonuses, so that not only could they generate that extra good will among their own employees, but then the average consumer would also have that much more to spend at their stores.

Conclusion? Well, I really don't know what to make of it. General all-purpose evil. That's all I can come up with.

Raleigh Ho! I Went To Mexico!

So it's been another travelicious week for work. I was home from Missouri for about three days before I had to fly out again for a double job: I had a test to administer in Raleigh, North Carolina, and one a few days later in McAllen, Texas. I flew out on Thursday morning, just as the Poconos were getting hit by that crazy snowstorm. It had just started to sleet a bit at the Newark airport as I was taking off, and it was 75 degrees out when I landed in Raleigh. I think that I may have actually suffered from weather lag; it was a pretty weird sensation. I've done that sort of extreme weather change travel before, but I think I wanted to see some snow so bad this year that it affected me physically to all of a sudden find myself in balmy springtime weather. (Is it all of A sudden, or all of THE sudden? The Himmelburgers might be able to help me out there.)

Raleigh is a neat city though. I didn't get any pictures because nothing in particular struck me as photo worthy, but I drove around a bit and it had a really neat vibe. Everybody was really cheerful, as if they enjoyed living there. That's something I've tended to notice more, the more I travel. I think I've gotten a bit sensitive to the overall mood of places. That could all just be in my head, but that's what it feels like, anyway.

My friend John lives a couple of hours away from Raleigh, so he drove up to meet me for dinner and drinks the evening before I had to fly to Texas. Another friend of mine, Jeff Nimmer, also lives very near to there, but he had JUST gotten back from Krampus fest and so was unable to make the drive. I talked to him on the phone briefly however, and he informed me that Krampus had been unusually violent this year, which just depressed me about missing it even more because it's hard to imagine a more violent festival to begin with. Sounds like it was a good year. I'll just have to be sure to make time for it next year.

Anyway, John and I went to a hip little pizza bar in town and had a good time discussing movies, women, and whether or not Scott is ever coming back from China. They had really good beer at this place, and gradually the conversation devolved into nonsense until we realized that it was after midnight, and I had to wake up at 4am to catch my 6am flight. John was too besotted to drive 2 hours home, as I'd suspected might happen, so he crashed on the couch at my hotel, and I woke up at 7:15 am. I have never missed a flight before in my life. I blame John. Long story short, I spent the entire day trying to get on overbooked flights, and wound up arriving in Harlingen, Texas (NOT my original destination, you'll notice) about 10 hours later than I'd originally planned. It's a good thing I had a couple of days before I had to work.

So I've spent the last two days checking out grungy little Mexican border towns, as McAllen is about a 10 minute drive from the Rio Grande. I was really excited about this, because I've never been to Mexico, but it kind of turns out that border towns, at least in this part of the country, are mainly mostly characterless industrial areas which cater to Texan daytrippers. I visited Reynosa, Nuevo Progresso, and Matamoros. Reynosa and Matamoros were kind of grody, though they each had a bustling street market area which was kind of fun. In each of those towns I was pretty much the only white guy I saw all day, which reminded me of walking around in Baghdad or Amman, Jordan. It was actually kind of nice, because I'd forgotten what that felt like, and also Mexicans are pretty laid back and don't really give you a second look. I'm sure they're used to seeing gringos, I just didn't see any in those two towns on that day other than me.

Nuevo Progresso on the other hand, has got to be a made up town. It's not in Wikipedia, nor is it listed on google maps. It's right across the Rio Grande from Progresso, Texas, and after walking across the international bridge there, you find that New Progresso is basically a single very long street made up mostly of Pharmacies, Dental Clinics, and stores selling mostly cheap tourist crap, tobacco, and liquor. I mean, there were other streets, one or two, but I suspect they were made up of apartments to house the people who worked there selling cheap crap and services to Texans. It kind of reminded me of Slubice, Poland, which is a border town that seemed to exist primarily to sell cheap tobacco, liquor, and salon services to Germans.

 Apparently a lot of Texans cross the border to get cheap dental work done. Those Dental Clinics actually made me a bit nervous though, because there were hundreds of them. It made me wonder what the dental standards in Mexico are... I'm not sure I'd feel comfortable hitting a tiny back alley Dentist... what if he pulled out a coat hanger? I mean, that's what it felt like; that kind of shady. OTC drugs are cheaper and prescription free in Mexico also, which was why with all the pharmacies. It all reminded me of how screwed up our health care system in the US is, that you can get the same drugs at a fraction of the cost almost anywhere else in the world. Not to mention cheaper health care.

 The food though. Mmmmmm-mm. Mexican food in small grungy border Mexican towns is still authentic Mexican food. I ate a whooole bunch.

If States Were Countries, I'd Be Rackin' Up Those Hypertrek Points, Dammit

I am currently in a room at the Hilton Airport Hotel in Tulsa, Oklahoma, looking very much forward to getting the hell out of here tomorrow morning. I'm recovering from the most nasty, bad, evil, wretched, godawful case of food poisoning you could imagine. It's weird, but almost exactly this time last year, I was about to come down with another nasty, bad, evil, wretched, godawfull case of a stomach virus on our trip to Egypt. I'm going to be wary of the month of December from now on. Anyway, the last time I got it from the Nile, this time from either a spring roll or some unwashed lettuce at The Oriental House in Neosho, Missouri. So if you're ever in that area, don't eat there.

Other than that I had a pretty good week. I visited the George Washington Carver museum, located just a few miles from Neosho, which was erected on the site of the farm he grew up on. It was pretty cool, actually. I wanted to go because I felt that I owed him a visit to pay homage to the man who invented peanut butter, considering how much of my life's diet has consisted of the food of the Gods. I learned a lot of things about him I never knew, but two things in particular stand out. One, peanut butter was a sort of by-product of his particular inventive genius. I always thought that he just loved peanuts and, you know, spent perhaps a tad too much time with them. But as it turns out, at the time cotton crops were destroying the soil it was grown in due to various uninteresting agricultural reasons inexplicable to me but quite troublesome to the Missouri farmer, and he'd discovered that crop rotation helped to preserve and even revive the soil. The problem was that nobody really wanted to grow things other than cotton because it was a huge cash crop. So, G.W.C. played around for a while with certain other crops, peanuts and soybeans and such, in order to find other uses for them in order to create a market so that crop rotation could become viable!

Well, I thought it was interesting. The other thing I learned is that he looked like Ghandi, and had an extremely similar belief system.

The other fun thing I got to do was the Bill Clinton museum! I decided to drive back down to Fayetteville, Arkansas one afternoon because, well, Neosho kind of blows and I really wanted to see that museum. I miss Bill. The museum is in the house that Bill bought for Hillary as an engagement present when they lived and worked at the University there. There's not a whole lot in it since, you know, they're still alive and need their stuff. But it was cool. The coolest part about it was the bathroom. No seriously, check it out.

Aww, awww! Come on now! That's just... that's uncalled for. Who peed in the Clinton's toilet?!

                                                  I did, I did!

Messiestobjects Does Missouri, And Is Not Full Of Misery

It's been a fairly busy couple of weeks... suffice it to say I've really racked up the points over on my cities visited Travel Map! On the other hand, it's all come at great personal cost. Even as I type this, my friends are converging in Munich, Germany for our annual pilgrimage to the Krampus fest in southern Bavaria. I'm quite broken up about not being there this year, but I was unable to attend due to work. Anyway, they were planning on hitting Turkey as their post-Krampus hypertrek this year, and I've already spent about a month in that country.

But still. SAD messiestobjects. SAD Krampus. If you want to commiserate with me, go here and read about the excellent time I had there last year, and you'll see how I feel about missing it now, after a full long year, more or less, in the United States of safe commercialism.

Forging ahead, I spent a night in Charleston, West Virginia a couple of weekends ago. My Dad and I drove down there to bring a bunch of my brother's stuff to him, as he just got an apartment there. He's working as a Sears photographer. We hung out, had a few drinks, came home the next day. It's a tidy little city, from what I was able to see of it... sorry no pictures! That was kind of dumb of me. But it was good to see my little brother and that he got himself a nice little place to live. I'm happy that he seems to be able to take care of himself... we were worried for a while there!

So anyway, currently I'm in Missouri for work. I've been here for just over a week, but I've managed to see a good amount. I'm based in a small town named Neosho, in the southwest corner of the State, about 15 miles south of Joplin. The first day I had off, I drove up to Branson, MO, which is rather like a poor Christian's Las Vegas. What I mean by that is that it is a very SHOW centric town, full of theaters staging long-running acts, but no casinos or liquor stores, and loads of billboards on the way there touting Churches and Jesus and crosses and stuff. The only different sort of attraction they had was Silver Dollar City, (known as "steal-your dollar city" by the locals) which is an amusement park that I declined to attend due to the $50 entrance fee. But they had one cool show in town which I totally wanted to see: Did you ever wonder what ever happened to Yakov Smirnoff?

That's right! He has his own permanent show in Branson, Missouri! I was totally psyched to go see it, but apparently he only has very occasional afternoon shows, and not on the day I was there. He normally does his act at 9:30 am. 9:30am? Really? Come on, Yakov! Who wants to see a SHOW at 9:30am? Well, I would have, except I didn't even roll into town until like 2 in the afternoon. Oh well. Next time.

Then after about 4 hours of work the next day, I had two full free days (I love this country! I mean, this job! Damn Yakov.) so I drove the 5 hours or so up route 44, which runs over the famous old Route 66, to St. Louis. St. Louis is sweet! And I say that based entirely on two experiences; The Gateway Arch and BB's Jazz, Blues, and Soups.

The Arch is awesome. It's a really graceful, amazing structure. I mean, you wouldn't necessarily think so... It's an arch. Pretty simple right? But A) it's HUGE, B) it's made of Stainless Steel, so it's all shiny and pretty in the sunlight, C) it's got a certain geometric quality which is hard to appreciate until you've walked from one end to the other from both close up and far away, and D) you can ride a sweet little car on the inside of it right up to the apex and get some great views of both the city and the Mississippi river! Plus, you know, the history and all that. Gateway to the West. Louis & Clark. Yadda yadda.

I thought it was especially pretty at sunset:

And as for BB's Jazz, Blues, and Soups, it was where I spent my evening after it got dark. I'm assuming it was named for BB King due to the pictures of him throughout the place, and they had a Blues trio funking it up and awesome food, and Guinness on tap. That's really all I need.

The next morning I got up and drove even further north to hit Hannibal, the town which Mark Twain grew up in, which was a tad kitschy but totally fun and worth it. Especially if you're Mark Twain's #1 fan, as I am... ahem. I ate at the Mark Twain Dinette & had some homemade root beer there. Toured the Mark Twain museum, which had loads of his funny quotes to read on the walls, and some memorabilia. The house where Mark Twain grew up in was there, and housed some more great quotes, each of them presented by an attractive Mark Twain plaster statue. Tom Sawyer's white picket fence was there, too. So was the Mark Twain gift shop. So I got some things, what of it?!

Below, that's his boyhood home on the left, and you can see him peeking out of the upstairs center window. The fictional Tom Sawyer fence is to the right. Although, since a lot of Tom Sawyer was based on Mark Twain's childhood, it is certainly reasonable to suppose that Mark Twain as a lad had been made to whitewash a fence in that very location, so let's assume that it is a historical facsimile of the fence made famous by Tom.

Cardiff Hill was there also, a favorite haunt of Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer, and Huck Finn, though I think in the books it was generally referred to as Holliday Hill or something. The Mark Twain memorial lighthouse was at the top of it, and from there you could see the Mark Twain memorial bridge, crossing over Mark Twain's Mississippi river from Mark Twain's Missouri to Illinois. There were also the Mark Twain caves nearby, another hideout of his and Tom's, but I was too late to take the tour. They even had Mark Twain riverboat rides on the Mark Twain Mississippi, but I was a touch Mark Twained by this time, and anyway it was a 7 hour drive back to non-Mark Twain Neosho, and work. Work work work.

One night I even got to investigate a local ghost story... The spooklight. I'd read about it on a things to do in Neosho (not much!) type website, and since the place where it supposedly appears on a nightly basis is only 20 minutes from here, I drove on over and parked on the side of the lonely, dark, and creepy rural Missouri road known as Spooklight road (actually the road is literally just over the border in Oklahoma) and sat for about an hour. I didn't see anything. Of course, I departed at about 9pm, and the website said that while it may appear at any hour after dark, it is more commonly seen after midnight. Intrepid Ghosthunter I am not. But you know, it got boring, and I don't really believe in ghosts so, you know. But the location certainly did have a certain creep factor which vaguely reminded me of the vibe in Centralia, PA.

Yesterday I drove down to Fayetteville, Arkansas. It was a nice little college town with an awesome coffee bar and the coolest book store I've ever been in, books stacked 12 feet high in a cavernous, dismal warehouse type building filled with shelves haphazardly jumbled making very narrow and non-linear walkways. There were so many books, I doubt that anyone could even read only the covers, or even just the titles on the spines, in a lifetime. I didn't get a chance to go to the Bill Clinton museum in town, so I don't have anything to say about that. Bummer.

So I'd have to say that Missouri is cooler than one would have suspected. At least, it is if you're willing to do the driving. I wouldn't mind spending more time in St. Louis some day... it seemed like a pretty happenin' city.

It's an odd juxtaposition for me, being in Missouri while Krampus 2007 is ramping up. On the one hand, I really wish I was still doing the world travel thing like Scott (Whom I suspect was in Latvia recently, but he hasn't said anything about it yet) so that I could be job-free and at Krampus this year, but on the other hand I've been able to do some quality travel within the US in the last 8 months, something I may not have ever really had the urge or opportunity to do otherwise. And I have to say, there are definitely some world-class travel opportunities within the States, the only major drawback being of course that there are too damn many Americans in America. Yuck.