Misanthropaea

More Completely Stupid Shit I Heard Today

'I have a friend who drinks Seagram's Seven. Does that sound right?'

***

'Hows come this is pink?'

'Because it's White Zinfandel. It's supposed to be pink.'

'But it says it's white. I need white.'

***

'How much are your two dollar scratch-offs?'

***

Holding up a clear glass bottle of white wine upon which the label states, A Fine White Wine From the Clare Valley:  'Would this be considered a white wine?'

***

Brandishing a bottle of red wine and a bottle of white wine:  'Are these both the same thing?'

***

'We're having turkey and stuffing. Do you have any recommendations?'

***

'What time do you close?'

'We close at eight p.m.'

'Tonight?'

***

'Alright. You have a nice one.'

'Thanks. I like to think so.'

To Go Boldly... Somewhere

I'm not sure how to feel about the trailer for the new Star Trek film. After months of seeing the teaser with just the Enterprise being constructed to sound bytes and dramatic music, this new clip creates a storm of mixed feelings. On the one hand it's nice to see new life being breathed into this franchise, but on the other... I'm not entirely sure how much I can stomach seeing these classic roles being completely re-cast, let alone Zachary Quinto (Sylar from 'Heroes' -- a series I have seriously lost patience with --who is not so much an actor as he is an Eyebrow Delivery System) as Spock.  There's a certain sense of blasphemy that I really just can't put my finger on.

Frankly, Star Trek: Enterprise was maddening enough as it was, returning to those thrilling days of yesteryear by thoroughly ignoring the fact that Star Trek: TOS (The Old Series) ever even existed. I gave the show half of the pilot episode to ruin everything for me and never watched it again. Scott Bakula was as drab and lifeless as always and woefully miscast, as was virtually everyone on the show.

So perhaps this new film is more a re-imagining, like Battlestar Galactica, which elevated a shit disco-era series into something palatable, but there is still a sense of wrongness about it.

When Andreas Katsulas died in 2006, Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Strakzynski stated that no-one would ever play G'kar again. Fans would be outraged-- like stupidly trying to slip Mary Kay Adams under the wire as Na'Toth --and, honestly, G'kar's are some mighty, mighty boots to fill. Anyone else would pale to insignificance in the role. If anyone were to assume that character-- whether for a re-imagined television series or perhaps for a film --I could maybe see F. Murray Abraham who, unfortunately, will be long dead by the time anyone gets round to even thinking about bothering with anything Babylon 5 again.

Oh. Did that sound bitter? Perhaps a topic for another time.

Presently, however, I am greatly at odds with the new Star Trek. Much like the Star Wars prequel films, this new version appears, stylistically, to ignore not only TOS, but it also appears to ignore everything that came after-- The Next Generation, Voyager, stupid Enterprise... and that fucking Babylon 5 rip-off piece of shit with Avery Brooks and the Forehead of the Week Creatures.

And of course the final judgement will need to wait because the new release date is now in May, not 'Christmas 2008' as all the previous trailers for the last year have been promising.

Figures...

Beyond Thunderdome

A great battle is waged over whom shall have the benefit of my services now the coffee house is closing its doors. Dribble & Whizz clearly lacked vision, not understanding what they had done in casting me adrift in February. They did not comprehend that their short-sighted tactics would one day create a flood of companies vying for my knowledge, abilities, and skills whilst simultaneously seeing their own quality of service diminish.

Two stores enter, one store leaves...

After the brutal savaging suffered in the economic downhill joyride, the coffee house will fade into bankrupt obscurity and, being inextricably financially linked to it, so generally will I.  And of the more than one hundred places to which I applied, only two contenders--perceiving that some fifteen years of management has prepared me well--have dared to take the field in a violent clash over which will win out.

Two stores enter, one store leaves... 

First to send an opening salvo was Gas Planet, shocked that Dribble & Whizz could ever have under-valued and devalued an employee of my experience, and one so clearly qualified for better things. They immediately leapt to offer me management, explaining that I would be well treated and well paid if only I would accept their lucrative offer. I said 'Yes.' And then came the silence.

Two stores enter, one store leaves...

The second contender, Liqu-O-Rama (one of the top competitors of Dribble & Whizz) immediate lunged in to fill the void. 'We need someone of your skills,' they explained. 'Sorry it took three months to call. Can't imagine what we were thinking.' They had me take a two hour written test, fill out papers, and then explained that they would look things over and get back to me within twenty-four hours.

Two stores enter, one store leaves...

Twenty-four hours went by in silence. Forty-eight. Seventy-two. Then the telephone rang. It was the District Manager of Gas Planet. 'Meet us at 11. We want to talk money.' So I drove thirty minutes across town in a torrential downpour and arrived at Gas Planet. 'Oh. Yeah. He's over at Wendy's. Go over there.' I raced to Wendy's. 'So...yeah...we haven't had a chance to check all three of your references yet. I know it's been almost a month. Sorry. Your drug test was clean though. How about if we start you out at much less than what you were making at Dribble & Whizz? Oh sure there's four times the work, but you understand. And you'll need to make a ninety minute drive twice a day to our training store. That won't be a problem, will it? Do you have any other references we can check? We'll get back to you in a day or so.'  I figured this must have been very important to them, otherwise why drag me across town in a rain storm for something that could have been done on the telephone?

Two stores enter, one store leaves...

Upon my return home, I called Liqu-O-Rama. 'Oh. Yeah. We forgot to call you. I haven't had a chance to finish figuring out where we want to place you. But I'll give you a call first thing Monday. Oh and if it's okay with you, we'll start you out at about $4 an hour less than what you were making before.'

Two stores enter, one store leaves...

Mid morning on Monday, Gas Planet called. 'We need to have you come out on Tuesday to go over some last minute details. At Wendy's.' Monday afternoon I called Liqu-O-Rama. 'Well,' they said, 'if you really want the Gas Planet job, we understand. But if you wait until Tuesday, we'll get back to you.'

Two stores enter, one store leaves...

Tuesday morning I arrived at Wendy's. And waited. And waited. And waited. Eventually the District Manager showed up: 'So... yeah... See we had an employee come back from maternity leave and we think we're going to give her the store we offered you. Are you interested in Assistant Manager? Well then go talk to Nikki tomorrow at one-thirty at the other store.'

Two stores enter, one store leaves...

Wednesday at 1.30 I went to see Nikki, a pencil-thin crack whore who appeared to be about two hundred years old and, when she wasn't puffing on a cigarette, spoke in the deep raspy tones of a professional wrestler: 'I don't know why he sent you here. I ain't got nothin but a part time cashier job for about seven dollars an hour.'  Ten minutes later I was in my car phoning Liqu-O-Rama. I got the answerphone. I left a message. Again.

Two stores enter, one store leaves...

Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday drifted by. I fought the urge to call back the Gas Planet DM and explain to him in absolutely no uncertain terms what I thought about the ignorant cuntrag running their 'other store' and what a slap in the face it was to be jerked round by a company that claimed to pride themselves on staffing their stores with exemplary employees of  the highest quality. In the meantime, late Sunday, Wal-Mart rang me. 'If you're still interested, we have a position open unloading trucks on second shift.'  I paused, then politely explained that I had applied (and was well qualified) for any number of the various management positions they currently had open and that unloading trucks was a monumental step down from what I have been doing for the better part of my working adult life.

Tw0 stores enter, one store leaves...

Monday afternoon my cell phone rang. It was Liqu-O-Rama. 'If you're still interested, we'd like to make you an offer. Can you stop by Tuesday morning about ten?' I arrived as scheduled and was lead through the corridors of power at their corporate offices. 'We have three stores that have individuals who are... under performing, let's say. We haven't decided where we want to send you yet, but after a week of training at one of our high-end stores, we'll let you know.'  I asked what three stores they had in mind.  'Well, one is a nice quiet little store very close to your house, one is a complete shit-hole about a twenty minute drive into the 'hood and you would be behind a big glass barrier, the other one makes the complete shit-hole look like a sweet juicy little slice of Heaven with a big dollop of whipped cream and a cherry. Doesn't that sound terrific?'  I paused, and then explained as politely as I could that, after having been robbed three times at gunpoint in complete shit-hole stores thanks to the lack of foresight of Dribble & Whizz, I would really prefer being put in the nice quiet store close to my house. 'Yeah. I figured you say that. We'll let you know after a week and a half at a really nice store, though.'

And so from Thundrdome, scarred and battered, does Liqu-O-Rama emerge victorious.

For now...

Is That Lipstick On The Doll's Head? Famous Last Words

Oh, and the part where the authors of Dark Mission promised to show us photographs and an in-depth analysis of certain alien artefacts retrieved by Apollo astronauts as final proof of the grand NASA conspiracy? Yeah, well, it's not it the book.

Typical...

Is That Lipstick On The Doll's Head? Look Back In Angle

 

A few years ago, in part two of this little review, I mentioned that there was one particular bit of H.O.G.W.A.S.H. that I would address in some detail as we got closer to the subject.  Unfortunately I was diverted by some badly rendered photographs with inaccurate documentation and, as you know, got sidetracked. One of the reasons this term wasn't more fully addressed earlier on has more to do with the fact that it wasn't as irritatingly ubiquitous in Dark Mission as it was in Monuments of Mars, or in other writings from the Enterprise Mission. So here is the promised look at the other Hoaglandism which, in the immortal words of Frank Burns, gripes my cookies.

H.O.G.W.A.S.H. version: Circumscribed Tetrahedral Geometry.
Oh. My. God. I hate this phrase. I hate it all over the place. It pisses me off more than 'stunning' or 'striking' or 'highly' or 'arcology', or just about any other Hoagland adjectival insipidity or catch-phrase with the possible exception of 'rectilinear.' It's another one of those over-worked, over-used, rarely (if ever) defined terms which just demands that you simply bow down an accept that Hoagland is better than you because where an ignorant and worthless fop such as yourself would dare to suggest 'You mean a triangle inside of a circle?' the Master Mind of Mars would scoff at your stunted and minuscule vocabulary and clearly inept elocution. 

What it means:
At the risk of sounding like an ignorant and worthless fop with a stunted and minuscule vocabulary and clearly inept elocution, this is best described as 'A triangle inside of a circle.'  Really. That's it. At its most fundamental level, that is what it means: a triangle inside of a circle. Obviously it lacks the epic scale and grandiloquent punch of Circumscribed Tetrahedral Geometry, but that is the core definition.

In the interest of fairness and completeness, it should be noted that the triangle in question is of course an equilateral triangle.

Advancing outwards from the core idea to better understand the overall concept of the circumscription of (or circle going round) the equilateral triangle, it helps to have a little knowledge of basic geometry. Perhaps you will recall this from a maths or science class in your early school years. I know I don't. I remember Theresa Webster from my science class. And I remember very little else other than nearly not passing because of certain firmly in place obstacles subverting the learning process and making it very hard.

Anyway, the triangle, like the circle, is a two dimensional form. Unlike the circle, however, the triangle, when represented as a three-dimensional form, is known as a polyhedron or tetrahedron. It is one of the Platonic Solids. If you do not remember your Platonic Solids, here is a quick refresher which you mind find helpful:    

The tetrahedron is, as you can see, shaped somewhat like a pyramid with three of its four sides meeting in points called 'vertices.' 

A circle, conversely, is represented in three dimensional space as a sphere, which still quite remarkably resembles a circle. When a tetrahedron is placed inside of the sphere (for whatever peculiar reason one might have for doing such a thing) with one of the vertices touching a point inside the sphere (for example a point we might call 'south') the remaining vertices generally tend to point to regions of the sphere which reside at approximately 19.5 degrees above the equator of the sphere.

Like this:

 Isn't that fun?

Undoubtedly the next question is 'So what?' and it is a question I often share. In effort to answer that query one must step far out of the mundane world of boring old Euclidean Geometry and, according to Richard C Hoagland, founder of The Enterprise Mission, recipient of an Angstrom Medal, former science advisor to CBS News and Walter Cronkite, author of The Monuments of Mars, co-creator of the Pioneer Plaque, originator of the Europa Proposal, and principal investigator of The Enterprise Mission, into the 'lost work' of James Clerk Maxwell and the somewhat fascinating realm of Hyperdimensional Physics.

A discussion and dissection of this particular 'model' is simply well past the parameters of both this blog and my attention span, especially since it was only my point to explain the basic meaning of Circumscribed Tetrahedral Geometry. As I've said, I really only remember a couple of pertinent points from science class and, the fact is, the related subject of Hyperdimensional Physics-- though interesting --starts to become deeply technical and is often bogged down with arcane arithmetical equations of sines and cosines and loads of squiggly bits which rapidly cease to have meaning to me.

Suffice to say that the 19.5 position (either North or South of the equator) seems to have a fair number of curiosities attached to it-- in that it is the relative position of Olympus Mons on Mars, the Red Spot on Jupiter, the Dark Spot on Neptune, Mauna Kea (Hawaii) here on Earth --and it is definitely worth reading about at your leisure.

But not here.

The fundamental issue I have with the term Circumscribed Tetrahedral Geometry is the same issue I have with every other Hoaglandism-- it is used as a verbal or written Jedi Mind Trick to inflate a point of discussion into an unnecessarily obscure and mythic domain where Hoagland is The Great and Powerful and we are, for want of a better term, 'some insects called the human race' who need not-- and dare not --be allowed a quick glimpse behind the curtain. To deign to define the idiom is to erase its mystical nature, to break the magick spell of a potent talisman, and stoop to the unwanted level of those of us 'crawling on the planet's face.'

The second issue I have with discussions of Circumscribed Tetrahedral Geometry is that the application of it as a useful methodology or its function as a tool for deciphering impenetrable mathematical relationships is almost never divulged: How is it used? What does it mean exactly? How does it relate? What is the significance of it?

We are left virtually in the dark about how this model predicts or resolves anything, but are reliably informed that it is clearly referenced in not only the complex internal geometry of scattered structures on the Cydonia mesa, but throughout the vastness of the cosmos.

There is a point in Bram Stoker's Dracula when the eponymous Count states, 'There is reason that all things are as they are, and did you see with my eyes and know with my knowledge, you would perhaps better understand.'

I believe that if Hoagland were writing that quote it would be followed by, 'But you don't. Ha ha. Sucks to be you!'

Freakin' Sweet!

Thank the gods and everything sacred.
Even though we've still got to wait until January...