YouTube Tuesday: Pixel bombed

I really dig this short film on a couple of levels. As a child of the 80s, I see all my good friends from Donkey Kong, to the Space Invaders and Pac-Man, characters I spent a lot of time with in the convenience story back home (it was the small town equivalent of a video arcade in the early 1980s.

On a different level, I appreciate the metaphorical implication that it will be our digital, technological, iPad-craving lifestyles (or possibly the Higgs Boson)that will destroy our planet bit by bit, not some catastrophic event.


tagged: YouTube, Tuesday, movie, short film, Pixels, Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Higgs Boson, iPad

Bullitt list -- 04.12.10

Today's category: Enter the Dragon

Listen, I get that China is the up-and-coming superpower. We Yanks have had our day in the sun. But now the strains of having it too good for too long, along with the desire to have it all for free have made us a few steps slow and short of breath.

The Chinese, on the other hand, still have what Survivor called the Eye of the Tiger. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't want to live there or anything, and I'll take the relative freedom of the USA to the Chines censorship and state social control. But there can be little doubt that the Day of the Dragon is near.

They just need to iron out a few things. Because they have some fucked up shit going on that is unbecoming of a world superpower

• You remember this gal from a month or two ago? Chick is growing devil horns. When you say you want your girls to be horny, this isn't what you have in mind. Chinese doctors say the growths on Zhang Gouzheng's forehead are "cutaneous horns," made up of compacted keratin, which is the same protein we have in our hair and nails, and forms horns, wool and feathers in animals.
  
  They say that, while rare, they tend to show up in fair-skinned elderly adults who have history of significant sun exposure, and in demon spawn.


• Kudos to the federal judge that awarded several Virginia families $2.6 million in damages from a Chinese manufacturer of drywall. It seems the Chinese thought it would be a good idea to make drywall (you know, the stuff the walls in your house/apartment are made of out of?) from the waste materials of scrubbers on coal-fired power plants.
  
  Big surprise, that cheap Chinese-made drywall emits sulfuric acid gas into you home. Bummer. It causes extensive damage to wiring, heating and air conditioning, floors, closets, kitchen cabinets -- not to mention YOUR LUNGS!!!
  
  So, yeah. China, as you make the ascendancy into superpowerdom, you might want to figure out how to build houses that don't kill your own people.


• Another Chinese medical oddity that may or may not be related to sulfuric acid emitting drywall is the case of a boy who was born with 16 toes and 15 fingers. There are many advantages of having so many digits -- it's a new world record, you can easily count to 31, you have multiple options for flipping the bird.
  
  Still, doctors opted to do surgery on the polydactyl boy to make him more normal. Of course as we've seen, 'normal' in China has a whole different definition.
  


• The Chinese are taking misogyny to a whole new level. You know what happens when you take the communist's one-child-per-family policy and mix in a culture that values men over women?
  
  You get a badly imbalanced gender ratio for one thing. By some estimates, China will have 30 million more men of marriageable age than women within the next 10 years. Thirty million! That's more than the population of Texas. Can you imagine the state of Texas being nothing by dudes? Gives me the heebie-jeebies.
  
  I don't know what they're going to do. Import a lot of foreign women? Some kind of war to "cull" the surplus men? Promote the use of X-box, Cheetos, Mr. Pibb and Internet porn as a means to keep all these maniacs in check?
  
  All I know is that this kind of gender imbalance is unprecedented (to the best of my knowledge) and could end up causing the downfall of the Chinese superpower just as it gets going.

tagged: Bullitt, China, polydactyly, Zhang Gouzheng, cutaneous horns, drywall, sulfuric acid, misogyny , gender ratio imbalance

Kansas vs Missouri: Sizing things up

It's pretty common knowledge that Kansas is a better state than Missouri.

It goes all the way back to the American Civil War days when Kansas was on the winning side. Truman, the Missouri president, destroyed two Japanese cities with atomic bombs. Eisenhower, Kansas contribution to the White House, gave us the Interstate Highway system.

Even today, Kansas has superior roads, schools and modern sewer and waste water management systems. The mayors in our towns and cities wear shoes while at work, and they don't rely on unconstitutional earnings taxes to fund their cities' budgets.

So with all these strikes against them, it was kind of a shame to see yet one more indignity come to the men of Missouri recently.

Condomania, makers of advanced, custom fit condoms for the men of America, recently released analysis of years of data gleaned from their "FitKit" system for measuring length and girth of the male member.

"These fitted condoms range in length from 3 to 10 inches and from super slim to extra roomy." says Chris Filkins, Condomania’s Directory of Technology.

"After gathering detailed information on over 27,000 penises, we now have the most comprehensive database of penis sizes on the planet! Needless to say, these men's privacy is our utmost concern, and we're interested only in the statistics, and not who's who! But the data itself is pretty interesting.

The rankings of average penis size put Kansas men firmly in the meaty part of the bell curve, right in the middle of the 50 states at number 26. Unfortunately (for the Show Me State gals) Missouri men came up a bit short, limping in at a flaccid #36, just behind Texas (but three spots ahead of Nebraska).

But hey, c'mon Missouri. Don't let this get you down. It's just a dumb ranking based on scientifically collected data. Penis size doesn't matter, anyway. What matters is the emotional connection... or something.

No need to build giant monuments to compensate.

tagged: Condomania, FitKit, penis, size, condom, Missouri, Kansas

Random Photo XXIV: 'Pecker gotta eat

One of the sure signs of spring is what I call The 6 a.m. Woodpecker that has lived in my backyard for the past few years.

Actually, it's a pair of woodpeckers, a couple. They used to feast on the cedar shingles on our house until we replaced our siding. Then they moved to our neighbor's house and made holes in his siding.

Now they've moved on to a more natural habitat, this dead tree limb behind the neighbor's house. The female of the couple is pictured here getting an evening meal on Sunday.

tagged: spring, sunset, photo, bird, Kansas, woodpecker, Kansas City, wildlife

As seen in Kansas: The final resting place of Fokker Niner Niner Easy

A week ago today, and 79 years, the coach stood frustrated at Kansas City Municipal Airport after missing a reunion with his two sons. He boarded the plane to California, there to consult on a movie commemorating his career, and would never see his sons again.

A few hours later, Knute Rockne and five other passengers and two crewmen of the Fokker 999E plummeted into the Kansas prairie and were killed instantly.

By some early accounts, a freak storm caused the plane to crash. Those of us who've lived in Kansas for a couple of years wouldn't doubt it, especially in that era of aviation. But further investigation concluded that the crash was caused by the catastrophic failure of a wing strut on the Fokker 10AF Trimotor plane.

Regardless of the cause, the result was a scorched spot in the Kansas Flint Hills. You can imagine what it must have been like for the first people on the scene. Weather probably much like today's weather. Cool morning, moist grass. The smell of gasoline and hot oil hanging in the air.

It was a rather gruesome tourist attraction for weeks. Kansans from the area, unfortunately, had little respect for the deceased or for Rockne's surviving sons, 14-year old Billy and 12-year-old Knute Jr., who had returned that day to Pembroke Hill School in Kansas City after an Easter vacation in Florida. Newspapers reported people slogging their way through muddy fields to the crash site to walk away with various chunks of debris as grisly souvenirs -- a chunk of rubber from the plane's tire or a piece of its rudder. There's even one account of a person claiming to have found a gold tooth at the crash the site.

In the years since, the sensation of the incident has worn off and the site has been treated with more respect. A small, tasteful memorial on the site has been maintained for decades by Easter Heatherman who, at the age of 13, was one of the first people to arrive at the crash to render aide. And the Matfield Green travel center along I-35 also has an exhibit commemorating the accident.

While tragic, the resulting investigation into the crash revealed a flaw in the wing spars caused by moisture weakening the wood laminate. All US airlines at the time were forced to ground their Fokker FA10s and many were discovered to have the same flaw. No doubt many more lives were saved.

Also, the intense public interest in the accident forced the Aeronautics Branch of the US Department of Commerce (forerunner of today's FAA) to abandon its policy of keeping the results of aircraft accident investigations secret.

tagged: Kansas, Knute Rockne, Fokker, airplane, crash, Flint Hills, Matfield Green

YouTube Tuesday: Nuit Blanche

Here's another cool, artsy slice-of-hyper-real-life video. The highly stylized film explores a brief moment in time between two people. I especially dig the super-slow-mo video effects.



tagged: YouTube, Tuesday, film, Nuit Blanche, surreal, slow motion, movie

Tommy can you hear me

If a guy came up to you and started laying down a cogent, rational argument that creating a system in which giant taxpayer funded bailouts were necessary to keep the economy (barely) afloat would result in continued economic doomsday spiral, some of you would call him a crazy, racist, extremist Tea Bagger.

But you would be wrong. He's actually one of the more respected, clear thinking personalities to come out of the fecal tempest that was the economy over the past two years.

And he happens to be from Kansas City.

No, it's not me (but that's a good guess). It's none other than Thomas Hoenig, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, and he's not a Tommy-come-lately to criticizing the system that resulted in the megabailouts we saw last year. He reiterated his criticism in a recent speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

In a 1999 speech on financial megamergers, I concluded that, "To the extent these institutions become 'too big to fail and ... uninsured depositors and other creditors are protected by implicit government guarantees, the consequences can be quite serious. Indeed, the result may be a less stable and a less efficient financial system."

More than a decade later, the only thing I can change about that statement is the government guarantees are no longer juts implicit. Actions during the financial crisis have made this protection quite explicit.

The speech essentially chides regulators and legislators for paying lip service to reforms without actually doing anything. Democrats have controlled the entire government for over a year now, dangling a shiny new fake health care reform act in front of the public so that we would forget about the causes and effects of the biggest financial meltdown in a generation.

Hoenig has specific recommendations that the D.C. crew can ignore, including allowing failing banks to fail (duh) and requiring maximum leverage and loan-to-value ratios.

These are all reasonable and obvious (in my opinion) reforms. Unfortunately, the chance of them being implemented is about the same as me buying the next Justin Bieber album.

Why? Well I'm glad I asked that. The problem is that despite all of the rhetoric about hope and change, there's no benefit in these reforms to the people who run the government right now.

tagged: economy, TBTF, Justin Bieber, Thomas Hoenig, Goldman Sachs, reform, banking

Metamorphosis

So I'm heading back to the office the other day after taking care of a few lunch-time errands.

Ever cognizant of my surroundings (as one must be when the government agents and dwarf assassins are out to get you), I observed what I thought was one of the most ingenious concepts for a pest control/exterminator business ever (and I've seen a lot of concepts for pest control/exterminator businesses).
Of course! A bug killing business that pays homage to the author of one of my favorite German surrealist man-becomes-cockroach stories, The Metamorphosis.

"When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin. He was lying on his back as hard as armor plate, and when he lifted his head a little, he saw his vaulted brown belly, sectioned by arch-shaped ribs, to whose dome the cover, about to slide off completely, could barely cling. His many legs, pitifully thin compared with the size of the rest of him, were waving helplessly before his eyes."

Now that's an exterminator with a sense of humor and a good grounding literature. Just the kind of guy I want going after my silverfish!

So I maneuver closer to get around to the side of the truck. There must be a phone number on there somewhere. Anyone with the marketing savvy to name an exterminating company after Franz Kafka surely would know enough to put the phone number on the side of the truck.

That's when I saw the critical detail that painted me as a total sucker. A line of copy under the logo on the side of the truck read "Available at the Johnson County Library."
Of course. This isn't some pest control professional with a penchant for marketing. It's a new mobile billboard for the local library.

Well, touchè librarians. You got me. Who knew a run-of-the-mill lunch hour errand trip could be so entertaining. I wonder if the library stocks any books about gullibility.

tagged: Kafka, Metamorphosis, pest control, silverfish, literature, gullible, advertising

Two cups, one gack

I recently discovered a flaw in my morning routine.

A typical work-a-day morning for me goes something like this: Get up, get ready for work, drop off the kids, stop by QT for a coffee and fruit (can't forget breakfast), drive to work, park car, arrive at my cube, turn on computer, drink coffee, start work.

It's a pretty good, streamlined routine. There are various sub-steps along the way, but you get the idea. It has worked pretty flawlessly for ages now.

Until yesterday. I discovered a rather nasty flaw stemming from my coffee subroutine.

The coffee subroutine involves me grabbing one of my half-dozen or so insulated travel coffee mugs on the way out the door. After dropping of the kids, I take my mug to the QuikTrip for a refill of Colombian Supremo with a squirt of non-fat creamer.

So far so good, right? I drink the coffee on the way to work and throughout the firs few meetings of the morning. The problem is, I don't always bring the mugs home everyday after work. And a couple of them are identical.

Yeah. You see where this is going.

Yesterday I bring my morning cup of joe into my cube. For illustration purposes, it looks pretty much like this (because this is what it is).

As per usual, I set it on my desk to take out my laptop computer and get it started. I take off my jacket and hang it up. Then as I'm sitting down in my office chair, I grab my cup of coffee and take a big swig. But I've inadvertently set it down next to yesterday's coffee mug...

Let me just say that it's no pleasant realization when you're expecting the warm rich taste of roasted Colombian java beans to get the cold bitter nastiness from the previous day. Luckily I came to the horrible realization before I swallowed, and immediately spit the offending liquid back into the cup.

But obviously, I've got to scar, mar or otherwise deface one of the cups. This can't happen again. This aggression will not stand, man.

tagged: coffee, QuikTrip, mug, gag, Colombian Supremo

YouTube Tuesday: Surreality TV

I've mentioned before how much I think "reality" TV has been a symptom of our declining culture -- eroding as it does an appreciation for nuance and subtlety (not to mention good writing and directing).

But this short film out of Canada? This is some surreal, funky stuff that I can really get into. And the dialog is an order of magnitude better than what you'll find on any "reality" show.



tagged: YouTube, Tuesday, reality, TV, surreal, animation, How wings are attached to the back of angels