On Quakers & Progressive Portland

Yesterday I was taking a walk down my city's great North-South divide known as Burnside St. and saw a curious place marked as the American Friends International--a one time Quaker organization, apparently--which had posted this ridiculous sign:



I didn't realize stoning rape victims was a progressive value.

Giuseppe Arcimboldo

I'd never heard of him before last week, but he's he quickly become one of my favorite painters. His relatively mundane self portrait:

The Evolutionary Advantages of Being john william

Being john william is a really, really tough undertaking. Okay, that's a complete lie. I am, in fact, kind of amazing. I actually feel really sorry for anyone reading this because I know that you're not I. What is that like? No. Don't tell me. I don't want to live in that damned universe.

The dumber among you are probably thinking to yourselves, "What makes you so great, mister john william?"

The answer is Science.

Using my utterly uncanny cognitive abilities, I've been able to determine just how great, evolutionarily speaking, I am. Did you know that North Koreans teach that all along the eons of evolution there was the Korean ancestral line? Like, that amoeba? There was an ordinary amoeba and then there was the superior Korean amoeba. That fish with legs? Well, there was the normal fish with legs and then there was the superior-in-every-way Korean fish with legs. The Koreans are actually on the right track, except that where they think there were superior Korean versions of proto-humans, it was actually superior john william versions.


But enough of that hogwash! Let's get to what you paid for, a bullet list!

• john william never gets hung over. Ever. Don't ask me to explain it; I don't want to look a gift horse in its dirty, dirty mouth. All I know is I've never had one. If you're thinking I just haven't drank enough, let me tell you about this past Saturday night: Six or seven pints of beer. A martini. An old fashioned. A manhattan. A straight bourbon on the rocks. All I had for dinner during that span was some 3 bean soup and a salad. I woke up Sunday without so much as a headache. It's completely insane, I realize this.
• john william is one tall drink o' water, but not freakishly so. Yes, sir. 6'2" was identified as the perfect height in a joint study by Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer. Any less is some meager semblance of masculinity and any more was determined to be pure fruitball-ism! This trait helps you attract females because of their chronic desire to reach for things out of their wingspan. Yes, I can get that chafing-dish for you, but don't think it means I'm gonna marry ya!
• john william falls asleep, and wakes up, with ease. I also only need an average of six hours of sleep a night. I don't even set an alarm clock. I figure this was an important trait in the lives of pre-john williams. Inveterate enemies of the john william line waged their unholy, eternal crusade against us. Jealous of our gifts, they tried to wipe us from the face of the Earth. But we were crafty. Every time they came creeping upon us in the still of night, we were awake and ready with our spear/sword/catapult. The john william line is without fear or blame.
• john william has impeccable taste concerning, well, everything! Want to know what you should listen to while reading what you should be reading while waiting for carry out from the restaurant you should be patronizing? john william knows, but he only gives this information away to friends. The rest of you are going to have to pay up to 50 dollars for each suggestion.
• john william is a really good kisser. The secret ingredients are my full lips and my penchant for pulling hair. Scientists have found that good kissing was helpful in past eras where making out was often an exchangeable currency. JFK's most foolish act was taking us off the gold standard and then not putting us on the smooch standard. Way to go, Kennedy!
  

These Indie Rock Goddesses Need to Get Up Off My Nut Sack

Seriously, ladies, it was cute at first, but you really need to move on. Quit writing songs about me! First it was Emily, writing some stuff about her ghost asking my ghost something about who put these bodies between us. Emily, you're great and really talented, but let it go already! I want to be able to enjoy Metric and not have to hear about myself the whole time.



Then it was poor, poor Tracyanne. Did you know she wrote a whole album about our breakup. Obsessed much? Apparently, Camera Obscura is close to releasing a new album; who wants to bet more than one song is about john william?


The latest broad who needs a clue? Liela of the Duke Spirit. The only thing she enjoys more than sea metaphors is singing about how I done her wrong. Yes, I did tear up your letter. Yes, it was to prove myself right. Deal with it.

I hate to air these things out in public, but c'mon gals! You're all really talented and should move on and, most importantly, you're kind of cock blockin' me over here. I'm trying really hard to make some time with Zooey overhere.

Spoiler Chat: Fringe

Don't read any further if you don't want to read spoilers!

The Fringe episode titled "Peter" has really worked its way into my brain in a way that's generally reserved for Lost and Lost alone, as far as television based entertainments are concerned. After reading a few TV blogs' impressions of the episode, I thought I would offer my own insights that I haven't yet seen brought up.

The Observers: We seem them conversing in the parallel world, with Mr September setting out to rectify a mistake. We later see him in our world, making good on his promise. Do the observers freely move between the two worlds? And if so, does that make them exceptions to the general rule of there being two of everything? Or have they a way communicating with their counterparts on the other side?

How serious is this rule of two? Surely there can't be double of everything or, more accurately, everyone. The fact that the other side is about a generation, in people terms, not technology, ahead of our side in science and technology would make for a lot of differences. I'm willing to believe that many people would have their dopplegangers, but surely some people would simply not exist in both worlds.

Are there only two worlds, or are they infinite in number? Is the reason why travel and communication between the two on the show is possible is because they are something akin to temporal twins? Was there an event in the past that caused the metaphorical zygote to split, but still gestate within one womb?

Walter really is the start of everything: The show made it pretty clear that Walter's sojourn across the dimensional divide was the beginning of the Pattern--somewhat funny as the Pattern hasn't really factored into season 2 at all. Not only did he lay the scientific ground work for the lesser men who followed, as we learned in the first season, but his selfish-yet-understandable quest is what allowed the boundary between worlds to weaken. But does it go farther? Did Walter accidentally inflict the Blight on the other world? And is it possible that the mastermind behind the assault from the other side is Bizarro Walter, a man done an unimaginable sin by our Walter?

Pre-lobotomized Walter wasn't just more cool and confident, he was also a bit of an a-hole, a narcissist, and an egomaniac. Obviously, it's incredibly wrong to kidnap a child. I can understand his decision to keep other Peter; the unspoken exchange between Walter and his wife as she held the seemingly resurrected child in her arms almost brought me to tears. But I didn't forget that on the other side a bizarre scene of confusion, suspicion, and loss must have have been playing out. Secondly, Walter appears to have been suffering a God-complex. "There is only room for one God in this laboratory and it isn't yours." I'm happy to see them add more complexity and depth to whom is already the most compelling character on the show. Now if only some of that would rub off on Peter and Olive.

How good was the most recent episode of Fringe?

It was this good. Seriously, if you aren't watching, or aren't caught up, Fringe just earned its place as Lost's successor.

Did anyone else get a David Bowie vibe from young Walter?

In Offense of Hugs

So the other night, while enjoying a delicious Mt. Rainier at my favored bar, I was reminded of a thought that had been slumming in the depths of my consciousness for some time. I hate how hugs--the namby pamby, egalitarian, wimpy, and all together impersonal collision of right shoulder to right shoulder--have become the end all, be all way for a man to greet everyone, from the saint who birthed him to that dude he's met a few times; but only if said dude goes in for it first.

I don't want to give the impression that all hugs are worthless and awful. A true hug, an actual embrace, is a thing to be adored. It is not, however, a thing that's appropriate for every greeting we make in typical day. And it's certainly not a way for an American President to greet a fellow world leader or, well, anyone. Nor, I might add, is bowing to the despotic ruler of a third world, morally backwards country.

You see, gentle friends, the better way is the handshake. For, like, eons, across this very universe, the proper and gentlemanly way for a man to to greet another man, be he acquaintance, cherished friend, or coworker, was the humble, sensible handshake. Thankfully, we haven't completely given in to this peculiar mental derangement and therefore don't greet our employers with bear hugs and beard burns. The handshake meant we are meeting as equals. And I'm not going to try to kill you. At least not for another few minutes. I mean, you give me the dead fish then I'll know you're a pussy and I'll have to kill you.

How did the handshake become undone in favor of hugging? Like most things that are utterly imbecilic in modern American life, we may thank our parents: the baby boomers. You see, the handshake, gosh darn it, just wasn't personal enough for them. It meant business and business was some gross, nasty thing those dirty, old, racist republicans spent their time obsessed with. No, sir. A handshake was no way for me to greet the dude who got me SO baked that one time on Dog Hill or that other dude that did absinthe with me and we ran naked along the river. A hug was really the only way to express how I truly felt about my comrades; we who fight the power and strive against stuff and junk. Truely, only a hug could adequately express the space between us.

Barf.

This decision by our forebears has had two effects. The aforementioned over-application and subsequent devaluing of the hug or, conversely, the complete absence of tactile interaction among males. In the absence of handshakes, most men are reduced to "s'ups" and mockish hand gesticulations that in earlier days would have befit only the neutered. How far our descent but how facile our restoration! All it takes is the simple commitment to not act like wimps who believe that hugs have the magical power to heal baby seals of their acute brain traumas.

Next time you greet another man that you have some semblance of affection for, do your future sons a favor and give the lug a damn firm handshake.