ian glazer's tuesdaynight

Interesting discussion of multi-culturalism in a welfare state.

It’s bad enough that the airlines treat you like cattle. It is bad enough that, if they serve you food at all, it is total crap. It is bad enough that they are smug when they lose your luggage. However, this is far worse. I’m sure our no-talent ass-clown president would be thrilled that this kind of behavior…

I was at a party recently. You know, one of those ’tis the season kind of affairs. I was given a glass of wine. Can’t say as I remember the wine too much, but I do remember the wine charm. Wine glass charms come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. They are used to identify which wine glass is yours. Now there are two major assumptions in that:

1. You remember which wine charm is yours, and after lots of wine, that gets hard.
2. You can clearly distinguish your wine charm from the others, broken glass, and food bits on the table, after drinking lots of wine.

Wine charms are great gifts for people who either have everything or often get confused which drink is theirs or both. So… I got a wine charm, which was not too fancy. There was one word on it: Simplify Now if you have a collection of wine charms, it is fairly safe to say that you are pretty damned far from living a simple life. I think the charm misses the point. However, let’s say you take the wine charm’s advice and simplify. Start with throwing out your massive wine charm collection. But, wait, how do I tell which drink is mine? Try these helpful hints:

So here I am on the Accela heading to NYC. Station stop Newark. I am going to from DC to NYC, spending a bit of time there and heading to Boston, seeing the family, and heading back. And I am doing all this the weekend before Christmas. Now I have traveled up and down the Northeast Corridor on Amtrak. I know when to travel on it and when not too. This is not an ideal time. Thus the reserved ticket and seat on Accela as supposed to an unreserved cattle-car ticket on a regular train. The plan was to get a seat in the Quiet Car, watch a few movies, and chill. The Quiet Car (QC) is one car behind the first class car. Cell phones, loud electronics and conversations are forbidden. It’s a great place to catch some z’s and get your sanity back. There are three kinds of people who are in the QC. The first, I’ll called the Herd. The Herd just wants to sit and relax. They are non-confrontational. They want to get some work done, read a book, what have you. The next group of people I’ll call the Gulls. Gulls make noise. It’s in their nature. They have to talk on the phone. They have to make noise. They cannot help it. The third and final group are the Grumps. Grumps follow rules. Grumps enforce rules. They live by social norms. Grumps do not, as a rule, chill. They can be quiet. They can be loud. They are self-stressed. Grumps and the Herd usual coexist peacefully. The Herd is mostly quiet and the Grumps stay to themselves. But, you add a few Gulls into the mix and the fun begins. The Herd will generally ignore the Gulls. The Herd might scowl at Gulls, but they rarely take action. Egregious Gull behavior will get a word from the Herd. Grumps, however, cannot stand rules being broken. They cannot stand a Gull breaking the social contract of the QC. They just cannot handle it. So they take action. They will raise a fuss. They will get the conductor. They cannot just let this go. The Gulls have broken the Grumps pristine peace of the QC. They must be punished. So there I sat amidst the usual Gull - Grump warfare. Typical. Sad, but typical. After a time, things settled down. First, Gulls do not often realize they are Gulls. The nature of the QC isn’t obvious. To get the gist of the QC, you need to take cues from your surrounding. In this age of exploding Assberger’s Syndrome populations, taking social cues is less and less likely. Second, enough Grump prodding quiets down Gulls… unless they are assholes and must be dealt with accordingly. But then… a wild-card was thrown down. It started as a commotion. At a station stop, a new rider entered the train with a Red Cap carrying his bag. The new rider was very upset that someone else was carrying his bag. He wanted it back. He needed it back. And we all heard him loudly protest. Once the Red Cap placed the bag in front of the new rider, things quieted down for a moment. And then he start talking. Loudly. To anyone. To everyone. I glanced back and saw that the new rider was youngish, maybe early twenties. His eyes were small and an intense blue I had never seen before. But there was something not quite right about him. His features were Mongoloid. His behavior revealed some sort of mental retardation. So into the QC where a recent Gull - Grump détente was reach, entered the new rider. He, who had no awareness of the QC rules. He, who only the most craven Gull would chastise. Here he sat. Talking. Loudly. To anyone. To everyone. Two things were happening here revolving around social norms. One, the new rider was unaware of the social norms of the QC. He was, seemingly, unable to pick up on the cues of the QC. He did not hear the announcements about the QC, or at least did not think that the QC rules applied to him. Two, social norms quietly dictate that you (be you Herd, Gull, or Grump) do not chastise, confront, or yell at a mentally handicapped person. This drove some Grumps to the point of complete insanity, but they held their tongues. The rest of the journey was a mixture of the new rider yell-talking, the frustrated sighs of the Grumps, and the usual train noises. All in all, it was a pleasant rider. It provided me time to write, watch a movie, and get a quick peak at social norms in action.

The sad fact of this is that Mickey Mouse should be part of the public domain. But he’s not. He’s part of the Disney empire who sees fit to keep the mouse out of our hands. They have manipulated the copyright laws to prevent Mickey Mouse from entering the space that Shakespeare, Mark Twain, and Ben Franklin all reside… the commons. For more info see Eldred v. Ashcroft

I’ve been flying all around the world. I spent a few days in Sydney, which was awesome. I spent all of 36 hours in Tokyo which was very very cool. Tokyo smells great! Seriously - it does. You know how some cities just smell like poo and urine and cars and garbage and all sorts of other crap? Tokyo smells really good. It smells like flowers and spices. Okay, there is the occasional smell of automobiles. But all in all, it smells very nice. A fragrant city. I was nervous to go. Having just seen Lost in Translation, I was nervous. (BTW, it’s a great movie.) The Tokyo subway system is great once you figure out what on earth is going on. It makes NYC, Paris, London, Boston, and DC look like childs play. In fact, if you took all the previously mentioned cities, combined their subway systems, you still wouldn’t touch the vastness of Tokyo. I especially like the small female voice telling you what stop you were at. As far as I can tell, Japanese does not stress sylables the was English does. The words are pronounced fairly flat. I was trying to go to Asakusa, which I pronounced AH-sa-KU-sa. That go me no where. However, trying to get to ah-sa-ku-sa worked just fine. Takes a little getting used to.

Go Little Joe, go!

This guy is still my hero.

I’ve seen a lot of shows in my time, and I’ve seen some BAD opening acts…Jason and the Scorchers opening for Bob Dylan in 1989 come to mind…but how many people can say they had somebody referred to as “His holiness” open for you? No, this isn’t about Pope John Paul II opening for the smoothe 15th century stylin’s of W and the Republican party. Tuesday night favorite Tom Waits did a show a couple days ago and had “HH”, The Dalai Lama open for him. Link below goes to the review in the NY Times, but the best graf by far, referring to HH’s day beginning at 3:30 am… “Tom Waits, who closed the show in his usual guise as a lowlife sage, wisecracked: “So his holiness goes to bed at 7:30? That’s not the holiness I used to know.”” Enjoy Star Starts a Show; Tom Waits Ends It

Ian, your identity crisis is scaring me. Don’t go changing to try to please us…