Good evening, good morning, good afternoon, and good eclipse to you all. I am Monsignor Chatterton Ouiseberg Debumsex the Third, owner, operator, curator, and custodian to this, the first and only Fooblestein Gallery of Art, Sculpture, and Ten Minute Lube Jobs. This highly esteemed and respectable institution has been endowed (quite well endowed) with the solemn and sacred duty of collecting and presenting for you, the adoring underwashed public, all that is fine and good in realm of the visual art, especially if it’s really, really dirty.

After all, our patrons expect a certain level of stimulation on one level or another.

Our first pair of exhibits will certainly stimulate your sense of amused horror, as it features two pictures from the distant past that will surely haunt your nightmares and make you truly grateful for all the advances in costumery that have have been made since the terrible days when these pictures were taken.

Thrill to the horror!

Kind of suggests some kind of horrifying alternate history where the entirety of World War I was sponsored by Disney and what we are seeing here is actually the world’s most surreal and horrifying gas mask drill. Sure, you look like the members of some Disney fixated version of The Klan, but this is your only hope of surviving an attack of deadly Woodpecker Gas from the forces of Walter Lantz.

OK, that last bit is probably just me.

Of course, you do not start life as a much-feared Donald Stormtrooper. Future Disney warrior start out small, as Mickey Commandos.

Here they are being cheerfully indoctrinated in the Disney Code of Behaviour, and learning the importance of peace, love, obedience, cooperation, and the willingness to kill when the forces of evil strike.

So I have a really sick mind. It’s what got me this job!

Moving on to our next exhibit, what we have here is a nearly perfect example of the art of the verbal zap, reproduced in IRC text for our reading pleasure.

You will have to excuse me, as I am fairly certain I will become extremely unprofessional after showing you this stellar exhibit.

Awww HELL yeah! Feel that, you stupid bitch? That’s called a deep tissue burn! That’s called an orbital level slam! You got owned like tsunamis own the coastlines of Pacific nations! And oh, it’s just starting…. a sweet cut like that is the sort of thing your whole school will be talking about for days and days, and people will be looking at you and laughing for no apparent reason, and when you ask them why, they will just say “Oh, nothing…. ” and laugh even more.

Let that be a lesson to you : mock not the nerd, for we are all wizards and the ways of wizards are beyond your feeble understanding. Know only that we can hurt you in ways you cannot even comprehend, and you should show us the respect due to all human beings and seek not to put us down for being good at school.

Ahem. So, back to the exhibit.

Sometimes it is not the picture alone that makes it art, but instead, the perfect union of image and caption that creates something far larger than the sum of its parts.

As in this image :

Hilarious, for sure. Any party where you end up walking through flaming wreckage wearing nothing but a motorcycle helmet and a jock strap has got to rate as “epic” at the very least. That is some seriously hardcore lifestylin’ there, dude.

But the real question burning (sic) in everyone’s mind is : what the hell is the real story behind this picture? Sense. This makes none!

Like… did someone say “Hey, look, that building over there is burning down. Hey Lars! Dare you to walk through it in nothing but your jockstrap!”

And Lars replied “Hokay, but I get to wear my helmet too!”

“OK, you go get your helmet, and I will get my camera, and then it’s on, bitch!”

I am not sure why I immediately imagined these people as being German, but hey, we do not know for sure that they aren’t, right?

Well, that’s it for this week’s exhibition. I sincerely hope you all appreciate the degree to which I have made you more cultured, more sophisticated, and above all, just that tad more presentable.

Come back next week, where we will be exploring the controversial and provocative revelation that Ansel Adams did a lot of erotic photography under the pseudonym “Big Bad Wolf XXX”.

Yup, it’s back! I had so much fun rattling on about the new music I had found last week that I decided to do it again this week.

Not that I plan on making a “thing” of this, like the Science Roundup or Foobles, it’s just that I have such enthusiasm for the music that one edition of the Grooveshark roundup was simply not enough to contain it!

So if music be the food of love, or love be the eater of music, or music be just plain fun cool and awesome, let us play on. What’s up this week?

Turns out, I have been doing a lot of exploring various artist’ works, and finding new fresh gems that way. Here is some examples.

Funkhauser by Hard and Phirm. I discovered this little comedic (and musical) gem when exploring the works of Hard and Phirm, a comedy group primarily known (if at all) for their absolutely mesmerizing song about Pi that makes the rounds amongst us nerds now and then. Turns out, they are pretty damn good, as evidenced by the hilarious and brilliant song I have linked to here. Taking the old saw of the song where the singer calls in each instrument and taking it to such delightfully absurd extremes is sheer genius. That is the kind of comedy writing that I really enjoy, original and fresh and funny as hell. They deserve an award just for the phrase “Take a dead rat… and throw it at a bus. ” Also check out the magnificently nerdy Carbon Cycle and of course their Pi Song as well.

Jack Sparrow by The Lonely Island. For those who don’t know, The Lonely Island is the name of the band made up of SNL players that produced such hits as Dick In A Box, Mother Lover, and Threw It On The Ground. I decided to check out more fo their stuff, and found this hilarious song. Never thought I would hear Michael Bolton swear, but even more so, I never thought I would hear him threadjack an entire song. I am also very fond of this marvelously disturbed high production number Great Day , and the satirical look at youthful pretension and geriatric orgies that is known merely as Boombox .

Teeth by Lady Gaga. Inspired by my recent passionate love affair with her epic awesome smash hit tribute to self-acceptance and diversity Born This Way, I decided to check out more of Lady Gaga’s work, and most of it was not really to my taste. Pretty much just fairly average electronic dance numbers. But this kinky little number immediately leapt out at me. Now that is something different. I love that stripped down nasty primal beat and while I have never considered myself particularly kinky (perverted as hell, yes, but not kinky), I have to admit, I find the song pretty damn hot. So if one song was going to break from the back and get my attention, it was going to be this one. Icy cool, Mother Monster.

Demons by Fatboy Slim. WARNING GENRE BIGOTS : This song takes the music form of a soul/spiritual fusion type song. This might remind some people uncomfortably of religion, but the song is not really religious, or at least, it’s thoroughly nondenominational. Myself, I love it, but if you don’t, you can check out a few more of my faves from Fatboy Slim’s amazing oeuvre, like Punk to Funk (very old-school synth and experimental) or their original smash hit The Rockafeller Skank, which you might well know as “that song where he goes ‘right about now, funk soul brother, check it out now, funk soul brother’ a million times. ” Personally (back to Demons), I am a big fan of the sort of feel-good non-religous spirituality it represents. The world desperately needs to rescue the inspiration from religion, and learn to feel good without having to obey anyone or believe nonsense. This is how we move on, folks!

I Need A Doctor by Eminem. Surprise! I am ending with Eminem again. I checked out more tracks from this latest album of his, and he continues to blow my mind away with just how real he can make it. Every time I listen to this song, it draws me into the raw emotion it expresses. I had no idea Dre and Eminem had drifted apart. And the stuff he talks about in Changes and 25 to Life is just as rugged, raw, and real. Fuck all that gangsta bullshit, it’s all just fucked up fantasy, give me more of life lived hard.

That’s all for this week. More later? Maybe.

Here it is, Friday once again, and that means it’s time for me to roll up the sleeves of my lab coat, put all my rings and watches in the nearby nonferrous receptacle of science (an old pink washing basin, as it happens), and plunge elbow deep into the big vat o’ science I keep around for just such a purpose and fish about for some salient and savour science with which to stimulate and edutain you, my adoring masses.

Yes, that was all one sentence. I am totally cool with that.

But now you know why I never use grammar checkers. They would choke with uncomprehending rage over that stellar opening paragraph. Refusing to use them, therefore, is not merely practical and easier on my nerves, it is really the only humane option.

Software has feelings too!

First a semi-addendum : there’s a story I wanted to cover last week and never got around to, so I figure I had better tag that sucker this week before it disappears over the rapidly receding horizon of science news entirely.

This year’s Nobel prizes were particularly sweet for one man, Israel chemist Daniel Shechtman, because he has had to fight for his discovery of what are called quasicrystals for almost 30 years, and now he’s gotten a Nobel prize for them.

When he discovered them back in 1982, his colleagues all laughed at him. You can’t make a regular crystalline structure based on five sided figures! Everyone knows that. You either have an amorphous non-crystalline blob, or a simple periodical crystal. No in between.

Well, quasicrystals are in between. And he definitely had observed them. But his results were so controversial that not only did he spark heated debate throughout chemistry, but his research group eventually booted him out for making them look bad.

As if that wasn’t enough, no less a personage than legendary American chemist Linus Pauling was quoted as saying “There is no such thing as quasicrystals, only quasiscience. ”

At this point, I feel like we should all be glad that he didn’t retreat to a remote castle and invent the Quasicrystal That Ate Desmoines.

Instead, he published anyhow, and science has slowly validated him over time, till finally, this year, he gets the Nobel.

Ah, sweet, sweet vindication. I mean seriously, has anyone else ever had a biography that more closely resembles the Mad Scientist’s? They literally laughed at him at the Institute, and he literally returned to prove to them all what myopic fools they had all been and win the Nobel Prize for his discovery.

And from my comfy perch on the sidelines, here after the game is over and the winner declared without my ever having had a preference of one team over another, I can smugly say “Gee, seems obvious to me that you can tile any regular solid with a sufficiently complex pattern”, but hey, what the hell do I know?

Just goes to show that science, being performed by humans, is fraught with pitfalls, and the revolutionaries of today will be that which must be overcome tomorrow and the embarrassing historical footnote of next week.

Moving on to science that sounds weird but apparently works, Scottish doctors are using ultrasound to help broken bones heal faster.

Yes, ultrasound sort of like the kind we now associate with taking a look at your little baby as he swims in the womb, but at a different frequency and pulse rate.

They claim that the patient feels nothing, but application of this particular kind of ultrasound for twenty minutes on a regular basis to the break can speed healing by forty percent because “The ultrasonic pulses induce cell vibration, which doctors say stimulates bone regeneration and healing”.

And so far, nobody is calling bullshit. But whenever people start talking about special vibrations that aid healing, I get nervous. It smacks of psuedoscience. Smacking of things is not, of course, an actual logical argument. But still, it sends up alarms.

Oh, and lastly, a quick word on Amazon’s supposedly $80 Kindle : in real, market terms, it does not exist, because in order to get that sweet price, you have to buy, as in pay money for, a Kindle that is loaded with advertising. No competitor of theirs forces you to accept ads, ergo, this Kindle does not compete with them.

The real version, the one sans ads, is $109, which is still a decent price, but not the “oh my god, the first under-$100 e-reader!” that the hype would tell you it is.

Once more, Amazon demonstrates their complete inability to understand how the low end works, and comes across elitist.

That said, that’s all for now. Catch you next week folks!

Our two kinds never have gotten along, and it is not too hard to figure out why.

There you are, filled with tension and ambition and drive and worry and intellect and stress, working as hard as you can to get the highest marks you possibly can, with a future full of scholarships and Ivy League achievement and high powered jobs always hanging in the balance in your mind. The expectations on you are extremely high and you feel you have to scramble as hard and fast as you can every moment of your life to just keep up with them. Fear of failure is constant, and so you try as hard as you can on every level, all the time, never truly relaxing at all. Everything has to be right. The right clothes, the right friends, the right extracurricular activities, the right courses, and of course, the right grades, meaning the highest possible. Sweating every test, every grade, and no matter how good your marks are, you always feel like you failed, because you could have (and therefore should have) done better.

And this tyranny of high expectations takes a toll on you every day, wearing on your nerves, making you anxious and nervous all the time, and yet you can’t let any of that show, because that does not fit the image of the future alpha of the world you work so hard to live up to. That would not be “the right move” and your life is all about the right moves, no matter what. That is what your upper middle class parents expect of you, and not living up to their expectations is your absolutely worst fear.

You absolutely must do absolutely everything right, perfect in fact, and you always feel like you are failing even when you are winning accolade after accolade, and you feel like you are constantly dangling on the edge of a tall cliff, and you are not allowed to call out for help or even let on that you are scared.

And then you look across the sea of other keeners just like you in the classroom, and you see someone like me.

Wrong on all counts. Disorganized, messy, disheveled, sloppy, I seem to float around in a hazy and unpleasant cloud of ignorance, not even seeming to be pay attention in class a lot of the time, taking barely any notes, and looking positively homeless in comparison to you and all your perfectly groomed co-keeners.

By all accounts, by all rights, by all justice, by all the rules of the incredibly harsh and unforgiving world in which you operate, I should not even be in the same school as you, let alone in the same classroom, let alone sitting right there and looking calm and happy and like I am actually enjoying learning. I shouldn’t be chatting with the teacher like we are equals and not only getting away with it, but actually being encouraged in it by the teacher who actually seems to like me.

And I certainly shouldn’t be getting the same marks as you or even higher.

And without even seeming to try very hard!

So I don’t blame you for hating me, even though I know that in my innocent ignorance, I do none of these things with any thought towards hurting anyone. I am just being who I am, a dreamy, brainy intellectual who is just doing what comes naturally to him.

It’s just plain not fair that I should get what you get by sweating blood without even breaking a sweat. And the worst part is, I don’t even seem to know what I have.

Which is that I am naturally what keeners like you try so hard to force yourself to be.

And I can’t even claim it is because I am smarter than you. You are obviously not dummies or we would not even be in the same class. When I look at you, I wish I was more like you. Smooth, confident, organized, controlled, looking wonderfully put together and giving every impression that you are headed for the top no matter what you do in life.

So here it is, twenty plus years later, but I finally understand why you and I never got along. I never had anything against you guys, innocent that I was, but I can completely see how from your point of view, I was something that just shouldn’t exist.

I wish I had understood this back then. Maybe I could have bridged the gap.

Regardless, I forgive you.

Who, what, where, why, and PORK CHOPS? Are we back in the charming boutique country of Fooblesvania for another round of uninspected and tariff free silliness? Is it that time again? Are these questions rhetorical?

Yes little children, it is once more time to break open all the piggy banks and open all the windows on our Advent calendars at the same time (stickers? What a ripoff!) and get all crazy with the Cheex Whiz as we once more plunge into the deep dark heart of the Fooble Jungle and find out if it truly contains all the wisdom and secrets of the ages, or whether the rumours are true and it’s just full of cholesterol.

Inquiring minds want to know!

I know…. let’s start with some outrageous cuteness!

Turns out, baby cheetahs don’t meow. They squeak, which, amazingly enough, is even cuter. Just look at that fluffy little kitten squeaking at you because it’s hungry. Don’t you just want to pick it up and cuddle it and pets its fuzzy head?

Its mama might not think much of that, though. Helpful hint : if you and Mama end up in a dispute, don’t try to run away. You will not get far.

Cheetahs are weird felines in many ways. They don’t have a meow, they instead have a sort of barking sound they make. Their claws don’t retract like most felines’ do. In many ways, they are more like dogs than cats.

Plus, you know, they’re the fastest animals on land. But don’t worry, they are cool about it. They don’t hang around being all smug about it just to make other creatures feel bad or anything. They know they are fast, and that’s enough for them.

You have to admire that.

Next on our whirlwind tour of this fascinating nation, we have an informercial from Japan that should make us here in North America feel better about things like the Shake Weight and the Forever Lazy.

I think the lack of English really helps this clip. I don’t speak Japanese at all, so to me, this is a fascinating pantomime about a mysterious product with hilariously obscene action.

Realistically, it is easy to deduce that this product is presumably a piece of exercise equipment designed to mimic the sort of exercise one gets from riding horseback.

I know, I know, from the point of view of us city folk who are used to less equine forms of transport, getting exercise from horse riding seems as silly as claiming you get a good, stiff workout from riding the bus.

But from what I am told, it’s actually very good exercise for the rider as well as the horse. It takes a lot of balance and skill to stay upright in the saddle, grip the horse with your legs, and match your movements to the movement of the horse at the same time.

And from the action of the exercise machine above, you can certainly see why girls on the cusp of puberty find horses so appealing.

No, I won’t explain that. You can either figure it out on your own or you are not old or mature enough to know. Moving on!

There’s a terrible blood sport happening in a chic suburban neighborhood near you, and this brutally frank expose blows the lid off all of the sordid details.

Brutal Spouse-Fighting Ring Discovered in Miami Basement (Preview of Season 2 on IFC)

A very clever idea for a skit, well executed by the people over at The Onion News Network.

A lot of people would enjoy that kind of thing. For some reason, there are people who enjoy watching other people have big verbal altercations. To them, I suppose, it’s happening to them, so they feel free to enjoy it like a spectator sport.

Me, I am far too sensitive for that. My instinct is to try to end conflict, not sit back and enjoy it, and if I can’t, I will want to just get the heck out of there.

Bad vibes, man. Harsh, negative vibes. Not good for us sensitive types. Like I always say, being sensitive is not for wimps.

Despite what you have probably heard all your life.

Well, that’s it for our tour of Fooblevania. Thank you for coming to visit us. You will find that there is absolutely no way to leave except through the gift shop, where you will find many things you would never buy if they weren’t related to a thing you just did.

Have fun, and come back soon!

Sorry I missed last week! Explanations reside here. Lightning short versions : I was sick.

But enough of the past. Let’s look into the future… with science!

Brain science, to be specific, one of my all time faves. I guess if you spend a lot of your time inside your own head, you get to be curious about the neighborhood.

And what a find : we may have located the exact fold of the brain that is responsible for our ability to tell reality and imagination apart.

Or, as I prefer to phrase it, it lets us distinguish between internal and external events, between what happens inside our heads and what happens outside them. (I prefer this definition because it is more in line with phenomenology. )

Anyhow, the discovery’s first and most immediate implication is that we might have found the very place that needs help in people with schizophrenia, psychosis, and all that level of mental illness. An inability to distinguish between internal and external events is the closest thing I have ever heard to a definition of schizophrenia, and if this discovery leads to better treatment of the disease, with fewer side effects ^[1], that alone would be a massively important result.

But I am curious whether said region might be gently and carefully manipulated to create a sort of virtual reality effect, almost a controlled schizophrenia, that could be used to create virtual experiences for entertainment purposes. Bypass the whole complicated business of traditional VR setups and pipe the illusions directly to the brain.

Speaking of reading your mind for fun and profit, Nissan is developing cars that can predict what you will do next and adjust themselves accordingly.

First off, they came up with this technology while trying to invent a thought controlled wheelchair, and how freaking cool would that be?

But the idea is sound. Brain science, as well of masters of the martial arts, already knows that you can predict what someone is going to do via monitoring their muscular responses, the way their eyes move, etc. it only gives you a fraction of a second warning, but that’s fast enough to dodge a blow or, as it turns out, shift gears.

I am very curious about what the subjective sensation of driving such a vehicle would be, however. It could theoretically be an amazingly wonderful driving experience, the ultimate in responsivity. In fact, if the system is not too expensive, it could make cheap, affordable cars drive just like the super sleek and sexy sports cars that have to be engineered incredibly finely to get the same effect.

And of course, if you can anticipate what people are going to do, you can keep them from doing the wrong thing and ending up in a crash. People might resent that at first, but the first time it saves their ass, they will learn to love it.

And finally, be warned, this one is a little uncomfortable for us animal lovers, but the medical implications are worth it : they have invented autistic mice.

Specifically, they have extra copies of a specific gene linked with autism, which has resulted in mice that display three of the main symptoms of autism : low sociability with other mice, far less vocalization than other mice, and repetitive self-grooming that is considered the equivalent of a human autistic’s repetitive behaviours.

I have to admit that my first response to this news was less than scientific : I immediately imagined mice in winter coats, spotting trains and watching Doctor Who in tiny parent’s basements, and having tiny mouse arguments on even tinier mouse forums.

Adorable, yes, but neither nice nor scientific.

Of course, the whole point of inventing these mice ^[2]} is so that we can better understand autism spectrum disorders in human beings.

I am not sure this approach will bear fruit. It will certainly help us observe autistic behaviour en masse, but I don’t see it leading to useful medicine for humans.

It may give us further insight into how empathy works in social mammals, however, and that could greatly expand our understanding of ourselves.

And that is always a good thing.

That’s it for now, folks! Seeya later.

For those of us who have been to college, and lived in residence, we often have fond, nostalgic memories of dorm life.

The lack of responsibility for anything but your grades, the freedom of being a young adult without ties, the social and sexual opportunities that seemed to be everywhere, and of course, above all, the meal plan.

Oh, the meal plan. Sure, we complained about the food. Sometimes it genuinely sucked (what my school’s cafeteria called meatloaf, I called “roadkill in vomit sauce”), and sometimes, honestly, it was just fun to complain. Bellyaching about the grub is a time-honored practice, after all, and probably started back when the first army was formed and someone had to feed those ungrateful slobs.

(No wonder a lot of institutional food workers become bitter and defensive. No matter what you do, they will complain anyway. )

But when you think about it, and especially when you have experienced the Real World with all its complications and irritations, living in a dorm with a meal plan was pretty freaking sweet. Beats the hell out of bachelor (or bachelorette) living out in the rough and tumble of the real world, right?

In fact, a lot of people wish they could go back to college once they have tasted the real world. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Like these people (and puppets) here :

But you wouldn’t even have to go back to college, would you? You would just have to go back to the dorm and the meal plan and so on. You could keep your regular job, and just go home to a dorm every night, and have supper and breakfast off the meal plan, right?

I mean, why the hell not?

You don’t even need the college. This is the part that bothers me. It seems obvious to me that there would be a huge, huge market for what basically amounts to dorms without colleges. Same communal living, same opportunities, same meal plan, same everything.

But not attached to a college at all. Just a different way of living. You could even keep the option open to pay for a year at a time, if someone has the cash. Imagine, not having to worry about rent or shopping or cooking or cleaning for an entire year.

Doesn’t that sound good?

And the thing is, with economies of scale, institutional advantages, and so on, you might even be able to offer it at the same rate as a young, fresh out of college person might find themselves paying for all the same things in the real world, but without all the hassle.

And we know it is at least possible for this to be a viable business model, because it is already working on college campuses (campi?) all over the world.

From what I know, which is admittedly little, about college administration and the business side of higher education, I highly doubt that colleges and universities all over the world are taking a huge loss on providing resident services for the students, you know, just out of the goodness of their hearts, in order to minimize the financial impact on the students.

Yeah, like that ever happens.

So we know it can work. So why not make this happen?

Even if it ended up being more expensive than regular rent in the real world, it still would not be more expensive if you added in all the rest of the things, like food and cleaning, and honestly, even if it was more expensive with all that added in, I think people would be willing to pay a little more just for the convenience.

This wouldn’t be for everyone, obviously. For one thing, it would be no place to raise a family, or even cohabitate unless you like being really, really close.

But for young single people, I could see it not merely being a viable alternative, but it has the possibility of being the sort of business model that reshapes society and becomes completely part of the standard urban landscape, as much as the apartment complex, the housing subdivision, and the motel.

It could quite simple become part of the expected life-track. You grow up, go to school, go to college, then find a dorm complex that you like and live there until you are ready to make the move to a house in order to start a family.

Wouldn’t that be a better way to live than what we have now?

But after we leave university,

Came across an interesting clip from an upcoming documentary today, and it seemed like a good jumping off point for tonight’s article.

Warning, the following clip contains Harlan Ellison being himself.

Needless to say, being a writer, I kind of agree with Harlan, although I may be biased.

Also needless to say, he makes his point in the most asshole-like way he possibly can, including a tale of how he verbally abused some random studio flunky because she had the gall to suggest he do something for free.

But buried somewhere in that giant stinking heap of Harlan’s highly toxic personality is a good point or two, I think.

First off, yeah, sure, all the other people agreed to do their DVD stuff for free. That’s because they are all actors who have gone on to do other things and legitimately can think of this as publicity for themselves.

Or they are J. Michael Straczynski and are worshiped as a god by nerds worldwide, and have no need for such petty offerings as “money”.

But writers are just writers, even when they are as (in)famous as Harlan. They need to get paid for what they do, and paying work is scarce in the world of writing (which is why all those “amateurs” have to work for free, Harlan, you douche nozzle) and so every writer is best served by being pretty fierce about getting paid for their work whenever possible.

And it’s not like he is asking for money from some earnest group of hard-working fans who are scraping something together out of love for the show and are putting it all together on their friend’s MacBook Pro because they all work at Starbucks.

This is Warner Brothers here. They can afford to pay, and they should pay, if asked.

That didn’t justify Harlan being such a dick to the nice lady on the phone, though, and I can only hope he is embellishing the story and was not actually that rude to her.

But you never know with a prime dickhead like Harlan. Maybe he was even worse, who knows?

The problem boils down to the fact that there are hundreds of millions of people who want to be writers in the world. It is a job with a high degree of appeal to those of us who are shy and highly verbal and big time readers and/or consumers of other media.

And when you have such an enormous supply with such a (relatively) low demand, it becomes rather heavily a buyer’s market and we poor sellers are left in a very poor bargaining position. Sure, we would all like to be able to demand to be paid for anything we do. Do that as a struggling, unknown writer like millions of others, and you will find yourself unpublished and obscure for the rest of your life.

I know it’s hard for you to remember, Harlan, but there was even a time before you were famous, and when you might well have been willing to work (or even take a piss) for free just to get your name out there.

Of course, you haven’t written jack shit in the last twenty years anyhow, so I supposed you have to lunge for every potential revenue stream you can lest you end up working for a living. By the way, when’s that next Dangerous Visions coming out? Real Soon Now?

Myself, I would love to be a paid writer. What wannabe writer wouldn’t? We all dream of being able to make a comfortable living just typing away and creating our magic, with all the little mundane details of life taken care of by others who are paid to do so. with just the occasional book tour to shake the cobwebs out of our furrowed brows and air out our leather-elbowed tweed jackets. It’s an intellectual’s wet dream, and one I am haphazardly pursuing even just by writing this article.

(I think it might involve getting my shit together enough to take something I wrote and polishing it up so I can send it to the sort of people who publish things. Boy, that’s going to be a tough one. )

And Lord knows, a lot of people are eager to completely ignore the writer’s role in things, and a lot of writers are more than willing to go along with that because of the aforementioned buyer’s market, and, honestly, low self-esteem amongst introverts.

But that does not excuse all those people for trying to cut the writer out of the deal, as thought the parent is the least important part of a childhood.

So pay the writer already!

Still waiting on the Next Big Story Idea, so for now, I will just share with you lovely people all the really neato stuff that I have come across lately.

Let’s start off with a little animated GIF that is sure to surprise you.

Talk about an eye-popping illusion, huh? It really blew my mind when I first saw it. I was expecting that it would be one of those clips you see these days where a 2D object on a piece of paper is turned into a 3D object via some kind of augmented reality trickery.

Instead, what looks like a classic bouncing cube animation from the early days of computer graphics turns out to be a perfectly mundane real world object that just happens to have the power to mess with your mind.

Aren’t optical illusions kick-ass fun? Take this classic “black balls” illusion.

THIS IS NOT AN ANIMATED GIF

for those of you who don’t read captions, let me reiterate : the above picture is not animated in any way. All those little black balls you see blipping around the places where the lines intersect are not really there at all, and are entirely products of your sense being fooled by the graphical trick of the illusion.

Freaky, n’est-ce pas? IT can be fun to mess with your own mind.

The same goes for this pic :

No animation here either, sport!

Despite all appearances, those balls are not animated in any way, either. It looks like they are floating and bobbing in an ocean of green. But they are just sitting there. The motion you see as you scan the pic with your eyes is entirely in your mind.

Now that we’ve got your eyeballs all warmed up and ready for something truly spectacular, feast them on this amazing video clip from America’s Got Talent and a little dance clash performance group called Team iLuminate.

Now remember, this is all taking place live, on stage, in front of America and a studio audience. No CGI or anything. Just…. this.

Now that, my friends, is an act. I mean holy crapsticks. It is impressive enough in video. I can’t imagine what it is like live, happening right in front of you. They cook light and shadow, illumination and contrast, glow strips and black velvet, and made a simply breaktaking visual display out of it.

The act lags somewhat in the middle, but it is still damn impressive. The first time I watched this video and saw the Shiva arms pop up, my eyes nearly popped out of my head and bounced off the screen.

I am a big fan of spectacle for the sense if it is done right, like these folks do it, or like Blue Man Group. There’s nothing wrong at all with making something purely to look amazing. Not everything has to be a multi-layered meaning-laden narrative Dagwood sandwich.

Sometimes, you just want to make people’s eyes go “whoa…. WTF was that?”

And finally, a clip that probably will not amaze your mind, but it definitely will warm your heart and might just blow your mind as well.

This clip shows what a young make orca named Luna learned to do in his attempt to communicate with the strange creatures known as “humans”.

That’s right. In an attempt to communicate with us, Luna learned to mimic the sound of the motorboats that plied the waters around his home.

Does that not just grab your heart and blow your mind? He is trying to talk with us, so he is repeating back to us the sounds we make. The sincere and innocent desire to communicate coupled with the degree of intelligence and mental flexibility that it takes to be able to even imagine trying to communicate with us thusly, let alone actually being able to use his existing vocal apparatus to do a pretty good motorboat impression, just makes me feel like giving an orca a big hug.

Not a good idea, I presume. I can’t even swim.

I wonder what Luna thinks of his attempts? Presumably, without even meaning to, we humans make our motorboat noise right back to him, and so the most primitive form of communication has been established : that of mutual repetition.

You know, like these guys.

Trust me, it’s corny now, but that shit was quite exhilerating back in the seventies. Holy crap, the aliens have Moog synthesizers too! Awesome!

That’s all the neat stuff for now, people. Goodbye!

After talking to you for several hours last night, I came to this conclusion :

You are a lucky, lucky person.

Oh, I know you don’t look at yourself that way, but I assure you, it is true!

I mean, take geography alone.

Here you are, a person living in a small farming town far from the city lights, someone who has never been more than 20 miles from home and who lives in the very house in which he grew up, and indeed was born, and yet you were easily able to assure me that not only was the town you live in the very best town in the very best region on the whole of God’s Green Earth, but that you lived in the nicest part of it with the best people and even the world’s best church bar none.

Imagine! Such luck, to be born in exactly the right place and have the very best of everything in the world right on your doorstep, literally and figuratively. That would be more than enough fortune for anyone!

But of course, your good luck is only beginning! In fact, compared to other factors, this extraordinary piece of luck of being born in, of all the places on the globe, the very very best one, pales into mere serendipity compared to others.

Your racial background, for instance. Through absolutely no effort of your own, you were born into the racial subgroup which just happens to be the clearly and widely acknowledged best one. You are no bigot, of course, and indeed are quite proud of the racial tolerance you have for other, inferior races, and you are quite sure that should a person of another racial makeup ever come to your time, you would treat them with every possible courtesy and respect for the entire time it took to see them on their way again.

That is mighty decent of you, to share your luck like that!

Or your gender. Granted, that was a mere toss of the coin, but still, Lucky Duck that you are, that one came down in your favour too. Yup, yours is the clearly superior gender, and you did not have to even budge one inch to get it.

All this good fortune just rains down on you like golden rain!

Even your profession is clearly the most important, prestigious, and worthy job in the world. I was truly touched by your sincere pity for those forced to labour in other, lesser fields because they were not blessed to be born with both a talent and a liking for the only job truly worth doing, amongst all the hundreds of professions in the world.

Imagine that! Of all the jobs in the world, you just happened to be good at the best one! Truly, nobody else has ever been as lucky as you!

Even your hobbies are, by sheer coincidence, the only truly interesting and illuminating ones in the world. By simply following your natural inclinations, you have spent hours and hours doing exactly the most worthwhile past-times in the whole world.

It’s a wonder other people even bother to try, with you in the world!

And of course, how could I forget your lovely family? The best spouse in the world with whom you have had not one, not two, but three of the absolute best children possible in the whole wide variety of the spectrum of humanity? It truly makes a person sad to think of all the rest of us mere mortals who have to sweat and toil and worry just to achieve a pale shadow of what Lady Luck gives you as a matter of course!

And of course, your politics. Even though you vote exactly how your parents always voted and never even given the slightest thought to the alternatives, you were nevertheless able to assure me, with rock-solid certainty, that your politics represent the only true, worthy, moral path for your country, your region, and your home town, and all others are but misguided mistakes at best and downright malign machinations at worst.

And do I even need to mention your religion? No, I didn’t think so.

So to recap : without having to do a thing, you have the best religion, job, family, politics, home, gender, and everything else in the world, purely by luck.

You are truly the luckiest person alive.

I mean seriously…. what are the odds?