It’s spring here in the city, which means windy evenings and sunny days.  It is the kind of weather that makes you want to go sit on boat.  Not a very fast moving boat, maybe a boat powered by steam, that floats down river.  Maybe you want this boat to be cruisin’ the cool, historic waters of the Mississippi (it’s been sometime since I’ve typed that word.  I highly recommend it).

Ah yes, the mighty Mississippi (really rolls off the fingers), the cradle of American civilization where commerce and blood flowed like river water, on river water, in river water…. It’s not important what is important, at least to me, is that the Mississippi river is home to the GREATEST maritime disaster in US history.

It was April 27th, 1865. The Civil War would soon  draw to a close, Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated 11 days prior.  The SS Sultana, a girthy, wooden steamboat, commissioned by the War Department to transport released Union soldiers from Confederate prison camps, was making regular trips from New Orleans to Cincinnati.  The Sultana  had docked for the night in Vicksburg, Mississippi (Typing. So fun).  There the ship underwent minor repairs for leaky boilers, repairs done so poorly that later they would prove to be …… wait for it…… dum dum DUM!  FATAL!!!

Steamboat of doom heads out of Mississippi.

Yes it was the poorly patched boilers and the overcrowding of the Sultana (capacity was 376, yet more then a 1,000 were have estimated to perish) that led to the massive explosion on April 27th, 1865 at 2:00 am 8 miles north of Memphis, Tennessee (not quite as fun as Mississippi).  Bodies flew through the air and into the chilly, spring runoff of the Mississippi River.  It took over an hour for rescue boats to arrive.  You can imagine after spending more than an hour in the Mississippi’s (I could swim in that word) chilly spring water’s one could drown, develop hypothermia, or have an epic chicken fight.  Sadly the latter is not documented in the annuals of history.

The Sultana on Fire, bodies scattered about.

No exact death toll is known, but the US Customs Service marks it at 1,547.  Others speculate that it could have been as high as 1,900.  Titanic, what?

And so was the most disastrous maritime incident in US History.  Fascinating stuff, stuff I never knew, until I stumbled onto wikipedia, the Mississippi (and one last time!) river where my Steamboat of truth and history floats.

Ahoy there.  You’re anxious about the transfer of television to all digital, aren’t you?  I know I am, and it’s causing me not so excellent ulcers, not so excellent at all.

So it seems that airwaves will cease their relentless humming and be transferred into ground waves through cables of digital nature.  It makes me sad a little, to think that you can longer get a shitty tv and a shitty antenna and then watch some shitty Spanish language soap opera through mild static.  Such nostalgia for bad reception and honest to goodness programming.  They just don’t make it like they used to.  Now everyone’s all hopped up on reality and clarity and definition, as if what we see everyday through our eyes isn’t real and clear and defined enough.  Maybe I WANT to squint every once and a while!  COME ON!

Anyway, the abandonment of analogue for digital got me thinking, what exactly are they going to do with all of that airspace?  Well they’re going to use it for emergency services and public stuff, but I like to think that’s not really going to happen and what they’re really going to do with the waves is just kind of forget about them.   Which means, dear reader (me), that we will have open to us a veritable cornucopia of uncharted air-waters to pillage and plunder with our unique and artistic expressions.

Ah the pirating of airwaves is a dirty, dangerous (not to mention difficult) undertaking.  Since stations are making the switch, it’s safe to assume that they’ll be turning off their analogue systems, which means that for this to work we’ll have to build our own transmitter.  I don’t know how to do this, but I bet somewhere, somehow there are instructions.  Instructions that one day will be followed.

To get motivated for our eventual take-over of the abandoned airwaves let’s take a trip down airwave-piracy-memory-lane….

On April 26, 1986, a man calling himself Captain Midnight, interrupted HBO’s transmission with the following:

It stayed on air for about five minutes and the words on the color bars are as follows:

GOODEVENING HBO

FROM CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT

$12.95/MONTH  ?

NO WAY !

[SHOWTIME/MOVIE CHANNEL BEWARE!]

Way to make a statement Captain Midnight.

Chicago, November 22, 1987.  There you are in your living room watching Dr. Who:  Horror of Fang Rock (apparently I really need to start watching Dr. Who) then this:

I don’t really know what one can say about that.  Flyswatter’s my favorite part…Throughout the remainder of the 80s and 90s there were a couple more broadcast interruption incidents one where some hoo-ha from the Christian Broadcasting Network interrupted Playboy TV’s transmission.  I’m not quite sure what he did with that transmission, but it sounds dumb so that’s all we’ll say on that matter.

In other countries, like the Old Soviet Union, transmission interruption was a pretty regular occurrence due to people’s desire to see non-government TV.  In Poland in 1985 four astronomers hijacked a TV signal and broadcast a plea for the people to boycott the upcoming election.  And in 2006, Isreal hijakced Hezbollah’s Al Manar TV and showed propaganda, including the bombing of targets in Lebanon with words like “your day is coming.”  Egad.

While our foreign neighbors use the piracy of airwaves for political purposes, good ole Americans keep it real with disembodied heads and complaints about pricing plans.  And of course lets not forget our most recent foray into the fires of Television piracy…..

Ahem —

I don’t really have anything to write about so I’m going to write about nothing, empty space, the void, the vacuum.  What amazes me and starts me on a weird and unusual line of thinking is this: the expanding virtual space into (onto?) which things can be saved, and how said space seems to be shrinking in real space but growing in virtual space.  Take, for instance, this computer on which I type.  Back in the day I would have been delighted to have, say, 1 gigabyte of hard disk space and now I have a whopping 200 gigs.  And this, dear friends, is just the beginning.  I now know words like terabyte (1000 gigabytes) and soon my lexicon will employ words like petabyte (1000 terabytes) and whatever will come after petabytes.  I’m so baffled by where all this space originates and it’s ever-growing nature. 

I sometimes wake in the middle of the night, sit upright, and imagine myself being pulled down into the dark bottomless void that is cyberspace.  Will the space ever reach it’s limit?  Will it begin contracting instead of expanding like the universe?  (Is the universe still expanding?  Have we hit the shrinking stage yet? We’ll tackle that another day) 

Thinking about the end of space, cyberspace to be more specific, makes me feel like I’m living in  weird reality that doesn’t exist.  Step away from the hard drive.  Get your photos developed.  Buy CDs?  Or even better yet, records?  Stuff?!  STUFF?!?  What’s happening to all of our stuff?  It’s being turned into ones and zeros.  Maybe that’s best, maybe when the space gets flushed we’ll all be without stuff, just like John Lennon wanted. 

Ok, I know, I know, you can’t really smell anything, nor can I, but I can smell my imagination percolating away, perck perck percking!  Smell is an incredibly strong sense.  It can trigger memories, nausea, happiness, sadness, or homicidal compulsions.  In fact, after some research on the old internet I found out very interesting things, very interesting things indeed. 

Firstly, preferences of smell are learned and different for each individual.  It’s not like taste where when you’re born you already have a preference for taste due to buds and chemical reactions and, you know, science and babies.  But that’s neither here nor there.  So yes, when you smell something while experiencing pleasure, pain, stomach upsetedness, or murder, your brain forges a link between that smell and that circumstance, making the two linked forever.  For all eternity.  Until the end of time and future space.

How has scents’ ability to bring back painful or happy memories or even induce strong feelings of fear or disgust been used?  It turns out that governments caught wind (right?  WIND?  CAUGHT WIND??!) of this and decided to employ it in warfare.  The first known instance of this experimentation was in World War II when the Office of Strategic Services developed a scent to be carried by the French Resistance.  The scent was packaged in a pocket atomizer and distributed to French Resistance living in German occupied France.  The idea was that with one squirt of the scent, called Who Me?,  the French could embarrass the German officers so horribly that they would abandon their posts and go screaming back to Germany.  Sounds highly unlikely right?  Yes absolutely, it was highly unlikely, mainly because it turns out that Who Me? is quite hard to control and contain.  The squirter could easily become the squirtee and then everyone just ended up smelling like the most horrible shit ever unleashed in Europe.  Needless to say (but I’ll say it anyway), Project Who Me? was deemed an utter failure and the French went back to smelling of croissants and cigarettes, while the Germans remained reeking of borscht and sauerkraut.  

Well that was over sixty years ago, what’s being used now?  I want to know and I want to know bad! Turns out smell has kind of reached a dead end for being used in warfare.  In the 70s the government did some tests: hollowed out chicken eggs and filled them with chemical compounds that stank of shit.  These eggs were then lobbed at enlisted men to see how they would react.  God bless the US Military!  It was discovered that people usually adapt to a smell within fifteen minutes of exposure, so for all practical purposes using the ole’factory in warfare became kind of moot.  Bummer.  Still, the idea of the army bankrolling scientists to create the most horrible odors the world has ever smelt is hilarious and fascinating.  To me… yes me… who me?

So as you may know, since you are me and I am you (thank you Beatles), I was in New Mexico working on the Obama campaign for the past oh, well not so recent past now (thank you unemployment) five weeks.  While I was there I found out about a number of things.  Some of those things being that while people may be living in abject poverty, in their single wide trailers in the middle of nowhere — poverty, healthcare, jobs no no no none of these items are on their lists of most important issues.  NAY!  Never!  You know what matters?  You know what really matters more than any of those other things that have a DIRECT effect on my life?  DO YOU KNOW WHAT MATTERS!?!?!?!  Yeah… here you go….

That’s right, there it is in all of its majesty.  Yes, that’s why I’ll cast my vote.  God I hate fetuses.  Feti? Fettuccine?  I’m hungry.

Ok, obviously I’ve struck out on a tangent.  Abortion was never my intended subject.  But it always ends on abortion, doesn’t it?  Sigh.  Ok, so one other thing I noticed was that when I would make my snide, sarcastic comments about how there are SOOO many Jews in New Mexico, someone would inevitably say “actually, there are a lot of Jews here in New Mexico.  But it’s very strange and very secret.  They’re SECRET Jews.” 

WHAT THE!?

Secret Jews!  WOW!  So it turns out after some more of my hard-hitting research (typing “secret Jew Southwest” into Google) I found this:

In the spring of 1492, Jews in Spain were given two choices: convert to Catholicism or leave the country. Many left. Many others simply abandoned their religion for Catholicism.

But a few of those who converted did so only publicly, continuing to practice Judaism in secret.

Modern scholars have found a few communities of so-called “crypto-Jews” that survived in both Iberia and the New World for centuries, hiding their true religious identity from their neighbors and the Catholic church.

Click for full article

So, the Secret Jews of the Southwest are called Crypto-Jews and they’re an odd hybrid of Catholicism and repressed Judaism.  Sounds like a lovely slice of guilt-pie, doesn’t it?

How interesting to be a secret Jew in the Southwest.  I wonder if there were any Jew gunslingers like Hebrew Haas, Wyatt Earpenstein or Doc Hudsongold.  They would while away their days on the desert chasing fair shiksas and fighting off unjust goyish Sheriffs… 

This is the Southwest Mel Brooks must of had in mind….

Fear not, dear computer, your brain may be just around the corner! Yesterday scientists at the University of Reading in the UK developed the first robot controlled by biological brain. His name is Gordon, and he avoids walls. How does Mr. Robo-Gordon work? Well these smart scientists removed brain cells from rat fetuses and put them in an enzyme bath. Then they hooked the the enzyme bath up to this “multi-electrode array” which acts as the conduit between living tissue and the machine. The “brain” sends “impulses to drive the wheels of the robot, and receives impulses delivered by sensors reacting to the environment. Because the brain is living tissue, it must be in a special temperature-controlled unit and communicates with its “body” via a Bluetooth radio link.”

The people behind the development of Gordon say that being able observe how brain matter reacts to learning and storing data will give them valuable insight into human brain development and help them better understand and treat diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

Sure, that’s exactly what they WANT us to believe, but really, these British “scientists” are being secretly bankrolled by the US Military to develop weapons for 21st century warfare. Who do they think we are? We know that this lovable, smart robot will not become the real life version of Pixar’s Wall-E.

Nay! Gordon will most likely evolve into James Cameron’s killing machine, which will eventually lead to the destruction of life as we know it!

Or perhaps, after spending some time with humans and learning how to love Gordon 2.0 will turn from a killing machine to a Automaton with attitude!

Whichever road Gordon may take (Damn you beef stew! Damn you! Why are you here I smell you, why why why?!?!) robots have become smart, which means that soon computers will be controlling us, and then we’ll wake up in a tube on embryonic fluid and realize that the world is just green flowing characters and now, we have to rely on some dipshit to save us, but really he’ll turn our salvation into a three part suckfest. Oh, how I miss the 20th century.

Info and quotes found here: http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,25642,24181170-5014108,00.html

I prefer to get my news through telegram. That’s right the OLD internet. Let’s take a trip back in time to the beginning of telecommunications!

Interestingly, the telegraph was simultaneously invented in both the UK and the US in 1837. In the UK, the first commercial telegraph was constructed by Sir William Fothergill Cooke and used in the Great Western Railway in Britain. It was patented in 1837. AND, Mr. Samuel Morse and his buddy Alfred Vail constructed the the electrical telegraph and developed Morse Code in 1837 in the States. They sent their first message across two miles of wire.. and the message was “A patient waiter is no loser.” Here, here I think we can all agree to that. Right? Absolutely.

**You may hear that the first telegraphed message was “What has God wrought” however, my sources (WIKIPEDIA) disagree**

(Damnit, someone is eating beef stew again! Such a rich disgusting smell and just when I was getting all excited about my telegrams. Pish aaaah. Ok, focus, ignore… tangible… reeking… warm smelling… air)

So telegrams! After being developed and implemented in both the US and Europe in the late 1830s the telegram went international. And even better, the first transoceanic telegram took place 150 years ago (two days ago) – August 16, 1858. The first telegram sent from Queen Victoria to President James Buchanan read as follows:

“The Queen desires to congratulate the President upon the successful completion of this great international work, in which the Queen has taken the deepest interest. The Queen is convinced that the President will join with her in fervently hoping that the electric cable, which now connects Great Britain with the United States, will prove an additional link between the two places whose friendship is founded upon their common interests and reciprocal esteem. The Queen has much pleasure in thus directly communicating with the President, and in renewing to him her best wishes for the prosperity of the United States.”

I wonder how often the Queen did indeed drop the old Prez a line and express her excitement for the US’s renewed prosperity. Or do you think she’s one of those people who says they’ll call and never does?

Here’s a map of the electronic telegraph lines as of 1891.

I found out that you can still send a telegram not via Western Union though. It turns out that Western Union sent its last telegram on January 27, 2006. (Check it out) Sigh. However, you can still send telegrams through International Telegram, which uses Western Union’s original cabled network. So if you feel like you’ve got something to say, but don’t want to say it with an email, phone call, fax, text, IM, or overnight package, then head to International Telegram and spread the news.

Fullstop.

And speaking of talent, what better way to find talent then by heading over to YouTube.com and checking out what humanity is up to? Ah, here’s something interesting…. let’s talk about it.

I don’t know if you’ve seen the Michel Gondry movie Be Kind Rewind, if you haven’t, it’s not really worth watching as it sucks, but if you have then at least you’ll know what I’m talking about. Anyway, in the movie these two mo-mos through a series of odd and badly explained events are forced to recreate some of Hollywood’s most well-known movies using only their imaginations, local resources and a cheap camcorder. Once a movie has been remade they dub it as being Sweded. So for instance, there’s Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters Sweded! For whatever reason, most likely boredom, I was cruisin’ the youtube and came across a treasure trove of Sweded movies! It turns out that Be Kind Rewind actually hosted a “How to Swede” contest, hence all of these wonderful videos.

I encourage you to watch these videos, as they are a testament to the wonders of imagination and creativity (and they’re only two minutes long)!

Jurassic Park SWEDED!

Silence of the Lambs (Trailer) SWEDED!

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory SWEDED!

The Shining SWEDED!

Lord of the Rings Trilogy SWEDED!

Yes, I will be making the trek from work to home, and I will encounter wonderful things along the way. I plan on taking the sunniest route possible. I also find myself tempted to take off my shirt and just cruise the streets; unfortunately my modesty requires I leave on my undershirt. I have a feeling that by the time I leave here, however, the fog will have rolled in and I will need my shirt, anyway. Sigh. What kind of summer is this?! One where you have to wear shirts?! Gah. GAH! I defy you foggy summer! I DEFY YOU!

Ok, enough smiting…moving on… yes Walking! Glorious walking! How lucky I am to live in place where I can walk from work to home. Sure it will take me about an hour, but just think of all the encounters I’ll have along the way. I’ll probably smell plenty of urine,

Mexican food,

and jasmine

and see countless kinds of people,

dogs,

and situations.

Maybe I’ll stop and get a drink? What kind of drink?

A bubble tea with tapioca?

A Veitnamese ice coffee?

Mexican Coke in a bottle?

A tall boy of Bud Light?

Then I’ll be off, up the hills I’ll charge, through the brightly flagged streets of the Castro

and down the slopes of the lower Haight.

Oh look, an open air produce market!

How convenient! I need to buy some tomatoes for eating

and some fruit for snacking.

Oh grapes!

I wanted grapes earlier and now here they are!

Thank you kind shop owner, here’s your money and off I go! Walking!

Oh!   The bike shop just called.  Looks like I’ll be riding home after all….