❮❮prevnext❯❯

---

The other day I was able to dig up this old rec.arts.erotica story that has hung around in my mind for years...

Kael Goodman
Jun 12, 1994, 11:56:23 AM
to
Archive-name: kael.6.94-1

[Author's Note: this is one chapter in my on-going sexual self-
examination. Theoretically each part should stand on its own and
their chronological order is irrelevant..]

Kael's Diary: June, 1994 "Closer" part one

Who knew I could ever be an adult? Oh sure, they always
tell you you're supposed to grow up, there are all of these so-
called adult people walking around as proof of the kind of person
you should grow up to be. But fuck all that, all right? I'm supposed
to be getting serious now, right? Well, in my own way I am. I sure
can look the part. A little flabby here and there, and my golden
hair is getting quite thin indeed on top. I'll be bald before I'm thirty,
I'm sure, if I live so long. But for now I am twenty-five, going on
twenty-six, headed for the Millennium, and I'm gonna go down
screaming.

There I stood, wearing a cut-off pair of Dockers, an old army
belt, an over-sized T-shirt and a huge, structureless cotton jacket
that hung down past the ragged cuffs of those pants. Combat
boots, large wire glasses and long hair that defied the pre-
described onset of male pattern baldness. I stood, for a moment,
outside that old building, in that bad section of Cleveland -- I was
there because I worked there, me and everyone else sitting
around outside it on thatbalmy June evening, waiting for the
audience to arrive. It was a local theater house, one of the small and less
reputable ones, and we happy band of twenty-nothing aged men and
women had made it our base of operations. The younger generation has no
clear goals, no clear objectives? They just couldn't see them. But then,
any goal that doesn't include ruling the world and enforcing your
will on others always seems to confuse Baby Boomers.

Take President Bill, for example. Oh, I supported him, ad I
still do. But you have to admit that's what he's up to. That's what
all those who aspire to power attempt to do, but Clinton and his
whole generation aren't content to just rule, they want to mold the world in
their self-righteous image. My g-g-generation? We're slackers, losers,
we can't get our shit together. Uh-huh. Just watch us. Oh sure, we'll prove
you "right", who can actually change the world? But cut us a break and
don't turn a blind eye to all the hard work we do.

I say I stood there, outside the theater, for a moment. That's
because the next moment I had to dodge yet another of a series of
excruciatingly embarrassing blows inflicted by Jackie, with whom I
was having an amateur boxing match.

Jackie had been with our renegade theater troupe since
the previous summer and you couldn't call her beautiful. A pixie, a
sprite, a wood nymph, are these descriptions insulting? A remnant
sale fashion sense and a strong body odor. She stood five foot
two, her normally brownish-reddish hair now dyed to a fluorescent
blondish-orangish with eep brownish-reddish roots. Her hair
was like that of a six year-old boy, unkempt and dirty, even if she
owned a comb it would have been hopeless. Oh, and a voice like
a demonic child --Linda Hunt meets that dwarf from "Poltergeist",
on a pack-a-day habit. Odd freckles and moles, one clear bump
on her upturned nose, and teeth that looked like they had never seen the
fuzzy end of a toothbrush.

Jackie was a mess. And she gave every boy a hard-on.

Right then, she, holding two tight little fists, one clutching a lit
cigarette, receiving a playful head slap to the forehead from me, tried
kicking my shins. I lashed down and grabbed her by the ankle. A normal
person would have flipped out, panicked, lost balance and cried out in
surprise. Jackie put her weight on her good foot, leaned into to my torso,
and began pummeling my ribcage. I let go of her foot.

This continued for a few minutes. Sid, Ryan, also hanging
around outside, waiting, begging for someone to finally show up to
see our performance, began to get worried that if someone did
show up, all they would see was that there was a fight going on
outside the theater, figure there's a good reason why they had
never seen this part of Cleveland, and move on.

"Hey guys," Sid said, "take it inside."

"You hear that?" I said, deflecting yet another hit aimed for
my solar plexus. "We're not being professional."

"You started this," Jackie said, pushing me with one free
hand, "you smacked my head."

I reached out and grabbed her hand that wasn't holding a
cigarette. "That's because you were being a PRICK." She writhed
in my hands and began kicking again. I let go and stepped back.

"Stop?" I asked, smiling.

"Whatever," she said, and said down on the curb, with her
back to the nasty, city-maintained "beautification" (see: "dying
shrub"). I sat down next to her.

"You guys cool?" Sid asked, sitting a few feet away.

"Shut up," Jackie said, "sometimes Kael needs his butt
whupped."

"I was kicking your ass," I said.

"I had a cigarette in my hand," she said, taking another draw
off of it. "Do you want one?"

"Nope," I said, "thanks." I hadn't smoked in two months. It
was looking like I might qui for good this time.

A deep, dark, maroon van pulled up to the curb, and we all
sat back. The driver's door sprung open and Gail popped out.

"Like it?" she asked.

"Wow," Jackie said, "that's great!"

"Kel and I picked it up this afternoon from the airport, it's so
huge inside," Gail said.

Jackie flicked her cigarette to the sidewalk, and calmly stood
up. She stepped in front of me, and pushed me backwards into
the bushes.

I yelped out in surprise as her wee fists began pummeling
the living shit out of me.

"You crazy little bitch!" I cried.

"How do you like that, huh?" she barked in that great,
hoarse, pinched voice, landing on me, battering me with a variety
of punches and slaps. I flew my hands up in a weak defense. A
swarm of bees rose from the nettles and flew about us.

"Get her the fuck off me!" I yelled, grabbing onto her wrists
and pulling her down close to me, but she just kept on smacking
me about. I managed to fling her to one side and get to standing,
but she was already there. Sid leaped up and stood between us.

"Oh get away," she cried at him.

"Cut it out, you two," he said.

"Oh, MAN," I whined, petulantly, "w were having fun."

***

The plan was simple. We'd perform our Saturday night,
eleven o'clock show, hop in this rented van sometime around one
in the morning and drive to Chicago. Our show, consisting of
originally choreographed and constantly updated dance slash
comedy routines, had been running every week for seven months.
We all needed a little vacation, and the cheapest one available
was a short jaunt to Chicago. Those of us who had work managed
to take a few days off, driving non-stop, the five of use who were
going would drive and hour apiece and sleep (yeah, right) the rest
of the way. We'd arrive Sunday morning and leave on Tuesday,
flopping on the floor at friend's apartment, shopping and seeing
as much alternative, inspirational Big City theater as we could.

Our show that evening was another disappointment. The
media had a thing against our little theater, and we found it
impossible to get any kind of free exposure. Te usual trickle of
ten people came in, saw our show (we jumped and sang, danced
and pontificated, moved our tiny audience to tears and got huge belly
laughs) told us it was the most original and innovative thing they
had every seen in their lives and why were there so many empty
seats?

Oh well.

They left, we turned out the lights, packed the van, and took
off for the second city.

***

I love driving, late at night, my favorite music playing on the
stereo, a-c turned off, the window cracked open after midnight.
I've had a lot of experience taking long trips, driving to or from
Clemson as often as I did for six years, that one time I went all the
way to Florida, stoppin once for a ten minute nap. Nineteen
hours was all it took, left at nine in the evening, I was in Bahama
City by dinner the next day. Never doing that again, I'm sure.

This time it would be for just an hour. I went first -- the van
was signed in my name. Jackie drove shotgun, Ryan sat in the
second, expansive seat, Satch and Gail tried to catch a few zees
in the larger, more secluded back seat. Sid couldn't afford the trip
or the time. Ryan, our seventeen year-old technical prodigy, by far
the youngest member of our modest theater company, had
purchased a copy of Madonna's contribution to the "Dick Tracy"
hype back in 1990, "I'm Breathless". It was one dollar in a bargain
bin, and we all listened to it. Funny. Ryan the high school student,
Jackie, the lower class punk and me, an affluent middle class
snob, and we all knew every word to that obscure collection of
great Steven Sondheim melodies and cheesy Madonna pop
tunes.

"Would you knock it off, please? ZIP! Thank you."

"Hey," Jackie said, picking up her purple, rattan, oh so very
bohemian knapsack. "What does anyone else want to hear?"

"That's not done yet," I informed her.

"Yeah," Ryan chimed in.

"I don't care," she said, "I'm sick of this."

"Put in the 'Twn Peaks' soundtrack," I said, "as long as
we're on this whole 1990 motif."

"You and your thing about chronology," Jackie said, "it's a
little tired."

"Hey, I'm a little tired," I said, "it fits. Anyone see a sign for a
rest stop?"

"In about two miles," Ryan said.

"Coolee-cool."

Since Ryan was attending a public school for the arts, he
was able to tell his teachers that this was a special field trip he was
taking with the theater he worked for, which was, when I thought
about it, true. He was a hefty boy, almost taller than me, and a
much greater distance around. A red smear tore down each
cheek, just like the kind I had when I was younger, a tell-tale flush
that at the slightest moment of insecurity would flare up into twin
admissions of shame or embarrassment. Mine had died down a
little as I got older, and whether this was self-confidence
manifesting itself or just part of the aging process, I was glad to be
without them. Poor kid. They have the emotional scarring
capability of a hard-on in tight jeans, only you can't put your books
in front of them.

We stopped the car at the next rest stop, still miles from the
Ohio-Indiana border, and everyone switched places. Jackie took
the driver's seat, and once I came back from the pop machine I
found Ryan already waiting to sit shotgun. Satch and Gail
continued to snooze in the back. Ryan had no license yet, and so
the two of them would be taking us the rest of the way into
Chicago. I sat in themiddle seat, and the three of us continued
our late-night pow-wow.

"Who put this piece of shit music on?" Jackie asked.

"It's Julee Cruise, it's 'Twin Peaks', man," I said.

"It's fucked is what it is."

"You're ugly," I said, "you know that , Jackie? You're so
ugly, it goes down to your soul."

"Whatever."

"If it means anything," Ryan kicked in, "I don't think you're
ugly."

"Yeah, well," I said, "we all know what you think."

Twin cheek flare-ups. Poor, poor kid.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Jackie asked, hitting the
cigarette lighter.

"Yeah, what's that supposed to mean," Ryan asked, not a
little defensively.

"I just thought, you know Ryan, we've been through this," I
said.

"No, what?" Ryan said, turning in his seat to look at me.

"It's about your thing, you know, with boys." I said flatly.

"Oh, fuck you," he said, turning back around.

"No," I said, "I'm sorry, I keep bringing it up --"

"You've got to leave him alone," Jackie laughed.

"-- it's just," I continued, "Jackie has got this whole Dennis
the Menace thing going with her hair and all, it just made sense --"

"Thanks," Jackie said, mock offended.

"I'm sorry," I said, sitting back and throwing up my hands in
a mocking sort of acquiescence, "I'm sorry, I just thought it needed
to be sai."

"The only one here with a thing for boys is you," Ryan said,
trying to rise to the occasion.

"Well," I said, a little sombered, "there's no need to be
hateful."

"Whatever."

"I mean, when I make assumptions on your sexuality," I just
couldn't stop this, "I don't mean them as insults." Ryan just sat
there and stewed.

"You're so full of shit," Jackie said.

"I'm just trying to be helpful, I said.

"You can help me," Ryan said.

"Anything," I said, "how?"

He turned back to face me, his cheeks turned a deep
purple.

"Shut the fuck up," he said.

I thought for a moment.

I nodded to him in closed mouth, wide-eyed, excited
agreement.

***

An hour and a half later, getting on four in the morning,
Jackie pulled our maroon rental into the next available rest stop
and we all took a little stretcher. It was Gail's turn, more or less
awake and refreshed, and it was me in the very back seat when
everyone got back from the bathroom.

"Hey, Jackie," I said, "come spoon with me."

"Oh-kay," she said, quacking like a ten yea-old.

"Oh, man, "Ryan said, "that means I'm in the middle again."

"Did you want to spoon with me?" I asked.

"What do you think?"

"I wouldn't dare to presume."

Jackie stumbled into the back with me. I was lying with my
head to the port side of the van (uh, that's left to everyone else),
my back to the seat, on my side, and Jackie flopped comfortably
into my arms. My knees were a little cramped, I had one foot here,
another a few feet below and in front, I wrapped my arms around
her, my left under her head, that greasy, glowing, golden hair
under my nose. She smelled of patchouli, strawberry air freshner
and a lap around the block. I held her close, this man-child, this
freak of nature. A scratch on my calf, inflicted during the bee-bush
episode, rested uncomfortably on the back of the upholstered seat.
I fell asleep for a half an hour.

***

"Aaaagh," I said.

"Mm, what," she mummbered.

"My leg is way asleep."

"Wanna move?"

"Mm-hmn."

We shifted about. I tried putting my long legs anywhere
they would fit, but it was pointless. We switched positions, her in
the back, holding me, with my legs dangling out over the edge of
the seat. That wouldn't work. I ended up lying on my back, a little
of me hanging on the edge of the seat, I looked up into the ceiling
of the van, my left hand reaching over onto my stomach, she lay
next to me, on her side, back against the seat, her mouth an inch
from my ear.

One of her legs was tucked under mine. The other lay on
top. She held me in her arms. Her right hand gripped me around
my ribs, like she was helping me stay on the seat. She nestled
me close.

Her hand gripped my chest. Her breathing was a continual
repetition of tiny sighs in my ear, never losing tempo, only
increasing in volume.

Her knees squeezed together. That involuntary, right? I couldn't
help changing my breathing only slightly. I had been asleep only a minute
or two earlier. I was delirious. My chest rose with uncertainty.

I turned my head to hers. I looked into her face. Her jaw,
slack, that small mouth, those chubby little lips, bucky little
front teeth, nicotine stained and nasty and adorable. Her eyes
were closed, her breathing heightened but regular. I opened my
mouth (what? what? what am I doing this for?) and drew my
lower lip against hers, and squeezing both of my lips against her
lower one, she pulled her lips together -- our faces were apart, our
lips cleared the distance, making a teeny little handshake.

We did it again, she still kept her eyes shut, were we both
asleep? No, I know I wasn't, her arms pulled me closer and I
swiveled my body to face her, and our lips pulled and pushed,
kissing again and again, tongues darting slowly, I put my arm
around her and caressed her little body and her hand came up to
touch my face. Her legs scissored around mine and the breathing
started to seriously pick up in speed.

And now it was a grope fest, albeit a slow one. I wrestled
my hand into her buttoned up, pea green shirt in a lame attempt to
fondle her tiny little breasts. She continued to kiss me every odd
moment, taking my lips in hers like a hungry bird, awkwardly
accepting a small morsel of food.

The truth is, this was not the first time we had kissed. The
first was on New Year's Day Night. That had been a Saturday
night and she and I and Satch and Gail had sat around after the
show, drinking what was left of the champagne and talking until
two. After those two had gone to bed, Jackie and I sat up longer,
talking it up until I had the balls to ask her to kiss me. At that point
all I really knew was that I was horny, Jackie looked real sweet in
the candlelight, and Maria had really pissed me off on New Year's
Eve.

But those were just simple kisses. I wanted to pursue the
matter, I tried getting ym hands all over her, but Jackie talked me down and I
figured our relationship would be an on and off series of months where we
punched and insulted each other, and isolated moments where we would
just kiss. And being one of the world's great kissers, a man who truly
enjoyed just necking for hours on end, I couldn't complain. Because she
was good. Her teeth were rotten, she smoked like a chimney, smelled like a
man and looked like a boy, but she kissed like goddess.

I was not getting her normal kisses here, however. The
breathing was all wrong, less than assured, desiring more. I forgot
about her tits, they were nothing -- it seemed like they were nothing
to her. She kept tugging my lips with hers, urging me on --

-- I glanced upwards. The boy in the middle seat must
surely be asleep, right? --

-- we hadn't said anything. She gripped my behind and
pressed my groin firmly against hers --

-- and the music was playing, and the windows open, Satch
and Gail must be oblivious, they're miles away --

-- I tucked my pelvis back and rested a hand between her
legs. Hot, very hot, she must be steaming inside these tattered old
jeans. The soft, worn cotton was already damp with sweat, and
what else..? I slid my hand between her and she opened her legs,
one resting on the seat, the other against its back, and rubbed
where I could only assume the trouble was...

...and there was a hole.

No. No, you're kidding. I brushed a finger against it. Pubic
hair. No underwear? A hole?! She has GOT to be kidding. I was
beside myself with disbelief, awe, complete befuddlement and just
a little bit of restrained laughter.

Is this the trick hole? This woman has a trap chute in her
jeans?

She continued to pulse with almost imperceptible earnest. I
withheld my anxiety and pressed my middle finger into the hole.

Wet. Stewy wet. Swampy wet. If she didn't want me prying
into her jeans, violating her through a secret hole that just barely
(not even barely, let's face it) allowed my bony middle finger, it
was the last thing she was telegraphing. My face was less than an
inch to hers, my mouth less close, no more kissing , just sharing of
breath, my eyes only slits as I drove as much of my left middle
finger as I could into her. It was easy, in comparison o the tight
sheath of thin cotton I had just passed my finger through, her
secret part was warm and soft and slippery, I pressed into her like
so much microwaved Cool Whip. I pronged her as carefully as I
could, my finger up and into her jeans as far as I could put it. My
lips brushed against hers and they trembled slightly.

But I knew this wasn't enough. I withdrew the offending
finger, bent it as much as I could, the tight denim catching around
my flesh just below the second joint, that bulky ring on the
adjacent finger getting in the way, and I rubbed the tip, fingernail
and all, in a valiant attempt to find THE CLITORIS.

The free fingers of her hand were kneading my shoulder
and back. Her eyelids opened imperceptibly, those dark brown
orbs now completely black between slightly parted lids. She
panted straight into my mouth, closed her eyes again and pressed
her face into mine, firmly mashing my lips with hers.

Pulsing, pulsing, the blood was not making an easy way
into my crooked middle digit, and I found my mark -- at least, I could
only assume that's what it was. Our noses touched, we shuffed
sharply down each other's throats, our chest slammed forcefully
together, our legs a tangled mess somewhere down there where I
couldn't see. The flesh right below my fingernail, thrubbing, over
and over against this tiny knot, no, not tiny, it was actually quite
large, it stood out proudly amidst the squishy skin and matted, moist
hair. If I had ever before satisfied a g-spot, now was the time to
remember exactly how it was done.

Not too hard, not too soft, maybe she liked it hard? Maria
had always been very picky about how I satisfied her. Maria was
really the only person I didthings like this to for the past four or five
years. Funny I should think of Maria now. I thought of Maria
sucking off her manager at work in a van not very different from
this one and pressed on.

I kept up the pressure, the pain in my finger increasing
exponentially as it seemed to take on a life of its own, separate
from my hand except for the pain it supplied. My hand was baking
between her legs, she rocked in her seat and I tried to suspend the
finger in mid-air, just above her tender, tender fleshy bit, gently but
firmly and continually rolling it back and forth, slipping and sliding,
and her head bent back, her breathing never changing, and I
looked up at the seat back, had Ryan looked back here, and Jesus
GOD I am going to have to quit soon Jesus FUCK this hurts, and
still I went on, rolling and rubbing that thing, it was as big as a
house, it couldn't fit in the van, and my hand was screaming --

-- and she leaned her head forward, huffing silently, laid a
hand aside my face (hers glowing with perspiration) and pressed
her forehead to mine. I slowed my pace, withdrew from my
Chinese finger trap and laid my crippled hand delicately on her thigh.

"Heh-mmm," I cleared my throat slightly, and kissed her
again.

She parted her eyelids. The eyes were brown. She smiled.

"Heh," I said.

"Hmmmm," she said, an open mouthed smile, displaying
the dirty dental work.

"Ah," I said, "did you, uh...you know."

"Mm-hm," she said, nodding slightly.

"Lucky you," I said.

"Mm-HM," she said.

"I wasn't sure I found it," I said.

"Do you think anyone heard?" she asked.

"Do you care?"

"No," she said. "Do you?"

"No," I said, without a moment's hesitaion.

"Hm," she said.

"I think," I said, "I can finally go to sleep."

"Yeah," she said, like a happy eight year-old.

The sun was rising behind us as we cuddled close together.
In a few hours we would be in Chicago, on a Sunday morning,
with everywhere to go and nothing to do.

"Hey," I said, reaching between my legs.

"What?" she whispered.

"I think I came."

She smiled her devilish smile and pulled me tight.

"Then we're both lucky."

-- to be continued

*Special note to all "Diary" fans: thank you all for your letters, and if you like
my work but have never written me, please do so, because I have a special
announcement to make which I will send personally to anyone who has
ever given me their support.

Mail to: at...@cleveland.freenet.edu

You'll be glad you did.

-- KG
--
The wife's lover's children and my lover's wife,
Cooking in my kitchen, confusing my life.
And it's upside down when you reach Cloud 9.
Upside down when you reach Cloud 9.
--
Moderator, rec.arts.erotica. Submissions to ero...@unix.amherst.edu.
Please, no reposts, first drafts, or requests for "subscriptions,"
stories, GIFs, or archive sites.

Growing up, I mostly used sleeping bags (and I still prefer a straight blanket or comforter to topsheets that always seem to be getting lost) I was once filled with delight by receiving the Pac-Man sleeping bag shown here (and on the Two Decades of Sleeping Bag Evolution page)

Out of the package it smelled really weird, but it got better, and I just loved it in general.

---

If you don't believe me, try making a map of your office. See what you remember. Where do people go when they are rewarded, punished? Where is power concentrated, and where do you sit? What paths do people take to accomplish their goals? Are some emotions possible in one space and not another? (Take a picture and send it to me. I want to see.)

Now make a map of your "digital office." It will be a bunch of squares and a screenshot of a web browser.

Boy, ain't this the truth? There is such a there-ness to offices. My current team assembled online, has barely met in person. But I still can detect sense-memories about my previous employer's space...

---

Football players will risk life long injury, brain and otherwise, but are too scared by the "uncertainty" of vax jabs. Ok. I'm rereading Martin Gardner's book "aha! Gotcha: Paradoxes to puzzle and delight" I found this book in my Aunt and Uncle's library and it left an impact on me, teaching me things like the "liar's paradox" ("this sentence is true!") and the weirdness of the Hotel Infinity, where the seemingly full hotel can make space for any finite number of new guests by having all the current guests move up that many rooms, or even an infinite number of new guests by having everyone take a room that's their current room number x 2.

In the section on Statistics Gardner talks about statistical "clumping". I remember this passage:

A striking experiment in clumping was discovered by A. D. Moore, an engineer at the University of Michigan. Moore calls it the "nonpareil mosaic" because it uses large quantities of nonpareils, a sugar candy manufactured in the shape of tiny colored spheres. Obtain enough red and green nonpareils so that you can fill a glass bottle with equal amounts of each. Shake the bottle until the two colors are thoroughly mixed.

Inspect the sides of the bottle. You would expect to a see a homogenous mix of colors, but instead you see a beautiful mosaic made up of irregular large red clumps interspersed with equally large green clumps. The pattern is so unexpected that even mathematicians, when they first see it, believe that some sort of electrostatic effect is causing spheres of like color to stick to one another. Actually, nothing but chance is operating. The mosaic is the normal result of random clumping.

If this seems hard to believe, try this simple experiment. On a sheet of graph paper, outline a 20-by-20 square. Take each cell in turn and color it red or green, choosing the color by flipping a coin. When the 400-cell square is fully colored, you will see the same kind of mosaic that appeared on the sides of the bottle.

But being in a page of relatively plentiful computer power, I made a digital version of this this morning and saved myself the 400 coin flips... see it yourself at ahaclumps

I made it so if you click higher or lower you get more or fewer colors (up to 8) and if you click left or right the number of squares in the grid changes. With small squares, I feel the clumping effect is a bit less pronounced, so I'm not quite sure I believe the original jar-of-nonpareils effect is well demonstrated here.

UPDATE: I made a variant clumpswap

It starts with equal and divided red green populations, and then starts letting things mix by swapping adjacent squares.

Of course at first the action seems slow, because most of the swaps are of a color with itself.

I didn't make it interactive but I find the end result kind more fun watch than the earlier program... instead of swapping, it feels more like individual cells are moving ... but of course, the "color" of the mover is determined by which color is more in contrast with its neighbors.

---

A major difference between dogs and cats is that when you take care of a dog, the dog assumes you must be some sort of king, while when you take care of a cat, the cat assumes that it must be some sort of king

---

Gizmodo's I Miss series is pretty fun. I just finished rereading John Irving's "The World According to Garp" - it's either a particularly memorable novel, or I consumed it at a particularly tender time, because so many bits were so lodged in my memory, but I had forgotten the source.

Irving gives some of his smartest thoughts to the titular character, who (like the author, of course) is a novelist:

You only grow by coming to the end of something and by beginning something else.

Human sexuality makes farcical our most serious intentions.

People will always make sides--of everything.

Imagining something is better than remembering something.

Another good quote:

In short, all that is body is as coursing waters, all that is of the soul as dreams and vapors.

I had a vague memory of hearing about a childhood mishearing of warnings about "the undertow":

It was Walt's fourth summer at Dog's Head Harbor, Duncan remembered, when Garp and Helen and Duncan observed Walt watching the sea. He stood ankle-deep in the foam from the surf and peered into the waves, without taking a step, for the longest time. The family went down to the water's edge to have a word with him.
"What are you doing, Walt?" Helen asked.
"What are you looking for, dummy?" Duncan asked him.
"I'm trying to see the Under Toad," Walt said. "The what?" said Garp. "The Under Toad," Walt said. "I'm trying to see it. How big is it?"

In the novel. "undertoad' becomes the family's expression for anxiety and foreboding. My family has a somewhat similar phrase from an anecdote:"got 'em all back now mom!" which expresses relief a danger has passed - specifically a danger that wasn't recognized when it was extent.

Garp knew what to take for courses and whom to have for teachers. That is often the difference between doing well or poorly in a school.

I always thought that the difference between institutions was probably a lot less important than how hard one applied oneself, but I think getting lucky (or smart) about individual teachers is more important.

This was another instructional excerpt that lodged in my brain:

She was suddenly no drunker than Bill; or she had become miraculously undrunk, or she was enjoying that half hour of clarity between stupor and hangover--a half hour Garp had read about, but had always believed was a myth. Another illusion.

Fair warning, the final two are a little on the raunchy side, starting with this pornographic glossary:

The picture Garp looked at in the dream was considered among the highest in the rankings of pornographic pictures. Among pictures of naked women, there were names for how much you could see. If you could see the pubic hair, but not the sex parts, that was called a bush shot--or just a bush. If you could see the sex parts, which were sometimes partially hidden by the hair, that was a beaver; a beaver was better than just a bush; a beaver was the whole thing: the hair and the parts. If the parts were open, that was called a split beaver. And if the whole thing glistened, that was the best of all, in the world of pornography: that was a wet, split beaver. The wetness implied that the woman was not only naked and exposed and open, but she was also ready.

And maybe most of all, this:

Garp first sees the young man reflected in Mrs. Ralph's dressing-table mirror. Sitting naked in the chair, he is combing out the blond end of his thin ponytail, which he holds over his shoulder and sprays with one of Mrs. Ralph's aerosol cans. His belly and thighs have the same slick buttered look that Garp saw on the flesh and fur of Mrs. Ralph, and his young cock is as lean and arched as the backbone of a whippet.

The "as lean and arched" analogy really stuck with me.

---

Slate argues You Have a Moral Obligation to Claim Your $125 From Equifax.

---

"Now I'm going to sign this bill [for funding 9/11 victim compensation] into law - and I don't know if this stage will hold it, but if it doesn't we're not falling very far... but I'd like to ask the families and I'd also like to ask the first responders to come up... and we'll give this stage a shot... let's see how well built... 'Made In America'... let's see how well built it is."

Ladies and Gentleman, your President of the United States! Cruel and tacky, or merely stupid and tacky? You decide! (I'm sure he hired only the best people to build his stage.)

---

Man I miss Vine sometimes...

There's some meanness here sometimes, but also such creativity and exploration of comic timing... Fun Weekend with the PPLM crew in NH - the grounds with the bog and toads, the petting zoo, the dramatic rain, and Top Gun... (retroactively publishing these in 2023...)

---

I feel that the smile in this CGI render of Toucan Sam is not with the eyes, and therefore might not be truly sincere.
MS Paint to be phased out, though reports of its death are slightly exaggerated.


...I love that video ("Can we... can we thin out the line? Can we make the line thinner-" "-No" "...Ok")

Old school Paint did one thing better than almost all of its peers, and almost every program today even, in that the the mouse pointer was actually the brush you were about to paint with. Between that and not having to worry about anti-aliasing, it was pretty cool for pixel art. (And then there are some folks who use it as an actual art tool apparently in a pixel by pixel way)

That said there was a revamp of it that made me like it a bit less than the original.

---

NY Times and The Case for Cursing. The paradox is the strength of the cussing relies on it being generally taboo. It is cooler to save it for special occasions, I think. Give a hoot, don't dilute!

---

Nothing in the world is as old as what was futuristic in the past.

---

The Freewright is a uni-tasking, distraction free, mechanical keyboard, don't go back and edit just keep writing word processor that also synchs up to the cloud. Very cool concept, it appeals to me in the same way scratching out things on the original Palm Pilot I bought a few months ago does.

---

Commercials on the Bar TV- one for this HP Spectre laptop, one for VistaPrint business cards, both with a lot of crappy faux-classy Shiny Gold on Black-- I'm worried we have Trump to blame for this? I mean who but sports channel watching business dudes are out for a super pricey Windows laptop and tacky business cards?

---

Susan Kare, pioneer in Mac Pixels and still a big player in the industry. So cool. The cross-stitch/pixel connection is great; sometimes I think about how my work on the old Etch-A-Sketch Animator connected me to my dad's Counter Cross-stitch work. (Kare points to this 1760 sampler by Elizabeth Laidman )

---

OPEN LETTER ON DONALD TRUMP FROM GOP NATIONAL SECURITY LEADERS I think this might be my new go-to summary for why Trump would be a horrible, horrible president.

---

Republican VP Pence chastises Obama for calling Trump "a demagogue" - says that "name calling" has no "place in public life." I'm going to operate on the assumption that there's a decent chance your day will be improved by an image of Katharine Hepburn on a skateboard.

via from http://ohscience.tumblr.com/post/91376654885/nevver-x-ray-specs-carrie-witherell

---

3D printing is the macrame of the 2010s.

---

It could be said that, in many ways, the trombone is the Village People of musical instruments.

---

'Obama thinks he's king. He's so arrogant. Everything is about him. Please subscribe to the TV channel I named after myself' - Sarah Palin

Trigger warnings galore, this is one of the most disgusting local abuses of power I've ever seen... http://boingboing.net/2013/07/28/nv-court-marshal-sexually-assa.html Thank God there was a video record of it, and that the broken system at least kept the tape undeleted.

---

---

"Sousaphonic Cityscape" from JP Honk Band @ Figment 2013

(Someone else's photo, but my horn!) I've been following WW2 Tweets from 1940, following WW2 events in "real time but tape-delayed" by 62 years. (There's a related Facebook Page) Today they republished some survey results that were in Life magazine. They summarized it as "56% think Germany will win the war - against 24% for Allies. 70% for immediate draft." but the question I liked best was the final one: That seems like a lot of optimism to me, considering! But we muddled through.

---

I liked how the London Olympics opening had a tribute to the National Health, but I wondered if they were showing off to the Americans
4/6 of my team "The Yooper Doopers" at the Boston waterfront, during the Cashunt photo scavenger hunt part of Alleyoop's Summer Fun Day. In Pinker's "How The Mind Works" he touches on "Geons" -- a theory that the brain uses a smallish set of basic visual/structural elements (akin to atoms, but on a larger level) to remember what things look like, and identify them later, even if the image we're looking at is at a funny angle, in different colors, etc. Here's an example, showing 5 Geons and some common objects that could be described with them: I am very bummed that I can't find a "complete" list with all 24 Geons anywhere online. It's an intriguing idea though, complete with some nice testable implications. (It's not 100% complete in terms of describing how we identify things in theworld, but -- as Pinker argues at length -- the brain may also have a set of additional task-specific subsystems, for example, a different way of identifying and "reading" faces, and that would not destroy the basic theory.

---

Sith. What kind of a word is that? Sith. It sounds to me like the noise that emerges when you block one nostril and blow through the other, but to George Lucas it is a name that trumpets evil.

---

Evolutionary speaking, there is seldom any mystery in why we seek the goals we seek--why, for example, people would rather make love with an attractive partner then get a slap on the belly with a wet fish.

---

There are three possible parts to a date, of which at least two must be offered: entertainment, food, and affection. It is customary to begin a series of dates with a great deal of entertainment, a moderate amount of food, and the merest suggestion of affection. As the amount of affection increases, the entertainment can be reduced proportionately. When the affection IS the entertainment, we no longer call it dating. Under no circumstances can the food be omitted.

---

If men could only know each other, they would neither idolize nor hate.

---

Panasonic RP-HJE 130: Cleverest earbud packaging ever?

---

The "Golden Record" on the Voyager probes has an hour of Carl Sagan's wife's brainwaves, including a bit on what it's like to be in love.

---

Weird iOS 4 bug- when music is playing, but you get the music controls on the lock screen, the play triangle never becomes a pause icon? Odd

---

The only thing for which they should have used wood-grained plastic was the coffin of the man who invented wood-grained plastic.

---

Daniel Shore died? Nuts!

Powerhouse from Antonio Linhares on Vimeo.

That reminds me, I've been thinking about Raymond Scott lately. It's too bad his quintet's version of his "Powerhouse" doesn't have the- well, power- of Carl Stalling's Loony Tunes version, which the first minute of this is based on. (Maybe I should rip this as an MP3...I purchased a Carl Stalling mp3 from Amazon, but this cut wasn't stand alone, just mashed in with all the rest.)

---

http://www.slate.com/id/2223680/ - learn the term "rescission", and question if a gov't agency is gonna be worse than a for-profit HMO.

---

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/07/-it-sounds-like-something.ars - "like BattleBots, but with money". I always suspected greedier, smarter people than me were running my stock market ideas...

---

Dave Sim's Tangent vs Valerie Solanas SCUM manifesto - FIGHT! Lets see who can be the most screwed up about the other gender. (Still like Solanas' "zestfully, lustfully, tearing off a piece" description of good sex.)

---

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/505307 - When Pigs Fly flash game by dessgeega, I get a playtester credit in the ingame credits. Neat!!! One final note on Hawkins' "On Intelligence"... he describes the neocortex as being a 6 or so level hierarchy of neurons, with each layer providing another level of abstraction and pattern recognition.

This reminded me of the description of Superman's foe Brainiac as possessing a "12th level intellect". That would make total sense in this model, 6 more levels of neurons (or whatever) could grant him superhuman abilities to analyze, pick out patterns, etc etc. (Of course the blinking lights attached to head probably help as well.)

It's a minor "life imitating art" moment, like how Star Trek's computers draining enough power to dim the lights seemed like silly fiction to me when I was comparing it to my Commodore 64, which seemed to operate at a steady state, but now I'm all too aware that running computationally expensive things like movies and fancy games on modern laptops and smartphones will drain battery life and make things run hotter.

---

Money comes and money goes. The days just go.

sure, it's a bit of the folly of youth, and money doesn't generally arrive unless asked, but it's a good point.

---

I feel... I dunno, malleable? After reading the Hawkins book on the mind maybe. F Scott Fitzgerald Tender is the Night is great or terrible

---

Still a bursting-at-the-seams with stuff I need to get rid of work in progress, but got my apt. settled enough to vacuum. Yay Guest Prep!

Open Photo Gallery

Nice advice from a bumper sticker:


One thing it's easy to miss with fireworks
is how they light up the faces of your fellow watchers.




And they were some mighty fireworks!


Am I missing something, or is this like
the world's least ambitious helicopter?


I was impressed that this syrup
(declining to be more labled more specifically than "breakfast")
managed to have not its top but
TOP TWO ingredients be corn syrup.


Jersey shore. It seems you get a lot of sunset shots
facing over the water, but not as many going the other way.


Best shot I took at Six Flags.

So Ksenia's been watching the hell out of the complete set of Ally McBeal we got.

One thing about that show: lots of great shots of Boston.

---

Quote of the Moment

I guess that's the story of life: what you most fear never happens, but what you most yearn for never happens either. This is the difference between life and fiction. I suppose it's a good trade-off. But I'm not sure.

---

Image of the Moment
From CNN, "A man cleans a poster of Hezbollah chief Nasrallah." At the risk of being completely culturally insensitive, I'd say one thing I like about the West currently is that we DON'T have giant-head posters of political and group leaders up and about for the most part. Even the most numbskulled George W. supporter limits it to a "W" bumpersticker, or in the most extreme cases a small portrait on top of the TV.

Which reminds me of this other quote from the author's commentary of the Philip K. Dick anthology I just finished:

Hitler had once said that the true victory of the Nazis would be to force its enemies, the United States in particular, to become like the Third Reich--i.e. a totalitarian society--in order to win. Hitler, then, expected to win even in losing.

I wonder how that quote fits into the often asymmetric "war against terror." "We" can't quite ever look like "them", because we're a society, and they're a small group. But their power to guess our responses and then work horrific misdeeds to shape those responses gives one pause.

Yeesh, most of this week has been pretty lame for this site. Sorry about that. I guess I'm just not up to being my cool self as usual.

---

Funny of the Moment

Heisenberg may have slept here.

Actually, we have scientifically determined that Heisenberg did indeed sleep exactly here. However, we have no idea whatsoever just how fast asleep he was.

---

Observation of the Moment
This is probably too geek pseudo-deep for many kisraelites to get, but if you wanted a single, shining example of the fundamental difference in outlook between DOS/Windows and Unix, I'd say it can be condensed into the single fact that in a DOS Window you can type "cd.." without the space and it works.

To someone with more of a Microsoftish approach to life, it's a good example of a UI accomodating the user, but to someone steeped in the Unix tradition it violates the principle of doing that which surprises the (knowledgable) user least, breaking the guidelines set for using small sets of simple rules to do great things.

Quote of the Moment

If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner.

---

Offer of the Moment
Anyone want a pair of tickets to Cirque de Soleil on August 7, $150 for both? Great seats, says my coworker...

---

Wrongness of the Moment

As he entered the room within which so many a wild night of their sweltering love affair had been spent, the White Rabbit regarded her with benevolent eyes, her posture such that he suspected something was wrong, but before he could speak Alice unburied her face from her trembling hands and between her intense sobs he made out the words, "I'm late . . . I'm late."

Some good stuff, but there's too much of it to get through without starting to think "I've seen this before..." Wacky News of the Moment

Also from The Guardian, news of a certain Michael Howard of Leeds, who, outraged at being charged £20 for a £10 overdraft, legally changed his name to "Yorkshire Bank PLC Are Fascist Bastards." When the bank asked him to close his account, Mr. Bastards demanded that they pay out the 69-pence balance by a cheque made out in his new name.

The Funny Times is the funniest collection of cartoons and articles in a monthly newspaper I've ever seen. (It's the only paper I get delivered.

---

Philisophical BS of the Moment
The first proposed title for the TV show "Married With Children" was "Not the Cosbys". They were setting themselves up the opposite of The Cosby Show, so to speak. White instead of black, way lower middle class instead of borderline wealthy, mean instead of supportive, bawdy humor instead of Cosby's more family friendly fare. For a second, though, I wondered if "Good Times" (the one with J.J.Walker going "Dyn-o-mite!") would have been an anti-Cosby, since it was also about black life.

I dithered a moment about which one was the better "Not the Cosbys", a comedy with mainly white people or a comedy with mainly black people, but then I thought, what about a drama with white people? Isn't comedy the opposite of drama? But I'm still thinking of TV shows. What's the opposite of a TV series? A radio series? How far do we need to go with this?

It hit me; there can never be any such thing as a "total opposite" for anything, because otherwise there'd be no basis for comparison. Black/White? Both races. Or colors. (Well, not really colors, but you know what I mean.) Tall/Short? Both heights. Both words. Both concepts. You have to find out how things are the same before you're able to see there on opposite ends of a spectrum. And some spectrums don't have opposites, as far as I can tell...what's the opposite of a human? (Other than my fourth grade math teacher, I mean.)

I guess this is similar to how people who insist "more unique" is not a valid construction are so full of it...nothing is absolutely unique (everything falls in some kind of category), or everything is (no two things are exactly the same.) So therefore, it's logical and useful to think of "uniqueness" as a spectrum.

I don't know how "deep" this idea is (probably not very) but Beer Philosopher 101 is always a fun game to play.

---

Quote of the Moment

No matter what the shrinks, or the pundits, or the self-help books tell you, when it comes to love, it's luck.

. I think we saw this film and afterwards Mo said "you know, that felt a lot like Woody Allen flick". (Allen is not actually in it, but Kenneth Branagh does a darn fine impersonation.) Went to my Great Uncle Frank's 90th birthday celebration yesterday...saw the side of my family that I don't see enough of. Plus over the weekend I actually helped Mo with grouting in the bathroom shower. Actually, with the cleanup, getting rid of a great deal of excess grout on the tiles. And despite Mo's best attempts, I'm not learning to love it. (Hmm, the next to bits involve glue and dust...isn't that kind of what grout is?)

---

Link of the Moment
I saw this around a while back. Cool in a DIY-geek way, it's ThisToThat, chock full of advice on gluing things to...other things. Mostly focused on common household materials, such as paper, wood, metal, etc.

---

Quote of the Moment

Everyone must have two pockets, so that he can reach into the one or the other, according to his needs. In his right pocket are to be the words: "For my sake was the world created," and in his left: "I am dust and ashes."

Quote of the Moment

The male has a negative Midas touch--everything he touches turns to shit.

This is the woman who Shot Andy Warhol. Interesting diatribe. Never heard of receiving the sexual favor of a woman described as "zestfully, lustfully, tearing off a piece". Also, "groovy" seems to have had a deeper meaning than the little campy phrase we use now it as now.

---

News of the Moment
Man, some Golf Officials are real jerks. A potentially amazing breakthrough for an autistic child being set aside for some niggling little rule. Using a "Slippery Slope" argument is, amusingly enough, a slippery slope.

---

Geek Link of the Moment
I've been meaning to post this for a while, a study on the psychology of people's passwords. Though since one of the cardinal words of passwords is don't tell yours to random people, you wonder how they conducted the survey. (via this slashdot article, with some interesting if long-winded conversation about it.)