The Canadians are at the Gates!

I was horrified this afternoon to find on Google Maps that a spurious geopolitical claim has been made on the Banfield Freeway, I-84 on the beautiful East Side here in the City of Roses.

That's right: The precious artery that connects our fair but isolated city to the rest of the nation has been claimed by a province of our massive northern neighbor, Canada.

Now sure, there are some of you who will laugh this off, calling it a "glitch" or a "software error" or perhaps even a "prank by a disgruntled employee." YOU'RE LIVING IN A DREAMWORLD!!!  We're talking about GOOGLE here!  They don't make mistakes!  They don't have disgruntled employees!  It's well known!!!

To the ramparts!

Teach Yourself Urdu!

...because frankly, I don't have time to teach you myself.

First published in 1915, this book offers numerous translation exercises for the eager student of Urdu.

...or of colonialism...

...or of brisk management of the servant class...

...or whatever.

from the collection of L&TM5K special Urdu correspondent Vida.

Song of My City

Seen on the notice board of the local cafe where Mrs.5000 and I became engaged:

Wanted: Female Guitarist

for Ecofeminist Doom

Metal Band

Now This From the Wells Fargo Department of Superfluous Tautology

I noticed an especially weak bit of text gracing the Castle5000 mortgage bill this month!


(The orange oval is my own little enhancement).


How inspiring! My guess -- but this is only a guess -- is that this little koan was meant to be part of a bid to encourage me, the mortgagee, to enroll in an electronic payment plan. This would "make a difference" by saving the Wells Fargo Mortgage Company the expense of sending me bills and by eroding my day-to-day control over my household finances. Oh, by and making an unmeasurably trivial reduction in my personal share of the planet's paper use.

But whatever its original intention, somehow it has been divorced from its referant and now just sits there on the envelope, mildly encouraging us to shake our fists -- or at least wag our fingers -- at fate.

Gentle Reader! I encourage you to do one thing different and make a difference! And report back in the comments.

BP Wants You to be Safe!

I bumped into this coloring book the other day, and can't decide whether it's funny or fair or even noteworthy, but whatever. We'll give it a shot.

Oil and Energy MegaCorporation "bp" -- the MegaCorporation formerly known as "British Petroleum" -- presents the 2001 bear-oriented publication Home Safety: An Educational Coloring and Activity Book!


bp wants to make sure you know exactly what to do in the event of an emergency!

bp says "Take extra care around fire and heat!" Be careful around things that can be hot. And it's a good idea to have a fire extinguisher around!

bp wants you to take an oath that you will follow all of the safety rules! Because it's all about keeping your home and family safe!

Here endeth the cheap shot.

Technically, She's NOT More Than a Doll

This document arrived at the Castle5000 mailbox a few months ago, addressed to Mrs.5000.

It is a small catalog of high-end Barbie Doll related merchandise. It is aimed, apparently, at those with a fixation on the iconic mass-marketed plaything, but with too much money to be able to effectively spend it in the pink aisle of their local big-box.

Along with odd Barbie-related merchandise...

...Barbie Doll themed experience is also available at a price. "Be a globetrotting goddess and star in your own luxury adventure," suggests the brochure; "Journey to the exciting world of Barbie Shanghai." This involves two days of travel, a day of spa treatment, a store tour, and a one-day tour of the great Chinese city, all for thirty large.


It's really quite something.

I guess the biggest question for me is: How on earth did Mrs.5000 get on this mailing list?

Well, everybody needs a hobby, and if people are excited about Barbie brand licensed merchandise, that's no worse than anything else I suppose. What seems particularly unwholesome in this document is not so much the lurid pink merchandise itself, but the more-than-usually blatant attempt to harvest a maximum of money for a minimum of product.

I enjoy a good consumer purchase as much as the next person, but any healthy adult realizes that there's only so much happiness you can buy, and that even then it's a short-term buzz. With apologies to John Greenleaf Whittier, for all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest might really be these:

Three Dorky Endeavors

I: Running in Rows and Columns

I've been running off and on since I was in high school, but I never kept track of it. In August, though, I decided it was time to push myself a little harder, so I brought to the act of running the one thing guaranteed to make it yet more exciting: a spreadsheet!

It's a good spreadsheet. For every date, 1 to 31, it tracks the maximum distance, the average distance per run, the average distance overall, and various other arcana, and it's set to turn encouraging colors when I do well and nasty colors when I'm sub-standard. Plus, there are a bunch of statistics for monthly totals as well.

And here's the weird thing: it totally works. On days when I don't feel like running at all, I'm now totally motivated to get out there and run just a couple laps around the park, just to get a number on the board. On days when I feel like running, I know that taking a few EXTRA miles will make my numbers look good. Since I've started this, I've run more days than I haven't (I'd like to get it up to 2/3 next year), and I'll cross the 200-mile mark tomorrow. For what that's worth.

For those of you who know me on the Facebooks, yes, this is why I'm constantly nattering on lately about how I just set an all-time record for miles run on the 28th day of a month. Or whatever.

Down side: it hasn't helped much with the weight.

II: International Man of Chess

It's been almost a year since occasional L&TM5K commenter Morgan got me involved with chess.com. He has since stopped playing online chess, but I've stuck around like a chump, gradually picking away at my project of playing a game of chess with someone from every country in the world -- and this according to chess.com's very inclusive definition of "country," under which there are close to 300.

There is, of course, a spreadsheet involved in this one too.

I am pleased to announce that as soon as I lose this match I'm playing with a guy from Barbados, I will have crossed the 25% mark in number of countries played!

Down side: I'm at more like the 15% mark in number of countries won against.

III: Like County Collecting on Steroids. Or Maybe Acid.

You are of course familiar with XKCD, the droll internet cartoon, the self-described "webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language." You know, the one with the stick figures! And you may vaguely remember having seen this specific strip:

Well, I learned recently that there is a small and I daresay quite dorky community of people who have taken this algorhythm to heart and begun making treks to the random locations that this formula generates in their local graticule of latitude and longitude. So -- to make this perfectly clear -- where some people might try to get their passports stamped at every national park, or play 100 golf courses before they die, or keep track of the counties they've been through, or (like Brother-and-Sister-in-Law5000) climb every "fourteener" in Colorado, the Geohashers travel to randomly selected locations.

Well, of COURSE I had to get in on that action. My first geohashing adventure, completed last Saturday, is chronicled here.

The introductory page of the Geohashing Wiki is here.

And if you live in or near the City of Roses and want to go on an expedition, I am SO IN!!!

Oh, did I mention there are achievements?!?

Down side: I frankly can't see one.

-----

DorkFest results tomorrow!

-----

Paperback 269a: Three-Dollar Mile / Ian Banyon (Challenge Books 203)

Paperback 269a: Challenge Books 203 (PBO, 1966)

Title: Three-Dollar Mile
Author: Ian Banyon
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: oh, I don't know. $5?


Best Things About This Cover:

• "I appreciate the courtesy of this house call, Dr. Abrams. Now, as we discussed on the phone, the growth is right here on my left buttock."
• It's technically possible to extend one's right arm around a friend in that position, but it'll be agonizing if he holds the pose very long.
• There really ought to be some trace of the dame's lower half visible beside or under the cushy chair. Unless we're seeing her caught in mid-leap as she hikes up her leopardskin pants.
• Leopardskin pants.
• The painting is quite competant, with hasty but not terrible brushwork.
• Damn kids these days can't even be bothered to capitalize the title of their own books, what with all the texting.

Best Things About This Back Cover:

• Who can say "no" to a vast field of burnt orange?
• Dave "aspired"? He "sought"? Is this teaser copy, or the man's goddam resume?
• Hmm, she had "very different plans," eh? "SOYLENT BURNT ORANGE.... IS.... STARLETS!!!!"

Page 123~

For a half a second, McGann expected to smell or see booze in the room. Then he realized the pair were in the middle of a beef.

"Hey, where did you find that beef?" blustered McGann. "All I could find down at the store was Soylent Burnt Orange."

~un hommage a Rex Parker
Book found by chance at the Goodwill "Bins," Sellwood.

Weekly Rates, Family Units

The LeMaster Motel is a modest establishment off of North Avenue in Grand Junction, Colorado. At first glance, its sign simply projects the vintage charm marking many of the small motels on American highways, locally-owned places that offer the mildly adventurous traveller an inexpensive alternative to the blandness of the franchises and megachains.


But a closer look at the sign -- particularly, at the faint shadows to the left of the word "motel" -- can't help but provoke speculation. I mean, you can see what they were getting at; they wanted to imply both the luxury of a hotel and the convenience of a motel, and perhaps the comforts of home as well. But was there really a time when it seemed like the word "homotel" could be used with a straight face? And was "LeMaster," as in "The LeMaster Homotel," really the right name to try it out with? And in point of fact, how long was the "Ho" actually up there? And when was it painted over? I would love to know.

--

I ate the first tomato tonight. It was, I understand, a vine-ripened grape tomato, for those of you keeping score. From Mexico I believe. I washed it off in the sink, and then I took it and I stood out on the back porch for a while, looking around the lush green of the trees and the gardens and the grass, relishing the oppressive beauty of a hot summer night. I walked down the steps and out into the back yard in my bare feet, kicking pine cones out of the lawn, and I remembered being a child at swimming lessons, paralized out on the low diving board, too scared to jump and too scared to inch back the way I'd come, frozen, and just standing there abject and miserable and small until eventually I did jump, or at least kind of lurched off the board, and then the water was hard on impact and then kind of cold too but I survived, and I floated up to the surface, and life went on. And so I put the tomato into my mouth and bit down into it.

Why I Woke Up at 4:30

I'm taking a business trip!

To Boardman!

Life is full of surprises.

Where Once I Might Weep, Now I Might Laugh: Two Vignettes

I: Hell

I'm at the library on Saturday morning, checking the catalog from one of many computers on a long table. At the computer next to me is a more than usually bland man of about thirty with a somewhat meaty build. He is dressed and groomed in an unremarkable fashion and, indeed, makes no impression other than that of a slight thickness. He is intent on his computer screen and is wearing a set of headphones. I barely notice him as I sit down.

I spend a few moments searching through the library catalog.

After a time, I notice as my neighbor fidgets, sighs heavily, and removes his headphones. He doesn't take his eyes from his computer screen. For no apparent reason, he speaks a single sentence in a low, mild, matter-of-fact, almost weary tone.

"The homosexuals are going to burn in hell," he says.

Then, he puts his headphones back on.

I glance over at his screen. He is watching some sort of Japanese animation that is not, but is very much like, "Hello Kitty."

I get the giggles.


2: Refugee Work

I am helping a man who comes from a distant country, a place where life is often very hard, prepare his resume. He tells me about jobs he has had as a teacher and as a clerk, and then mentions that he also worked for a few years as a security guard. This is useful work experience, so I am very interested. I ask him about the details of this job. Since his comprehension of English is stronger than his speaking ability, I ask a lot of yes-or-no questions.

michael5000: Did you walk around the buildings to make sure that no one was there who was not supposed to be?

man: Yes, I did that.

m5k: Were you an armed guard?

[clarifying] That means, did you have a gun?

man: No, no, we did not have guns.

m5k [thinking]: Did you... did you...

man: I was by... the doors. When people came...

m5k: I see. So people would come into the factory, and you would check to make sure they were allowed to be there?

man: Yes, I did that.

m5k: Was there a metal detector?

man: [puzzled]

m5k: [mimes using a metal dectector wand]

man: Yes! We had this, and I used it.

m5k: [writing notes] Good! Did you watch, um, TV screens that showed different parts of the...

man: Yes! "Security Cameras."

m5k: Excellent!

man: Also, sometimes if a thief came and stole something, the supervisor would make us beat him.

[long pause]

m5k: OK, we are NOT going to put that part on your resume.

[pause]

m5k and the man both crack up.

Wednesday Drivel

Firstly:

I put it in red letters in the sidebar, so am sure you are all excited about the upcoming blog event coming March 22, 2009, when:

michael5000 LiveBlogs Sunday!!!

That's right! Liveblogging, heretofore limited to athletic events, presidential elections, and the like, finally comes home to real life! From Castle5000 and its environs, I'll be giving comprehensive all-day coverage of the back half of the weekend! This will be a fully interactive experience, with readers free to ask questions, make suggestions, or discuss their own experience of Sunday!! It's sure to be the media event of the weekend! For me.

3.22.09

m5K x 24 hrs

Be there and/or be square.


Secondly:

You know how sometimes you see something really quickly out of the corner of your eye, and you get it all wrong? Sure you do.

Well, I was wrestling with the even crappier new Facebook interface earlier this week, and I caught what I thought was a truly remarkable advertisement over on the right side of the screen. Hitting the back button, I discovered that this is what I had REALLY seen:




But what I had THOUGHT I had seen, as you might have already guessed, was this:


With apologies to the organization in question, I can't help but think the ad generated by my subconscious is a bit more.... provocative.




And Thirdly:


Mrs.5000 and I made up a tongue twister! It's fun to say out loud! Try saying it twenty times quickly. Also, drunk.

I saw Fra Filippo Lippi at La Calaca Comelona!

OK, that's enough out of me.

Now That We've All Learned Our Lessons...

Hey, want to live in Neighborhood5000!?



You could move into one of these new condos! Just a short walk from the Castle, close to shops, restaurants, and entertainment here on the Inner East Side of the beautiful City of Roses. And best of all, no down payment!!!

What could possibly go wrong?

-----

Fans of the occasional L&TM5K vignettes ought to enjoy Chance's post today....

You Can't Resist Are On We You're Wind

The collection of Korean T-shirts that Heatherbee shared with us back in October was a real hit, and I wish I could tell you that she had brought back as many from her recent excursion to Indonesia. Alas, Heatherbee could not stay long in Indonesia and was not able to concentrate fully on T-shirt acquisition, for reasons that remind us that although Dengue Fever is a great band, it is not an especially great band name.

So, she was only able to bring us back one shirt. But it's a good 'un.

If any of all y'all -- there's no size given, but you would need to be on the slender side, and presumably female -- think you could pull it off, it is yours on the condition that you agree to send back in a picture of yourself wearing it proudly in public. Just let me know.

(Heatherbee, incidently, is fully recovered, safe, and happy. So don't fret.)

Clearance Sale Quiz: Quoting Sarah Palin

Only eight days past its sell-by date, it's

the L&TM5K Sarah Palin Quote Quiz!!!

a Karmasartre/michael5000 joint

DID she or DIDN'T she say it?

1. "As Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where– where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border."

2. "We believe that the best of America is not all in Washington, D.C. ... We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, very pro-America areas of this great nation."

3. "Now you'll hear some people saying, they'll say, 'how can someone from way up there in Alaska understand what things are like here in Mississippi?' But there are a lot of things that Alaska and the South have in common that most people just don't expect. For example, I like pork rinds. But that doesn't fit the mold."

4. “I have more executive experience than Barack Obama even has.”

5. “In politics, there are some candidates who might use change to promote their careers. And then there are those who don’t, like John McCain, who would never use their careers to promote change.”

6. "Well, let's see. There's ― of course in the great history of America there have been rulings that there's never going to be absolute consensus by every American, and there are those issues, again, like Roe v. Wade, where I believe are best held on a state level and addressed there. So, you know, going through the history of America, there would be others but ―"

7. "They are also building schools for the Afghan children so that there is hope and opportunity in our neighboring country of Afghanistan."

8. "Yes" is what I say to good ideas. I'm all about "yes". That's why I've gotten so much done in all my executive position experiences, and why I'll do a good job as vice-president."

9. "I told the Congress, 'Thanks, but no thanks,' on that Bridge to Nowhere."

10. "As a governor, I have to be faced every hour of every day with the kinds of decisions about health care, and taxes, and defense -- things like that, executive decisions -- that as a Senator, Barack Obama and Joe Biden don't, he doesn't need to make."

11. "If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations then I don't know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media."

12. "I'm the mayor, I can do whatever I want until the courts tell me I can't."

13. "When it comes to maverick -- I just think the American people need to ask themselves, who is the real maverick in this election? Because it's not, not Barrack Obama. It's John McCain who is the maverick that the American people want in the White House!"

14. “Well, there’s Chief Justice Roberts of course, and that great American Clarence Thomas, and isn’t it just -- I just think it's wonderful that people of any color can rise to elected office in this great United States of America.”


The L&TM5K Sarah Palin Quote Quiz is a production of the Life & Times of Michael5000 -- michael5000, executive producer.

Based upon a concept by Karmasartre.

Authentic Quotes Research: Karmasartre

Inauthentic Quote Fabrication: michael5000 & Karmasartre

Quiz Sequencing: michael5000

Authentic Quotes Production: Governor Sarah L. H. Palin

Special Thanks to: the mainstream media

The L&TM5K Sarah Palin Quote Quiz should be played for entertainment purposes only.

Election Day Number 2008

Here to Remind You that it's Time to Vote.....

...why, it's MyDogIsChelsea! This photo is from her recent star turn on YesWeCake.com, which makes her among the very most famous members of the L&TM5K community. Her YesWeCake appearance also includes a photograph of me, michael5000, casting a vote for my own preferred candidate. So y'all can just lay off with that "news broadcast from the future" meme, OK? I get it! I voted!

More pictures from the MyDogIsChelsea voting party -- including a few in which if you look very, very closely you can actually kind of tell whom she voted for -- can be found here.



Who Are Some of the Other Famous Members of the L&TM5K Community?

Well, you may have noticed this when you were flipping through this month's Oklahoma Magazine:




But did you notice who gets top billing?


That's right -- Blythe's Bee-Spot is officially the Greatest Oklahoma Website! [insert cruel joke here.] Now, that's famous! Mind you, I don't know if she technically considers herself "of the L&TM5K Community," but since I've been more or less trying to rip off her writing style for the last year and change she's pretty much on board whether she wants to be or not.

(Rip off her writing style, that is, except for the self-depricating part. I haven't mastered that bit yet.)


Also, Rex.

Really, having the 55th Greatest Crossword Puzzle Solver in the Universe as the official Dork of your independent blog is kind of like having Dick Cheney on the board of your international engineering and construction corporation. It's good for business. Here's what happened when Rex Parker put his DorkFest championship badge up on Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle:


We can only wonder what would happen if he wrote something like "The Life & Times of Michael5000 is not just the most insightful, vital, necessary thing happening on the internet today -- it's also consistently laugh-out-loud funny!"


But Enough About Famous Readers. The Important Thing Is....

...as Elizabeth recently posted, cryptically but memorably:


Courage, people....

Almost Bay Along It, We'll be Out of the Earth Special

From time to time there will be a fad here in the United States of America to plaster characters from Asian languages all over our leisure clothing. By tradition, the wearer will neither know nor care what the characters mean; the point is only that they look exotic and more or less stylin' upon one's chest or thigh. A few of us will fret about the intellectual vacuity of this sartorial choice, but nobody cares what we think.

Well, it goes both ways. All over the world, people express their contempt for the Anglo-American cultural hegemony by sporting T-shirts on which our beloved mother tongue is contorted into strange and surreal forms. These shirts embody a postmodernist's contempt of the simplistic notion that language can convey precise "meaning." The sole message they bear is rather that coherence is an illusion -- that concepts and states of mind can at most only be extracted from the medium of written language in the form of vague gestures and allusions. Or, as the shirt of a young Russian gentleman I met recently had it,

Almost bay along it
We'll be out of the Earth special

Occasional L&TM5K Commenter Heatherbee has of late been sojourning in the countries of Asia, and took time out from studying traditional Korean drumming techniques to investigate the T-shirt phenomenon. Here, brought to you with the kind help of her mother, is a sampling of her collection.

In conclusion, if you only remember one piece of T-shirt wisdom, it might well be this one:

Brighten the corner where you are
Water is Life
Every Drops of Water are Value

Forgotten Lands: Kim'chin do & Coregos

(What are these "Forgotten Lands" you speak of?)

A little bit of the fun I've had in making up these mildly surreal little countries evaporated last week when the Channel Island of Sark abolished the last vestige of feudalism in Europe. Yes. Sark. Feudalism. Demonstrating yet again that you can't out-weird reality.

Kim’chin do
Capital: Namju
Population: 161,000 (2001 estimate)

Economy: Fishing, forestry, zinc, electronic goods.

If you look at the area northeast of Hokkaido on any world map, chances are you will see only open ocean. It is not entirely clear how an island as large as Kim'chindo came to be forgotten by the world's cartographers. As the site of major Soviet naval and air bases, it was regularly omitted from that country's maps for security purposes. While it is difficult to imagine the Western publishing companies taking their cue from the USSR, no other explanation has ever been put forward for the island nation's widespread omission from our maps and atlases.

The natives of Kim'chindo had tales of their ancestors arriving from the south on a city of rafts. Modern archaeologists have established only that a large migration arrived from the Korean penninsula, in the 12th Century A.D. A great capital of wood buildings was built on the southern tip of the island on a sophisticated plan of broad boulevards and great open plazas. This city, Kim'sol, was destroyed by a tidal wave in around 1620:

My city
floats out to sea
in jumbled sticks.
-- Ko Tae-Li, 17th Century

As much as half the island's population perished in the disaster.

In the modern era, the island was handed from empire to empire: the British (1710) were followed by the Dutch (1770), the Japanese (1906), and the Soviets (1945). Kim'chindo stumbled into independence after the breakup of the USSR with a small but polyglot population (34% Japanese, 32% Kim'chin Korean, 12% Russian, 12% Chinese, 10% European) and no tradition of self-government. A parliamentary system has been established and elections held, but the real power in Kim'chindo is held by the large corporations (mostly Japanese and Dutch) that have acquired its mills, mines, and factories. Nearly 40% of working citizens, a 2002 study found, are in the employ of a foreign corporation. Wages and investment in national infrastructure remain well below world averages.


Flag: The Kim'chin, like many Asian cultures, associated colors with direction. The modern flag, designed in 1993, is thus a sort of traditional map. Red, in the center, represents the people. Black is to the north, white to the south, yellow is to the west, and green to the east. Blue and purple were considered the colors of danger in classical Kim'chin symbology, and are rarely seen in traditional decoration.

Republic of Coregos
Capital: San Esteban
Population: 591,862 (1996)

Economy: Export sector is dominated by bananas, cattle, and some coffee. Corn and other foods are no longer imported since a government self-sufficiency program was launched in the early 1990s; however, most durable and electronic goods must still be imported.


Coregos is best known to most Americans as being the country that, according to a high-profile 1984 study by the National Geographic Society, less than five percent of high school students are able to locate on a world map. This notoriety is a strange fate for a country that, less than a century before, President William McKinley proclaimed “absolutely fundamental, absolutely crucial, to the future of the United States in this hemisphere.”

McKinley spoke with an eye toward the broad Torrenos Depression, a wide valley amid Coregos’ mostly mountainous terrain, as a likely route across the Central American isthmus. When a populist government headed by a former peasant, León Garcia, offered the contract to construct an ocean-to-ocean canal to a German engineering firm, the U.S. responded by sending two divisions of Marines to occupy San Esteban. This military presence continued until well after the construction of the Panama Canal, which follows a route most modern observers feel is much inferior to that of the Coregos passage.

Flag: A golden pendant interrupts horizontal fields of red and blue. The symbolism of this design, if any, is unclear.


An unofficial flag of Coregos, featuring a stylized coral snake on a field of deep blue, is seen at least as often as the official flag once outside of San Esteban’s government district. Coregaños often refer to themselves as serpientes – “snakes” – for reasons that remain unclear.