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FLYING: Conveyor Belts

 

Flying home today from my ancestral homeland of Vermont to my adopted ancestral birthplace of Portland I  am amazed at the amount of conveyor belts at Newark Int’l Airport.

The airport is the most conveyor belt-dense region of the world of today, and it will only get more impressive according to the experts.  Eventually airports will have such extensive conveyor belt systems that every surface will be snaked back and forth with moving platforms littered with objects of all shape and size.  The conveyor belt will begin at your seat in the plane and convey you into the terminal once you land. Another conveyor belt will convey your luggage into your hand and perhaps a diet Coke because you will be parched from the dry air of the cabin. The conveyor belt will convey you to the bathroom and to the urinal where it will convey your fly open and convey your hand to the flushing device once finished. The conveyor belt will lead you to the parking garage and into your car, and then it will convey your car out of the garage, onto the highway, onto the correct exit ramp, through the sidestreets and into your driveway.  Meanwhile it will run very close and parallel to hundreds of other conveyor belts conveying hundreds of other cars which are themselves conveying perhaps thousands of half-sleeping travelers. The conveyor belt will convey you into your darkened house, into a warm shower, into the waiting bed and finally into a dream of a world completely foreign to war.

SHITTY PLANET: Puerto Rico

Note: I returned from Puerto Rico a couple days ago. I am working on a travel guide series for miserable people, and here is a selection from the Puerto Rico edition:

The Miserable Traveler’s Guide to Puerto Rico

The first thing to know about Puerto Rico is that it is technically a part of the United States. Of course Puerto Rico is “technically” a part of the U.S. like my girlfriend is “technically” related to me. If you are splitting hairs then yes, we are distantly related, but not to the point where it actually makes any difference legally or in day-to-day practice so get off my case, Mom and Dad. Puerto Rico and the U.S. have a similarly ambiguous but completely legitimate relationship.

Puerto Rico was conquered by the Spanish in 1508, who used it as the main base for their awesome Carribean adventures. There were many battles and pirate-related goings on after that, but records show that these times were less like ‘Pirates of the Carribean’ and more like genocide and painful diseases of the skin and mouth.

In 1898 the Spanish evacuated Puerto Rico when they realized what a bitch it would be to drive in any of the cities once cars were invented. The U.S. took over and tried to alleviate traffic congestion by making all the roads very narrow and unpleasant to drive on and hiring drunk pedestrians to dash out in front of oncoming vehicles so that people would be scared to drive. Also, they put 40% of Puerto Ricans in poverty so they couldn’t afford cars.

Puerto Rico is a U.S. Commonwealth, which is kind of like a state but worse. Thus Puerto Rico has everything that is terrible about the United States without any of the good things. For instance, there are two Starbucks on every corner but no hospitals. Actually there is one hospital, but it was being turned into a Starbucks when we were down there.

Puerto Rico has less Puerto Ricans than nearly half of U.S. states.

As a U.S. Commonwealth, Puerto Rico uses U.S. currency. This means that no one is going to be impressed if you run up to the cashier in a store, flip out a twenty dollar bill and wave it in front of his face while screaming “U.S. Currency! U.S. Currency! BOW BEFORE YOUR ONLY GOD!” Seriously, don’t do it. They will call the cops. (The Puerto Rican cops can’t deport you because it is America, but they can do other horrible things once they find that stash clenched between your buttocks.)

The official language of Puerto Rico is Broken English, the official bird is the cockroach and the official tree is prostitutes.

Puerto Rico is the New Jersey of U.S. Commonwealths.
What should you do in Puerto Rico?

San Juan
Nestled on the Northern coast of the island, San Juan is a little bit of the Old World right here in the New. That’s right, it is absolutely filthy.

Lazer Nightclub
Booty-shaking Reggaeton is all the rage here at Lazer Night Club. But the steamy scene is not for the faint of heart! Scantily-clad women have perfected a truly scandalous dance called “the dog” (el perro). Apparently, the name comes from the fact that the woman has sex with a dog on the dance floor.

El Morro Fort
This fort was built in 1539 by the Spanish. While the size of the fort is not very impressive compared to our modern office buildings it is very filthy.

Rumba Nightclub
Please God, not another nightclub.

My sister and me. Miserable.

CRAIGSLIST: “Approx 90% of the people in the Western Hemisphere will want to know more about Mira, Mistress of Destiny”

This is the start of an obsession, I think. My buddy Danny sent over this great ad from the “Writing Gigs” section of Portland’s Craigslist:

Mira, Mistress of Destiny

Reply to: the21writer@alumni.marymount.edu
Date: 2008-01-01, 3:05AM

I’ve written both a novel and a screenplay about a female Maya shaman who leads her people.
My search leads me to seek a media-contact person who can channel this product into an appropriate market. Approx 90% of the people in the Western Hemisphere will want to know more about Mira, Mistress of Destiny.

Skip the lazy, 50s B-movie title. (”Mistress of Destiny” sounds like a trashy fantasy novel landing just this side of pornography.) Skip “female Maya shaman” and the inevitable leopard-skin bikini, the sweat beading between perfect brown jungle tits. Skip the zanily optimistic “novel and a screenplay.” Skip the creepy “my search.” Skim right down to that last, key sentence which tells us “approx 90% of the people in the Western Hemisphere will want to know more about Mira, Mistress of Destiny.”

I mean, What? It’s a phrase so ungrounded in accepted reality as to make you think for a minute that everything you’ve ever known might have been exactly the opposite of how you knew it–the deranged thesis of some fucked up metaphysics. It just hangs way out there, so obviously begging to be attacked that it’s kind of suspicious. A little too easy, James Bond might say. For instance “90% of the Western Hemisphere” means that every single person in the Western Hemisphere who has the means to purchase Mira, Mistress of Destiny (or see the movie) will. Plus, substantial multi-national charity efforts will be need to be advanced to ensure that the poor in all countries–even those truly desperate poor with the flies on the face, the dirt floors and the threat of a lonely painful death all around–will read Mira, Mistress of Destiny. The U.N. will probably have to be enlisted to translate the book into 150,000 languages or whatever. Highly-trained Mira, Mistress of Destiny emergency response teams will need to be dispatched to indigenous peoples living in the deepest jungles and atop the highest peaks; copies of the book will have to be dropped from cargo planes onto remote Alaskan outposts; those homeless people that live in the subways underneath New York City will have to somehow be coaxed above ground and taught how to read, as well as be convinced that reading Mira, Mistress of Destiny would be a good use of their time. Our entire half of the world will come alive with movement and activity as furniture factories are switched over to churn out hundreds of thousands of copies of Mira, Mistress of Destiny, and governments halt their far-flung wars to divert the funds to making more books (finally!). There would, in short, have to be a New Mira, Mistress of Destiny World Order.

I of course Googled “Mira, mistress of destiny” after I read this. Mainly I wanted to know what kind of person cites “90% of the people of the Western Hemisphere” as the projected demographic for his “novel and screenplay,” then has second thoughts, begins to doubt his numbers, sees with a little shock what he has actually typed on the page and comes to the conclusion that adding “approximately” would be a good way to head off any potential criticism. The only thing I knew was that it had to be a man, because this was the twisted logic of a real dude.

The first thing I found out was that the dude had posted on a number of Craigslists. Each posting varied a bit, suggesting that he hadn’t simply cut-and-pasted the same ad. However each post carried that key bit of “Western Hemisphere” delusion. Orange County: “Approx. 90% of the people in the Western Hemisphere await ‘Mira, Mistress of Destiny’”; San Francisco: “Apporx. [sic] 90% of the people in this Western Hemisphere have an interest in this subject.”; Denver: “Approx 90% of the people in this Western Hemisphere will flock to see ‘Mira, Mistress of Destiny.’; New York: “Everyone in the Western Hemisphere is bound to flip ove ‘Mira, Mistress of Destiny.’” If nothing else, he was sure of his made up facts.

After tracking the dude through Craigslist, I finally found some identifying information. Actually, a surprising amount of identifying information in an equally surprising place: The comments section of an article titled “Penelope Cruz Crowned Hollywood’s New Style Queen” posted to www.aceshowbiz.com on December 14th, 2007. There was posted his address, 4317 N. 16th Street Arlington, VA 22207, a more detailed synopsis of Mira, Mistress of Destiny (”Think Kung Fu in Mesoamerica”), and his name: “Skeeze Whitlow”. This was posted by Skeeze (twice) on the 14th, perhaps after he finished learning about Penelope’s sexy, yet in the end romantic, couture.

Who is “Skeeze Whitlow”? According to his homepage, Whitlow sailed in the Merchant Marines, graduated from Marymount University and “believes life to be a good deal.” He is a writer of such stories as “Spaghetti Farm” (”Now, our spaghetti farm is as good as new. And we grow enough spaghetti to feed the world”) and “The Bong in the Binnacle” (”This here bong of his was nothing but a two foot length of cut fiberglass pipe with a smoking bowl attached, and a suction hole below the mouthpiece.”). Unfortunately there is no data on how these fared with what percentage of the Western Hemisphere.

But I keep coming back to that “90% of people…”  I can’t quite discredit this as fully as I’d like.  On some weird level it actually makes sense.  So I have a few questions for you, Skeeze Whitlow, if that is indeed your real name. Now I have your email address so I will ask you these questions. These questions deal mainly with the Eastern Hemisphere, with which you seem unfamiliar. They are mostly variations of this question: Don’t you think that the Eastern Hemisphere, once it becomes aware of the massive coordinated efforts to promote Mira, Mistress of Destiny underway in this half of the world, might also be interested in Mira, Mistress of Destiny? And don’t you think you will need someone comfortable in both hemispheres–equally adept at making pizzas in New York and in Italy while at the same time able to make Chinese pizzas in China? This is me. These are trans-hemispheric times, Skeeze, and they call for trans-hemispheric thinking. I think exactly in this way. The way I see it, if your “90% of people in the Western Hemisphere” numbers are anywhere near accurate, we can count on twice that many readers for Mira, Mistress of Destiny in the Eastern Hemisphere. I’ll take this on, Skeeze, and I won’t stop until every two-bit wallpaper factory in China is puking out paperbacks of Mira, Mistress of Destiny at a truly alarming rate. Hit me up: 802-683-9996.

VIDEO: Puerto Rico Adventure

I am still in Puerto Rico, and I made a video about it. Click here.

SEE YA: I am going to Puerto Rico

I am going to Puerto Rico with the family for a week starting today.  We like to have big, blowout fights in exotic locales where people don’t know the language so they can’t discern all of our embarrassing secrets.  I don’t know anything about this country(?) besides that it uses US dollars and is responsible for Reggaeton.  I will post blogs as Internet access allows.  I will try not to get kidnapped.

If anyone has suggestions for what to do in the country(?) of Puerto Rico, please do them in the comments section now!

VIDEO: How I will ask the woman I love to marry me (Part 2)

[Updated]

This is dumb:

How I will ask the woman I love to marry me (part 2) from Adrian Chen on Vimeo.

See Part 1

POLIDICKS: Actually, Mitt Romney kinda told the truth

Perhaps you have heard that GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney misled voters in his much-publicized speech addressing his Mormonism on Dec. 6th? To prove that Mormons are normal (i.e. not racist), Romney spoke about how he saw his father, former Michigan Governor George Romney, march with Martin Luther King Jr. in the sixties. Because that is what normal people did back then. My own parents marched constantly with prominent civil rights leaders in the sixties, and I know of no two people who are less racist and more normal, or who have worse knees.

But, as the NYT writes, politicians often have a way of taking a kernel of truth, watering it and sprinkling liberally upon it the Miracle Gro of exaggeration until it blossoms into a beautiful, knee-high lie. People have been accusing Mitt of lying about his father and MLK, saying that it is chronologically impossible for the two to have been in the same place at the same time. For his part, Mitt has offered up some BS defense about him talking only “figuratively” about his father “marching” with MLK. Yikes!

HOWEVER: Since I am a citizen-journalist, I have done some in-depth research instead of having sex for the past five months. And, though I cannot prove decisively that Mitt’s Dad, George, actually marched with MLK, I have found photographic evidence of him doing a lot of other cool stuff with him! Check it out:

Montgomery Alabama, 1958

From left to right: George Romney, Martin Luther King Jr.

When a young Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested in Birmingham for leading a peaceful protest against segregated public transit, George Romney insisted on accompanying him to jail and holding his hand the whole time. They shared the same booking number, bunk and prison hooch.

Washington D.C., 1963

George Romney had a dream, too.

Little known fact: George Romney proofread MLK’s renowned speech delivered at the March on Washington. In fact King had originally written the speech as “I have some dreams,” but Romney suggested the now-famous “I have a dream,” because it totally sounds better even though the speech mentions way more than one distinct dream. If you listen closely to the archival recordings, you can hear Romney’s vigorous “Amen, brother” whenever King makes an especially salient point.

Memphis, 1968

George Romney takes one for equal rights

When James Earle Ray took aim at Martin Luther King Jr. through the scope of his high-powered hunting rifle he gauged carefully the wind, distance and speed of his target. But forgot to take into account one crucial fact: George Romney. When Romney heard the shot ring out he leaped in front of King, taking the bullet in the heart. Unfortunately, James Earle Ray had packed another bullet.

The Moon, 1969

One small step for civil rights

Like all assassinations past, present and future, the King-Romney slaying was part of an elaborate CIA conspiracy to fake the moon landing. The CIA resurrected Martin Luther King and Mitt Romney using their technology and put the two best friends in charge of lighting. Born leaders, they excelled at the movie-making business and can today be found jointly directing movies under the pseudonym George Lucas. They still hold hands all the time.

PREVIEW: New Layout

I am home in Vermont and spent the last hour working on a mock-up of a new layout for WOT.  HINT:

FLYING: PDX to Newark

I am in the airport now, about to board Continental Flight 784 to Newark. (So if you terrorists are planning on blowing it up, don’t.  Also, terrorists, why are you reading my blog?  There is nothing for you here.  Go read Slate!)  I should be boarding right now, but instead I am finishing this blog post.  I just read about how JetBlue is starting to put the Internet in their airplanes.  That would be so amazing–blogging in the air!  It would be amazing for you guys too.  I’m sorry that you are missing out on all of the weird thoughts and actions that I do on the airplane.  Also, having the ability to check your email mid-flight would be very useful.  If you got an important email that needed action ASAP, then you could parachute to earth and deal with whatever came up.  Business people are truly the cyborg ninjas of our time.

Anyway, this was not my best post ever.  If only I could blog on the plane!!!