Monday, November 29, 2010

Goodbye Mr. Kershner

I've been struggling to find something to pad President's blog with, but some of the ideas I wanted to save to not write about on my own blog or I just haven't the time to flesh them out. In my search for something to talk about, I saw that Irvin Kershner had died over the weekend at age 87. I was tempted to save this for my blog as well, but seeing as how President is also a film buff and former amateur director, it seemed appropriate to write about it here.

Mr. Kershner has done a number of notable films such as The Flim-Flam Man and The Eyes of Laura Mars (not to be confused with Veronica Mars), but what makes him significant to me is that he also directed The Empire Strikes Back. For the average geek, and especially sci-fi geeks, this was a landmark film and possibly the best of the three of the original trilogy. While I personally declare that Star Wars: A New Hope (originally it was released as just "Star Wars" and without the "Chapter IV" on the opening scroll, but when it started raking in cash and a trilogy was inevitable, they tacked those onto later prints of the film) as my favorite film, for many reasons, I have to admit that Empire had a lot more going on and gave the characters more depth. No offense to Mr. Lucas, but the best thing that happened to the two films following Star Wars is that they were not directed by him. Since the characters were created by Lucas, I think it was good that someone from an outside viewpoint came in to breathe some extra life into the film. It is possible to be too close to a film and stifle it somewhat, as is possibly the case with the Prequels.

But I digress, this is supposed to be about Mr. Kershner. As far as sci-fi goes, he also did RoboCop II which was pretty good. It seemed like he was the man to go to for sequels. He also did a Bond film (Never Say Never Again) which was notable for the fact that it was the only Bond film not sanctioned by the franchise governing all the other Bond Films and triggered a number of legal battles. I didn't particularly care for the film, but it had a kick-ass, gadget encrusted motorcycle. You can read more here. He also directed the sequel to A Man Called Horse, the Return of a Man Called Horse. So much for ingenious sequel titles. Legend has it that viewing this film is what prompted George Lucas to hire Kershner for Empire.

It will be sad to see Mr. Kershner's face up on the wall of the Oscars during the traditional "People Who We Lost" slideshow. Sometimes that's the only way I find out people have died. I think I just found out that Bob Denver, who played Gilligan on Gilligan's Island, died about five years ago! Who knew?!

So I raise a virtual glass and toast Mr. Irvin Kershner. I thank him for making Empire not suck, and he will be missed.

April 29, 1923 - November 29, 2010

There were a lot of cool pics to choose from, but I liked this one best. See the others here.



Sunday, November 28, 2010

Excerpt from Atlantis by W.H. Auden

I first encountered this poem while reading Kelsey Grammer's autobiography, So Far..., more than a decade ago. For reasons best left unexplained it quickly became one of my favourite books. Apart from his own captivating (and oftentimes painful) history, Grammer shares an excerpt of a W.H. Auden poem--Atlantis, that moved me quite strongly. I'd like to share that passage with you today.

Assuming you beach at last
Near Atlantis, and begin
That terrible trek inland
Through squalid woods and frozen
Thundras where all are soon lost;
If, forsaken then, you stand,
Dismissal everywhere,
Stone and now, silence and air,
O remember the great dead
And honour the fate you are,
Travelling and tormented,
Dialectic and bizarre.

Stagger onward rejoicing;
And even then if, perhaps
Having actually got
To the last col, you collapse
With all Atlantis shining
Below you yet you cannot
Descend, you should still be proud
Even to have been allowed
Just to peep at Atlantis
In a poetic vision:
Give thanks and lie down in peace,
Having seen your salvation.

For the full poem, click here.

Stagger onward rejoicing. A philosophical outlook I've held ever since I read such a beautiful concept encapsulated in just three words.

Blogs I'm Liking Lately (pt. 2)


Shoveling in a Jo Storm: I dig her author interviews, and the random industry news that she shares from time to time.

Dangerous With a Pen: Mixed content, but always a delight to read. Give her horror flash fic a look while you're at it.


The Journey: Colene Murphy's blog is one that I check quite frequently due to her sparkling personality. I have no doubt that she will be published one day.

Nerdville Rhapsody: A consistently thoughtful blogger that I've enjoyed since I first stumbled upon her.

Kiersten Writes: Author of NYT Bestseller Paranormalcy, and an absolute gem of a blogger.

And in case you missed it the first time around, here's part one.

Friday, November 26, 2010

Publishing: Where the Boys Are Not

"It’s no secret that lots of women work in publishing. But just how many more women work in publishing than men? In PW’s recent Salary Survey (Aug. 2) one statistic stuck out: 85% of publishing employees with less than three years of experience are women. So, while everyone knows there are more women than men working in this field, that statistic raises the question: is an almost all-female publishing industry bad for business? Does it matter?"

Click HERE for the full article on Publishers Weekly.

So, what does everyone think? I'm still not quite sure where I sit with this.

Thursday, November 25, 2010

Oh, One More Thing (Massive List of Agents on Twitter)

I came across this listing of literary agents on Twitter.

Many recognizable faces, but I'm sure we can all find an agent or two that we aren't already following and bask in their knowledge and experience (and hopefully apply it in a meaningful way when the time comes).

For the Nerds, Atheists and Atheist Nerds

I came across a passage by Lawrence Krauss today that I thought too beautiful not to share:

Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics: You are all stardust. You couldn’t be here if stars hadn’t exploded, because the elements - the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution and for life - weren’t created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars, and the only way for them to get into your body is if those stars were kind enough to explode. So, forget God. The stars died so that you could be here today.

I'll see you guys sometime tomorrow, possibly with another review.

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Intoxicated Poop Segment: The Series

Since President is way too lazy to actually keep track of Roman numerals that aren't his own, I am abandoning the numbering theme altogether in lieu of pithy one-liners, but keeping the "Intoxicated Poop Segment" part as an homage to the series. Besides, numbers are stupid.

Unless we're talking about Tiger population. I love a clean segue. Researcher are finding more accurate and less expensive means to tracking the dwindling tiger population in India. Apparently, this involves cataloging a mix of tiger footprints and tiger poop.  Unfortunately the article doesn't explain HOW it helps, but maybe it's a poop volume thing. They must have some calculations that say tigers poop a particular amount per tiger and see how much is in an area. Sounds like a fun job. You people should be accustomed to sarcasm here, right?

Poop is probably more important than people realize, at least for the sciency types like biologists and anthropologists. They study poop to find out what people's diets were a thousand years ago by finding the seeds and bones they pooped out back then. The anthropologists of the future are going to be screwed because now all our poop goes into the sewer and then off to a water treatment plan or big pipe that spills out into the ocean. They won't have anything to study and will have to settle for rummaging through landfills.

Who really needs to know this stupid stuff, like what berries human ate along with their woolly mammoth meat? Now, if they could do something practical, like get the formula for some lost and forgotten recipe for beer or wine, it might be worth it. I just can't imagine anyone waking up one day and declaring, "I want to dedicate my life to studying poop!". Ok, maybe President, but not anybody else.

I just can't think of a caption that is worthy of this, but it would probably be LOLcat related.


Monday, November 22, 2010

Moes Before Hoes

First off, let me express my frustration at the lack of apparent guidelines for pluralizing abbreviated (or otherwise) words ending in "o". When I was typing the title, I originally typed "Mos" but that looked like it should be pronounced "moss" (like Mos Def...or eh moss) so I stuck in the "e". Now it makes me think of several stooges with bowl-cuts. I went to the arbiter of all truth, the World Wide Web, but even the general public can't seem to decide whether it's supposed to be "Bros before Hos" or "Bros before Hoes". No problem seems to exist for "Bros", thank god. By the way, should it actually be "Whos" with a silent "W" given that it's short for "whores"? Of course you can see the obvious problem right there, but it does present an interesting reinterpretation of "Horton Hears a Who". I think we can all agree that the English language is seriously phucked up and leave it at that...and I'm sure everyone in England really appreciates that even though we threw out everything else, we kept the term "English" for our language.

Ok, now we can actually get to what this post is actually about, which is really not that much more interesting, but this way it looks like a lot more information. Apparently, the term "mo" is the common colloquialism for "mustache". Who knew? I thought it was "stache", but maybe that's too 70's for the Gen Z crowd. So is the next generation going to go back to the beginning of the alphabet, or start with numbers. Whomever coined "Gen X" really wasn't thinking ahead. But I digress...I found out about the mo when I ran across an online add for Movember, which is an illness awareness "event" trying to bring more attention to men affected by cancer, most notably, prostate cancer. The idea is to start clean shaven on November 1st and grow a "mo" until the end of the month. While I whole-heartedly endorse the underlying idea of increased awareness, I frankly think choosing to grow mustache to indicate your support is rather asinine. I found about this by accident on November 22nd which is practically the end of the month. Hardly enough time to grow a mustache if I wanted to. So, anyone not knowing about this is only going to see what they normally see on a day to day basis, a variety of men in different stages of stacheyness. In effect, the gesture is saying absolutely nothing, because even if you DID know, you really wouldn't know if that guy on the bus was supporting the cause, or his girlfriend liked the way it tickles when he goes down on her. Maybe if you add that you have to dye the mustache yellow or purple to match those LIVESTRONG bracelets, then you'd have something. THAT would actually take some commitment and would send a message, and you'd only be confused at punk-rock concerts. (Ok maybe not a purple mustache, although it is strangely appropriate. Geez, the shit you find on the internet by accident)

Tell me that doesn't just jump out at you!
(yeah, not sure what is with the Seuss connections)

In the end (that was not a pun related to the last link...ok maybe it was), I think if you are going to do this sort of thing, you shouldn't pussy out by making a gesture people are statistically going to do anyway, make people own it by doing something outrageous. What better way to spread awareness by having people ask you, "Why the hell is your mustache turquoise?" prompting you to tell them about men's cancer. Perhaps not the best bar pickup line, but you could do worse.

So I challenge you Movember Foundation to take more radical steps in your mo-growing mandate. Let's see some REAL commitment...and send out free paste-on mustaches to those testosterone-weaker dudes who can't grow one themselves, like President Wishnack. Of course, he could just cut some of that mane of his off and paste it under his nose.




Of course my real fear is that women will grow mustaches in support and I really can't get behind that.

Seriously women, don't do it.

Seriously.


Dear Ungrateful Poop Enthusiasts

I'm sure many of you regulars to this blog are bitching, as most blog readers do, about the lack of new posts by the President. Well, once again he is without internet in spite of actually paying for for it, due to the inability of a particular person, whose name isn't nomiS spelled backwards, to correctly set up the friggin router that Comcast gave them. Obviously President is more interested in his new shoe fetish than bringing you new posts, or else he'd take care of it himself, although between you and me, unless the router has a glue-gun or suppository on it, I don't think he could figure it out either.

On a side note, the first post that comes up when doing a search for "anal" on this blog is titled "My First Love". Yeah, that pretty much sums up President.

So, until he is back on the airwaves, you'll have to put up with my random posts, which I know due to the complete lack of commentary or songs written about me, you don't care to read. Bastards. Most likely the posts will come out at 2:00 pm or random times in the afternoon when I get bored of answering stupid questions for customers at work. Also, they are likely to come out every other day. I have a life you know. Not a good one, but I have to drink sometime.

I hope you appreciate this you ungrateful wankers, but I know you won't.

President, where the f--k are my new tennis shoes you owe me?! Jerk.

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Review: Afterschool Charisma Vol. 1 by Kumiko Suekane


Publishers Weekly Summary

With a title right out of a romance manga and a premise that sounds like Clone High, at first glance Afterschool Charisma doesn't seem promising. But that first impression is most emphatically wrong. Suekane's story of a school full of cloned historical geniuses and a very ordinary boy who observes them is another success for Viz's experimental manga line.

Cloned for undisclosed and morally dubious reasons, the students include not only the great and the good (Mozart, Marie Curie, Elizabeth I) but also the world-shatteringly brilliant and driven of every stripe (Napoleon, the infamous Dowager Empress Cixi, Hitler). But locking would-be world leaders up in a boarding school and disappearing the more rebellious students to "another school" works about as well as you might expect. 

Unlikely alliances and conspiracies form--Napoleon will hardly go tamely to his fate, for example, and Sigmund Freud revels in using his cynical psychological insight to be the perfect power behind the throne. Suekane's art is all clean lines and expressive faces, even if the characters look disconcertingly little like their historical counterparts. Tensely plotted and sparkling with sharp dialogue, the story succeeds by not underestimating the intelligence of teenagers, in both its characters and its readers.

First Impressions

Shiro Kamiya, unlike all of his classmates, is not a famous historical clone. Although his admittance to St. Kleio Academy is left unexplained, the reader can safely presume that he was granted admission on account of being the son of Dr. Kamiya, the resident professor. This explanation, however, is immediately suspect and the reader is soon confronted with the reality that things are not always as they seem at the academy.

Shiro's new classmates are a diverse group of historical figures. In this first volume the main cast is made up of: Marie Curie, Napoleon Bonaparte, IkkyuFlorence Nightingale, Mozart, Elizabeth I, and the always delightful Sigmund Freud. Secondary characters include: Einstein, Joan of ArcHitler and Rasputin, among others.

As one might expect, there are numerous existential questions for the clones to grapple with. One recurring fear that the clones share is the notion of destiny--namely, whether or not they'll end up identical to their namesake. This pressure is exacerbated by the teachers who try their best to ensure that the clones turn out exactly like the originals. Certain characters, like Marie Curie, find themselves conflicted over the subject of their passion. Historical Marie Curie was a noted chemist and physicist; clone Marie Curie envies Mozart and wishes that she too could study music. 

To add to the mix, clone Kennedy, a seemingly perfect copy of the original JFK is quickly assassinated after announcing his intention to run for president, further blurring the line between destiny and free will in the minds of each and every clone of the academy.

On a tangent, I must say that Hitler is by far one of the most interesting characters of Afterschool Charisma. Unlike his predeccessor, he is shy, reserved and always with a smile on his face. Like many of the clones, he carries around a small figurine of Dolly (the first sheep successfully cloned) which he cherishes and holds onto religiously. What makes Hitler so distinct in the manga is his bond with Shiro. Both Hitler and Shiro are regarded as rejects; Shiro is outcasted for being a non-clone, accountable to no destiny other than his own, while Hitler is hated purely for the crimes of his namesake. To add to the complexity, Hitler accepts his rejection as a sign of deserved punishment for the sins of his original model. Now there's a story with endless possibilities!

Hitler: Reserved Dolly carrying cutie and, oddly enough, a fan favourite.

Final Thoughts

Afterschool Charisma is a well developed seinen manga, drawn semi realistically and avoiding the garish style that befalls many of its contemporaries. It is distinguishable by its interesting premise, dark undertones, diverse cast and snappy dialogue.

Oh, and heaving bosoms. Lots of them. In fact, boobs are the catalyst for many of the more comical moments of this manga, including my all time favourite scene. After Freud is caught peeking in on the girls in the dressing room (who are comparing the size of their breasts--this is a manga after all), he protests:

"Ultimately, the sex drive is what powers our libido, man's instinctive energy. Essentially, what happened just now enabled me to reach the genital phase, averting sexual deviance! Isn't that wonderful? Now if we look at what happened from the reverse perspective, examining the female subjects' activities, their own progress towards the genital phase..."

Classic Freud.

Afterschool Charisma Vol. 2 is released January 2011. Don't be surprised if you see subsequent reviews of this manga. 

Saturday, November 20, 2010

Review: The Cutting Room by Louise Welsh




















(Recommended to me by a good friend (Scottish photographer and Dewar award winner Alex Boyd

Product Summary

When Rilke, a dissolute and promiscuous auctioneer, comes upon a hidden collection of seemingly violent photographs, he feels compelled to unearth more about the deceased owner who coveted them. What follows is a compulsive journey of discovery, decadence, and deviousness that leads Rilke into a dark underworld of transvestite clubs, seedy bars, and porn shops. In this hidden city haunted by a host of vividly drawn characters, Rilke comes face to face with the dark desires and illicit urges that lurk behind even the most respectable facades.

First Impressions

The Cutting Room, debut novel of Scottish writer Louise Welsh, is by far one of the most beautiful works of modern prose I've ever encountered. But I don't expect you to take my word for it. Let me offer up three brief passages to support my claim:

"I missed the street hawkers and book barrows of Paddy's Market's prime, shook my head at what passed for quality, and pitied youth. The best was not yet to come. It had vanished for ever."

"Still, impressed as I was, I did notice an absence. Usually you get a feel for the person who used to live in the house you're clearing - little things, style, a mode of living. You find photographs, souvenirs and keepsakes. Their books reveal interests, and inside their books are clues: tickets for a train taken every day; cinema stubs; theatre programmes; letters. I've found pressed flowers, leaflets from Alcoholics Anonymous, birthday cards, the bottle behind the wardrobe, love notes, cruel letters from the bank, baby's curls, the leash of a dog long dead, neglected urns, whips, library books years overdue, size-twelve stilettos in a bachelor's apartment. Of Mr McKindless I was no wiser by the end of the day than I'd been at the beginning. There was a sterility to the collection, an almost self-conscious expense about the dead man's possessions. Everything said: I am a very rich man; nothing more."

"Pornography is a versatile industry, it moves with the times. When the first caveman discovered he could paint on walls, using dyes fashioned from earth and ash, another dirty little Homo erectus saw the chance to draw a bare naked lady."

Exquisite, isn't it? This book is an absolute delight to read, from cover to cover. Aspiring authors should also take note because The Cutting Room is one of the finest specimens of the "show, don't tell" literary rule. Much is revealed not by the author's competent command of language, but by the actions of her characters. Rilke in particular has a great deal of back story never explained, yet clear as day, thanks to Welsh's illustrative example of this literary principle.

While classified as a thriller, I shy away from describing The Cutting Room as such; those looking for a traditional thriller will undoubtedly be stupefied at the leisurely pace of the novel. This is not a cliffhanger-at-the-end-of-every-chapter sort of thriller, constantly driving the plot forward, rather it is more of a sedate thriller--a sleeper thriller if you will, driven by a single question.

Right before the denouement there is a marked increase in intensity and consequence. When the thrill does arrive it arrives suddenly, like an unexpected blow to the face towards the end of the novel. While not unbelievable, I'm still not sure where I stand with such a dramatic change so late in the text and I wouldn't be surprised if this temporary departure was regarded as problematic by some readers. Cautionary comment aside, this novel ends well. 

Final Thoughts

Some authors are great storytellers. Others make up for their lack of ability with beautiful prose (look no further than to some prominent examples of recent literary fiction). Louise Welsh is one of the select few today capable of weaving spellbinding plot and literary prowess together under one cover, exceeding all of my expectations of a debut novel.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

With a V

in the third grade i won the spelling bee by spelling "calendar". the same year i nearly failed a written report on pandas for wrongfully using an apostrophe in "its" as in "the possession of a panda" versus the short form of "it is".

i've never been excellent at spelling, but i've never been very bad at it. at times, i've been one of few people to spell "definitely" correctly, but i've also been known to misspell words like "exercise" and i've never been the go-to guy for hard science-related words.

but, for whatever reason, i cannot stand to see spelling errors. if there have been spelling mistakes on this blog (there have been many), you can safely assume i wrote the post without re-reading it.

i am, unfortunately, the guy who will ask the cashier if he knows it's not spelled "bagles" and if he plans to change it or just leave it as is.

it gets out of hand, really. it makes me feel a lot more rude than i believe i am. but it's difficult for me to see signs that read, "please leave packige by door" without saying anything about it. i can't help it. i want them to miss their packige badly.

the worst part is when she texts, "your cute" and all i can think about is how she should've said "you're" because even though "cute" could be something i possess, and therefore a noun, i'm pretty sure it's a your/you're mistake.

later on, she'll say, "your an asshole" because it's the inevitable end to "cute" and i will chuckle at her lack of spelling skill. and then i'll feel like an asshole and perhaps she will chuckle, too.

i hate caring about spelling.

it's everywhere and no one seems to care. in fact, it's almost socially awkward to point out incorrectly spelled words unless they're spelled in a manner that ends up sounding sexual in some way.

i just think if you're going to make a warning post that uses the word "absolutely" you shouldn't spell it "absolutly" because when you do, everything seems so much less absolute. it forces my eyes and mind to focus on the mistake rather than whatever problem the sign is meant to warn me of.

and, most selfishly, when you make a spelling mistake i notice it and feel like a jerk for doing so. in that way, you're being rude.

your rude, even.

I've Completed NaNoWriMo AND My 1st Draft Manuscript!

My first ever attempt at NaNoWriMo has ended in success twelve days ahead of schedule! 50,127 words (an average of 2785 words per day) has brought my already underway WIP to a close. Yes, not only is this the end of my first NaNoWriMo, but it also marks the end of my first draft manuscript! Nearly a year ago I told myself that I would hammer out the first draft by the following November. I'm happy to report that I've kept true to my promise.

There are plot holes, characters in need of a makeover, and I'm pretty sure I switched from 1st person to 3rd person (and back again) a couple of times...but all of that is irrelevant at this moment because I WROTE A BOOK. Besides, all of that can be hammered out in the hell that is 2011 edits!

So what does this mean for me? Well for one I'll be far more consistent with blogging again, now that the dreaded behemoth is slain. Secondly, I'll have the time to finish up those four or five half completed reviews that I've been meaning to share with you all. Lastly, I'll actually have the time to write my essays for Rome & Early Christianity.

I refuse to even peak at my manuscript all of December, and start fresh in the new year. Wish me luck?

And to all of my writing buddies that are still reaching for that 50k...



Get to it.

One of the Many Losses

there are things current and future teens will never get to experience. there are many things.

but, worst of all, teenagers will never understand a staple part of my angsty life: dropping televisions from large buildings and watching them float silently toward the ground-- spinning in a quiet slow motion-- and waiting for that brilliant boom that can only be created by gravity, cement, and a cathode ray tube.

it is a very unique sort of pop that is generally followed by an uncontrollable maniacal laugh.

that pop was, at times, what made things okay during my teenage years of rebellion and knowing everything in the world. that pop was courtesy of a vacuum created by the cathode ray tube inside: it was a stress-relieving implosion.



if you have never dropped a tv from a four story parking garage or abandoned bowling alley, you likely have had times when it was difficult to communicate with me. you and i are on different wavelengths. i cannot express to you the feeling of watching something so typically symbolic of america's culture fall to its shattery death during the days of puberty. at times, when i found my friends upset, i would suggest we throw a tv off a building. and they would laugh, but i was serious.

and today's teens will never experience this. for one, monitors and televisions are no longer made with cathode ray tubes and can no longer boom-pop. also, televisions don't hold the same menacing power over society that they used to and there is nothing particularly freeing about destroying one.

plus, something about how very heavy the old televisions were related to the pay-off of dropping it after carrying it several flights of stairs.

once, when i was in high school, a few of us were making a music video to the beatles' maxwell's silver hammer and we were told explicitly that death could never be shown. if you know the song, you know death is more or less the chorus. but we got around it by filming a series of destructive metaphors-- like bees being eaten by ants, balloons popping, and a large television imploding.

i'm mostly sure that we used the assignment as an excuse to create chaos while calling it homework, but sometimes that's okay, too.

we had spidermanned up the side of an abandoned bowling alley and were pulling the television by rope while mathias (our camera man) waited below for the drop. and you should know it is amazingly difficult to hoist a 32" television three floors up. it took tim and me together to accomplish.

but just as soon as the tv was on the roof, the crimefighters arrived.

dununununununuh!

back then tim and i ran into the police on a weekly basis-- half the time it was because we were smoking weed in obvious places like the roof-top of an elementary school, and half the time it was because neighbors mistook hacky sacking for "throwing rocks at houses". but, there was no way we were going to call our tv-drop quits just because the cops came-- not after the sweaty battle of getting it high enough to drop. so we motioned for mathias to roll camera and let the tv fall to its imploding demise.

a word of advice for any of you looking to experience the sound of a television popping: police officers tend to mistake the pop for a gunshot and will react accordingly.

"drop your weapon and get down on the ground!" the first cop shouted at mathias.

"it's not a weapon," he cried, "it's my camera!"

"DROP YOU WEAPON AND GET DOWN ON THE GROUND!" the cop repeated, while pushing his own weapon forward.

mathias placed the camera down gently and proceeded to lay on his stomach while panicking inside. it should be mentioned that out of the three of us, mathias was likely the worst candidate for things like having a cop aiming a gun at his face. he was a very timid guy with very little cop-related experience and had an underlying fear that one mistake would have him deported back to canada.

while the first cop proceeded to push mathias about and question who was firing shots, the second cop sat me and tim down for a chat.

"so what's going on here?" he asked.

"we're filming a music video," tim said.

"we got a report that the two of you were up there stealing satellites."

"huh," i said, "no. we weren't doing that at all."

"what were you doing up there?" he continued.

"we were dropping a television off of the roof," tim said, "it's for our literature class. we have to film a music video and we can't show death."

"oh," he said, "well, you are aware that you can't just throw electronics off of roofs regardless? that is, technically, littering."

if i had a dollar for every time a cop tried to pin the technical crime of LITTERING on me, i'd have two dollars. it's like their second favorite crime. second only to TRESPASSING.

"we have a broom," tim said, "we were going to clean it up after we got the shot."

it's true: we did have a broom. and that broom saved us from a ticket.

not long after we'd explained the situation to our cop, mathias came stumbling from around the corner-- being pushed along by his cop-- and we snickered a little. watching your friend get wrongfully manhandled by a law enforcer isn't exactly funny, but it's one of those things you snicker at anyway. i think tim and i both wished we had been the one to deal with the more violent cop-- the two of us were much better at talking with police officers given how frequently we had to.

the two cops had a small chat with each other before having a small chat with us.

"so," the first cop said, "you guys do know why we acted the way we did, right? i mean, you understand that we thought there was gunfire-- so, you know, we had the right to treat you like we did."

mathias just kept his head down. tim and i smiled, enjoying the experience of a cop worrying we might call what they had done Unjust.



the music video caused a few more cop run-ins, kyle's shattered windshield, and a good amount of laughs at school. but we got an A. overall, it was a great adventure during some wonderfully immature days.

but to bring it back to televisions-- if i may-- tim and i continued to make an event out of exploding tv's on days we were feeling low. we'd film most of it, too. in fact, later on in my college years, i wound up forced to use a lot of it as b-roll in a last-minute student documentary. and eventually, a friend told us both about a website where you could pick up free television sets. and not just tv's, but fridges, chairs, and even toilets.

it was a magical website called craigslist.

in some ways, i feel like my love for throwing television sets from buildings lead me out of the stressful days of puberty and into a world of responsibility. it lead me to craigslist which lead me to college and my first jobs in san francisco. in fact, craigslist has always been the way i've found apartments, actors for short films, computers, furniture, and even good old fashioned entertainment.

and no teenagers will ever experience that the way i have. because televisions and computer monitors no longer have a cathode ray tube and no longer pop.

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

intoxicated poop segment: part xcvi

"Before the revolution of 1917 the quality of lavatories in Russia was the best of the world," Vladimir Moksunov, head of the Russian association of lavatory manufacturers, told reporters.

"But now we do not even have official regulations for the quality of public lavatories except a document from 1972 that talks about cesspits," he said, adding that Moscow had a "crying need for modern lavatories".

[read more]
i love that there is essentially a President of the Toilets and that he takes his job seriously. vladimir moksunov is also trying to name april 9th a national day for toilet awareness in russia.

i'm curious to see what plans moksonov has to help russia rebirth as the world's toilet power-- i mean 1917 is quite a ways into the past-- and i don't know that our toilets today need much more improvement.

but i will say my favorite country to watch try and be the best is russia because they don't hide it when they try-- they are very clear about their goals. the fight for the moon, the color tv, the world's best toilets...

remember when gorbachev took off his shoe and banged it on the podium while shouting, "we will bury you!"-- that's the kinda stuff i like seeing.

and in other poo-laced news, i found this sign in our lobby:

i like that the author used brown duct tape. that's a nice touch.

i hope that wasn't elton.

And I Think it's Gonna be a Long Long Time

carmen the cat is still lounging about. and now we've taken in elton the dog while a friend removes the bed bugs from his apartment.

it's kind of nice to have a dog around. but between elton and carmen, i really need to watch where i step-- they're both about mid-calf height and skitter about during dark hours. i think i've already stepped on elton twice.

this reminds me of that story with the man and the loud family.

he goes to the therapist complaining that his house is always so loud and begging for a solution. the therapist recommends moving in a dog.

the next week, the man comes back complaining even more. the dog only made things louder. so the therapist recommends adopting a goat.

the man brings in a goat and things get even worse. now there is more than the chatter of his family and barking of his dog-- there's bleeting, too.

anyway, i think the story continues like this until the man has a small indoor petting zoo and has nearly lost his mind.

the final day, the man goes to his therapist and seems ready to die. he tells the therapist that none of the suggestions have worked-- not even the giraffe and not even the small zebra. the therapist looks at the man and calmly says, "now remove all of the animals."

and the next week the man comes back to tell his therapist how quiet the house has become.

and blah, blah, blah.

our house isn't loud, but it's just a bit overcrowded. we started with three of us and a cat, and then added a fourth (without much of my knowing), and now elton the dog.

this calls for a trip outdoors.

i think i've got everything. i'll call you later.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Old but Relevant Issues

this story is about only one person and because i have 471 facebook friends the odds are that it isn't you.

sometimes your opinions were a lot like the last few pieces of an ikea desk: immediately useless and only there to make me doubt myself.

it started with you promoting the impossible, promising a hidden world if only we pushed the limits. i liked that-- i liked finding new truths by testing old rules-- but it wasn't what i had been promised.

you were a shallow pool of water, beckoning to me, flaunting the tasty idea of jumping from a two-story building and diving head-first into your warm waters.

i remember standing on the edge of that building thinking about a million reasons why this couldn't be done and why it shouldn't be done.

but ultimately, all i saw was the adventure and your waters.

so i jumped.

and during that four second fall, the wind threw itself through my hair and pulled at my face, almost as if it were trying to stop me from going too fast. i should've known i was plummeting toward a horrible demise, but something about the air and the speed made me feel just as though i were flying.

but i was definitely falling. i was falling quick.

and when your warm waters greeted me, it was not long before the cement bottom of your shallow pool greeted me as well. except that bottom was not nearly as friendly as the top had appeared.

i was hurt bad.

and i never thought this would happen to me.

but after it all, i owe you a thank you. this is not a thank you for the times i thought i was flying but was really being pulled to a horrible end and this is not a thank you for allowing me to be graced by your shimmery, dishonest, manipulative waters.

no. but this is a thank you-- a better thank you-- nonetheless.

i thank you for creating such a believable mirage with such an unbelievable punishment that i have since learned to dip my feet in pools of water to see if they might be safe before i dive in head-first. it took a long fall and cranial damage for me to learn that i can't just go after every thing that looks exciting-- that sometimes exciting is not nearly reliable or accommodating.

i thank you for painfully teaching me to stop acting on my impulses and i thank you for reminding me that even good swimmers cannot dive into shallow pools without getting hurt.

but know if i ever run into you and your shallow waters, there will be no dives or talk of dives. no. i will use you like any shallow pool should be used: as a very pretty toilet.

To People of My Demographic

i'm starting to feel like THE ECONOMY is just a really cheap excuse for lazy people to be lazier and selfish people to be selfish...er.

i don't understand any of it. this should be every poorman's dream.

are we forgetting that apartment prices have dropped drastically in the recent years? if anything, i feel like i've moved up the social ladder because of the economic scare. sure some rich folk downgraded which caused some poor folk to move back home, but let's not ignore that the rich folks' move created vacancies in great apartments which were then forced to lower their prices in order to get new tenants.

and suddenly we're all competing for jobs with people fifteen years older and ten times as experienced-- and it's scary. but guess who gets the job? it's the young, eager-minded, easy to train rather than untrain. it's an expensive waste of time to hire the man with twelve years experience if it just means you'll have to spend energy erasing what his twelve years have taught him.

to be in your twenties right now is a brilliant thing.

and despite all of that, people are still blaming THE ECONOMY for their lack of job or their extra dick-like attitudes.

how am i supposed to be polite in this economy‽

and now it's gift cards, too.

in this economy, how can we be spending money on anyone but ourselves? that would surely be foolish. and i will be damned if i'm expected to buy someone a gift card without getting something like a free scoop of ice cream at the same time.

awesome.

in ben & jerry's words: it give is good, but to get is gooder.

it's all just selfish and lazy.

look, when shit goes down, opportunities arise. i understand that's what some would call cliche or hopelessly optimistic, but i've lived most of my life with that in mind and while i may not have much to show for it i am certainly not as fucked as everyone who relies on THE ECONOMY as a scapegoat.

i mean is this seriously where we are? companies actually have to coax us into buying gifts for friends by offering a personal incentive beyond making the friend happy.

how about this: if you see me walking down the street, high-five me and introduce yourself, i will give you $2. you can ride the muni for four hours, or you can buy a double cheeseburger-- it's up to you.

that's for free. for free and for fun. there is no economic scheme here. i'd just like to see more people high-fiving strangers and worrying less about their financial well-being. this is a two in one.

limit one per stranger.

Her wardrobe malfunctions by Jake Gyllenhaal?

Jake Gyllenhaal causes Anne Hathaway to have wardrobe malfunctions!

Anne Hathaway
OMG..

"I have come to realize that if you put me in a room with Jake Gyllenhaal, my bbrra has a natural eject button."

Anne Hathaway jokes that her bbrra comes undone just by being in the same film scene as Jake Gyllenhaal, and she's got the evidence to prove it—her top came off in 2005 in Brokeback Mountain and she's bbrraless and then some in Love and Other Drugs, out next month.

Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal talked about their sxy scenes at a question and answer session for their latest film last night in New York. In the video posted by a fan on YouTube, Jake explains that having been in their birthday suits before made things easier the second time around.

"On a serious note I think we inherently as a result of having been nakd we were comfortable with each other and it led into this."

OMG

:)

Her wardrobe malfunctions by Jake Gyllenhaal?

Jake Gyllenhaal causes Anne Hathaway to have wardrobe malfunctions!

Anne Hathaway
OMG..

"I have come to realize that if you put me in a room with Jake Gyllenhaal, my bbrra has a natural eject button."

Anne Hathaway jokes that her bbrra comes undone just by being in the same film scene as Jake Gyllenhaal, and she's got the evidence to prove it—her top came off in 2005 in Brokeback Mountain and she's bbrraless and then some in Love and Other Drugs, out next month.

Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal talked about their sxy scenes at a question and answer session for their latest film last night in New York. In the video posted by a fan on YouTube, Jake explains that having been in their birthday suits before made things easier the second time around.

"On a serious note I think we inherently as a result of having been nakd we were comfortable with each other and it led into this."

OMG

:)

Monday, November 15, 2010

Getting Hot & Looking Cool

some people would refer to my enjoying constant chaos as a major inconvenience. and i have been told that my habit of quitting jobs over moral issues makes me my own worst enemy. but i like to think of it all as staying true to myself and keeping mentally agile. i can't help that i enjoy a bit of an unexpected ride.

that's not the point.

my latest chaotic experience took place at the shoe store, during closing, and for once was not my fault. it was an odd combination of things and quite... humbling.

what most people underestimate is exactly how tiring closing a shoe store can be. between locating missing shoes, reorganizing their boxes, stacking them in order, and generally running up and down stairs, you will break more than a light sweat.

and i think i've mentioned before that if i get too hot, my nose decides to spray blood everywhere for a few hours. it's one of the many things that make me so cool: getting a bloody nose because it's over 70 degrees.

that alone would've been a somewhat humbling experience-- especially because i'm still new to the job-- but bleeding onto a pair of sequenced coach slip-ons made it slightly worse.

if you've ever found yourself running around pouring blood from your face, you know the panic-dance; the hope that someone will throw you a box of kleenex, or that the blood will at least avoid landing on anything expensive.

it's all very difficult when in the women's shoe section. everything is expensive and there are no kleenex nearby.

i found myself tearing apart a shoebox to steal the cheap tissue from inside. it was gucci, which made me laugh a little. but having to shove it up my nose in front of my new coworkers made my laugh end pretty quickly.

and that is how i closed the store: with gucci wrapping paper in my nose and blood on my shirt. i would've liked to have gone to the bathroom to clean up, but when my nose bleeds it can last over an hour. and at the shoe store no one goes home until we, as a team, have completed everything. it's sort of like a failed communist idea.

the worst of it is they probably all now think i'm a cokehead and have no idea i'm only an alcoholic.

though, looking back, i came into work with a nice black eye on my second day at the credit card concierge job-- so maybe i just have a knack for embarrassing beginnings.

Dear Steve Wishnack

the other day, someone found my blog by googling "president steven wishnack". and i'm not sure why, but i decided to see what else google had to say about me. i've googled me before-- everyone has-- but i hadn't recently.

"president steven wishnack" brought mostly what i had expected. this blog, my facebook, a few mentions of things i'd done in the past...

and it brought you-- the president of think & do-- steve wishnack.

steve wishnack: center

i remember when i was seventeen, i'd discovered that you existed and i called you up to debate about who was better at being steven wishnack and who should have to change their name. i asked you about whether or not you had only one mattress on your bed because i had two. and then you hung up.

i'd even written a documentary called steven wishnack vs. steven wishnack in which i planned to prove you were not as good at steven wishnacking as i was. i managed to woo the thomas kinkade gallery into allowing me to film at their elegant location. but like many projects i had when i was seventeen, it was never started completed.

i'd mostly forgotten about all of that till googling myself. and when i found that the majority the internet's findings were me and not you, i started to wonder if that ever irritated you. that the same punk kid who prank called you nearly ten years ago is now just as immature but higher ranked online.

even if you search "steven wishnack" without "president" i am still much more apparent than you. and, believe me, this letter/blog post is going to make me rank even higher.

i wonder if that ever affects your business-- even on a comical level.

anyway, i am not writing to you to remind you that i'm a better steven wishnack, but rather to inform you of something else i discovered via google and our name.

in descending order, our full name brings my internet movie database profile, then gather.com, then my actual blog, and then your company website.

i'm surprised my one movie credit landed me on imdb.com, but that's beside the point.

what gets me-- and should get you-- is that i deleted my account from gather.com. i deleted it for several reasons:

1. the site tried to combine blogging with social networking and mostly sucked.
2. if you googled our name, gather.com would show up before anything else either of us had created.

but there it was: second on the list of steven wishnack findings.


and you may notice gather's title being "group or member unavailable" due to the deletion of my account. but what you may not notice is that gather.com has decided, for reasons beyond me, that if our name will no longer lead visitors to my writings they will instead lead everyone to david amber's "obamasucks.gather.com".

i don't think obama sucks. and i don't like my name being associated with someone who does. i mean, i don't think he's the most amazing man in the world and i don't think his being elected has magically Changed america-- i would never own a blog called obamarules.gather.com-- but i still dislike the advertisement david ambers' obamasucks blog is getting from our name.

i've written to gather.com, expressing i'd like them to fix the problem and now i'm writing to you for help. one steven wishnack to another, i ask you to send gather a letter, too.

unless you hate obama, in which case i guess fair is fair.

but if you're like me-- and i think you may be-- give me a hand here. let's unite as a duo of steven wishnacks and remove obamasucks from the list of things relevant to you and i. i need your help on this one: you're a ceo. i'm just a drunk who googles himself.

this can be steven wishnack and steven wishnack versus david ambers. david ambers who is self-described as "The Man", "Educated", and "Loveful"; david ambers who has zero blog posts and can't wait for the winter to come and his allergies to go.

let's take him down.

steven wishnackingly,
president wishnack

p.s. i still think my description is better than yours. the legend, the rumor, the menace... rather than 25 year career as an educator, trainer and business consultant.

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Great Holiday Expectations for E-Readers


This could be the holiday season that American shoppers and e-readers are properly introduced.
E-readers will be widely available at stores like TargetBest Buy and Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest retailer, and offered at prices that make sense for Christmas gifts — less than $150.
Publishers and booksellers are expecting that instead of giving your mother a new Nicholas Sparks novel or your father a David Baldacci thriller in the hardcovers that traditionally fly off the shelves and into wrapping paper at this time of year, you might elect to convert them to e-reading.
“This is the tipping-point season for e-readers, there’s no question,” said Peter Hildick-Smith, president of the Codex Group, a book market research company. “A lot more books are going to be sold in e-book format. It also means that a lot fewer people are going to be shopping in bookstores.”
Only a small slice of the book-buying public has bought an e-reader. About nine million devices are in circulation in the United States, according to Forrester Research.
That could jump in the coming weeks as consumers begin their holiday shopping, analysts predict. According to Forrester, at least 10.3 million e-readers could be in circulation by the end of the year.
And many of them will be bought for other people. Research from Simba Information, which provides data and advice to publishers, has shown that 1 in 5 of those who own a Kindle, Amazon’s dedicated e-reader, received it as a gift.
In a recent Consumer Reports poll, 10 percent of the adults surveyed said they planned to give an e-reader as a gift this year, up from 4 percent in 2009.
That has corresponded with an increase in e-book sales. Two years ago, publishers said that sales of e-books constituted 1 percent of total book sales, but the figure is now closer to 9 or 10 percent.
A year ago, the Kindle was the dominant force in e-readers, and it remains so. But since then, the Nook from Barnes & Noble and the iPad from Apple have emerged as major competitors.
Last month, Barnes & Noble introduced a color version of the Nook for $249; there is also the Kobo, which is sold at Borders and Wal-Mart, and dozens of other e-readers, including a $100 tablet offered on Walgreens.com.
“Last year, when you think of the e-reader category, it was Nook and Kindle and Sony, but primarily Nook and Kindle if you look at the sales,” said William Lynch, chief executive of Barnes & Noble. “The difference this year is, there’s a whole lot more choice.”
Maybe too much, said Michael Norris, a senior analyst for Simba Information. “I don’t think that the U.S. market can support 50 or 60 e-readers,” he said, adding that he had lost count of all the current models.
James McQuivey, an analyst for Forrester Research, predicted that the glut of e-readers would confuse consumers.
“The range of choices is actually going to be perplexing,” Mr. McQuivey said. “And when that happens, consumers go back to the tried-and-true brands that have trust and good word of mouth.”
Weeks before the holiday season officially begins, the promotional blitz by retailers has already begun. On Amazon.com, a prominent homepage ad informs shoppers about the latest versions of the Kindle, for $139 and $189.
At the Borders Store at Columbus Circle in Manhattan, a bright red table near the front entrance features an assortment of readers, among them the Aluratek Libre e-reader ($100) and the Cruz Reader from Velocity Micro ($170).
Barnes & Noble has added sleek white “boutiques” in its stores, dedicated to showcasing the Nook. A Barnes & Noble in Greenwich Village has featured an enormous freestanding poster above the store entrance, with window displays full of brochures for the Nook Color and protective cases for the device, in hot pink, black and turquoise.
Inside the store on a recent evening, Jonathan Goodman, a writer in a gray trench coat, inspected a Nook e-reader and peppered a saleswoman with questions about price, book selection and service, in case the device broke down.
“There are just so many to choose from,” Mr. Goodman said, sounding weary. “But at this point, buying one feels inevitable.”
Amazon, which is planning a television advertising campaign throughout the holiday season, has expanded its reach to brick-and-mortar stores as well. During the holiday season last year, the Kindle was available only on Amazon.com; now it is sold at several national chains.
“Customers can walk into a Target, into a Best Buy, into a Staples, and touch and feel the screen for themselves,” said Jay Marine, director of product management for the Kindle.
All the emphasis on e-readers could take away from sales of the hardcover book, a traditional holiday gift, and that is a prospect that has some booksellers worried.
“There’s no question that this is the year of the gadget, and this year’s gadget is the e-reader,” said Geoffrey Jennings, the owner of Rainy Day Books, an independent bookstore in Fairway, Kan.
But Mr. Jennings said that sales of print books at his store were even stronger than last year, and that he believed the e-reading craze could be limited.
“A lot of people are going to get these things and they’re going to go, ‘This isn’t like reading a book,’” he said. “Then again, you’ll have people who get them and then say, this is a fun gadget. But people get sick of gadgets after a while.”
Publishers insisted that they were not worried about the spread of e-readers. “We’ll see a lot of reading devices under the tree, which means we’ll sell a lot of e-books,” said Tim McCall, the director of online sales for Penguin Group USA.
Carolyn Reidy, president and chief executive of Simon & Schuster, said she expected e-book sales to shoot up on Christmas Day, when people open up their e-readers and immediately start buying books.
“The digital will be an added plus to what looks like we’re starting to pull out of — a very lackluster market,” Ms. Reidy said. “That will make for a very happy year after two Christmases that have not been very happy.”

intoxicated poop segment: part xcv

i demand to know why this was not done earlier.

personally, i feel like a small failure for not having gotten to this first.

also, i wonder if professor x ever used his mutant-telekinetic powers to make someone else poop for him. you know, like on days when he just didn't want to get up and do it himself. i know he's got the power-- i just don't know if that's how he rolls.

that was a wheelchair joke.

i've also wondered if sith lords ever used the force to fling poop at jedi. throughout history, we've been using poop against our enemies. if you're into evolution, we can start with chimp-flingers. but even if not, the ninjas and the vietcong both dipped weapons in poop-- be it shuriken, or be it punji-sticks-- the idea being a slow death by infection. teenagers in the 90's filled brown bags with poop and lit them on fire to trick their enemies into stomping on poop, too.

the only hindering issue is we don't like touching poop with our hands when flinging it at our foe. but a sith lord wouldn't have to. they could make the poop float above their hand and force it into a jedi's face without ever having to touch it.

whether or not george lucas felt the need to include such facts in his stories is one thing, but if we're looking at the world of star wars as reality, i think it's safe to assume at least one sith has tried force-throwing a turd or two.

well, this has gone on far too long. the end.

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Little Things and Little Boxes

i mentioned earlier that it is not uncommon for a customer to come into the shoe store carrying an entire outfit, in hopes to find matching shoes. i've only been working for three weeks, but it's happened over ten times.

there is, however, a less common activity which has happened twice since my hiring.

"would you mind trying them on?"

"you want me to try them on?"

"is that okay?"

and they've had great excuses for why they need me to try on their shoes. one of them was a photographer and needed to see it on someone elses foot. the other was a girl shopping for her boyfriend.

that's what they say anyway. i say foot fetishers.

but that's only happened twice.

i actually ended up buying one of the pairs i modeled.

what happens every single day-- besides shoplifting-- is the confused look of a customer who has arrived on the second floor via escalator but cannot figure out how to get back down. the escalator only goes up. they'll stand at the top, looking around for other means of escaping, and sometimes they look as though they are legitimately considering running down the up-escalator and trying to beat it.

the stairs, the elevator, they're both on the other side of the floor.

and every day, i'll make corny shoe-related jokes-- telling the customer we'll have to tie a series of shoelaces together and lower them to the first floor-- but ultimately pointing out that the stairs are on the opposite wall.

for a while, i was lightly referring to it as "horrible architecture". but after seeing it happen, day after day, and after noticing that the stairwell is not only located on the far wall but in the woman's section i've changed my mind.

it's marketing as much as displaying milk at the back of a grocery store is marketing.

when any customer is ready to leave, and has found the escalator upon which they arrived, they will discover they have to walk all the way back across the store's floor one more time-- passing through the women's shoes-- and trying to escape.

generally they don't escape very immediately. the women's section has a way of eating people. and the stairs are no accident-- no horrible architecture.

oh, and on a separate note, i discovered something interesting to me and perhaps boring to you regarding the structure of a shoe box.

do you see the metal eyelet? not all boxes are as fanciful about it, but about 98% of them have some form of seemingly useless hole on the side that tells you size and style. steve madden boxes don't have a hole and i hate them for it.

the hole is for me, it's also for you-- but it's much more for me. it's because when you stack ten shoe boxes on top of each other, it becomes very difficult to pull the bottom one out without destroying the box. if you pull by the lid, it will rip and the box will still not come out-- the lid will come out and the tower of shoe boxes will tilt, but the box will not come out.

also, if you were to grab the box with your whole hand-- grasping both the lid and the box at once-- you will be able to pull it out and as soon as it's free, it'll flip open and the shoes will fall on the ground. you can't hold a shoe box by the short end alone because it forces the other end to open-- sort of like how a clothespin works, just without the spring to make it close.

that's why there are those holes. you just slide your finger in as a hook, and pull the box out with ease and perfection. it's a savior when it comes to stocking and closing.

appreciate that little hole if you didn't already.

posts like this happen when i've had too much coffee and didn't plan out what i was going to write.

Friday, November 12, 2010

intoxicated poop segment: part xciv

Potty training at the sloth orphanage from Amphibian Avenger.

"you can take a sloth to the poo pole, but you can't make him poo." oh i see what she did there.

i think that video was more informative of humankind than it was slothkind. and i am in no way surprised that the lady has sloth earrings. i would love to see the inside of her house.

though i, too, do a poo-dance.

Pubic Apps

my brother sent me a link to the following article and i wasn't sure it was real. an app that will test you for sexually transmitted diseases. but it is real. if these guys have funding, i guess that means i was working on the wrong app.
Mobile phones and computers will soon be able to diagnose sexually transmitted diseases under innovative plans to cut the UK's rising rate of herpes, chlamydia and gonorrhoea among young people.

[...] People who suspect they have been infected will be able to put urine or saliva on to a computer chip about the size of a USB chip, plug it into their phone or computer and receive a diagnosis within minutes, telling them which, if any, sexually transmitted infection (STI) they have. Seven funders, including the Medical Research Council, have put £4m into developing the technology via a forum called the UK Clinical Research Collaboration.

Sexual health experts hope it will help reduce the growing number of STIs, which have increased for the last decade and reached a record 482,696 last year. Two-thirds of women reporting a new STI were under 25, as were more than half of men.


[read more]
and why not pee onto a microchip that goes in your phone? this sounds like a master plan that will prevent not only the rise of stds, but also the continued theft of cell phones on buses. any number of phones may had diseased pee pee inside and the gamble is just not worth it anymore.

what an amazing app-- seriously. it can be like foursquare! you just check into your parts and earn things like the Clap Badge, and become the mayor of Pubic Crabs.

i wonder if the app can be programmed to provide you with a villain's list of the most likely spreaders in your contact list. like You have obtained Herpes. According to our database, there is a high probability that you were infected by Tabitha.

what really made me laugh was the picture the guardian provided with the article. a sort of mediocre young adult, holding a pill-covered greeting card, and looking like she's only fake-listening to the doctor.

but nothing about the scene screams "THIS IS ABOUT SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED DISEASE!" in fact, if the image says anything, it seems much more related to depression. hence the pill greeting card and bored look of the patient.

this patient must just be an actor signed to do stock photos. she was probably only told this was "a patient at the doctor's office" and had no idea her face would be linked with an app that allows you to pee on your phone to check if you have stds.

and it gets better.

after reading the article originally, i decided this was something i should share with you and that there was a good chance my brother sent it to me for that very reason. i went back to the article and realized tabitha, the std-ridden patient, was gone. i'm naming her tabitha, by the way.

the picture was no longer even at the doctor's office. the second time around, it was a somewhat lonely picture of a standard chuck-wearing twenty-something dude, checking his cell phone.

it's just dave, checking his phone. maybe text-messaging, or playing snake. and again, nothing about the shot seems to imply that he has just urinated on a small usb-capable microchip that is now feeding his nokia with the results of his sexual sentencing. the guy looks like he's mad because his pizza was supposed to come twenty minutes ago and he's debating whether or not he should call them back and ask what's up.

these poor stock photography actors.

i needed extra money.
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