Category: stardate

For years I’ve had variants on a recurring dream where I chip a tooth, or where my teeth are shattered. Sometimes I have a third set of teeth that grows in.

Analyze that how you will; it might be seen as an impotence dream, however I am much more concerned about broken teeth than impotence. It may also be caused by grinding my teeth while asleep.

Anyway, in a rush to eat dinner tonight, I bit down incredibly hard on a steel fork. With a sandy crunching noise, I chipped an incisor in two places. I’m hoping the dentist can just file it even or something

So I wonder: will I stop having that dream now? I’m guessing not.

I’ve been noticing something about Harry Potter: it’s obviously a fantasy, where the reader (a child) fantasizes they are in the world. A magical world of spells and wands and flying brooms heroes and villains!

But there is no chance the reader could be part of that world. Firstly, the wizard world is hidden. You apparently have to be a wizard to get to the secret platform at the train station. Their shopping district is also secret. They have their own newspapers. They live in their own parallel world they hide from the rest of us. Most wizards seem to be descended from a long line of wizards.

Secondly, one cannot “become” a wizard, one is born a wizard. This strikes me as especially un-American (well they ARE British after all…). Even though occasionally a wizard is born to a Muggle (non-wizard) parent or even parents, no one ever starts out a Muggle and trains to be a wizard. And yes, I know a female wizard is called a witch in Harry Potter land. If that is the thing you are most concerned about for this post, then never mind; just stop reading please.

This all goes back to the Princess fantasy: the fantasy goes-

• I deserve better than my current lot in life
• My parents / life are actually unjustly foisted upon me
• My “real” parents / life / what have you are fabulous
• At some point I will be rescued from this ersatz life and brought into the fantasy life I deserve

…all of which is of course malarkey.

I blame the Messiah notion– the idea that someone external to yourself is going to come around and save you, just because they feel like it. Until then, you just sit tight and wait!

But how does this relate to Star Wars, you are asking. What? You weren’t asking that? Well shame on you! The relation is this: in the first trilogy, the Force is seemingly something you practice, like Kung Fu. There is a bit of destiny involved, because Luke’s father was “strong in the Force,” but for the most part we follow the Kung Fu movie arc where the student studies at the foot of the master.

THEN, betrayal: in the prequel trilogy, Lucas decides that now, you are basically BORN with the Force- it’s some kind of weird microscopic bullshit. If you aren’t born with it, well then tough. That’s just great. Note that even in feudal Japan, which basically had a caste system, you could be a warlord badass; you just wouldn’t be royalty.

So let’s generalize “being a wizard” or “being a princess” or “having the Force” to just “being fabulous.”

So.

Here’s the especially disturbing part of this: while I obviously like the Puritain Work Ethic fairy tale, where you can get magic powers and be fabulous through practice, I believe that to the majority reader, there is an actual appeal to the unreachable nature of the fantasy. It’s this:

The reader is in no danger of being blamed for not being fabulous. Because they weren’t born to be fabulous. Yeah my life is sucky, but it’s not my fault– Not a wizard, not a secret princess. Oh well!

So I say: Fuck that!

JOE: You know how you can search for “a” in Google
JOE: and there will be a lot of results
JOE: and you can search for “aa” in Google
JOE: and there will be less results?
JOE: and so on for more and more a’s ?

BRAIN: Uh yeah?

JOE: well when you get far enough down the numbers go up again

BRAIN: Why don’t you just make a graph of your data there Joe

JOE: Oh, I did already. It’s on my homepage.

BRAIN: Okay you win

SHAC: its raining
SHAC: good thing im not near the castro
SHAC: we all know how it rains there

It’s the season: we’re watching “A Christmas Story.”

You know the fake swear words Ralphie’s dad says? I am convinced that if you transcribe all of them, you’ll get a magic spell. Maybe it makes everything taste like Ovaltine, or freeze your target’s tongue to something. Or shoots their eye out.

I was moving a bunch of stuff into a friend’s place, maybe my mom’s… A strange-looking, very tall woman arrived at the door, dressed in black.

My mom was expecting some computer parts she bought on back-order, and this was the person coming to install them. The computer itself was something like an old Mac SE. I looked at the delivery/installation person, and it was Alan P from Casa Zimbabwe!

Wow Alan, I say, are you dressing in drag now? He’s wearing what looks to be those traditional black robes girls wear in Iran. I blame the recent release of Perseopolis…

Alan looks sternly at me and says, it’s not really drag. So I ask him what that means, and he looks at me meaningfully. He then gives me a lecture on all the new words there are for “transgendered people” and “fractally-gendered” people, and how I should be more sensitive… when no one is looking he shows me that his penis has been cut off.

Then Alan mentions he had to do it himself in a ritual surrounded by his family. He also show how his “breasts” are actually flaps of skin folded over into triangles, like little hammentaschen… fastened with safety pins, because in his new super-orthodox religion, they don’t believe in surgery or anesthetic or seemingly sutures.

Thieves cut off man’s ‘holy leg’

Police in southern India are hunting for two men who attacked a Hindu holy man, cut off his right leg and then made off with it.

BRAIN: hey, you don’t eat a leg like that all at once!

SAMIR: so the messed up thing
SAMIR: is I’ve met this guy

BRAIN: you missed your chance
BRAIN: shoulda cut off the leg while the getting was good

SAMIR: and if I remember right
SAMIR: he got a ton of donations
SAMIR: and money
SAMIR: just for… being holy

BRAIN: now there’s a racket

SAMIR: so they made a leg of gold
SAMIR: like a solid gold leg
SAMIR: molded off of his
SAMIR: and donated it to the temple
SAMIR: you’d think THAT was the thing to steal

BRAIN: don’t be silly
BRAIN: can’t eat a gold leg

SAM: what no one considers
SAM: in the santabot scandal
SAM: is that perhaps they patterned it after the real santa?
SAM: how do we know he’s not an oral fiend?
SAM: think about it: he hires ELVES…
SAM: he could have taller people. what are elves good for?
SAM: they’re perfect blowjob height

BRAIN: this is why you never get presents

BRAIN: ok, “2 girls 1 cup” — admittedly really bad.
BRAIN: but see, not as bad as ep-sample
BRAIN: wall has made me a warrior of the New Oblivion
BRAIN: I am invincible
BRAIN: so I guess what I’m saying here is:
BRAIN: ep-sample worked
BRAIN: I _am_ stronger
BRAIN: thanks pld!

RAND: Just like your argument about public schools
RAND: and finding dead bodies in the garden?

BRAIN: It’s not an argument

BRIAN: It’s totally lame that “homeless love story”
BRIAN: wasn’t an actual musical
BRIAN: and instead was some kind of half documentary thing

KARUNA: what, you wanted it to be two homeless people
KARUNA: singing to each other
KARUNA: about how they were in love with each other?

BRIAN: Well… yes
BRIAN: Because THAT IS WHAT A MUSICAL IS.

KARUNA: But… wouldn’t that be making fun of homeless people?

BRIAN: This is why you are all destined to be slaves to Doom.