I have started to dread the weekends (the culmination of my work week) because there are far too many things out of my direct control and I feel like I’m riding the same stretch of white water over and over and every week, come Monday, I say “fuck it, that’s it, I’m done” and then during the week someone manages to convince me to ride it one more time until we get the opportunity to go down to the river with some dynamite and blasting caps and move the big rocks so the ride’s a lot smoother. Every week.

Case is sitting on the couch watching the weather channel and bursts out with “WHAT? How can it be FIFTY?” (which would be 10 for my centigrade friends). She misses last week, which was 80ish (26.6ish). Also, expected to be windy today. Trading sunburn for windburn in less than six days. Peanut butter, motherfucker, indeed.

In other news, I’ve been hammering the shit out of facebook the past couple of days, just clicking ALL the damn buttons I could see. I discovered that some of you are on facebook using your real email address but aliases (lol whut?). Cue Hank Williams, faintly in the background, singing “Your Cheating Heart.” Shame on you fuckers (alright, so you’re probably just avoiding students or coworkers, that’s fine).

And now, for breakfast beer and pills. Shit, I’m almost out of both. This is an emergency. Send St. Bernards and Paris Hilton, immediately. And have the dogs bring a gun and some ammo (Paris won’t be coming back).

Quite a fucking lot is going on lately, but there’s a fair amount I can’t write about openly because of pending uh … man, I can’t even describe it adequately without risking someone finding it and complicating matters by spreading it around. That sounds really bad, probably. Nothing major, everyone in the inner circle is healthy, reasonably happy (or reasonably unhappy, for the Freudians in the audience), no one’s getting married, divorced, killed (yet) or anything “status changing.” Email me if you’re really interested, or call, I’m trying to be better about answering the phone. I know where it is right now, for instance.

Couple more cryptic notes on the off chance that those they’re intended for check in (very fucking doubtful).

J., I owe you many calls back, I hope you’re not taking it personally, I’m just flaky on a level that adderall can’t seem to touch. I’ve got a huge collection of CDs to send you, you come up in conversation almost daily, all the usual much love shit.

K., sorry to hear about your loss. I never know if it’s best to call with belated condolences or if it’s just opening fresh wounds, so I tend not to mention it when I find out later. I know it was a long struggle, and I know how close you were, and I’m just … so sorry.

T., how’s the kid? I owe you email, I have video of some really interesting lectures to send you, I instantly thought of you, your work, and your new mom status when I saw these.

L., I really owe you a call, and we really need to clear time to hang out and just chat. Every time I think “I should be writing” I hear you berating me for not doing it on any of the numerous occasions you’ve done it, and I’m grateful to you for that.

I’m forgetting people and leaving some out because a) as is usual on a Friday, I should have been in bed several hours ago and b) I really don’t think too many people read this.

General thought of the day. The market changed complexion four weeks ago when the Sunday market split—the old location opened, and most of the “old location” regulars went back there, leaving the “new location” regulars and people who think it’s the better geographical choice (and really, is just fucking is) behind. There are a lot of other issues involved in the market, which I won’t go into, but just the change, not seeing some of the same people every Sunday—and these are years-long relationships at this point—has changed the entire “feel” of both days. And I suppose it’s inevitable, but a certain amount of eye-opening has occured, and it’s just all a bit sad. Both days are less enjoyable now. Maybe it’s just the weather, but we’ve discussed it and we feel a palpable “and that was the end of a golden age” sort of moment. Though golden age is stretching it—more like brass.

We’ll be at the annual street fair down the block tomorrow, by the way—in what looks to be constant rain all day. We are driven more and more toward brick-and-mortar.

It’s sweet to be remembered, but I neither deserve it nor expect it. I did get this awesome print from a friend at the market that I will post in this space as soon as I show it to my photographer friend at the market (the one who sets up and sells—you still count, Jane, but you don’t set up yet).

Anticipating some questions: I don’t feel older. I don’t care about the number, it’s just an imaginary concept used to measure a non-linear progression. Not dreading forty (couldn’t give a fuck). What else … I didn’t do anything special today (work day, so I worked). No, I really don’t mind. Honest. I had cake on Thursday (mom and dad).

That’s probably all for now. Watch for the awesome print.

The blob of nerves forming the brain of the robot was taken from the neural cortex in a rat foetus and then treated to dissolve the connections between individual neurons [excerpt taken from here].

Dr. Ben Whalley (notice I didn’t say “scientists,” which is my pet peeve of the moment—these people should not have to be anonymous white coats) has conducted experiments that involve making a little neural margarita out of rat brain cells and sticking them on top of a little robot with wheels. In the “don’t tell them how to actually make nitroglycerin” maneuver, the article doesn’t say how the following was accomplished, but somehow

The brain cells have been taught how to control the robot’s movements so it can steer round obstacles and the next step, say its creators, is to get it to recognise its surroundings.

Then they plan to change the surroundings to simulate memory loss to see how the brain … mush … changes. Anything that cures something like Alzheimer’s is alright with me, but I can’t help feeling sorry for the rat fetuses the brain cells are taken from (and presumably the uh rat that the fetuses are taken from—doubt they called in a midwife for that).

It does raise the obvious (to me) questions about the intersection of organic and inorganic, sentience and synthetics, and the question of the “ghost in the machine,” or the soul trapped in the robot.

The “ghost in the machine” phrase is one you hear a lot for one reason or another (the 1981 Police album, the anime series and movies, probably mostly because it has two words people who speak English dig in it) but it orginates in a book by philsopher Gilbert Ryle as a jab at Descartes’s mind-body dualism (Descartes, dead for just under 300 years at that time, didn’t deign to respond).

Descartes pondered the question of where the body and the mind (or, really, the soul) intersect (he settled on the pituitary gland, as it’s the only “single” he could find in the head—two eyes, two ears, two jaws, everything else lobed and symmetrical). Descartes’s idea that the physical and the “aphysical” are separate and distinct has lasted a hell of a long time. Some people disagree.

Ryle basically had a problem with dualism (the whole concept that mind/soul and body are separate but somehow coexisting and intersecting) and evidently felt that Descartes and everyone who believes in dualism (which, though I doubt they realize it, is about everyone who isn’t a philosopher who studies this shit) fails to use the concepts correctly. For what it’s worth, I think using a concept in any manner that approaches a greater inherent understanding, whether that understanding can efficiently—or at all—be communicated to other people is a perfectly acceptable use of the human mind. I offer a gentle-but-firm “Fuck you, Ryle” to my fellow Leo (19 Aug), but expect no response as he is now as dead as Descartes.

Descartes was one of the first guys to walk down a path (on which, to be fair, Plato and Aristotle may have swung machetes) that has been more recently trafficked by people interested in artificial intelligence, all of whom (to my knowledge) have been dualists. The “philsophy of the mind” is sort of a hobby of mine, and it quickly gets messy with issues of dualism, “substance dualism” versus “property dualism” (”it’s stuff” vs. “it’s created by stuff but isn’t stuff itself”, sort of), monism (I’m not even going to get into it), and various other really fucking confusing issues and questions.

The closer we get to artificial intelligence—and every time I read a story like the one linked to above—the more I wonder about the nature of the soul, whether it exists and if so is created or creates itself, and ultimately if the soul is the purview of man (and/or animal), or if souls can exist outside of organic beings that may or may not be sentient. I’ll leave my (predictably messy) beliefs out of it, but I’ve got a pretty firm grasp on some suppositions. Shit like rat-brained robots scuttling around pens (read the article!) don’t make these questions any easier to answer, however.

When we get to a point (and we will) where we can essentially up- and download sentience in one form or another into manufactured forms, the question may answer itself, or become impossible to ask. I dunno. My mind and body both want a drink, at this point.

Casey’s home from NYC, tired, and at this moment not thirty feet from where I sit, getting a shower. I’m going to post this quickly and then make her tea, her only request on homecoming (other than a hug, as evidently no one in NYC does that as well as I do).

I did do a few other things this week, by the way, contrary to my last post (I knew I was forgetting something). I dismantled a lamp to identify the faulty part in the switch (the rotary pull mechanism tensioner has worn out, and despite attempts to repair it, it’s only reliable about 30% of the time, which means it isn’t reliable, so I’ll buy a new one sometime … in the future), and did my first soldering project since I stopped playing bass and guitar sometime in the last century.

I have a headset I use to listen to music and, uh, talk to my internet friends. Yes, very geeky, fuck you. Anyway, one headset went bad at the precise moment I installed a piece of software (alright, it was a game fuck you redux) published by a company known to publish games that do fucked up shit to your audio and video drivers (sometimes—but they’re great games!). So I spent my leisure time over the next few days installing and uninstalling drivers, fucking with settings, etc. On a whim, when I had about given up, I plugged in earbuds (always hated that word) and … it wasn’t the settings at all, it was the headset.

First rule of technical failure: always test on duplicate/similar hardware when possible.

So. Case found another headset lying around the apartment (we had bought two of them for friends when they started being geeks, but they snubbed their noses at them and so they languished in a closet). I used them, no problems, good music, the mic worked, hooray. Until Monday evening, when the mic stopped working.

This time, instead of blaming drivers, I tested the duplicate hardware (cf. rule one), and discovered that the condenser mic had gone bad. So. Two headsets, one with bad output, one with bad input.

Long, boring story short (too late) I took from one and gave to the other and through the ugliest soldering job since the bronze age, I have one working headset made from two not-working headsets.

And I watched some TV and did a lot of thinking about the shape of the world post-oil, if post-oil actually does happen. Maybe more on that later, as it’s more interesting than me blathering about headsets.

But I fucking soldered some shit, people! Hot iron! Toxic chemicals! Wires and shit!

Right. Work tomorrow, Sunday, recuperation Monday, then maybe that bit about the world post-oil.

Enjoy your weekend.

I’m updating because Case is in NYC visiting family and I have, for company, a deaf cat (who is also cranky) and some coffee and beer and I think there’s some bacon and possibly yogurt around here somewhere. I figure Case might stumble on this and read it and see what I’ve been up to. Ordinarily, I would think “no one could possibly ever be interested in this stuff,” but Casey actually might be.

In addition to sending suggestive text messages to my recently published friend (grats, Carrie), gate camping with Stephan (it’ll make sense to him, the rest of you don’t need to know), and watching bits and pieces of odd TV (Generation Kill, good, The Craft, omg it’s only been 12 years?), I went to the special nerve doctor (I still have nerves), got the car washed, bought groceries (two pounds of bacon, two pounds of sausage, two pounds of oatmeal, and one pound of coffee—seriously), and … man, it seems like I did more than that. Uh. I guess I didn’t.

Here’s a shopping tip: tienda hispana. That’s Google’s language gizmo’s version of “shop hispanic,” only it’s probably wrong (and offensive to my Hispanic friends, one of whom has told me “Hispanic” is like “Negro,” e.g. deprecated as a term anyone you’re trying to describe with it wants to hear. Help me out here, mis amigos). One 16oz jar of instant coffee (get off it, it’s a lot better than it used to be and it’s a hell of a lot faster) costs how much? Well, if you speak and shop exclusively English, it’s $8.95, something like that (might be $8.97, magical bullshit supermarket nonsense). However, if you know that Clasico probably means the same thing as Classic, and Nescafe means the same thing as Nescafe, you’ll get the same 16oz jar of instant coffee for … $4.50. Or $4.97 or supermarket bullshit. Cheaper by almost half. Appears to be the same product (I sure as hell can’t tell the difference).

Think I’ll go have some right now.

After the band’s halcyon days, Doug “retired” from music (do you ever really retire from music?) and opened the barbershop, which he ran pretty much right up until his death in 1985. Doug was a hell of a drummer—they once played a show at a used car lot in Waldorf and people could hear the drums three miles away (apparently someone reported “gun shots” to the police, who tracked the sound to the used car lot, and Doug Wray’s drumming).

By the way, the Wikipedia article linked above is a little inaccurate. The song was performed in Fredericksburg, VA for the first time, but “hot-miked” (Ray Vernon Wray, Link’s other brother, jammed the microphone he’d been singing into right into one of the amps), which produced that really loud, distorted, buzzy sound that hadn’t been heard outside of basements and bedrooms with busted, cheap ass amplifiers of a certain vintage.

Link had a practice “studio” (usually called “The Three Track Shack”) in Accokeek, MD., where I grew up (about five miles south of DC). The studio didn’t have the best equipment, so when they later practiced Rumble, as it came to be called (the song was originally called Oddball), that trademark proto-grunge sound was still there, a result of some pretty blown high-end response. When they went to record it at Cameo Records in Philadelphia, (the song was eventually picked up by Cadence, in NYC, release number 1347), they couldn’t quite get the sound right. Link solved the problem by walking around the studio with a pen, stabbing holes in tweeters (but leaving the woofers unmolested) until the guitar sounded about right.

Link would have been seventy-nine today.

As someone who’s always been fascinated by surveillance and intelligence, this is a good flick. Obvious nod (or rip off) to Antonioni, and would make a good “double-feature.” Maybe. Blow Up might be one of those things you need to see and then go do something else for a while.

Conversation’s great, though. I’m not sure if I’ll listen to the Coppola track, I just can’t stand him sometimes.

Whenever I’m around family, what I call “the casualty list”, a roll call of the dead and wounded, eventually makes its way to the top of the agenda and names and ailments are called out in a ritual of commiseration and warding. My cousin (once removed, elder generation) Louis is suffering the later stages of Alzheimer’s, and doesn’t know his friends or his children or how to do things like tie his shoes or drink from a glass. He occasionally looks at his wife of fifty-plus years and asks her, “Where’s Mary?” to which she can only reply, “Louis, I am Mary.” He’s prone to fits of rage, he is sometimes found standing in the kitchen in the middle of the night, nude, eating raw food with his hands. He shouts. He pounds on walls and doors until he bruises his hands. He can’t stand to let Mary, who I think he must recognize on some level, out of his sight for even a moment. She must serve as some kind of landmark, something familiar in a totally unfamiliar landscape.

So I think of this man, a former bank president, banging around the darkened, damaged labyrinth of who he used to be like a wounded minotaur bellowing at shadows and listening for changes in the echo, and I think almost any other end would be better. I’m hard-pressed to think of anything much worse.

Who wants to read shit like that? That’s why I don’t post more often.

(I’ve changed their names, by the way)