Man Poked by Katana Wielder In Ann Arbor

So, Djenna just sent me possibly the funniest article for the beginning of this year yet. Some kid at a fraternity got “poked” by a katana.

Ann Arbor police said they arrested a man who poked an unruly partygoer with a sword Saturday morning.

Officers were called for an assault at the Lambda Phi Epsilon fraternity at 820 Oxford Road at about 3 a.m. and found a 23-year-old man with a small cut on his abdomen, Detective Sgt. Richard Kinsey said.

The man refused medical treatment and told police he was at a party at the location when a resident threatened him with a sword.

Yes, for some reason the journalist who wrote this article seems to want to use “poked” to describe the assault. Although, it seems to me that anytime a sword is brandished and pierces someone else's skin, that it was in fact a stabbing—isomuch however minor the wound.

I guess that the journalist just doesn't realize that there are more gradations of assault between jabbed at and ran through.

Yes, I am assuming it was a katana, I could be wrong. The writer describes it as a “samurai sword” and in American culture that's generally only katanas.

Link, via Mlive.com

Mill Avenue Nights Saturday, January 3rd 2009

Wandering the Ave I had time to spend with Squirrel. She’s a tall, round-faced girl, with thick glasses and a thicker expression. Today she came sporting a heavily draped t-shirt and a baseball cap which cast a half-shade across her face as we walked through the shifting streetlights. Her motions are slightly contorted, as if stilted by strings, in an almost Huntington’s muscular jerk.

She talked about her visitation down in Tempe to see one of her children and the new light rail system. Which I got to see first hand while spending time waiting for it to arrive; listening to the airplanes screech through the night air and the clack-clack-clack of the trolley along the tracks.

Corky and Cindy came by and stopped to talk to us while we sat on the bus stop bench (not waiting for the bus, but eating.) They paused to talk to us when Jim Coleman came over—we didn’t have much time to speak with them, however, as Squirrel needed to rush along as not to miss the light rail.

Together we walked through the light crowds of the Ave, bantering about nothing except our own lively experiences in the city. The street hushed around us as we moved like casual cats, slinking past barely aware crowds. The light rail tracks have glowing buttons embedded into them, glowing red. Above are guide wires that I suspect carry electrical currents like for the streetcars in San Francisco. I have seen sparks shatter from them like falling pixies.

While dawdling on Mill Ave after Squirrel took her leave via the rail; I met a pair of nomadic streetrats, carrying their heavy packs and bedrolls. Scruffy with days of travel, but grinning and brimming with knowledge, Sarah and Aaron jested with me about my cane—“That’s a kur-beater!” bellowed Aaron, casting his gaze from beneath a floppy brown hat. “I hope that you have beaten some kurs with it. Say that you will beat some kurs with that kur-beater.”

Sadly, no kurs revealed themselves for the beating.1

At the drum circle I found Envy and Cole, as well as a visitation from tall-as-a-weed Jimmy. They had quite a lively setup tonight, with several drums, and two children running around our midst. I even gave away a book to one of them; and showed off my top hat.

A number of people came out as well, interested in talking to Omar Call about his article in the New Times.

Mill Avenue Vexations gets a little love from the press

One of our local newspapers, the Phoenix New Times, has a blog and they just posted a book review of Mill Avenue Vexations.

Link, via the Phoenix New Times.

9-11 ASCII Trending

So. Today Google Trends has something fun for all of us. The number #2 search is basically ASCII 9-11 art.

✈ ▌▌

No kidding! Also, it doesn't seem to pull up any results from trends. So who knows. This might be the first. It's amazingly irreverent; but thou know what? If we cannot be a little irreverent by now (7 years later) when can we?

First Friday Artwalk Nights Friday, January 2nd 2009

First Friday is damn interesting.

I got to listen to a number of different prevailing philosophies and actually got a chance to stand out and stand in at the same time—by this I mean, I met other people with steampunk aspirations. One guy in particular wanted to get my photograph, he wore an interesting vintage leather vest and a pair of goggles. Go steampunk.

I tell ya, when I have Helljammer up and running steampunk is going to become a way of life.

For those who don’t know much about the steampunk aesthetic, you have a great deal of studying to do! I would suggest starting with this video done by a fan of Abney Park.

This night I had a chance to actually range a little bit further and wider than usual. I split from the usual location between the obnoxious preachers and the obnoxious Scientology Corporation (the Phoenix Anonymous were protesting them again, with their V for Vendetta masks on.) After quitting these depressing locales, I found myself wandering the bazaar of bazaars.

Not a single city block away, past a fading building that had seen better times and sported a “Safe Place” sign (an image of one person hugging another on a yellow diamond sign.) And past the sweet, meaty smells of cooking and food—a beautiful restaurant that plays music and plies apparently good food. There, between dirty roads and loud traffic, I found stalls set up with all manner of artwork portrayed.

Apparently these are even pretty cheap to buy space for. Much less than any Con.

I walked past people selling paintings—even painting paintings while they sold them—some playing strange EBM music to the wind and selling CDs. Stalls that contained brittle metal fragments tortured and bent into beautiful, intertwining shapes. The best one, really, though that really caught my attention was selling mustard.

Mustard. Right next to the hotdog stand.

Now that was brilliant.

And from what I saw, it was amazingly good handmade mustard.

The entirety of my observations about the preachers that come out to First Friday is taken over at my Mill Avenue Resistance blog for Friday, January 2nd. Suffice it to say that new preachers already caused something of a stir by insulting the egalitarian sensibilities of some of the members of the Resistance. And one of the Resistance also decided to go visit the Scientology Corporation and discover what their free stress test was like.

Mill Avenue Nights Saturday December 27th 2008

The drum circle had two drums today, they placed themselves off away from our stilt-bronze-man statue and next to the fountain. The region between the Valley Art Theater and My Big Fat Greet Restaurant has a couple strangely-placed stone blocks that just jut out of the walk, all of them good for sitting on, and they’re clustered around a waterfall/fountain—this is up against the side of Valley Art. With the echo chamber of the closely set buildings (probably about 4 meters apart) that area in particular worked really well for resonating the sound of the drums.

And a guitar.

I don’t want to forget that one of the newbies on the Ave had a guitar and was strumming along with the drums. I keep wondering about bringing my violin out and rocking out with everyone else. Not on a night as cold as this one, though, since my fingers would absolutely fail me.

Vince joked about how people had started to call it the “square drum circle” instead of the drum circle because of the presence of the bronze-stilt-man and the dais that it’s built on. I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s obvious in part that the installation of this particular form of urban art was directed pretty much at disrupting the drum circle. A lot of the other acts have been as well. Expectedly, the drum circle formed around it anyway.

While I was waiting I met a young man named Raccoon—he chuckled over my makeup when he noticed it wasn’t a pair of sunglasses; Josh often jokes that I look like a raccoon myself. He had a scruffy beard and mustache, spoke a lot about Sedona, and used a mystic tone in his speech. His hair, at odds with his scruffy face, happened to be shiny and well conditioned, almost like a shampoo commercial. He happened to have a set of drums also. I hope that Raccoon comes out more often.

I also had a chance to meet a strange newcomer to Saturdays, a tall young man wearing all black, medium length hair, and an intense speech. He wanted to tell everyone about the equations that make up the universe, which he contents use imaginary numbers and division-by-zero to elaborate on philosophical principals in a theory-of-everything sort of way.

The major criticism that he received was from Omar Call’s friend, Jim—a well-dressed, straight talking presenter—who didn’t like how Weird-Math-Guy happened to be basically dismissing his wife and child (a newborn) in order to present his strange math and attempt to instruct people on Mill Ave. She didn’t look happy herself, lurking inside the doors of Urban Outfitters to keep the child out of the cold whilst her husband plied his thoughts.

I let him borrow my notepad in order to illustrate his equations.

The biggest problem that I had with them—aside from everything being zero or infinity—is that they didn’t really explain anything. Certainly he had some interesting ideas on how the imaginary numbers interacted with the universe, but each of his states could compressing into two possible states: zero (not null) or imaginary infinity. Certainly complex numbers (i.e. imaginary numbers) are used in quantum physics, but they’re used to define particular states of quanta that are orthogonal. It’s not special nor that surprising. In fact, for particular quantum mechanics orthagonality using imaginary numbers is good for describing interactions that “turn” quanta in different phase directions.

When using highly philosophical math it becomes extremely silly to set up giant, complex equations and then either multiple them by zero or divide them out of zero. The most grand equation that will always equate to zero is a lesson in frippery. I am not talking about multivariable calculus or differential equations here where multiple variables interact to becomes zero. I mean: no matter what variables it will always be zero.

(x * y) * 0 = 0

That’s a totally useless equation. It tells us nothing. Where x and y can be anything. It’s literally informationless—there is no difference in this equation that makes any difference—this is the problem with half of the equations he wanted to use.

He had some other neat stuff going on, however, in that he really wanted to explain his position. The problem became, though, that he had gigantic jargon issues. He couldn’t properly talk to a lay person because he was using too much math jargon which makes no sense to non math people (and possibly just suits to put normal people into dummy mode.) He also didn’t like that people didn’t care for his math, or had specific critical observations about how he was presenting it. And didn’t care that he wanted to say, “And don’t tell me you can’t divide by zero.” It’s not that you can’t it’s that the answer is an undefined number. To this end it’s not really a useful answer.

Even philosophically, “undefined” or indefinite is just another way of saying that we don’t know—in math a lot of these answers are distinguished as “no solution” among other interpretations of division-by-zero and it’s various paradoxes. His algebra was just a bad allegory for his attempt to collapse the universe into the philosophy.

I gave away his diagram so I will have to get it again if I want to show everyone.

Street philosophy is certainly a good place to learn and amaze.

Good night and good dreams—especially to every null to infinity out there.

Mill Avenue Nights Friday, December 26th 2008

Cold.

Nothing else can really be said for the night. The temperature has dropped precipitously since the solstice; plummeting down to the low 40s. Anything hovering around and below the 50s is weather that makes my nose run. I hate that. I don’t know what was up with the dew point, however, since we couldn’t see our breath yet—which is something we had going on a few weeks earlier with less bone-chilling cold.

There are just particular types of cold. There’s the cold I recall from Minnesota. It drove me forward, stomping through the snowy forests; recalling a witerbite through my boots and into my feet, but nothing that reached down into my bones the way that Sonoran cold does.

Mill Ave was largely depopulated of the ordinary night-clad folk visiting clubs and bars, but they were certainly still there. They just didn’t choose to stop and dawdle in the chill so much. Possibly because a number of people were out in short sleeves, swinging their arms in the frigid air. Walking off of the Ave, the wind would pick up between the aisles of buildings. My cheeks felt cold from the bristling breezes.

All I did much on the Ave was talk to some of the streetrats and enjoin in a few gatherings outside of Valley Art theater; but there was little to discuss. Most of them have been huddling back at their squats or hiding in what housing they’ve been able to find during these colder days.

It’s particularly difficult for the itinerant culture during the winter. Fortune, of course, favors those out here due to the fact that we’re at a low altitude and latitude. The desert can reach freezing at nights, though, so anyone sleeping outside is at something of a risk. I still recall some of my nights sleeping out near the Mill Ave bridge. Cold causing all of us to shiver even as we were huddled together, listening to every passing car, and flicker of lights thinking it might be the police.

At least jail would be warmer.

Strange for me, of course, since unlike many of my friends I did have a place that I could go to if I chose to—and I did, often taking some of them with me. The number of street rats who I kept in my dorm room later that year was a little amusing. Possibly less-so to my patient and kind roommate at the time. Who managed to suffer well through the sick kids that I let sleep in my bed while they were taking their medication and recovering.

Healers. Can’t go far without us fostering some ailing stray under our wings.

That was a great deal of time before.

Now the chill simply hurts my fingers and makes it hard to type.

I hope everyone else had a warm Yule. Be well out there everyone.

Have a Merry Vexing Christmas and a Sprightly Yule all

Mill Avenue Vexations Have a Merry Vexing Christmas everyone.

This little title was released almost two years ago now, for Christmas. It is one of the very first tribute stories that we ever wrote.

If you haven’t read it before you might as well catch up.

I even have a black Santa cap like Vex is wearing on the cover now. For those who haven't had the fortune of reading this yet (get to it!) it summarizes a little bit like a cabdriver Dicken’s story, as Vex tries to unravel the lives of various fares. Three exactly. Each of whom have a little bit of trouble in their past, present, or future.

I hope everyone enjoys.

Merry Christmas and a Sprightly Yule to all.

Link to Mill Avenue Vexations.

CameraFRAUD.com, the cameras are watching

Shushing over the dark asphalt like octopus ink, thundering on hooves of rubber our car rides into the night; streetlights flashing bars of stereo-glow through the windows like a fan over an interrogation lamp.

“Here it comes,” I say.

And Kazz, smiles, the tinge of starlight making his teeth steely white in the dim flicker. He reaches up to the windshield and displays his middle finger.

It follows a small machine set along the side of the street like a heliotrope following the sun. A giant “SCREW YOU!” memorized by the traffic camera’s CCD, shot down wires in digital pulses, and stored somewhere for a muzzy eyed, blowsy faced political tech to scan it over while looking through reams of footage of the street.

These are the speed cameras of Phoenix, set out along the 101.

A terrible fraud meted out upon the city without vote, without democratic decision, and without ethical worth. These have been discussed before as a revenue source for the city—their blinding flashes chitterling scintilla bright against the dark as they photograph cars—and that they supposedly decrease crashes and make the roads safer (an effect not shown in any evidence.)

Instead, they defraud the public, produce a surveillance society, and slowly line the pockets of the Redflex Corporation.

Most of the time the tickets delivered from their cameras aren’t even legal and you can just throw them away; sometimes the process servers are corrupt and lazy, appear at the doors of people who aren’t home, or lie about the delivery, or pass them onto children who then forget.

Fight back with CameraFRAUD.com or at inform yourself on the subject. These cameras are not our friends, neither is Skynet or Terminators or whatever other machine masters purloining the public good for their own corporate greed.

We really need to stand up to these pathetic attempts to lie to the public, defraud the community, and generally make us less safe in an attempt to chew through extra money at the expense of civil rights.

"I quit," says YHVH played by Omar Call of Mill Ave

The Phoenix New Times just published an article on a guy who I know from Mill Avenue. Omar Call Preaches Atheism on Tempe's Mill Avenue by Niki D’Andrea.

He's carrying a white megaphone and wearing a shiny silver-metal backpack that resembles a vacuum cleaner — an example of the "industrial design" he loves so much.

A couple of people ask if he's going to "fire up the jetpack" and fly away.

But more ask about the big, black sign that reads "Damn God America" in gold block letters.

Usually, street preachers share the word of God. For the past several years on Mill, you haven't been able to walk from one bar to another without tripping over someone sharing the love of Christ through an amplifier or a stack of Bible tracts.

But this blue velvet guy is a different kind of preacher. He's a devout non-believer, and he preaches atheism.

I’ve seen him out on the Ave since last year; I met him the first time right before Yule as well, which means that I’ve seen him out there for almost exactly a year now. He’s definitely an interesting presence with his sign that says: DAMN GOD AMERICA.

Other things that he’s done has included dressing up as the Christian god, YHVH, holding a sign saying, “I quit.” He has quite the ensemble and often wields pithy phrases with gusto.

Omar is a soft spoken, well versed person who promotes positive atheism and a dialogue with passersby about the behavior of the street preachers. I have never had much of a chance to talk at length with him, but thespian types are exactly the kind of person that I want visiting the Ave.

After his first appearance on Christmas day, he started to return to Mill intermittently now and again and had talks with Kazz. Since he’s become part of the ecology of the Ave he sometimes makes it into my anthropological observations.

He is always well dressed, carrying a white bull horn, it hasn’t been until this year that he’s begun to wear that interesting metal backpack that does indeed look like a rocket pack.

Link, via the Phoenix New Times.

Update

The folks over at BetterThanFaith.com have posted their own reactions to the New Times article about Omar Call. Ostensibly to correct irregularities of fact in the information published by the New Times.

Mill Avenue Nights Saturday, December 20th 2008

The bracing chill of wintry weather brings foggy breath from pursed lips; huddled crowds, conversing over cold fingers, white exhalations like smoking lungs speaking warm words into substance. For most of the night, everyone gathered out in front of Borders; but eventually the crowds lingered also around the drum circle and we had drums.

The drum circle finally found itself, shook off its sleepy cloak, and started up around 10pm. The street rats there shifted in a tide between nineteen and twenty six people, one third of the population female. Pretty much also all huddled into talkative groups against the cold.

I got to see Mark and Cairo—a young man I’ve seen on Mill for quite some time, who carries a bokuto like I used to (although sheathed, and now I carry my steel-fiberglass cane instead of my bokuto.) He introduced himself as Cairo Seijuro. Mark, for those who don’t know, is one of the biggest fan of Vexations as there ever was. As a result, I made sure that he got a copy of Lost Sphinx Cat.

I did get quite a few booklets passed out tonight.

Monkey sent to the hospital

Our friend, Monkey aka Mikey, ended up being taken out of Borders bookstore and trundled off by the paramedics. No news on what happened to him but it did not appear life threatening. Speculation is wild, but the facts are thus: he was strapped to the gurney, which is not uncommon; and he had no apparent IV, there were no debris from injections or ampoules, drop bags were not open, and they did not have vital telemetry set up. This tells me that he was at least stable.

I suspect we’ll see him back on the Ave soon and we’ll all know then what happened.

Nathan

I met him, bouncing his skateboard on his foot standing, waiting, watching the evangelicals. A young man with a mohawk growing out, short brown hair on the sides of his head and the mohawk itself blonde. He says that he’s just out of San Francisco, wondering at the rusty-razor chill wind.

Diana and Danielle

I am not sure exactly where to put this one. I’m certain the BetterThanFaith people want my observations on them, but since I have some base anthropological thoughts on the subject I will just double up my observations. You can read this entire section also on my Mill Avenue Resistance observations blog.

A few of the Resistance had already appeared by the time that Kazz showed up with his speaker and microphone. When he started up, Jim was on the mic for the evangelicals (this is Valerie’s Jim) and he stepped down an instant later. To which there was a quip from Kazz, “Yeah, he’s afraid of me.”

Almost instantly a woman with straight, lank dark hair stepped up and started talking to Kazz. Her name, I would learn during my later interview of her, is Diana. I missed a lot of the conversation between her and Kazz, but I think that they discussed some of the ordinary first-day evangelical sound bite memes. (More of this on the Resistance observations blog.)

I spoke with Diana and Danielle, sisters. I could be wrong about Diana’s name, she could be Diane—but I recall thinking of the Italic goddess Diana, Greek Artemis’s likeness as the goddess of the hunt. Danielle wore this lovely little matching woolen sweater and cap, topping off round spectacles and also watched quietly like I normally do.

They haven’t yet visited Mill before, so I welcomed them. And I learned that they are basically a nomadic family who go from place to place evangelizing. Sold all of their worldly possessions and now they live out of an RV. I hope that they had a good time. I gave Diana a copy of my book as well just because.

As usual I spent some time steering the conversation, deflecting mirrorspeech when I could. This is because likely with the simple memes I’ve heard it all before and it’s just going to be a turn off to both of us. I understand they they’re out “working” to convert or evangelize people, but it’s hard to actually get to know anyone through their work when it is such a homogenizing and normative force. As a result I began to describe some of my thoughts on the civilizing influence of urbanization.

I have some thoughts about how city centers and cultural locus are extremely important to community. That Mill Ave serves this purpose for Tempe, especially with the proximity to Arizona State University. How cities have burned into a culture were everyone’s neighborhood actually persists at work and away from their residence. The modern work ethic has drawn people out of their local communities and made a tribe out of their workplace to the extent that most people know their co-workers much better than they do their neighbors.

In some ways this is good because it diversifies the set of resources that people have to draw upon; but it also has some collapse problems in that people therefore are disconnected from the communities that they must rely on for social interaction in times of crisis. It disconnects them from the proximity of culture.

Town centers like Mill Ave can help to bridge that.

Woman accused of piercing kittens to make them “gothic”

From all of the gothic community: Just don’t do this.

WILKES-BARRE, Pa. - Humane officers said a Pennsylvania woman marketed “gothic kittens” with ear, neck and tail piercings over the Internet. Officers with the SPCA of Luzerne County removed three kittens and a cat from a home outside Wilkes-Barre.

Officer Carol Morrison said the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals raided the home on Wednesday after getting a tip that the woman was selling the pierced kittens on eBay.

“It’s unbelievable anybody would do this to kittens,” Morrison said.

There are various gears of ethics when it comes to the treatment of animals in our culture. By in large we try to be as humane as possible when we impinge on their lives to produce our food, fur, and—in the case of domesticated pets—companionship. Kittens cannot consent to piercing or tail docking and any sort of invasive body modification should really be done by a veterinarian for health reasons.

This may not be the worst example of animal cruelty, especially to domesticated pets whom look to us for protection and care, but it’s still a lapse of judgment that should not be condoned especially by the goth community because it is bearing our banner by proxy.

If thou, or know someone, who has witnessed animal cruelty thou can visit the Pets911.com Animal Cruelty search to find contacts in the area.

“If thou’d like to help pressure the District Attorney to prosecute this case, please contact Jackie Musto-Carol at the Wilkes-Barre Courthouse at info@jackiemustocarroll.com or call 570-825-1674 and urge her to press this case to the fullest extent of the law, including jail time for this sick individual.”

Link, via GOTH Magazine.

Yes, but what are we going to replace Borders with?

With Borders closing on Mill Ave, Downtown Tempe is losing more of what little it had to offer. While there are many people out there happy to see it go, I am not just yet. It is leaving behind a wake of empty spaces on Mill as it goes. I would love it if Downtown Tempe finally got a grocery store, and what an almost perfect spot. Whole Foods had been opening larger and larger stores in the early 2000's but they realized how these stores underperformed their smaller predecessors and they have recently switched to designing smaller new stores. The space Boarders leaves is 25,000 square feet, the same size as the Whole Foods planned to go in 690 Stanyan in San Fransisco.

Some musings from the blogger at khamm.net.

I don't think that the vacant location in the Brickyard is a good place for a grocery store. Maybe the parking lot formerly known as Long Wong's; but not the Brickyard. Why do I think this? The space is positioned wrong.

A grocery store just doesn't work well at the community center of the type that is Mill Ave--unless it functions like an open air fruit market/bazaar that I've been talking about. Remember IGA? That was perfectly positioned, just a mile maximum from Mill Ave proper and in a magnificent place. Of course, that's dreadfully gone now.

We have a Walgreens on the corner now, which takes up some of the retail slack of the general bric-a-brack that people who live on and near the Ave will be looking for, but it doesn't qualify as a grocery.

There are numerous spaces off of Mill Ave proper that could hold a Whole Foods, or something else, and that niche is wide open. The space that Borders currently possesses, however, is more ideal for another bookstore or some other type of retail outlet. Ideally, though, I think that location should gain some sort of a community central element.

I'd love to see an arcade or a spot to draw in the college students; possibly a cafe and meeting places. I know that we have Starbucks and Coffee Plantation but we don't have any sort of casual entertainment anymore.

Stumbleupon is impressive vis-a-vis EvE Online mining scandal

So we got this article posted on Vox ex Machina about the newest drama to hit EvE Online. It's about a terrific bug in the moon mining that allows large corporations to exploit moon masses for basically infinite minerals.

Stumbleupon found this article, and hyped it to hell in back. We have managed to exceed—and survive—the greatest numbers of the slashdotting that took out the server earlier this month. Over the past two days we have absorbed over 15k impressions just from Stumbleupon, punking us straight up into 10.2k impressions in a single day. The spikes from the slashdotting (and Redditing/Digging) only reached 4.8k and 5.0k on their respective days.

Moon mining was added to EvE online in November, 2004 during the Exodus expansion, a patch originally called Shiva. Since then certain people have been taking huge advantage of this. One corp in particular, Band of Brothers, which has basically been the pet of CCP (the parent company that runs EvE) had been siphoning this exploit for a very long time yet managed to sail through this unscathed.

Who knew?

Wow to Stumbleupon; and thank goodness for the quick caching that I wrote into the Wordpress installation, otherwise we’d be down again.

Burger King unleashes a cologne for men

As if we didn’t think that the Burger King In Yellow was creepy enough (see a short story on this subject) Burger King has decided to take the uncanny and weird to a totally new level:

A Burger King cologne.

Just in time for the festive season, the company has released its very own men's body spray, Flame.

Not recommended for vegetarians, Flame is being promoted as "the scent of seduction with a hint of flame-broiled meat".

While the smell itself might not inspire confidence, the price will.

Flame is on sale for the credit crunch-busting sum of just $3.99 (£2.65), suggesting the Burger King promotions department has realised their contribution to the fragrance market might work best as a novelty stocking-filler.

Flame, a body spray for men, was launched this week online and in a selection of US stores – it is sadly not available in the UK, and now even has its own website, the appropriately named firemeetsdesire.com.

I like meat as much as the next elf on the street, in fact being an entire race who love the thrill of the hunt, it’s rather in our blood, but—there is a point at which I do draw the line. That’s generally when I smell like meat. Not just the sweaty, rushing, blood-throbbing meat that we fell in the woods, but the succulent, cooked food that sits on a plate waiting for a fork to stab into its juicy center.

Yes. I do have a badge that asks people to please not eat me!

So this isn’t high on my list of scents that I would want to wear.

Link, via the Telegraph UK.

Afterthoughts: So, when is Burger King coming out with a scent that smells like French fries?

A personal book signing for a fan

Just received a copy of Specter in the Spectacles via post to sign for a fan!

That's right, kids, this is my very first book ever and I have a fan, mailing me a book, so that I can sign it.

Now—I just have to figure out what exactly to say. It's for his daughter whom he wants to get to read, so I should probably be sane...

Who ever thought that I’d get to the point where people actually wanted me to sign stuff?

Brother Jed

“Fish don’t live in pine trees.”

Still no news from his website when we'll be seeing him next at ASU. I just thought I'd bring this bit of nostalgia back to everyone.

The Codex Gigas

Literally meaning, “Giant Book,” this is the largest extant manuscript of mediaeval illuminated text that we have. Also called the Devil’s Bible, it has been getting some interest lately because it’s appearing on National Geographic.

The book itself is amazing, take a look at the Wikipedia article on the subject.

Writer Stephen Rose has some things to say about its presentation on National Geographic, which decided to trod into superstition and Christian themes when presenting the Gigas Codex.

According to legend. Right. This is pure hoodwink territory. As described the Codex itself is religious subterfuge, right down to its popular name. As far as I can gather, the entire deception is based on the presence of a prominent illustration of Satan, a figment of human imagination which, according to the New Testament, Jesus managed to defeat by pointing out that a house divided cannot stand. No small insight in a world still wracked by false dualisms.

Well before this illustration was drawn, Cro-Magnon painting in the caves of Lascaux offered an incredible sense of the inherent creativity of human beings who respond to the spark or force within themselves. I make bold to say that this spark is closer to what Jesus had in mind when he challenged the imperial values of Rome and promulgated a Beatitudinal way than the hoary superstitions that are the staple of mass media exploitation of the religious impulse.

Every time hype production values are applied to superstitious elements of sacred texts, we are in humbug territory. For the National Geographic to play this game is a serious shame.

It isn't uncommon for the most powerful meme in a particular society to attempt to insinuate itself over ancient documents to forward its own goals. It is a bit shameful and stupid that people tried to plaster them over this particular document.

Link, the Huffington Post.

Borders on Mill Ave closing down

Verified by a worker in Borders, they are closing up on January 31^st.

After they have left us, we will have no more bookstores on Mill Ave that cater to contemporary works! So, we really need someone to take up the slack—even a small mom and pop outfit would be welcome. Please.

May not be able to take up the location that Borders is vacating, but something would be welcome.

The closing comes on the heels of about four shops opening on Mill in recent months, as the area attempts to recover from more than a year of economic woes. Several Mill Avenue merchants have said Tempe's downtown is struggling because of the economy and competition from Tempe Marketplace, near Rio Salado Parkway and McClintock Drive.

Vic Linoff use to own Those Were the Days book and antique store on Mill Avenue, which closed earlier this year. He's now leasing out the space in the building he owns.

"We have a lot of difficulty leasing our space, but that is not surprising given there are more stores closing than opening," he said.

There is some commentary that everyone is blaming the Tempe Marketplace; and in fact this is true. In some ways it is to "blame." Because it is pulling away a lot of the retail power that Mill Ave has.

However, this is like blaming an invasive species of animal for trashing an ecosystem because it's better adapted than the other animals. It's just doing what it tends to do. The Tempe Marketplace is a giant mall that is pulling away the economy from Mill because Mill was built too much around the type of retail stores that work extremely well in the Marketplace.

Mill simply needs to respond by diversifing into niches that large retail stores do not cover. Especially those niches that malls are extremely bad for: kiosks, bazaars, eclectic stores, and book stores that cater to the cultural Bohemian.

Link, via AZ Central.

Mill Avenue Nights Saturday, December 13th 2008

Little newbie Christine really needs to calm down a little bit. It is apparent that she’s a bit hyperactive and possibly mildly Aspergers—something that most geeks can probably relate to. She doesn’t seem to understand that assaulting other people is a very bad thing, after striking Osiris with an image she had drawn, throwing water in my face, and other things. She’s been stirring up a lot of animosity with the group through hyperactive behavior and assaults. I figure, though, that as long as enough people are firm about what behavior is bad she’ll eventually calm down.

The drum circle group is fairly mellow and do deal with people acting out rather well, however, the frat crowds and the drunken outsiders who visit are not. So it may become a problem if she gets too abrasive with one of them.

She’s a young blond girl, wearing a hoodie, constantly talking about her boyfriend and pretty much insinuating herself into every conversation.

Others that I found out there

Remi came by, drunk off his respective ass.

Jimmy also ran about offering hugs to all comers—I got about three.

Vince made an appearance but I didn’t get much of a chance to talk to him. For the most part he stood around and discussed theology as per his regular status as Preacher Man.

I also got a chance to talk to Ogre (Paul) and his girlfriend. I haven’t seen him since last year. Apparently he and his kaywng have been together almost 13 months now, which is going strong and is good to hear. He’s been avoiding the Ave due to drama that permeates the place—but it’s still cheerful to have him back in the group.

Osiris also came out again, which is good because I like having him around.

Jim, our wheelchair bound friend

I had a chance to sit down an interview Jim for my first recorded interview with one of the people who comes out to Mill as an evangelical. He is not connected to the Way of the Master evangelicals, but he has been out there for years now and I haven’t gotten his story.

I am going to start making interviews shortly of street rats and evangelicals, and anyone else, to post on this blog about their experience on Mill Ave. This will also be added to my anthropological research.

Anyone who would like an interview and a biographical post, go ahead and contact me by commenting and we can get together.

Mill Ave street preachers

Of whom Jim is sort of included in a cursory fashion, they were out caroling, cavorting, and so on. I have more about them in my Mill Avenue Resistance observations blog.

Hanna is awesome

She is a petite blonde girl, ASU student who started out in CSE but moved instead to a Mathematics major, if I recall correctly, because CSE at ASU yet seems a bit too far behind the times and tended to put her to sleep. Her joining the Ave is definitely a good influence. As readers are about to see.

Near midnight a newcomer joined our little revelry and since she looked like someone who might like Vexations, I gave her a copy of Lost Sphinx Cat; the result of which became a trade—a trade for Pop-its! Little micro-explosives made of wads of paper, gunpowder, and flint (or some sort of rocks) that when struck against the ground, or any other hard surface, make a crack! sound.

This lead to a great deal of merriment.

Until several mounted officers came by, stood for a while, and then approached to tell Brian that we were littering. I’m not sure that I fully support this sort of “stop that because your littering,” because certainly they could have just asked us to stop because they felt like it was disruptive. Littering? The amount of paper litter produced by these tiny things isn’t even enough to make a single tract or flyer handed out by the other various groups. And we could have been asked instead to simply clean up some tracts/fliers or even the bits from the Pop-its.

Littering?

It is easy to disrespect people who use obviously stupid reasons to stop a behavior rather than plead for calm. As police officers they will always be facing a certain amount of animosity from the public because they’re being told what to do; but when the rule of law from their mouths is so transparently asinine it’s only going to feed into the notion that they’re not worth respecting.

Try keeping the peace with a little bit of actual respect for the citizens rather than using bad rhetoric; people really do not want to be part of a problem, leave it at that rather than insulting them.