As much as I've always loved The Onion, it sorta went south for a while, in my humble opinion. It just wasn't quite as good for a stretch. For a while there, it fell out of my regular Wednesday routine. I went back last week after a long hiatus and there it was...The Onion had it again, and I was jiggling like jello in my chair for a good ten minutes—precisely the effect it's supposed to have. Headlines of note:

• Bedding Officials Demand Thread Recount
• Experimental Band Theoretically Good
• Matchbox Twenty Finally Finishes Watering Down Long-Awaited New Album
• Ramones Reunion Nearly Complete
• Trapped Miner Wishes He Could See The Coverage

Ah, The Onion...

Ever wondered what the worst possible jobs might be? Check this out. It's a great read. Hilarious, interesting, and quick enough to not waste your time.

This hurricane thing is getting ridiculous. Someone out there must have pulled the wrong lever or something. We've never seen anything like it. Not this many, not this big, not this often, and never one after the other. I'll say this: if, after all this, people STILL insist on living in a trailer park in Florida, maybe they deserve to sweep up their homes a few times a year.

Meanwhile, Antarctica's glaciers are melting ever faster. In the coming years, we might hear a lot about the salinity level of the ocean, and how it is likely to affect the Gulf Stream. In a nutshell, England, Ireland, and all of northern Europe could quickly plunge into an ice age—within this decade. (Emph: Could)

In case you forgot, the Gulf Stream is generated by cold, salty water that sinks into the North Atlantic. This in turn forces warm surface water northwards, which creates the current that keeps much of northern Europe warm despite their latitude. (After all, the British Isles have the same north latitude as Newfoundland. It's like, cold there.)

This might be a massive worldwide catastrophe in our lifetimes, or it might be a massive worldwide catastrophe in the next generation's lifetimes. Or the next. Or it might not amount to anything drastic for a thousand years. It might take an eon. Two eons. But one thing is for certain: Blaming climate change on George Bush is off the mark. No one's doing that? Sure they are...follow the placards.

I'm not talking about pollution, I'm talking about climate change. Yes, yes, alternative fuels should be commonplace by now; yes yes our continued reliance on fossil fuels is maddening, and yes, these things appear to be contributing to global warming, which might be linked to our climate weirdness. I'm talking about climate changes due to natural Earth changes. Human activity frosts that cake, but it doesn't bake it.

Brrrr...?

I was a little miffed that the U.S. didn't walk the walk on the Kyoto Protocol, but a closer look reveals that it had a lot of junk attached to it. The point is, despite what you might read in a few decidedly slanted rags, our climate isn't changing because of George Bush, oil and car companies, or "corporate greed" in general. It's not changing because of the United States. It's changing because the Earth periodically changes. It always has, and always will. Most climate scientists say we will likely experience a climate "flip" of some kind. They just aren't sure of the severity of the flip. Or the timing of it. There's data out there, but not all scientists agree what the data is telling us, or how we can use it to forecast changes in the immediate future. Fear allows us to draw the worst conclusions. I'm guilty of that too. It's a frightening concept mainly because there's nothing we can really do about it if the tide turns.

But why is it that we don't hear about the link between the Sun's activity and climate trends on Earth? You have to dig for this stuff while you do your best to tune out what's happening with Britney Spears. We hear that Bush refused to sign a few papers a few years ago at the Kyoto thing, but we don't hear about the immutable blips and bleeps of our solar system, or the natural evolution of the planet, and how these things engineer what we see and feel on Earth. Maybe we're not changing Earth as much as Earth is changing Earth. And she's getting a lot of assistance from del Sol.

Maybe people were smarter thousands of years ago than we are today. England and its neighbors had a mini ice age about 12,500 years ago. They call it the Younger Dryas. Britain fell into a permafrost, and icebergs traveled as far south as Portugal. Whoever was king then probably didn't have to deal with a bunch of placard-wielding shitheads who collectively jumped to the wrong conclusions—conclusions that fueled their misdirected hate. Nope, I bet he didn't have to deal with that. I'm sure people just made and hunted for better coats, and did their best to survive.

Tempus Fugit, and I have no idea where it went. Once upon a time I was less aware of time. Or at least its passing. You know, back when it barely moved. If you're thirty something or older, you remember the days when a semester felt like an eon. When summer vacation was measured in geologic time. Damn, those were good times. Because time was good to us. Time was on our side.

Time is supposed to be a constant, but we can cross out that notion with a nice heavy ball point pen (red, of course). Plato said time is the motion of the cosmos. Aristotle said Nah, it's not motion, it's the measure of motion. Much later, Immanuel Kant offered something interesting: Our minds perceive space as having Euclidian geometry, and time as an infinite mathematical line. Almost every one of our great philosophers had their own theory or method of explaining time. The one explanation that feels the most true to my rational brain and info-needy heart comes from Albert Einstein:

Time as we know it—and time as we measure it with our calendars and clocks, is a human invention. Therefore, we can conclude that it's imperfect. It can't be a true constant.

I think this is a satisfactory explanation for the phenomenon of what I'll call proportional time variance. In fact, let's call it PTV so that it sounds cool. PTV is responsible for that pit in your gut when you realize that those memories from college that feel close enough to reach out and touch are more than a decade away. PTV is the reason you have a hard time believing that your coffee is already cold. It's why your stomach is already barking for lunch but you just got started. It's why you see the sun going down a few moments after reading the mail. It programs us to say things like "Where did the day go?", or "No way it's already six o'clock. Are you kidding me?" It's also why your dearest memories feel like they're closer to you than they are.

More specifically, PTV is that very real perception that time burns more quickly the older we get. As the proportion of our lived lives increases relative to the unlived, unknown future...time seems to, well, fly. Meanwhile, the instruments we use to measure time tell us that a day or week or year in 1986 spanned the same amount of time as it does today.

So, do we trust our flawed perceptions, or our flawed instruments? Like you, I know the answer but I don't. As soon as you choose one over the other, you doubt yourself. You quickly conceive an argument that at least temporarily overrides your conclusion.

Einstein's genius was beautiful because his language was beautiful, and truth is beauty and beauty is truth. His ideas have stood the test of time, and they feel right. They feel like truth. They appeal to the rational mind as well as the aesthetic mind. Time took Einstein. It'll take you, too. And me.

There has to be another way.

So I guess we found an old nuke at the bottom of the Ocean. Lost in a B-47 crash in '58. I was immediately reminded of a story my mother told me just last year. It was the last week in October, 1962. My parents were driving to Boston with my older sister (3 years old) and brother (2). The Cuban missile crisis had...mushroomed into the most frightening and dire moment in modern times.

They drove across the Mass Pike in the dark of the evening, anxiously awaiting President Kennedy's national radio address. This is what they heard. He detailed the different missile types pointed directly at us. He mentioned the cities that were in range. They could strike as far north as Canada, and as far south as Peru. In other words, it appeared that WWIII would arrive before the weekend, and the entire country was a bullseye.

Kennedy during his address, not looking chipper.

My parents created a plan immediately. If they saw a flash in the sky, they would stop the car, pull over, and lay on top of my brother and sister in the roadside culvert. They fully expected they'd need to do this. Nikita Khrushchev was a tough, stubborn S.O.B. who had set no precedent for backing down. Everyone knew the U.S. wasn't going to bend, either. A stalemate looking down the barrel of nuclear oblivion.

There never was a flash, as we know. Khrushchev blinked. The point is, my generation still hasn't seen a fraction of the terror that my parents' generation lived through, and even more so, their parents' generation. We've had it easy.

Another good example of why I hate politics: Democratic lobbyists are planning to create Schwarzenegger "Girlie Men" bobblehead dolls—complete with hot pink dress and pumps—ostensibly to discredit him or make would-be idiots believe that his self-effacing reference to "girlie men" is somehow unacceptable or worthy of scorn. Two things here:

1. The "girlie man" comment was created by Dana Carvey for an on-going skit on Saturday Night Live in the early 1990s. It was poking fun at Schwarzenegger. For Arnold to use that old reference only demonstrates that he doesn't take himself too seriously, and that he can handle being parodied. In other words, there's nothing to attack.
2. How ill-conceived, hypocritical, and just downright childish is this thing? The Dems—who doubtlessly would think it's a laugh riot if Schwarzenegger was on their "side"—are bringing to life the very concept that they claim is insensitive. What's worse, poking fun at yourself in a speech, or falsifying your discomfort with the joke and then—despite your alleged discomfort—create a girlie man doll out of Schwarzenegger...? Is anyone following me here?

First thing's first. When you click your CNN shortcut and see this on the front page...

...it's interesting what flashes through your mind.

Helicopter pilots trained for five years to catch that thing by its parachute. The same parachute that never opened. Engineers on the 'chute team are buying the drinks. Sigh...

There has been crazy weather all over the globe for quite a while now. The "Climate Change" chatter is up. Way up. Climate change happens. It happened on Earth long before the industrial revolution, so I'm not going to jump on the "humans did it" bandwagon. Yes, we've gunked up the air, water and soil in many places...but climate change would be happening now with or without homo sapiens.

You have to wonder, though...where are we headed? Here in upstate NY we've had the rainiest, most springlike summer I can ever remember. In the past few years we've had the longest, coldest, most brutal winters any of us have experienced. Japan has had a record number of typhoons. Glaciers are cracking and groaning throughout Alaska. Dry regions are even drier, if they're not burning to a crisp. Wet regions are flooding. Some areas have had record warmth, others have had record cold.

Meanwhile, Florida is getting bleached by consecutive hurricanes. Now here comes Ivan, a category 5 hurricane that appears to be wiping its feet on Florida's welcome mat . Florida's house is already a wreck. Ivan wants to come in and destroy the ruins. Looking at all the computer models, the chances of it missing Florida aren't good. I wonder where the insurance premiums will be when all is said and done.

This satellite photograph of Ivan is impressive.

Oh, one more thing: Are you sitting down? Good. If not, sit down. Lift your right foot slightly off the ground and move it repeatedly in a circle, clockwise. Now, with your right hand, try to draw the number 6 in the air WITHOUT changing the direction of your foot's circular motion.

Frustrating, isn't it?

Try...try...try to think of a summarizing title for this post.
I betcha can't.

Finally, an intriguing signal from space...!

...or not.

Come on, you guys! Place a take-out order! Make it obvious and undeniable!

Thought of a pretty good Clash parody song. It's called:

Looks like we might be close to nabbing A-hole 1. If it happens before the election, there will doubtlessly be loud claims that the timing is suspicious. Many, many people will assume that the worst case scenario must be true. It might be. But it might not be. What do we know, I mean really?

The low-budget movie Clerks was a pretty big deal when it came out in 1994. Not because it was great or important or anything speciously lofty like that. Everyone saw it, everyone thought it was great, etc. I never did. I thought the delivery of every quasi-actor was off—way off. I chuckled a few times, but on the whole I never thought it was worthy of the praise it received. There are so many moments in that film where the dialogue is so rapid-fire that the unnatural lack of pauses makes you too aware of the production. And if it wasn't that, it was the stilted attempt at making the characters seem glib. It came off like Kevin Smith speaking through puppets. I always figured that's why Smith's character "Silent Bob" was mute. He was too busy acting as everyone else's ventriloquist.

Clerks did however make it clear to me (and every other tenant of 91 Argyle Street) that maybe it's not impossible to realize all those movie script ideas floating around in the attic. Half-baked plans ensued. We all still have our day jobs.

Anyway, I think of this because I just read that a sequel to Clerks is on its way. "Passion of the Clerks"....? I hate it when movies borrow titles from other works like that. Is it supposed to be cute? Is it supposed to be some kind of timely response to the original? What? Why? I especially hate it when a filmmaker for whom I have a modicum of respect stoops to boring, unoriginal titles like this.

Wanna see a video of an impressive spontaneous "dust devil" (tornado)? None of the Japanese tykes were hurt. Just a few shade tents. Interesting stuff.