Transitional Man's New Writeups

May 8, 2013 (event)

2013-05-08T22:53:37Z

Since I got my current job I drive on average over 1,000 miles a week. Yet I rarely get held up by auto accidents. Today was completely different.

I was downtown moving at two miles per hour when my local NPR announcer told me there had been a fatal truck accident on I-70 eastbound just outside the outerbelt. That didn't bug me too much as I was heading west. Yet I was barely past downtown when I spotted a burned out semi that had once headed in the other direction, surrounded by wreckers. A forklift was unloading the trucks cargo into another rig. A flatbed to carry away the carnage stood by. I got through it and figured I was on my way.

I was wrong. That blackened, ruined truck was just the overture.

Traffic sped up then slowed down again as I got to the outerbelt. Time to creep along again at two MPH, wondering what was happening. Four miles later I got to see the remains of the most horrific…

April 17, 2013 (idea)

2013-04-18T00:30:26Z

I had an evil thought about the Boston Marathon bombing today while driving between jobs. My gut tells me the bomber or bombers is most likely some kind of conservative extremist like McVeigh or Rudolph, but it's way too early for conclusions and while my gut is really good about such things, it is not perfect. Most believe the bombing was motivated by politics and that's likely, but it occurred to the bomber might have a different motive. Fun.

Was Adam Lanza motivated by politics? How about Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold? Or James Holmes?. In none of these cases can the shooters motives be ascribed to anything political. They didn't kill to make a point, they killed because it made them feel good and important to pump bullet after bullet into the moist flesh of innocents. They decided to turn their lives into a real single person shooter.

The problem with the Doom…

Earl Scheib (person)

2013-01-24T01:26:48Z

When I was a boy I remember the ads in beautiful black and white. In print or on television Earl Scheib was a big believer in the power of advertising. A slender man with a big toothy grin, brylcream slick hair calling out in high pitched, midwestern twang, "I'll paint any car, any color for $29.95! No ups, no extras." That man was Earl Scheib.

Painting cars isn't cheap. The right way to do it is simple. Strip off all the chrome bits. All of them, and clear out everything you can. Pull every window, window gasket and trim piece. The best way to do it is really to remove everything but that only happens at the factory or during a truly expensive frame-up restoration. You sand down the body, fix all the little dings, clean it up, prime it then add layer after layer of high quality paint. Buff it till it shines then reassemble.

That was not the Earl Scheib way.

The middle way is you pull the easy chrome…

November 13, 2012 (essay)

2012-11-13T01:51:35Z

I find myself really depressed today, and it's about American politics. Logically I should be happy. We just re-elected a black man as our President despite a still weak economy and attack ads that began two years earlier. The Democratic Party managed to increase its lead in the Senate despite defending twenty-three seats to the Republicans ten. In my own state of Ohio Sherrod Brown was returned to the Senate despite a series of super-pac attack ads that began about a day after the Citizens United decision came down from the Supreme Court. It was a good day for Democrats and I much enjoyed the great wailing and gnashing of teeth that followed from the right, particularly Karl Rove's meltdown on Fox News.

But at the end of the day it just makes me sad. Today people from several…

American Flagg (review)

2012-10-27T02:49:48Z

In many ways the comic book rose to the status of true literature during the early 1980s. Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons brought Watchmen to life. Frank Miller re-imagined Batman in a way that his Caped Crusader may have become the real paradigm for the Dark Knight. Walt Simonson did the same for Thor. The Hernandez brothers combined science fiction and street culture in the marvelous Love and Rockets. And one of the first, if not the longest lasting was Howard Chaykin's American Flagg.

American Flagg was set in 2031 Chicago, one more corrupt and dystopian then the Daley Machine could ever have imagined. The Earth is ruled (from Mars) by a gigantic corporate master known only as The Plex. The plex is everywhere, makes everything, employs everyone yet doesn't give a damn about anyone outside the executive class. They talk about putting a run-down and savaged…

October 11, 2012 (log)

2012-10-11T22:09:20Z

It seems they always call around dinnertime. They figure you'll be home, relaxing with a cocktail, ready for their sales pitch. Supposedly, they have this thing called a Do Not Call List. I'm on. Most of my friends are on it. My mom is on it.

Sometimes it even works. But not always, particularly if you have a land line. My solution to telemarketers when I had a land line was to set down the phone and walk away. Come back a few minutes later and they'll be gone. I do listen to political ads because I was once a political scientist and I want to hear their pitch. I take push polls and try to mess them up. I sat through an entire speech by National Rifle Association head Wayne LaPierre in order to hear the lies (and there were many!) but mostly to tie up their people and phone line for as long as I could.

My mother takes a different tact. She went to the hardware store and bought an Acme Thunderer, the same…