My views on politics, life, death, the army, and other things too miscellaneous to mention here. This is a personal blog. This blog is 100% factual.
Bill Duckwing
Poet, Author, Journalist
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Your Super-Cute Daily Terror Alert Update Will Be Forevermore:
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"There are some myths and untruths surrounding the role God plays in our daily lives. To say that religion and politics do not mix, is certainly a myth, unless you ask a liberal. Anything that affects a Christian (and voting is one of them) — enters into the religious realm. Trying to separate the two is like trying to separate oil from a glass of water, it's impossible to do. "
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Friday, May 20, 2005
My Tepid Excuse for not Updating Regularly, Plus Revenge of the Sith
I know I tend to post new entries in spurts, but I am really sorry about the total lack of updates this week. My sleep schedule is all out of whack, and I think I'm going to need the weekend to get myself back on track. But this week it's all been:
6:00AM -Get up, go to work.
6:45 PM -Get home.
7:00 PM -Nap for a couple of hours.
9:00 PM -Get up groggy, make phone calls, internet, tv, music, whatever else to wind down.
11:00 PM -Read Bible chapters for the day (see previous post)
12:30 PM -Try to go to bed.
1:00 AM -Can't sleep. Get back up.
3:30 AM -Crash in a heap on my bed.
6:00 AM -Rinse. Repeat.
Pretty deep, huh? There's two types of Star Wars fans out there, those that wait in line for days to be the first to see next Star Wars movie when it hits the screens, and those that photoshop creepy shit onto child actor's faces and make it their desktop wallpaper.
I'm actually looking forward to seeing the last installment, but I'll probably wait it out a couple weeks until the buzz dies down a bit. I hate showing up twenty minutes before a movie starts and being forced to sit in the front row.
-duckwing, at 12:59 AM
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Thursday, May 12, 2005
The Utter Joy of Throwing Old Refrigerators Down Stairs
Have you ever wondered how our country, just a year shy of it's 230th birthday, managed to accumulate so many myths and legends to its name? Think about it for a moment with me. How many tall tales have we as a people just totally pulled out of our asses, just for the hell of it. We have the cowboy. Totally made up. A fabrication created by pulp writers who had never ventured west of the Mississippi. I want to get a little bit into a problem area in American history. Tim Cahill once wrote an article about trekking across Death Valley in a book titled "Peking Ducks are Pecking the Liver Out of My Body," and in it he covers the problems inherent for humans attempting such a feat in a "true story" he calls The Man in The Freon Suit.
 It concerns the tale of a guy who lived in the 19th century, during the time of the Wild West. The Man in the Freon Suit constructed an insulated body suit out of fiberglass and freon tubing from old refrigerators (yes, they existed back then) in order to trek across Death Valley, a desert wasteland where temperatures routinely reach 180 degress fahrenheit, a steaming funk of hell so cruel to life that no man has ever crossed it and lived to tell the tale. Before the invention of the automobile, at least.
The Man in the Freon Suit is a hard thing to understand, and perhaps even disturbing to the typical recreational reader. The biggest problem with freon is that, like uranium, it's a highly unstable chemical. But the problems inherent in the chemical nature of freon become more exciting when you add electricity into the mix. When it's excited by an electical current, freon reacts with moisture and contracts, which provides the nice cooling sensation present in appliances like refrigerators and carburetors, at least while they're running. However, when old freon refrigerators are left unplugged, freon loses the main catalyst responsible for it's reaction with water molecules, and this prevents condensation. Deprived of a resource capable of condensation, freon molecules frantically expand outward and react with pure, raw Hydrogen ions, and this releases an unbelievable amount of heat and radiation. Nothing comparable to a hydrogen bomb, but dangerous enough to warrant a fair amount of government attention during the time. This is essentially why we don't use freon coolant refrigerators anymore.
Tim Cahill's account of the tale explains to us that the man in the freon suit encountered a major problem with administering the freon to his suit. The reasons for this vary, some say the motor running the apparatus just died halfway into his trek, others opine that it was a clog or a break in the tubing. Regardless, the end result was the same. Death.
But unfortunatetly, Cahill allowed himself to speculate wildly on the manner of his death. Since freon is better known as a coolant, he says that the man in the freon suit must have frozen to death in the middle of Death Valley. He takes his account solely on the wild myths and oral tradition passed on by those blokes in Montana. Cahill's account, of course, is a serious fabrication. What probably happened was that, without an electrical current, the heat from walking across Death Valley in an insulated, padded suit would've excited the freon molecules into creating an internal temperature inside of his suit 70 or 80 degress higher than the surface temperature on Death Valley, and this excessive heat promptly cooked his brain.
The moral is the same, however. Don't build a suit out of used refrigerator parts if you wish to take on Death Valley.
Which brings me to my own little story. I live in a house with a couple of roommates, and our landload only stops by once a month to pick up or rent and utility checks. One day, a plesantly warm day with highs in the 70's, I noticed that the thermostat upstairs read an improbable 98 degrees.
I was curious for the discrepancy, since I was pretty sure we didn't have the furnace running. But I knew our landlord wouldn't stop by for another couple of weeks, so I decided to investigate. After checking in the basement to make sure the furnace wasn't running, I grabbed a ladder, and crawled up through the crawlspace upstairs into the attic, where I noticed that there were about 30 or so old fashioned freon style refrigerators, sitting upright, and unplugged.
 While interesting, I knew that I couldn't deal with an upstairs floor 20 degrees hotter than the outside, so I immediately started tossing the refrigerators through the crawlspace and down onto the upstair floor.
It didn't take to long for the commotion to awaken my roommate, given it was about 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning. My roommate shouted from downstairs:
"Hey, it's three o'clock in the morning. What the hell are you doing?"
"I'm trying to cool the house down," I said, and paused. "It's gotta be at least 20-30 degrees hotter up here in the attic than it is down there."
"What?" My roommate asked.
"It's the freon! Freon heats up when there's no electrical current..." I paused, out of breath. "For some reason, there's a shitload of refrigerators up here."
"Oh, cool." my roommate responded. "Can I help?"
And together we pushed most of the refrigerators out of the attic, and then we pushed them down the stairs, where they made bright clanging noises.
We left ten or so up in the attic, as a way to provide some amount of internal heating for the house during the winter (cuts down on the heating bill, as we have to pay heating utilities in addition to the rent).
The garbage men, strangely enough, took all of the refrigerators, though they won't take our cardboard boxes filled with more garbage for some reason. Apparently the first rule for garbage men in our area is: Bag it, or we won't take it. Unless they're a bunch of refrigerators, because then we can fix them and sell them at flea markets.
Or something like that.
-duckwing, at 10:04 PM
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Wednesday, May 11, 2005
My Life and Hard Times With Anthony Burgess
I remember first meeting Anthony Burgess back in the 70's, a few short years after the peak of his fame and Stanley Kubrick's release of "A Clockwork Orange," a movie based upon Burgess's famous novel of the same name. At the time, his literary star was rapidly fading, but back in the sixties, his heyday, he was huge, for a number of reasons. For one thing, "A Clockwork Orange" was not only a mammoth bestseller, but it also introduced to the world an entirely new type of syntax. A mix of Russian words combined with a cockneyed English accent, it inspired a litany of goofy slogans and internet catchphrases for generations to come.
But despite the success of "A Clockwork Orange," the information age which Burgess lived his post-successful life was not quite as appreciative of his work. He was a quirky man, full of eccentricities, and he would unleash wildly inappropriate quips to those foolish enough to cross him. Things back in the 70's weren't like they are today. Back in the 70's, if you made a serious ass out of yourself, people remembered you. Anthony Burgess found this out the hard way.
Prior to our chance encounter, Burgess had spent a good deal of his time denouncing Kubrick's masterpiece to any American media reporter who cared enough to listen.
"Nyet to Kubrick. 'Nyet' means no." -he said to The Boston Herald
"I invented Nadsat. I am a genius. Who is HE to interpret my work."- to the New Yorker
"Did you just ask if I 'felt horrorshow?' What the fuck could you possibly be talking about?" -to The District Examiner
He was an odd looking man, even for a man barely into middle age. Untamed hair that curled into hooks around his brow. You could almost say ol' Burgess bore a cross of thorns on his head. And then he'd slap you in the face for being so uncouth. Out of spite. He was just a spiteful man. And at the same time a gloomy one. Try and do a Google image search for "Anthony Burgess," and I guarantee you that you will find no color photographs of the man. Just Try It. Sure, I know you're going to say you found one of two 'color' photographs of him. You probably feel pretty proud of yourself for it, too. But before you copy and paste the links to me, just listen for a second.
They were retouched from old black and white photographs of him. They will revert back to their b&w origins in due time. That was just the nature of the man. Trust me on this.
There is a lot of conjecture to why a man of Anthony Burgess' statue could only be photographed in black and white. Some attempt to portray Burgess as a sort of melancholy King Midas. Eyewitnesses present during his lifetime reported a wispy black smoke emerging from his fingertips when he visited, choking their lungs and turning their upholstery dark grey. Soot would drop out of his trouser legs, horrifically expanding like it was a lit charcoal snake in his pants. When approached his eyes would turn bright white, and irradiate anything that remained untouched by his pervasive gloom. Wouldn't that be fucking weird?
The real reason why an exclusive with Anthony Burgess required such stringent demands was primarily because he considered himself a man of letters, but also because he demanded that the pictures taken of him portray him in as un-lifelike a manner as possible. For posterity, I guess. Which was how I found him when I went to get my copy of "MF." signed at a local Barnes and Noble. He looked like an ancient. His eyes were glazed over by cataracts, so I guess I had no reason to fear being irradiated by the old man, but for some reason he smiled at me as I approached and his blind eyes twinkled with a faint glimmer of recognition.
"Ah, yes. I remember. Do I know you from somewhere? Do I owe you something?"
"No-no," I said. I was very nervous, and with arms shaking, I opened up my copy of "MF." for him to sign. "...Just a fan."
"Fantastic!" He exclaimed far too loudly as he scrawled enthusiastically over the table with his pen. "I like fans..."
Dejected, I closed my book, making to leave. "Thank you very much, Mr. Burgess."
"Call me Anthony!"
"Sure."
He pointed behind me to my girlfriend at the time, Rachel. She was standing behind me, her arms crossed and her foot impatiently tapping the floor. She looked like she really wanted to leave.
"Actually, you." Mr. Burgess said, "Would you like to have dinner with me tonight? What did you just say to me? Dinner at Eight?"
I looked over at Rachel. She frowned at me, so I told Anthony, "Sure, eight o' clock sounds great!"
He quickly gave us directions to his place and sent us on our way. We arrived at around quarter of eight, and he lived in a bad part of town. The cul de sac next to the building enclosed a 30 foot high grey marble bust of him wearing a mortarboard cap. Surrounding the base of the bust were carved depictions of cherubs blaring trumpets, cloud formations, and depictions of various forms of human sacrifice. A marble orange gagged the bust's mouth, unpeeled, perhaps symbolizing the bitterness Anthony Burgess felt about his life's work. While he wasn't the most humble man in the world, I guess, it was a fitting symbol for someone who believed that, in the end, we were all robots.
As we cautiously approached the front door, Anthony threw open the second story windows of his loft to greet us, and black smoke quickly poured out of the house. The stench that wafted out of the house was completely rank. It smelt like somebody threw some putrid decaying thing into the oven and just left it there for the day.
"You're not cooking dead cats up in there, are you....Mr. Burgess?"
"No. Not at all , good chap! It's my birthday!" he exclaimed as he waved his arms around. "I'm baking a cake!"
"Wow," I said, "If I'd known, I wouldn't baked you one myself..."
He attempted to speak, but indulged in a hacking fit so harsh that he dry heaved over us towards the street. "That's okay. Please, come inside, please."
The front door was unlocked, so we entered. The house was full of smoke, and it only became more intolrerable when Mr. Burgess ran down the stairs to greet us with a burnt cake in his arms. He gestured us towards his dining room, and quickly dropped the cake on the dining room table. I observed that Mr. Burgess didn't appear to be wearing pot holders.
"Please! Be Seated!" he yelled at us, throwing his head to and fro as if he was attempting to located us without the use of his eyes.
 As we walked over to join him, he threw his arms up and shook his head. "Oh Christ! I forgot! I don't have any birthday candles!!!!"
He looked towards the area where he though we were standing. He wasn't too far off the mark. "Old chap, would you go ahead and do me a huge favor." he smiled. "Would you go to that get some candles for me at that corner gift shop for me? It's just a block away, and I'm pretty sure they have birthday candles."
He chuckled to himself. "I mean, they must have birthday candles!"
After arguing a bit with Rachel, I persuaded her to stay with Anthony Burgess while I went out to get the candles. After all, he was a literary genius. I figured he, if no one else, could keep her company while I was out.
When I returned, the loft was still pretty smokey to a certain extent, but a bit more tolerable. Rachel had on my old Washington Senators cap, which she must've fished out of my bag while I was gone.
Anthony Burgess was standing over the cake, cutting and serving it onto small paper plates. He cocked his head as he heard me approaching.
"To what do I owe your appearance here?" he asked, "Do I know you? Do I owe you something?"
"I've got your birthday candles right here." I said.
"Oh, just lovely!" he said, "I didn't know it was someone's birthday! Perhaps we should have some cake!"
I walked over beside him. "Yeah. Why don't you have a seat, sir? I can serve the cake for you."
"MMMmmmm..." Rachel said, "Ugggghhhh..." Poor thing. Perhaps I was wrong. Maybe Anthony Burgess' strong suit wasn't in making idle conversation.
"Yes, perhaps you can serve cake..." Mr. Burgess mused, "or perhaps you can serve..." and then his brain went else where...
"So many civilizations eat their slain enemies... what do you think...?" he mused, "How much better to devour a person physically....than to devour his spirit? Which is...of course, how silly of me, THE PURPOSE OF THE INSTITUTION!..."
Suddenly, he jumped up from his seat and removed Rachel's Washington Senators baseball cap. The top half of Rachel's skull had been completely sawed off, presumably by Anthony Burgess, and in place of her scalp lay the exposed entrails of her brains.
"Ses cerveaux pour ici ou pour aller?" he asked me.
I stood there transfixed, unable to move. Weakness overtook my body. Burgess was patient with me, taking his time to cut out a portion of Rachel's brain with a fork and a knife and present it to me.
"You must...eat?"
I didn't take too much time to make a decision about that. I ran out of there with the tail between my legs faster than a speeding photon. I never saw Anthony Burgess again, but before his untimely death at the age of 76, he was the recipient of many literary awards, such as the Hugo and the Peabody. He never did win back his fan base, who never fully recovered from the film treatment of his landmark "A Clockwork Orange," but I think the bigger obstacle might have had something to do with the fact he never completely cleared himself of the rumors his fans had circulated that he enjoyed eating human flesh. Still, I feel that just knowing Mr. Burgess, however briefly, has enriched and qualified my own life. Though I regret the loss of my dearly departed Rachel, and while I did think about reporting it to the police for a number of years, who am I to wrassle with a man of such abundant literary talents?
Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
-duckwing, at 9:39 PM
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Tuesday, May 10, 2005
Uh, Actually...I am the Man Who Will Fight For Your Honor...
I've been accumulating a few links to throw out to you to enjoy.
I'm fascinated by the Republican blogger turncoat "GW is not a God, freepers!" thing that's kinda popped up in certain blogs since the last election. The most obvious example is Andrew Sullivan, of course, who actually ended up endorsing John Kerry in the last election. But I think the best of the bunch is John Cole, of Balloon Juice fame, a Republican who seems to be virtually tearing his hair out with every post he writes.
I'd also like to endorse Ariana Huffington's superblog, mostly because Slate (which has been on roll this week with political silliness) thinks it sucks. Actually, that might be a bit premature even for Slate. But It seems it already thinks da Huffpost is an epitaph waiting to happen as it approaches it's two day anniversary. Given the lag, I'm not sure what to think about it yet, though I enjoyed Larry David's appraisal of John Bolton.
I've been listening to internet radio a lot lately. It's a great internet radio station that where listeners can upload and add to the master playlist, which plays 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The gem of the station is frequency of sheer novelty songs that are played during the course of the day, and songs that are edited, speeded up, or otherwise fucked up.
A key example of this is a song I heard by Peter Cetera called "The Glory of Love." Played sanely in it's entirely, it's your typical 80's movie soundtrack mediocore love song. "The Glory of Love" is actually from "The Karate Kid", and you generally hear it every time Ralph Macchio and his gal look at each other. The key lyric that announces the bridge to us is "Like a knight in shining armour, from a long time ago..."
It's is called "The Glory of Love -Extended Remix" -and this version reprises the bridge lyric for about two whole minutes. It sounds like a broken record. Which it is...
Here are the lyrics to "The Glory of Love" with appropriate links:
Tonight it's very clear
As we're both lying here
There's so many things I want to say
I will always love you
I would never leave you alone
Sometimes I just forget
Say things I might regret
It breaks my heart to see you crying
I don't wanna lose you
I could never make it alone
I am a man who will fight for your honor
I'll be the hero you're dreaming of
We'll live forever
Knowing together that we
Did it all for the glory of love
You'll keep me standing tall
You'll help me through it all
I'm always strong when you're beside me
I have always needed you
I could never make it alone
I am a man who will fight for your honor
I'll be the hero you've been dreaming of
We'll live forever
Knowing together that we
Did it all for the glory of love
Just like a knight in shining armor
From a long time ago
Just in time I will save the day
Take you to my castle far away
I am a man who will fight for your honor
I'll be the hero you're dreaming of
We're gonna live forever
Knowing together that we
Did it all for the glory of love
We'll live forever
Knowing together that we
Did it all for the glory of love
We did it all for love
Indeed.
-duckwing, at 11:47 PM
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Tuesday, May 03, 2005
Bruce Springsteen on Slate
I read this piece in Slate this morning, and then again when I got home from work today, and I still can't get my head around what the fucking point of this article is. It seems to be from the point of view of someone who knows Bruce Springsteen, and yet at the same time never aludes to meeting the man personally. In fact, it's written from the point of view of a fan-boy who truely "knows" Bruce.
Thirty years later, and largely thanks to Landau, Springsteen is no longer a musician. He's a belief system. And, like any belief system worth its salt, he brooks no in-between. You're either in or you're out. This has solidified Bruce's standing with his base, for whom he remains a god of total rock authenticity. But it's killed him with everyone else. To a legion of devout nonbelievers—they're not saying Bruuuce, they're booing...
What the fuck is this horseshit? I think I represent most people when I say that if a Bruce Springsteen song comes on the radio that I like, I'll listen to it, or if I don't, I'll just go ahead and change the station.
I won't argue any of the finer points of this article. It's just stupid. You could write this exact same article about this about any media personality, or any advertiser, who tries to sell you stuff.
"Madonna is a fraud, but we love her anyway. Starting out as a innocent but punky Catholic girl from Detroit (she was in the cast of Godspell, for crying out loud!), Madonna allowed the media and her managers to shape her into something very different!"
Yeah.
-duckwing, at 7:31 PM
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