I like Chris Moore, and I think you should too (though many of you probably won't.) In aid of this, I present to you a somewhat abridged quote from my favorite novel of his, Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal. Never mind that you don't know the story, you'll figure out what's going on here.

We were twelve days into our journey, following Balthasar's meticulously drawn map, when we came to the wall.
"So," I said, "what do you think of the wall?"
"It's great," said Joshua.
"It's not that great," I said.
There was a long line waiting to get through the giant gate, where scores of bureaucrats collected taxes from caravan masters as they passed through. The gatehouses alone were each as big as one of Herod's palaces, and soldiers rode horses atop the wall, patrolling far into the distance. We were a good league back from the gate and the line didn't seem to be moving.

"Screw it," I said. "This is going to take forever. How long can it be? Let's go around."

A month later, when we had returned to the same gate and we were standing in line to get through, Joshua asked: "So what do you think of the wall now? I mean, now that we've seen so much more of it?"
"I think it's ostentatious and unpleasant," I said.
"If they don't have a name for it, you should suggest that."
And so it came to pass that through the ages the wall was known as the Ostentatious and Unpleasant Wall of China. At least I hope that's what happened.

1) Wall-E. I seem to have enjoyed it more than most, but then having read dozens of opinions from folks about what the supposed message was, I was able to realize that as with the news, your objections or kudos to a given media product say more about where you stand than the actual message. Yes, there were one or two overt messages, largely about overconsumption and the need to get out and do something. They're not invalid messages, but they were so incredibly overt that they quickly became funny. As such, I immediately just got over it and simply enjoyed the movie. Anyway, no matter how much you might scowl, you'd have to be cold-hearted indeed not to be charmed by the, let's call it the "dancing" scene so as not to be spoilery.

2) This is probably only of use to folks in the LA area, but, the Americana at Brand is just as irritatingly pleasant as the Grove is. In fact, it's kind of better in its' use of space. The trolley (yes, they have a trolley here too) is completely useless except for cuteness' sake, as it doesn't take you anywhere except on a loop through the entire property, and there is only the one stop at the beginning, or end. At least at the Grove, you can theoretically use it to go from one end to the other. More problematically, there are far fewer shops, and *all* of the shops are upscale, as opposed to the Grove where a few of them are actually useful. And of course there is no Farmer's Market, or as my wife put it as we were getting ready to leave "But there's no meat shop! There should be a meat shop attached!" Which indeed there should always be. To date, we have found no better butchers than those located in the Farmer's Market. If you, whoever you are is reading this, know of a better butcher in the Los Angeles area, I am absolutely soliciting your advice. I'd prefer advice from folks who have actually purchased meat from these butchers, of course.

3) John Adams. Good book, good documentary on HBO. Read it, watch it. I never would have thought that I would find more respect for one of our founding fathers (and, for that matter, lose respect for one who I had largely considered a genius), but I did. Mr. Adams is sadly overlooked in our history. Our revolution would almost certainly not have happened if it were not for him... although perhaps it was inevitable.

There's an alternate history story, if anybody wants to write it: Boston, 1808. The cod fisheries are producing, industry is flourishing from Philadelphia to Boston, the cotton is flowing, and now the crown wants money to fight Napoleon - who steps to the fore? Come now, the British Isles are months away. We can and will have our own country! The sheep farmers of Australia had a revolution 20 years ago and the UTA (United Territories of Australia) is now a free and independent country! Will we sit idle and watch the pointless wars of Europe financed upon our backs? Nay, I say nay!

As with all things, this one can be blamed on my wife, who recently purchased me several books, among which was Stephen J. Gould's Rocks of Ages.

And now follows a very long and boring rant about the meaning of science, religion, ethics, philosophy, and other boring stuff. ( Click at the peril of being deeply, deeply bored, but please don't complain that you were bored - You. Were. Warned. )

Here's something cool that I'd never heard about, that I think you might like to know about as well. I cannot vouch for the scientific accuracy of the following, but it's cool anyway. According to the authors of The Book of General Ignorance, John Lloyd and John Mitchinson, the loudest thing in the ocean is... shrimp. Not the loudest individual creature - that honor belongs on land or in air to the blue whale, whose incredibly low-frequency and loud song has been shown to travel up to 10,000 miles. But the loudest possible noise, they say, is the combined sound of shrimp.

The sound of the "shrimp layer" is the only natural noise that can white out a submarine's sonar, deafening the operators through their headphones.

...even adjusting for the fact that sound travels five times faster in water, equates to about 160 decibels in air: considerably louder than a jet taking off (140 dB) or the human threshold of pain. Some observers have compared it to everyone in the world frying bacon at the same time [and wouldn't that be a fine thing? World Bacon Day! -ed].

The noise is caused by trillions of shrimps snapping their single oversized claw all at once...

But it's even more interesting than it sounds. Video shot at 40,000 frames per second shows clearly that the noise occurs 700 microseconds after the claw has snapped shut. The noise comes from burst bubbles, not the shutting of the claw itself, an effect known as cavitation.

It works like this. A small bump on one side of the claw fits neatly into a groove on the other side. The claw is shut so rapidly that a jet of water traveling at 62 mph squirts out, fast enough to create expanding bubbles of water vapor. When the water slows down and normal pressure is restored, the bubbles collapse, creating intense heat (as high as 20,000 degrees Celsius) [that'd be 36,000 degrees Fahrenheit -ed], a loud pop, and light - this last being a very rare phenomenon called sonoluminescence, where sound generates light.

Shrimps use this noise to stun prey, communicate, and find mates. As well as ruining sonar, the sharp, hot intense noise makes dents in ships' propellers.

Preliminary web research would indicate that the shrimp layer is far from widespread, and in fact only exists in a few places. Also I really have to wonder at that 20,000 degrees Celsius figure - that's a temperature three times hotter than the surface of the sun (though admittedly well below the thousand of millions degrees produced, we think, in the center of the sun). Still, presumably the shrimp don't usually manage to produce quite so much heat, or they only manage to do it in sub-microscopic areas. And it's a good thing, or they'd boil the seas dry, at least in their local areas.

Also, can sound actually make a dent in a propeller, or are ships' crews blaming poor navigation on "well, I don't know... maybe it was the shrimps!" Nice try, Whiskey McScurvy... maybe? I dunno. Further research is necessary.

Nevertheless, it seems possible that shrimp can kick our ass just by being shrimp and doing their shrimpy thing. Just one more reason for the rest of you to get on with eating them. I'd help, but I'm allergic.

"Comedy" Friday Night continues.

If you have children or are at all familiar with kid's books, you may have heard of Mo Willems, who has authored such amusing books as Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus and Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late. Here's a few rejected titles from the same series:

Don't Let the Pigeon Drink and Dial

Don't Let the Pigeon Take the Free Personality Test

Don't Let the Pigeon Eat the Whole Goddamned Bag

Don't Let the Pigeon Have A Wide Stance

Don't Let the Pigeon Sign the Release

Don't Let the Pigeon Supersize It

Don't Let the Pigeon Double Down

Your contributions to the list are invited.

I've been re-reading some Raymond Chandler lately, and I... well, okay, I love Chandler.

I want to see the Los Angeles he saw in 1933, and 1939. He makes it not exactly come alive, quite the opposite actually: He holds pre-war Los Angeles down and kills it and puts it on display like a diseased butterfly. (Which may be the best metaphor I've ever thought of for Los Angeles of any era.) Only you don't notice he's doing it, because he's telling you a story at the same time. He does the same for post-war Los Angeles too, only he lets it breathe a bit and impart even more menace to the surroundings.

But the trouble is that the story, in every single one of his books, is incomprehensible. I get to the end and I think "wait, what just happened?" There were some dames, and there were some bad guys, and people got killed, both before and during and after the story, and Phillip Marlowe got either beaten up or drugged or both, and he got paid a little but probably not enough and... so... everything came out sort of okay in the end, but only because Marlowe is a deadpan avenging angel, except it really isn't okay because Marlowe still can't really get at the real root of the problem which is that it turns out that everybody is bad given half a chance to be.

And yet Chandler's prose just pulls you along, in this flat and easy and almost-but-not-quite entirely disconnected fashion, and you have no choice but to keep reading to find out what happens and also to find out in extraordinarily economical descriptions about the places in Los Angeles. But of course as a veteran Chandler fan you know there will be no answers, no resolution, no salvation at the end - only an ending.

I would be curious to know your thoughts on Chandler, if you have any.

Attention: Bloggers, Radio Hosts, TV Commentators, Talk Show Hosts, Journal Posters, etc.

I understand, I do, but I am nevertheless placing a one-month moratorium on the following phrase:

So it goes.

You may not use this phrase under any circumstances, in any context, for one month. On May 14th 2007, this phrase will be once again be available for use.

Thank you.

Anybody got any book suggestions? I am finding myself reading the same old stuff over and over. Time for a fresh infusion. I'm all ears.

This is probably only interesting to those interested in comics, so: ( If you're not interested in comics and specifically superhero comics, really, just move on. )

Stolen without shame from errforce1:

Billy Collins, "The Revenant."

I am the dog you put to sleep,
as you like to call the needle of oblivion,
come back to tell you this simple thing:
I never liked you--not one bit.

When I licked your face,
I thought of biting off your nose.
When I watched you toweling yourself dry,
I wanted to leap and unman you with a snap.

I resented the way you moved,
your lack of animal grace,
the way you would sit in a chair and eat,
a napkin on your lap, knife in your hand.

I would have run away,
but I was too weak, a trick you taught me
while I was learning to sit and heel,
and--greatest of insults--shake hands without a hand.

I admit the sight of the leash
would excite me
but only because it meant I was about
to smell things you had never touched.

You do not want to believe this,
but I have no reason to lie.
I hated the car, the rubber toys,
disliked your friends and, worse, your relatives.

The jingling of my tags drove me mad.
You always scratched me in the wrong place.
All I ever wanted from you
was food and fresh water in my metal bowls.

While you slept, I watched you breathe
as the moon rose in the sky.
It took all my strength
not to raise my head and howl.

Now I am free of the collar,
the yellow raincoat, monogrammed sweater,
the absurdity of your lawn,
and that is all you need to know about this place

except what you already supposed
and are glad it did not happen sooner--
that everyone here can read and write,
the dogs in poetry, the cats and the others in prose.