I hate it when I catch myself stereotyping. Like, the other day I was at the Seven-Eleven getting some gas (for my car -- I'm not talking about the chili dogs), and as I was watching the little digital counter spin up into the sixth digit and wondering how difficult it would be to change my identity and leave the country before my credit card bill shows up at my house, I heard a voice from somewhere across Madison shout something I couldn't really understand, although I was able to discern the phrase "Go to hell" in there somewhere. I looked around for where the noise came from, my eyes moving without pause over several different possible candidates: Family waiting in their automobile while dad was inside the store buying smokes -- nope. Fellow commuters standing at the pumps, silently mouthing curses to the evil lords of petroleum while Junior's college fund flowed into their SUV's tank -- nope. Gay couple walking hand-in-hand down the sidewalk -- nope. And then I saw him: Shirtless Man.
Aha!
And this is what I mean by stereotyping, because I of course immediately and unfairly assumed that Shirtless Man must be the source of the unintelligible rant I had just overheard, and I based this assumption purely on the fact that he wasn't wearing a shirt. I know that this is unfair. Just because a guy can't afford a shirt, or gets hot and wants to take his shirt off and wear it around his waist like a belt, and just because he has a faraway look in his eyes like he has no idea where he is and he's scuttling down the sidewalk while stealing furtive glances over his shoulder at nobody in particular DOESN'T mean that he's the kind of guy who would just walk down the street shouting curse words at the top of his lungs to whoever will listen.
I mean, of course it was him, a fact proven to my satisfaction when I saw him turn around and again shout a stream of invective about going to hell to passers-by crossing at the crosswalk on 15th. But still, I feel bad for jumping to that conclusion.
I encounter a shirtless man pretty much every other time I stop to get gas here. Also, this is the gas station where I heard the worst ever pitch for money from a panhandler. This guy was of the I-just-need-money-to-take-a-bus-back-to-Olympia variety, i.e. panhandlers who pretend they're not and always try for at least ten dollars at a time. I was filling up my tires with air because this is the only working air pump on the Hill, and so I was hunched over the valve on the right rear tire when he came walking up and stood right next to the rear bumper, looming over me to deliver his opening line:
"Hi! You've got pretty eyes."
It definitely did get my attention, in that I immediately stood up and faced him while I considered my chances if I had to defend myself by beating him with a pressure valve. I'm sure it's a proven sales method to lead with a compliment, but technique does matter.
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This cabaret I've been putting together for the last month or so is happening tomorrow night here, and you can buy tickets here. If you're in Seattle, you should come down and see me play. If you're not in Seattle, hell, buy a ticket anyway. It's for a good cause -- starving musicians.
It will be a hell of a lot of fun.
Well it's Monday and the cataclysm predicted by my conspiracy-theorist friend hasn't materialized, so I had to get up this morning and go to work like any other Monday. Not that I'm complaining. And the next time I talk to said friend I'm probably not going to rub it in that the latest vague and implausible threat to be issued via the internet (soon to be known as "the Ranternet") was, like so many others, probably concocted by a 45-year old "Alias" fan who likes to show up in chatrooms and brag about his work with "the Company."
I may be practicing a bit of a double standard here based on my fondness for crackpot theories, because I definitely don't cut this much slack to everybody who cries wolf. I may have a tendency to gloat, for instance, when certain believers in an impending apocalypse set a date and that date comes and goes with nary an apocalypse in sight. People waiting for the Rapture to come and scoop them off to heaven remind me of a kid who doesn't do his homework because he hopes it might snow three feet tonight and school will be cancelled tomorrow. Plan for the future? No, thanks. Jesus is comin'!
The collective effect of all this hopin' and wishin' and anticipatin' seems to be that a substantial and disproportionately well-represented portion of the population sees no point in thinking more than a year or two into the future. The ones who set a specific date always seem to set it right around the corner, never more than a few years off. It's never going to happen two hundred years from now ("We figured it out using Numerology!"). It has to hold the promise of happening within their lifetimes or it loses its motivational value, I guess.
The year 2000 represented a unique convergence of several promised apocalypses as millenarian Christians, black-helicopter survivalist types, and WIRED-reading technophiles alike awaited their own particular forms of The End of Life As We Know It. Interestingly, although I saw plenty of mockery in the media for all the doomsayers who based their warnings on the computer glitch angle ("When the dial rolls over to double zeros THE MISSILES WILL ALL LAUNCH AT ONCE!!"), the Rapture-anticipators seem to have mostly gotten a free pass. I guess that while it's all in good fun to mock survivalists and computer nerds, it's considered unseemly to mock people who make stunningly inaccurate predictions based on deeply-held religious convictions. Unless they're "cultists."
Also, while I saw a fair amount of sheepish "whoops!"-es in the press from the people who talked up Y2K beforehand, I never heard any talk of massive defections from evangelical churches when the aforementioned Rapture 2000 produced a big goose egg. So I'm assuming most of those people just pushed the date back again and remain poised for their imminent rescue from this world of misery. The Rapture's been postponed like this plenty of times before without any apparent impact on the church's credibility, and the Faithful remain as steadfast as Cubs fans, every year knowing in their heart of hearts that this could be the year.
Of course, it's not as if Cubs fans believe that when the Cubs finally win the World Series all the fans who remained loyal to the Yankees or Red Sox or Cardinals (Hi Rae!) are going to roast in hell for all eternity and "serves 'em right anyhow." Or maybe they do. I don't pretend to understand Cubs fans.
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I had a full weekend of day-after-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it fun activities, the highlight of which was going to see The French Project at the Vodvil Theatre. It was charming and weird. I made a mental note afterwards that matching outfits serve better than any other device I can think of to make a group of people playing instruments look like a band. And remember: Without a little French accent, lamé is just lame.
On Sunday I saw a workshop produced by friends of mine called "Tits! the Musical" which was thoroughly enjoyable, if brief, and then afterwards there was a talkback where the director asked us all what we thought of it and what we didn't like and "what we'd like to see more of", and at this all the heterosexual males in the room sort of looked at our shoes and didn't really say anything.
One of my loose cannon friends just forwarded me a lengthy missive about some impending disaster planned by the sinister forces at work within our government, "something big" it tells me by way of vague and ominous warning, bigger than 9/11, big enough to justify martial law, maybe nuclear big etc. etc. It will be happening later this week, the message assures me, following a round of speculation against the dollar by all the high-level conspirators who know what's coming. He says he's sending it as a warning to his friends in possible target cities, but I suspect he also wants to be able to say "I told you so" if it turns out to be true. Which, to be fair, is also mainly why I'm mentioning it.
If it all goes down like it's supposed to, while you're reporting to your assigned food-distribution zone to receive your rations and whatever instructions your local commander has for you, you can be thinking "Wow, if only I'd listened to more crackpots on the internet, I might've seen this coming."
Meanwhile I suppose I'll be feeling very smug from inside my barbed wire enclosure at the Pacific Northwest Detention Facility for bloggers.
A conspiracy theory is a bit like a fetish -- no matter how hot you may get about your own, everyone else's just seems silly. Trilateral Commission? Please. Spare me. Everyone knows that the Anunnaki are running the world from their subterranean base beneath Antarctica.
I don't need conspiracy theories this week in order to feel bummed about the state of the world. Not after reading this article about how the internet trade in endangered species is driving many species closer to extinction because apparently people want to buy chimpanzees just because they can. I don't know what they intend to do with the chimps and tigers and macaques and giraffes once they buy them, but I guess the fact that it's illegal makes it even more appealing for collector types. Forbidden fruit and all that. It's sort of like an exotic animal fetish.
Note to the people on the buying end of these transactions: If you really think rhino horns make you virile, how come there aren't more rhinos running around? Shouldn't they be breeding like rabbits? Not that I wish to encourage the trade in rabbit-based virility cures. But at least it would make more sense. And there are enough rabbits to go around if it comes to that.
This proposal to move endangered African animals like elephants and cheetas into the plains states of the U.S. didn't really cheer me up either, even though I support the idea based on its entertainment value alone.
If the researchers quoted in this article are right, that might not be the only way that North America will come to more closely resemble equatorial Africa in the next century. It seems that most of the models projecting global temperature increases prior to now have been assuming a steady, incremental rise. But what that doesn't take in to account is threshold events like the one happening in Siberia. As the permafrost thaws, huge quantities of trapped methane are released into the atmosphere, thus accelerating global warming by 10% to 25%. Also, because ice reflects a lot of heat, as it melts the exposed ground absorbs even more heat, thus exacerbating warming even further.
So, the upshot is: we're even more fucked than we thought. Also, we're going to need to come with a new name for "permafrost." I propose "impermafrost."
What's next? Plagues of locusts?
I've never really believed that ignorance is bliss, but reading news stories like these is definitely the opposite of bliss.
Sigh.
Pt 4: The Web
2014: The controversy around PanGenTech's CEO and "Phantom Pharmaceuticals," as it is dubbed in the press, creates an outcry for laws restricting the claims that can be made by the manufacturers of cell-implant systems, but in August InCelCo files suit against the U.S. government under the provisions of Article 12 of the Central American Free Trade Agreement, arguing that the proposed restrictions represent an unfair restraint of trade. The court rules in InCelCo’s favor.
Documentation of subsequent instances of CEO cheesing attacks is not publicly available, although unofficial reports have circulated of other alleged corporate victims resorting to the Federal Restrictions On Trade-Damaging Speech Act of 2006, which allows corporations to seek compensatory damages against media outlets that publish stories resulting in loss of revenue for the company. The extreme reluctance among executives to discuss these incidents even with their own boards prevents any accurate assessment of the prevalence of this type of crime, and provisions in the Homeland Security Act that allow corporations to classify internal documents as "Critical to National Security" further complicate any public investigation. As a result, after the initial furor over PanGenTech, the matter is quickly forgotten by a public already grown weary of stories of corporate scandal and malfeasance.
2015: InCelCo, in a message to shareholders, proudly reports that in the last three quarters none of the Elite CEO level customers have elected to have their implants removed. Sales of the new Platinum Security line, which boasts an "infallible Turing Test" capable of screening for artifical intelligences of all varieties, are higher than expected. Thanks to a hugely successful PR campaign, InCelCo has managed to turn the fear generated by the Phantom Pharmaceutical scandal into an advantage, with sales of their highest level military-grade encryption services exceeding projections.
2016: InCelCo prepares to release a stripped-down version of the Elite Executive implant with fewer security measures and pretty-good encryption (PGE), marketed as the Vice President Class of implants. Prices for the surgery are within the budget of a broad range of customers, with a price tag comparable to breast augmentation or rhinoplasty. InCelCo stocks climb sharply in anticipation of its release.
In the wake of the "Phantom Pharmaceuticals" incident, the new joke repeated to the point of cliche goes "What's the difference between a schizophrenic who talks to imaginary voices in his head and a CEO talking to the Tokyo Branch? The suit!"
This joke reflects the environment in which we find ourselves halfway through the second decade of the twenty-first century: A world where, thanks to the increasing ubiquity of implant technology, more and more people find themselves holding conversations with voices in their heads that only they can hear, and everyone up to the highest level decision-makers is daily expected to act on the whispered confidences of secret interior voices, voices which may or may not have ever originated from the mouths of human beings.
It has been said that we weave the web of our reality from the threads of individual facts, known pieces of information from which we construct the framework for our understanding of the rest of the world. In the modern world, the bulk of what we profess to know comes from exactly those sorts of whispered confidences, facts originating from disembodied voices, facts which can only be credibly confirmed or denied by other, equally intangible voices.
Note:In compliance with the Online Speech Provision of the Federal Restrictions On Trade-Damaging Speech Act, names of certain parties have been fictionalized or, in some cases, omitted.
Pt 3: The Ear of the King
2013: Stock prices at PanGenTech plummet when it is revealed that the CEO has been holding high-level negotiations with a fictitious company called "PharmCoPro" which holds patents on a new male potency drug called Vigoralis. When an executive assistant recognizes this name as having originated in a series of manga (a popular Japanese form of comic-book) released under the English name Corporate Ninja Clan, she informs her boss of her suspicions about PharmCoPro and is promptly fired. Word of the incident is leaked to the press, resulting in a scandal that ultimately forces the CEO's ouster.
Documents from the joint FBI-SEC investigation into the matter reveal some disturbing facts: Analysis of voice recordings of the CEO's interactions with PanGenTech over secure phone lines indicate that at no point was the CEO speaking to an actual person. The head of PharmCoPro, characterized as "absolutely trustworthy" and "most emphatically NOT a machine" by the CEO, was in fact a machine. Investigators speculate that the electronic con man was actually a highly advanced phone-bot, probably being operated by a person or persons with previous criminal experience and armed with a wealth of private information about PanGenTech and its CEO. The perpetrator(s) clearly had access to secure phone lines and cracked private encryption keys.
The fraud was elaborate and included voluminous documentation of PharmCoPro's business operations, none of which had been known to anyone other than the CEO. False documentation even extended to internal PanGenTech documentation, apparently generated for the sole benefit of the "mark," concerning the status of ongoing negotiations as well as various briefs from the legal department. What emerges is an intricate and carefully targeted scam that successfully duped its intended victim into accepting an entirely constructed reality, trading heavily on a corporate culture of secrecy and exclusivity that allowed the illusion to grow unchecked. The "facts" of the high-level business dealings were never vetted through any employees in a position to verify them. Only when the deal was nearly ready to go public did eyes besides the CEO's see the falsified documents, and even then it was an assistant-level employee who finally raised the questions that resulted in an investigation.
Throughout the entire affair, the CEO had been utterly convinced that he had been speaking with a real human being, the head of a successful pharmaceuticals company that never in fact existed. It is the first such scam on record, a cell implant hack, which would later come to be known as “head-spamming” and then “head-cheesing.” Information attacks that deliberately feed misleading information to the chief officer of a large organization (usually with the added instruction that the false information be “kept private” because of its extreme sensitivity) are now commonly referred to as “cheesing.”
Because the fraud did not extend to the rest of the company and did not include any known monetary transaction, the motive for this elaborate ruse remains unclear. Investigators have variously theorized that it was internal sabotage at PanGenTech, an attack by a rival corporation bent on undermining PanGenTech's credibility, an attempt by speculators to manipulate stock value, or pure "malicious mischief" perpetrated by extremely skilled, unaffiliated hackers.
Next: Pt 4: The Web
Pt 2:Implants and Imposters
2010: Researchers at USC announce the creation of the first "sales-bot", a prototype telephonic AI that is capable of initiating conversation. Working from scripts based on thousands of hours of observation of successful sales calls, the sales-bot's programming incorporates the standard expert system and voice recognition features of existing phone-bots with additional real-time psychological modeling and the latest in customer-preference grids to create a system that tailors its approach to the preferences and emotional responses of the listener. Based on the statistical preference grids in common usage on retail sites like Amazon.com, the system makes "educated guesses" not only about what sort of products the customer might be interested in, but also about what sort of psychological appeal is most likely to be effective with that customer.
2011: The first entirely automated telemarketers come on line. Replacing the standard recorded voice sales-pitch (which demonstrated extremely low rates of success) with an interactive AI that is not always easily distinguishable from a human telemarketer, the sales-bots employ massively modular "script trees" designed to prolong the interaction and screen for prospective buyers. Closing is still handled by human sales staff.
2012: With the falling price of tooth implant surgery eroding the status value of its highly lucrative Executive Class line, InCelCo responds by releasing the Elite Executive Class series, which replaces the bone-resonance tooth with a chip that feeds directly into the auditory nerve. The successful ad campaign urges executives to "Live in the Loop. No wires, no sound, just perfect fidelity, anywhere, anytime. Backed by the best service in the world. Because behind every successful business is an Elite Executive."
The vast bulk of public interactions with businesses are handled by computers. Calling a business and getting a human on the line becomes a mark of status. While corporations continue to conduct some of their internal business through person-to-person interactions, such interactions with the general public become increasingly rare. With the rise of automated "cell-spam" placing an ever-growing burden on the communications grid, secure networks that allow person-to-person calls only between registered users become yet another mark of status.
InCelCo incorporates just such a secure network into their Elite CEO class series, which boasts a "100% effective barrier to unwanted calls and unauthorized interactions."
Next: Pt 3: The Ear of the King
Pt 1: Communications
2002:The popularity of "hands-free" headset phones prompts the first of many stand-up comedians to observe that it is becoming difficult to differentiate between people talking on their cell phones and "street crazies talking to the voices in their heads."
2003: Researchers develop a prototype for the first cell-phone implant, the "tooth phone." The prototype is displayed in the Science Museum in London. News of the invention is reported in tech magazines and various mainstream news sources as a "shape of things to come" curiosity, but largely ignored.
2004: Advances in voice-recognition software leads to the testing of the first commercially viable "phone-bots", interactive customer-service AIs that aim to mimic interactions with real human operators. Able to learn from interactions, the synthetic operators display facility with word recognition approaching human levels, combined with integrated expert systems that allow them to answer almost any well-formed question without detectable delay. The phone-bots are initially envisioned as a replacement for voice-activated "phone trees" which ask users to select from a menu of options.
2005: Researchers test tone-recognition routines that provide an automated basis for evaluating the psychological state of a caller; An early publicized example is used to create MIT's "Jerk-o-meter," which uses metrics of pitch variation, rate of speech and length of pauses to assess a caller's mood.
2006: Developers of customer-service AIs at VoxInterActiv incorporate this technology into test versions of M-Path, a phone-bot that automatically modulates the computer's speaking voice to adjust to the emotional agitation level of the caller. Taking their cue from studies showing that hearing a consistently calm-sounding voice can further enrage certain already-irritated customers, designers endow their computerized receptionist with the capability of altering its responses to accommodate varying levels of customer agitation, adjusting the tone of its responses to sound appropriately "polite and deferential" or "confident and reassuring" as the situation dictates. Initial testing shows that callers prefer interacting with the automated receptionist over a human in 7 out of 10 instances.
2007: InCelCo announces the release of its Executive Class line of cell phone implants. As with the first mobile phones and later cell phones, it is first marketed to high-end users by emphasizing the product's exclusivity and through appeals to new-technology fetishism. The fact that they must be surgically implanted helps to impart this cachet, as does the fact that the Executive Class users must register with the Department of Homeland Security and receive a special permit to operate the strong encryption measures that come as a standard feature.
2009: Automated customer service representatives are now far more common than their human counterparts. Able to answer most customer inquiries with far greater speed and accuracy than human operators, the phone-bots can also draw on a database of regional variants in pronunciation and syntax to adjust to the caller's speaking style. The phone-bots are designed for seamless interactivity to create the illusion of "conversation," but only within the realm of well-formed question-and-answer type interactions. They continue to perform poorly compared to humans when required to initiate conversation threads or when called upon to answer incongruous or poorly-formed questions. The "nonsense blind spot" creates a special employment niche for human agents, who deal with the small percentage of customers who are too incoherent for an AI to cope with.
Next: Pt 2:Implants and Imposters
Sometimes when I'm reading the paper I like to stop and read Billy Graham's column. He publishes a biblically-themed advice column which can always be relied upon for one-size-fits-all advice to suit every situation. Thinking about straying from your wife? Look inside your heart and ask God for guidance. Thinking about taking a rifle with you up to the top of the water tower and exacting your revenge on this godforsaken little cesspool of a town that has always treated you so unkind? Ask yourself if Jesus would approve of this course of action. Thinking about buying a house but worried about the housing bubble bursting just as you're getting into the market? What if you find yourself locked into high-interest mortgage payments on an overvalued home just as the economy takes a sudden downturn? Trust Jesus, my child. He has the answers.
I was reading the paper today and came across this column, in which the good Reverend prints a letter from a woman complaining of the following problem:
"I know it's bad for me and all that, but I guess I'm just addicted to food"
The Reverend then goes on to counsel her that "God loves us and wants us to be free from anything that enslaves us ... including food."
I can't tell you what a relief that is to hear. I'm definitely addicted to food. Like, if I try to go even a day without it, I start to go through withdrawal. I find myself feeling tired, listless, irritable -- oh my God, I think I have a serious problem! I mean, what if it turns out I can't stop?!? I need an intervention here, people!
It reminds me of a joke my dad, who grew up on a farm, has been known to tell:
"We had a mare we were teaching to go without food. We figured we'd get her used to it slowly by just cutting down her feedings until we could finally just eliminate them altogether. It was going pretty well, but unfortunately just before we got her trained, she died."
She's in a better place now.
Back when the Emporor Norton was in town, we would occasionally converse face-to-face (or face-to-solar plexus, as it were.) This is one such conversation, as close as I can remember it.
Flaming Banjo: Hey, you've worked in food service a lot --
Emporor Norton: Yes.
FB: --Maybe you can answer a question I have. Why is the service in vegan cafes always so awful?
EN: Pot.
FB: (Laughing): That's it? Pot? I thought you'd have a whole theory about it.
EN (Looks up and right, considering, then): Well, maybe... Why, do you have a theory? (This said in full awareness that I always have a theory.)
FB: I always think it's because when I walk up to White Dreadlock Dude and actually have the nerve to ask him to prepare some food and perhaps a beverage for me, that he deliberately proceeds as slowly as possible because he's decided that I'm the Man.
EN: Okay, there might be something to that. Maybe those places tend to attract people who have a problem with authority -- like they're anarchists and object to the whole idea of being expected to wait on other people because it's demeaning. Cause, you know, 'Fuck the Man'.
FB: You don't see a lot of "the Customer is Always Right" signs in vegan cafes. I always get this feeling that's like "you should be glad that you can even find a place that serves cruelty-free muffins, buddy. We're doing you a favor just by staying in business, so the least you could do is cut me a little slack, Mr. Where's-the-Food-I-Ordered-Forty-Five-Minutes-Ago. "
EN: Maybe being an eco-anarchist free thinker is fundamentally incompatible with service industry positions. You can tell they're free thinkers, 'cause there's a Che Guevera poster hanging over the espresso machine.
FB: Exactly! They're all "Hey, quit bugging me, man. I'm trying to master the didgeridoo!"
Also, Iwonder if it isn't malnutrition: maybe they aren't getting enough vital amino acids in their diets, and their synapses aren't firing right.
EN: Which brings us back to my original explanation: It's the pot.
FB: It could be the pot.
For dry wit and sophisticated reparteé, the Algonquin Round Table has nothing on the Drooping Acres dining room table:
Flaming Banjo: We're out of toilet paper.
John Galt: Really? I thought we just bought a ton of the stuff.
FB: We did, but then we wiped our asses with it.
JG: Typical.
FB: This is why we can't have nice things.