Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Cognition via Digestion



Christmas has come and gone, leaving in its wake a path of destruction wreaked on my health and digestion. My clothes have mysteriously all shrunk in the dryer, my knees ache when I climb the stairs and my dog has taken to yelling "lard-ass!!" at me instead of his usual "woof". My blood type has turned to scalloped potatoes and my liver is paying the price of my family's craziness.

So imagine my surprise on logging on to reddit.com yesterday morning only to discover that these holiday indulgences are not only warding off my eventual demise into Requiem For A Dream-like dementia, they are actually improving my cognitive abilities. According to an article on Science Daily, the Oxford department of Physiology, Anatomy, and Genetics teamed with a team from Norway to study the relationship between cognition and the intake of three common foodstuffs containing flavonoids, namely Chocolate, Wine and Tea.

I do admit that I have misgivings regarding Brits researching cuisine when they are responsible for such culinary delights as Christmas Pudding and Mincemeat. You would think that instead of researching chemical effects of Flavonoids on cognition that they might attack a more rudimentary problem first, say, the effects of eating sausage, beans, and blood-pudding for breakfast on ones health and flatulence or, perhaps, toothbrushes: how to pick and where to find one. This, combined with my distaste for Lutefisk and Slatur (don't even ask), both regional "cuisines" of Norway makes me completely distrust any and all information included in this study. How both ABBA and Ace of Base remained so upbeat and happy subsisting on a diet composed of this crap is a question I will never be able to answer. Yes, I know, those are both Swedish bands, but their cuisine is fairly similar and the only bands I know of to come out of Norway are Mayhem and Royskopp... Yeah, that's what I thought; no one wants me to go on a lengthy exposition on bands that eat their own lead singer and make necklaces from his skull, do they? But I digress...



After contemplating how I would go about researching and back-checking all of the facts and findings of their study I came up with a much simpler solution: a one-day field test involving one test subject and a limited budget. What? This is a perfectly legitimate short-cut. It should work nearly as well as the time that I forgot to put the turkey into the oven until 20 minutes before everyone arrived for dinner. Just divide the amount of time required by the recipe by how much time you have until everyone shows up and multiply the temperature by the quotient, right? I know, I was surprised that my stove went up to 4200° too. I never did get to see how that one turned out... Some jackass decided to light my kitchen on fire and the fire department showed up before I could taste it.



My next step was to set about organizing my scientific study. While a scientific person would go about getting someone else to observe their behavior during a study like this I decided upon a different tack. I have proven time and time again that not only am I patently un-scientific when it comes to attacking problems but I am, in fact, chaotic, disorganized and completely irrational. If someone were to make a flow-chart of my typical efforts at problem solving it would resemble several feedback loops that never progress beyond step one: identify problem area. There would also, in all probability, be several pirate ships attacking a flaming tank drawn on the side of the flow-chart by me when I got confused by its colors and mistook it for a children's place mat from IHOP. Needless to say, my processes for this study were going to differ slightly from those used by Oxford and the Norwegians, and not just in the size of the sample group: this test was going to take place all in one day...

Hmmmm, in order to be able to ingest the amount of quantities necessary to get a viable sample of their effects I was going to have to fudge a bit on the ingredients here. Considering my height and body-weight I was going to have to knock back about 4 bottles of wine alone, not to mention the Chocolate and Tea, in order to get enough Flavonoids into my system in one day. That was likely going to end in a hyperactive booze-rant in a bubble-tea hut on University Ave when I would invariably be refused service for shouting my order at a wall and sleeping on the counter. Actually, that might pass for normal behavior in the U-District but I still wasn't going to risk it.

What Foods did I decide on for my single-day test, you ask? Well, here's where that part about me being chaotic and completely irrational comes in to play. I decided on the following 3 substitutes: Malt Liquor, Twinkies and Red Bull. While they contain no Flavonoids whatsoever, the alcohol content of the booze is markedly lower while the caffeine and sugar content of the Twinkie/Red Bull far outpaces that of Chocolate and Tea. I figure that the metabolic effects of the sugar and caffeine will perfectly counteract the depressant effects of the Mickeys Green Hornet, or whatever happens to be on sale. This is, after all, as much about saving money as it is about taking drastic short-cuts. Lets just hope that there isn't a special on any malt liquor with "Ice" in the title. The last time I ingested anything like that my evening resembled the Prodigy video for "Smack My Bitch Up", except replace the strip club with a retirement home and quintuple the amount of vomiting and property damage... Just watch the video, it'll all make sense.



Get it? That's what I was trying to avoid...

So, where to go for all three of these precious American commodities, you ask? Right across the street from the house I grew up in, as a matter of fact.

Yes, this explains why my study habits in High School closely resembled sleeping: the Korean store owners at the Wicker Basket Grocery apparently thought that I was 21 when I was 16 despite my awesome complexion and braces. This might be attributed to the fact that I was already 6'5" at the time but they should have been suspicious of any "21" year-old who actually chose to a) dress like a reject from a Cypress Hill video and b) only bought Malt Liquor or Fortified Wine. Sadly though, the Wicker Basket was closed for remodeling when I stopped by. Either that or they finally got busted for selling booze and cigarettes to anyone over five-foot one.

After a few minutes of deliberation I finally decided to head down the street to the aptly named "Choice Deli".

The only change that this store has undergone in the last 15 years is getting rid of the Street Fighter II video game and the Addams Family pinball machine. They even have the same guy working at the front counter, all 6'6" of him replete with waist-length hair, Sepultura T-shirt and black jeans. This place was like a time-warp. I half expected to find cans of New Coke sporting Max Headroom on the back when I opened the cooler.

It took me a few minutes but I finally decided on four 40oz. bottles of St. Ides for my beer. In order to counteract the alcoholic effects I figured I was going to need the same amounts of sugar and caffeine in my system as alcohol. The alcohol by volume is 6% in St. Ides which came out to about 9.6oz of hooch in those 4 bottles, if my kindergarten arithmetic was correct, so I was going to need enough servings of Twinkies and Red Bull to get an equivalent amount of sugar and caffeine into my blood stream, right? Here's where I decided on another short-cut: since the fluid ounce is a measure of volume that weighs only slightly more than the dry ounce (when water is used) I decided to fudge the difference between the two for my calculations. After all, it's not like metric to imperial conversion has ever caused any drastic problems, right?

There are approximately 28.35g to the ounce. After breaking out my set of Crayola crayons and working with a slide-rule for a few minutes I calculated that I would need 272.16g of both Sugar and Caffeine. A quick look at the back label of Red Bull forced me to make another quick change: in order to get that amount of caffeine into my body I would need to ingest approximately 35 cans of Red Bull. Judging by the effects that half of a can typically has on me I decided to shoot for 272 milligrams of Caffeine instead of 272 grams, which amounted to just under 4 cans. With 27g of sugar per serving to go along with it, that meant that I had to get another 164g of Sugar via Twinkies. Things were looking up: that only came to 12 packs of Twinkies! I had conquered my conversion tables and on top of that I wasn't going to have to drink or eat all that much. I figured I could knock this out in 3 or 4 hours.

When I woke up the next morning I was proven to have been drastically mistaken. Not only did I not remember the previous 12 hours but my home resembled a cross between a scene from Fear and Loathing and the Delta fraternity from Animal house, complete with a motorcycle in the hallway and the stolen mascot of some local High School (does anyone know who has a badger for a mascot, because this thing has almost destroyed my bathroom and is only momentarily trapped in my washing machine). Needless to say I, like so many stripe-shirted frat-boys do every weekend, completely misjudged the restorative effects of caffeine and sugar vs. alcohol. On the upside, I did get some good data out of this little exercise. I feel like complete hammered shit, like there are 10,000 monkeys with broken-glass wrapped hands fist fighting in my frontal lobe, not to mention the damage that my G.I. tract has wreaked on the bathroom and, by proximity, on that stolen mascot. This all points to the simple conclusion that Norway and Oxford are full of crap. My Beer, Twinkie and Red Bull diet not only failed to make me any healthier but in the tallying was also responsible for about $1000 worth of property damage per ounce of intake. Suck on that math Oxford!


Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Super Karate Monkey Death Car, Pt. 2





I know these videos are a few years old, but... damn, a fish-headed hero from the planet soy? It makes my brain hurt and my eyes beg for a Pokemon-induced seizure.
I might be a tad jaded, but I think that I may have to pull up stakes and move to the pearl of the orient. If this is what passes for a major advertising campaign over there then I am a couple hundred bucks shy of making a fortune.

How to make myself into a Japanese advertising powerhouse:

Let me see, what would I need in order to compete from the years of research and competitive advantage that their ad-agency possesses? Well, my limited Internet research (i.e. googling Kikkoman and giving up after searching two pages) tells me that one of the companies responsible for Kikkoman's stranglehold on the soy-sauce market is Scholz & Friends, a Berlin based company. Now, the piece of advertising that Scholz was responsible was this:



A diarrhetic version of Hosukai's wave painting? Mmmm let me go and douse my sushi with some of that japanese scroll painted poo-water which has infiltrated my consciousness via a benign yet brilliant piece of advertising. Though they have been successful in changing my associations of soy sauce from pan-asian condiment to Tsunami from the bowels, it does not necessarily mean that they are the company that developed the retina-warping video extravaganza that I posted above. While that is true, I am lazy and therefore I am going to take a few liberties and shortcuts and assume that they were. Rome may not have been built in a day but I have bills to pay and I need to wrap this up.


Using my ironclad grasp of logic I will now inflict/apply the same line of reasoning on this problem that got me through Garfield High School in 6 short years. I remember one of my teachers discussing logic, but I was too busy napping and growing my hair long to give him my full attention.

Here's what I remember:

a) All fish swim
b) Turtles swim
therefore: all turtles are fish.

Maybe my teacher said that was a logical fallacy. Fallacy means "super-strong", right? Sounds good to me! Lets see if this holds true in other cases:


a) All neo-nazis have bald heads
b) people with Alopecia have bald heads
therefore: all people with Alopecia are neo-nazis. Wow... Who knew? Well, there's no escaping that logical premise; facts are facts, and I rechecked the logic on that one at least 1.5 times. Ironclad!

It follow then that: a)Scholz is responsible for a piece of advertising for Kikkoman, and b) the above "video" is a piece of advertising for Kikkoman, therefore Scholz is responsible for the above advertising. Check AND mate! Take that, Socrates!

So my competition for the hearts and minds of Japan's soy-based commodities consumers is Scholz & Friends, eh? I shall prepare myself. Lets look up their website. Hmmmmm, they have a managing director from the London School of Economics? Well then, so shall I. Except replace "London, School & Economics" with "Tallahassee Technical College dropout". T-Pain has street knowledge and knows how to use a synthesizer. That trumps Econometrics classes and understanding elasticity any day of the week my friends. Sing it, T-Pain!

We'll make up ground in our Creative Director anyways. Let me see now, who does Scholz have heading up their creative team? It appears that they have a guy named Matthias Spaetgens who looks like this:



No matter that he has won several advertising awards, including something called the "Lion of Cannes". I have no idea what that is but I'm going to assume that it is unimportant. If I am going to win this battle then I am going to focus on finding someone who is similar in appearance yet projects a different, edgier image. Maybe not so stuffy either (read: educated). Who can I use? Well, lets see. Who is going to take my company to the stratospheric heights that the "Fight, Kikkoman!" video attained and how shall I find him? ...Google "Matthias", that should do it.

...Got him!



His name is Matthias (spelled Mattias, but who can be choosy?) and he looks like a creative bad ass!!!! Watch out Scholz & Friends, your ass is mine!!!! Two cases of beer and 10 hours locked in a studio and we're going to have advertising gold, people.

Now, we need a prime advertising venue or event to make the biggest splash possible for our advertising dollar. Taking my lead from Scholz, lets see what events they've been involved with recently:

"10/24/2008, Berlin - he new seasonal campaign from Scholz & Friends Berlin for Saturn, the electronic goods retailer... An action-packed 60-second TV and cinema commercial will dramatise Saturn’s technical expertise, kicking off the season in highly vocal style with the line “Die stärkste Technik aller Zeiten! Gnadenlos günstig!” (“The strongest technology of all time! Pitilessly low prices!”). Conceived by Scholz & Friends Berlin, the commercial tells the history of the evolution of technology, using as an analogy the merciless Darwinian selection found in the animal kingdom."

Wow, "The strongest technology of all time! Pitilessly low prices!" Is it just me or can you imagine the video playing behind this using Rammstein as its soundtrack and the narration read in an unemotional monotone by Peter Stormare, the nihilist from The Big Lebowski?

The fact that this is the ad campaign that these jackasses actually came up with when I did my pseudo-background check is astounding. 52 graduate degrees and a bondage-room full of Golden Celtic Walrus awards and this is what you come up with? I might as well start looking at villas on Lake Cuomo now.

But what shall I call my soon-to-be-conglomerate? ....Hmmmmm. Wait, this might actually take some time. I'll get back to you when I've got something better than what I came up with via my first stab at creativity: combining my name from the internet Wu-Name generator with my name from the Outlaw Biker name generator and slapping "LLC" on the end of it. I just don't think Ol' Mucky Terrahawk & Cowboy of the Death-Cats LLC is going to make us cash-positive...

But I'm still trademarking it.



http://www.recordstore.com/wuname/wuname.pl

http://www.ratbike.org/motorcycho/outlawname.php




Monday, December 15, 2008

Super Karate Monkey Death Car

Some things just don't translate from culture to culture or language to language. Like if I were to try to explain, I don't know, 'je ne sais quoi' to a French person they would probably think I was talking about pastries, head-butting or surrenduring large swaths of countryside after undertaking an enormous yet antiquated feat of engineering in order to secure their borders.

Examples like this can be taken from many other cultures as well. None, however, differ as greatly from intended meaning to perceived meaning quite so much as when trying to understand Japan. We can probably assume that some of this comes from the simple fact that we are attempting to translate a language based on pictograms into a language, in the case of English, based on Syphillis, inbreeding and the need to shoot any animal who's name contains a consonant.

Apparently Japanese people judge which bank to put their money in based on commercials like this one:



Hmmmm... I don't know about you, but a guy who looks like he should be wearing jodhpurs and solving crimes on trains is not who I want as a mascot for my lending institution. Especially not when he gets distracted as easily as this jackass.

"Wait, my satchel is on your... Look, boy scouts!"

A better investment strategy might be to get involved in a long-distance calling-card ponzi scheme or better yet, try to parlay your fortune through pull-tabs. However, maybe canary yellow slacks and Burt Reynolds mustaches are a sign of virility and market know-how in Japan. They are the country that gave us Most Extreme Elimination Challenge and Super-Cute Red Panda Attack (clip at the bottom), a show where a girl lives 24 hours a day with two baby red pandas and the results are aired on T.V., so you never quite know which advertising strategies are going to pay off. In fact, the best idea might be to just pick ad concepts based on mad-libs.

"Blue... lightning... communist... monkey... parade. Blue lightning communist monkey parade? Sounds like a winner. Get Adrian Brody on the horn! We'll sell a million units by Tuesday. Huzzah!!!"

Back to my original point: does anyone remember the episode of News Radio where Jimmy James has his biography, "Jimmy James: Capitalist Lion Tamer", translated into Japanese and then when it's a huge hit over there he has it translated back and the title becomes "'Jimmy James, Macho Business Donkey Wrestler"? No? Well, screw you, fascist! Phil Hartman was a saint!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2MPEYU1XkI

Friday, December 12, 2008

Belltown Family Fun



Here is what my barely literate self does on Friday mornings:
a) Take stock of my surroundings. Having grown up in Seattle I am in constant fear of being asked to sign a petition or approve a new measure to fund an extension of the monorail as I get out of bed. ( http://www.imeem.com/groups/e360YjV0,no_homers//music/4RUrHfo5/the_simpsons_the_monorail_song_from_the_episode_marge_vs_t/ )
b) Remove my clown makeup.
c) Go to practice, and proceed to try and recapture my former/never attained collegiate glory and waistline since I have the metabolism of a hibernating polar bear.
d) Make child-like stabs at completing the NY Times crossword puzzle, until someone snatches the paper away from me because I giggle whenever a clue contains the word "pianist", "breasts", or "electoral college".

This morning, my ritualistic approach to putting off work was thwarted by a simple, yet elegant turn of phrase in the Seattle P.I., the lesser-known idiot step-child to the Seattle Times. What was this show-stopping couplet, you ask? Far be it from me to keep you on the edge of your seat/physio-ball/high-chair.

Stabbing in *gasp* Belltown!!????!

What? Nay! Belltown? You must be mistaken. Surely it was just a group of youngsters out for some wholesome fun exchanging barbs with a local shop-owner or footman. Violence is not tolerated here in Belltown, center of Seattle's far-famed arts scene and the only place in the territory you can see a talkie feature, dear sir! J'accuse!! *slap-slap*

I had forgotten that things like this were even reported on in Belltown. Unless there are robotic pandas attacking people or another Mime-Gang turf war, I just assumed that things like this were viewed in the same way as tornadoes are in Kansas, or drunk-driving Kennedys were in D.C., California... well, everywhere. Imagine my surprise when a whole five sentences were devoted to the description of what I generally referred to as "A slow night" when I worked in the area.

If you are unfamiliar with Belltown, its surroundings, or what passes for decorum there, let me paint a picture:




Now just add:



Now place both in a blender, add enough Red Bull and vodka to Kennedy-ify the New Zealand All-Blacks, a hot dog cart, 500 striped button-down shirts and you've got Belltown on a Wednesday. What, did you think I was going to use words to paint a picture? If I still haven't found where my name is on my diploma (I think it's somewhere to the left of the DeVry insignia, and below the bright red letters that say "copy: not for publication"), what makes you think I would use pictograms to give voice to my talky-thoughts? Pay attention!

When it comes to Belltown, I know of what I speak. I spent the better (read: majority, not better) part of two years as a doorman every Friday and Saturday night there. Being a doorman makes you privy to all sorts of fun. Some of my favorites include:

  • My boss buying "illicit substances" (see the previous video if you want specifics) with wine from his wine cellar.
  • A drunken, drive-by motorcycle shooting wherein the shooter was a) on his 21 run and b) on a stolen motorcycle, and the targets were six bike cops who were waiting for him with guns drawn because he had threatened them earlier in the evening when he was 86'd and was then spotted revving his stolen bike at the bottom of the hill and pointing at them for several minutes before he actually proceeded to commence his drive-by (see: stealth, lack or disregard of)
  • Local sports caster Dan Devone using the line "Don't you know who I am?" when trying to sneak past the line at a dance club and being answered with: "Yeah, you're a hack sportscaster on a second rate news station. Tuck in your shirt."
And so on...

People, this is not news to anyone. News usually follows the simple formula of: something unexpected or singular happens somewhere (i.e. Keanu Reeves acts!! or Kelly Rippa not Pregnant. For local flavor, replace Kelly Rippa with Anngie Menken from FSN). The sun always rises in the east, GM makes cars that self destruct at frightening rates and Italian soccer players flop more than Matt LeBlanc movies involving baseball-playing chimps.



So don't waste your time reporting on things that we as Seattleites take for granted. We expect good coffee, exceptionally bad drivers and violence in Belltown. Now go and report on something that we aren't expecting...



Look, that bear is playing hockey! Oh, you win again Russia...


Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Kevin Bacon's Ghost in the Machine



My brain has a tendency to go on epic journeys right around 1pm if I'm not careful. Careful meaning well-caffeinated and completely distracted: If I'm not surrounded by 30 crying babies, a homeless person cage-fighting against ghosts and a fair amount of Emo music blaring out of a sub woofer next to my head then I'm not going to get shit done. This afternoon was no different, except for the fact that I was in a quiet coffee house in the ass-end of nowhere.

No homeless people yelling at pigeons.

No Fallout Boy warbling out of a blown-out amp in the background.

Not even an ADHD adolescent screaming about his girlfriend... Obama... His car... The metaphysical implications of Fight Club... Ooh look, that kid has a Yo-Yo. Yo-Yo's are awesome.

None of that. Just me, alone with my thoughts.... And a hangover.

This lead, inevitably, to an afternoon of me ignoring my Inbox, wondering who's phone kept ringing (it was mine) and stumbling into the morass of distraction that is Google and all of its radiating roots, tentacles, sewage pipes and mole burrows. If one is not careful google web searches can inexorably lead to a downward spiral of button-clicking that eventually ends with a purchase of bootleg X-Files DVDs from Malaysia or reading about the metaphysical implications of watching The Wiggles while bloated on Mescaline and Yerba Mate on some Norwegian teenager's blog (don't ask). If one is, say, seriously hung-over, not properly caffeinated and prone to left-clicking on anything that has bright colors or nifty catch-phrases this can lead to some epic Aboriginal Internet walkabouts.

Enter 55 ways to have "fun" with google and enter Phillip Lenssen (http://chestofbooks.com/computers/search/55-Ways-to-Have-Fun-With-Google/index.html). Phillip Lenssen spent so much time on his computer, caffeinated, high or otherwise, that he decided to categorize and publish different games that he came up with using Google's web-search tool. After much perusing of the list of 55 ways to have "fun" I have come away with an impression of Phil that while benign, is not at all favorable. Once you have read a few of the different ways that he has "fun", a few things need to be re-assessed and accounted for. First off, you need to use a slide-rule when accounting for differentiating opinions of what "fun" is.

Some people B.A.S.E. jump:




Some people chase wheels of cheese down hills (watch for the poor bastard at the 25 second mark):




or better yet even ride large phallic trees in fits of epic Japanese weirdness:




Apparently, Phil comes up with overly complex ways to create mischief, mayhem and attain a higher-consciousness via Google. He is like your crazy uncle that shows up at Thanksgiving reeking of Patchouli and "sage" and tries to get everyone to join in the fun of a rousing poetry slam while there is a 60 inch plasma screen mounted on the wall behind him showing re-runs of American Gladiators. And by "your" I mean "my friend Brent McDowell's" and by "poetry slam" I mean "knife fight". Needles to say, Phil's ideas of web-fun come off as the wooden choo-choo-train in the F.A.O Schwartz web universe.

Some of them are interesting: type "Life, the Universe and Everything" into the Google calculator and the answer you get back is "42". I know, you're either staring blankly at your screen right now wondering what the fuck I am jabbering about, or you're smirking to yourself because you actually read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy back in 7th grade. Either way, this little google Easter Egg, while entertaining/confusing, is not the basis for a chapter in a book, much less even a footnote on some graffiti in the bathroom of your local masonic temple.

Some of are a bit forced: Phil plays the six-degrees of Kevin Bacon game via google, trying to find out whether or not Kevin Bacon is the true center of the Hollywood Universe. Apparently Phil has never heard of IMDB.com or The Oracle of Bacon (http://oracleofbacon.org/). If I had to venture a guess I'm pretty sure that Phil could also come up with a great way for me to make coffee using a jet-engine, 12 virgin dwarfs and the Tibetan Book of the Dead but I think I'll stick with the old fashioned hot water and steeping technique.

And some, well, some just defy reason. One of the games is entitled "The Shortest Google Search", wherein the player tries to "find the shortest Google search that doesn't return any results, using only the letters a-z (no Umlaut or accented characters) and the numbers 0-9". Um, yeah, let me get right on that, right after I start randomly flipping through the yellow pages and patronizing establishments that I blindly point at but before I spend a week only eating foods that contain the letter "Q". Mmmmm, Quinoa.

After about an hour of slogging around through this website and only a mild fever to show for it I decided to abort my search for higher consciousness via google and its permutations. Thanks Phil, but no thanks. I'll get my entertainment spoon-fed to me by the likes of YouTube and WWTDD.com, or, better yet, a well thought out book with characters, a plot and, nay, even creative metaphors, similes and turns of phrase, not from some net head with too much time on his hands and a myopic view of "fun". Besides, I've got things to do and hangover cures to web-search.

As I backed out of my self-created google-cocoon my head began to clear. Had I found the cure to the common hangover? Was spending an hour or two researching nonsense will my brain stitched itself back together really responsible for my feeling of euphoria, that all was right with the world? The wonderful Seattle weather had turned nature's palette from a dull graphite to a wonderfully bright and dazzling charcoal gray, middle-aged women with toddlers had begun to occupy the adjoining booths in the cafe, unable to keep pacifiers in their mouths and unfazed by the falsetto pitches of their screaming. Even a panhandler outside had even begun to shout at a mailbox. All was right with the world, and all it took was burying my head in the google sand and listening to ebb and flow of the web tide... Telling me tales of high adventure.


"Kevin Bacon! What is best in life?"
"To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women."