Likely to be of interest to some of my peeps: Who Invented Chaplin's Tramp?

Normand was an inventor of the movie star, the first woman allowed to be both sexy and funny. She was a high diver, a bareback rider, a race car driver, and a flapper a decade before flappers. Photoplay called her "a kiss that explodes in a laugh, cherry bonbons in a clown's cap, sharing a cream puff with your best girl, a slap from a perfumed hand, the sugar in the Keystone grapefruit." By the time the man who would become the Tramp walked onto her set, Normand had worked on sets for four years, and made over a hundred pictures. She was 22.

Shouldn't we credit the director, the one who decided to shoot 75 feet, for the success of the Tramp? Keystone didn't have writers in those days, but did the director of Mabel's Strange Predicament unleash the Tramp? Doesn't Sergio Leone deserve some credit for Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name? Doesn't the director dictate tempo and decide who gets the camera's attention? Isn't the director's job to seek out the hidden talents of his actors and make sure they end up on screen? Doesn't a good director jump on a happy accident like the Tramp and ride it with a prayer of gratitude?

What Sennett and Chaplin both neglect to mention in their memoirs is that Mabel Normand was among the very first stars to direct their own films, and Normand directed Mabel's Strange Predicament. Perhaps in the intervening decades they forgot. It was certainly in their interest to forget. Why diminish their own roles in creating the miracle of the Tramp?

I have no idea how valid an interpretation this is, and would love to hear thoughts from anybody who's more knowledgeable about films of this era than I am.

And, y'know, what with short attention spans and all, it's nice that the clipped scenes included are in the 10-30 second range. Ahem.

Or something like that.

Hey, LJ. It's been a while. The usual autumnal funk hit me pretty hard this year (although as spiritualmonkey pointed out, "Hard? Normally 'hard' would mean we spent the winter without leaving the apartment, wishing for death. This? This was nothin'.") and I've been feeling off kilter and unmoored for a bit the past six months or so. Erf.

And then the other day I came across the Bangable Dudes in History blog (Motto: "Dead man porn for your still-beating heart"). In particular, the Buster Keaton entry, which reminded me of *cough* certain people on LJ. And then there's been hockey in the news, which has reminded me of other people on LJ. And other things reminding me of other people. And a feeling that it would be good to get out of my head a bit, and to do so in more than 140-character chunks, and to have the ability to filter and lock things, and...

So hey, LJ. How the heck you been?

One of the souvenirs I brought home from my work trip right after Thanksgiving was a nasty cold (another was a self-inflicted dislocated thumb; ow). BossLady has been out sick too, even sicker than I was, for the past week or so.

I made this sign this morning and put it up outside the entry to her office/my workspace:



We're encouraging people to shift any meetings they have scheduled with her to be phone calls instead, and suggesting that in-person discussions be conducted from a distance of about 12-15 feet. In other words, whoever wants to talk to us should stand out in the hallway while she and I stay at our desks.

*koff* *koff*

Hypothesis: Morphine's "You Look Like Rain" is one of the sexiest songs ever. Discuss.



( I can tell you taste like the sky, 'cause you look like rain… )

I finally got to read Neal Stephenson's latest book, REAMDE. (I had put a hold on it at the library shortly after it was released, but the wait list was forever.) It's only out in hardback at this point, and it's massive. I put it on the kitchen scale. 2.8 pounds. Undaunted, I lugged it all the way to Irvine last week for a work trip. And back, of course.

Spending the weekend trying to fight off a cold give me a good opportunity to read it, and I finished it Sunday night.

What I'm left wondering is, how can 1036 pages feel so thin? When I finished reading Snow Crash, and when I finished reading Diamond Age, my mind was all a-ferment with ideas. The burbclaves. The philes. The Rat Thing (poor Rat Thing!) The Feed, and what does it mean to be an artisan in a world of mass-produced items? All kinds of ideas and issues and nifty concepts to play with and think about.

Ending REAMDE left me with a feeling of "yeah, okay, whatever. Oh, that character survived? And that one didn't? Eh, whatever."

Color me cranky, and not exclusively because of this cold.

In the discussion thread on MetaFilter, one commenter said, "I closed the book, walked into my husband's office, thumped it down on his desk, and said, 'I cannot recommend you read this book.'" I have to agree.

Another commentor on MetaFilter said, "I should remember that when mainstream reviews call something an author's most accessible work, it means the people who actually like that author's work probably won't."

So I downloaded Anathem from the library as an e-book, and I think I'm going to take it (and my cough syrup, and another jumbo handful of Chinese herbs) and go to bed. From what I've read about it, Anathem is anything but accessible. Excellent. At the moment, a book with heavy inclueing and as little exposition as possible is what I'm in the mood for.

spiritualmonkey is loudly and vocally praising dinner... which is Brussels sprouts with smoked tofu and hazelnuts, based on the Caramelized Tofu recipe at 101 Cookbooks.

Um... who are you, and what did you do with my husband? I mean, the one who literally ate a hamburger for dinner every night from age 10 until he left for college? The one who's been known to taste a dish, wrinkle his nose, and remark, "It's kind of... vegetably"?

Not that I'm complaining!

Up next, the Golden-Crusted Brussels Sprouts, I think. Or maybe a salad with a vinaigrette, like the one at the Trappist (gateway drug to Brussels sprouts, it seems).

The squirrels near the Lake Merritt lawn bowling courts are so plump and round they look like little squirrel-koala hybrids. They're also a lot more willing to put up with each others' company than the squirrels we usually feed — we figure we must have had a dozen of them around us pestering us (successfully) for trail mix and (mostly unsuccessfully) for bits of Arizmendi chocolate-raspberry scone.

Bold little beasties, too.



*sigh* I think our monthly trail mix bill just went up again.

I am laughing my ass off at the video spiritualmonkey uploaded of Amanda Palmer singing Billy Bragg's "The World Turned Upside Down" to the Occupy Oakland camp.

Ever wanted to hear Pirate sing? Here's your chance. Ever wanted to hear Amanda Palmer sing? Um.

Tom Waits, speaking about his writing partner and wife of 31 years, Kathleen Brennan:

She's Amelia Earhart and Jane Goodall and Joan Jett all rolled into one. She's really great to work with and amazing. She doesn't like the light of the business we call 'show.' She stays hidden, and that's where she likes it. But she's an amazing collaborator, and I feel like sometimes I have a map in my pocket that folds up and I pull it out and it's bigger than the table, and there's 1,000 places to go with her.

Source.

I'm amused to hear him confirm that no, it's not that he sings like that because he's fucked up his voice over the years, it's that he's fucking up his voice because he's been singing like that for years. Heh.

I put my Halloween costume together based on plans from Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories. With shopping help from Pirate* I spent Sunday afternoon with an umbrella, a black hoodie, pliers, a screwdriver, EMT shears, needle, thread, and a thimble**.



and came up with a pretty damn awesome costume, if I do say so myself. Pirate took a short video of me doing a quick test-ride Monday morning to see if could wear it on the bike or if I'd need to pack it and put it on when I got to work.



The advantage of the character is that it didn't matter if I was banging into things and bending the wing struts (like I was) or looking ungainly when Pirate insisted I run around in circles in the park after work so he could take more video.



Surprisingly, a number of people (who didn't have the excuse of having grown up elsewhere) didn't get it. "You're a... bat? A devil?"

For pete's sake, my garment had a hang-tag that said "Genuine ACME Corp. Bat-Man Suit", I kept pulling an ACME catalog flyer out of my pocket and offering to show it to the person I was speaking to in case they might be interested in any of the other fine ACME products (although I myself could not personally recommend the rocket-powered unicycle or the boomerang, good sir or madam), and I was wearing a name tag that said "HELLO MY NAME IS Wile E. Coyote, SUPERGENIUS — Have brain, will travel"!

Pirate and I were down at Jack London Square goofing around and taking pictures with the statue of Jack when two women walked by. I wanted to hug the one who looked at me and said "...so, where's the Roadrunner?"

After the park (and the Trappist) and the stop at JLS we went to one of our favorite points overlooking the estuary (deserted at that time of night), put some music on, and danced on top of the empty picnic table. It was an amazing way to spend an evening.

I so, so need a bat-hoodie for day-to-day wear. I'm going to shorten the ears and wings, replace the metal struts with something flexy (maybe boning from the fabric store, or else hello TAP Plastics), and use snaps to attach the wings to the body of the hoodie so it's backpack-compatible. But bat-hoodie there must be.

Running in a bat-hoodie? AWESOME. Riding a bike in a bat-hoodie? AWESOME. Dancing on a picnic table in a deserted park at night in a bat-hoodie? AWESOME. Highly recommended.


* Including being very sensible and, late Sunday afternoon, as I was sitting on the living room floor dealing with black thread on black fabric and not-great instructions and cursing under my breath, saying "Hey, sweetie, I know you were going to make cookies to take to the potluck, but how about I go by Arizmendi in the morning and get some cookies and drop them off to you? You don't need another thing to do tonight."

** AKA "OMG THIMBLE stay on my damn finger!" I feel so thimble-illiterate. Thimble-incompetent. Utterly clumsy and with two left hands. Argh. #21stCenturyProblems

Both my Fitbit and the Gmap Pedometer agree that including the 2 miles each way between home and downtown, Pirate and I walked about 12 miles today. No wonder my feet hurt.

"He enjoys… lawn bowling with men several decades his senior."

From an article in a recent New Yorker.

This is all xtingu's fault.

In preparation for the Halloween potluck at the end of the month, one of my co-workers sent out an email request that people submit photos of themselves as kids dressed up for Halloween. I'd gone through our photos not too long ago, so I knew I had a suitable one. After spending a little while digging through the photos again (it would be good to get them organized), I found it and scanned it in.

Based on the school visible in the background, this was at Creekside Elementary (which no longer exists), which would make it either fifth or sixth grade. I think it was fifth, which would make me about 10 at the time.



(I didn't even notice the damage to the photo until I'd scanned it in. Funny what one's eye skips over.)

I wish I had a photo of the fantastic Wurlitzer jukebox costume my dad & I made for me when I was 11. It looked kind of like this one only, y'know, made out of a cardboard box and with an 11-year-old inside. I carried a kazoo, and whenever anybody put a coin through the slot I would play them a song. :-D

[ETA: Upon further reflection, and considering my haircut, I think this must have been 3rd grade, actually, which would make me 8. I was trying to figure out why this didn't fit in with the two costumes I remember from the two years I was at Creekside...]

Sixteen years ago tomorrow, spiritualmonkey and I met at the hotel bar at the 1995 Tattoo Tour convention in Seattle, among a whole crowd of our other rec.arts.bodyart friends. That was Thursday night. Sunday afternoon I flew home to break up with the boyfriend I was living with and embark on a long-distance relationship with the monkey.

Most spontaneous, reckless, unplanned thing I've ever done, before or since. But at the time it felt like a golden hammer coming out of the sky to hit me on the head as a huge voice intoned SOMETHING IMPORTANT IS HAPPENING. PAY ATTENTION.

For all that we're 99% wrong for each other, I would hate to have to try to get by without my teammate.

For anyone who's not on the Living Compassion email list but who might be interested:

NEW EMAIL CLASS WITH CHERI HUBER

Title: “It’s Time to Feel Good” – NEW SESSION
Dates: November 1-30, 2011
Cost: $80.00 ($60.00 for Monthly Donors)

Note: This class is one of the prerequisites for the extraordinary new “What You practice Is What You Have” retreat with Cheri.

We are offering another month of the “It’s Time to Feel Good” email class, based on Cheri’s latest book, What You Practice Is What You Have: A Guide to Having the Life You Want. According to participants in the first session, November 2010, the practice of self-mentoring and self-facilitation through making and listening to recordings of how you want your life to be has been tremendously transformative. Because so many are reporting life-changing results, and because so many others have said they’d like to take the class, we are offering it again. Here is some of the feedback we received:

• I knew intellectually what egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate was and that compassionate acceptance could end it. Now I know how to do that.


• Thank you so much to everyone involved in our record/listen class. It has been an incredible, life enhancing gift to me. I will be signing up in April. If I weren’t already a monthly donor, I would become one.


• Being clear in my recordings about (1) this is what the voices are saying; (2) this is what the mentor says – has helped me to stay on track. Gratitude overfloweth for all!


• Recording and listening has changed my life. I expect to feel happy.


• It is so loving to focus on what these recordings are saying. This is the life I want to live and what I have always wanted but only felt elusively, until this commitment to practice.


• The most helpful thing has been Sangha support via the class blog and the radio archives as I go through the recording/listening process. I’m not alone and it’s all okay.


• Holy horse-pucky! I just experienced for the first time that when my attention is on recording and listening I am not suffering. When egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate distracts me from recording and listening, I suffer. Huge gratitude!


• Have broken old patterns. Go to bed and wake up with joy. Now I know the support is always within. Deep gratitude for all who made this happen.

In this session of “It’s Time to Feel Good,” there will be some of the same or similar exercises as in the previous sessions and some new ones. Those from a previous class who sign up for this session will be given class assignments that take them to the next level. All participant emails with Cheri’s responses will be shared with the whole class. In other words, there will be challenges for everyone.

Class Description
Most of us hold a very deep, conditioned belief that we must first fix what’s wrong with us before we can feel good about ourselves. “I want to feel good, to be free of self-hate, but I have habits I must break/amends I must make/actions I must take before I can be free. There’s no way I can love and accept myself without first changing how I am.” The difficulty is that the voice that has us convinced that we must change is in charge of doing the changing! This system is designed to fail.

In this class we will identify the places where those internal voices of judgment and self-hate snag us, plunging us into suffering. Using the recording tool in What You Practice Is What You Have, we will find our own internal Mentor, counter conditioning’s antics, and end the belief that we must fix ourselves before we are worthy of enjoying our time, attention, and best efforts. It’s time to feel good, time to practice turning attention to the good that we are.

Class Format
Twice a week, Tuesdays and Fridays, Cheri will send an assignment to the class. These assignments are the heart of the class. They are usually quite simple and require focusing attention on some aspect of your life. You will spend some time doing the assignments and, if you choose, email Cheri with your experiences, comments, questions, etc. She will read and respond to all on-subject emails from the class. All emails and responses will be posted on a web page created for this class. Cheri’s staff removes all names before she sees them, assuring anonymity.

A word from Cheri about recording devices
Participants are required to have a portable voice recorder. You can use any recorder you choose for the class as long as it is portable. Digital or cassette tape doesn’t matter, but it needs to be something you can have with you all the time. The one I have is digital, comes from Radio Shack, and costs about $30. I am in the process of transferring the recordings I have to iTunes so I can download and listen to them on my phone. The level of technology you choose to engage with is up to you--though if you have voices telling you anything is limiting your choice, I’d encourage you to confront that information and do exactly the opposite of what you’re being told--but you will need something easy to have with you all the time. Also, you will not need to be online when you make or listen to your recording.

Time Requirement
The class assignments are designed to be focused on for as long as it takes individual participants to complete them. Reading the daily emails will take no more than a couple of minutes. Reading class submissions and Cheri’s responses will take considerably longer. Read at your own pace.

The book--What You Practice Is What You Have
It’s not a requirement, but certainly recommended, that participants read What You Practice Is What You Have before the class begins.

Registration
Go to our secure payment page and register by Monday, October 30.

For Monthly Donors: to pay your Registration Pledge, please use this secure payment page.

Confirmation
A confirmation email, containing answers to many common questions, will be sent by 6:00 p.m., PST, Tuesday, October 31. If you sign up but do not receive confirmation by that time—remember to allow for time zone differences—let us know ASAP.

We look forward to your participation. If you have questions, please let us know.

Gasshō


Some of what we have heard from email class participants:
-- "Cheri's email classes are fun and very enlightening. Her clarity and sometimes outrageous sense of humor keep me reading deep into the night." A. R., Pennsylvania
-- "It is a blessing to have this remarkable practice available in my own home." K. L., United Kingdom
-- "Cheri reads many hundreds of emails from participants during these classes. Her level of commitment inspires me more than I can say." H. S., Oregon

Information page on the Living Compassion website.

I realized over the weekend that my usual autumn funk has already descended upon me.

It did so a few weeks ago, actually, back near the beginning of September. The cryptic symbol I'd marked on the calendar on September 4 was so cryptic that it wasn't until late afternoon that I remembered what it meant. Oh... yeah. It's the anniversary of Mom's death. Dammit. September felt off-kilter and out-of-sorts all the way through after that. The last week of it I just felt drained and down and anti-social (more so than usual, I mean) and like I wanted to go to bed and pull the covers over my head and not come out, except to eat seasonal things with lots of squash and cranberries, until April.

And things haven't really perked up in October so far. It was realizing over the weekend that it had been a week since I'd read email helped me recognize that yeah, I'm in a bit of a slump. It's to be expected this time of year, but it's still not fun.

I'm trying to pay attention and not just slip into hermitty hibernation. I don't want to get to March and realize that I haven't done much beyond read and sleep and waste time on the net. It feels like I need to be stripping a lot of things down and getting rid of excess (clearing out apartment clutter, unsubscribing from 90% of the email mailing lists I'm on, etc.) and setting up a structure that's going to be supportive (not letting the Egoscue and zazen slip when I'm feeling tired or down, planning meals ahead of time so I have healthy tasty food on hand that I want to eat, knitting or sewing or otherwise making things, spending as much time as possible in the sun, etc.). Also working on finding a way to keep track of how I'm doing with those things that won't turn into a source of stress in itself (Health Month has been feeling stressful, but I think I just had an insight into why, and how I can adapt it on my own to be more helpful to me). And I need to resist the go straight home/stay at home and cocoon up urge and try to see people socially.

I am with the moment, and the moment is "Bleah."

I had to take the bus up to Temescal after work today to pick my bike up from the bike shop. Sam, the mechanic who'd worked on it, said, "When Pirate dropped it off he said you were having problems with it skipping. So I took your bike out and mistreated it a bit and yeah, it started skipping immediately. Your drive train was badly worn, so we put on a new chain and a new cassette — this one has a slightly wider gear range, which should help with hill-climbing. I know you guys spend a lot of time in SF, so..." Came to $75ish for parts, which could be worse. I was amused that when Sam rolled my bike out from the back of the shop, my eyes immediately jumped to the cassette. "That's way too shiny to be the one Esperanza came in with," I thought, "and... hey, the chain's clean enough that I can actually tell that the master link on the chain is a different color from the rest of it. Gotta be new." Heh. He also said something about a broken bolt on my rear rack, which he had to bore out and redrill or something. The pavement around here is so bad that it's vibrating my bike to pieces beneath me. I seem to be averaging a bit over a thousand miles per chain/cassette; it'd be more if I cleaned them more often (ever). Maybe now that they're up in the living room, instead of down in the bike cage, I can figure out a cleaning setup... Hm.

I also stopped by one of my favorite yarn stores to treat myself to some yarn. It took no time at all — the gal working the register was showing me which shelves they have their DK-weight yarn on, "and there's also this on the table in the middle, which would work nicely." Table in the middle? Oh. My. Yes. Hello, who are you and what's your fiber content? I mean, literally that's how long it took: Gaze moves to follow store assistant's gesture towards the table, eyes lock on the three skeins in burning red, hand goes out to pick up a skein to feel the texture, gaze darts to the label to double-check the stated gauge, other hand reaches out to pick up the remaining two skeins, and suddenly I'm saying "Ooh, these" as I turn back toward the register.

I wound up coming away with three skeins of Madelinetosh Tosh Merino DK in the Tart colorway (the last three skeins they had in that colorway — the store assistant said "Oh, good, I'm glad you're buying these so they'll stop tempting me Buy us and take us home to be with the other skeins you bought!"). The photo on their website of Tart seems to be borked, but it doesn't really matter — I don't think it could show how gorgeous it is. It's merino, so it feels lovely, of course, and the color is made up of several shades of deep, rich reds that work with each other and with the shape of the yarn in a way that reminds me of the banked embers of a fire. Just luscious stuff. They had some other beautiful colorways in the DK, as well as in what looked like a laceweight. Gotta go back and check it out.

The pattern I'm going to use is the Shimmer shrug from Knitty, which looks like it'll be fun to knit and quite useful when it's done. Also probably quite adaptable for a panel with other lace patterns or what have you. (And down the line maybe I'll get organized enough to boot up Garment Designer and actually design a pattern from scratch. Not holding my breath, though, this being the hibernatey time of year...)

'Scuse me. Gotta go find my needles and do some swatching.

When I saw the link to this costume and noticed the world "adult" in the URL, my heart sank. Oh, please, don't let them have warped and perverted this far enough to make a "slutty" version...

And then I clicked through and my heart did a brief happy dance in my chest. Check this out:



And, for comparison, an original image:



Excellent!

And take a look at these two gals rockin' the costumes in real life:



Very nice. Too bad ol' Sieve-Brain Girl doesn't remember enough details of the show to be able to carry off either costume very well. Instead, I'm half-considering going as Juana Galan. A lace mantilla, a great honkin' big stick, and a small kettle to represent the boiling oil? Heck yeah!

Met Pirate by the lake on the way home — he's got a lot of shifts this week (yay), so if we hadn't gone today he would have had no squirrel time until Monday. Can't have that...

We arrived at the tree at the same time, and as we propped our bikes against it a squirrel came down the trunk to peer at us. Nuts, monkeys? We think it was a new one that we hadn't fed before, because it was a bit wary of coming too close. Once we got up in the tree and got settled with our coffee and trail mix, it would cautiously come get a nut, sniffing warily and keeping a close eye on us, then retreat a little way up the trunk to eat it. A couple of others showed up after a bit. One was Honey Brown, I'm pretty sure — she's the boldest and most confident, and the most at ease about hanging nose-down on the trunk, resting her forelegs on one's palm as she munches away on the trail mix. (About which: OMG OMG OMG so so cute. Ahem.)

We'd been up in the tree for a bit when from below we heard, "Have I found the Squirrel Whisperer?" Yes, you have! Hi! Um... do I recognize you? No, but if you're somebody I know from online, that's not surprising... It turned out to be merle_'s sweetie (whose LJ handle I realize I don't know. Oops). We hung out, the two of us literally so in the tree, chatting about squirrels and bartending and Monty Python (with yours truly missing a reference badly — minus 10 geek points for me) for a while until merle_ arrived.

Future plans, at least in my head — the others may remember them slightly differently — although still vague and general, are to explore Lakeside Park further for additional suitable squirrel-visiting spots and to assess the climbability of more of the trees. merle_ described several places elsewhere in the park that sound like they might be promising. Also thoughts of trying a wider range of nuts to see what the squirrels prefer. I think we ought to start bringing some in-the-shell nuts as well as the shelled ones, to increase the chance that they'll survive being buried.

Pirate and I were talking about the challenges of identifying the different squirrels, especially the ones that don't have visible markings or scars. "I've had thoughts of microchipping them," I said. "The chips are only the size of a large grain of rice these days."

"Nah," said Pirate. "I want to get a laser pointer and put extra-powerful batteries in it and use it to brand them. 'Hey, it's Star-Butt. And over there is Heart-On-His-Ear.'"

"You're horrible," I said. "No wonder the squirrels like me better."

This is not the result of camera trickery, editing, or any other technological shenanigans — this is 100% human skill and talent (and, I'd guess, far more than 10,000 hours of practice). Smart of this dancer and whoever filmed it to have the glass door in the background so the reflections of passing cars can show that, realio-trulio, this is real-time.



As one of the commenters on the MetaFilter thread where I saw this said, "He pegs the uncanny valley with nothing more than movement." Another points out that at about 3:30, it looks like he gives up on the dance... but he doesn't.

And the move at 4:12 had me uttering an involuntary "Wah!"

Highly, HIGHLY recommended to watch in full-screen if possible.

No, really. It'll be good for you.

Apparently research indicates that spending time in nature makes us feel good, but we consistently underestimate just how good we'll feel.

Since I read that, I've been making an effort to push past the "eh, maybe I'll just ride straight home..." feeling that tends to settle on me towards the end of the workday and instead have been stopping by the lake to visit with my squirrel friends. The days are getting shorter (ARGH DO NOT WANT) and today is the first official day of autumn (DO NOT WANT), so I feel like I need to be taking advantage of every remaining still-light-after-I-get-out-of-work day.

I had to laugh at myself yesterday when I rolled up and found that there were two people in a hammock under OUR tree. Furthermore, they were feeding some of OUR squirrels. I hope you appreciate the time we've spent over the past few months socializing these little beasts! I thought. And then, I wonder how many Oaklanders — how many generations of Oaklanders — had been feeding the squirrels before we started? Um. Heh.

So it was nice to get there today and find the tree empty and inviting. Quite empty, actually, as were the other trees nearby and all the ground I could see. Oh, well, maybe they'll show up later. I've got coffee and snacks. And if they wait too long, well, I'll have eaten all the trail mix. Serve them right.

Elapsed time from when I propped my bike against the tree (and hit "start" on my watch's chronometer function) to when Nervy Nose appeared on the branch behind me: 3 minutes 51 seconds.

I wound up spending almost an hour and 45 minutes up there. Partly because just as I thought "well, I'll finish my coffee and head home" Honey Brown showed up. She is such a bold little creature — she's getting very comfortable with rummaging through the trail mix on my palm. And although I haven't even tried to stroke or pet her yet, at one point there were only raisins and cashews on my palm, but two almonds had fallen off my hand and were lying on the bark of the branch next to and slightly under fingers. Little Ms. Honey Brown seemed perfectly comfortable using her cheek and nose to nudge my hand aside so she could get to the almonds.

This is going around the net in a version called "Charlie Chaplin vs. Inception", but I think it's much stronger in the original version, without the addition of Hans Zimmer's music.

From The Great Dictator:

The text of the speech:

I'm sorry but I don't want to be an emperor. That's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone.

I should like to help everyone if possible; Jew, Gentile, black men, white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each others' happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way.

Greed has poisoned men's souls.
Has barricaded the world with hate.
Has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.

We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge as made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little.

More than machinery we need humanity.
More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness.
Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.

The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in man; cries out for universal brotherhood; for the unity of us all.

Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women, and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people.

To those who can hear me, I say "Do not despair."

The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.

Soldiers! Don't give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you and enslave you; who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel! Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder! Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men---machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have a love of humanity in your hearts! You don't hate! Only the unloved hate; the unloved and the unnatural.

Soldiers! Don't fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the seventeenth chapter of St. Luke, it’s written “the kingdom of God is within man”, not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people, have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy, let us use that power.

Let us all unite.
Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age a security.

By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfill their promise. They never will! Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people! Now let us fight to fulfill that promise! Let us fight to free the world!

To do away with national barriers!
To do away with greed, with hate and intolerance!

Let us fight for a world of reason,
a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness.

Soldiers, in the name of democracy, let us all unite!

Via and via.

I stopped by the market on the way home to pick up bread and beer (the Yankee math still applies). When I came out, there was a young guy — I'd be surprised if he were over 20 — sitting on the bench near the bike rack, looking glum.

As I unlocked my bike I heard a middle-aged woman walking by address him. "Smile! It ain't that bad. Cheer up! Smile!" Gee, I thought, telling a stranger to smile is just as fucking obnoxious and patronizing when it's a woman saying it to a man as when it's a man saying it to a woman.

"I'm sleeping in a car," I heard him say. (Oh, he sounded young.)

"I've slept in a car!" she said. "I've had seven heart attacks, two strokes, and I got a hole in my back! You got it better than me!" She walked away, continuing to talk as she went. "You got it way better than me!"

As I coiled up my cable and stowed my U-lock I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye. He looked even more down than he had before. Another guy who looked to be a year or two older, who'd been at the pay phone nearby, sat down next to him and they both sat there staring at the sidewalk.

Yeah, no, I thought, and grabbed all the small bills in my wallet. "Hey," I said as I walked over to them. They looked up at me, the younger guy's expression very guarded. "You know, I think the whole making-misery-competitive thing is bullshit," and jerked my thumb in the direction the other woman had gone. "Would a couple of bucks help?"

The muscles around his eyes softened suddenly as he looked at me. "Yeah, it would."

I handed him the bills. "Take care."

As I mounted my bike and got ready to roll, they both raised their hands in a wave and called to me, "Thank you! Bless you!"

"Good luck!" I said, and headed off.

My mother was a very wise woman.* One of the things she used to say was, "I don't do comparative misery. I'll do you the courtesy of assuming your misery was as bad as you could stand if you'll do the same for me."

By the time I got home I was wishing I'd given them the $20 I'd gotten back from swiping my debit card to pay for the groceries.


* I was once talking with a friend about the various recreational chemicals we'd seen people partaking in out at Burning Man. (Actually, we were talking about the aftermath and ways in which said recreational chemicals could go wrong for people — we were both Black Rock Rangers.) "I don't remember who told me this," he said, "but stick to the vegetable drugs. If it comes in a powder or has to be referred to by its initials, you probably shouldn't mess with it."

"I told you that!" I said. "That's one of the things on my mother's list of The Best Advice In The Universe!"

I should really write down what I remember of TBAITU. "Stick to the vegetable drugs" was only one of them. And Rule Number One definitely saved me some heartache when I remembered to follow it.

Which I know encompasses at least a couple of folks on my f-list...

How to make a Buster Keaton-style porkpie hat:



Buster's remarks on making his hats are also available.