Sprechen Sie scheiße?

For a culture so deeply infatuated with shit, it's only fitting that there is a German soccer player named "Anis".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%84nis_Ben-Hatira

This is funny to me because there's been like 8 posts here and two of them have skid scatalogically.  Hey man, it's wikipedia's fault, not mine.  Or is this a "he who smelt it dealt it" kind of situation?

Quote The Hipster, "Whatevermore."

Ok, so I stole that from a Conan episode.  Sue me.  (please don't)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacramento_Film_and_Music_Festival

Fighting... urge... to... be... condescending...

We can go 'round and 'round about the value of community, in particular, when that word is used to describe the microeconomies of artistic expression that flourish near areas of academia and/or pretentious post-bourgeois white nouveau-poverty.  But is there something to the plethora of over-enthusiastic, under-delivering film "festivals" that dot the landscape?  Could there be value to these gatherings, if not in the perpetuation of film culture and visual dialogue, but towards external gains that are unmeasurable by sheer snarky observation alone?

I guess.

It certainly isn't hurting anyone, that's for sure.  I've never heard of any long-term health effects from participating in or attending a film festival.  I would assume that the potential for positive outcomes would have to be pretty great here.  When artists are able to engage and be challenged by other artists and their work, it tends to raise the quality of internal and external dialogue.  Competition amongst artists and their contemporaries has long been a fuel for a higher level of artistic output.  Hemingway and Faulkner.  Voltaire and Rousseau.  Biggie and Tupac.  The evidence is all around us that exchange and dialogue can motivate artists to push beyond previous limits and achieve new heights.

But what about me?!? 

Maybe I've gone to deep.  I'm so far down the rabbit hole that a 15 minute "short" of a douchebag in a white v-neck t-shirt smoking cigarettes in some culturally-tame setting and falling in love 13 times just doesn't cut it.  I have no patience for that stuff, despite a profound, yearning to see something NEW.  And yet, someone on the opposite end of the spectrum has no patience for it either.  Those who do are the facilitators and perpetuators of the blandness.  It lives for itself.

That's in direct opposition to Wikiflections, which is for the people, by a couple of people.

Over the Hills and Far Away Down Under

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shire_of_Kojonup

A letter to the good people of the Shire of Kojonup in Western Australia:

Dear Shire of Kojonup,

Greetings from the northern hemisphere! I’d like to offer some free marketing advice: sell out and turn yourself into a Wisconsin Dells style tourist trap replete with Lord of the Rings themed amusement parks and shops.

I know, I know, the movies were filmed in New Zealand, not Australia. But, what’s that matter? Universal built a Harry Potter theme park in Orlando, Fla. If sunny Florida can play home to Harry Potter’s dreary England, surely Western Australia can be Middle Earth. Lobby the federal government in Canberra to officially change the name of the Outback to Mordor and the tourists will swarm like chazwazzers from the Simpsons’ Springfield.

I’m sure you’re also thinking, "Hey, ratbag! The Shire of Kojonup looks nothing like the verdant Shire of Middle Earth." No problem. Most people don’t know anything about Australia beyond koala bears, boomerangs, and crocodile hunters. Reinvent yourself any way you like and we’ll be none the wiser.

Best,

Ignorant Northern Hemispherer

E Unum Pluribus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Hadjira_District

If you're into the whole brevity thing, this Wikipedia article is for you! It's flagged as a stub, and that might be an overstatement.

This post originally began last week as some sort of pseudo-profound statement on Middle East conflict, but my inner liberal college hippie began shining through my cold, calculating libertarian exterior and all hell broke loose, wikiflections-style.  I think we'd all like to avoid that kind of nonsensical garbage, so taking a step back I reflected on this stub of all stubs.  What do I see?  What don't I see?

With the rise of the middle class in industrialized nations came this idea of "leisure".  It wasn't something that was borne of whole cloth per se, as lazy, time-filling pursuits have been the province of The Rich time immemorial. However, as individuals experienced upward mobility, leaving behind dirty and dangerous factory work for clean, "white-collar" jobs, their increased salaries provided certain opportunities that were previously unavailable.  Increased income, fewer hours worked, and the rise of consumer technologies lessened time and effort that individuals needed to spend on the obligations of daily life.  This is when we begin to see the rise of leisure activities such as the consumption of mass entertainment like radio and spectator sports.

WTF does this have to do with Algeria?  Perhaps nothing, perhaps everything.

I asked myself, "self, why is there so little information on this parcel of land? This is a part of the world that has been continuously tread by man for thousands and thousands of years.  Continuous civilization here precedes the Helenic world.  So why does no one, particularly its residents and neighbors, have much to say about it?"

I bet you wish your thoughts were as linear and well-organized as mine!

My answer to this question, to put it bluntly, is that very few people in Algeria give a shit about Wikipedia articles. Sure, this probably has something to do with access to technology and cultural memes, but by and large, Wikipedia is a trivial playground for a privileged few with a surplus of time and lack of academic rigor.  Umm, and for two dudes and their awesome blog.

Anyway, the point is, more than any obvious factor, our leisurely existence is the true sole benefactor for this Wikipedia thing, and it's easy to forget that without the key ingredients supplied by our perpetually-unfulfilling post-industrial milieu, our many digital playgrounds would not exist. 

It all seems very tentative, however, so is the stub status of this article.  Someday, there will be more.

Maybe.  

That's Whack, You Ol' Chap!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandford_Schultz

Reading an article about a "cricketer" is a bit of a "WTF"-moment for me and probably most who are unfamiliar with the sport. This must be what it's like for the uninitiated when encountered with some random minutia regarding baseball; a bought of confusion followed by disorientation, impatience, and usually a disparaging verbal remark. That baseball is a direct descendant of cricket comes as no small coincidence.

Does the lexicon and language of the sport pervade its founding culture the same way baseball has with Americans? Do those of the former British Empire analogize their lives and interpersonal interactions with cricket situations? Is there a cricket version of "three strikes" legal framework?  Do Indian teens have a cricket analogue for "getting to third base"? Do Australian frat boys "upper deck" their fraternal nemeses?

Aside from these ponderings, Sandford Schultz' seemingly lackluster career as a cricketer brings to mind an interesting and perhaps superficial observation: what is with the British and ball sports? Particularly, ones where the ball is stricken with something. The British popularized modern soccer (football), rugby, golf, cricket, polo, and teabagging. OK, I might have made that last one up, but whatevs, prove me wrong. Unless the offense is caught in the act, the last is the only one which doesn't involve violence against spheres. 

Is there some deeper metaphor here? Are the British seemingly "conquering" the globe with every polo strike, with every kick of the foot ball? Is it perhaps some Freudian expression of masculine shame when one cathartically launches the ball down course with their driver? Or is it just a way to get away from women, hang out with the boys, consume alcoholic beverages, and exercise socially?

Regardless, we can all agree that the British love balls.

¿Cómo te llamas?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javier_Margas

Growing up, the diverse city in which I lived helped me realize fairly early on that the lens through which I view the world runs through a sometimes deceptive filter that is my cultural background. It became apparent to me at a young age that the way I looked at even the most fundamental elements in my life—food, housing, family—was a product of my culture. Still, despite what I consider a precocious realization about cultural biases and perception, I continued to make some assumptions based on cultural learning that turned out to be false. Among these assumptions, one of the most deeply rooted was that parents around the world named their children just as my parents had named me: a given first name and middle name was added in front of a family name, which I knew was often, but not always, paternal. When Ichiro Suzuki debuted with the Seattle Mariners in 2001, one of my understandings about the world was toppled—Ichiro's name was rearranged for American baseball fans so that his family name, Suzuki, would appear after his given name; in Japan, his name would appear as Suzuki Ichiro. It's fitting, then, that another professional athlete has further expanded my understanding of the world's naming conventions.

Javier Margas, a retired Chilean soccer defender who played in Chile, England, and Mexico, is known through Spanish naming customs as Javier Luciano Margas Loyola. I'm sure Mr. Margas would appreciate it if someone writing about him on a blog would be doing so to fondly remember some of his great achievements on the field, but instead, I'm taking this opportunity to shed some light on Spanish naming customs.

Wikipedia kindly spells out the basics of Spanish naming customs at the top of the article for Mr. Margas. "Javier" and "Luciano" were the names given to Mr. Margas by his parents, whose family names were Margas and Loyola. Unlike in the United States, where we're accustomed to a woman dropping her family name upon marriage, the Spanish-speaking world does not employ the concept of a maiden name. Thus, Javier Luciano Margas Loyola carries both a paternal family name, Margas (appearing first), and a maternal family name, Loyola. Typically, as with Mr. Margas, Spanish speakers will drop their maternal family name for the sake of brevity in informal settings, but it is not uncommon for the paternal family name to be dropped in favor of the maternal family name. Pablo Picasso, for example, dropped his paternal family name, Ruiz, and used his maternal family name instead.

The Song of Science, in the Key of BM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippe_Sansonetti

Taking a blind leap of faith here given that there are no specific references outside of a journal article by the subject of the Wikipedia page himself, I'll go ahead and dive in head first.

Philippe Sansonetti is an American-born French microbiologist who, in his over 30 years of dedicated research, has led incredibly important research that has led to the creation of vaccines that have eased the suffering and saved the lives of potential millions, particularly in the developing world.  He's been published in peer-reviewed journals on over 300 occasions.  He's the considered to be one of the founders of cellular biology.  He also has a sense of humor.  The title of one of his articles is, War and Peace at Mucosal Surfaces.  I would have maybe gone with, Mucosal Surfaces, What Are They Good For? That's a discussion for a different day, however.

His work, particularly in regards to the bacterium Shigella, has lead to a much greater and deeper scientific understanding as to how the organism functions and operates. These understandings are what have led to the aforementioned vaccines.  The bacterium dehydrates its host, and leaves it vulnerable to malnutrition as well as death.  Its main weapon towards this end?

Diarrhea!

Mud butt.  The Hershey Squirts.  Assplosion.  Montezuma's Revenge.  The Porcelain Sundae.  The Budweiser Epilogue.

Here I am, fully aware the the accomplishments of this man far outweigh the close-to-absolute zero contribution towards human existence that I represent, yet I still find it absolutely necessary to soil his achievements with my raging immaturity.

There's this notion of immortality that I carry around with me.  The idea is that for most humans with any true lasting contribution to the improving the ongoing human malaise, poetic justice comes in the form of posthumous recognition.  The living very often do not feel comfortable validating their peers.  Therefore, a functional immortality exists for someone like Samuel Clemens, whose wisdom and observations carry importance long after the world he watched has disappeared and his mortal remains have returned to the earth and ether.  No statue needed!

This might be the case for Monseur Sansonetti.  Many of us may find it disturbing/hilarious on a superficial level that this guy roots around in watery excrement every day to better understand some microorganism.  Those that benefit from his research, like those who drink water soiled by their fellow man, likely have no idea who he is to even mount some sort of meaningful gesture of appreciation.

But then again, especially for a Frenchman, the approval of his peers and the resulting status gained from his work probably provides a level of satisfaction and validation far beyond anything any other person or group could provide, even in the afterlife.  How the dirty work he's done will live on, I cannot even begin to speculate. 

However, I will continue to subvert the onslaught of food-borne parasites and bacterium by eating a lot of spicy food and drinking lots of great beer.  Based absolutely on nothing whatsoever, this highly advanced diet will kill any organisms that choose to attempt to use my precious bodily fluids as their playground.  28+ years and no dysentery here!  Now that's what I call science!

Maybe that's why Phillipe Sansonetti is a highly accomplished researcher and I'm just a semi-anonymous man-child crafting poorly-conceived, over-hyphenated observations and also-ran shit jokes.