Costumfoolery

When his prime crimefighting days are behind him, what will Cap’n America do for fun?

Tonight’s costume tells the story.

Thanks to Joe, Jenn and Catherine for hosting tonight’s costume dance party at KCDC.

I dressed as if Captain America had joined a professional wrestling team in the guise of “Willie Nelson meets ’Macho Man’ Randy Savage”, using EL wire and LEDs for light effects (man, those battery packs were hot):

Do you agree SNL jokes are older than ever?

Many say that the American late-night TV satire called “Saturday Night Live” has a rather geriatric feeling to it.

Well, recent evidence points out why.

The lead writer, Seth Meyers, is actually an old Catskills “Borscht Belt” entertainer trying to pass himself off as a hipcat daddio of a comic, thanks to modern CGI effects:

An alien or just a regular NYC citizen with multiple personalities?

Apparently, as we age, we gain more digits in addition to lengthening noses and ears?

Or is Seth an alien unfamiliar with, but trying to understand, our culture?

More as it develops…

Kick it!

The producers of the film, “Kick-Ass,” expressed their wishes to dedicate their movie to the girl, Malala Yousafzai, for her courageous stand for girls’ education and survivor of an attack by the Taliban.

The graphic novel creators have not confirmed they are writing a fourth book in the series of the story expressly turning Malala into a Pakistani superhero.

News Digest, 14th of October 2012

A few years ago, I installed a couple of ultrasonic buzzers in our attics to keep out animals.  The first year, it was quieter than usual — fewer bumps in the middle of the night by our furry friends.  Then, this year, I discovered a family of raccoons had taken up residence in the attic.

Call it affirmation of survival of the fittest except, in this case, it is a family of deaf raccoons that discovered a place to live peaceably under the roof of our house.

I found out that fact last night by opening the attic door and shouting at the raccons to be quiet.  The baby raccoons kept chasing each other until one of them must have smelled me and turned, catching the attention of the other two who turned and froze, too.

Waving my arms and making aggressive charging motions scared them off into the unreachable corners.

Well, at least there’ll be no more screaming at the top of my lungs and confirming to my neighbours that the crazy man next door is trying to commune with the dead again.

In robot news, more from the analysis of Heidegger’s Being and Time by Hubert L. Dreyfus…

“2. Comportment is adaptable and copes with the situation in a variety of ways. Carpenters do not hammer like robots.  Even in typing, which seems most reflex-like and automatic, the expert does not return to the home keys but strikes the next key from wherever the hand and fingers are at the time.  In such coping one responds on the basis of a vast past experience of what has happened in previous situations, or, more exactly, one’s comportment manifests dispositions that have been shaped by a vast amount of previous dealings, so that in most cases when we exercise these dispositions everything works the way it should.”

“4. If something goes wrong, people and higher animals are startled. Mechanisms and insects are never startled. People are startled because their activity is directed into the future even when they are not pursuing conscious goals.  Dasein is always ahead of itself.”

In other words, our actions/thoughts are based purely on the past while focused on the future.  No wonder we have no idea what we’re doing in the present moment.

In business news, UPS made a hostile bid for the company Space Exploration Technologies Corp, commonly known as SpaceX, now that SpaceX has demonstrated its near-Earth-orbit package delivery service is reliable.

Experts expect FedEx to make a competitive bid to prevent UPS from expanding its reaches to “infinity and beyond,” with FedEx merely wanting to “be there before there are customers to be there,” mainly the Earth-to-Moon route that international transportation corporations are watering at the mouth to sink their teeth into.

The UPS CEO denied that Felix Baumgartner would be vice president of dropoff service for the new SpaceX division, if their bid is accepted.

The bicycle messenger union has opened negotiations for a stratospheric drop and parachute deployment training center that could provide pinpoint hand-delivery of packages to customers in remote locations via sky-high balloon or dirigible.

Pickup of the delivery person is a major sticking point in the negotiations at this time.

More points to [re]ponder

  • Technology disrupts former profit models, closing businesses and increasing unemployment, but provides no equal replacements for jobs/profitability
  • Technology creates high-stimulus, addictive leisure activities that are easily available (cheap, abundant, etc.), making instantly-gratifying tasks like searching the Internet and gaming more appealing than delayed-gratification tasks like studying for high-skill jobs
  • Technology creates demand for high-skill jobs but large workforce not interested/motivated for high-skill job training
  • Local skill gap in job requirements for businesses seeking expansion, as well as national governmental barriers to entry/competition for eligible, highly-skilled, internationally-mobile workforce, contributes to regional high unemployment

When do local people, en masse, say “no more!” to higher education and highly-technical skill sets, creating viable subcultures that revert back to lower skill needs?  How do they remain competitive enough to be profitable and stay in business as owners/employees?

Does a technology-based socioeconomic system, in general, have a fixed lifespan like a classic technology lifecycle?

Yes, these are repetitive thoughts but ones I want to grasp onto for myself and understand their implications for the future in this parallel universe of a blog.

Either we admit that our model of nations is out-of-sync and possibly obsolete or we open up the floodgates and let subcultures compete against each other at full blast, with subcultures, like species and languages, going extinct at a faster rate than before.

If the latter, will your subculture withstand the onslaught?