Captain Nissen Going through Whirpool (sic) Rapids, Niagra Falls

Hitting water's surface at 200 mph

That was a cut and paste job up there above for the title and yes, whirlpool was spelled whirpool in the thingamabob article I a-cutted and a-pasted from. Ever since MS Spellcheck and ABC check came into virtua-being, spelling has gone right down the toilet. Reason is nobody proofs anything any more (proofreaders actually costing money, natch) so if I misspell dog as god (likely, as proofreading down and dyslexia up) it won't be caught because the AI (artificial intelligence) just won't know that I made a misteak. How whirpool was missed is anyone's guess--ABC check suggests a correct spelling is whipple.

The brick wall photo is one of hundreds of thousands available online through Google image search. Apparently the plan is to replace nearly all photos of any worth with pics of bricks, starting with anything in government archives. In this instance it's suggestive of an exhausted imagination or perhaps simple exhaustion, which is likely. At times trying to do a wacky Blog in this cultural environment feels like trying to be a balloon bender (you know, one of those guys or gals who makes balloons into dachshunds, maybe they are called balloon benders or maybe low-impact-inflatable biomorphics engineers) in a concentration camp.

Fifty years ago was today's future, not tomorrow

Now just add fuel cell technology or whatever, and a whole new (old) attitude

Jesus, imagine a two-toned lilac and purple car! Today fun in an automobile (as little as one may find) always drags in an nasty sort of aggressiveness or defensiveness. Cars are built for conquest of one sort or another; color is out unless it's a fightin' color (I get frequent comments on my own bright aphid green car--it stands out so much; I'd own a lilac car in a second). The simple idea of fun is a problem these days--the whole all-pervasive male rapper/gangsta macho aesthetic (the absolute nadir of what was always an impressive and imaginative black style history) paired with the modern women's sex-worker shtick (where did feminism vanish to once all those rage-filled college girrrrrlz graduated and started making the big bucks?) and the across-the-board cynicism kind of eschews any sense of fun and playfulness. When you're working so hard to summon up that much attitude there isn't any time or room for much of anything else.

Blogger gets all weird and stuff

All this view by Cole lacks is spray painted graffiti

Welcome to the 21st century. By this juncture in the history of homo sap we were supposed to be wallowing in leisure time, Jetson-style flying cars, and tomatoes the size of watermelons. Instead we have a world that on nearly every count can't wipe its nose properly, and a load of hyper-sophisticated virtual/PC/electronic hooey that never malfunctions the same way twice from day to day and is continuously under attack (both legally and illegally) by irresponsible and/or piratical nincompoops (it's getter tougher to tell them apart any more). It's also a world where sentences the length of the previous one are no longer encouraged because "readers" nod off and drive into roadside mailboxes and drainage ditches about half-way through 'em. It's also a world where Blogger gets confused a lot and needs more and more maintenance which is why I'm writing this as Blogger seems to be in, as the computer wits dub it, Safety Mode.

All the real basic on-the-ground stuff that says civilized social existence--like feeding, educating, or housing people, or simply maintaining roads--is rapidly getting beyond us. Instead we've packed our emptying, ineffective, and trivializing lives with communications and artificial intelligence devices that, if they were living breathing people, would be diagnosed with senile dementia or at least bad manners. Nobody seems to be noticing this decline in quality of life and few are (or would be) complaining because all these "labor saving" and "life-enhancing" techno toys are essential to the continued appearance of paychecks and they help (in a kind of Biblically Satanic way) fill up all those empty spots in our lives. As far as those bad roads go (and that's just one of hundreds of warning signs) well, we've got SUVs galore and bicycles with shock absorbers and knobby tires--these days you need off-road vehicles to drive on a road. What does that say?

Fifty years ago the quality of life for many people was pretty OK and the chances of improving it, with the technology and materials right there at hand, were darned good. Last week, I drove through my boyhood suburban home town and sadly noted the creeping edgy chaos, the bad roads, the new pasteboard construction, the uncoordinated visual clutter. It looked awful and it was once a uniformly nice middle-class suburban community that owned a big mechanical street sweeper and fretted about where a tree would go and what color to paint the crosswalks. My olde high school (built in the classic late Fifties brick and picture window style) had covered up more than half the area of the previously huge classroom windows with what looked like painted plywood--the effect was depressing and no doubt indicated not just an inability to afford replacement glass but a disturbingly frequent need for it. The joint looks ready for an enemy assault (and in a sense probably is, but mostly from within).

The center of town is hideously overdeveloped with shopping plazas behind shopping plazas behind even more shopping plazas. Town Hall, a swell old stone structure built in the days when even small communities took considerable pride in their public buildings, is lost in this clutter of crappy commercial structures. The new library--replacing a lean, light, and cheerful brick structure from the 1960s--is of the new exposed steel truss variety. The spaces within the interior are just loopy (about the only thing an architect can do creatively with a modern structure is malevolently deform the shapes--I encountered a published professional discussion on this once) and none of the materials used in the detailing say quality. Like most modern buildings it looks like an inexpertly morphed temporary structure or a converted warehouse--meaning another Silly-Putty variant on Wal-Mart.

(More later--probably too much more)

One more shot at Kristaluthian Church of the Way Too High Cross

Any higher and we'll have to add an air hose

Empty old bottles floating in vinegary old wine

If you can read this "Urth" letter you'll learn that there was apparently a serious problem way back in 1953 with Western depictions of Middle-Eastern hats--fortunately the cartoon was never shown in Egypt and that probably saved scores of lives, along with the cost of replacing a burned embassy. Then there're the negative effects of closing the Suez Canal to international traffic, all because of a hat.

This was just one in a long line of "incidents" involving tonsorial insensitivity on the part of "Da Urther" West.

Here's a sample of others:

• The Fifth Crusade was sparked by a vague incident supposedly involving the Sultan, the Venetian ambassador, and a Washington Redskins baseball cap. The Sultan's troops sacked Constantinople
• An earlier fez incident took place in 1914 in, coincidentally, the Moroccan city of Fez, when visiting fez-topped Shriners--there to open a new children's hospital--were taken prisoner by "anti-Western fanatics" and brutally de-fezed (actually an awful mistake as the miffed Moroccans were in fact anti-Country Western fanatics and mistook the miniature-wagon riding shriners--this was before the tiny car was perfected--for cowpokes)
• In 1926 the new Mexican president Julio Sasquatcho refused to shake hands with a sombrero-wearing Calvin Coolidge--the relationship between the neighboring nations cooled noticeably following the meeting (to be fair, many say the sombrero was so gigantic the Mexican leader couldn't get close enough to the President to shake hands)
• Sudanese rioted for ten days after a League of Nations delegation--all sporting the new wildly popular propeller beanies--arrived in their country for talks on irrigation and agricultural development in 1934
• Mongolia briefly (and ineffectively) declared a yak-dung embargo on Great Britain in 1967 when an advertisement appeared in The Sun showing a Mongolian yak-herder wearing a bowler
• In the late Eighties, Syria ejected all Russian military advisers after their leader, during a state visit to the USSR, was offered a balloon hat by a clown at the Moscow Circus
• Not cultural hat incidents per se, but the Prime Minister of Denmark was once attacked and mauled by an enraged squid probably because he was wearing a bright red tie, and the French Minister for Culture received a bad bite on the nose from a cockatoo when he unthinkingly snapped his suspenders in front of the temperamental bird

Today, of course, with sensitivities screwed up as tightly as they are, one shudders to contemplate the Middle-Eastern response if Mister Magoo ever turned up in a fez again or someone snapped their suspenders, especially if Iran obtains nuclear weapons. This is a very real possibility as it's rumored Pez-headent Boosch likes to spend his evenings relaxing with pipe and book while garbed in a robe, slippers, and fez. (Sweet Wotan! Does he put his feet up on an Ottoman?) What we may ultimately see there on our goofy Echo World is a sort of unique culturally-relative arms race with the Iranians justifying building additional atomic bombs every time the West offends them with an inappropriate hat or mismatched socks. Who are we to criticize what others find important and unimportant.

Greasepeace spokespeopleperson Edwina Longhorne Schnifterlifter summarized it well: What do we expect?! For years we forced modern technology, medicine, agriculture, and engineering down these people's throats, and now, virtually at gunpoint, we're making them adopt culturally alien and unreasonable Euro-centric ideas about headwear, freedom, democracy, women's reproductive rights, worker's rights, gay rights, child-abuse, slavery, and respect for other religions and cultures and......uh......um.......

Kristaluthians find "way out" is up and back

Rocketing to Heaven on tongues of flame as faithful assistant feeds out high-status "direct line to God"

500-year-old coded painting contains secret to salvation--Ancient shuttle technology enabled Kristaluthian prophet to escape death, orbit "da Urth," and return in time for Sunday egg hunt, ham dinner, and ritual chocolate rabbit decapitation--Celestial rocket fuel consisted of volatile mix of benzene and holy spirits--"God is my astro-navigator" sez cultists--Wotan's Valkyries remain unimpressed

Kristaluthians reach for the sky, pard'ner

Still not quite high enough

Members of the First Kristaluthian Church of the Way Too High Cross attempt--yet again--to get faithful into Heaven "the old fashioned way" but fall short of their goal. One sect is cautiously exploring the use of JATO or Jet Assist Take-Off technology to loft manned crosses to paradise after failed earlier attempts to use modified catapults and immense atl-atls.

"da Urth" Moon mullahs miffed over prophet-as-larvae pics

Lunar Jihad threatened

Our galleries will soon swarm with the righteous in their countless thousands! sez top dog moon mullah after satiro-entomological pics of Prophet Mohubbard published--Peepernaut mission to "da Urth" may be postponed as our other-dimensional Echo World heats up due to pile-up of dopey controversies and simultaneous gradual increase of planetary tip toward sun that's causing greater daylight/warmth in Northern Hemisphere--Kanadans rattle saber one more time (and maybe just accidentally while they were reaching for broom and dustpan)--Penguins continue massive military build-up at South Pole threatening destabilization of "da Urth"s rotation--Hurricanes waiting on sidelines for "opportunities"

Sea-hardlioners draw firm line on "unreasonable" and "unseasonable" penguin demands

No Compromise and his three wives

Plucky penguins prep for polar pugilism!

Sentinel stands watch as penguin-built destroyer A.S.S. Squidtreat rests at anchor

Penguin supreme council demands immediate cessation of sea lion military research program or "there will be serious consequences once we've finished dinner and napped a bit"--Task force formed around flightless-aircraft carriers Kippersnack and Codlunch prepares to leave McMurdo Harbor--Orcas attempt to negotiate settlement to crisis--World icicle and snow cone prices skyrocket!

Doctor's SEUSS chamber--by reader request

They usually don't leave smiling

Over the past days the Planetary Panopticon has received hundreds of electronical Sh'emails asking us to post a picture of the Institute's Sealed Environment Urth Stress Simulator or SEUSS. This remarkable training apparatus--which gives future Peepernauts a solid rollicking snootful of the parallel dimension Echo world of our own beloved Erde (the place known as "da Urth"--see earlier posting)--was developed by a team lead by Peepergate Project Coordinator, mad scientist de-luxe, and beloved Institute icon, Doctor Potato. The device is so effective in recreating the chaotic and often frightening nonsense of "da Urth" (in the hope of helping Peepernauts acclimate) that the Doctor has been offered the opportunity to design Dreamland Park's long-awaited Haunted Coliseum of Angst.

Doctor Potato installs and adjusts newly arrived Schaubutt assembly for Peepergate

The thing what makes it go

Institute unveils new Peepergate protective funda-menta-suit

Peepernauts can now safely mingle with "Urth" religious conservatives without worry of being exposed to King James's Brainorrhoids, Contagious Zionarcissism , or Mad Mullah Disease--also doubles as self-decontaminating brain-washer/dryer combo

Things to Come

Let's see--one stone from Bosnia, another from Baghdad, that polished one in the middle is from the foundation of the White House , the little charred one in the corner comes from the WTC mall, and that big rounded one is from Andrea Dworkin's stomach--she needed it to digest her food. It's just a crazy-quilt of cold and hard come-downers!

Ed Pahnjorndice here; there's nothing more depressing for us than surfing through the other blogs in this virtual Land-of-Nod.

Take a gander at this one: http://theurbancontemplative.blogspot.com/

It's even in the same stock format as the Panopticon. Plough around a bit and it gets worse (or at least that's how we feel).

Honestly, with all this blogging and MySpacing and emailing--does anybody actually pay any attention to it all or is it just going-through-the-motions--like buying the big economy pack of Christmas cards and working through a printed-out list? MySpace for example--once the MySpacecadet has "set up shop," creatively decorated the page (with all the panache of a person with way too many family photos and refrigerator magnets), and written the all-too-predictable bio (Sex and the City a favorite TV show--imagine that!) then it's the hollow game of adding "Friends" like game pieces, or getting hip-yet-Hallmark comments from them. It's as if all these electronic social interactions consist of nothing more than metaphorically shouting arabesqued-yet-impersonal halloos at each other from distant corners of a darkened cave. Nothing of any real significance actually transpires. ("Coooool--good to hear from ya! Thanks for addin' me as a Friend!) But then again, we have coffee shops on Erde that are hotbeds of intense conversation and not creepy mixes of corporate work cubicles and caffeine "opium dens." Very different worlds.

We here at the Institute do this thing-called-a-blog largely for our own amusement; it's fun wringing the last drop of zaniness and nonsense out of a terminally banal planet. But sometimes we have to admit that we really really worry that things have gone so far that the very idea of, say, a whale touring the nation on a railway flatcar (and not to make any particular political, sociological, or environmental point) has simply lost all zany meaning to all but a handful of holdouts. Sadly, we have accepted the truisms that language-fun and word-play in your culture are largely limited to creating euphemisms and exclusionary vocabulary, and the "creative" efforts of black youths with rhyming dictionaries. Historical or non-contemporary cultural allusions?--forget it. In a history and culture illiterate society (one that--horror of horrors--actually feels smug about this ignorance!) it's like telling jokes in ancient Sumerian.

Oh well. The Tunarians are holding a big bash tomorrow night (Pilate's Jog--one of our favorite holidays) and Patty Pille--the most interesting gal in the Empire--is my date. Late in the evening there'll be a flyby by the glowing plasma-covered interplanetary spacecraft Venus Enfers and absolutely insane fireworks with live music. Imagine a world where an infinitesimal fraction of, say, your defense budget is spent by the government to just develop outrageous fireworks no private firm would ever dream of wasting R&D money on--thank the Imperial Department of Public Entertainment. Free enterprise is surely a grand and glorious thing but only if the only goal is to make money. It groans mightily and produces mouses--like the IPod, a smaller, cheaper-to-make-and-ship method of storing near infinite amounts of crappy corporate music. Wow! Did the planet just shift on its axis? Myths and PR spin aside, there's never really anything daring, outrageous, or nonlinear about "free enterprise" and that instantly leaves out a whole lot of potential fun and adventure. The equation is a simple one me buckaroos--nobody is going to invest anything in something unless it's pretty much a sure thing and nothing genuinely new is ever a sure thing.

New Peepernauts being trained for next round of "da Urth" missions

Young Penny Pille suiting up for brave go at the "da Urth" simulator

Peepernauts-in-training, garbed in cumbersome protective gear, must learn to work controls, demonstrate good judgement, and effectively handle simulated crises in the Mt. Palomine Institute's Sealed Environment Urth Stress Simulator or SEUSS. During training, the cramped steel tank is filled with internal combustion engine exhaust, hemp smoke, burning crosses, cheap incense, and PC gas emissions. To further disorient and discomfort, speakers blast "Urther" rap music at bone-jarring volume; inconveniently placed optical wireless screens show reruns of Sex and the City along with Pez-headential press conferences, and Fox news; cheesy advertisements "pop-up" unpredictably in trainee's faces; cell phones ring loudly, randomly, and from startlingly unexpected places; and anything set down is instantly stolen or decorated with spray-painted graffiti. Meals consist of a simulated "Urth" diet--a viscous paste made from tofu, Tater Tots, breath mints, and cellulose, spread on sun-dried tomato bagels and washed down with mugs of warm Jolt. Only one in fifteen trainees manages well in the artificial chaos and eventually qualifies as a Mt. Palomine certified Peepernaut. All who have endured the mighty SEUSS agree that the greatest challenge it presents is the nausea-producing sense of utter existential pointlessness induced by the disorienting lack of any cultural gravitas whatsoever. Said one trainee of the SEUSS experience: "It's like trying to function normally while floating upside down in the center of a tornado of crap!"

Preparations properly paced for Peepergate plunge

Peepergate maintenance engineer suiting up for last minute orifice check and hole whisking

NASCRA announces plans to crash into Urth's moon

Almost lubriciously obscene--colliding astral bodies give each other "sugar"

The National Aeronautic and Space Car Racing Association today revealed plans to crash an immense psychedelic artificial moon into the Moon (D'Anna to us) to see if it they can find water or, judging from the supplied illustration, perhaps molten butter. Merkan President Boosch deems the presence of H2O and (he speculated) air too, along with shoes, as mandatory for any future Moon settlements (usually out of court). Concerns are that the stupendously huge, crazy-looking artificial sub-satellite will either punch a hole right clean through the theorized thin titanium surface and violently deflate Urth's neighboring celestial body (catastrophically spraying Urth's atmosphere with ozone-depleting helium!), or land atop the super secret Muslim lunar mosque and smoosh all the moon mullahs. For several years intelligence analysts have suspected that the moon is surreptitiously being used by conservative activists of that faith as a jumping off point for the militant conversion of the alien unbelievers allegedly hiding in the swirling sands of Uranus.

Peepernauts prepare for the Big Peep

Director Zliplitt fills pants with tears and creates much-needed ballast as he sez "Goo-bye" to Frau Zliplitt

Kristaluthians to celebrate Öyster Hooeyday

Not Quite High Enough

While members of the microscopically sized Kristaluthian religious cult gather squirrel eggs and stuff logs with jellybean paste in preparation for the upcoming Öyster Hooeyday (the putative anniversary of the near-suffocation and resuscitation of their "savior"), Pilatists Erde-wide are simultaneously looking forward to the annual Momenta Eureka and the following ten-day-long carnival/festival/marathon of Pilate's Jog to Rome.