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Get your Caterpillar gear here! Beats the heck out of a Bob Dylan rayon bowling shirt. I think rayon is a body odor amplifier, don’t you? It’s not absorbent enough to stanch the flow of a really manly sweat.

Technorati Tags: Caterpillarian party gear

So.

I watched Noam Chomsky explaining away the myth of American democracy with a bow to Robert Dahl’s theory of Polyarchy. Then, as often happens when YouTubated, I found myself watching Ali G’s interview of Professor Chomsky, an interview that explored relationships of many words as only Ali G might be expected to connect them. A baby growing up with two languages might be said to be bilingual. Later, if the child added a third language, then that child would be multilingual. It was easy for Ali G to make the orthogonal shift that permitted entry of bisexuality and cunniligualness to the discussion. Professor Chomsky acquitted himself well and at the end, with but a single old white guy false move toward a handshake, touched fists with Ali G and shared respect.

So how far was that YouTube moment from a click to Ali G’s interview with Posh Spice and Beckham? Not very far, and it was an interview I enjoyed. Perhaps you will enjoy it too.

But that’s not what this post is about. This post is about the Chicxulub crater in Mexico, Deccan traps, and pterosaurs. But I’m hoping this evening’s exposure to Ali G will help me frame my understanding in a way that I can comfortably share with any of the environmentally obsessed people who may come this way looking for an answer to the riddle of what killed the dinosaurs and is it true that fried they taste just like chicken?

Take the National Geographic. The Nat. Geo. suggests that it wasn’t this big smack-down of a huge asteroid boiling the water in the Gulf of Mexico, turning it into a huge basin of bouillabaisse (or more like chicken gumbo probably), punching the planet so hard that a crater fifty miles across was formed, an impact crater that threw so much junk in the air you would think you were driving in LA or something. No, the Nat. Geo says that it likely was huge volcanoes all over the place, but especially in Western India, volcanoes that essentially nullify the bouillabaisse (or chicken gumbo) theory of extinction and suggest something more like a luau, only it was in India, so they probably had nan and dal with that, instead of pineapples and the pu pu platter. But it still tasted like chicken, only more pit roasted than boiled.

So the Nat. Geo. throws out this big Indian oven idea as an alternative to the asteroid punch, but all I’m saying is why should it be either/or? What if Ali G was walking down the street and he saw Norman Mailer walking his poodles. This would be the not-dead Norman Mailer I’m using here for the sake of the story. And suppose Norman said something rude and perhaps somewhat defensive about his poodles not being gay or even signifiers of gay, and it’s not like he has dyed them pink or something. And what if Ali G — whom I respect, but here for the sake of the story is some behavior that we wouldn’t want our children to imitate — just suppose Ali G got very annoyed with Norman Mailer and had to punch him real hard in the stomach. And then what if Norman Mailer vomited because he is very old (not dead yet in this story) and he can’t take a sock in the gut anymore? And what if he got some on the poodles. Might not the poodle barf markage be jointly caused by both the punch in the gut and the ensuing vomiting? I mean the story would not be complete if you just said Norman barfed and got some on the poodles, and I think maybe the Indian subcontinent barfed after the planet took a few heavy punches and so it’s not an either/or thing.

Technorati Tags: paleontology, victoria beckham, norman’s poodles, I wonder who they’re staying with

My mother says that my first real word, after the “dada-baba-mama”
pleasantries, was “perfection.” Someone nearby said it, and I grabbed
onto a guiding principle. It might as well have been “methamphetamine,”
for all the promise of lasting contentment that it held. For those of
us crippled by ideals, love is most possible when it’s already
circumscribed by departure, or safely past.
– Dervala Hanley, whose Frappr map says she lives on the equator in the sea south of Ghana

Talk about social networking!  And the chart is in pink and blue! 

[Okay... we need someone to count the end points.  How many boys are depicted as having only one relationship, versus how many girls?  What are their stories?  How many of the 63 monogamous couples will grow up and marry each other?  How many of the 21 triads have experimented twith a three-way?  Do you believe this data when only one bi-sexual relationship structure is reported?

POV shot from the backseat.  JIM FRIEND is in the driver’s seat.  A WOMAN is riding shotgun.  We see JIM’s right hand shove a cassette in the deck, then slap the steering wheel, an anticipatory gesture…

TAPE:  –gooseberries, she said. I said again I thought it was hopeless and no
good going on, and she agreed, without opening her eyes. (Pause.) I asked her to look at me and after a few moments–(pause)–after a few moments she did, but the eyes just slits, because of the
glare. I bent over her to get them in the shadow and they opened. (Pause. Low.) Let me in. (Pause.) We drifted in among the flags and stuck. The way they went down, sighing,
before the stem! (Pause.) I lay down across her with my face in her breasts and my hand on her.
We lay there without moving. But under us all moved, and moved us, gently,
up and down, and from side to side.

WOMAN:  Seventeen copies sold…

JIM hits rewind and there is the familiar screech of backwards audio.

TAPE:  –unshatterable association until my dissolution of storm and night with
the light of the understanding and the fire–

JIM:  It’s art, Woman.  They give people the Pulitzer for this kind of thing.  The fucking Booker prize.  All kinds of honors accrete…

WOMAN:  If you don’t find the back formation offensive.

JIM:  "Accretian…" 

WOMAN:  …and you don’t spell very well either.

JIM:  How would you know that, Woman.  It’s a damned SCRIPT for god’s sake.  How can you tell whether I spell it "accretian," "accretion," or even "a Grecian?"

WOMAN:  Yes… well, you’ve certainly URNED the right…

JIM:  Don’t be doing that now.  Going all truth and beauty on me.

JIM rewinds the tape again amidst much screechery…

TAPE:  –my face in her breasts and my hand on her. We lay there without moving.
But under us all moved, and moved us, gently, up and down, and from side
to side.

The WOMAN hits the stop button and turns on the radio.

WOMAN:  Enough crap…

RADIO:  It was suggested that for an artist of his stature, he had a relatively
small body of work - but only if one measures size by number of words.
Distilling his art to its essence, he produced scores of eloquent plays
and stories, many of those in his later years not strictly defined as
full length.

JIM:  I’m told size doesn’t matter.

WOMAN:  One understands why you may have heard that…

Young man, met him in a dark bar on the lower east side, he was way polite and everything… whenever I read him I ask myself why not everyday?  His site loads slow though…

anyway, he has an early link to the Bin Laden truce offering and an excellent comment thread beneath it.

And he has a brilliant post on Drew Barrymore and why it’s okay for her to be normal.  My word, normal, not his.

Halley Suitt recently responded to a year old ABC sex survey with a post examining why women don’t sleep nude.  I tried to leave a comment, but - ironically - Halley’s Comment won’t take my comment.  Or perhaps there’s no irony there since, after all, it is Halley’s Comment and not mine.  But more to the point, Halley is so wrong.  Here are the reasons Halley thinks that most women sleep clothed and some offhand critique of my own.

1. A lot of us are overweight and think we look like hell naked. (Girls, I hate to admit this, but a lot of us think this way, don’t we?!?) Even if we look good, we don’t think we look good.

ABC said that only about one woman in seven sleeps naked.  Halley posits that American women experience a lot of discomfort about their own bodies.  If Halley could show that around six out of seven women express discomfort with their appearance, then I’d put some stock in this.  But really, when you sleep, you close your eyes, so what does it matter what you look like naked?  Your eyes are closed!

2. Maybe we don’t sleep in the nude because we’re wearing something like this – how bad can it be? Pretty good reason not to be nude.

This almost calls for a guy survey.  Follow that link of Halley’s.  Guys, how many of you have crept into bed beside a woman dressed like that?  No, you imbecile… I mean the WOMAN!  How many of you have crept into bed beside a woman who was dressed like that? If so, was she still dressed like that by the time you fell asleep?

3. If we’re moms, we know with a loud noise in the night, a little thunder, a wet bed or whatever, there’s every reason to believe one or more kids will come climbing into our beds in the middle of the night and it’s probably better to have pj’s on.

This one makes sense, but we need more demographic information.  Halley, how many women are mothers of children who are between the ages of 18 months and about ten years old?  Subtract the number of divorced moms and factor back the number of nights per week that the joint custody agreement has the kids out of the house and we’re approaching some meaningful numbers.  Also there is a little cognitive dissonance rumbling around when this item is compared with number two, above.  Do you really want to be wearing the Fredericks fetish garb when the little one crawls in for some comfort?

4. We don’t want to be that naked idiot on the news, sporting a blanket, if there’s an earthquake, fire or other natural disaster in the middle of the night.

This ranks right up there with the clean undies in case of an auto-accident meme.  People don’t really think like this, but some people’s mom’s would have them believe that people think like this.

5. We sleep with other folks around who would freak to see us naked — parents, fellow college students, drop-in out-of-work brothers on the couch in the livingroom, you name it.

This is what the bathrobe is good for.  If you sleep naked beneath a blanket, and pull on a robe when you skip off to the loo in middle of the night, well — small chance that impressionable brother is going to glimpse your special parts.

6. The statistics are off because … we might spend a lot of time naked in bed, but when it comes to actual "sleeping", we throw our old UCLA tee shirt on, grab our teddy bear and can only get cozy that way.

The statistics are off because ABC only surveyed women who were likely to drink too much and pass out half-dressed and later pull a blanket over themselves when they woke up enough to fall asleep.

7. If we sleep naked with our beau, boyfriend, lover or husband, they would never stop trying to get one last touch, squeeze, stroke or rub of various available parts of our curvy bodies — and you’d never get a bit of sleep. Can’t you just hear them blaming it on us, "You can’t lie around looking like that and not expect me to touch you!"

The sad truth is if you go to bed with your beau, boyfriend, boyfriend, lover, or husband the odds are your partner will try to get in some touching, squeezing, stroking, and rubbing regardless of whether you have your jammies on.

8. You feel so … NAKED … when you’re a naked woman. It’s hard to keep your own hands off yourself sometimes.

You need to understand that you will go blind and/or god will strike you dead if you do this.

9. Our arms get cold. (This happens to be my real excuse, often as not.)

Some people sleep with their arms under the covers too.  Just not the ones with a firm grasp of the concepts enumerated under number eight, above.

10. Sleeping in the nude … it’s just too … Swedish. We’re Puritans, don’t forget!

When I think of Puritans I think of Demi Moore in that movie about the girl with the letter jacket… Hester somebody.