--Dan KilianThursday, May 17, 2012
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Three Kitchen Jokes and Three Hippie Jokes
Who is the vampire of the kitchen implements? Spaaaatula.
The colander shot the skillet. In his last words, the skillet delivered a comedy routine, and it was pretty funny. It wasn’t the jokes so much as the dead-pan delivery.
The deep dish pan was really being a jerk to the muffin tray, so the muffin tray said “Cut it out, you casserole!”
Q: What does a hippie-Vulcan say?
A: It’s not logical, maaaaan!
Q: What does a hippie-vampire say?
A: Free blood!
Q: What does a hippie-cowboy say?
A: Woah!
--Dan Kilian
The colander shot the skillet. In his last words, the skillet delivered a comedy routine, and it was pretty funny. It wasn’t the jokes so much as the dead-pan delivery.
The deep dish pan was really being a jerk to the muffin tray, so the muffin tray said “Cut it out, you casserole!”
Q: What does a hippie-Vulcan say?
A: It’s not logical, maaaaan!
Q: What does a hippie-vampire say?
A: Free blood!
Q: What does a hippie-cowboy say?
A: Woah!
--Dan Kilian
Octopus Man #3: Ben and the Monster
Friday, May 11, 2012
The Weathergoat
The Weathergoat trudges on.
First in blinding sleet, through slush and puddles that soak his feet to the skin, plodding next to garbage-strewn highways, salt trucks casting stinging fans of salt across his thighs as they lumber past. The sleet then turns to freezing rain, plastering his hair to his face, drenching his clothes, making pale mushrooms of his hands. Still he trudges on. The rain passes and a bitter wind starts to blow, an eager pickpocket stealing whatever warmth he'd secreted away – even his armpits feel cold. With the wind comes dust that cakes in the corners of his mouth and eyes, a chalky foulness that he can neither spit nor swallow away. The Weathergoat digs his hand deeper into his pockets and continues to march.
Finally, the sun comes forth, a baleful eye that cooks the water out of the blacktop, tainting the air with a humid petroleum funk. But there are no clouds – the Weathergoat's skin peels and blisters. Pollen bursts forth from the ragged grasses on the side of the road, filling the cracks on his brow and in his lips. Still he walks.
Elsewhere, in dappled shade under swaying sycamores, a man pours lemonade from a pitcher and passes it out to his friends. Hamburgers flare and sizzle on a portable grill. There is a cooler filled with ice and beer. A gingham cloth is held down on a picnic table by bottles of ketchup of mustard on one side and a bowl of potato salad with hard-cooked eggs and scallions on the other. A woman in a sundress waves a fly away from a platter of cheese and tomatoes for the burgers. It's a beautiful day.
For this the Weathergoat trudges on.
--Steve Kilian
First in blinding sleet, through slush and puddles that soak his feet to the skin, plodding next to garbage-strewn highways, salt trucks casting stinging fans of salt across his thighs as they lumber past. The sleet then turns to freezing rain, plastering his hair to his face, drenching his clothes, making pale mushrooms of his hands. Still he trudges on. The rain passes and a bitter wind starts to blow, an eager pickpocket stealing whatever warmth he'd secreted away – even his armpits feel cold. With the wind comes dust that cakes in the corners of his mouth and eyes, a chalky foulness that he can neither spit nor swallow away. The Weathergoat digs his hand deeper into his pockets and continues to march.
Finally, the sun comes forth, a baleful eye that cooks the water out of the blacktop, tainting the air with a humid petroleum funk. But there are no clouds – the Weathergoat's skin peels and blisters. Pollen bursts forth from the ragged grasses on the side of the road, filling the cracks on his brow and in his lips. Still he walks.
Elsewhere, in dappled shade under swaying sycamores, a man pours lemonade from a pitcher and passes it out to his friends. Hamburgers flare and sizzle on a portable grill. There is a cooler filled with ice and beer. A gingham cloth is held down on a picnic table by bottles of ketchup of mustard on one side and a bowl of potato salad with hard-cooked eggs and scallions on the other. A woman in a sundress waves a fly away from a platter of cheese and tomatoes for the burgers. It's a beautiful day.
For this the Weathergoat trudges on.
--Steve Kilian
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
Novelty
The other day I noticed the following bicycle and took a photo:
Note that there are many spokes on the wheel – many more than necessary. It is bad engineering, this wheel. And yet it caught my eye and was interesting enough for me to take a photo. This is due to the tyranny of novelty. Something does not have to be good to attract attention. It merely needs to be novel. So the over-spoked wheel looks cool in its way simply because it's unusual.
It is 19th-20th century industrialization that has led to this condition. Mass production and standardization of consumer products have filled our material needs (or could fill them, but we choose not to afford everyone a baseline share in the riches -- that's another topic). But they've also made our product-scape a monotonous one. Where every bicycle, car, building, jacket, or fork looks more or less the same, spastic deviations get undue credit and attention. And yet I wouldn’t want to go back to pre-industrial levels of scarcity.
Fortunately we are poised on the verge of a new mode of mass production, with near-infinite variety being possible while maintaining low cost of goods and services. In such a society novel items will be commonplace – not novel at all – and thus would be judged based on their intrinsic merits and not difference for its own sake.
Yes, there will still be items that are produced with what are now considered traditional methods. There will be products issued in lots numbering in the millions. But eventually my hope is that individuals will take a larger role in creating (or at least choosing – and there is some feedback between the two) their product-scape. This could be extrapolated to a world consisting entirely of unique items. In such a place fashion would be eliminated, as every fad would be regarding a product-issue of one item.
This is already starting to happen in digital media, where the masters of content origination are losing market share to individuals. Yes, we all watch stuff put out by the networks, but there are new content producers and distributors catering to ever-smaller slices of the market. Web TV channel for Renaissance Fair enthusiasts? Check. Star Trek channel? Check. Dog TV? Check.
At some point there will be more content being originated than the gatekeepers will be able to categorize or mediate. The velvet rope will be trampled by all of the traffic flowing from originators to consumers. And eventually all consumers will be originators – creative life will be the norm, not the exception.
--Steve Kilian
That Old-Time Magic, Revisited
psi K a tree
Our unconventional friends got us a tree for our wedding. Big sac of roots and all. A baby tree, still it was hugely impractical and hellish for Karen’s Mom to get from the banquet hall to our house. Still we loved them, loved each other, loved our new back yard, and we planted it. We don’t live there anymore.
Went by there the other day, just driving by, then I parked. Knocked on the door. No one home.
What was I hoping to find? Traces of our more innocent, happy days? Just how much a new family alters a place, how much the place stays the same? Some patch of carpet or paneling from those different days? A “For Sale” sign?
Walked around back. Now I was an intruder, a burglar, a creep. The lawn had gone to shit. Did that make me feel better about myself, that these new owners couldn’t handle the up-keep? No, it was depressing, as any poorly tended lawn is depressing. So what if thick watered manicured turf is unnatural? Nature, with its wild seeds and brown patches, its entropy, is depressing.
Yet the tree is still alive! And huge! How did it get so big?
And the K, where I started carving Karen’s name and then thought better of it, it’s opened into a great gnarled mouth of exploded tree bark.
I walk up to it, put my hand in the wound. I feel the wet sap inside. I push and it parts for me, letting me probe its inner bark and the wet wood within. I push my full arm inside. Does it have some disease? It feels so healthy! I pull it wider and look inside.
Head, arms shoulders, I shimmy into the body of it’s trunk, dark and wet, enclosed. I feel the xylem and phloem transporting the water around me. My scalp tingles with vibrations from the branches above; I feel the wind in my hair. I feel her love again, and I drink in the sun with my leaves.
--Dan Kilian
This was the program from the Saturday, April 21st show at Otto's Shrunken Head.
Here' s a video of us playing there!
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wf4NYySqG9I&w=560&h=315]
Election Night
Went by there the other day, just driving by, then I parked. Knocked on the door. No one home.
What was I hoping to find? Traces of our more innocent, happy days? Just how much a new family alters a place, how much the place stays the same? Some patch of carpet or paneling from those different days? A “For Sale” sign?
Walked around back. Now I was an intruder, a burglar, a creep. The lawn had gone to shit. Did that make me feel better about myself, that these new owners couldn’t handle the up-keep? No, it was depressing, as any poorly tended lawn is depressing. So what if thick watered manicured turf is unnatural? Nature, with its wild seeds and brown patches, its entropy, is depressing.
Yet the tree is still alive! And huge! How did it get so big?
And the K, where I started carving Karen’s name and then thought better of it, it’s opened into a great gnarled mouth of exploded tree bark.
I walk up to it, put my hand in the wound. I feel the wet sap inside. I push and it parts for me, letting me probe its inner bark and the wet wood within. I push my full arm inside. Does it have some disease? It feels so healthy! I pull it wider and look inside.
Head, arms shoulders, I shimmy into the body of it’s trunk, dark and wet, enclosed. I feel the xylem and phloem transporting the water around me. My scalp tingles with vibrations from the branches above; I feel the wind in my hair. I feel her love again, and I drink in the sun with my leaves.
--Dan Kilian
This was the program from the Saturday, April 21st show at Otto's Shrunken Head.
Here' s a video of us playing there!
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wf4NYySqG9I&w=560&h=315]
Election Night
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Monday, April 9, 2012
Sugar and Berries
The surviving crewmen of The Margaret were lying face-down on the deck. They’d been boarded by The Guppie, now bobbing along starboard, strangely peaceful now that the smoke and clang of battle had ended. They’d been badly beaten, decimated, and surrendered to their fate.
The pirates laid planks of wood across the boats. First came a mop-up crew to kill the remaining wounded. After that some gathered crates of the cargo, mostly berries and sugars from the island. Then they rolled a large heavy block of wood made from several crude logs bound together. Crewmembers of The Margaret exchanged puzzled glances.
Then came the man who could only be the infamous Captain Horatio Magellan. Standing over six feet tall, he strode across the ships, resplendent in his blue naval uniform, still immaculate so many years from his days in the British navy. His face was as weather-beaten and cracked as any driftwood, his white walrus mustache standing out like ice against his sun-browned skin.
“Who is the Captain?”
One of the crewmen tilted his head upwards. “The Captain was killed. I’m Nathanial Hollander, first mate.”
“You will work as slaves for us?”
“Never!”
“Then hoist the block!”
As pirates held sabers to his neck to keep him from struggling, several others lifted the great wooden block over his body, and then gently laid it down on his flattened body.
“Oof!” moaned Hollander.
“Haul the anchor chain!”
Magellan’s crew drew up the anchor, but rather than winding the chain on its giant spool, they dragged the loose links and laid them across the heavy block. Hollander wheezed as the pressure weighed down upon him.
Magellan smiled a mirthless smile. “One less slave then. I prefer to do business with berries and sugar! These islands and your ships provide rich cargos! I shall be known for brown sugar and berries. I shall have to add these items to my coat of arms!”
Hollander gasped, barely able to spit the words, “Men like you aren’t known for their plunder, they’re know for their crimes!”
Magellan smiled wider and angrier. “Sugar and berries! Throw a cask of each on our good first mate, shall we lads?”
His men lifted barrels of their new loot on the block, and one clownish one did a jig, as Hollander’s lungs collapsed, and his bones began to snap. Cruel laughter rose on the deck of The Margaret as the ritual was reenacted, prisoner to prisoner. Most accepted slavery, though some called Magellan hateful names and were crushed under the block. A few of the doomed called Magellan a particular name, and when he heard that name, he made a point of weighting them down more slowly, link by link of the chain.
After the bloody rite was finished, some of the booty was hauled aboard The Guppie, along with the great block. Corpses were tossed into the sea, slaves shoved into the hulls of both ships, and the conquering crew appointed new officers for the captured ships. Then came drinking and song.
As his men jigged and sang, Captain Magellan sat and fumed. The last words of Hollander were ringing in his ears. That and the name he’d heard repeatedly from the other dying sailors. Of course in his bloody career he’d been called many vile things, but the fact that more than one of the prisoners had used the name meant that others were saying it too. He really did want respectability, a coat of arms with sugar and berries. Instead, he was making a name for himself, a legend, based on his signature act of cruelty.
They were calling him “Captain Crunch.”
--Dan Kilian
The pirates laid planks of wood across the boats. First came a mop-up crew to kill the remaining wounded. After that some gathered crates of the cargo, mostly berries and sugars from the island. Then they rolled a large heavy block of wood made from several crude logs bound together. Crewmembers of The Margaret exchanged puzzled glances.
Then came the man who could only be the infamous Captain Horatio Magellan. Standing over six feet tall, he strode across the ships, resplendent in his blue naval uniform, still immaculate so many years from his days in the British navy. His face was as weather-beaten and cracked as any driftwood, his white walrus mustache standing out like ice against his sun-browned skin.
“Who is the Captain?”
One of the crewmen tilted his head upwards. “The Captain was killed. I’m Nathanial Hollander, first mate.”
“You will work as slaves for us?”
“Never!”
“Then hoist the block!”
As pirates held sabers to his neck to keep him from struggling, several others lifted the great wooden block over his body, and then gently laid it down on his flattened body.
“Oof!” moaned Hollander.
“Haul the anchor chain!”
Magellan’s crew drew up the anchor, but rather than winding the chain on its giant spool, they dragged the loose links and laid them across the heavy block. Hollander wheezed as the pressure weighed down upon him.
Magellan smiled a mirthless smile. “One less slave then. I prefer to do business with berries and sugar! These islands and your ships provide rich cargos! I shall be known for brown sugar and berries. I shall have to add these items to my coat of arms!”
Hollander gasped, barely able to spit the words, “Men like you aren’t known for their plunder, they’re know for their crimes!”
Magellan smiled wider and angrier. “Sugar and berries! Throw a cask of each on our good first mate, shall we lads?”
His men lifted barrels of their new loot on the block, and one clownish one did a jig, as Hollander’s lungs collapsed, and his bones began to snap. Cruel laughter rose on the deck of The Margaret as the ritual was reenacted, prisoner to prisoner. Most accepted slavery, though some called Magellan hateful names and were crushed under the block. A few of the doomed called Magellan a particular name, and when he heard that name, he made a point of weighting them down more slowly, link by link of the chain.
After the bloody rite was finished, some of the booty was hauled aboard The Guppie, along with the great block. Corpses were tossed into the sea, slaves shoved into the hulls of both ships, and the conquering crew appointed new officers for the captured ships. Then came drinking and song.
As his men jigged and sang, Captain Magellan sat and fumed. The last words of Hollander were ringing in his ears. That and the name he’d heard repeatedly from the other dying sailors. Of course in his bloody career he’d been called many vile things, but the fact that more than one of the prisoners had used the name meant that others were saying it too. He really did want respectability, a coat of arms with sugar and berries. Instead, he was making a name for himself, a legend, based on his signature act of cruelty.
They were calling him “Captain Crunch.”
--Dan Kilian
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