This weekend (October 3-5, 2008), the clothing chain Old Navy is celebrating Columbus Day early with its "Party Like It's 1492" sale. Apparently, Old Navy, and the creative directors that created this misguided advertising campaign, and the suburban White Americans who have bought into it, only learned the sanitized, white-washed version of Christopher Columbus' arrival to the Americas.

Lest we all think that the arrival of the Spanish in 1492 and the subsequent colonization of the West was a gay old time when the Spanish and Natives partied it up with brotherly love, consider this:

• Howard Zinn, historian and author of A People's History of the United States, quotes Columbus as writing in his journal: "As soon as I arrived in the Indies, on the first Island which I found, I took some of the natives by force in order that they might learn and might give me information of whatever there is in these parts." Columbus' motives? Gold.[ http://www.newhumanist.com/md2.html ]
• Upon returning to the Americas on his second expedition, Columbus "proceeded to unleash a reign of terror unlike anything seen before or since. When he was finished, eight million Arawaks -- virtually the entire native population of Hispaniola -- had been exterminated by torture, murder, forced labor, starvation, disease and despair." [ http://www.religioustolerance.org/genocide5.htm ]
• Columbus, Zinn writes, enslaved the friendly and hospitable natives of the West Indies, searching for their gold (there wasn't any gold). According to Zinn, "In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death. // The Indians had been given an impossible task. The only gold around was bits of dust garnered from the streams. So they fled, were hunted down with dogs, and were killed." [ http://www.newhumanist.com/md2.html ]
• Zinn quotes the Spanish missionary Bartolome de las Casas as writing, "There were 60,000 people living on this island, including the Indians; so that from 1494 to 1508, over three million people had perished from war, slavery, and the mines. Who in future generations will believe this? I myself writing it as a knowledgeable eyewitness can hardly believe it...." [ http://www.newhumanist.com/md2.html ]
• In one day, according to las Casas, the Spaniards raped, tortured, and murdered some 3000 natives, committing such atrocities as cutting the legs off of children who ran away from them, feeding live infants to dogs, and filling people with boiling soap. [ http://www.religioustolerance.org/genocide5.htm ]

What, therefore, are Old Navy and the producers of this campaign thinking? Are they so naive that they have accepted the white-washed version of Columbus' arrival to the West Indies? Or have they bought into colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism so completely that the commoditization of genocide is something to be made light of?

Of course, it's not that surprising that a bourgeois chain like Old Navy that caters to mostly suburban upper-middle class White people would so mangle the truth for their own commercial gain. Truth goes out the window when there's a quick buck to make.

And the consumers that buy into this system, those currently shopping at Old Navy during this sale, who have forgotten the real events of 1492, those slaves to fashion - perhaps they should stop to consider truly what slavery means, their slavery to consumerism, and the barbaric slavery of the Natives of the Americas (and also, later, our brothers and sisters in Africa). It was and is this very slavery that built the foundation of the consumerist world in which we live today.

Some advice: stop buying overpriced designer goods, unnecessary clothingthat will just be thrown out within a season or two, from stores large chain stores that really only care about enslaving a person to their fashion in order to acquire their "gold" (money). Boycott Old Navy, Gap, Banana Republic, and the like, where most of the clothing is produced in third-world sweatshops powered by virtual slave labor.

Instead, make do with what you have. Buy second hand. Buy fair-trade. Buy recycled. Make your own. Do something to break free of the vicious cycle of consumerism in which we all seem to be trapped.

And get educated. Learn the real truth - whatever that may be - by seeking it out yourself. What you're told by any one person, any one book, any one blog entry, does not and cannot encompass the entire story, even when the author is attempting to tell it as accurately as possible. There are always more sides. Learn how to learn, how to sift through the noise and find the fragments of truth, how to assemble those into a coherent and informed narrative. Otherwise, you always be a slaved to what you are told; your mind will never be free.

You know that an album has to be good when you can't get it out of your mind. I mean the whole album, not just one song off of it. Seriously. That's what's been going on for the last few weeks with album Heretic Pride released on 2/19/2008 by The Mountain Goats on the 4AD label.

Every time I catch myself listening to John Darnielle and Peter Hughes in my head performing "Autoclave", I try to change the channel, but just end up with them doing "Lovecraft in Brooklyn" instead. Then they'll switch it up on me and skip to "Sept 15 1983", or bounce to the albums title track! When they aren't playing in my head, they're streaming through my headphones - every day at work I pull up iTunes and listen to the album, all the way through, sometimes twice. Hell, I'm listening to it right now - I can't stop! (Maybe I should listen to some mariachi music to break the The Mountain Goats feedback loop I seem to be trapped in.)

In all seriousness, this album is incredible on many levels. From the well-crafted music, heavily featuring acoustic guitar and piano, with some light-weight drums in the background and some other sounds mixed in for good measure, to the extremely literary lyrics. In fact, it's those lyrics that have cemented the brilliance of this album in my mind. Where else can you find references to the works of Sax Rohmer and H.P. Lovecraft, along with a song that imagines the last moments of Michael James Williams, and even a piece for the fictional Michael Myers (from the Halloween movie franchise)? Of course, thrown into the middle of this are various songs about the Lake Tianchi Monster and swamp creatures, and even a beautifully intimate ballad or two.

It's the genuine intimacy of all the songs, even when they're referencing obscure literary characters or monsters, that brings the album home. Many of the songs tell a story about a character as a snapshot of a day. Sax Rohmer's spies sneaking around alleyways as the sun rises. Conspirators (or they could be people hiding from someone) scared in a room with a single light when someone calls on a phone line that no one dares to answer. A guy wandering into a Brooklyn pawn shop to buy himself a switchblade. An incredibly intimate and heartbreaking scene that takes place in the mens restroom involving an East Berlin disco refugee.

And suddenly the song changes again. The Tianchi monster is staring into space, in my head, anyway, floating among sandalwood smoke and children sketching pictures...

Press photos by Mark Van S. from The Mountain Goats official web site.

Last night, my fiancée and I went out to dinner with her mother, who is visiting from the Philadelphia area. After an aborted mission to eat seafood at the Red Fish in Canton (closed, maybe for good (?) - their web site is now a random register.com search portal), we decided to head over to Ikaros Restaurant in Greektown as we'd been meaning to try some Baltimore Greek food.

It was a nice place, family-friendly, with a fairly extensive menu. Being ovo-lacto-pesco-vegetarians, we honed in on the seafood. K ordered the Shrimp Guvetsaki with Rice, a sure win. Her mother, who does not adhere to our blasphemous ways of avoiding the consumption of land-dwellers, ordered the Stuffed Grape Leaves appetizer, another sure win (except for that ground beef thing).

I, on the other hand, being of an adventurous culinary nature, and suddenly feeling like this could be my episode of Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations, decided to try one of the specials - Octopus With Rice and Feta.

Now, I thought I liked octopus - I've eaten it in seafood stews, I've eaten it as sushi, I've eaten it in random Spanish dishes I can't even remember the names of... But, I'd never had octopus like this before.

Here's the official description of my meal: "Fresh octopus cut in small pieces, seasoned w/ herbs and wine, cooked w/ rice pilaf, and topped w/ feta cheese."

When my dish arrived, I thought they'd made a mistake. That's octopus? It doesn't look like octopus, I thought. (Sorry, at the time I didn't think to snap a picture with my cell phone.) That doesn't taste like octopus. That doesn't have the texture of octopus. I even asked my waitress to make sure. She reassured me, but I was skeptical until I found one of the beast's briny tentacles lurking in the rice pilaf.

I quickly felt my episode of No Reservations transforming into an outtake from Bizarre Foods - Andrew Zimmern, you've got to try this dish... Apparently, when octopus is left to marinate in "herbs" and Greek white wine, then baked with rice pilaf and smothered in feta cheese, it transforms into something strange and, quite frankly, disturbing - the infamous OCTOPORK!

I swear, I thought I was eating pigs' ears and snouts. That texture totally reminded me of how I imagine pigs' feet. Waitress, are you sure that's not swine in my pilaf? Ah, well...

Imagine a creature straight out of Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake, not as cuddly as a rakunk, not as weird as a pigoon, and not quite as ferocious as a bobkitten, but even more disturbing - an amalgam of the dark briny depths and a wild boar. All tentacles and snout. It gives me the shivers.

Could be worse, I guess, like that time my mother snuck the chicken hearts into the mole... Or I ended up with soup from what used to be my favorite Thai restaurant that, literally, tasted like ass...

George Carlin. May 12, 1937 - June 22, 2008. Goodbye.



I was fortunate enough to see this man live twice - once in Las Vegas and once in Baltimore. Both times were incredible, irreverent, mind blowing, and life altering. Possibly one of the most intelligent comedians of all time - may you find yourself finally at peace in death, Mr. Carlin.

More to come on both adventures, once the shock's worn off, the coffee's kicked in, and I make it through a day of work...

I try to be aware of what I put into my body, so I tend to be a man who reads the food labels. I also tend to read CD liner notes and the copyright and acknowledgment pages in books. Perhaps its a borderline obsession... But I digress.

As I said, I like to read the labels and know what I'm eating. That way I can purchase the best possible food items available, not ones with filler materials (like xantham gum in cream cheese), or preservatives (like sodium benzoate in lemon juice). I also try to avoid anything with a corn-derived product on the list, unless I'm explicitly buying something like corn meal or tortilla chip or, well, corn!

Corn: they stick it into everything - your bread, your fruit juice, your ice cream, your iced tea... They probably fry your potato chips in it. They probably fed it to the livestock that you eat or from which you get your dairy.

I know, I know, this isn't news. People like New York Times Magazine contributor and UC Berkley Knight Professor of Journalism Michael Pollan have been railing against corn as a cheap food additive for years, and against U.S. agricultural policy that promotes the excessive production of this crop.

But, have you ever heard of corn being in your soy sauce? That was a new one... Granted, the package of soy sauce in question came from a Chinese fast food joint (how much could I expect from fast food?), but can they even really call it soy sauce when the third ingredient is "hydrolyzed soy & corn protein"? And when they have to add "caramel color" to make it look right?

The packaging, oddly enough, also claimed "No MSG" and that the sauce in question was Pareve. That first claim, while technically true - no MSG was added to the sauce - does not mean that there is no MSG in the sauce. It turns out that any hydrolyzed protein inherently contains MSG!

It's a little harder to get to the truth about the Pareve nature of the soy sauce. Was the sauce really processed according to Jewish dietary law? Fortunately, as I'm not Jewish, I'm not as concerned about this, although kosher foods tends to be handled in a much more clean and humanitarian way.

Back to the point at hand. Since when did they need to start adding corn to create soy sauce? Usually its just soy beans and/or wheat, depending on whether it's tamari or shoyu. But corn?

Have you ever been to the site Everything₂? Odds are, you're scratching your head right now and staring blankly at the computer screen.

I recently discovered the site after Googling the punchline to a Geek joke that I apparently wasn't Geeky enough to get (there go my über-Geek points). The site, which turned out to answer my question comprehensively, thus saving my street cred, also turned out to have entries on just about EVERYTHING.

According to the website itself, "Everything2 is a collection of user-submitted writings about, well, pretty much everything."

Everything₂'s concept is pretty simple. It's a multi-dimensional weblog joined together with the automatic linking of a Wiki. That is to say, its a website powered by a diverse user community that posts anything they want - writing about ideas, events, things, people, reviews... Then, the system automatically links words and phrases with other entries that contain those words/phrases. Or, in the terminology of the site, nodes are joined with other nodes.

Why is this so cool? Well, for one, it allows a reader to follow the writing in a random association sort-of way, stumbling from one entry to the next. It's a labyrinth of interesting ideas. In my case, I could spend hours getting lost on the site, clicking from one node to another to see where I end up.

So, for example, say I go to the site and search for "99 bottles of beer on the wall". I end up with two results, the first being a BASIC program that iterates from 99 to zero and prints the song... From that entry, I can click on the word "PRINT" and I end up reading about fingerprinting, two-dimensional works of art, and various other definitions. At this point I can keep wandering through to other words...

I also have the option of clicking on a link that says "I like it". If enough site visitors click the "I like it" link on your entry, presumably you end up in the "Cool User Picks" area on the homepage.

Even more interestingly, I can click on the "Chaos" link at the bottom of the page. This takes me to a "tag cloud"-like view somehow related to the entry in question. "Somwhere near print I got lost in..."

The first time I did this for the "PRINT" entry, I saw links to everything from "cout" to "George Washington's 1794 State of the Union Address" to "Marcus Garvey". But then, when I tried the exact same chaos, I ended up with a completely different set of entries in the cloud...

The possibilities are endless! It's better than a game of "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon".

Yes, indeed. I randomly typed this into my location bar in FireFox:

kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk

Really, I was just bored and pressed down the first key that my finger laid upon.

Here's the magic result that came up:

http://service.govdelivery.com/docs/NJPASSA/NJPASSA_11/NJPASSA_11_20060919_en.pdf

Go figure. How those two go together, I have no idea. Maybe there are a bunch of "k" characters embedded somewhere in the PDF?

Glad to know, though, that Passaic County Sheriff's Department hosted an equestrian event in September of 2006.

I just walked from Canton to Charles Village, from my office in the Natty Boh Tower to my house on 27th and Howard. According to Google Maps, it was just under a six mile urban hike. I took it at a brisk pace and made it in about an hour and a half, give or take a few minutes.

My approximate path:

• Natty Boh Tower - O'Donnell Street to Boston to Fleet
• Fleet over to President Street
• Short jag up President, then worked my over to Calvert via University of Maryland/Commerce Place/City Hall
• Up Calvert to Mercy Hospital
• Cut across St. Paul through that little park area and up to Charles
• Up Charles through Mt. Vernon, past Penn Station, through Station North, and up to Charles Village
• Left on 27th and two blocks to home

This is the longest urban hike I've done in Baltimore. I used to walk from home to work when we were in our old office on Pratt Street down in the Inner Harbor. That was somewhere between 3 and 4 miles, and was always an interesting glimpse of the city gearing into motion in the morning, especially walking down Baltimore where they were hosing off the sidewalks in front of the strip clubs...

This hike in the opposite direction, at the other end of the workday, also provided some interesting glimpses into the city. Joggers out getting a workout, students meandering, business people in their suits and ties, homeless people asking for change, walkers with dogs. Police cruisers rolling by. City workers fixing power lines. Broken water mains. A man trying to sell his groceries.

Friends, romans, countrymen... Happy Sunday morning. It's raining here in Baltimore, thunder-storming, in fact, after a gorgeously beautiful Saturday. At least Spring has arrived, the flowers are blooming, the trees are blossoming in all their yellows and pinks and purples and greens. And the rats are coming out of hibernation. Did I say rats? Yeah, rats, the size of small ponies... Okay, maybe the size of miniature ponies... Okay, but I swear that they truly are the size of cats around here. This is Baltimore, after all.

So, you're wondering, why is he giving me an update on Baltimore flora and fauna? Has he taken up ecology or something? No, sorry to disappoint - I just don't have time for another career, what with the cyber-punk rock-and-roll poet-philosopher thing going on. Although I do enjoy pretty flowers.

This is all an elaborate ploy to keep you interested long enough to read the third paragraph, in which I divulge the fact that a short fiction piece of mine (or is it a prose poem? oh, the gray, nebulous divide) is appearing in the Spring 2008 issue of JMWW, a quarterly on-line journal. To be precise, the piece is called "Case Study: Part 16" and was inspired by/is a response to JZF's poem "John Freemont Interviews #24".

You can read 16 here:

http://jmww.150m.com/Langston.html

You can find the index and read the rest of the Spring 2008 issue here:

http://jmww.150m.com

And you can watch this excellent piece of independent documentary film making about Baltimore Rat Fishing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Yv9I33uob0

Yes, Baltimore, where the rats are the size of cats and the cats run and cower in the corners... Or at least the cat I live with.

BBC News just published a special report on their web site: "Iraq violence, in figures". For people who can't really comprehend numbers without a visual representation, these statistics should finally make an impact.

One of the saddest things is that nobody officially knows how many civilian casualties there have been (I guess nobody "official" cares?). Independent studies have found anywhere from 80,000+ to 650,000+ civilians killed. That's a humongous range and absurd human cost for a war based on false-pretenses if not downright governmental deception.

As of the publication of this blog, the U.S. has spent something like 511 TRILLION dollars on this failure (I'm not making that number up - visit the National Priorities Project!). That comes out to be somewhere in the approximate range of $800,000 to $6,000,000 per individual killed.

A July 2007 estimate by the CIA placed the population of Iraq at 27,499,638. Do the math again, and that comes out to just over $18,000 spent by the United States of America per LIVING, BREATHING IRAQI CITIZEN.

Just consider for a moment: what would happen if, instead of shooting at perceived threats and blowing things up, we gave every single person in Iraq $18,000 U.S. dollars?