January 2007 Archives

I Have a Giant Penis!

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I have a giant penis! It doesn't help that I wear invisible pants. I am also incredibly thin. I eat brownies and frosting and I never gain an inch. I am independently wealthy. I regularly send millions of dollars to all my powerful friends in Nigeria.

Giant Penis

Translating God

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When I think of "God," I translate that to mean "Energy of the Universe" and I am perfectly happy holding a conversation about "God" because I have translated an understanding to which I can relate. "God" does not translate into "Heaven" or "Hell" or "Angels" or "Trumpets" for me -- I instead think of an unfillable empty space.

Translating God

I'm pleased to announce the availability of the Urban Semiotic Private Online Portal for those of you who are interested in helping build this blog into the future by writing articles.

Urban Semiotic Private Portal Logo!

The Urban Semiotic Private Portal is a place where we can confidentially discuss blog matters, article ideas and other genius thoughts that will continue to make this place a better place to visit, think and play. I look forward to seeing you there. If you have any questions or comments, ask away here!

Spreading Your Legs

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Many of us are taught as children that we are all equal: Men and womenSpread are of the same notion and devotion. We are born as one. We share all rights together.

We suffer together. Do you think that idea of equality is true, or are there internal differences that place one gender over another either viscerally or demonstrably?

Are there certain mandatory body positions of power and submission that require one gender to take a lesser position of human stature in order to be served?

Does the mere knowledge of one gender's propensity over another for creating a submissive position create unconscious inequality and separateness? When you think of spreading your legs -- and I'm not just talking about sexually -- which gender is more required to get on their backs and open their legs in the most vulnerable position the human body can create?

Is there power in spreading legs or is that position seen as a universal human indicator of weakness and open submission?
When I was 15 years old, my writing mentor and television producer and director and friend Marshall Jamison said during one of our regular, weekly, writing meetings, "The longer I live, the less I know." 
When "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin died by being stung in the heart by a stingray, he left behind a wife, a young son, and a daughter named Bindi Sue. In the devastating aftermath of his death his fans are forced to deal with the public pimping of his 8-year-old daughter Bindi in the popular media in order, it seems, to perpetuate the family myth and to earn professional fortunes.

Bindi

Circles Yesterday's post concerning a Round, Edgeless Future pressed me into remembering how we are surrounded by circles but few of us realize their power.

Chains of events also create circles but even fewer of us are able to forge the connections to complete the meaning.

A circle is the original conundrum: What indicates everything and nothing at the same time?

We ride on circles. We hold hands and create two joined circles.

Circles remind us of who we are and where we began.
RoundThe other day I read an article discussing how, when architecture students are asked to design a "City of the Future," they always draw round structures.

It seems having corners is "too old fashioned" and not "forward thinking" enough.

That design flaw -- that only Round is good -- is a stereotype that has been embedded in the young designers by popular culture and not by appropriate future need.
Boles University is now revamped into a more formal online teaching and learning portal. We need your help on both sides of the realm to expand its capacity for education. If you haven't poked around Boles University in the last few days, you should go over there now and snoop around a bit -- Boles College has also been added to the magical mix!

Boles University logo!

Curse of the Common Name

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Do you suffer from the "Curse of the Common Name" Common Nameor are you one of those blessed with a truly unique name that identifies you before anyone actually meets you?

I've always hated the name "David" because it was so common.

I much preferred "Keith" growing up but I never had the gumption to insist others actually refer to me by that name.

My father wanted to call me "Rocky" but my mother demanded the ordinary safe "David" harbor to the extraordinary rough shore. I'm not thrilled with the idea I was almost a Rocky, but anything is better than the "beloved" David. 

I Love Me Some Sleep

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Yesterday, I heard a child walking hand-in-hand with his mother squeal, "I love me some sleep!" His mother scooped him up in her arms and he rested his head on her shoulder and fell asleep. We all appreciate The Art of Power Napping and we try to be cogent during the day to avoid American Somnambulism, but what about our need for deep sleep?

Sleep


Curse of the Upside Down Lock

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Our building manager Jose decided the building, and all our apartments, will be "more secure" Curse of the Upside Down Lock!if he changes all the locks from Rightside Up to Upside Down.

I discovered this insanity, this madness, this curse of the Upside Down Lock -- now means we have to turn all our keys upside down so the teeth face downward in order to fit into the building locks. After a lifetime of living "teeth up" when it comes to inserting keys,

I have to admit the only person who is frustrated by this new Attack of the Locks is me and not "crooks and burglars" as Jose claims. Jose also thinks using upside down locks puts "less torsion" on the key and it "makes your wrist feel better" after turning keys The Right Way all day long.

Has anyone else been exposed to this New Key Madness? Or is this just another one of Jose's bright ideas that results in making the entire building darkly miserable? Did I miss the memo on new lock theories?
Are religion and morality the same thing, or are religion and morality separate and distinct ideas that can survive alone?

Why are You Significant?

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Why are you significant?

Show Me Your Tongue!

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The other day Janna went into one of the local shops in our Jersey City neighborhood to buy some food. Janna is Deaf and she usually chooses not to use her voice with strangers because if you use your voice then you are expected to vocally communicate on both sides of the conversation and that puts her at a disadvantage when it comes to understanding what is being spoken by a large immigrant population with many accents and unique vocalizations that are impossible to always comprehend and interpret. 

Brown Paper Bag Experiences

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We have all been subject to "Brown Paper Bag Experiences" when others evaluate us not by our inner selves -- but by our outward appearances -- and many times they wrongly judge us by jumping to incorrect conclusions. In my article, Coercing Faith, Gordon Davidescu posted this Brown Bag comment:

I think the best analogy (or at least the one I just came up with now) is this: Say you see a person walking down the street with a brown paper bag in his hand. Given New York's liquor laws you know that he has some sort of alcoholic beverage inside. However, you don't know if that alcoholic beverage is a beer or wine, or even a wine cooler - unless it is taken out of the bag. Converting is sort of like removing the bottle from the bag. Being Jewish means you have a Jewish Soul - but not everyone with a Jewish Soul hidden in their paper bag realizes that they are Jewish until they take it out of the bag - converting, that is.
As we celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. day in the United States, MLKingwe are faced with the questions of antiquity that have bothered and constrained humankind: Do we still judge people by color?

Do we still prefer violence over getting along with each other and the world?

It is possible in any way to reclaim our tainted and lost humanity?

I wish those in the churches and the mosques and the community living rooms and the religious leaders would stand up to the politicians and say, "Don't go to war in God's name.

Don't ask for our prayers to cover your bloodshed.

Don't seek our religious protection for your unholy political wars.

Don't ask for our faith votes in the polling place. Leave religion out of your killing fields."

That kind of religious rebellion against the politicians would remove the brush cover from political fanatics who pretend they are doing God's work in the fields of war by killing those who are of darker skin and lesser opportunity than those wielding the staff and the cross.
Here's my Iraq Timetable for the next two years.

August 2007:

The "Surge" didn't work. The country is splitting into three region-states. American losses are outstripping any forward movement in the Iraqi coalition government. Now what?

Iraq Timetable


President Bush decided we're going to surge 20,000 more troops into the abyss of Iraq and one can't think he's doing anything more than tossing more bodies into the volcano.

Casting Caskets

Coercing Faith

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On a recent television news show, the topic of coercing Faith in Politics came up and two fascinating quotes were offered:
God does not demand obedience, why should we?
The second quote:
Jesus didn't die for a country; he died for individuals.
Is it ever appropriate to coerce any brand of religious Faith? Should children ever be coerced into a belief system when they were born without one?

Faith

Yesterday's fascinating conversation concerning -- Is Intelligence Inherited or Earned -- inspires today's post.

Does society need - and please forgive the easy opposite term for "intellectual" and read yesterday's article to fully understand the context -- "stupid" people? If yes, why? If not, why not?

Stupid People!

If you believe stupid people are a necessity, please provide analysis of their roles in the following three landscapes of society -- Economics, Aesthetics and Education -- in addition to the rest of your argument.
A friend recently said to me, "All intelligent people should be required to have children in order to preserve the human race."

My friend went on to argue if you are intelligent you see how dangerous and rotten the world has become and you would never wish that sort of increasingly Armageddon-like future on your offspring; the intelligent are able to see the future and realize our current evolutionary course is in for a major correctionIntelligent! by deadly force resulting in the removal of the current trough of all bodies from the face of the earth.

My friend believes intelligent children can solve this conundrum of a world at war and that's why intelligent parents must give birth to them.

My friend understands you want your children to prosper, not perish, and the hatred and destruction of the world isn't something you want to gift your intelligent children with in life and so -- my friend's theory goes -- intelligent people have been consciously making the "smarter" choice, the more human choice, to not birth children into a world filled with emotional and intellectual suffering and a guaranteed, bloody, death by radicals.

The unspoken, provocative, angle of my friend's argument is that intelligence is inherited and not earned and that only "selfish, stupid people" are procreating and that's why we're in such a terrible world situation.
Yesterday in New York and New Jersey we experienced the strangBioterrore and pungent odor of natural gas. No one could explain then and no one, even today, can begin to explain now. What's going on in the urban core?

The olfactory mystery in the New York region was matched by strange activity elsewhere. In Austin, Tex., police cordoned off 10 blocks of the downtown business district early yesterday after more than 60 birds were found dead overnight along Congress Avenue, which leads to the State Capitol.

Air testing there failed to find a cause, but preliminary results determined that people were not at risk. In New York, the piercing odor was the talk of Manhattan, and it called to mind another mystery: the maple syrup odor that people reported smelling on separate days in late 2005 and whose source has never been established. In yesterday's case, several people said they were overcome by the odor.

We all wear masks. Once you've lived long enough, you begin to recognize and read people via the mask of their face before any words are spoken. There are few original masks in the world and once you've reacted and interacted with one face you quickly begin to learn all masks of that sort behave and express in the same way. What happens when the faces of the dead are resurrected into masks of the living?

I need your help testing a new blog I have set up on blog.BolesUniversity.com -- hosted by Blogger -- for a special, super-secret, project I am working on and I hope I can share the details with you soon.

Blog @BolesUniversity.com

Please let me know your experience on that blog both here and there so you can directly report your comparative experiences.

The Yankee Ingrate

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There's nothing quite as annoying as an ingrate. Add "surly" to the personality of the ingrate along with $43 million in salary over two years to win 34 games playing -- not working -- baseball and you have the nasty Randy Johnson. Randy Johnson never fit into Yankee pinstripes. 
Are we are minds?

Or are we our bodies?

We cannot be both because our bodies are limited and our minds are endless.

How we deal with that mind/body disconnect is the biggest conflict of our existence but, sadly, many of us never realize that struggle or recognize our need to confront the mortal and the immortal within us.


Fun with Text-to-Speech

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There is no greater fun than playing around with Text-to-Speech on the AT&T Labs website.

ATT Labs

Three Worlds Away

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It's time once again for our annual worldwide Urban Semiotic reader check in -- if you are comfortable publicly sharing your answers -- for the following three questions:

A Map of the World

I am currently moving my websites to Mosso from Media Temple so parts of this site -- sidebar images and the rotating header -- may come and go as the new DNS servers propagate across the world.

My email also will drop in and our over the next couple of days so if you sent me an email yesterday or today and I haven't answered you yet, it is because your note was lost in the transition. Please resend your message.

As well, yesterday and today most of my comments here on your favorite Urban Semiotic were, and are, getting caught by Akismet as Spam. That's a big hassle because every time I comment here I have to enter the Akismet admin interface to clear my own messages.

I changed my email address here to see if that will stop from getting me caught as a Spammer. If you have a moment during the day to post a comment or two to help me test this Akismet problem while our DNS propagates, that would be a pure delight and I do thank you.
Happy New Year from Urban Semiotic!

Urban Semiotic Colors!

It's time once again to do a review of who and what we are and where we want to go in the future as we formally set down our Urban Semiotic Resolutions and Predictions for 2007

About this Archive

This page is an archive of entries from January 2007 listed from newest to oldest.

December 2006 is the previous archive.

February 2007 is the next archive.

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Recent Comments

  • Kathakali Chatterjee: It depends David! What if they are just incapable to read more
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