Three Dumb Punks present their second podcast, featuring guest Dr. Mike O'Connor to talk about some of the contradictions between democracy and capitalism. This edition includes rich white men that don't pay their taxes, why you should vote Green Party, things that suck, and DJ's with lisps.
Click the title to listen or subscribe in iTunes under by clicking "Advanced" and then "Subscribe to podcast..." and type http://feeds.feedburner.com/AmantesSuntAmentes.
The most recently revised version of a short screenplay about how the New York subway connects people in random, yet meaningful, ways.
In Blazing Saddles, Mel Brooks plays cross-eyed governor William J. LaPetomane who is more concerned with banging his secretary than saving the prairie town of Rock Ridge from a scheming railroad company. My sister discovered that Governor LaPetomane is actually based on Le Pétomane, a French stage performer from the 1890s with a talent for controlling is abdominal muscles allowing him to fart at will. The name Le Pétomane combines the French verb péter (or fart) with mane (maniac) thus granting him the prestigious title of "the farting maniac".
Le Pétomane first discovered his erstwhile talent as a child while swimming in the ocean. He noticed that he was unable to control water penetrating his anus and that he could even suck up water from his rectum and project it several yards. Although a baker by trade, Le Pétomane regularly entertained customers by imitating musical instruments behind the counter (which I can't imagine whetted peoples' appetites for his, um... buns). At any rate, Le Pétomane soon took his talent to the stage eventually playing the Moulin Rouge in 1892. Some of his highlights included playing a flute through a rubber tube inserted in his ass, emulating cannon fire and thunderstorms, and blowing out candles from several yards away. Among Le Pétomane's audience were Edward, Prince of Wales, Belgian King Leopold II, and Sigmund Freud (who no doubt had plenty to say on the subject). In later years, Le Pétomane joined the vogue of recreating natural disasters for public entertainment by farting his impression of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
Three Dumb Punks present their first podcast featuring gay weathermen, Hassidic party boys, streetwalkers, and horny Turks. Click the title to listen or subscribe in iTunes under by clicking "Advanced" and then "Subscribe to podcast..." and type http://feeds.feedburner.com
Sarah's sister gave me a February 2007 Playboy featuring Battlestar Galactica's Tricia Helfer. Amongst the ads for Crown Royale, fragrances from the band KISS, and Skoal Bandits, was an article on male sexuality (imagine). In addition to such fine lines as "Faced with annihilation the Y (gene) learned to fuck itself," the article discussed some of the differences between male and female DNA.
One of the most obvious differences is that Y (male) chromosomes only have 76 genes, compared to the X (female) which has 1,098. But the Y chromosome wasn't always so meager. In fact, since the Y mutated from the X gene about 300 million years ago it has been steadily losing genetic material. This has caused some geneticists like Bryan Sykes to speculate that the male gene and therefore the gender may be completely depleted in 125,000 years. Other geneticists refute this finding responding that the Y chromosome has actually stabilized in humans over the last 6 million years compared to other primates. But regardless, the Y chromosome has undoubtedly experienced extreme declines of genetic material.
When making sperm cells in a fertilized egg, the Y exchanges DNA with the X during meiosis exchanging DNA through 23 pairs of chromosomes before being violently torn apart from one another. But these genes can only swap genetic information at their tips (otherwise, humans would all be male), resulting in genes easily being dropped. Y genes attempt to correct this by replacing damaged genes in single sections with healthy ones without having to involve the X. The Y can't always fix these problems however, which can result in a number of male-specific disorders such as infertility, color blindness, hemophilia, Duchenne musular dystrophy and fragile-X retardation.
Despite the disparity of genes between X and Y chromosomes, geneticists used to think that the genetic variations between men and women were minor, as most of our genetic coding tends to come over from the X with only small bits of code that make us male brought over from the Y. All fetuses begin as female until the Y kicks in chromosomes to tell it otherwise. But in 2005, two scientists studying the once-thought "dormant" female X discovered up to 300 active genes. Combined with more Y genes than scientists anticipated, this actually means that men and women differ genetically more than humans from chimps. In fact, men and women are further apart than any two races genetically. As Playboy puts it, black and white men are closer in makeup than a man to his wife. What are often thought of as socialized differences between men and women may actually be more fundamentally coded into our bodies making it no surprise that there often exists such a gulf of understanding between the sexes, Playboy perhaps being the quintessential example.
After almost three weeks of traveling through India and 35 hours of transit getting back, I was ready to come home. Surprisingly, I found myself missing very little of my treasured New York lifestyle. Though not necessarily in this order, I missed long hot showers (of course), my family and friends, Sarah, potable water, playing chess, fast and available Internet, my guitar, and good wine. But other than that, I missed almost none of the other American accoutrements.
It was the most patriotic I've ever felt walking through customs and hearing the burly customs officer say in his thick Brooklyn accent, "welcome home." Never before have I felt the value of U.S. citizenship, what that means to the rest of the world, and the extensive resources that my country has as its disposal should it ever need to find me in some compromising situation abroad. Although I have always been down on the spirit of capitalism that pervades this country, going to India very much reminded me that it was business that shaped modern life and the comfortable middle class in which I was raised. My biggest complaint about capitalism is that it seems largely devoid of altruism or certainly mechanisms which inspire successful corporations to be altruistic . Our system is balanced by competition that we engender, rather than any sense of obligation to social parity. But it has made me think that becoming financially successful is the best way to help other people and make some sort of marked impact on the world. Whether I have the tenacity or taste to do that, is another blog post.
For the first time, New York seems quiet. And clean. The car lanes are luxuriously wide and cab drivers amble over the highways gently in blissful reverie. The sidewalks seem devoid of people and the peace and quiet facilitates my post-travel introspection. I am still haunted by those small faces that looked up at me with such devastatingly beautiful eyes pleading for a little help. I don't know what to do with that. Except to maybe understand my small place in the vast world a little more clearly and what makes life essentially valuable.
After my first foray into Anjuna Beach, I really couldn't understand all the hype. After walking through rows and rows of shop stalls that twisted mazelike at the edge of cliffs overlooking the ocean, I couldn't see a way down and wondered if Anjuna Beach even had swimmable beaches. Upon further investigation, it turns out that an unobtrusive, narrow path past the vendors stalls twisted down to the beach over red soil and black lava rocks leaving the impression of a long lost Martian ocean.
I walked down the row of beaches during sunset where bars had set up tables and chairs facing the ocean. Couples and groups of friends were drinking beers casually watching the sun gently sink behind the water. I set myself up in a bar almost at the end of Anjuna watching the beautiful colors succumb to the overarching darkness when I noticed a couple of younger guys next to me fashioning what looked like hash and tobacco into a rather large spliff. I leaned over inquiring about the legality of smoking this monster in such plain view
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