The publication of Anasazi-35 has stimulated some interesting conversations, so I think that it deserves a little more attention. I'm posting several exegetical articles, covering different aspects of the story. Previously I talked about the technology and about the economy. Today, I'm going to talk about the part that most readers thought was surreal and nonsensical, the cop office.

In the story, Sunset MacClaine has been beat up and left to sit in a holding cell over night. Then they bring her up to the detective floor of the building, where the office is just a walking track.

The design is an offshoot of my thoughts about the sedentary American lifestyle. The model American drives to work in the morning, then sits at a desk for eight hours, then drives home, then sits watching TV. On the weekend it's a lot of sitting around drinking. There's occasionally a push to go to the gym, but the twenty minutes at the gym hardly overcomes the bulk of daily routine which involves little or no physical activity.

My own daily habits incorporate a bicycle as my primary transportation and a day-job that requires me to walk up to five miles per shift (I've used one of those pedometer things to confirm it -- although the downside of working in a bakery is the vast amount of pie in my diet). For people who are lucky enough to not have a blue-collar job, there's not much to be done.

Unless, and here I put on my speculative fiction hat, what if mobile technology frees people from their desks? Then they can fill out spreadsheets, make calls, take meetings, and surf the web or play minesweeper, all the while ergonomically replicating the physical activity of our first nomadic biped ancestors.

I was feeling pretty cocky about how smart I was, but then it turns out that the bastards at the Mayo clinic (particularly Dr. James Levine) have beat me to it. Their office of the future design incorporates a walking track that's virtually identical to what I envisioned.

Drat.

Last year, I celebrated by birthday by staying at home and watching movies all day long. It was such a success that I did it again this year, and made the day just a little more gluttonous by EATING TACOS FOR EVERY MEAL.

I discovered the one true recipe for that delicious, creamy taco-cart green salsa, which made this the best birthday ever.

The first movie I watched was Onechanbara: Samurai Bikini Squad

Apparently, during the zombie apocalypse, there's going to be a woman wearing a bikini and a feather boa, who fights with a samurai sword. They don't get into why she's in a bikini, but I think it has something to do with how she projects her ki. I'm sure that Cormac McCarthy was going to have more bikinis in his post-apocalypse story, but he just never got around to it.

Continuing the Japanese school girls with swords genre, I watched Blood: the Last Vampire

I'd seen the anime version, which was half an hour shorter. They expanded this with more emphasis on the American heroine, but it generally worked well in live action.

I was reminded that I hadn't seen all the works of Stuart Gordon, namely Dolls

This was one of Gordon's lighter and funnier works, with none of his trademark genitalia abuse. I recently had a long conversation about how much CGI sucks, so it was good to see a movie that makes effective use of puppetry and stop motion to create imagery that's both creepy and neat to watch.

Tony Jaa is of course awesome. His sequel to the breakaway star-vehicle movie, Ong Bak 2, has almost nothing to do with the original. It also makes little sense.

But it is chock full of action sequences that are wonders of filmmaking.

I regretted missing Singh is Kinng in the theaters. And even more so after I saw it. It's funny, beautifully shot, relatively fast-paced for Bollywood, and it has a credit sequence that features Snoop Dogg. It also is filled with Bollywood in-jokes.


When I was browsing through my friendly neighborhood art video store (actually it's pretty surly, but it is in the neighborhood), I noticed a couple of things. First, nearly all the American films in the new releases sucked. The blockbusters sucked, and the independent direct-to-video options looked like they sucked even worse. I think it's because all the talent in America is busy making TV for the premium cable channels. The other thing I noticed, is that there were a lot of videos available for things that were either just in theaters or were just coming out in the theaters. For instance, House of the Devil was in the theaters just a couple months ago.

It's a horror film shot in the style of 80s fright night films. I'd forgotten just how worried people in the 80s were about satanic cults. The head satanist in this film is a dead-on impression of one of the local Austin writers with similar religious beliefs.

When I was down at Domy books the other day, I impulsively bought some DVDs. One of them was called Kure Kure Takora, and it appears to be some sort of Japanese Sid and Marty Croft-esque children's program about an octopus who gets bopped on the head alot.

I don't particularly feel obligated to watch the whole thing.

Speaking of apparently insane Japanese entertainment, there's the wrestling film Oh! My Zombie Mermaid

You could watch this trailer, but I honestly think the less you know about the movie the better. You just need to know that it's a movie about a wrestler struggling against adversity the only way he knows how.

I also saw Our Man Flint, but I didn't get through it and I don't know if I ever will.

In summary, I had as many movies and as many tacos as I could possibly fit inside me.

Over a year ago, we elected a man to be president and we were euphoric with hope and happiness.

That's why I posted this list of predictions on the morning after. I wanted to make everybody miserable and cynical like me.

The post drew a lot of interesting commentary, and I hope that revisiting it will do the same.

Here are my 22 predictions, followed by analysis of how they've been coming along.

1.) The president will successfully tax the rich. That would just about balance the budget deficit, except-

*( Yeah, this would happen if Obama could get so much as a resolution condemning midget wrestling through congress.)

2.) -we will never really get out of Iraq. Expect major reductions of troops in Iraq, but they will stay on at some level, probably as a "stability force" or somesuch euphemism for occupiers. The troops that do leave will just trounce over to Afghanistan.

* (True, except for the "major reductions" part. Is anybody really surprised?)

3.) Prediction 1 leads to the conservatives hating Obama like nobody's business. The invective increases steadily in hatred, until the language from the ministers of conservative churches borders on the treasonous. Bolstered by the hate speech, the extreme right wing mounts-

* (Conservatives don't need an excuse to hate and say stupid things any more than midget wrestlers need an excuse to pile-drive little people.)

4.) -several serious assassination attempts. But luckily the right wingers with the guns are every bit the screwups as the ones in the Whitehouse these last eight years. Feeling increasingly disempowered, the conservatives turn to-

* (This hasn't happened. Yet. That we know of.)

5.) - Sarah Palin as a role model and ideological figurehead. Becoming as divisive and polarizing as Newt Gingrich and Dick Cheney before her (but without the common sense to shut up and stay out of sight after the country gets sick of her), Palin skirts the accusation that she caused the downfall of the McCain campaign (see my previous post about the trap of identity politics for the right), and instead becomes a righteous martyr. Offensive comments from Palin will make the news every six months. At least once she will be caught saying something truly racist, but America won't really notice because-

* (I'm giving myself nine points out of ten for this one, but with Palin regularly doing live TV on FOX, we can expect the shockingly racist comment within the next year.)

6.) -investment in the tech sector will skyrocket. Even though investors are politically conservative, they only feel comfortable putting their money in the future when there's a forward-thinking Democrat in power. Because of Obama, the most stodgy moneybags will think that we can remake the shape of industry, and that people will buy books online if given the chance. With the previous administration, all the investors could think about was oil. Now's the time to invest in the most goof-ball technologies you can find, but be sure to sell before the conservative backlash government.

* (I have no idea how this is coming along. I'm thinking that the economy is still too sucky for a lot of investment.)

7.) America will completely fail to get over its race problem. The cops in Austin will still use force on black people at a rate seven times that of whites. School funding will still be tied to the property values of the community, giving poor communities the shaft. The president will just be another celebrity, no more tied to the liberation of black people than the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, except that now when the middle class sees someone from the working class, they won't think, "Let's fix the disparity in the access to education," they'll think, "That loser could have been president." And it won't help that Obama thinks those Mexicans need to learn English (luckily, he will find a way to phrase that so it sounds perfectly reasonable).

* (This is just another way of saying that nothing has changed from last year.)

8.) The energy crisis will continue to be a crisis and too little will be done too late. Luckily the economy won't hit the post-petroleum brick wall until the first term of the conservative backlash president of 2016, so no one will think to blame Obama.

* (The stagnant economy has given us a temporary reprieve from the energy crisis. Yay!)

9.) There will be no significant health care reform. Nobody in power wants that to happen. There's too much money in the health racket. All that time that Obama and Hillary spent debating nuanced differences in their health-care packages? Total waste of freaking time.

* (Hahahahahahahahahahahahahah!!! Ten out of ten! Too bad my personal victory means that America is getting the shaft like a midget in a wrestling ring.)

10.) At some point I will find myself protesting a "limited bombing campaign" against a nation's sovereign territory. There will be five other people there. They will all be incredibly ugly. At least one of the signs will be misspelled and that will be the only thing to make it to the nightly news.

* (Luckily we're still entangled with limited bombing of the same two nations (or three, depending on who you ask) so I don't need to make any new protest signs.)

11.) There will be no Great Society-style initiative. Do you remember Obama mentioning poor people? Wrack your brain all you want, he hasn't brought it up and he never will.

* (Thanks to Obama, the poor people who couldn't afford health insurance may now have to pay for it or get a fine! But only if he actually gets a Health Care Bill through both houses.)

12.) Obama will continue to look great on television, and people will continue to feel all warm inside when he sounds reassuring and presidential.

* (I haven't had a television in over a year, so I can't speak on this. He sounds about the same on NPR at any rate. But I suspect that the charm is wearing off.)

13.) Exciting revelations about the horrible things done by the Bush administration will pop up continually throughout the Obama administration, even if Obama gets two terms.

* (I was expecting more of this. Obama needs to learn that you can only leave the sins of the past behind and have forward-thinking if you actually have some forward momentum.)

14.) The environment will continue to degrade, and people will continue to make token and ineffectual gestures to ameliorate the problem.

* (The raccoons seem to be doing fine in the urban environment. So we will have at least one North American animal for a while.)

15.) The liberalization of international trade will continue in the form of the WTO, World Bank, IMF, NAFTA, etc., without slowing down.

* (You know, I haven't heard anyone even mention these things in the past year. I guess they won.)

16.) The world will suddenly think America is awesome. Except for Venezuela, which will still hate us.

* (Right after the election the world thought we were awesome. Now they think we're "meh.")

17.) Conservatives in Congress will do everything possible to dig their feet into the ground. There will be no unity and no consensus building. If Obama asks Congress to breath air, they will hold their breath until they die. There will be lawsuits, special investigators, filibustered appointees, and the minute they get a majority (which will happen mid-term elections second term), they will attempt an impeachment. Lieberman will continue to be a putz.

* (Wow. This gives me shivers. Am I really this psychic? Or is Obama really that dumb to think that there will be bi-partisan cooperation just because he says it will be great?)

18.) Something as weird and improbable as a black guy with a funny name becoming president will happen, but none of us will get close to predicting what that will be.

* (Balloon boy? The underwear bomber? Dinosaurs with stripes? I'm still waiting for something truly weird to happen.)

19.) Nobody from the Bush administration will be held accountable for their crimes.

* (Not only have they not received the slightest slap on the wrist, they're getting book deals and tenure at Berkeley. Yeah, I'm talking to you, John Yoo, you motherfucking sadistic yes-man scuzzbag.)

20.) George Bush will write his memoirs. In crayon.

* (Apparently he wrote the first couple chapters with a white crayon and couldn't remember which pages were blank.)

21.) President Obama will repeatedly remind us that the Democratic party is also the party of big business.

* (Corporations are now people. They will flood the Democratic party with yet more bribes-slash-donations. Kiss your democracy goodbye.)

22.) The next version of Firefox will have a spellchecker that includes both "Obama" and "Barack" in its dictionary.

* (Um, Firefox? You've had three updates. You read the newspaper? You have Steve, Barclay, Fillmore, Roosevelt, Lincoln, Clinton, and Chavez. I think you're forgetting someone.)

The take home lesson here, is that when you feel like being cynical, you should ask yourself if you're really being cynical enough. With the exception of the assassination prediction, it all turned out as bad or far worse than I feared.

Of course no-one tried to assassinate Clinton or Carter, so I guess the conservatives learned from the JFK assassination (and the following Great Society) that it's easier and more effective to character assassinate.

I feel a little blind-sided by the Obama administration's failure to conduct the "War on Terror" in a humane method. We still have extraordinary rendition. We still have Gitmo, and there are now prisons in Afghanistan that are likely as bad or worse. I guess our people in uniform have more or less stopped torturing people outright, but that's up for debate.

I wouldn't have thought that the Obama administration would be so incompetent at passing legislation and such a failure at establishing ethical foreign policy.

To quote my food-frakking deputy Julia from six-months ago, "I thought it would be at least a year before I would be disappointed with the Obama administration."

Now that it's been a year, I can't believe I was so hopeful to begin with.

I'm going to make myself feel better by punching a midget.

Here's how things stand right now: The slush pile is getting consistently cleared, thanks to Elle's hard work.

And the editorial board has even approved a few more of thes stories for publication, but we're still far short of a full roster for the next issue.

Meanwhile, Sanjay2, the official Space Squid photocopier continues to give me trouble. I can only print off thirty copies at a time before it makes copies with ugly dark streaks. We've decided that this is the last time we print off an issue in my closet like a bunch of hoodlums. Two thousand copies? That takes a long time to run off.

It works well enough that the issue is getting out on the street. The current issue is now available at a number of drop points in the Austin area, including Quack's Bakery, Monkeywrench Books, and Domy. More drop points will have issues as I get around to biking past them.

Here's something I made this morning. It's called a girdle scone, or if you're speaking to someone non-Scottish and you wish to avoid confusion, just call it a griddle scone.

I ate this fresh off the pan, but I always thought it tasted better split down the middle and re-toasted with butter and jelly.


Girdle scones were one of four things I cooked while going to college (the other ones being spaghetti carbonara, stir-fried rice with tofu and habaneros, and crepes). I would grill up several pounds of scones, and my roommates and I would eat it with butter while watching Chow Yun-Fat movies and talking about how much we admired the ethereal beauty of Blossom's friend Six.

They're pretty simple to make, possibly the fastest and easiest way to consume flour. Most of the recipes online are from Scottish tourism sites, but they're pretty much identical to the recipes I used.

2 cups flour
1/2 t soda
1/2 t of cream of tartar (what does the cream of tartar do? nobody knows)
1/2 t baking powder
2 cups Buttermilk (I almost never have buttermilk on hand, so I usually just add vinegar to regular milk to curdle it)
2 T butter (preferably melted)
1 T sugar or honey (although the Scots use "golden syrup" which just sounds naughty)

You mix it all up in that order and it should form a slightly sticky dough. Then you form it into thin patties and cook it on a griddle. You can either slightly grease or lightly flour the pan. I prefer the latter.

I spent my entire college career trying to find the perfect combination of scone thickness, griddle temperature, and cooking time, and it's always eluded me. I think that if I had let the scones cool a little before slicing them open it would have turned out a lot better.