Zombie Lapdance

I’ve been having some conversations with toasterwaffel recently that I thought I should share with the rest of the world. Specifically we were talking about our shared history with radical politics, and about the character of Zarek on BSG.

There’s going to be spoilers, so if you’re not caught up on BSG, you should skip the rest of this. At the very least you probably won’t know what I’m talking about.

So, Tom Zarek is my favorite character on the show. Hands down. Because he perfectly encapsulates the personality of the radical. Even when he was incorporated into the power structure he was still the voice of the masses. He always knew the way the hammer would fall when it came to public opinion. We see this when he warns Roslin against putting Baltar on trial. And he’s not afraid to use every tool at his disposal to do what he thinks is right, which we see in the last two episodes he appears in.

Toasterwaffel points to the very first shot we see of Zarek. He’s standing amidst a rioting prison ship, legs set in a wide and manly stance. He’s in perfect control of the worst surviving humans. He’s the embodiment of street power. He’s the old Apollo, looking the new Apollo straight in the eye with the cocky assurance of someone who knows that he’s still the cool one.

Basically, Zarek is the Malcolm X of BSG.

And then we see him at the head of the coup. He stops looking like Malcolm X and starts looking a lot more like Stalin. The moment that he orders the execution of the Quorum is the greatest moment in television history. That’s the flip side of radical change, the violence that’s needed to enact change. Or more precisely, it’s the end result of giving ultimate power to someone who has spent his life in opposition to power.

The best part of it is, Zarek would have won. The reason he didn’t, is that Gaeta didn’t hold up his side of the bargain. Gaeta wasn’t willing to break those omelet eggs. Either Gaeta didn’t know how the world worked, or he was always just acting out his psychosocial compulsions, whereas Zarek was acting out the cold hard requirements of ideology.

We can imagine that Adama didn’t enjoy executing Gaeta. It was simply the step that had to be taken to regain control. But we know for certain that Adama loved watching Zarek get shot. In a series where alliances and friendships constantly realign, Adama would never have given up his uncompromising hatred for Zarek. Adama is a cop at heart, and cops will never, ever tolerate radicals. Radicals are the reason we have cops. Cops exist to keep people in their place, and radicals exist to shuffle the seating.

And toasterwaffel makes a great point, no matter how likeable Adama and Roslin might be, they are certainly not running a democracy. It was when they took actions counter to the will of the people that Gaeta and Zarek stepped in, arresting control from what amounted to a military dictatorship and re-empowering the elected representatives (until the Quorum wussed out and had to go). Adama is operating on the same moral authority that is the basis for the moral authority of cops everywhere: he has a monopoly on the use of force.

Which brings us to the real world.

Over the summer, a couple of Austin activists were arrested on federal charges relating to the Republican National Convention in Minnesota. As it turns out, someone they thought of as a friend was in fact an informant for the FBI. The Austin Chronicle has a fantastic article about this, easily the best story of theirs I’ve read.

The snitch’s name is Brandon Darby. For years he had been one of the loudest and most publicly recognized activists in the local community. And for years he had been narcing on his friends. The members of the local activist community are by turns furious and heartbroken about this revelation. A lot of people honestly thought Darby was their friend, someone who could be trusted.

Here’s a quote from the Chronicle article that cogently summarizes the character of Brandon Darby:

"At best, Darby might be just an ordinary and confused young person, fired with generalized idealism and stumbling through this world on his own tangled, misguided mission to save it. But at worst, he might have been – might have become over the last several years – a manipulator with a hero complex, bent on inflating his own self-importance in the comfortable guise of moral superiority."

The Chronicle article speculates that Darby didn’t become a narc until he broke under the stress of an ambassadorial trip to Venezuela. I can believe this. Once you make the decision to never compromise with the system, the course of action becomes increasingly extreme until you either run to the safety of the other side, or you find yourself assassinating the Quorum.

Darby was in Venezuela attaining relief money for Katrina victims from the Chavez government. On the one hand, this was a task that was clearly over Darby’s head. It’s easy to excede your paygrade when you’re a volunteer. But I also think that this is a parallel with the Zarek narrative. Zarek and Darby both found themselves with a lot of power, more than they bargained for. Where Zarek used his power to murder his colleagues for the greater good, Darby betrayed some kids for his own good (the FBI gave him the requisite pieces of silver).

In the end Zarek won. He got what every true radical hopes for: a martyrdom and an end to a life of constant struggle and gut checks.

Darby is still in the Austin area, despite being universally reviled. He seems to think that he has a career in law-enforcement ahead of him, not realizing that being a snitch doesn’t make him a cop. No matter how much he capitulates, cops were made to hate people like him.

The USB charger that I was using with my media player broke. Basically the power-outlet prongs broke off, so I soldered on an entire power cord that I took from a boombox I disassembled.

I’ve also been dorking out my bike. It now has luggage made from laundry detergent buckets.

I had to extend the cargo rack to fit them on without banging them with my heels as I pedalled. Here they are after a trip to the HEB:

They’re held on with metal clips at the top and bungee cords at the bottom, so it only takes a few seconds to take them off and carry them around like the buckets they are.

I don’t know why no one told me about Jim’s Diner.

It’s a chain out of San Antonio, and it’s open 24hrs. During the days it’s heavy on the senior citizens, and during the late nights it’s heavy on the cops.

I ordered the mini-burgers and onion rings.

Although they look like crappy NewCastle sliders, the mini-burgers actually have double-meat and they’re topped with thousand island dressing. The onion rings were specifically recommended to me. The onions are sliced as thinly as physically possible, so what you end up with is a side dish that’s about 80% grease and batter.

I’ve been experimenting, trying to reproduce the green, creamy salsa of a taco cart, but I’ve found only modest success.

Containing an entire bunch of cilantro, peppers, tomatillos, lemon, and spinach, this salsa verde tastes okay, but it doesn’t taste taco cart okay.

Here’s some spicy Indian snack balls, backlit so you can appreciate their grease content:

There are two world-class culinary traditions that have come out of Wisconsin. One is Ed Gein, the other is Culvers.


Because it’s lent, the Culvers here in Austin is serving walleye, the consensus most delicious freshwater fish in the world.

Here it is battered and deep-fried:

Walleye tastes like catfish, if catfish wasn’t a disgusting wad of filth.

Of course I ordered the cheese curds as a side, which were supremely disappointing. They were served almost cold. Plus I prefer the cheddar variety over the mozzarella.

At least they came with ranch dressing, the only proper way to eat cheese curds.

In case I wasn’t stuffed enough, I also ordered the frozen custard, which is better than icecream. Don’t ask me how or why, it’s just better, okay?

The creamy white stuff is marshmellow cream, which they keep in a pitcher and pour it over icecream as it’s needed.

If you need to know the Culver’s flavor of the day on a minute-by-minute basis, you can download the flavor of the day widget from the Culver’s website.

For the Torchwood fans out there (there must be at least one person who likes that show), Captain Jack has a romantic advice column. I can’t think of anyone with more rounded and extensive experience in the field of love.

As those of you who know me well can attest, I am an extremely good whistler. I have seen the documentary Pucker Up, which is about the world whistling championship, and I believe that with the proper preparation I would be a legitimate competitor.

Well, this orangutan is making a mockery of everything that I and other gifted whistlers stand for.

I didn’t want to go there, but as I was continuing to read "Chess Bitch," it turns out that the female chess masters are not only uniformly young, but they are also all quite hot. Here’s the reigning women’s chess champion, Alexandra Kosteniuk:

Honestly that picture doesn’t do her justice. You should check out the 8gigs of cheesecake photos of herself on her website. (speaking of which, I just made a note to put more cheesecake photos of myself on my website)

Basically, back home in Russia, Grandmaster Kosteniuk is known as much for her work as a swimsuit model as being a terrifyingly intense chess player.

There’s also an extensive article about chess playing women on the Science and Supermodels blog, and a ranked gallery of the 2006 chess olympiad women. Perusing the ranked gallery, you will notice that the highest chess ranking (2450) corresponds to the user-chosen most photogenic.

I wish that we could keep this discussion of women in chess on a more intellectual level. Instead of talking about their hotness, we could analyze their comparative playing styles and preferred openings. But honestly, neither you nor I would understand any of it.

Way back when, I posted about the blackboard at work which I’ve been using for chess games with a coworker on a different shift. Well, we’ve played several games since then (I can’t believe that the management hasn’t said anything about this appropriation of bakery resources this entire time).

In general, Mr. Hall has been beating me. I think that he’s won three, tied one, and lost another to me. In my defense, I tend to make my moves in the couple of minutes between getting off shift and going home to take a nap. If my brain weren’t so blown-out at the end of the day, I would be doing a bit better.

Here’s the current game. You can see in this photo my signature variation on the Bird’s opening.

It’s my strongest opening, with a center-pawn structure that rarely gets broken. Although Mr.Hall seems to have done just that.

We’re at a crux in the game right now. I’ve let him blow my entire pawn structure to heck in return for a rook/bishop+pawn exchange and a chance to ravish his king like a bottlenose dolphin.

Although, if history serves as an indication, my recklessness is going to prove my undoing by the time I return to work tomorrow.

On the subject of chess, I’ve been reading Chess Bitch by Jennifer Shahade (two time U.S. women’s chess champion).

It’s a feminist exploration of the role of women in professional chess.

Much of the first chapter explores the common argument that women aren’t common in professional chess because they aren’t smart enough for it.

Obviously Jennifer Shahade doesn’t condone this argument, but I feel there’s a lot of similarity between that sentiment and a similarly asinine opinion that floats around our circles frequently: there aren’t many women writing hard sci-fi because they aren’t smart enough.

It’s an argument that breaks easily into an ad hominem rebuttal: "Dudes with Aspergers think that people who don’t like the same things as dudes with Aspergers, aren’t as smart as them."

As I read the book, I’ve tried to widen the comparison between chess and sci-fi, and there aren’t as many common points as you would think. Chess masters seem to hit their peak around the age of 20, and sci-fi writers generally have to wait another fifteen years. From the stories in Chess Bitch, one would conclude it’s because the children have been groomed to the game by their parents from the earliest possible age.

You rarely hear of five-year olds getting a personal coach to teach them to write sci-fi.

But Jennifer Shahade makes me want to take chess more seriously. Reading the tales of struggle in the face of persecution and condescension, leads me to think that it’s more than just something to do on a disused chalkboard.

Here’s a little gem I found wedged into the nondescript back catalog of the Netflix instant viewing pages. Time After Time, which stars two of my favorite 70s/80s era English actors, Malcom McDowell and David Warner.

Personally, I’d never heard of it, which I thought was odd considering the premise: H.G. Wells pursues Jack the Ripper through time to the 1970s. There’s some fun fish out of water scenes with Malcom McDowell’s socialist free-thinking Wells wandering about San Francisco, but the film really misses the boat by leaning toward comedy. It never achieves the hard edge of the time traveling Ripper from Dangerous Visions.

I’ve also been catching some of the original series Star Trek on the Netflix instant viewing. It always surprises me how few of the original series episodes I’ve seen (I grew up in a TV market that played Dr.Who, but not Trek). It’s interesting to go back and see how an entire mythology sprung up from a few throwaway conceits written by a diverse sampling of sci-fi writers.

My favorite episode has to be arena:

I love how the Metrons show everyone how violence is bad by setting up a gladiatorial deathmatch. When I have godlike powers, I’ll have people fight to the death for the own good all the time.

This entry is going to give everyone the impression that I spend all my time eating piles of weirdness. Which is probably only half true.

From the taco trailer "La Nortena" on Cameron, near 51st. Carnita tacos:

"Carnita" is the Spanish word for "little carnival." It’s chopped up bits of pig, as juicy and tender as anything I’ve eaten. This is one of the taco stands that uses that delicious, creamy cilantro salsa.

I stopped by the icecream counter at the foodcourt, and got the peanut butter sundae.

It used hard Oakcrest icecream, which was a nice touch, but the peanut butter part was just lumpy spoonfuls of unsweetened PB. It wasn’t bad per se, it just seemed like something I would have made when I was 12 and I didn’t think my parents were looking.

I had dinner at the Korea House restaurant up on Anderson, and of course I had to get the dish that had raw beef and raw egg.

The beef strips tasted like sashimi. The raw egg was hardly noticeable once it was mixed into the crunchy greens. Because this was a Korean restaurant, the meal came with its own little personal buffet, minus the sneeze guard:

From the local Korean grocery, fish cakes:

These deeply processed fish sticks have the texture of extruded rubber, and taste like an Asian grocery smells.

It rained furiously last Tuesday, so I took refuge in the Fiesta, which in retrospect might have been a bad idea considering the series of impulse purchases which included:

Tiny bananas!

An Irish meat product (remember, the UK has ethnic food too) called "black pudding."


According to the ingredients it’s pork that is fluffed out with oatmeal and "dessicated beef hemoglobin." And it indeed tastes like meaty, bloody pudding.

Mexican pastries!

The apple empanada (in the rear) tasted like a dinner roll stuffed with jelly.

What is essentially spicy beef jerky:

And I found some of that machacado I mentioned earlier:

And I went to the trouble of turning it into a breakfast taco:

Here’s some of the fallout from my last trip to the Pakistani grocers:

Chiki brittle, which is not unlike the sesame seed lovechild of peanut brittle and a popcorn ball:

Mint chutney, which makes a very good mayo substitute:

Chatka, which is what you would get if you had Indian immigrants in Houston produce a Cheetos substitute:

Crunchy corn dollops with Indian spices? How could anything be more awesome?

Well, what’s more awesome is the product copy on the back of the package (the ellipses are not mine, they are native to the text, because I really wouldn’t use more than three periods in an ellipses under any circumstance):

I would call that Hinglish, but considering that it’s made in Houston, I would call it Englu. Indeed it’s naya cool.

And while I have your attention, I would like to mention the phenomenon where Austin patio restaurants acquire cats. The Parlor on North Loop has a cat who begs for scraps of pizza.


There’s some sort of evolutionary process going on here, but I hesitate to guess who’s getting the short end of the selective adaptation, me or the cat.

I’ve been putting a little more work into my homepage, MatthewBey.com. Including some nifty GIF animations like this:

I also posted a PDF of the very first book I ever wrote. It’s essentially just the journal of the year I spent wandering the country on a motorcycle. For some reason, I called it "Cheesy Rider."

It’s not well written. But I figured I would put it out there, just to put on the public record that no matter how uncool I may appear now, I did at one time do drugs.