Happy Panic Productions

Suspended

Not writing anything here lately because I'm doing some real writing for a change. So far, 26 pages of unformatted, unedited radio script. Some of it is actually kind of funny. Stay tuned!

If this article is to be believed, then we might see the Pentagon defining its War On Terror in purely economic terms:

Pentagon Moving Swiftly to Become 'GloboCop' (from the Inter Press Service News Agency):
' Barnett's term for areas of greatest threat is ''the Gap'', places where ''globalisation is thinning or just plain absent''. Such regions are typically ''plagued by politically repressive regimes, widespread poverty and disease, routine mass murder, and -- most important -- the chronic conflicts that incubate the next generation of terrorists''. '

In the context of the article, this quote is basically saying: if your economy doesn't play along and open its markets, we're going to be ready to invade you at a moment's notice.

Reality TV, what exactly are you good for?

From today's Studio Brief:

Irish Reality Series Hits the Rocks

Cabin Fever, an Irish reality series in which the contestants are packed onto a boat (a variation of other reality series in which they are packed into a house), literally hit the rocks Friday. Published reports said the boat broke up after running aground near Tory Island, Donegal. All ten contestants escaped serious injury. However, their ordeal was not captured on tape, since the accident occurred when the camera crew was not on duty.

I have a feeling a lot of TV producers will be getting memos in their boxes today: "Make sure this never happens on our show! Those cameras had better never turn off!"

I was thinking recently about Presidential war rhetoric, particularly Bush's pre-war emphasis that we were going to fight, and we were going to win. It's really true, isn't it, that American popular opinion only favors war these days if they believe that we're going to win. What kind of cowardly, amoral standard is that? If a war is not worth fighting in the face of defeat, then how is it worth fighting at all? If a cause were truly worth fighting for, would you worry about your probability of victory before deciding to fight?

The eyes don't have it

I had my appointment and the Eye Guy says that pulsating thing is just a different kind of floater (which, as Jim points out, "it's very rare that [floaters are] actually microorganisms") which he speculates is "shimmering" because it's wobbling around. He came up with that explanation pretty quickly considering he hadn't seemed to have ever heard of the kind of thing I was describing, but if we says it's nothing to worry about, then I'll believe him. I can barely notice it anyway - it takes me a minute to even find it. But when I see it, its motion reminds me very much of the Sentinels, those tentacled robots from The Matrix: Reloaded, burrowing furiously toward Zion. And once I get to thinking about malicious entitites burrowing into my eyes, well, let's just say it's a little more unpleasant than getting "Wannabe" stuck in your head.

deathdream

I was working in a government building downtown. This guy very quietly took me and another employee hostage and led us into one of the highly secure inner chambers. He was trying to get control of an atomic bomb. The other emplyee refused to enter the code so he was shot and killed. Then the building's security system kicked in, and the room was filled with poison gas. I died.

My spirit walked out of the building, where all these First Responders were scrambling around, not knowing precisely what the situation was. I saw my wife standing next to Wade and Rachel. It occurred to me that I should let them know that my spirit was with them, so I went right up to them and whispered my name. The freaked out, and Wade reached out and grabbed hold of me! It was just as if I were an invisible man -- I wasn't expecting to still have a corporeal form, and it freaked me out, so I was trying to fight Wade off, but he was freaked out because he didn't know what was going on or what he had got a hold of.

I managed to get out of his graps and run away. I ducked into a gorcery store, and I was trying desperately not to touch anybody in the crowded aisles. At one point a man suddenly reached for apple sauce cups on a shelf behind me, and I had to climb up the shelf to get out of his way. I finally found a quiet corner by the magazines and wine, and it gave me a chance to think. I decided I should go and visit everyone I knew, and let them know I was okay.

It was night, and I was in a big house belonging to Mike. He was sitting alone on a couch in the front room, reading in silence with just a single lamp above his head. I walked into the room behind him, and I deliberately let one floorboard creak. He looked up sharply, and immediately somehow he sensed it was me, and a smile spread across his face.

I'm downtown again. Now I'm investigating the crime that caused my death. Somehow, while exploring the government building in the middle of the night, I uncover the plot and who was behind it. With a sense of purpose, I go to the lobby and exit the building, but as I go through the revolving door, night turns to day... it is now 30 minutes before my being taken hostage. I spot the would-be bomb-jacker and knock him unconscious on the street. I go to the entrance of the building, and Wade, Rachel, and my wife are standing there, as if waiting for me.

More on the Peripheral Pulsator

While telling a co-worker today about my little eye thingy, he asked me if it was a "floater". This was apparently his word for the transparent miscrorganisms I've referred to... but in my experience, that's a name for a class of poo. Certainly not something I want in my eye.

my eyes hurt

which is making it difficult to look at small black type on a white background on a computer monitor, so I'll type this while looking at the keyboard. The eyes don't hurt so much as they're very tired. I have an appointment on Monday. There's this quivering spot in my vision. You know how you can see microorganisms floating around on your eyeballs, I used to play games with them while looking at the sky while riding in the car, moving my eyes to make them swin across the sky and collide with billboards or bounce along power lines. This was similar to the game where I would stare at a headlight or the sun, and then blink my eyes rapidly to create a staccato burst of after-image; this was the machine-gun fire by which many road-side neighborhoods were annihilated. Well, the other day I was reading a book in the sun (or what we've had of sun here in Chicago this past week) and saw one of these little floating ghosties in the corner of my vision, except it was pulsating, and it was at a fixed spot in the field of my vision. I summoned tears (in a gown-up manly way) and that failed to wash it away. My mom, amatuer medical slueth that she is, says it's a dead rod or cone. Guess I'll find out Monday! At least it's my left eye, so this can't be the fulfillment of my one-time morbid obsession that my right eye would get poked out.

The latest obsession

Homestar Runner. Finally, the promise of Internet entertainment has been realized. Sarah, the undergrad who works in my department, clued me in to this, which apparently is mounting into something of a phenomenon -- and quite deservedly so. Check it out now, before it gets written about in Entertainment Weekly.