The Daily Marmoset

Your Favorite Destination on the "Next Blog" Superhighway.

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

The future, it's gonna be alright.

EDITOR'S NOTE: I know, I know, I'm wandering off topic, but that's what I do best. Ask anyone who's ever met me and they'll probably tell you so.

The Marmoset is fond of saying that "we're living in the future". The future may be a disappointment in some ways, since there are no flying cars or jetpacks. But we do have other tehcnological marvels that put those to shame. Bio-luminescent rodents spring to mind as an obvious example.

Anyway, today I saw an article that really drove this home for me:


The article talks about using a "nerve stimulator" to deliver a sort of non-stop electroshock therapy, regulating the brain's functions in order to combat depression, epilepsy, and other neurological disorders.

Gee, what could go wrong with that?

This caught my attention because I thought I'd read about it somewhere a long time ago. Then I realized that I had read this before. It's not every day that you see a science fiction writer nail the future so head-on. Especially when the writer is a fourth-rate underhanded little weasel like Michael Crichton. But I have to give him points for this. Congratulations, Mr. Crichton, we are now living in a Terminal Man world.

In closing, I could not find the proper clip to go with the title of this post, so here I present the next best thing:

Friday, May 18, 2007

Runaway Gorilla

We interrupt this blog to bring you the following headline from the Netherlands:

Gorilla Wreaks Havoc in Zoo Escape

According to the article, " A 400-pound gorilla escaped from his enclosure and ran amok in a Rotterdam zoo Friday..."

ABOVE: Meet Bokito,
the runaway Dutch gorilla

All my life, I have waited to see such a headline as this. Sure, some innocent people were hurt by a wild animal running loose in a crowded park, and that is undoubtedly a terrible thing. But seriously, it's an escaped gorilla, and on some level that will always be awesome.

Even the photo caption had a beautiful, weirdly Zen-like quality to it:

People grab their chil-
dren as the gorilla, con-
cealed, passes nearby.
See what I mean? How many news photos have a haiku for a caption?

(EDITOR'S NOTE: Thanks to the Marmoset for bringing this to my attention. It's been a long two weeks, but I hope to conclude my earlier three-part story soon. I'm sure you were losing sleep over it.)

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

The Great White North - Part II

After my odyssey through the Mall of America, I was desperate for some sunlight and open sky. So after riding the train a few stops towards downtown, I stopped at Fort Snelling, which a coworker from Minnesota had recommended I visit. "The fort's been there since the 1820s," he told me, "you'd love to see it". And he's right; I still would love to see it. Unfortunately, he neglected to mention that it is still a functioning Army base. After a few minutes of wandering around the station, I couldn't see anything but Federal office buildings and and lines that I couldn't cross without getting shot. So I decided to save the fort for another time and quickly got on the next train.

My next stop was much more successful, however: Minnehaha Park. "Minnehaha" supposedly means "laughing water", and I for one find it hilarious that "haha" apparently means "laughter" some Indian language. Anyway, Minnehaha Park is built at the place where the Minnehaha Creek flows into the Mississippi River. The park is named for their main attraction, the famous Minnehaha Falls. I think they were given the name after a girl named Minnehaha was thrown over the falls, or something like that. I dunno, I once tried to read the Song of Hiawatha, but after Longfellow introduced the story for the seventeenth time in a row I was ready to pitch myself off a waterfall.


I may not know the exact story of Minnehaha falls or of Minnehaha itself, but that's okay. The important thing is that Minnehaha is a really funny word, and I've enjoyed using it at every possible opportunity.

Minnehaha.

Come back tomorrow for the thrilling conclusion of
Skippy's deranged and incoherent ramblings about his trip...

The Great White North - Part I

Sorry I didn't write anything last week. That's because I was out of town, at a conference in lovely Minneapolis. I'd never been to the Twin Cities before, except for very briefly passing through once on a road trip in high school, so I was excited to go and explore.

I flew out of St. Louis on early Monday, which got me there in time to take the train downtown, find my hotel, unpack, and still have most of the day to see the sights. Of course, I'd already seen one sight: the world's largest whoopee cushion was on the way to the hotel, but I had no real interest in seeing that. As my Kansas City friends will tell you, Cardinals fans are often known for their ability to hold a grudge.

Anyway, I decided to start my adventure by taking the light rail, which had brought me from the airport to my hotel, back down in the other direction to that most famous of all Minneapolis attractions: the Mall of America. For those who have never seen it, I can only describe the Mall's terrible glory in the following way:

  • Count the number of shopping malls in the city where you live.
  • Take the four biggest, and lay them end to end in a big square.
  • Take the rest of the malls, and stack them on top like Lincoln Logs.
  • For good measure, drop an amusement park in the center.

As you can imagine, the overall effect is, shall we say, a little overwhelming.

By the Hammer of Thor!

Torn between my hatred of shopping and my obsessive love of wandering aimlessly, I decided to take one quick lap around the mall and then head back. Tragically, I did not realize at the time that "one quick lap" would require fourteen solid hours of walking. Along the way, I saw stores that sold NASCAR crap, stores that sold only John Deere keychains, stores that sold juggling equipment. I even saw a "QVC Store" directly above an "As Seen on TV" store, for God's sake. In one store window I even saw a copy of the Farming Game, which I had thought only existed in that weird parallel universe where my father-in-law buys all his stuff. Come to think of it, maybe this was that weird parallel universe.

ABOVE: My own personal hell, as seen from space.
Courtesy of Google Maps - click on image for closer look
(note the scale at bottom left)

Eventually, my shoes began to wear out and I was nearing the point of exhaustion. I was starting to wonder if I would have to spend the night in the mall and continue my trek in the morning. My head began to fill with dark visions of a whole life spent in the mall -- sleeping in photo booths, living on discarded Cinnabons, and being hunted for sport by roving packs of surly goth kids -- when finally I turned a corner and was back where I'd begun. I never thought I would ever be so glad to see a bus station under a parking garage, but I had survived.

Little did I know that this would be excellent preparation for the rest of my week, but we'll get back to that later.

Stay tuned for the continuing saga in Part II, coming soon...