Menu: J World: The Letter J

"J" World's Weekly Newsletter
Published every Wednesday evening

Vol. 2, No. 1

March 26, 1997

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The Letter "J" is a weekly newsletter sent via e-mail and published here at The Daily Globe each Wednesday evening. Think of it as the reader's digest of newsletters. The Letter "J" consists of short articles or items in a wide range of topics both by and for "J" World & Daily Globe readers. The newsletter is essentially a communal pen-pal letter and a forum to exchange news, ideas, and experiences. Subscribers should think of themselves of being in a family of like-minded strangers and you're encouraged to submit items to the newsletter. If you'd like to receive this newsletter each Wednesday evening by e-mail, follow the instructions at the bottom of the newsletter.

This Week's Ask J Anything Question & Answer

Top 10 Rejection Lines

Top 10 Rejection Lines Given By Women (and what they actually mean...)

10. I think of you as a brother.
(You remind me of that inbred banjo-playing geek in "Deliverance.")

9. There's a slight difference in our ages.
(I don't want to do my dad)

8. I'm not attracted to you in 'that' way.
(You are the ugliest dork I've ever laid eyes on.)

7. My life is too complicated right now.
(I don't want you spending the whole night cause you may hear phone calls from all the other guys I'm seeing.)

6. I've got a boyfriend.
(I prefer my male cat and a half gallon of Ben and Jerry's).

5. I don't date men where I work.
(I wouldn't date you if you were in the same solar system, much less the same building.)

4. It's not you, it's me.
(It's you.)

3. I'm concentrating on my career.
(Even something as boring and unfulfilling as my job is better than dating you.)

2. I'm celibate.
(I've sworn off only the men like you.)

and the number 1 rejection line given by women (and what it really means):

1. Let's be friends.
(I want you to stay around so I can tell you in excruciating detail about all the other men I meet and have sex with. It's that male perspective thing.)

And in response... The male perspective on the same issue ...
Top 10 Rejection Lines Given By Men (and what they actually mean...)

10. I think of you as a sister. (You're ugly.)

9. There's a slight difference in our ages. (You're ugly.)

8. I'm not attracted to you in 'that' way. (You're ugly.)

7. My life is too complicated right now. (You're ugly.)

6. I've got a girlfriend. (You're ugly.)

5. I don't date women where I work. (You're ugly.)

4. It's not you, it's me. (You're ugly.)

3. I'm concentrating on my career. (You're ugly.)

2. I'm celibate. (You're ugly.)

and the number 1 rejection line given by men (and what it actually means):

1. Let's be friends. (You're sinfully ugly.)

Contributed by Jim F.

Polygamy

Philip, the Landgrave of Hesse, Germany, was one of Martin Luther's chief protectors in the early 1500's. After Philip recovered from a severe illness, he resolved to marry his mistress, Marguerite de Staal. Unfortunately, he was already married to Princess Catherine of Saxony, who had presented him with several children. He appealed to Martin Luther, citing quotations from the Old Testament to aid his cause. Today in 1539, Luther and seven other divines issued a warrant approving Philip's 2nd marriage to his mistress.

The Typo That Wouldn't Die

John "Gotta Love That Typo" C. responded last time to Sara W.'s comments about his original statements about the then-upcoming US election. Sara W. writes back as follows:

I never said that Bob Dole was a saint, and I never said I agree with all (or necessarily any) of his policies. However, in response to John "Gotta Love That Typo" C.'s letter, I'd like to say that anyone who believes that Bill Clinton is the perfect model of moral virtue has a case of permanent blindness. It's true that no one is perfect (including Bob Dole), but no other single president has done more to destroy the integrity of the presidency. I've lived overseas, and many people in the former Soviet Union, where I lived, were amazed that someone like Bill Clinton was electable. I hate it that the United States has elected a president who is the laughingstock of the international community, but obviously John C. doesn't see it that way.

I'm sure we'll hear some more commentary about my "sour grapes" in future issues from Mr. C., but for now I've got to go.

Contributed by Sara W.

More Thinking Through

Last time, Dave H. talked a bit about the election system in the US, and particularly with regard to my own.

I wrote in partial response to his response (confusing, isn't it?) that "[m]y pocket copy of the Bill of Rights says freedom "of the press", not "what is" news or newsworthy. I don't disagree that the presses right to report what "is" news is absolute; what I do question is their judgment in what that news "is"." Dave wrote back to say:

What is the freedom to publish the news if it does not come with the freedom to determine what the news is?

I confess I often disagree with the selection of news stories, the tack which is taken on them, and the sound-bite give-us-30-seconds-and- we'll-explain-Bosnia-to-you nature of most network news. But I would rather have the media make that decision and vote on it by turning my TV off, than have it regulated in any fashion.

I also wrote "I still don't understand the value of paying an enormous sum of money so these guys can go to a convention, drink and employ hookers, just to vote for the guy that got the popular vote. If, as Dave says, 49 out of 50 states "require" that they vote for the popular-vote-getter, then what the hell good are they except to spend more of our tax dollars on a meaningless boondoggle. Wouldn't it make more sense to have the same electoral divisions to get the benefit that Dave states above but drop the fat cat electoral college pinheads?

Dave replied as follows:

I concur that one could come up with a "simplified" method to achieve the same ends. I do wonder how much money is really spent on such expeditions, though. And, frankly, is it worth saving that amount of money to go through the expense of amending the Constitution, which explicitly calls for electors to gather together?

Thanks for the thoughts (and the forum).

Contributed by Dave H.

Busy, Busy, Busy

I know it's been three weeks since the last edition of The Letter "J" and I appreciate everybody's patience (yes, I know I'm slacking).

Word Play

"I can't remember what I had for lunch on Tuesday. It must have been Chinese food - that's what I eat every weekday. I know I had chow mein on Monday and fried rice Wednesday - plus other things, of course; I always order three dishes. To avoid monotony, I don't order exactly the same three items on successive days. Golden Wok's menu has only five dishes on it, so I have to repeat individual items. For example, I had spring rolls Wednesday and Thursday. But I never order the same dish three days running. That's why I had egg drop soup today instead of hot and sour soup, even though I like hot and sour soup so much that I have it at least every other weekday. Some day I'll try both soups at the same meal. But Tuesday's lunch is still a complete blank."

Can you reconstruct my lunch for each day of this week, including Tuesday?

The answers to last week's Word Play

Can you link "UTTER" to "CHAOS" in 11 steps by changing one letter at a time? Only common, uncapitalized English words should be used, and the order of letters should not change.

The Answers Is:

UTTER
OTTER
OUTER
MUTER
MUTES
MOTES
MOLES
COLTS
COATS
CHATS
CHAOS

Words To Live By

"Beware the fury of a patient man."
-- John Dryden

Lifesavers

A teacher was working with a group of children, trying to broaden their horizons through sensory exploration. With their eyes closed, they would feel objects from pumice stones to pine cones and smell aromatic herbs and exotic fruits. Then one day, the teacher brought in a great variety of lifesavers, more flavors than you could ever imagine.

"Children, I'd like you to close your eyes and taste these," announced the teacher. Without difficulty, they managed to identify the taste of cherries, lemons and mint, but when the teacher had them put honey flavored lifesavers in their mouths, every one of the children was stumped.

"I'll give you a hint," said the teacher. "It's something your Daddy and Mommy probably call each other all the time."

Instantly, one of the children spat the lifesaver out of his mouth and shouted, "Spit 'em out, you guys, they're assholes!"

Contributed by Rob L.

What is Psychedelic? or Why Stoner Chicks Rule: Let's set some boundaries

I was trying to answer Olga's question about what all of my CDs have in common. I pondered a moment, slowly scanning my humble collection - and then I realized: they're all stoney.

Now, Olga is a Ph.D. in physical chemistry who was 1st in her class at one of the Soviet Union's best universities. She doesn't go for words like "stoney", just as she asks for elaboration when I say, "the creative spirit of the universe".

I tried, "music that's good to listen to when you're stoned." So, we got stoned and listened.

"Yep," she agreed after some days of this procedure, "they're all stoney." It transcends "taste" and goes into... well, what is stoney.

For any of you who have never been stoned - you won't know what I'm talking about. Only experience produces this kind of knowledge and understanding. After my first psychedelic journey - I suddenly understood psychedelic better. I could see it - what I tripped on was psychedelic. For instance, plastic is not psychedelic - cement is, but not asphalt. What moves? What becomes animate?

Cars? no. Buildings? yes, some. Sky? definitely. Animals? not really, but it's great to be stoned or tripping around them. Plants? the best. International airports? the worst.

How about music? Who's the ultimate stoney/psychedelic band? Pink Floyd? The Doors? CCR? Led Zeppelin? It's what we can all agree on. Stoniness is subjective - I'm inclined to consider it as a field, or a group effect. Naturally, you can be a group of 1 and still have the stoney field.

A lot of heads (see glossary, p. 318) think that The Grateful Dead were the best, but I never did. They maintained that, "you have to go to a show!" And I was very near a show, once, on my bicycle riding around the parking lot at Shoreline with a head full of acid. My co-voyager was in the same condition. Probably the highlight was standing on a small dune and watching the Eternal Sunset.

Anyway, the parking lot was good enough and we could hear the music - but it wasn't so loud that it was annoying. Okay, so technically I've not been, and I guess never will now. Ah, life's missed opportunities!

Pretty much anything from Peter Gabriel is stoney. All the way back to that tripped out old Genesis stuff. I think Beck should win the award for, "New Stoney Artist".

See, here's where the problems start. Some people really like to play ultra-high-tech video games or just watch TV or movies while high. This is definitely not what I would consider stoney or psychedelic. I think one of my friends said it best when he responded to a telephone call, "see a movie? At this point [in the trip] it would be kind of redundant."

Most who consider themselves stoners much prefer a natural setting for their psychedelic use. For smoking ganja, well, it turns out that just about anything can be stoney: taking the drab bus to work in the morning has become much more interesting with the help of a pre-departure blunt.

Fractals are pretty stoney, and so are insects. For the first time in my life I let a snail crawl on my hand during a recent journey. An observer wrote me, "one of the most touching moments was seeing you in my garden in the drizzle. You slowed yourself to the snail's pace... a good exercise for the hare."

Let's keep in mind that these are controlled substances which the government has declared 'baaaaaad'.

All weather is stoney.

Stoney is sitting around with your friends, smoking out, and thinking that, "for instance, Bill Clinton just absolutely cannot do this!" Who would _want_ to be president, or anything, if you couldn't pass a joint while dancing at a reggae concert, or playing with your cat, stoned.

Sex isn't necessarily stoney, though it's very psychedelic.

Going to work, on the other hand, can be stoney, but it's definitely not psychedelic.

Showers? stoney. Microwave ovens? death.

Cocaine, heroin, etc., are not stoney nor psychedelic.

Math is stoney, but it's hellua hard to do when baked. Raising the dead... might be stoney. But, as Sheryl pointed out, one should not make remarks about anything that one does not have direct empirical knowledge of.

Anthropology is stoney. Business is anti-psychedelic.

Tea is stoney, as is m�sli. Coffee is more psychedelic.

Ultimately, tobacco and alcohol are not stoney nor psychedelic, but a little is understandable.

All religion is stoney, at least to some degree.

Cartoons are stoney, some sci-fi. And how can you watch, for instance, Repo Man and not be stoned. No less than you can watch "Strange Brew" and not guzzle down some suds.

Books? hooo - the list is long, let's start with the classics: Lewis Carol, Herman Hesse, Aldous Huxley, Kurt Vonnegut... damn, it's a male stoney world out there! Where can we turn? Who can we look to? Most of the stoney women I know are women I know personally. And the other ones were authors of obscure books in odd places that I just picked up.

Probably none of you know Mae-Wan Ho, she's a biologist - kind of famous in the electromagnetic investigation circles. Anyway, she's very stoney, though not a stoner herself.

In fact, of the scientists whom I know (believe me Sheryl, all scientists are a bit kooky - most of the stoney people are women. At scientific congresses (depending on the congress), most attendees are not stoney. Anthropology conferences differ in this regard.

Zippos are stoney, as are dinosaurs, the universe, the Dali Lama, language, the British Museum (most museums), the arctic regions of the earth, chaos theory, seasons, wind (are tornadoes stoney?), earthquakes, inner balance, kissing, "J" World, used bookstores, train tracks, burritos, knives, chess, people in general, martial arts, ruins, public transportation.

War is as un-stoney as it gets, pretty much any kind of fighting or conflict is out.

Life is stoney.

Contributed by Sean O'Matic, of course

Stop & Go

Name at least five songs which have GO as the first word of the title. Now name five more songs with STOP as the first word of the title.

Answers to last week's trivia

If Earth were the size of a billiard ball, and wiped off the salty moisture, running your fingers over the surface, would you be able to feel the mountains and ocean basins?

According to Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine (1985), No. "The surface of the earth would feel as smooth as ivory. Despite how a mountain may look from the bottom, Earth has a very smooth surface for its size.

Ross T. also answered, "no. If the earth were that small, it would be a (very dense) black hole. If you tried to handle it, you would simply be sucked into it.

You're Free - To Do As We Tell You

Here in California this election was Proposition 215, a state measure to make it legal for a doctor to recommend the use of marijuana for patients to ease their suffering in cases deemed appropriate by the doctor. It passed, not by a wide margin, but still the people of California decided this issue for themselves. Unbeknownst to me (at least until this week), Arizona also passed a similar measure (although apparently broader in scope including harder drugs such as cocaine and even heroin).

This all seems fine and dandy to me. Here we have two situations of the people in a democracy deciding issues themselves which politicians would never touch. Politicians frequently talk about "mandates" from the people but ballot propositions are the best (and perhaps only) examples of these mandates. In these cases, an issue politicians have ignored is put on the state ballot by getting the requisite number of signatures to do so. Then the question is voted on and decided by the people of that state. Pretty nifty concept, the people actually voting what they want. California is the first state I've lived in that actually uses state propositions and they're a lot more interesting and meaningful then voting for politicians.

So far so good, the people had spoken and they said drugs were OK for people who were suffering from deadly and/or painful illnesses. Well, along comes the US federal government and says "wait a minute, we don't like this one bit." This week, there were congressional hearings of some kind trying to figure out how to stop these two state measure from happening. Apparently testimony was introduced saying, in effect, "that the government has studied the problem and everybody agrees that illegal drugs have no medicinal value whatsoever and that settles it, case closed, no more studies, we've decided what's best for you." Never mind the fact that every illegal drug was either originally created as a medicine or has been used for that purpose at some time in history prior to it becoming illegal in the US. Never mind that marijuana likely became illegal because of pressure from newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst in the name of money (his own). Never mind that our government has been waging, in their own words, a "war" against drugs for no apparent reason other than P.R. for the masses or to get re-elected.

The feds have already considered taking away the medical license of any doctor who recommends the use of marijuana to say, a dying AIDS patient. I have a huge problem with the government trying to force a doctor not to use his own best judgment. Every doctor has to take the Hippocratic Oath when they become a doctor which dictates how they must treat each person in their care. When this oath comes into conflict with laws and government policy who do you think suffers? A few years ago, the US government told doctors they couldn't even mention abortions unless they wanted to lose their funding. Same thing, they hog tied doctors from being able to uphold their oath.

But by far the most infuriating thing about this latest incident is that the actual people have decided what we want as a society and the government, acting as separate from the people instead of made up of the people, is saying no, we'll decide what's best for you. You're too stupid and ignorant to decide for yourselves. This whole democracy thing was just a sham, we didn't want to have to tell you this but that's the way it is. If you want to live under our roof, you have to observe our rules. Sounds like an annoying parent, doesn't it. And I think that's exactly the dynamic at work here. A society of people who can decide for themselves what they want their society to be like doesn't need as much governing as we've got going on right now and that means people in government could - gasp - be out of a job. So they'll try anything to hold on to their power. They don't want to let go even a little for fear that too many people might notice they're not wearing any clothes (just like the rest of us).

During this brouhaha, the federal government has suggested that people were duped into voting for these measures. I guess the politicians saying this all had very truthful advertisements. And I think we'll all be seeing flying pigs any second now. They said people didn't really now what they were voting for. This, despite the fact that every conservative pinhead organization was trying it's damnedest to stop the measure in California. The FBI even raided an organization in California that distributed marijuana to AIDS sufferers a few weeks before the election. Doonesbury did cartoons about the proposition. The bottom line of all this was never said better than by the late, great Bill Hicks who said "you are free ..... to do as we tell you." He waxed philosophical that our freedom is just an illusion to keep us from realizing how little freedom we actually have. And before anybody gets a jingoistic hair up his or her ass (see, I can be PC too), I'm not saying Americans have no freedom or that we have less freedom than other countries. What I am saying is that we have less freedom than we're led to believe we have. We're led to believe we live in a democracy where we the people decide what kind of world we want to live in. But, as this incident points out, when we the people say what we want and the US government doesn't like it, well, then we see their true colours in panoramic spectrascopic technicolor. And no matter how hard I look, I can't see any clothes.

Packers Update, Week 14

It's been three weeks since the last Packers report and it started off particularly embarrassing and frustrating as the Packers played as poorly as they did against Kansas City, maybe worse, as Dallas walked all over them to win for the 6th straight time. Green Bay has got to get over their psychological problems with the Cowboys if they hope to win the Super Bowl this year. On the upside, they held Dallas to no touchdowns. Two weeks ago, they beat St. Louis after a poor 1st half showing a bit of the old form in the second half. New receiver Andre Rison, who just joined the team on waivers is a 3-time all-pro wide receiver who Favre will be looking to more and more to fill the holes left by the loss of Brooks, Freeman, and Chumura. Last week they played a little better again, beating Chicago 28-17, with a boost from returning Freeman. This makes the pack 10-3 for the season and solidly in 1st place of their division. But this week, Green Bay takes on Denver, who is 12-1. The good news is the game is at home, which should help, and, perhaps more importantly, Broncos quarterback John Elway may not play if his hamstring is still giving him trouble. As always, I'll have on my cheesehead for luck, you should cross your fingers.

Run To (or From) Daylight

Seagram's had a VIP reception and special screening of Sylvester Stallone's new flick, Daylight. Now, I'm not much of a Stallone fan, so my expectations were pretty low. But this action turkey was a pure cheese fest from start to finish. This new film, if you'll forgive the pun, had plot holes you could build a tunnel through. A few of the special effects were pretty good, and a few of the actions scenes were well done, but that was about it for the positives. The dialog was hopelessly cheesy and funny where it wasn't supposed to and remarkably unfunny when it was supposed to be. My recommendation ..... run away.

Can You Believe It Took This Long?

The Senate recently passed a bipartisan measure to abolish the federal Tea Examiners, which for the past 99 years has met two days a year in a Brooklyn warehouse to sample teas from around the world to determine if they are fit to drink. "Under this measure," sponsor Senator Hank Brown (R-Colorado), said, "Americans will be responsible for determining for themselves what tea they like and don't like."

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