I am planning to move this over to wordpress, not that anyone is reading it or cares. Also, I am all pissed off today for no reason, so I will keep it short, but violent. Because that’s how September 13 is in these years. Happy Birthday, sanpaku.
September 13, 2006 - Kimveer Gill goes on a shooting rampage at Dawson College in Quebec, spreading the shoot up your school meme to Canada. You know, I think it’s about time we started using the word “meme” in its proper way. A meme is a unit of cultural transmission roughly analogous to a gene. So, something like an online quiz is a sort of a meme. It’s really more of a collection of many memes, all bound together in a meme. Clipping your fingernails is a meme. Saying, “Nice weather,” is a meme. Using your index finger, middle finger and ring finger to indicate the number “three” is a meme. Using your thumb, index finger, and middle finger is also a meme. The two memes are culturally distinct, and can be used as a means of identification with a cultural group, as in the film Inglorious Basterds. So, using firearms to attempt to murder classmates is a meme. It is a cultural activity that propogates and is subject to selective pressure.
Meme Enthusiast
Other memetic activities surrounding this event include: the wearing of a “trench” coat, panicked press closely examining Kimveer Gills online profiles and attributing his rampage to alleged “membership” in various subcultures, while downplaying gun ownership as possible cause.
Speaking of memetic violence, on this day, 65 bodies were found in basements all over Baghdad. Actually, they had been found on many separate occasions, but there was a press release and push for stories in the media on this day. How’s that for a meme? Control the flow of information out of a war zone. Package stories of torture and violence to illustrate that Abu Ghraib was part of a larger picture… The message being, “Everybody’s doing it! You thought Abu Ghraib was bad? This is how these people shake hands over here.” If all your friends dragged people into basements, tortured them, executed and dismembered them, wouldn’t you do it too?

To honor all this violence, dwarf planet UB313 is renamed “Eris” (The Golden Apple of Discord) after the Greek Goddess of strife on this day.
September 13, 1994 - Bill Clinton signed the Assault Weapons Ban into law today. According to some, this tragic ban is what causes violence. Because if everyone walked around with machine guns all the time, then no one would ever shoot anyone… it just makes sense.
Clinton and Ulysses 
To honor all this restriction of personal freedom, the Ulysses probe passed over the south pole of the sun on this day, the first time a spacecraft has been in such a position. Turns out the suns south magnetic pole is much more diffuse than the north magnetic pole. Now you know.
September 13, 1910 - Hazrat Inayat Khan set out 100 years ago to spread Sufism to the world. This is an important milestone in the spread of wishy-washy, “spiritual”, woo-woo garbage to the West from the “enlightened” East where people at the time lived in feudal conditions, were nearly 100% illiterate, and could expect to live to 30 years old if they were lucky… mostly dying of tuberculosis, cholera, measles, mumps, rabies, wild animal attacks, murders, overwork, mine collapses, etc… But not if you were “enlightened” like Khan. By enlightened, of course, I mean standing on top of the shitpile in gold boots. International Sufism, which developed out of Khan’s learning what rich people already believed and wanted to hear, is a wishy-washy, politically correct grab-bag of “energy”, “universal consciousness”, “unity”, all the standard stuff that sociopathic religious con-men preach to rich people who want to be “enlightened”.
Khan Man 
He was a master of making meaningless statements that mean whatever the listener wants to believe, then contradicting himself, then acting like there’s some secret nugget of wisdom hidden in the torrent of bullshit. If you react by saying, “You’re just a conman and full of it,” then you aren’t “enlightened”. Everyone gets to shake their head in solemn disappointment and wonder why you are “blocked” from accepting wisdom. If you nod and act like the blizzard of self-contradictory non-sense makes sense, then you get to be a “cool kid”. Then you notice that some cool kids are cooler than other cool kids, and they happen to be the cool kids who write big checks to build temples. It’s easy to “reject base materialism” when you’re born on a pile of gold. Some call him con-man some call him spiritual leader. I believe in compromise, and call him a “Spiritual Khan-man”. To his credit, he was a musician, at least.
September 13, 1977 - Fiona Apple is born. She is in her Jesus year. Something is going to come out of her, something dischordant. I am scared. We all should be. And Soap debuts. A Viewer Discretion Warning is aired before Soap. It is a TV first.
Do I need to point it out?
Soap dramatized the division and strife in American society that was forming at the time and has only grown since. The theme song is stuck in my head on a permanent loop now. Perhaps Fiona Apple should cover it?
September 13, 1982 - The Trial of the Century (Down Undah! edition) got underway 28 years ago, making it Too Old to (Ayers) Rock. Lindy Chamberlain and her husband had gone camping in 1980, and their child Azaria was dragged off by a wild animal peculiar to Australia and similar to a dog (let’s leave it at that). There was a search, but all that was ever found were blood covered clothes.
Victims of Cognitive Dissonance 
This is an instance of a rare logical fallacy. In effect, when an effect looms large in a person’s mind, they seek a cause that is equally large. For instance, if I were to tell you that 19 people hijacked airplanes and flew them into buildings, killing 3,000 people and toppling the skyscrapers, you might be inclined to think that there must be more–much more–to the story than 19 deranged religious lunatics seeking the glory of eternal paradise. But you would be wrong. Much the same, the jury simply could not believe that such a terrible event could happen so quickly, quietly, effortlessly almost. They needed a larger, more dramatic cause for the outcome. Also, Lindy was remarkably calm during the trial, which in truth was a testament to her character, and perhaps the fact that she was seven months pregnant and fighting for her life. People react strangely. The jury and public opinion felt that her calm veneer was a sign of guilt. What was she supposed to do, scream and cry throughout the trial? The seeming emotional disconnect, and scope of the tragedy were too much for the jury, so, they voted guilty. In effect, Lindy was framed for not being hysterical. Fortunately, the Chamberlains were exonerated in 1988 after evidence came to light.
Beyond Human Lifespan:
196 years ago today - Francis Scott Key writes the Star Spangled Banner, which is about as easy to sing as Jonny Greenwood’s guitar solo in the song Just. Upon confirming that his name is in fact spelled “Jonny”, I am greatly displeased to discovered that he is a month younger than me. Fuck you, “Jonny”.
Yesterday - Tomorrow




