The Binary Circumstance

Some reality TV producers in Britian must have been inspired by the movie, The Crying Game:

The men claim they were tricked into kissing, cuddling and holding hands with the “woman”, Miriam, and say it was only after three weeks of filming that they were told she was male.

While viewers know from the start that Miriam is a male-to-female transsexual, the contestants, who include a Royal Marine commando, a ski instructor and an ex-lifeguard, only discover the truth when Miriam picks the winner and then lifts up her skirt.

One contestant was so furious he is said to have punched the show’s producer when he found out.

The men are suing Sky TV and the producers of the show, which is called, There’s Something About Mariam.

UPDATE 11/1/2003: The AP reports that this show has been shelved due to the legal action taking by the six male contestants. They refer to the show as “Find Me A Man.”

A contract employee at Microsoft, Michael Hanscom, was fired because he posted a picture of some i-Mac G-5s arriving at Microsoft’s shipping dock on his weblog. This guy got written up in the Seattle-PI. Now, lots of people know that he’s unemployed. Will anybody hire him now that they know he takes pictures at work and posts them on his weblog?

I hope so. He’s only 30 and sounds like a creative, ambitious guy.

The WA State Supreme Court upheld a voter-approved car tax reduction:

The state Supreme Court today upheld voter-approved Initiative 776, which strikes down local car-tab taxes that help pay for Sound Transit’s rail and bus programs as well as road projects in King and Pierce counties.

Question: Now that the court has said that Seattle can’t force the entire state to buy it a nifty light-rail system for this Christmas and the next and the next, who will buy the train for them? Answer: The entire country!

Sound Transit recently demonstrated to a skeptical Oklahoma congressman that, even if it lost its car-tab revenue, it still could pay for the $2.44 billion first segment, from Westlake Center to Tukwila.

The agency last week received a federal commitment of $500 million toward the project; groundbreaking is expected in about two weeks.

When I read a review like CNN’s review of Chuck Palahniuk’s Diary, I don’t know what to make of it. Does the reviewer or CNN have some connection to the publisher of the book? Is Chuck sharing his dawg with the reviewer?

Palahniuk writes the story tangentially. He seldom approaches the plot head-on. Instead, he builds it from oblique angles, often obscuring events and motives the way a funhouse mirror reflects reality.

In the midst of her painting, Misty endures a seemingly pointless digression by the doctor on two mystic sects, the Jain Buddhists and the Jewish Essenes.

The reviewer almost told the truth in that passage but couldn’t quite get up the courage. Phrases like “seldom approaches the plot,” “oblique angles,” “obscuring events and motives,” and “pointless digression” pretty well sum up the structure of Diary.

The discourse seems to be a bit of rambling, but it has a very distinct purpose, as does every seemingly inconsequential — even bizarre — turn of events.

Palahniuk constructs his story as precisely as a stage magician’s grand illusion, building to a powerful climax that leaves the audience stunned and breathless. “Diary” triumphantly exposes the evil that lurks in the banality of everyday life.

I was left breathless and stunned by the evil that lies in the banality of this book. I think the exercise of writing it has a lot in common with Andy Warhol’s piss paintings (Oxidation paintings). Perhaps that’s why urine is a major theme in Diary.