SAA Memphis Part 3 - Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow

This here is Part 3, you dig?  Part 2 is here, and Part 1 is here.


So, that night I got to bed, fell asleep quickly, and, due to exhaustion, managed to sleep solidly the full night despite the immature pilots of Boeing 747s buzzing my hotel all night long*.  This also despite the fact that the hotel began to fill up with the rather rowdy attendees of a party for 15-year-clean members of Cocaine Anonymous**.

The next morning, I took the shuttle over to the convention center again, knowing that I would only have a partial day in which to see what I could at the conference, as well as to take a quick look around Memphis in the daylight.

So, I started by going to the poster session at the conference.  Posters, for those unaware, are a way for researchers to present their work without getting up and giving a talk.  Although some posters could easily be turned into a 15 or 20 minute talk, most are not quite sufficient material for such a talk, and as a result are better served by the static display of the poster.  A great advantage of posters is that the person who did the research is free to talk about it in a way that the people giving papers are not.  As a result, the poster presenters are often quite busy discussing results and answering questions with the other conference attendees.

Several of the posters were quite good, but two in particular struck me.  The first was from a  graduate student at the University of Washington who was presenting on her work at Dutch colonies in the Spice Islands.  Her work was interesting in its own right, but struck me especially because her findings (roughly - the Dutch were more acculturated by the people that they forced to work on their plantations than the people of the plantations were enculturated by the Dutch, and there was little effort to eliminate or alter the culture of the workers) held some interesting contrasts and parallels to the history of Spanish and later Mexican colonization of California.

The second noteworthy poster was from a young man whose institution I don't remember, but he was presenting on the work he is doing with sling stones.  Sling stones are precisely what they sound like - rocks used in a sling (think of the weapon with which David is said to have killed Goliath).  Slings were used throughout North America, but are rarely discussed by archaeologists, who generally focus on other projectile weapons - mostly arrows, darts, and spears.  What struck me is that one of the sling stones that the presenter had made looked suspiciously like a common bi-conical stone found in Californian sites usually thought to have been a religious item and called a charm stone.  Now, I am not saying that all, or even most, of these items were sling stones, but it is worth noting the similarities, and considering whether or not we may be routinely mistaking one artifact type for another.

After a bit, I went out to wander Memphis just a little bit more.  I wandered over to Beale Street, where I found myself in the middle of a Corvette enthusiast gathering.  It was quite a site to see, but my time was short, and I couldn't dawdle.

I then moved on to get some photographs of the Mississippi River, which is, it must be said, one hell of a river.   It was interesting, it must be said, to look across a river and know that I was seeing Arkansas - there are few places in my home state of California where you can know where one state ends and another begins just by looking at a natural boundary.

Finally, though, I headed back to the shuttle's stop, and got back to the hotel.  I found myself Sitting in the shuttle with the wonderfully named Professor Paine. If only my friend Myrtle shock (aka Dr. Shock, on account of her Ph.D.) were there to meet him.  Once at the hotel, I collected my belongings, and boarded another shuttle for the airport.  However, as I boarded the shuttle back to the airport, I was happy to see that one of the Cocaine Anonymous folks was a dead ringer for Liam Neeson, were Liam Neeson a bearded, long-haired redneck.

Anyway, I got the the airport, and realized that I had not yet purchased a gift for Kaylia, so I got promptly on that, settling on a box of Moon Pies (I have always found them nasty, but Kaylia likes marshmallow more than I do).  While doing this, I encountered a man who kept inadvertently knocking things off of shelves with his backpack.  He and I got to talking, and it turned out that he was a film distributor from San Francisco who had been traveling the country to attend meetings with possible outlets for a film on the history of Timbuktu that had fallen into his company's hands.  He had been in Memphis meeting with people in no way related to archaeology, when he heard that the SAA was there.  However, he had no knowledge of how to reach anyone...and then he ran into an SAA member who also had no idea how to reach anyone at the SAA, so there's irony for you.

One pulled prok sandwich later, I had to move to get onto my plane.  I was delighted to discover that there were only two people in my row - myself, and a fellow who looked for all of the world like John McCain.  As the plane was loading, the honorable senator from Arizona pulled out a large, hardcover sex advice book, and began reading intently, which he continued doing until we touched down in Atlanta (our layover stop).  Unlike the flight out, this one was uneventful, and I was able to finish reading my own book (Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley - I highly recommend it). 

After we landed, and as we disembarked, it became clear that the former Republican nominee for president had to literally run to catch his connecting flight (perhaps to Wasilla Alaska?).  And so he closed up his sex book and took off running as soon as we were off the plane (it was quite a sight to see, I assure you).  I strolled at a leisurely towards my plane.

On my way to the plane, I was passed by a family of three - a mother and her two children (a boy of about ten years, and a girl in her early teens).  The mother, a very attractive woman with an accent that I have to admit I found quite pleasant, said, rather loudly "well, all of this walking around is making my skirt ride up just ever so much!"  Prompting the teenage daughter to say "Ma!  What have I told you about too much information!"  The son just giggled, whether because he thought it was funny, or out of embarrassment, I could not tell.

You know, it's a shame that sexy John McCain had to take off...I could have introduced the mother to him.

As I kept towards my plane's gate, I also saw a rather corpulent middle-aged white woman being pushed in a wheelchair by a young African American man.  The young man had a bored look on his face, as the woman lectured on about how it is necessary to know your place in order to fit in and be happy.  While the conversation may very well have had nothing to do with race, I must admit that the scene as I saw it seemed to conform to stereotypes.  This, in turn, led me to wonder how often visitors to California see scenes that are not quite what they at first appear, and yet seem to conform to existing stereotypes.


Upon reaching my gate, I realized that I had an hour to kill before boarding.  I was not yet hungry, but I realized that I had a four-to-five hour flight ahead of me, and therefore should probably eat.  I made my way towards a nearby airport sandwich shop, and found myself at a table next to one filled by a group of female undergrad archaeology students, whose conversation was mostly gossip about who was dating who in their department, peppered with talk of good come-on lines for archaeologists. My favorite line: 'I have a recreated Navajo bow for projectile experimentation,would you like to come shoot it?'"

I am ashamed to admit that it took me about an hour before I realized the true potential for "bow job" jokes.

Finally, I got on my plane, and was on my way to San Francisco.  Unlike my previous flights, I had little to report on this one.  I was the only person in my row until the last hour or so of the flight, when a Peruvian archaeologist came over in order to work without being harassed by the person in the seat next to her.  I finally arrived in San Francisco around 11:30, and got easily to my car, and then off to a friend's place for the night, heading back to Fresno in the morning.

And there ended what is likely my last SAA trip for quite a long time.




*It's like they're just 13-year-olds with jet engines.

**No, I'm not making this up.

The Credible Hulk

Dr. Walter Simpson Stanley, better known to the world these days as the Credible Hulk, is arguably one of the lesser known super-humans, or "parahumans" to use the current media buzzword, wandering the world today.  Though less known than his "parasibling," Dr. Bruce Banner, Dr. Stanley is nonetheless a remarkable individual in his own right. 

Dr. Stanley, like Dr. Banner, worked for the federal government at a lab in New Mexico.  Unlike Dr. Banner, Dr. Stanley was not given to either pointlessly dangerous stunts, or to grandstanding. 

Also unlike Banner, Stanley was not a jerk.  Though known to the wider world for his exploits both solo and as a member of the super Team, the Avengers, Dr. Banner was best known amongst his scientific colleagues for his mean-spirited practical jokes, and his tendency to lecture others on the importance of his own work, or the superiority of his own morality.  Indeed, after he treated Dr. Stanley's nachos with gamma radiation (in a work place prank that some believe to be the origin of the Credible Hulk's somewhat mediocre powers), Banner then lectured his co-workers about the importance of keeping non-project personnel of off the test range, when it was his own negligence that had led to someone wandering onto it and almost getting dosed with Gamma Rays to begin with.

By contrast, Dr. Stanley was, and remains, known for being hard-working, stable, intelligent, competent, and if one dares to say it, he is known for being credible. 

Like his bigger, bulkier former co-worker, the key to activating the Credible Hulk is anger.  However, the Credible Hulk has a more muted response to anger.  Certainly, he bulks up, but he does not become 15-feet tall, as Dr. Banner is known to brag about himself.  No, the Credible Hulk gains height and weight noticeably, but just enough to make regular-fitting clothing uncomfortable - he has taken to wearing sweat pants, exercise clothes, and even a few articles of particularly butch maternity wear in order to avoid getting sudden-growth rashes from more non-elastic clothing.

The Credible Hulk is certainly stronger than non-hulked Dr. Stanley, but he doesn't go about flinging tanks or breaking through brick walls.  His strength is more along the lines of a bush-league luchadore - not insubstantial, but hardly inhuman.  Indeed, the most damage that the Credible Hulk has ever done due to not known his own strength was causing muscle strain in his wrist and bruising the tip of his left index finger after tapping the Air Canada counter irritably after the aforementioned airline managed to lose his luggage and make him miss his connecting flight to Los Angeles. 

Similarly, while the Credible Hulk has a lower intellect and poorer impulse control than Dr. Stanley, he is not the mindless beast of destruction that Dr. Banner becomes.  Rather, the Credible Hulk operates on about the same level as a frat boy half way through his second beer of the night.  A definite change, but if you didn't know Dr. Stanley, you wouldn't notice.

The most striking change is skin color.  The Credible Hulk has vaguely greenish skin.  Not bright green, or sickly green, but a just-noticeable olive.  His skin tone is less reminiscent of the Jolly Green Giant than of a Star Trek pilot episode Mr. Spock. 

Still, unlike certain other Gamma Ray victims, Dr. Stanley continues to be a productive member of society.  He still goes to work, to the same laboratory at which he has been employed for the last 20 years - though it did take the threat of an ADA lawsuit to get management to allow him to wear his less formal clothing to the workplace - and his co-workers have had to stop playing pranks on him - while amusing at first, the novelty of seeing their boss grow and inch, become swarthy, and bitch at them like a hyperactive drunken juvenile did wear thin and begin to cut into productivity and associated pay bonuses. 

In the end, arguably, it is Dr. Stanley, and not the increasingly less reliable Dr. Banner, who deserves our respect and praise.





Note:  This entry was inspired by one of my youngest sisters.  She was around five years (when I say younger sister, I mean around 20 years younger) old when the Ang Lee Incredible Hulk movie came out, and was quite taken with the character.  She received a pair of Incredible Hulk Smash Hands for Christmas, but being five, she had a hard time saying "incredible" and instead referred to the character as the "Credible Hulk" - which led to one of my sisters who is about the same age as me and I joking about how, unlike his unreliable cousin, the Credible Hulk is a down-to-Earth, believable guy.

Cinema of Pain

Okay, a detour from the usual talk.  This one is just for fun...

Every now and again, I meet someone who informs me that they have seen the worst film ever made.  They will then go on at great length about how some big-budget, low-concept film is well and truly terrible, and it wouldn't be possible to make a movie that's worse than it.  Or, perhaps it's one of those people who has heard that Plan 9 From Outer Space is the worst film ever made, and is actually gullible enough to believe this.

Whenever this happens, I chuckle, look at the person who announced that they have found the worst movie ever, and announce "my DVD collection can hurt you."

I have stated before that I enjoy B-movies, so it will probably come as no surprise to anyone who is a regular reader that I have racked up a fair number of bad movie notches on my television side over the years.  Whenever the person who announced that Wild Wild West was just too terrible for words insists on their point, I try to show them one of the films below.  If you enjoy crappy movies, then you probably already know about these.  If not, then proceed with caution.

I've included the trailers for all of these movies, but be warned - if you watch the trailer and think "that doesn't look so bad", it is because trailers are mareting tools, and one is can be designed to make a movie look significantly better than it really is.


Manos the Hands of Fate

Probably best known as an episode of Mystery Science Theatre 3000, this is allegedly a horror movie.  It was made by a fertilizer salesman, Harold Warren, who thought that audiences were stupid enough that any crap he put on screen would satisfy them.  He was proven very, very wrong.

On the one hand, many of the people involved as actors and crew apparently were proud of their work and really tried, and so it's a bit of a backhand to laugh at them.  On the other hand, the overall artisitic vision was provided by someone who was apparently something of a dick who thought that he was the smartest man in the country and the only one who would know that this film was dreck, so laughing at the film feels kind of good in that way.

This movie centers on a family (father, mother, and daughter) who are trying to find their way to a hotel, and eventually end up at a place called the Valley Lodge.  The caretaker of the Valley Lodge, Torgo (a fawn, but limited makeup results in him simply looking like Arlo Guthrie with huge knees), tells the family that they can not stay there, but the man (who is played by the fertilizer salesman - so he cast himself as the star of his movie as well...tells you a bit, don't it) insists that they stay despite the caretaker's wishes and unloads their luggage. 

Over the course of the evening, Torgo falls for the wife, the Master (Torgo's boss, a demon or sorceror who looks like Frank Zappa) awakens and decides that the wife and daughter (who was around 5 years old) would make fine additions to his harem, and the man who got his family into this mess is pursued by allegedly demonic dobermens before being turned into the new caretaker.  Oh, and for no apparent reason the viewer is treated to routine check-ins on a couple who are making out in a sports car and have nothing to do with the plot.

The script is bad, the production values nonexistent, the implications of demon-induced sexual slavery and pedophilia icky and disturbing, and the film was done without audio, so all of the voices are dubbed in by two or three people after the fact.  This one is bad.  Bad, bad bad.  Not the worst movie I have ever seen, but still pretty terrible.

The trailer:



The Galaxy Invader

Contrary to the title, no galaxies were at any point invaded during this movie. 

This is a micro-budget movie produced by Don Dohler, a Maryland-based film maker who made many low-budget grindhouse-level movies (back when Grindhouse referred to low-budget quickie/cheap films and not hipster film makers trying to "get back to their roots").  One the one hand, make no mistake, this is a bad movie from almost every standpoint - the acting is amatuerish (probably because it is filled with amateur actors), the budget is nonexistent, and the dialogue is often laughable, and even the film stock is poor...but Dohler didn't seem to be under any illusions as to the type of film that he was making, and while the movie is bad, it's also fun, and fun in a way that I suspect Dohler would have approved of. 

The basic premise of the movie is that an alien spaceship has crash-landed on earth, and the alien has lost his gun and power source in the crash.  A college student and professor witness the crash, as do a set of good ol' boys (led by a guy who comes across as a drunken, over-sexed redneck Jimmy Stewart wearing a permanently torn white t-shirt) who find the gun and power source, all the while the alien (while searching for the lost items) goes on a killing spree.  Although the film seems to want to make this into a treasure hunt/game of cat-and-mouse between the science crew and team redneck, that never quite gels, and instead it seems like two completely different movies that are spliced together without rhyme or reason.  Meanwhile, we are supposed to feel some sympathy for the alien, but as it seems more interested in killing innocent people than in getting its stuff back, that's difficult.  Weirdly, the most satisfying part of the movie is the family drama amongst the would-be-Jimmy Stewart's relations, which resolves in a way that is both hilariously poorly done and nonetheless actually rather satisfying. 

The film is probably best known for providing the clips that were (for no apparent reason) used in the opening and closing credits of another low-budget movie, The Pod People (which featured no pods, and arguably no real people, despite its title), which ended up on Mystery Science Theatre 3000.

Incidentally, the only person who has managed to site through the full film with me is my good friend Liberty.  Libby is also a professor of literature, meaning that she may be teaching your children the finer points of the greatest writing in the English language, but she's warped enough to enjoy something like this.  I have the coolest friends.


The trailer:



Highlander II - The Quickening

This is one of the few blockbuster, major-release, studio films that really is just as bad as it's made out to be.  Most of them are bad, but bad in a "come 10 years, people will forget that this movie was ever made" bad...Highlander II, however, is both hilarious (at least initially, see below) and legendary in its badness.  There are worse films, to be certain, but they weren't made by major studios working with an existing franchise with some well-known actors.  And so, as a friend of mine likes to say, Highlander II has probably the highest money-to-suck ratio of any film ever made. 

Now, some people will insist that, yes this movie doesn't really work with the story established in the original Highlander, but it's pretty good if taken as its own piece of work.  These people are wrong.

Some people will insist that the theatrical release or the television edit or the original video release were bad, but if you see the director's cut (AKA the Renegade Version because the director thought that using the term "renegade" made his movie sound badass rather than just plain bad) or the producer's cut.  These people are deeply deluded and in need of immediate psychiatric help.

It's worth noting that one of the later (and also terrible) Highlander films actually explained this one away as a fever dream had by the film's "hero" Connor MacLeod.  Yeah, a crappy movie in an increasingly crappy franchise even tries to disown this one.

At its core, Highlander II's problem is that its basic premise, that an alien (or time-displaced, depending on which version you're seeing) warlord comes to Earth (or the future, again depending on which version you are seeing) to prevent his arch-nemesis from returning to the Planet Zeist (or the distant past), makes no sense as the hero (such as he is) of the film has made it clear that he has no method of transportation or intention of going to Planet Zeist (or the distant past) to challenge the warlord (I like parentheticals).  Even the warlord's lackeys point this out!  Out of this nonsensical plot, add in an evil corporation that has no clear way of making profits off of it's only product, the fact that the "love interest" falls for a guy apparently because she saw him regain youth through decapitating someone (which you would think would be her cue to avoid him), and Sean Connery of all people using his "life force" energy to zap evil ceiling fans...and, well, there's just no way that this movie could be anything but bad. 

I love watching bad movies, but Highlander II begins to have a numbing effect after a while.  It is so bad that, at about the halfway mark, it ceases to be fun and starts to get boring.  If you watch it in bite-sized chunks, it remains fresh and entertaining in its own bizarre way, but trying to watch it straight through actually sucks the fun out of the bad movie experience. 

There are many big-budget major releases that get labelled as the "worst movie ever" (Ishtar, North, the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Gigli, etc.), but Highlander II has all of these beat.  Anybody who is so sheltered as to think that Gigli is as bad as a movie-going experience can get is likely to be killed by exposure to Highlander II.

For the hardened lover of the cinema du crap, however, Highlander II can provide some great post-movie jokes to crack with your friends.  Indeed, 2-hours of crappy movie lead to a 10+ hour session of making jokes about the movie with one of my college room mates.

A detailed, and wonderfully funny, scene-by-scene review of Highlander II can be found at Jabootu's Bad Movie Dimension.

The trailer:

Flowers in the Attic


Like Highlander II, Flowers in the Attic is one of the few major release films (and an adaptation of a popular novel) that is pretty much just as bad as it's reputation holds.  The premise: a woman who married her uncle has been widowed and is financially ruined, and is coming home to her parent's house in order to make ammends and get back in her sick father's will.  As he considered her marriage sinful (for obvious reasons), she must prevent him from knowing about the children she had with her uncle/husband.  So, the children are locked away, and slowly poisoned, until the oldest twins (who it is implied have begun their own incestuous relationship) break free and kill the mother.

If you think that sounds over the top, I have been told by those who have read them that the novels on which the movie is based have exactly the same plot, but that the incest is much more blatant and graphic, and includes elements of sibling-on-sibling rape (which is is later stated that the victim enjoyed).  Oh, and these books were popular in the 80s with teenagers who are now taking on leadership roles in our society.  Let that sink in a bit, and then shudder and weep for humanity's future.

What saves us from the ick factor in this movie is the sheer ineptitude.  The dialogue is both ham fisted and hilarious, and the delivery is truly awful.  Kristy Swanson, the star, speaks like a robot version of Keanu Reeve.  Oh, and the make-up effects for the "sick children make them look like Oompa-Loompa mimes.  It's really something to behold.

A personal note:  When I was a kid, my sisters loved this movie, which they were introduced to by a friend of our mothers (some friend).  They would rent it on a routine basis and would get upset to the point of physical violence if you pointed out that it was a bad movie.  They even were convinced that Kristy Swanson's performance was a thing of beauty.  Now none of them admit to having liked it, and all of them insist that it was one of the others who wanted to rent it all of the time...but the truth is, it was all three of them.


Once again, Jabootu provides a hilarious scene-by-scene review.

And, the trailer for this schlock:




Nukie

This Swedish/North American/African co-production is so terrible that I wasn't allowed to view it until I had completed my hazmat training.

The basic premise, clearly inspired by E.T. (which was actually, you know, good): a pair of energy-based life forms are flying through the cosmos and come too close to Earth.  One of them, Nukie, decides to buzz the planet out of a sheer desire to joyride.  This results in the other alien crashing, and being captured by the U.S. military.  Nukie lands in Africa, and begins a trek to recover his brother before he dies at the hands of evil scientists.

Now, with this premise, you would have a difficult time making a great movie (though this could be done), but you could easily make a decent movie, one that was fun, enjoyable, and provided you with a passable way to spend 90 minutes.  Instead we end up with a movie that is truly awful.  The writing alternates between hackneyed and hysterically bad.  The special effects are "special" in the same way that the surface of the sun is cold and wet.  And the acting...oh, the acting.  In a turdball film like this, it is usually difficult to figure out what the worst aspect is, but in Nukie, it's the acting.  Now, mind you, this movie could have been cast entirely with the greatest actors ever to have lived, and it would still have been awful, but with these actors, it crosses over into a very strange type of bad that I had not previously thought possible.

To accurately describe the acting in this film, I have to provide you with the following:  Imagine that you have a set of sub-par animatronic puppets that are constructed for Disneyland's cheap Bakersfield knock-off Darbyland.  Now imagine that the local community theater group were to take acting lessons that consisted entirely of watching these knock-off animatronic puppets.  You now have a very rough idea of just how bad the acting in Nukie really is.


The trailer:

Wedding Rocks

Over the weekend, a friend of Kaylia's got married (or, actually, had a wedding ceremony - she actually got married at a courthouse ceremony several months ago).  After I dropped Kaylia off at the Bride's hotel, I had a bit of time to myself before heading over to the beach at which the ceremony was to be held. 

When I finally headed over to the wedding spot, it was cool (many of the attendees do not share my affinity for cooler weather and would have termed it "cold"), overcast, and misty.  Not precisely brilliant weather for a wedding - though Kaylia had warned the couple that this was likely to be the case when, over a year earlier, they first stated that they wanted to have a wedding on the beach in Monterey County in September*.  I brought my folding chairs onto the beach and placed them where they were supposed to go (yep, everyone had to bring their own chairs ot the wedding).  And then I sat and played chess on my cell phone while I waited for the ceremony to start.  While I sat, a woman (who I later saw was offciating at the ceremony) walked up with a back of rocks, and asked me to take one, which I did.  I was a bit confused - during past ceremonies, I have been provided with bags of rice to throw at the couple after the ceremony, but this seemed a bit odd.  I looked up at the woman who handed it to me and asked "so, we're supposed to throw rocks at the couple after the ceremony?"

She chuckled nervously, and said "uhh...no, no, we're not asking you to stone them."

"You sure?  Because, I have to tell you, I have lousy aim, so I'll need to get REEEEEAAAALLLLL close..."

"No.  You are not to throw rocks at the couple!"

Anyway, the wedding occurred, and the entire time I was sitting with this rock in my hand, wondering just what the Hell, exactly, I was supposed to do with it if not use it as an offensive weapon.  Towards the end of the ceremony, all of the guests and hostages were asked to rise, walk through the arch, and place the rocks into a container filled half-way with sand, as the rocks were now "infused with our love and good wishes."  So, basically, we made a rather heavy good luck charm (which, admittedly, it would be fun to watch one member of the couple attempt to carry around on their key chain). 

When I was in graduate school, one of the professors had a habit of describing a situation that he had witnessed or that he had read about in an ethnographic or historical text, and then asking us to describe what the materials remains of such an event would look like should we find them in an archaeological site.  And so, I found myself  considering this good-luck-charm-of-DOOM (GLCD) and wondering what I would make of it if I had found it in a site.

The GLCD was comprised of a round glass container about 6 inches wide and a foot tall, rather like a huge drinking glass, that had been filled up halfway with sand.  The guests then piled rocks on top of the sand, filling the container much of the rest of the way.  Now assuming that I found it in a context where it was clear what this had been (either the glass container survived intact or the pieces of glass were arranged around the sand and rocks in such a way that it was clear that a glass container had once held them), I'm not sure what I would make of it.  The sand was from a beach in the Monterey Bay area, and of a sort that is a bit unusual for sand in that region, so I'd probably be able to work out where the sand had come from.  The rocks, though, came out of a bag of rocks purchased from a store (who knew such things were sold..why they are sold is still a bit baffling to me, are there places that are throwing-size rock deficient?) and were not of local materials.


Now, if I were to find such an item without any knowledge of other similar items, I might think it was simply decorative (not really correct), religious (quasi-correct), or I might think that it represented something having to do with travel or settlement (focusing on the potential symbolism of local sand covered by imported rocks...very much not correct).  I probably wouldn't be able ot figure out that it was a charm created as part of a wedding ceremony because, hey, I would have no information even pointing in that direction.

If, by contrast, it were a common item, and I found it only in the homes of couples and families, I would likely think that it was an item either granted to a couple or made by the couple as part of a "life crisis"** ritual for their marriage (which would be true), but I would likely still get caught up on the symbolism of the sand and the rocks, trying to figure out why there were local sands and foreign rocks, and probably concluding that this was a show that people from different areas were marrying and that the item symbolized their union (incorrect).

In other words, I would be stumped, which was often the point that my old professor was trying to make - always show some humility, because the materials record is usually incomplete and there's always a strong likelihood that you got it wrong and are barking up the wrong tree.






*Really, when you know a local who is willing to tell you about the area, it is best to accept that their assessment of the local weather conditions is likely ot be more accurate than your fantasy.  Just syain'...

**The term "life crisis" is used by social scientists to refer to events that alter one's status within the community and/or one's personal/home life - this includes coming-of-age ceremonies, marriage, childbirth, and death (which, really, isn't a life crisis so much as, you know, death).  In most societies, many, if not all, of these events are marked with rituals.

A Short Science Fiction Story

In the last moments of my life, I recalled my conversation with Dr. Johnson regarding the time machine. He had explained that the machine could travel through time, but not space. So I could go forward or backward in time, but would remain in the same location. Johnson had indicated the platform on which the machine stood, and said "this is the very height, down to the millimeter, of the land at this location prior to the construction of this facility."

He was proud of the machine, of the scientific work behind it, and, strangely, of having built the simple wooden platform. The USAF had sent me to be his test pilot, and I was getting ready to see this little corner of Nevada as it was in 1850, though I doubt it would be too terribly different from what it was now, other than the lack of pre-fab standardized government-issue buildings.

I thought of this after the laboratory had vanished, and was replaced with a starscape and a darkness more complete than anything I had ever seen on earth. I thought of this as the capsule exploded around me, it's internal air supply forcing it's relatively weak seems to break against the vacuum. And I completed my thoughts of this conversation as space sucked the air from my lungs and I could feel my eyes turning to ice.




Note: I have always been puzzled by science fiction stories that portray traveling forward or backward in time while remaining in the same spot on Earth as travel through space but not time. The planet, Solar System, and even galaxy are always moving. So, if you were to travel through space but not time, you wouldn't end up in the same point on earth but in a different year. Statistically speaking, you would most likely end up in the vacuum of space.

Places that Should be Haunted, But Aren't

Okay, after the heaviness of the last two posts, here's something a bit lighter, though not at all archaeology related.

As some readers know, I am a ghost story enthusiast. No, I don't believe in ghosts, but I nonetheless love a good ghost story. I even keep a second blog where I keep track of ghost stories. When you find a story of a haunting, you also usually find some sort of explanation. These explanations range from an allegedly haunted site being the location of a tragic or horrific event to the place being the repository of human remains (often unburied or disinterred, though proper cemeteries are frequently reputed to be haunted as well), to the ever-popular "this place was built on an Indian burial ground!"

Most of the time, following through on the stories explaining the hauntings reveals them to be fabrications. The number of times that I have looked up a place that is "built on an Indian burial ground" only to find that there are no burials of any kind anywhere near it is quite large. Likewise with most other stories - tracking down the actual deaths of people said to have been killed in a house often reveals that they died elsewhere of different causes (occasionally they are even still alive) or that the person in question never even existed to begin with. Likewise, looking for evidence of the traumatic events said to have left some sort of psychic residue often reveals that these events never actually happened or that they weren't nearly as traumatic as often made out.

Still, these are the common stories given to explain hauntings, and if they were true, there are a number of places that I personally know of that one would expect to be haunted, but which, mysteriously (or not mysteriously), are not. For example:


Two of my former workplaces

During my first job as a supervisor, my office was in a building that was built right on top of a Chumash village site. Now, Chumash villages in the particular area where this one was typically contained burials. So, this office was literally built on a Native American burial ground. I knew about it, as did the other archaeologists working in the building, but for various reasons (mostly related to not wanting people to loot what was left of the site), we didn't advertise the fact. In addition to being built on an area that likely contained burials, we frequently had human remains in our office, mostly bone dug from archaeological sites. So, we had a burial ground and disinterred bodies. However, other than the soul-sucking boredom of Monday morning staff meetings, we never experienced anything supernatural, nor did anyone ever report such a thing.

A subsequent workplace was not built on an archaeological site of any sort. However, it also often served as a temporary repository of human remains - mostly the remains of Native Americans which were removed from sites that were about to be destroyed by bulldozers. However, we also, for a time, had the remains of two Navy Airmen who died in a Plane Crash during a WWII-era training mission. We had excavated their remains, and before the county coroner collected them, we processed and stored them at our facilities. So, Native American burials AND the remains of people who died in a traumatic way? Double check. Ghosts on the premise? Negative.


Pajaro River Floodplain

The above-mentioned plane crash, the remains of which we dug up, was located on the Pajaro River flood plain, in Monterey County. Not only did two men die a traumatic death in a plane crash, but the event became part of local folklore (including variations on the story in which two planes hit each other mid-air and crashed...not true, by the way). So, again, the sort of place that one would anticipate would have a ghost story...but it doesn't.


Abney Park Cemetery

Before the band Abney Park existed, there was a cemetery by that name. While the cemetery doesn't have any more int he way of tragic history than any other cemetery that I know of, it is nonetheless exactly the sort of place for which the term "creepy-ass" was invented. It looks like the set of a horror movie, with neglected and crumbling tombstones, a dilapidated chapel that looks like something out of a Dracula movie, and a generally weird atmosphere. Here's some photos that I took while visiting:





I have searched long and hard for ghost stories for this place, convinced that it must have some, but keep coming up goose-eggs. If a creepy-ass cemetery doesn't have a ghost story, then what is the world coming to, I ask?


The Duplex on Mason Road

One day, in the late 80s, as I was walking home from school, I noticed that Mason Road - which forms the eastern terminus of Driftwood Drive, the road in Salida on which I grew up - was cordoned off, and there was a butt-load of news vans parked around the entrance to the road. I didn't know what it was all about until I saw the news that evening.

Earlier that day eight people were murdered, bludgeoned to death, in one of the duplexes (dupli? duplo? duplae?) as a result of what appeared to be the result of drug deals gone bad. As the media hype began to increase, I found my neighborhood labelled "Drug Alley" by the Sacramento news stations, despite the fact that nobody ever actually called it that except reporters from Sacramento.

Eventually, the interior of the duplex was cleaned up and rented out again. Despite the grisly history, I never heard of anyone having any sort of strange experience there, and asking around never brought anything up. So, a sad history, but not one that has been made light of by people using it as fodder for campfire stories.


Crown, Merrill, Cowell, and Stevenson Colleges, UCSC

Every college of university seems to have a ghost stories, but UC Santa Cruz's are relegated to Porter College. UCSC is divided into multiple colleges, which serve as the residential and educational bases of each student (though every student will take classes at other colleges as well). Porter College is the art college, and many of the residents are, in my experience, given to self-induced drama, which probably explains why it has the monopoly on ghost stories. However, Merrill College, Crown College (which was my college), Cowell College and Stevenson College all butt up against Pogonip Park - an allegedly cursed forest - are within walking distance of a cemetery with decaying graves dating to the civil war, and the forest adjacent to these colleges is described by the forensic anthropology professor from whom I took classes as a "dumping ground for bodies." Despite this, the place doesn't have much int he way of ghost stories. Sure, the forest itself does (complete with the ghost of Sarah Cowell, of the family for whom the college was named), but this portion of the campus does not. Fnord!



So, that's what I've got. So, readers, what are places that you know of which should have ghostly reputations, but don't seem to have the ectoplasmic taint?

Archaeologists Don't Dig Up Dinosaurs...Except When We Do

Normally, when somebody asks me if I dig up dinosaurs, I become annoyed. I have to explain that archaeologists study the remains of past human activity, and that prehistoric animals (unless hunted and butchered by humans) aren't really my bailywick.

Then this week happened.

One of my company's owners realized that if he has us out there looking at the ground anyway, and we're already trained to identify bone and teeth, we might as well also be looking for fossils as well. This provides better protection for paleontological resources (archaeologists get around far more than paleontologists, as the laws requiring our presence tend to be a mite bit more strict and expansive). However, while there is a bit of overlap in the sorts of things that we look for (some of the early human sites in the Americas contain Pleistocene animal bones that paleontologists are interested in), there is also quite a bit of difference. So, having archaeologists qualified to identify and handle paleontological resources requires that the archaeologists actually, you know, get qualified to do so. To that end, my coworkers and I spent the last few days at a small paleontological museum being trained to identify and recover fossils.

Now, we were not being trained to be actual paleontologists. We are archaeologists who now have enough knowledge of paleontology to know how to protect fossils that we find and when we need to contact the real paleontologists to deal with things. Oh, and we will only do this work under the supervision of a real paleontologist, so it'll be difficult for us to fuck shit up too badly.

I don't know if it's just a reaction to HAZWOPER training, or if it was the content of these classes in and of itself, but the paleontology class has been a hell of alot of fun. We went from covering the laws and implementing regulations that provide what protection there is for fossils, to covering the basic geology that we need in order to make an assessment of the paleontological sensitivity of an area, to discussions of the types of fossils that we are likely to encounter in different parts of California. The next day we gained some hands-on experience preparing a fossil for collection*, and then preparing them for identification in the lab**.

So, basically, I got paid to hang out with coworkers, learn some stuff, and handle fossils. It was fun.

But I guess this means I can't be as pissy next time someone asks me if I dig up dinosaur bones. Harumph.





* When identified, if the fossil is both small and in good shape, it can simply be picked up. If it is large and/or in poor shape, then you engage in a process called "jacketing." In this process, you dig around the fossil in a process known as pedasteling (we use the same approach with certain types of artifacts in archaeology). Once the fossil is appropriately pedestaled, you place wet tissue (what you and I know as toilet paper) over the fossil, and then cover this with plaster-soaked burlap in order to provide a protective plaster-and-tissue cover. You then use your trowel to cut the pedestal off, taking as much dirt as is practical with you to further protect the fossil, and cover the underside in tissue and plaster. This produces a large plaster package that you can then take to the lab and be secure in your knowledge that the fossil is in good shape. Of course, before you even begin this process, you will take GPS coordinates and take notes on the nature of the fossil, location, orientation (on it's side, standing up, pointing north, etc.), and also note the local geology.

** This is where you use a dental pick and paintbrush to carefully remove the dirt surrounding the fossil without damaging it. It was fun to do, but I imagine would get tedious if it was what I normally did for a living.

Indian Burial Grounds, Hilariously Revisited

I have written before about the tendency for people to attribute bad circumstances or allegend hauntings to a place supposedly being built on an "Indian burial ground". For those readers outside North America, there's a tendency for many on this continent to view the native peoples of the Americas as, essentially, mystical. This includes everyone and their Irish cousin claiming to be descended from one Native American group or another, even when such claims are tenuous at best, and often complete fantasy. It has also led to most of my fellow Caucasians assuming that the places valued by Native Americans are magical, and so it's not uncommon for me to find rock art sites vandalized by people attempting to "use the magic" of the place for their own gains.

It has also led to the idea that any frightening happening must be due to an "Indian Burial Ground" - after all, the cemeteries of Europeans and their descendants are creepy, so the burial grounds of people assumed to be magical must be really scary, right?

I think, though, that the Onion has now taken this to it's logical (and hilarious) conclusion:


Report: Economy Failing Because U.S. Built On Ancient Indian Burial Grounds

Ahhh, the Onion...life would be so much less fun without you.

Bottomless Lake

So, I have returned from the field, but spent the weekend helping Kaylia get to and from a conference, so I didn't have a chance to write anything. So, here's something a mite bit different - an urban legend from the area where I was working:


Lake Una, located south of the City of Palmdale and immediately east of the reservoir Lake Palmdale, is a small lake or pond. Although the presence of such a body of water is remarkable within the arid desert environment, it appears otherwise uninteresting on first seeing it's placid water and rather typical local vegetation.

But, of course, it has it's stories. It is said that people approaching the lake at night have encountered a dark figure in clothing that appeared to be a fisherman's, telling them in slurred speech to leave the area. People have also reported seeing dark figures climbing into the trees and vanishing at night.



In addition to these ghostly phenomenon, some locals tell of a strange creature - never described - that sometimes emerges from the lake to devour whatever animals it can lay hand (um...teeth?) on. The lake is reputed to be bottomless, and it has been claimed that at least one diver has vanished while looking for the bottom, and that bodies of murder victims have been dumped in the lake never to be seen again. One story even holds that a school buss once ran off of the Sierra Highway (immediately adjacent to the lake) and neither it nor the driver or children in it were ever found.

Do I believe any of this? Of course not, but it's a fun story, and I try to collect these sorts of things when I travel, and this was a good one.

Should you wish to enter the property, it is fenced off and private security has been known to patrol the area. So, this is one that is best viewed from afar.

Love Stones and Slang

It is my impression that every profession, or at least each type of profession, has a certain type of slang that goes with it. This slang can tell you something about the individuals in the profession, or about the leaders (perceived or real) of that profession.

For example, when I worked in the tech industry one would typically hear terms such as "paradigm" horribly mis-used (I once heard somebody talk about information being "stored in a paradigm of databases"), post-project meetings were described as "post-mortems", and we would often hear about how "pro-active" employees "own their jobs." The reason for some of this seemed clear: this was a field where intelligence was prized as was the ability to speak concisely and it was a field where one wanted, quite frankly, to look cool*. Using terms such as "paradigm" seemed to show intelligence, while talking about how someone "owned their job" was seen as wrapping a large, complex concept into a few words. Of course, most people mis-used the "smart terms", the "concision" words usually became essentially empty and meaningless buzz words, and the one's intended to sound cool...well, I always had a hard time taking anyone who used them seriously at all.

Importantly, nobody ever taught you these terms, you learned them by being in the business culture and by seeing how they were used.

When I entered professional archaeology, I learned a new set of terms, and like the ones from business, these reflected the culture of my new profession. Now, understand one thing, I am not discussing professional jargon here, where terms are developed to label specific things or phenomena and have specific technical meanings. I am talking about terms that you won't read in journals, or hear in professional presentations, but which every archaeologist knows before they've gotten too far along. As noted, they tend to reflect how archaeologists, especially field archaeologist, view themselves, and as such they tend to be goofy and crude in measure, and always a bit earthy.

One of the best known of these (and a rare one that you might actually see in a published paper) is krotovina. A krotovina is a rodent burrow that has been filled in with soil from above. "Why not just say 'filled-in rodent burrow'?" you ask, and, in truth, I have no idea why not. Actually, in my reports, I do write "rodent burrow", but krotovina shows up frequently in the archaeological literature. What is the origin of this one? Well, it comes from soil science where it is more of a technical term. I have been told that it comes from two Russian words meaning "rodent" (kroto) and "mine" (vina), though every source I have been able to find indicates that it actually translates into "molehill." I think that archaeologists use it because we can't resist grabbing and bastardizing terms from other fields of study. It's an affliction...we can't help ourselves.

Another term that I rather like is "love stone", which means "a fucking rock" (also called A.F.R. for "another fucking rock"**). You usually hear this term come up in two contexts, the first (and most common) is when someone hands a rock to an archaeologist and asks "what is this?" The answer: "It's a love stone." Which usually inspires the asker, now intrigued, to ask what, exactly, a love stone is, and they are answered with "a fucking rock!" The other occurs when two or more archaeologists are working in the field, and one takes a closer look at something only to dismiss it, announcing to the others that it's "just a love stone."

Artifacts, as well as non-artifacts, come in for abuse too. There is a type of crude ceramic found in the Great Basin and parts of eastern California which is usually referred to in the field as "shitware." And this refers to a specific subset of pottery - if someone in the field or lab tells you that they have found "shitware", then you know exactly what they are looking at.

I could spend volumes providing other examples, but I think these suffice. I am just fascinated by the contrast between the nature of archaeology slang vs. business slang.






*Bear in mind when reading this that I was on the business side of the tech industry. The technical side was a different story altogether, and I have to say that I think the engineers had a hell of a lot more fun than us "suits" did.

**Which is a play on words of sorts. A common artifact type is F.A.R. or "fire affected rock" which is found in hearths and sub-surface ovens.

Out and about - Kingsburg

Kaylia and I did another edition of Out and About with Olive.

Out and About With Olive

Kaylia and I got bored a while back, and made this video:



I want to stress that I AM PLAYING A CHARACTER. I am not that much of a dick in real life, and we have a very good relationship. I am actually supportive, and not dismissive, and Kaylia is not a ditz.

Okay, with that in mind, here's the next one:

The Lonely End of an Archaeologist

We regret to inform you that Anthroslug was crushed under a rolling boulder during recent fieldwork. We here at Anthroslug Industries would like to assure you that this means that the standards and quality of this blog can only improve, now that his grubby hands are off of it. We will continue to update this blog on a regular basis, and would send out condolences to Anthroslug's family if the chintzy bastard actually had anyone who cared about him.

Please enjoy the following photos of his last moments of life.












If you are curious as to why Anthroslug was being chased by a giant blue ball, please visit Kaylia's Youtube channel, where an explanation will eventually be provided.

B Movie Love

Intermission from Glenn Beck's pseudo archaeological meanderings, I'll get back to it tomorrow...

I had a conversation with someone recently in which I tried to explain my love of B movies. They insisted that I simply liked laughing at other people's work, and that it was essentially a cruel endeavor. I disagree. Yes, there are some films that should simply be laughed at, but there are some that should be seen because they are simply so astoundingly odd that there is a great joy in seeing other people's very weird imaginations at work. You're definitely laughing with and not at the film's creators.

Basically, a movie that is simply bad is...well...bad, and not fun to watch. a movie that is bad but imaginative, well, that makes for great entertainment.

Consider the following screen captures from the movie Champions of Justice, and consider that the movie takes place in a world where things like what you see below are perfectly normal.



Taken from www.badmovies.org



I give no explanation, because the movie doesn't give one. The filmmakers want to take you on a trip to wackyland, where masked Mexican wrestlers are the only thing that stands between order and chaos. It's silly, it's fun, and while it's bad, it's a kind of bad that everyone can enjoy, and I seriously doubt that anyone involved in the production would begrudge me my enjoyment of this sort of thing.

So, next time that you think your local bad movie lover is simply sneering at other people, consider that maybe they are actually getting something good and fun out of the movie.

Okay, off this soapbox, and tomorrow I'll be back on my usual soapbox.

Astronomy, Rock Guitarists, and Editorial Mistakes

I doubt that I will ever stop being amused at the rather bad vocabulary of people who should know better. Case in point - I recently found out that Brian May, the lead guitarist from the band Queen, holds a PhD in astrophysics. I thought this was pretty cool, so I decided to see if he had written anything for non-professional audiences, and indeed he has. He co-wrote a book that describes the history of the universe and it's projected end. If his writing is anything like his speech on the subject, I can only expect that it is clear and well-written (I'll be buying a copy for my partner, a Queen fan and a budding science fan).

That's all pretty damn cool. But in the review section of the above Amazon.com link, there's this gem of a quote:

"Highly recommended for community library astrology collections and for anyone who wants a unbiased look at the universe itself." -- Midwest Book Review

This is being recommended for astrology collections? Don't get me wrong, I am fully in favor of people who are into astrology actually getting some background in science and learning that astrology is nonsense, but I kind of doubt that this is what the reviewer meant to imply.

It's a weirdly common mistake, though. I once had a housemate who was absolutely convinced that astronomy was the superstitious thing with the newspaper columns and 1-900 numbers, and that astrology was the science with the telescopes and math and whatnot. I had to show him several books on the subject (including Phil Plait's footnote about this in Death from the Skies) for him to believe me that is as astronomy that was the science.

Of course, within a week, he was back to confusing the words again.

Back in California

So, despite the best efforts of London Transit (which shut down an important undeground lines without notice), the European Air Traffic Controllers (who routed a whole butt-load of flights through British airspace and delayed many flights out of London), and Iceland, which continues to spew it's supterranean ash into the stratosphere, I am back from London.

It was a great trip, and I learned a few things:

1- a. Despite my usual "go with the flow" attitude towards visiting a place, Kaylia's right, it helps to have some sort of a plan.
1- b. Kaylia's awesome on multiple continents.

2- a. British food is better than is generally claimed. Perhaps not fantastic, but certainly tasty enough.
2- b. Indian food in London is good, but not better than in, say, San Francisco or Los Angeles, contrary to what most people hold.
2- c. Contrary to what many Britons seem to think, mayonaise is not a major food group. It may be a major mucus group, but it is not a major food group.

3- The British Museum, London Museum, and London Museum of Natural History are fucking fantastic.

4- If there is actually interest in making it so, public transportation in a major city can be both more efficient than using a car and cheaper for the individual (a lesson alos learned in Tokyo) - now to convince the population of Los Angeles.

5- Just because you're British doesn't mean that you know what you're talking about.

6- Old architecture is especially photogenic.

7- Kaylia thinks that there is always room for tea...myself, I miss coffee, and I don't even drink much coffee.

8- The man who won't give out when there's trouble all about is, in fact, John Shaft, and not Gordon Brown.

9- British game shows seem to be simply weird Japanese game shows, but with white contestants and snarky narration.

10- Election politics is silly in Europe as well as in North America.

11- It is, apparently, illegal for English men and women to own suits that are not either black or navy blue.

12- If you live in a sunny beach town, taking a vacation in a rainy, grey city actually works out pretty well.

13- British English often sounds like baby talk to Americans ("telly", "loo", "poo" etc., and even place names like Picadilly and Waterloo), which makes me wonder what American English sounds like to the Brits.

And there you have it.

Atomic Plastic Cactus!

When I was in field school*, one of the other students was a fellow by the name of Bob Franks. Bob was retired, but had been a journalist for many years. As he told it, he got his start in journalism during his time in the Army during the 1950s, when he helped to document various different military activities. One day, when we had come in from a long day of excavation and were relaxing before dinner, Bob told us a story that, well, I don't believe it, but I want to. As a friend of mine would say, this is the sort of story that, if it isn't true, it should be.

Bob claimed to have worked as an Army filmmaker in the 1950s - and from what I could gather, he was of the right age for this to have been the case - and that he was with a unit that filmed atomic bomb tests. Atomic Bomb tests generally took place in the deserts of the American West and on remote islands in the Pacific Ocean. Bob indicated that he was involved in the tests within the U.S. and that, for obvious reasons, security was a huge concern, what with all of the Russian spies (both real and McCarthy-inspired hallucinations) wandering about. The Army was, naturally, worried that the films of things being vaporized in giant balls of expanding plasma might fall into the wrong hands**, and as such they concocted numerous plans to confuse enemy agents who might get their hands on the films.

One of these plans involved an artificial cactus.

The idea was this: the Army cinematographers responsible for filming atomic bomb tests would have an artificial cactus (attached to a trailer for easy transportation) that they would cart around with them. When they filmed a test, they would make sure to have the cactus in the frame. The intention was that the cactus was of a sort that was only common in a portion of the desert (I believe Bob said that it was a saguaro cactus), thus leading anyone viewing the film to think that it had been filmed in Arizona or California, when it had actually probably been filmed in Nevada.

I asked Bob whether or not they made sure that the trailer was not visible in the shot, and he responded that this seemed like the obvious move, but, with it being the Army and the 1950s, he couldn't be sure of that. I also asked if I would have been likely to have seen any of the footage he shot, as I didn't recall seeing any cacti in the more famous footage of bomb tests, and he said that it seemed unlikely. There were days, if not weeks, worth of test footage shot, and most of it is either still classified, or simply is less dramatic (and therefore less likely to be shown in documentaries) than the better-known footage that probably all of us have seen.

Nonetheless, Bob told us that the sight of a bunch of soldiers tooling through the desert in a truck and armed only with cameras, with a fake cactus in tow, made for quite a sight.

Personally, I am amused by my own mental image of a high-ranking officer, let's say it's a colonel, demanding that the cactus be placed "just so" in the image, to give the film that special je ne sais quoi, before ordering a coproal to push a button and blow the shit out of a desert rock pile.

Again, I don't believe the story. Bob was a great guy, and a fantastic storyteller, but I got the impression that more than a few of the things he related to us were tall tales. Nonetheless, if we're going to live in a world with nuclear testing, then I can at least wish that the testing would, somehow, somewhere, involve an artificial cactus.






*Field school is something of an annoying rite of passage for most archaeologists. Fieldschools are projects in which the head archaeologist, usually attached to a college or university, charges students so that they may work on his/her project. It's a way of getting field experience in an environment that is supposedly geared towards teaching the students how to perform their tasks. The field school I attended was absolutely geared towards teaching, but others are actually just a way for a researcher to get free labor and the students may not learn much. So, if you are planning on going to field school, choose carefully.

**Admittedly, this was actually a legitimate concern. But simply saying that in the text of the post isn't nearly as funny as being sarcastic, and I'll usually side with the joke.

More Psychic Archaeology!

So, I am finally back from the field, and therefore able to write some blog entries.

Today, I just wanted to let you know something very, very important.

Sometimes we find odd things in the field. I have written about weird things found during fieldwork. Normally these items just seem odd or incongruous, but I believe that I am beginning to see a pattern now, and I am beginning to see how the Universe has chosen me to bring a great truth to you.

When I was recording sites in Kern County last week, I came across these two items within the sites:




Combine these with my two previous experiences involving psychic archaeology, and it becomes clear: I have been put on the Earth to use archaeology as a method to spread the gospel of the one true messiah and savior of humanity!

ALL PRAISE TO URI GELLER! ALL SPOONS MUST BE BENT TO HONOR HIM!

Archaeology as Screwball Comedy

I was listening to the radio today (that is, the day that I wrote this, not the day that it drops into the feed) and hearing a show in which the host and guests discussed whether or not it matters if Hollywood acurately portrays various professions. Of course, an archaeologist wrote in to state that Holywood always gets archaeology wrong (although the writer succumbed to the usual false impression that only academic archaeology exists). But, it got me thinking, is it possible to accurately portray archaeology in a film or television show?

I have already made known my thoughts on whether or not public mis-perceptions of archaeology are a good or bad thing.

Although our jobs do sometimes require us to do adventurous things, most of our field time is spent doing slow and monotonous work, and our lab time is the same. Then, of course, there is the writing of reports, working out of budgets, and bickering with clients. In other words, for every adventurous moment that we have, there are thousands of moments that are simply not that interesting to anyone but us. So, while archaeologists figure prominently in adventure stories and action movies...well, that's just not even vaguely like the way that it actually is.

Of course, archaeologists also figure into horror stories, sci-fi stories, etc., usually in the role of Dr. Exposition - the guy who explains everything that is going on by deciphering ancient writings, knowing all there is to know about a wide variety of cultures, etc. etc. As much as I like the Dr. Exposition role, it's not accurate either.

I think that the first problem that comes into play is that, when you get down to it, archaeology is a job. Yes, it's a job that involves travel and discovery and ancient artifacts, but it is also a job that requires I-9 forms to be completed, W-2s to be sent at the end of the year, reports to be written, clients to be sought and bids to be won, timecards to be signed, budgets to be maintained, and a regular schedule either at the office or at the job site.

The vast majority of archaeology isn't fun, it's simply work. Those aspects of work that might be fun to watch involve the strange things that archaeologists say or do, the practical jokes that we play on each other, the conversations that we have about difficult clients (and, likewise, the conversations that our clients have about us are probably equally amusing), and the sometimes just plain weird discussions we have with government agencies (my favorite: I once spoke with someone at an agency who would not release the required parameters for a study until after the study in question had been completed...and they failed to see how this might inhibit the study being done). And what makes these things entertaining is the fact that they are frequently quite funny.

The next problem is that the parts of archaeology that are fun - seeing new places, digging into interesting sites, finding unexpected sites in weird places - are great to do, but they are difficult, if not impossible, to convey in images. And, again, much of what happens in these places that could be conveyed via television or movies is the archawologists bickering with each other as they get lost on their way to the new place, or realizing that the fact that they have found an interesting site means that they will have to continue living out of a crappy hotel for another few weeks, or the unexpected site makes so little sense that it inspires the archaeologists to start making up bizarre and goofy new hypotheses to explain it (a friend once joked that an entire site complex originated because someone was searching for a missing shoe).

In short, the things that might be fun to watch in archaeology involve the inter-personal strife and funny happenings that are common on any project. It resembles Arrested Development more than Raiders of the Lost Ark.

So, if the television and movie execs ever decided that they wanted to show the true "essence" of archaeology, they can foget adventure movies, sci-fi, "reality" shows, and all the rest. Archaeology can only accurately be portrayed as a screwball comedy.

Unitarian Jihad

I have read, this very day, of a new, frightening face to religious terrorism. Forget Al Qaeda, forget Timothy McVeigh, this new threat is far more serious. It's called Unitarian Jihad, and these people mean business. Follow this link to read more.

The most telling quotes:

Beware! Unless you people shut up and begin acting like grown-ups with brains enough to understand the difference between political belief and personal faith, the Unitarian Jihad will begin a series of terrorist-like actions. We will take over television studios, kidnap so-called commentators and broadcast calm, well-reasoned discussions of the issues of the day. We will not try for "balance" by hiring fruitcakes; we will try for balance by hiring non-ideologues who have carefully thought through the issues.

......


We are Unitarian Jihad, and our motto is: "Sincerity is not enough." We have heard from enough sincere people to last a lifetime already. Just because you believe it's true doesn't make it true. Just because your motives are pure doesn't mean you are not doing harm. Get a dog, or comfort someone in a nursing home, or just feed the birds in the park. Play basketball. Lighten up. The world is not out to get you, except in the sense that the world is out to get everyone.

Why are the media not talking about this? Why have they allowed themselves to be so cowed by the corrosive forces of political correctness to be unwilling to stand up and show Unitarianism for the threat it is?

If this group is not stopped, then we may all soon be over-run by reasonable, calm, intelligent people. We can not have that! The Unitarians must be stopped!