daikiki blogs

The many careers of Francesco Schettino

2012-01-23T19:47:00.000-08:00

A screed.

2010-10-25T20:46:00.000-07:00

Where will you be on November second? Where will you be in the days leading up to November second? Are you disappointed? Are you angry? Are you staying home? Are you insane?

Look - I get it. I really do. You were promised a unicorn and all you got was this lousy reform. I'd be pissed too. And now we're all collectively so pissed that we've decided to learn 'em a lesson. Our absence at the polling places will sure teach them. Our absence will teach them that we're fickle and self-absorbed and that the only way to win is to pander mercilessly to the lowest common denominator, to pretend that you're one of us and that you feel our pain and that, if elected, you'll immediately fix all of those things that you've been telling us so long bother us so much that we're about ready to start believing you. And then where will we be?

Remember the neocons? They thought they could reshape the world through wishful thinking and anger into a funnel that siphoned money away from we the people to them the plutocrats in exchange for a mere few hundred thousand human lives. Small price to pay when it's not your life, right? You thought they were bad, these jingoists, these hate filled white men in their -sometimes literal - ivory towers? You thought it was bad having to listen to the nonsensical justifications of men who would sell their mother for a juicy no-bid government contract? You thought it was torture listening to once-respected news outlets explaining why torture isn't torture?

Just wait until you see what's around the corner. Here comes the new class of Republicans and they're nothing like the old class. Oh no. They're so much worse. These new republicans. This newest branch on the evolutionary tree of wrongness doesn't even think they need to justify their wrongs. They are proud of their ignorance - proclaiming that our nation is a Christian one and that health care is an impossible burden and claiming that the rich deserve to be richer and that the poor deserve to starve. They demand that we spend, spend, spend on our military and on our failed wars and on our commercial incarceration factories, but they claim that we can't afford human compassion. They claim that we can't possibly find a way to care for our elders, our sick. That we can't teach our children. That we can't welcome our neighbors. That we can't trust. Can't give. Can't love. No we can't!

They demand accountability from the Democrats for the hideous wrongs the Republicans have inflicted upon us and the world over the last decades. They demand respect where none is due and deny respect well earned. They turn the world on its head every time they open their mouths. They claim that Democrats are spendthrift and Republicans are fiscally responsible even as they spend us into bankruptcy every time we give them the checkbook. They claim that we want government control where they want liberty even as they try to tell us where we can build our houses of worship and who we can wed and whether we become mothers and fathers.

Over and over we fall for it. The easily influenced are influenced and the sane are demotivated because we don't have our unicorns yet. And time and time again they take the finger, then the hand, then the arm, then the body, then the soul. They eat at us from the inside, making us so cynical that we can't distinguish between good and bad and so jaded we don't care. They make us believe that it can't get better. It can only get worse slower.

And now they stand at the brink of an epic victory - a refutation of human values and dignity that will echo through the ages. They will defeat us so soundly we will be afraid ever again to raise our voices - ever again to hope. Their misery will become everybody's misery. Their self-destructiveness will become the rule of the land once again. Government will be gridlocked for years just as we face our greatest challenges in a lifetime and down we will spiral into the long night. And they will crow victory.

Unless.

Unless we win. Unless we stand up and we fight. Unless we decide once and for all to reject the self-defeating rhetoric and create an environment where ideas can flourish and knowledge is held in the esteem it deserves and where we all know that we can win because we must.

We've been here before. We've won victories that with the gift of hindsight seem hollow. Sometimes it seems that every time we win we lose. Granted, politics are cyclical, but this isn't politics. This isn't even class war. This is survival. We must break the downward spiral and the only way to do that is to wrench away power from those who live for nothing else. Every time we win, we lose. We try to change the world and get caught up in the rhetoric of those who don't want anyone to win. The fearmongers grow rich over the backs of the disgruntled and the hopeless and they will never be sated.

Two years ago we stood at a crossroads. We chose overwhelmingly to wrest the baton of power from those who had abused it so cravenly. Now we have to decide whether we're going to let them take it back. We have to decide whether we should punish ourselves because the people we put into power didn't do enough to make our lives better. We need to decide whether we should stay home in protest of lack of progress, whether we should withhold our wholehearted support from those whose motives, while perhaps not entirely pure, are not utterly craven.

Who would learn a lesson from that? What would the lesson be? That we deserve to fail? That not enough progress is worse than no progress? That no progress is worse than regress? That up is down and black is white and hate is love?

We stand at a crossroads again. And we stand to lose a lot. But we stand to gain a lot too. We're not up against politicians any more. Our democracy stopped being a two party system years ago. The other party gave up. Now they're playing dirty. They're circumventing the people and going straight to our employers. They're trying to buy and lie their way into power and they're running on nothing. We've already defeated the Republicans. Now we're up against the fanatics. The crazies. We're up against people who plainly don't care if they tear the country apart, so long as they get their way. We're up against the people who don't care if they're wrong, so long as we pretend they're right.

In one week we can break them. We have the opportunity to wipe out these last vestiges of a failed system. We're up against the dregs here; people who, were it not for a media system that thrives on controversy and failure, would not get the time of day. We're up against people who think science is evil and people who think we should undo centuries of progress for the sake of purity.

It's not even a stretch. We don't need to change the world in a week. We just need to do our duty. We need to speak up. We need to be proud of our values. We need to be eloquent in our defense of them. We need to be convincing and unflinching and generous with our time and our money.

We must hold the line. This is their final charge. They've mustered all the crazy. They've resorted to open racism, religious intolerance, jingoism, and bigotry. They've played every card they have. This is their final gambit. If we hold the line we break them once and for all. If we hold the line we can start building a future for ourselves and our progeny.

Who knows? Maybe we'll end up in a world where our political choices are sane - a world where we can choose between different goods, rather than constantly fighting against stupidity and failure and ignorance.

But first we most hold the line.

I never write, I never call

2010-07-09T19:33:00.000-07:00

Now I'll be the first to admit that this is because nobody could care in the least whether I write or call. I'm just that uninteresting. In an attempt to remedy the situation, I give you a theoretical CEDA propaganda poster that gave me a good chuckle:

Apparently my camera is a rain god.

2010-01-18T19:33:00.001-08:00

A writer who died before his time once described a rain god; a man who was constantly pissed off because wherever he went, it rained. I think my camera may be a rain god. The last couple times I've pulled it out*, the heavens opened up on me. I did get to try out the rain cover on my new camera bag, but it was a close call.

*: While not in the middle of a desert

An object lesson in awful site design - by Microsoft

2009-12-15T19:20:00.000-08:00

My Xbox is broken. No surprise there. It's happened before and it'll happen again. It's all part of the Microsoft experience. But that's not my gripe. My gripe is, as indicated in the subject, about site navigation. You see, I'd like to know the status of my repair, so off I trundle to xbox.com.

Look! There's a button marked "Check Repair Status", in a dropdown right under the support tab. Clicking it does not, however, allow me to check my repair status. That's okay, because now there's a link called "Check Repair Status" on the left navigation bar, under console management.

I'll just click that. Surely doing so will display my repair status? Nope. But that's okay. Now there's a blue button in the middle of my screen that says "Check Repair Status".

I click it. Finally! My repair status!

My repair is. . .in progress. Not a big surprise, I suppose, but after all that buildup I would have hoped for something a bit more exciting.

Voyager 2 Where Are You Now?

2009-11-19T20:00:00.000-08:00

Voyager 2 where are you now
Looking back at home and weeping
Cold and alone in the dark void
Winding down and bleeping
Ever dimmer ever thinner
Feebly cheeping in the solar winds

Costco Hard

2009-11-05T19:09:00.000-08:00

I have, on four separate occasions in the last year or so, attempted to purchase (with money!) a Costco card. In each of these four attempts I have been foiled.

Now you may think that my willingness to partake in an arrangement where I give somebody fifty dollars in exchange for nothing other than the right to give them even more money in exchange for goods and services would be gladly welcomed and even facilitated by the party receiving the fifty dollars. You would be wrong. To the contrary, they seem quite intent on preventing it.

The first time I attempted to become a card carrying member of the Costco family was somewhere halfway through January. I was in need of large amounts of liquor and it had been brought to my attention that the establishment may be willing to purvey exactly that. So in I walk. There's a tired looking lady at the door wearing the type of vest nobody in their right mind would wear were it not for the fact that they'd be fired from their job if they didn't. Before she can even muster up the corporate mandated cheer required to welcome me to their retail paradise I ask her where the membership desk is. She points me at the customer service desk. Or rather, she points me at a teeming mass of people mulling about what I presume to be the customer service desk carrying all manner of inexplicable crap stuffed inexpertly back into boxes and bags. I do mean mass, by the way. There were a hundred people in line if there was one. "Surely you're mistaken," I proffer, "That would appear to be the return line."

Long story short: She wasn't mistaken. It was the return line, and also the membership line and, possibly, the bathroom line. Since I didn't want to die of old age standing behind the type of people who buy things for the sole purpose of deciding that they shouldn't have and blaming other people for it, I decided to just go to Target instead. On my way out I briefly entertained the thought that forcing new people to brave the teeming masses of plebs with defective or perceived defective or just didn't want it Chinese goods might be some kind of hazing ritual for new members, but I dismissed the thought. No big deal. Maybe it was just a busy day. I'll come back later.

A few months later, it's later. I have decided that it would be sensible to buy more than one day's worth of food at a time, so I decide to make a list of non-perishables that I regularly use and set out to buy a month's worth. So once again I head off to the local Costco. There's no line this time, so that's a positive. There is, however, a negative that rather more than offsets this limited blessing: There's also no Costco. It's gone. Completely. Not closed. Just gone. There's a patch of dirt where Costco used to be, surrounded by a desolate parking lot. The megamarket, it seems, was merely mega, and Costco desired a market that was rather more hyper than mega. So down it came, to be replaced eventually with the kind of building that one would suspect of housing a zeppelin or two had one not known better. Foiled again.

Attempt the third was fairly recent. Fall has come, and I hear that the place is open again. So off I trudge on a somewhat dreary Saturday afternoon to try once more to give these people my money. I should have suspected something when traffic was snarled a mile down the street, but I didn't quite manage to put two and two together. So, slightly delayed, I arrive at the site of the new Costco. Turning onto the parking lot I notice that the place is so large that one wouldn't be surprised to find for sale inside of it discounted four packs of smaller retail stores. The adjacent parking lot spans, I kid thee not, several acres. But in all those acres, there was not a single free parking spot. What was present was a sampling of the worst humanity has to offer. People blocking exits, people stopping in the middle of a row if somebody nearby even looked like they might soon consider freeing up a precious parking spot. People walking obliviously down the middle of the road, rug rats in tow. It took me fully twenty minutes; not to find a spot, but simply to get off the lot again. I think I left a part of my soul there though, because I've felt empty inside ever since being exposed to that carnival.

This neatly brings us to this evening. It's a weekday, I figure. It won't be quite that busy, and I really do need a bunch of the kind of merchandise Costco is likely to provide in packs of several dozen. Right. Off we go again. My first impression was that I may well be successful this time. There's ample parking, the building is - well - present. It's not on fire or anything. Having parked, my spirits rise even further. I can see the membership desk from here, and there are no more than half a dozen people standing there. I briefly wonder about the woman who was obviously trying to return a Christmas tree in November, but no matter. I've been to the California DMV before and suffered very little permanent damage, so I'm pretty sure I can brave this. Feeling a slight giddiness I set foot inside the building. Out of politeness more than anything else, I ask the dumpy middle-aged woman at the entrance whether the counter directly in front of me, the one that is obviously the member services counter is, in fact, the member services counter. She assures me that it is, but also informs me that I just entered through the exit. I take this for noted and attempt to continue on my way. Dumpy, however, has other plans. "You have to go through the entrance," she admonishes. I stop, look around. The entrance is an identical fifteen feet wide doorway immediately next to the exit, separated by a two foot wide pillar. "Over there?" I ask.
"That's the entrance," she says.
It should be noted that, if I were to do as she asked, I'd have to take two steps back, walk around the two foot wide pillar, and walk back inside, passing the exact place I'm standing now on my way to the membership desk. I decide I need some clarification. "So you want me to go back outside, come back in through there, and the come back here?"
"Yes," she says,"because that's the entrance."

Suffice it to say that I didn't take an amusing little walk around the pillar. Nor did I leap through a burning hoop or hop up and down making arf sounds in exchange for a raw herring. Instead I went to K-mart, where they let me in without so much as a verbal test, accepted money in exchange for goods and not once tore the building down.

I assume we're all familiar with the Philosopher's Drinking Song?

2009-10-19T22:15:00.000-07:00

Immanuel Kant was a real pissant
who was very rarely stable.
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
who could think you under the table.
David Hume could out consume
Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel,
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
who was just as sloshed as Schlegel.

There's nothing Nietzsche couldn't teach ya
'bout the raisin' of the wrist.
Socrates himself was permanently pissed.

John Stuart Mill, of his own free will,
after half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.
Plato, they say, could stick it away,
'alf a crate of whiskey every day!
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle,
and Hobbes was fond of his Dram.
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart:
"I drink, therefore I am."

Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed;
A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's pissed.

Dear Citibank. . .

2009-10-15T18:58:00.000-07:00

It's just not working out between us. A few years ago, when first we met, you were a different credit card. You were slimmer for one; I know it's not fair to play on your self esteem, but it has to be said. When I first saw you, you fit into a slim size 7%. And you promised it wasn't going to be an introductory thing either. I wouldn't say it was love at first site, but I was in the market and you were available. A little too available maybe. I suppose that, even back then, I might have seen this coming.

A year later you and I had been on a few dates, to Fry's mostly, but I took you out to some nice dinners too. I honestly wasn't too surprised when you wrote me and announced that you were now a size 10%. I wasn't too peeved either. I kept you around to help me maintain credibility with the other credit providers, and besides, even at 10% you were only costing me a couple bucks a month.

Then, last year, the crisis hit. You and I had been on one or two dates the year before, mostly because you indulged me in my preoccupation with expensive optics. When the shit started hitting the fan I thought maybe you'd come by, tell me you still loved me. Perhaps even announce that you'd lost some weight. After all, I hadn't once forgotten our anniversary, even though it seemed to move around unpredictably from month to month. That was a little bit suspicious, by the way. It was as if you were trying to make me forget and then. . .then what? Anyway - come by you did, but not to praise my loyalty or punctuality. No, you came by to announce that you were now a size 20%. Twenty! You looked like a blancmange!

I have a confession to make. I keep you around not because of the services you provide, but to remain attractive to the other credit cards. And who knows? Maybe someday I'd want to convince a mortgage to come home with me and you know how picky they can be. So I figured "What the hell?" and kept you around. Twice a year or so I'd take you out to dinner and the rest of the time I'd dutifully write you a check on our anniversary. Always for about twice what you asked because &mdash let's be honest — I know that if you ask for X and I only give you X you'll find a way to make me regret it.

And then times got a bit lean and I couldn't take you out to dinner anymore. But still I never forgot our anniversary and I kept you around. You didn't seem to mind, although I didn't hear from you very often. I figured maybe you needed some time alone with those nice men from the FTC who kept coming by to look at your kitchen. You know, where you did the cooking.

Things went on for a while like that, neither of us paying the other much attention. Business was getting better though and I remembered that I needed to use you ever so often to stay appealing. Also there was a particularly nice piece of glass I was interested in, so I decided to take you out on the kind of date we hadn't been on in years. It was exhilarating and we both got what we wanted. You got attention and a reason to bug me for a little bit more attention every month, and I got the respectability I apparently need and a nice piece of glass to boot.

That was two days ago. I just got home and saw your letter in the mail. I almost didn't open it. Most of the time when you write you're trying to sell me insurance or offering me minuscule discounts to Paul Anka concerts in states I'd never dream of considering thinking about entertaining the possibility of visiting. I don't know why I decided to open this one. Maybe it was the way the envelope didn't have a single starburst on it; not one exhortation encouraging me to urgently open the letter. Not so much as a single exclamation mark. It was almost as if you didn't want me to open your letter.

But open it I did. And I guess I really shouldn't be surprised to read what you wrote. You're a size 30% now. I guess you were waiting for the right moment. Waiting for me to show just the slightest sign of weakness. Well. You sprung your trap. I suppose you think you have me by the gonads. Oh sure - I can opt out of your massive increase in girth, but where would that leave me? You'd be forever surly until you went away completely and I would never again enjoy the few benefits you did offer. No. That's not the way. Here's the deal. When you open your mail tomorrow, you'll find that I've paid you off. Completely. No more anniversaries. No more nagging. And thirty percent of nothing is — let me think; times three, carry the zero — nothing. You overplayed your hand. You tried to trick me. And now you're going in the box. Don't get me wrong. I'm not letting you go. I still need you and the respectability you provide me in the eyes of the other credit cards. It's just that you'll never get another penny out of me for the favor.

Welcome to credit card purgatory, bitch.

Stereo Photography is Keen

2009-08-31T19:07:00.001-07:00

A few years ago I realized that taking a stereo photograph of a stationary object is as trivial as taking a picture, locking the settings, moving your camera a few inches to the left, and taking the same picture again. The first shots I took I used a tripod and a ruler laid against the front of it and it worked out fairly well. Unless you have a controlled environment, though, this is all really elaborate and burdensome. Some years later, I thought to myself, "How precise do I really need to be?" Turns out you can get a fairly decent 3D effect freehand. It's pretty simple, actually. Stand squarely in front of your subject with your feet about a foot and a half apart. Favor your left foot. Frame your shot and lock the settings, Take the pic. Shift your weight over to your right foot and take the shot again. Mission accomplished.

As far as looking at the things goes, you have a few options, two of which require no special tools, and one of which requires no special viewing skills. The first is called the cross eyed viewing method:

It's not hard to view one of these once you've worked out the technique. Fundamentally it's the same technique used to view those old 3D steganographs - you simply relax your eyes and slowly cross them, as if you were focusing on something in the middle distance between the screen and your face, until the left and right images merge. It's kinda headache inducing, but it works well.

The other technique, something that I briefly thought I'd discovered myself, is to simply alternate between the two images and let the viewer's brain fill in the blanks. It's a bit iffy for pics with a lot of depth, and not much less headache inducing than the cross-eye method, but it's pretty cool for its ability to convey the illusion of a 3D image with no special tools.

By the way, I composited the animated gif using Stereo Photo Maker; it's a pretty good dedicated tool that also does anaglyphs and the like. Check it out if you want to try this at home.

It goes without saying that I am easily amused.

2009-08-26T20:33:00.000-07:00

Can you run with our crowd? - mmm4w - 58

We've been through a lot together, the three of us, but there's something missing. We didn't really realize it when we first met, but then again, we didn't really meet under the best of circumstances. In fact, we all ended up in the hospital that same night. Adversity brings people together, I guess, and we've been inseparable since.

I'm the independent type. I've seen my share of humanity and I'm not entirely sure whether we're better off without them. I know how to take care of myself, but I'd rather have someone I trust cover my back any day of the week. My friends are . . . well, they're eclectic. They're also younger than me and don't seem to share my dislike of running up and down stairs. You'd think I'd get along a bit better with the biker, but he's just such an asshole. He's always whining about something. I know that, deep down, he's just afraid, and he's a great guy to have around in a pinch, but he's just not an easy person to spend time with. My other buddy is a bit more easy going - he tends to overdress though, and he is a little bit arrogant. I know he used to work in an office - computers, I think. He hangs on to his dignity, but deep down he knows we're all he has.

Let me be clear here. Things tend to get physical with us. It's not always the intent, but it always ends up happening. We went camping in Pennsylvania a while back. One moment it was all picnic baskets and moonlit nights, but one thing led to another and before we knew it we were hip deep in tongues and fingernails and bodily fluids. I'm not saying this to brag. I just want you to know what you're getting into.We're not looking for a delicate woman, and we're definitely not looking for somebody who can't take care of herself. What we are looking for is somebody to complete our foursome. Somebody who can stand up for herself in a rough environment and preferably somebody with a wry sense of humor. We cover each others' backs, even if we seem gruff. A thick skin will definitely be an asset.

We're planning on going for a little trip soon - get out of town for a bit, you know. So, maybe, if you're into it, you can head down to the airport with us. Hell, if you got the grit, we'll even let you take point.

Felicia Yay!

2009-08-17T19:37:00.000-07:00

Point the first: There is nothing unlikeable about Felicia Day. Point the second: Clan Whedon bears responsibility for pretty much all the epic the internets have to offer these days.

Musings on a piece of vellum

2009-08-08T18:25:00.000-07:00

I picked this up last weekend and have been researching it off and on since. And by researching I mean "trying to read it." I'm not sure I'm doing terribly well.

It starts, "This Indenture of Defeazance made this seventh day of September in the Four and Twentieth year of the reign of our Sovereign Lord Charles the Second," but my reading comprehension kinda goes downhill from there.

What I have worked out is this: It's a defeasance, which would release the parties involved from an earlier contract. The agreement is between Richard Kirkby, 18th lord of Kirkby, Member of Parliament and Justice of the Peace, and his daughter Agnes (spinster). It pertains to a gift of 300 pounds given in trust to Richard by his wife's father, David Murray (According to "The Antiquities of Furness", David was a servant at the court of Charles I) as part of his last will and testament in 1658.

Richard was bankrupted in the first civil war, even losing his estate (but rewarded well by Charles 2 after the Restoration). It seems, however, he had no way to repay Agnes her three hundred pounds plus interest (566 pounds now). This document seems to nullify the debt, possibly in exchange for something already provided.Something to do with Boulton? A manor?

Whatever it actually says, it's a fascinating look into 17th century British history, and you can play along at home! I posted a great big version here.

Booyah!

2009-07-04T21:17:00.001-07:00

And it only took a bazillion attempts.

Commercials are pretty much word soup these days

2009-06-24T18:08:00.000-07:00

BWM would like you to know that

Performance now is all about logic.
That some cars cost as much as $1500 to maintain is one thing.
That others cost even more is quite another.
That a BMW costs you nothing to maintain, defies all logic whatsoever.
And in turn makes it the most logical choice of all.

It's English. . .I think. Those are English words, anyways. That they have no semantic meaning is another thing whatsoever. I understand what they're trying to say here - honestly I do, and I understand what they want you to hear as well. What they want you to hear is this:

Performance now is all about logic.
That some cars cost as much as $1500 to maintain is one thing.
That others cost even more is quite another.
That a BMW costs you nothing to maintain, defies all logic whatsoever.
And in turn makes it the most logical choice of all.

Thing is, what they're actually saying is that some cars cost less than a specific amount to maintain over an unspecified amount of time and some don't. Also that performance is logic and providing a service contract with your cars isn't logical, and therefore, presumably, not performance. I'm not quite sure about that last bit though, since defying all logic is apparently quite logical.

I used to think that the people who made these things were really, really smart, and that they chose their words with great care, but I'm starting to suspect that they're just spouting gibberish and don't even realize how retarded their nonsense ends up sounding.

Riots in Tehran, Crickets on Cable

2009-06-13T17:49:00.000-07:00

I have been completely captivated by what's been going on in Iran for the last day or so - glued to my screen, actually. If you haven't been paying attention, or if you've been paying attention to the wrong sources, you'd think that there was an election, Ahmadinejad won a new term and there were some people mildly upset. The local media here is saying things like "World Reacts to Iran's Disputed Election" and "Ahmadinejad hails election as protests grow" on their sites and dedicating little if any time on their broadcasts.

What's really happening over there seems to be much more profound and much more brutal. The only problem is that there are no official sources, no authoritative reporters. There are, however, people twittering from Tehran, people posting images of bloodied protesters and recounting the disregarding of ballots and the abducting of dissidents. Nothing's clear right now, except that what is happening in Iran bears little semblance to what the major American news networks are reporting. According to the internet, Tehran is on fire, but according to the news, Tehran is mildly peeved. You be the judge.

Imagine hundreds of people talking about football!

2009-06-06T17:43:00.000-07:00

An early 90s news report on a new phenomenon named "Internet", where people come together to discuss interesting topics in a polite, well educated environment. Choice quote: "There's not a lot of cursing or swearing."

Adam Savage on Failure

2009-06-06T11:03:00.000-07:00

Adam Savage was one of the speakers at this year's Maker Faire; his speech was on the subject of (professional) failure and how it helped form his career. Well worth the time: Adam's speech in full

Omar and the Joy of Life

2009-05-25T11:41:00.000-07:00

I have to assume that the naked guy trying to fly a kite from his odd little enclosed balcony is Omar and that he's enjoying life. Taken in the Tenderloin, if memory serves. It was a long time ago.

Yosemite Falls

2009-05-18T20:17:00.000-07:00

More Yosemite pics on my flickr feed, of course. Also, Pete made a collage, as one does.

The best tilt-shift time-lapse monster truck rally you'll see all day

2009-05-11T23:23:00.000-07:00

Metal Heart from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

More nature

2009-05-10T18:32:00.000-07:00

Or a decent facsimile thereof - I'm not sure that a butterfly colony inside a glass dome inside a museum inside a park can be counted as nature.

Pictures of things

2009-05-05T09:18:00.000-07:00

By noon or so it was clear that my clients had all taken the day off, so I decided to get out of the house for a bit. Pictures ensued

More on Flickr

Mashup Time!

2009-05-04T09:59:00.001-07:00

Pete (who has a new site), posted one of those Apple silhouette ad parodies that absolutely everybody has seen. Hence this monstrosity - or is it a meta-monstrosity? Anyways, I went and made t-shirts out of them. Buy them, that I may eat.

Even my henchmen think I'm crazy

2009-04-11T22:51:00.000-07:00

Jonathan Coulton is teh awesome

Also: Skullcrusher Mountain

My new favorite quote

2009-04-01T00:04:00.000-07:00

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

Kung Fu Monkey

A worthy cause

2009-03-22T16:45:00.000-07:00

An anti-prohibition march, I suspect.

And what do we do when springtime rolls around?

2009-03-21T14:16:00.001-07:00

Plants are in - tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and cilantro this year. Hopefully I'll do a slightly better job this time around - last year the strawberries got strawberry mites, the cucumbers got sudden cucumber death syndrome, the onions got acute onion dwarfism, and the tomatoes got birds. The peppers were nice though.

Happy vernal equinox!

2009-03-20T18:18:00.000-07:00

Here's your Ostara flower. I was at the zoo yesterday taking pictures and admiring the unique sights and smells zoos always have on offer and, because I'm weird that way, I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to take a picture of this one flower. The people walking by must have thought I was quite mad, but that's okay. Cuz I am.

When we were very young

2009-03-09T20:17:00.000-07:00

When I was eight, I played outside. I rode my bike to the seven eleven, where I bought comics and slushees. My friends and I built underground forts in a vacant lot*, yet somehow I didn't once get murdered by a stranger. So this struck a chord.

Some days, we’d go exploring in the woods. Our minds full of fantastical stories of bad guys chasing us, we decided we must build a tree house. So we gathered up scrap pieces of old wood, rusty nails pulled out of rotting pieces of equipment, and a hammer someone nicked from their father’s toolbox. Then we’d nail this crap to a tree.
[. . .]
And we survived.
Hell, we didn’t just survive. We flourished.

The world is no more dangerous than it was thirty years ago. The parents bubble wrapping their kids today spent their own childhood playing with discarded building materials and eating bugs. So what gives?

*Pits covered with cardboard, technically, but who's counting?

Patrick Stewart's Magnum Opus

2009-03-02T23:15:00.001-08:00

Sesame Street, in case you hadn't guessed.

Death by hanging - the ebay way

2009-02-02T13:17:00.000-08:00

ebay's probably cheaper, but I don't want to get scammed. On the other hand, I don't have to leave my house. Then again, Target's hanging deaths may be of questionable quality. So many difficult choices to make, so little time.

This, though, is a thing of beauty

2009-01-24T15:28:00.000-08:00

I give you The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello, a 2005 animated short that has a marvelous steampunk feel to it. Do click the little HQ button in the corner and watch it in full screen - the tiny window doesn't do it justice.

The official site has some nice desktops and a screensaver.

My First Singles

2009-01-13T00:00:00.000-08:00

I first became aware of the existence of popular music in second grade, and I somehow associate each and every one of these songs with carpooling to school in 1983. I and some classmates whose names I simply can't remember would carpool to school in my mother's 1978 Buick LeSabre and I guess these kids - one of them was named James, I think - knew much more than I about worldly things. They somehow convinced my mother to play the local FM rock station. That was pretty much the end of it - within months I had a largish pile of those orange and yellow RCA singles. It was all innocent enough, but little did I know that a decade later I'd be scrounging around flea markets offering to perform fellatio on random strangers in exchange for early Bowie picture discs. And now - now it seems quaint to remember a time when music took up physical space. Anyway - here, then, are my first five singles.

Styx - Mister Roboto

It took me two decades to work out what "domo arigato" meant. All that time I thought they'd lost their robot.

Toto - Africa

The Clash - Should I Stay or Should I Go?

This one actually held up pretty well - much better than the other ones.

Mountain - Mississippi Queen

I still don't know what you mean. I checked wikipedia, but the song has the single most clinically offputting entry ever:

Early in the song, he compliments her lovemaking skills (or admits his lack thereof) by stating "...she taught me everything", then goes on to say she was a dancer who "moved better on wine". The singer continues, saying that she had asked him to be her man to which he replies, "I'd do what I can". He evidently took her up on her offer as the next line says . . .

Steve Miller Band - Abracadabra

My parents always seemed fairly uncomfortable when I sang this - not just because I sing so badly that Amnesty International has formally protested about me doing so in public. It would be a few more years before I worked out why. Frankly I just like the cool noises about halfway through.

A semi-comprehensive list of free museum days in the San Francisco bay area

2009-01-12T13:02:00.001-08:00

I couldn't find one of these, so I made it myself. Feel free to contact me if you have a museum to add. Also, not that this list does not contain museums that are always free or only free to certain patrons.

The sad story of the Kings Inn

2009-01-10T19:02:00.000-08:00

This blighted property just off Reno's main drag has been boarded up for a while. It's not prime real estate - about as close as you can get though. It's right across from the old Masonic lodge, right off Virginia where it used to cross the railroad, and it's a stark reminder of just how long Reno has been in decay. This seven story hotel and casino - hardly a marvel of architectural invention - was probably doomed from the beginning, though. Constructed in 1973, the place opened in 1974 - the hotel did, at least. The gaming license took another year ^[1].

Only five years later, the place filed for bankruptcy, with the casino closing in 1982 and the hotel in '86. That was 23 years ago. It's looked pretty much just like this ever since. The building is condemned, of course. There were plans to renovate the place a few years ago, but nothing came of it. I almost feel sorry for the poor building. Not that it's especially attractive or worthy of my pity, but to spend two thirds of your existence as nothing more than a cautionary tale to those who wish to follow in your footsteps is not an enviable fate.

What's odd to me is that a place like this, in the middle of a largish city, can just sit there for decades, completely ignored, while land is so expensive these days that a person earning an average wage can't even afford a modest home. The law of supply and demand just doesn't apply here, apparently.

As an aside, if you have anecdotes, pictures or memorabilia from the Kings Inn, I'd really like to hear from you. For reasons I can't adequately explain, I'm fascinated by the place and would like to know what it was like.

^[1]: The Rise of the Biggest Little City. Kling & Melton, 1999

The biggest little hellhole in the world.

2009-01-06T15:19:00.000-08:00

I guess it goes without saying that Reno isn't what it once was. The advent of Indian gambling in California has really thrown a wrench in the works of the city that once prided itself on the fact that it was. . .erm. . .closer to the bay area than Vegas, I guess. Look, let's face it. That's the only thing the place ever had going for it in the first place. It was always just a pale shadow of Vegas, and it felt like it was in decline all the way back in the seventies.

It's starting to get really bad now. The number of operating casinos is about the same as the number of shuttered ones, and the ones that are still open are starting to look pretty ratty, to be honest. Some of the closed ones have been boarded up for a decade, and some of them have been turned into condos. Great timing, that.

Still, the fact that so much of downtown hasn't been seriously updated in half a century makes for some pretty cool photo ops. I'll be adding some more as I get them edited.

Happy effing new year

2008-12-31T23:00:00.000-08:00

I'm just glad this one's over, frankly. I suppose it's possible that next year could be worse, but that would be some especially fucked up shit^[1].

I have some resolutions that I guess I'm going to share with whichever poor sod amongst you accidentally visits my blog. Of course, I'm no different from you bastards, so I'll stop implementing them in about a week and a half, stop feeling guilty about not implementing them towards the end of January, and forget all about them by the second week of February.

1: I'm going to use my powers for good.
2: I'm going to take pictures of more people and things. Some of them may not suck.
3: I'm going to travel more. Just because business is slow doesn't mean I can't spend money like a drunk sailor^[2].
4: I'm going to stop suffering fools. You know who you are.
5: I'm going to watch more awesome 80s video clips.
6: I'm going to master playing the infected.
7: I'm going to make visiting the library a habit.
8: I'm going to hone my mockery skills.
9: I'm going to write a Fallout 3 mod.
10: I'm going to embrace my inner dadaist.
11: Purple infinity houseboat haphazard.

There you have it. My resultions for 2k9. How about you?

-D

^[1]: Yo.
^[2]: Actually, it does.

Coal can do that?

2008-12-30T10:21:00.000-08:00

I somehow ended up on a clean coal propagandist site where I found a somewhat misleading datasheet. So I figured I'd fix it. The original can be found here. Click to embiggen.

More amazing covers

2008-12-26T19:31:00.000-08:00

Tori does the Police

Tori does Nirvana

Nirvana does Bowie

Bowie does the Pixies

As a kite

2008-12-26T19:15:00.001-08:00

The oft parodied Shat in his most oft (oftest?) parodied performance. It's worse than anything you could imagine.

Can you imagine spending three decades trying to outlive that? For the record, if you're going to cover Rocket Man, this is how to do it:

Ukuleles for the win!

Looks like they got Pete

2008-12-14T17:31:00.001-08:00

Tragic. But he should have been more careful. I tried to warn him.

Pretty quick reflexes, though

2008-12-14T17:26:00.001-08:00

I post this without further comment

On the internet, nobody can tell you you're an idiot

2008-12-12T21:18:00.001-08:00

The internets are a beautiful things. They allows people to discuss the most obscure interests with people anywhere in the world without embarrassment or discomfort. The downside of this is that the internets allow people to discuss their delusions with like minded individuals anywhere in the world, and that it's insanely easy to filter out any voices of sanity that could possibly break people's bubble. Or dent it. Or point at it and laugh.

Gang Stalking World, for example, is dedicated to supporting people who are constantly followed around in public by random people, for no apparent reason.

Gang Stalking is experienced by Targeted Individuals as psychological attack, that is capable of immobilizing and destroying a target over time. The covert methods used often leave no evidence to incriminate the Civilian Spies.^[1]

Go on. Google it. You know you want to. It should also be pointed out that, in my imagination at least, multistalkervictims.org has an ongoing rivalry with gangstalkersworld. You see, multistalkingsvictims.org was founded by the ex-lover of the founder of gangstalkingworld.com because she caught him cheating with the founder of planetgangstalking.com^[2]. He accuses her of stealing trade secrets and they're embroiled in ongoing litigation. It's all very sordid. In my imagination. In my defense, at least I know that I'm making shit up. These poor sods don't.

^[1]: Note to the world: You can't capitalize words just because you like them. Stop it.^[3]
^[2]: planetgangstalking.com doesn't exist. I know that this is a crushing blow to you, but you'll just have to deal with it.

^[3]: Unless you're A.A. Milne, in which case I think it's a Very Good Idea.

Bet you didn't know

2008-12-12T11:22:00.000-08:00

Bet you didn't know that your (somewhat cool but utterly useless) Xbox 360 avatar has a url. That's mine over there. He looks just like me, right down to the bags under the eyes. He used to look cooler, but that just made me feel bad. Full URL down beneath the pic.

https://msxb.hs.llnwd.net/avatar/avatar/[your gamertag]/avatar-body.png

Evolving Mona Lisa

2008-12-10T23:28:00.000-08:00

Roger Alsing's project, this. I just animated it. This is the result of a genetic program that evolves 50 semi transparent polygons into the Mona Lisa. Mind you, this is a tiny sample of nearly a million mutations, not all of which are beneficial.

I ended up having to put this in a frame on another server because blogger apparently doesn't like Javascript. What's that all about?

Jonathan is my hero

2008-12-04T02:11:00.000-08:00

The world's oldest turtle is 176, but

Despite his old age, locals say he still has the energy to regularly mate with the three younger females.

You da man, Jonathan!

It's funny because it sounds like boobs

2008-11-20T00:51:00.000-08:00

Introducing the Tiddy Bear:

It's real. I called the number and a Jamaican woman tried to take my order. We're all doomed.

More dissected lenses

2008-11-20T00:36:00.000-08:00

I guess it's kind of a thing, but I never cease to be amazed by the complexity and mechanical grace of lenses. This is a disassembled 17-85mm lens for a DSLR. This is rather more what the average consumer would expect the item to look like.

Many more pretty pictures here.

It would appear that the future has finally arrived

2008-11-13T15:08:00.000-08:00

While I was waiting for tacos last week, I caught a glimpse of the future, directly overhead. It's a zeppelin that recently went into service from Moffet Field - which is oddly appropriate. Hangar One was originally made for a zeppelin.

Oh, did I mention that thirty minute trips go for five hundred a pop? Bit rich for my blood.

It's about time

2008-10-13T11:34:00.000-07:00

In celebration of the 21st anniversary of cult sci-fi comedy series Red Dwarf, creator Doug Naylor has announced that TV’s favourite spaced out smeg heads will be returning to the small screen for four special breakout episodes.

Huh, what? How did I miss this?

The shows will broadcast in 2009, and if successful, could open the door for more Red Dwarf TV projects.

Linky

North Korean video arcade

2008-09-25T22:39:00.000-07:00

Yeah. It's as bad as you think it is. You should probably ignore the pithy commentary and just let the pictures sink in.

This kid is going to be so traumatized

2008-09-23T22:12:00.001-07:00

Somewhere out there, some poor kid is going to go trick or treating in a wall-e costume. Pictures will be taken, videos will be posted to youtube. A new meme will be born, and the kid will be scarred for life. You just mark my words.

A treatsie on the alphabetic principle

2008-08-24T22:30:00.000-07:00

I take it you already know,
Of tough and bough and cough and dough.
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, laugh and through.
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps.
Beware of heard, a dreadful word,
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
And dead - it’s said like bed, not bead,
For goodness’ sake, don’t call it ‘deed’!
Watch out for meat and great and threat,
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother.
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear.
And then there’s dose and rose and lose –
Just look them up – and goose and choose.
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword.
And do and go and thwart and cart –
Come, come, I’ve hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Why man alive!
I’d mastered it when I was five.

(Anonymous, via Wikipedia)

Followups

2008-08-15T21:39:00.000-07:00

Vivian, after a period of relative sanity during which she reminisced about her first cat and researched solar power companies, is off her meds again. See, Viv (I can call you Viv, right?) is of the opinion that she is still the rightful owner of the house from which she was evicted in April. She bases this belief on her conviction that the eviction proceedings were illegal and having sent the real estate agent (Earl) a check for 41 cents when the house was placed on the market after she was removed. So now she's upset again

Every time I drive past the Coventry home to which I hold title, I observe a car parked in the driveway. Its driver trespassed upon the property. So there is no point in asking who the owner is, because s/he knows I will prosecute.

I find its position in front of the garage door very annoying and don’t want to see it anymore. So if there is anyone who would like a free car, please help yourself.

She then goes on to theorize about which police officer - she knows them all - should arrest the trespasser currently living in her house

But the arresting officer should not be someone who tried to penetrate Linda St. Pierre after my garage door irritated her vagina. This would be a conflict of interest.

To my knowledge, three members of the Coventry Police Department are possible candidates for this assignment: Sargeant Ochtera, Lieutenant Solenski, and Officer Judy. I recommend the last.

Don't ask. Just don't ask. I've gone through her entire confusing, bizarre, and outright disturbing site and can't for the life of me work out what the garage door thing is about.

Meanwhile, in a different corner of whathefrakville, our good friend and mormon rapist Joyce Mckinney is in the news again. It would appear that her decision to go public with her cloned dogs wasn't of necessity the wisest. Especially since she's currently wanted for skipping bail - this is not a repeat - on suspicion of "criminal conspiracy to commit aggravated burglary and contributing to the delinquency of a minor". More precisely, she was arrested in Tennessee in 2004 for instructing a fifteen year old boy to burglarize a house so that she could use the proceeds to finance the purchase of a prosthetic leg for her three legged horse.

Go back and read that last bit again. You know you want to. I'll leave you with this priceless quote from her lawyer:

There was a strong aroma about her, and I told her this needed to be taken care of before I went to court with her.

Quite so

My head is spinning. . .but Earth isn't.

2008-08-14T09:47:00.000-07:00

Well, in their favor, they're not quite as insane as the flat-earthers, but as deadenders go, they're right up there with the young earth creationists and the confederation revivalists. Allow me to introduce you to what wikipedia diplomatically calls modern geocentrists.

These fine people are of the opinion that the earth is suspended by magnets like a cheap office tchotchke.

"An electromagnet and computerized sensor hidden in its
display stand cause the Earth to levitate motionlessly in the air."
Could God have engineered something like that for the real Earth?
The Bible and all real evidence confirms that this is precisely what He did, and indeed:
The Earth is not rotating...nor is it going around the sun.
The universe is not one ten trillionth the size we are told.
Today’s cosmology fulfills an anti-Bible religious plan disguised as "science".
The whole scheme from Copernicanism to Big Bangism is a factless lie.
Those lies have planted the Truth-killing virus of evolutionism
in every aspect of man’s "knowledge" about the Universe, the
Earth, and Himself.
Take your time.
Check it all out.
Decide for yourself.*

Bonus points for big bangism. I'll give them that. Of course, those silly little magnetic suspended earths don't actually hang motionless. Also, taking a telescope to one of the poles should disprove the earth-as-a-giant-office-toy theory fairly conclusively. The site does, however, feature many exclamation marks. And we all know that exclamation marks == truth;

Although the geocentrists themselves aren't really up to the challenge of explaining their pet theories, wikipedia takes a stab at it:

Some geocentrists believe that the difficulties in the types of theories discussed above can be overcome by rejecting some of the assumptions that were implicitly made in that discussion. In particular, some geocentrists believe that the universe is very much smaller than the billions of light years calculated by modern scientists. A detailed theory of this sort is not available, so its plausibility and freedom from internal contradictions cannot be evaluated here.

Okay, so I'll make an admission here. The geocentrists are, in a sense, right. The universe has no absolute frame of reference, but you're free to choose one yourself, I suppose. From the perspective of the moon, earth is indeed the center of the universe. Even Star Trek agrees, to a point.

That doesn't mean these people aren't fruitier than a gay pineapple. It just means that they are, almost entirely by accident, not completely and utterly wrong. And beside, how can you not mock these people? Niall Kilkenny, proprietor of the highly regarded reformation.org, referenced above, "just planned on doing a few brief articles on the Wonders of Bible Chronology. However the site just grew and grew until now it contains over 500MB's of Christ exalting, Rome busting information." Gee. Thanks Niall, or should I call you Champion of the Congregation of St. Candice? After all, he's related to "saint" Anne Boleyn. Or something. I guess that if god lets you declare the Earth stationary and immovable, you also get to canonize saints. It's like a divine twofer.

Where was I? Oh, right. The "logic" required to come to the conclusion that Earth is the stationary center of the universe. Here's a beautiful example; geostationary satellites.

"The elevated temperature of the sun causes it to transmit a high-level electrical noise signal to receiving systems whenever it passes behind the satellite and comes within the beams of the receiver antennas. [. . .] This is obviously very embarrassing to the heliocentric people because the sun is not supposed to move. The sun does move however, and twice a year it is over the equator.

Okay, Geocentrism one, Heliocentrism zero. Or something. Worst false dichotomy ever. "If you're against my idiotic concept, you must believe that the sun is at the center of the universe." Of course, what the dullard forgets to mention is that if the earth was stationary, geostationary satellites would plummet straight down to the ground.

I could go on about these nutjobs for hours, but I won't. Instead I'll leave you with this mind boggling ad-hominem directed at none other then Napoleon himself.

There is a definite conflict of interest in this Napoleon sponsored experiment to prove that the earth is turning....It might be a "coincidence" but the future emperor Napoleon was born on the island of Corsica in 1769. That was just 2 years after the Jesuits were dumped on that island when Pope Clement banned them with a perpetual decree never to be rescinded.

*: It should be noted that loonies commonly write paragraphs like this centered, with a different font, color, and size for each line, presumably as a way to project authority. Or mad HTML skillz. Either way, I've chosen not to reproduce the phenomenon

Torchwood to save earth from CERN

2008-08-10T23:46:00.000-07:00

The BBC will broadcast, on the occasion of the activation of CERN's Large Hadron Collider, a special radio episode of Torchwood on September tenth. They're calling it "Big Bang Day".

Torchwood set for 'Big Bang' day

Cloned dogs and mormon rape - this story's got it all.

2008-08-09T16:56:00.000-07:00

Mary pretty much nailed it when she mailed me this

this sooooooooooooo has to go on your page as ridiculously beyond high on the WTF meter! Really WTF?

So, a woman has her dead bulldog, incidentally named "Booger" cloned. This makes the news, and a picture of her, looking fairly insane, is published. This picture looks remarkably like Joyce McKinney, who, due to stand trial for kidnapping and then raping her erstwhile mormon lover in 1977, jumped bail by "donning a red wig and disguising herself as a member of a mime troupe". After fleeing Britain in 1978, Miss McKinney spent five weeks in hiding then resurfaced at the Hilton Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia, dressed as a nun. In the 1980s, she was arrested near Salt Lake City airport, where Mr Anderson worked, for allegedly harassing him. A rope and handcuffs were in her car.

Oh, and as if this weren't odd enough a story on its own, she was once Miss Wyoming. At least all the news outlets are parroting that facoid. According to Wikipedia, however, she wasn't.

My new favorite site

2008-08-06T15:07:00.000-07:00

Retro Thing is my new favorite site. Vintage gadgetry and the anoraks who hack it. What more could you ask for? Oh - right - Tardisses!

This one probably needs help

2008-07-29T19:00:00.001-07:00

My ongoing fascination with the nutjobs that roam free across the intarnets led me to Vivian here. I mean, she's nuttier than a packet of mixed nuts, and that's sad. But also hilarious. I only wish she had a real blog rather than a copy of frontpage.

It's hard to know where to start - on her index page she spins a fascinating tale of immigration agents at Heathrow trying to poison her asthma inhaler, weaving colleagues and acquaintances, politicians, and movie stars into a fascinating tale with her at the center.

The issues involving Prince William's demand of me to return to London are much more emotionally complicated. An admission that an investigation was necessary, could have led to the necessity that he must pay for my flight--his worst nightmare. He sends grapevine subliminal messages through friends and co-workers attempting to lure me with jewelry and other luxuries, while reminding me repeatedly that in five years I will be forty-years-old--over the reproductive hill. His pre-impregnation demand is that I tolerate his inability to handle my obtaining one of the jobs I have been offered in my field of anthropology. For me to obtain such status would threaten his masculinity. Because I do not accept his impregnation-prerequisites, I have been called a child-hater. He is unable to relate to me and to converse with me in any way. He insists I must chase after him. I prefer to go to work. He therefore classifies me as someone who places career before family. He believes he is doing me a favor by giving me this wonderful opportunity.

Attempted poisoning is an ongoing theme with Vivian. Recently an FBI agent broke into her house (it's okay, he does that all the time. Sometimes he moves small items, sometimes he rearranges her bathroom, and sometimes he has sex with her), and poisoned her Pepsi.

10:20 pm EST
Dear Ms. You-Know-Who-You-Are;
You have until midnight Eastern-Standard-Time to turn yourself into the FBI and explain:
WHO sent you to poison my Pepsi last night,
WHAT the poison was,
WHERE you are from,
WHEN you received the assignment &
HOW MUCH you were paid.
And the next time you trespass into my bedroom, I will spit my disease into your eyes.
[. . .]
The poison induced a heart attack. I remedied it with Solaray's Tart Cherry, Econugenics' Padma, and two birth control (i.e., estrogen) pills.

So that's how you cure a heart attack, huh? Good to know.

Subliminal messages are a recurring theme as well, with frequent messages from Donald Trump (who ruined her book deal with a vanity publisher), David Duchovny, (who has AIDS and cannot attain an erection without Vivian's subliminal help), and her dead mother:

Dear Mother;

I received your message--a file named GrandpaBo on my computer, with two images of a rectangle. These, of course, resemble the shape of the frame I selected for representation of the book written about Grandpa's lifetime of research as a urological surgeon.

[. . .]

I will try to finish it in time for Mother's Day.

Just when you think it's all yuks, you get to the good stuff - she spent most of 2007 fighting agains eviction, choosing, of course, to represent hereself, and basing her entire legal defense on the premise that the lawyers representing the plaintiff were doing so without the plaintiff's knowledge. We can all guess how that ended.

Monday April 07, 2008
I lost and have been given 41 hours to leave.
My father has suddenly turned into my hero. Helping me long distance.
My computer is going into storage. I don't know when I am going to begin transmitting again.

As I read this I start to feel sorry for the poor woman. Almost.

Guaranteed Presidential Pardon
for anyone who decides to follow
Biblical directive on
any non-human who practices Wicca.
In the pre-pardon proceedings of Court,
prosecutors can only invoke
the laws which prohibit
cruelty to animals.

Did I mention she's running for president? This is her campaign platform.

We've all seen this, right?

2008-07-25T14:53:00.000-07:00

I mean, I assumed that the whole world has now seen this clip, but it's come to my attention that this may not be the case. So here you go: Discovery's "I Love the Whole World" promo, featuring Stephen Hawking:

Just Words. My words though.

2008-07-23T09:41:00.000-07:00

So I'm reading a review of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, because my other option would be to actually do some work, and we mustn't let that happen, and I run across a line that seems vaguely familiar.

[. . .] it’s a tragicomic musical in three acts produced and directed by Joss Whedon

Why familiar? I wrote it, as an introduction for the Wikipedia entry, replacing the original, far less legible version. The writer grabbed some more background stuff from Wikipedia, which is fine, mind you; that's what Wikipedia is for - it's just a bit strange to see your own words bounced back at you at such an unexpected angle.

They probably believe that the turtle moves, as well.

2008-07-21T21:41:00.000-07:00

In my ongoing series extolling the biggest idiots on the intarwebs - or rather the most amusing ones, I give you the the International Flat Earth Research Society. These ones are right nutters. Unfortunately their founder, Charles Johnson, passed away about a decade ago, and the society hasn't been quite the same since. TalkOrigins has an interesting article which features the almost obligatory denouncement of science in general, and in the most up-is-down and black-is-white fashion possible:

We maintain that what is called 'Science' today and 'scientists' consist of the same old gang of witch doctors, sorcerers, tellers of tales, the 'Priest-Entertainers' for the common people. 'Science' consists of a weird, way-out occult concoction of jibberish theory-theology...unrelated to the real world of facts, technology and inventions, tall buildings and fast cars, airplanes and other Real and Good things in life; technology is not in any way related to the web of idiotic scientific theory. ALL inventors have been anti-science.

They've got some good theories, too. Of course, gravity doesn't exist, cuz a flat earth has no mass (or something). But why don't we fall off the planet? Thank you for asking. The answer is obvious, of course - we're accelerating upwards at 9.8 m/s^2, and have been forever*. They're not quite clear on why, of course. God, probably. Of course, they base their - interesting - ideas on what they consider to be a literal interpretation of the bible.

I sometimes call myself the Last Iconclast. Science is a false religion, the opium of the masses. I myself count it as a begining of Sanity to confess 'the creation proves there was a Creator' so a God or Creator...Exists. From a life-time of study, of seeking out a proving things, from the study of 6,000 years of recorded history, from observation, from experience, from Common Sense Observation, have concluded the 10 Commandments are in fact good Laws of Living and Behavior for oneself and all in contact with you.

Of course, it's commonly known that, until the end of the middle ages, the earth was widely considered to be flat. That's a lie. The earth has been known to be a sphere since the sixth century BC and even throughout the middle ages, when so much knowledge was lost, the earth was known to be round.

* 6000 years**

** At which rate we're now going six thousand, one hundred and eighty-five times the speed of light. Up yours, Einstein.

Doctor Horrible is full of win

2008-07-18T16:33:00.000-07:00

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is exceedingly awesome. If the name itself isn't enough to convince you, please consider the following: It's a musical in three acts about a blogging supervillian wannabe, distributed exclusively over the internets.

The great equalizer

2008-07-17T20:04:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite side effects of the internet is that it gives the loonies and the nutjobs and the schizophrenics and the outright wrong the same platform it gives the sane. Allow me to introduce you to Gene Ray and his amazing Time Cube. I'd explain it to you, but that would involve it being explainable. Allow me to quote, instead:

-1 * -1= +1 is WRONG, it is academic stupidity and is evil. The educated stupid should acknowledge the natural antipodes of +1 * +1 = +1 and -1 * -1 = -1 exist as plus and minus values of opposite creation - depicted by opposite sexes and opposite hemispheres.

When the theory you're about to read requires that you accept an entirely new concept of math, you know you're in for a ride. It gets better though.

When the Sun shines upon Earth, 2 - major Time points are created on opposite sides of Earth - known as Midday and Midnight. Where the 2 major Time forces join, synergy creates 2 new minor Time points we recognize as Sunup and Sundown. The 4-equidistant Time points can be considered as Time Square imprinted upon the circle of Earth. In a single rotation of the Earth sphere, each Time corner point rotates through the other 3-corner Time points, thus creating 16 corners, 96 hours and 4-simultaneous 24 hour Days within a single rotation of Earth - equated to a Higher Order of Life Time Cube.

Go on - check it out. You know you want to.

Santa on Santa Violence on the Rise

2008-07-10T15:28:00.000-07:00

When Santas fight, we all win! The Amalgamated order of Real Bearded Santas is on the defense as the Red Suit Society and the Fraternal Order of Santas try to muscle in on its turf. The chairman fears for his life and has instructed his family, "that, if anyone looks like Santa, run."

My fork is, apparently, nutritious and delicious

2008-07-09T16:59:00.000-07:00

The cafetaria at my office recently introduced new cutlery. In and of itself, this is exactly the kind of useless, tripe, and pedantic news you'd expect some nobody to post on his blog just to fill up space.

Fuck

No. Wait. There's more. See, this cutlery is different. It's hard to tell why. It's a bit thicker than normal disposable cutlery, and matte - feels a bit rough. So I'm idly examining it while I wait for the clock to hit five when I discover that the words "made from plants" are embossed on the thing. Turns out they are - potato starch, to be exact, mixed with soy oil. Not only are they biodegradable, they're apparently actually compostable and, in theory, at least, even edible. I may have to give actually eating one a miss until they come up with a salt and vinegar version.

There is no such thing as too much Futurama

2008-07-06T18:12:00.000-07:00

Oh but this is a pretty pic

2008-06-30T22:25:00.000-07:00

I know, on an abstract level, that camera lenses are intricate and delicate things, but to see them meticulously cut in half rather drives the point home, don't you think?

That's a relief

2008-06-23T14:25:00.000-07:00

Our planet is not at risk from the world's most powerful particle physics experiment, a report has concluded.

Thank goodness. The entirely plausible threat postulated by idiots who don't understand science and therefor fear it has been debunked.

Romans Used 20-Sided Dice Two Millennia Before D&D

2008-06-19T19:46:00.000-07:00

Many of us geeks take great pride in the ability to recite the history of role-playing games based on the 20-sided die, but what about the history of the die itself? Apparently it predates the original Dungeons and Dragons by almost two millenia.

Danny Boy - Muppet Style

2008-06-16T08:28:00.000-07:00

I was too young to appreciate them when they were first popular and too cynical to appreciate them during their revival; only now am I beginning to realize how much the Muppets rocked.

Lomedae, wed

2008-06-13T19:03:00.000-07:00

Proof positive of the joyous occasion. They seemed a bit dazed at the time, mostly, I suspect, because everything happened fairly quickly. In spite of that, it was a lovely ceremony. No hurling of rice, unfortunately. I should have brought some.

That's not the way

2008-05-29T21:22:00.001-07:00

Walking back from the novelty store we frequent (we're practically regulars!), Mary pointed out this somewhat comcial sign. I present to you "Commerical Way" in Redwood City. Apparently it's a fairly common misspelling, but you'd still expect the outstanding corps of civil servants employed by the county of San Mateo to check the spelling of common words. Having said that, at least they're consistent. The other side of the sign is spelt exactly the same way.

History is Fun!

2008-05-16T19:54:00.000-07:00

I recently visited one of these places. It was scary and unnatural.

Things younger than John McCain

2008-05-12T10:28:00.000-07:00

Pretty much everything, it turns out.

Define Irony in the context of carbonated beverages

2008-05-12T09:22:00.000-07:00

Rising demand for ethanol, combined with insane subsidies means that a third of corn produced in the US is now being used to make fuel. This has caused the price of corn syrup, commonly used as a cheaper and much less healthy replacement for sugar, to skyrocket. Manufacturers of soft drinks and other sweetened products are now considering switching to cane sugar as an "alternative". And to pile irony upon irony, cane sugar is a much more suitable source of fuel than corn.

Thomas Doyle is a bit of a genius

2008-05-08T19:00:00.000-07:00

The guy makes somewhat otherworldly maquettes with what appears to be HO modeling material. It's all quite stunning and a bit disturbing.

Make Stuff

2008-05-05T13:43:00.000-07:00

Flickr's pics of this year's Maker Faire, always a hotbed of weirdness. I keep promising myself that next year I'll go as an exhibitor. Somehow that continues not to happen. Well, next year I'll definitely be there with my haptic, stirling engine powered, fire spewing, steampunk, ecologically friendly, autonomous, artificially intelligent, l.e.d. lit, rube goldberg knitting machine.

Penis spam haiku

2008-04-14T18:42:00.000-07:00

I kid you not. I just received this as part of my daily barrage of penis enlargement spam.

Girls like when it big.
Feel shy of your penis size.
Girls are laugh at you.

I was going to post this yesterday, but it wasn't true back then

2008-04-11T19:33:00.001-07:00

It was my stated intention to post this image as proof, PROOF, I tells ya, that Comcast is, on occasion, capable of making me happy. But it was all a lie. Channel 736 taunts me with its blackness. Its cold, dark blackness.

It's not too late though. BSG isn't on for another two hours, twenty-three minutes, and nineteen seconds. Anything could happen between now and then. Anything. An empire might fall. A little-known mathematician may postulate the unifying theory of everything. A theologian may prove definitively that god not only exists, but lives in an abandoned farmstead a mile northwest of Saltdean, where he tends geese and grows beets.

Or Comcast could get around to letting me watch BSG in HD so I don't have to pull it down off alt.binaries.hd.unlike.my.expensive.cable tomorrow. That would be cool too.

Kurt Vonnegut was an interesting man

2008-04-10T23:42:00.000-07:00

"There is no order in the world around us, we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos instead. It is hard to adapt to chaos, but it can be done. I am living proof of that: It can be done."

More Vonnegut quotes

Oooh. Visitors!

2008-04-10T22:07:00.000-07:00

Kenny Johnson is remaking "V", and it's going to be in theatres. I'm guessing the original hasn't held up to well - I saw a clip a while back, of one of the Visitors removing his mask. Beyond the fact that the lizard face underneath the human mask was noticeably larger, the whole thing just looked cheap and tawdry. Still, in my memory, it was teh awesomenest TV show EVAR.

Psst, buddy - want free hosting?

2008-04-10T10:30:00.000-07:00

So I was looking for a new hosting provider yesterday and got to thinking - I have a bunch of domains and some clients and some friends and all of them need websites (as do trees, cats, and teenagers, apparently, but that's beside the point). Anyway, I decided that I'd get a low-end reseller account. They cost peanuts and allow you to set up fully functional, cpanel based hosting accounts that are independently managed.

So here's the deal: if you want free hosting for your personal thing. . .you know: blog, picture of a cute cat, whatever, with email and ftp and all the cool stuff the kids are using these days, and you're cool with not having 24/7 support, and you don't mind a 2gb transfer limit monthly, and -this is important- you actually know me, drop me a line and I'll get you set up.

Your word of the day

2008-04-06T21:43:00.000-07:00

Your word of the day is "Clintanic". Now go forth and propagate it.

Stay Classy, San Francisco

2008-04-02T19:45:00.000-07:00

The good people of San Francisco would like to honour the legacy of our president by naming an important piece of public infrastructure after him. Now that's class.

"Lifted", an hilarious Pixar short

2008-03-28T20:15:00.000-07:00

Wal-Mart doesn't own the smiley face

2008-03-28T07:54:00.000-07:00

Duh? Yeah, duh. Thing is, they tried to trademark it, then sued when some young whippersnapper launched a line of t-shirts parodying the company and its mascot.
They lost, proving that our legal system hasn't gone completely bonkers yet.

Can't. . .stop. . .laughing

2008-03-21T19:40:00.000-07:00

If you only see one Papal ascension parody this year, make it this one.

Stop dying!

2008-03-18T15:44:00.000-07:00

First Gygax, now Clarke. In his defense, he was 90, and ninety-year-olds to have a tendency to die on occasion. Sad still.

Salt Lake City is odd

2008-03-17T22:35:00.000-07:00

Title says it all, really.

I just got back from a weekend trip to la Cite du Grand Mer du Sel. It wasn't quite what I expected. The city itself, with the obvious exception of downtown, is identical to every other sprawling city in the west. Standing on the average street corner you simply can't tell the difference between them. There's a shell on one corner, a strip mall on the other with an Applebee's and a Starbucks and a Radio Shack and despair.

It turns out it's easy to spot Mormons. They're disturbingly polite, well shorn, and they all want to introduce themselves, shake your hand, and give you their business card. However, they seem to lack distinguishing characteristics. They're like polite, well-dressed Borg.

If you ever find yourself in town, you simply must check out Sam Weller's Bookstore. Their rare book collection is an amazing thing to behold. While you're there, cross the street and pay a visit to Utah Book and Magazine. It's the polar opposite of Weller's. Books and random junk piled a mile high, some of them priced, some of them not so much. Boxes full of old cards and magazines and posters, denoted by pissy signs admonishing visitors not to get the books out of order. Not that they were in order in the first place. Unless the proprietor uses some obscure masonic version of the Dewey system that mere mortals are not fit to understand.

Blake does Wired

2008-03-11T15:29:00.000-07:00

Blake made the front page of wired with his entry into their Self-Portrait contest. Friggin' sweet pic, too. If you haven't done so yet, check out his website, or have a look at his flickr feed. I'm a big fan of his vintage coin-op pics from the Musee Mecanique

BattleBots are coming back to TV

2008-03-11T09:30:00.000-07:00

This summer's BattleBots competition will be broadcast on ESPN 2, home of such fine sports as curling, alpaca wrangling, and extreme milkshake drinking. I drink it up. To the MAX! WOOO!!

Sorry. Got a bit carried away there. Still. Battle Bots. I wonder if they'll let Jamie come back.

pTerry on pTV!

2008-03-10T07:04:00.000-07:00

The second Discworld movie adaptation, The Colour of Magic, will air on March 23-24. This news fills me with yay. It's only airing on Sky One for now, so that's a torrenting. And if you haven't seen it yet, check out Hogfather. It's da bomb.

ESA++;

2008-03-07T19:37:00.000-08:00

The European Space Agency goes big. While we 'murcans worry about what we're going to do in the five year gap between the retirement of the shuttle, only two years away, and the first launch of our new old non-reusable rockets, the ESA is forging ahead with a new, fully automated delivery system that boasts a fairly decent capacity (nowhere near that of the shuttle though). It's good to know there will still be something besides a Soyouz that will be able to deliver valuable goods and services to ISS 24 months from now.

Gary cheats death

2008-03-06T21:53:00.000-08:00

Today's XKCD tickled me. But which one's the DM?

We need a cleric!

2008-03-04T10:04:00.000-08:00

Gary Gygax passed away today. Just a few weeks ago Lomedae and I were discussing his recent lack of public appearances. It turns out he's been in poor health for quite a while. I used to enjoy D&D immensely - it was a major factor in my formative years, and I still can't resist the lure of old, beat-up modules when I find them at thrift stores. So long Gary, and thanks for all good times.

Oranges will grow in Philadelphia

2008-03-02T19:02:00.000-08:00

I'm a bit of a sucker for historical predictions of the future. This one, from the Ladies' Home Journal, anno 1900, attempts to predict life in the year two thousand. It contains gems such as "Automobiles will be cheaper than horses", and "Wireless telephone circuits will span the world.", but also serves up a few canards; "Storekeepers who expose food to air breathed out by patrons [. . .] will be arrested."

Who wants to go to Pax with me?

2008-03-01T19:34:00.000-08:00

Pax will be held from 8/29 through 8/31 this year, and after missing the last gazillion events, I'd really like to make it this time. Anybody up for a fun road trip? I'm looking at you, Pie.

Is there nothing alpacas can't do?

2008-02-27T23:07:00.000-08:00

A woman, desperate to conceive, finally becomes pregnant after partaking of her alpacas' fertility supplement.