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Surely two distinct Creators must have been at work

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It takes a special energy, over and above one's creative potential, a special audacity or subversiveness, to strike out in a new direction once one is settled. It is a gamble as all creative projects must be, for the new direction may not turn out to be productive at all.

Sigh. I don't know if that makes me feel better or worse about my almost guaranteed obscurity.

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We entered an omnibus to go some place or other. At the moment when I put my foot on the step, the idea came to me, without anything in my former thoughts seeming to have paved the way for it, that the transformations I had used to define the Fuchsian functions were identical with those of non-Euclidian geometry. I did not verify the idea; I should not have had time, as...I went on with a conversation already commenced, but I felt a perfect certainty. On my return to Caen, for conscience's sake, I verified the result at my leisure.

I've cited this anecdote about subconscious processing many times. Maybe I should work harder at training my subconscious to get it to work on a problem.

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Philip Henry Gosse, a great naturalist who was also deeply devout, was so torn by the debate over evolution by natural selection that he was driven to publish an extraordinary book, "Omphalos", in which he maintained that fossils do not correspond to any creatures that ever lived, but were merely put in the rocks by the Creator to rebuke our curiosity--an argument which had the unusual distinction of infuriating zoologists and theologians in equal measure.

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Walking around with my sousaphone, interacting with families, I realize many people don't know the names of instruments so well - I mean I prefer the term 'tuba' for what I carry anyway but no sir, it's not a french horn, or trombone... but I suspect AI's training has reflected some of that taxonomical indifference. I wanted to make a "Tubanana" joke but "a banana crossed with a sousaphone" leads to stuff like this. :-(

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More on the Well of Death here

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Have you ever had your finger bitten? Memorize it. Know it so well that even if you lost your sight... you'd recognize me by my bite.

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That's why I sometimes want an even larger tv.

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"if you're not angry you're not paying attention" used to be such a powerful phrase but now it's more accurate to say "if you're not angry you're probably exhausted by 5+ years of Panic Outrage Mode and are nearing the limit of your emotional range for reacting to this shit"

Dumb idea I had yesterday, like maybe making stickers of this. I wish I could blame it on being asleep and having a stupid dream.

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The universe is an ongoing explosion.
That's where you live.
In an explosion.

We absolutely don't know what living is.

Sometimes atoms just get very haunted.

That's us.

When an explosion explodes hard enough, dust wakes up and thinks about itself.

And tweets about it.

	Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See Busta Rhymes	Not my favorite Busta Rhymes piece, though I do love that video style he had in this era. Mentioned in Cracked One Man's Crusade To Officially Name A Island (... After Busta Rhymes?)
★ ★ ★ ★	Fight The Power: Remix 2020 (feat. Nas, Rapsody, Black Thought, Jahi, YG & Questlove) Public Enemy	Great update of the Hip Hop classic. Love hearing women's voices on it too. recommended by Youtube off of “Public Enemy Number Won” from the same album.
	Dig It Up Holes Soundtrack	A little too polished, but the the rap / piano swing works well. via Cracked Meryl Streep Is Now Apparently A Rapper (err but not in this song)
★ ★ ★ ★ ★	Crash of Worlds Rocco DeLuca	Lovely, plaintive song for a cowboy game. From "Red Dead Redemption 2" which I played through.
★ ★ ★ ★	Funky Christmas feat. Big Freedia Too Many Zooz	Great holiday song! Love Freedia's voice, and Too Many Zooz always has a great sound. Youtube recommendation.
	Sump'n Claus - SNL SNL	The skit isn't all that funny but I love the concept. Youtube recommendation.
	Joe Hill Paul Robeson	Damn, that voice. Mentioned in a McSweeny article.
★ ★ ★ ★	Times Like These Foo Fighters	There's something stirring in the way he holds "I...." They were on SNL recently, and they did this song.
	Far Away José González	Another cowboy song. Sought out more from the Red Dead Redemption 2 soundtrack.
★ ★ ★ ★	Unshaken D'Angelo	This is like a set of tracks from "Crash of Worlds" but I think I prefer it... the sound is amazing, and playing it over a crucial lonely death scene was amazing powerful in the video game "Red Dead Redemption 2"
	Dixieland Steve Earle & The Del McCoury Band	Spirited war song, by one of the good guys. The original song "Dixie" has been popping up for me a few places, like on Veep, mostly with people making fun of racists.
★ ★ ★ ★	Hands To Myself Selena Gomez	Kinda sexy! I think Janelle Monáe's PYNK drew from this, maybe? Credits music for an episode of "Big Mouth"
★ ★ ★ ★	Under Pressure Karen O & Willie Nelson	Random spotify.

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The Five Crises of the American Regime...

This is a really interesting article. I hope it doesn't ring too many bothsiderism bells for people - I mean there is some of that, but I think there's also some significantly smart analysis going on.

There's some shit I just don't see ("the Democrats, by tacitly encouraging and bailing out foundation-funded NGO staffers with secret identities and superhero-style Antifa outfits during the tolerated anti-Trump riots of Summer 2020" -- whut? and "The Democratic street armies, with their national networks of bail funds that enable the coastal rich to spring left-wing rioters and looters from jail in staged protests across the country" - maybe I was too far from the action thus summer with my activist bands, but I didn't see much of that) but some other stuff rings way too true:

"And the elderly Boomer politicians of our time in both parties have chosen to wield their enhanced power to delegitimize the mere existence of the other party as a threat to the nation that must be humiliated if not annihilated."

And at the very least historically, it absolutely started with Conservatives:

The Republicans started the cycle of escalation in the 1990s. Rejecting the very idea of a bipartisan consensus, Newt Gingrich disseminated a partisan vocabulary to make it appear that Republicans favored the opposite of everything Democrats favored. Gingrich told Republicans to contrast the "conservative opportunity society" with "the liberal welfare state." Semantic warfare was combined with quasi-military organization, as Gingrich and his Republican successors imposed a degree of discipline on the Republican party in Congress that was alien to American traditions. The 1990s Republicans weaponized impeachment against Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. As Senate Majority leader, Mitch McConnell, occupying the same office as the great conciliator Lyndon Johnson, continued Newt Gingrich's tactics of treating the Democrats as enemies to be completely thwarted, not as partners in government.

And again, later the author claims that men do a lot worse job wise, but CNN tells me "According to new data released Friday, employers cut 140,000 jobs in December, signaling that the economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic is backtracking. Digging deeper into the data also reveals a shocking gender gap: Women accounted for all the job losses, losing 156,000 jobs, while men gained 16,000."

1. Just Cause Series - especially 3, and especially the "Sky Fortress" DLC that turns you into early, clumsy Iron Man attacking the Helicarrier, except instead of armor you have Wolverine's ridiculous healing ability. But overall, this series has such a beautiful sense of motion and physics - the whole gliding with your "flying squirrel" wingsuit, starting to lose steam, reaching out with a grappling hook then yanking yourself along to get an extra boost... so kinetically poetic.
2. Saints Row - especially 4, where they use a Matrix-y world to excuse giving the player crazy superhero abilities, but also 3 that was just a fantastic over-the-top parody of GTA but with better music.
3. Grand Theft Auto V - the scale of this game is just amazing, no other game I know does such a good facisimile of a living breathing city but is still fun to drive at break neck speeds or fly a plane around... the 3 protagonist story was hip as well.
4. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild I'm less a fan of fantasy or of games that are about gradual levling up, the whole from chump to champ path, but what a compelling world they made here.
5. Super Mario Odyssey Great return to form, and a heavy dose of what I'm into games for - experience new methods of movement and control, which Mario gains with that (kind of creepy if you think about it as posession) hat mechanic...
6. Earth Defense Force 2025 - limited and grind-y, but still some of the coolest B-movie material to make it into games, and an awesome buddy game. "Insect Armegeddon" was a fun westernized version as well.
7. Blaster Master Zero - such a lovely return to my NES childhood. using your weheeld tank's leap to deftly get to a platform, then switching the other way to cut momentum is a lovely bit of classic game physics.
8. Portal 2 - smart and funny puzzle - so well written - and with a great two player mode.
9. Redder - really thoughtful indie retro-style exploration game, with just a hint of growing menace.
10. iOS games in general: Desert Golfing / I'm Ping Pong King / Archero / ENDI Tank Battle / Tron / Picross / Scribblenauts have all had me spending a bit too much time staring at a tiny screen....

Honorable mention: Far Cry series. Not too much that GTA/Saints Row/Just Cause doesn't offer, but still pretty decent.

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Thinking a little about taboos and sometimes violent reactions to protect that what's considered sacred - pictures of the prophet Mohammed for example, or the N-word from the mouth of anyone not African-American themselves.

On the one hand, there's the obvious free speech issue - how should people whose group doesn't see something as forbidden be compelled to respect the limits laid out by some other group? But I don't think it's too convoluted to view the free speech issue the other way: shouldn't groups have limited authority to declare some taboos that are universally respected, especially ones in the wheelhouse of that group and its history?

The most correct answer is probably not at the absolutes. And this isn't meant to justify, say, the killings at Charlie Hebdo after the Mohammed comics were published - I'm not going down the Onion's "ACLU Defends Nazis' Right To Burn Down ACLU Headquarters" rabbithole, nor expressing a willingness to live in de-secularized society where the restrictions all abide by have an overt Theocratic justification. But the fact remains, even when you steer clear of the taboos, the remaining possibility-space of conversation and thought remains vast.

Louis CK is a good reminder that when people with power ask for respect it's called "civility" and is sacred, but when people without power ask for respect it's called "political correctness" and is the butt of jokes

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all wireless headphones look kind of goofy to me... Normal headphones end up looking like earmuffs, and AirPods have that weird Star Trek Uhura vibe. I favor BeatsX- the behind the neck loop is kinda like what a librarian would use to keep glasses dangling from her neck, which is a slightly better look IMO. But wireless somehow lacks dignity.

And I feel bad. But I just feel like this is all happening for a reason. And ladies I want you to win this fight. Ten years ago I might've been scared but you know, I got a daughter now; so if you win, she wins, so I'm rooting for you. And I agree with you.

At least ideologically I do. I don't know if you're doing it just right but I mean who am I to say... I don't think you're wrong, I just think that you can't make a lasting peace this way. You got all the bad guys scared. And that's good. But the minute they're not scared anymore, it will get worse than it was before. Fear does not make lasting peace. Ask black people.

And that's what it is. What this city really needs, without irony, I'll say this: the cure for L.A. is in South Africa. You motherf***ers need truth and reconciliation with one another. 'Cause the end of apartheid should have been a f***ing bloodbath by any metric in human history, and it wasn't. The only reason it wasn't is because Desmond Tutu and Mandela and all these guys figured out that if a system is corrupt, then the people who adhere to the system, and are incentivized by that system, are not criminals. They are victims. And that he system itself must be tried. But because of how the system works, it's so compartmentalized as far as information, the only way we can figure out what the system is, is if everybody says what they did. Tell them how you participated.

I saw Melissa cringe with some of his views, but we laughed a lot and I think there was some wisdom there in seeing some parallels in the history of dealing with racism and sexism. The Truth and Reconciliation idea stuck with me. That might have a lot more legs than truth and retribution. I'm not sure if it can work though; in part because men aren't always embracing the truth aspect. Also, the end of apartheid was the end of a minority rule (20% or less) and had just about the whole world condemning it. If it's demographics, men are about 50%, and it's going to be that much tougher.

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This weekend I found out Jackbox Games (who made "You Don't Know Jack" under the Jellyvision brand back in the 90s - those were WAY ahead of their time in terms of production values) is making some awesome games - they leverage the fact that so many folk have a smartphone with a web connection these days (or can borrow a tablet) and they can be a great tool (using a simple 4-letter code to hop intoan active game on the website, and then using the shared TV or monitor screen for common information) -- Fibbage is a great game of bluffing, Quiplash is like Cards Against Humanity but people actually have to use their own imaginations, Drawful is a pretty solid Pictionary-ish spin off... good stuff.

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Pshaw, our vaunted "stealth" bomber, captured by some dude in a Cessna 206? Sad.

(More on this amazing photo)

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Interesting - a Football player and Computer Guy from Tufts might be one of Belichick's secret weapons... from "The Space Merchants", by Frederick Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth:

[The doorman] whistled up a two-man pedicab, and Kathy gave the lead boy the hospital's address. "You can come if you like, Mitch," she said, and I climbed in beside her. The doorman gave us a starting push and the cabbies grunted getting up momentum.

Unasked, I put down the top. For a moment it was like our courtship again: the friendly dark, the slight, musty smell of the canvas top, the squeak of the springs. But for a moment only. "Watch that, Mitch," she said warningly.

"Please, Kathy," I said carefully. "Let me say it anyhow. It won't take long." She didn't say no. "We were married eight months ago--all right," I said quickly as she started to speak, "it wasn't an absolute marriage. But we took the interlocutory vows. Do you remember why we did that?"

She said patiently after a moment: "We were in love."

"That's right," I said, "I loved you and you loved me. And we both had our work to think about, and we knew that sometimes it made us a little hard to get along with. So we made it interim. It had a year to run before we had to decide whether to make it permanent." I touched her hand and she didn't move it away. "Kathy dear, don't you think we knew what we were doing then? Can't we--at least--give it the year's trial? There are still four months to go. Let's try it. If the year ends and you don't want to file your certificate--well, at least I won't be able to say you didn't give me a chance. As for me, I don't have to wait. My certificate's on file now and I won't change."

We passed a street light and I saw her lips twisted into an expression I couldn't quite read. "Oh, damn it all, Mitch," she said unhappily, "I know you won't change. That's what makes it all so terrible. Must I sit here and call you names to convince you that it's hopeless? Do I have to tell you that you're an ill-tempered, contriving Machiavellian, selfish pig of a man to live with? I used to think you were a sweet guy, Mitch. An idealist who cared for principles and ethics instead of money. I had every reason to think so. You told me so yourself, very convincingly. You were very plausible about my work too. You boned up on medicine, you came to watch me operate three times a week, you told all our friends while I was sitting right in the room listening to you how proud you were to be married to a surgeon. It took me three months to find out what you meant by that. Anybody could marry a girl who'd be a housewife. But it took a Mitchell Courtenay to marry a first-class rated surgeon and make her a housewife." Her voice was tremulous. "I couldn't take it, Mitch. I never will be able to. Not the arguments, the sulkiness, and the ever-and-ever fighting. I'm a doctor. Sometimes a life depends on me. If I'm all torn up inside from battling with my husband, that life isn't safe, Mitch. Can't you see that?"

Something that sounded like a sob.

I asked quietly: "Kathy, don't you still love me?"

She was absolutely quite for a long moment. Then she laughed wildly and very briefly. "Here's the hospital, Mitch," she said. "It's midnight."

What Aldous Huxley did to Orwell with eugenics, this 1952 book does to Huxley with sheer capitalism - a semi-dystopia vision of a world of salesman run amuck.

This passage has stuck with me; the concept of "interim marriage" still sounds futuristic. But more than that, Kathy's protesting paragraph, that's what really has rattled around in my brain for a while. (Some parts more than others - being a guy who doesn't change much more so than being a guy who argues and sulks and fights.)

But yeah, the surgeon thing - I've been pondering about how admiration is an important part of romantic attachment for me, and how I can almost always identify the specific, objectively cool something that made each person I've been lucky enough to be with distinct from everyone else, the gray lining to that silver cloud is how sometimes I do it to show off - it sounds cynical to identify it, but I think it's a natural human trait to enjoy having a partner who boosts ones own status in your shared social circles. Human/Mattress Dominoes:

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By @LucilleClerc (but being misattributed to Banksy) on the Charlie Hebdo killings:

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Tamara Oweibo, in http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-most-interesting-mental-illness-and-why :

Ataraxia - always being in a lucid state of robust tranquility, characterized by ongoing freedom from distress and worry.

A friend of mine suffers from this disease.... he works (computer programmer) only because he enjoys it... he really doesn't care how much his employer pays or whether his girlfriend cheats on him or whether or not doing something might be detrimental to him. he is very aware of the implications of everything he does... but feels no form of worry.

Man, I am jealous. I kind of hoped that an intellectual path to existential pseudo-enlightenment might get be closer to this. And in some ways it has, but the worried lizard ape in still kind of runs the joint. Songs I added to my collection in December... ones in red are especially great.

• As It Comes (The Exploding Voids) My favorite German group is finally making videos... I've loved this song for years. One of my all time favorites, such an eloquent expression of detachment and again, in a short little piece.
• What It Is About (The Exploding Voids) Another song by them that's really growing on me. (despite the little typo in the text of the video.)
• Go Where the Love Is (Edie Brickell) Very sweet song, used on the sound track to "The Way Way Back".
• Michael Jordan vs Muhammad Ali (Epic Rap Battles of History) One of the top three they've done. I love the way they captured Ali's flow: "Ooh here comes Jordan / Big tongue wobblin' / FLyin' through the air like a big dumb goblin"
• Barnacle Bill (Oscar Brand) I've heard of this song for years, ever since I heard my dad answered a speaker at training school (seminary) who was asking "Who is that knocking at my door?" with "It's Je-sus Christ the Savior"
• The Monster (feat. Rihanna) (Eminem) Good modern sound.
• Worried Man Blues (Woody Guthrie) Some of the oldest sheet music I own is this song, from my elementary school days. Very fun to sing along and harmonize to.
• I Need My Girl (The National) Not sure why this song was featured on "The Mindy Project" but it's great.
• Sleigh Ride (The Ronettes) Ronnie Spector was on public radio a lot this holiday, and the Wall of Sound is just terrific.
• The Man With The Bag (Kay Starr) Another nice big band holiday sound.
• My Thang (Regrooved by DJP) (James Brown) Funky remix. I was studying up on "It's Your Thing", and supposedly this song used the same bass line, but the presentation is way different.
• The Dinghy Song (Ruth Wallis) Another from that old Dr. Demento tape a friend made for my dad when he was sick; kind of fun and raunchy.
• Dang Me (Roger Miller) My mom reminded me of that old "Dang me, dang me, they oughta take a rope and hang me..." that I remember singing as a kid.
• No Rain (Blind Melon) Someone mentioned their coworker had the opening bars of this as a ring tone. One of those 90s songs that I kind of liked but wouldn't have bought a whole CD for.
• Fighting Man (DJ Pone & Drixxxe) Sought this out after Shazam or SoundHound managed to name it behind this extremely weird Simpsons spanish dub.
• Put 'Em On the Glass (Sir Mix-A-Lot) NSFW video. Kind of a sequel to "Baby Got Back". Notable for actually having nipples in a pop music video.
• Hallelujah Chorus (Bruce Kurnow) I wanted a version of Hallelujah Chorus and kind of like the twang in this one all harmonica version.

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http://www.xkcd.com/1314/ Today's xkcd reminded me of this quote:

Photography isn't about the pictures. Pictures never come out right. It's about the adventure.

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Re: global warming and the cold weather 'Liberals keep telling me the Titanic is sinking but my side of the ship is 500 feet in the air.'

Go Pro Trombone!

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http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/specials/100greatestphotos/ - some terrific sports photos

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http://kirkdev.blogspot.com/ -- new on my UI devblog, a fun html5 "roaming spotlight" effect..

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Try sending people who don't like flowers because they die a dozen turtles with a little note that says 'We will all outlive youuuu.'

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Bought a tuba last night! Or rather a Sousaphone, specifically an model tuned to Eb (a bit higher than the Bb I'm a little more used to.) I need to get the third valve repaired, but the price was right, mid-200s. Craiglist can be like magic sometimes.

These were the photos that sold me...


Who can resist photos like that? Well despite the broken valve button. (The other photos showed off the rather nice case it came with.)

I've never owned a tuba before, it's one of those big instruments that a group will often provide a student-aged player, like percussion. After college, I didn't want to seek out a group because I didn't have my own horn, and I didn't want to get a horn because I didn't have a group to play it in. Also...

I dunno, I really never really loved the concert band music where I think most of the tuba openings might be. In retrospect, my favorite music to play was the dumb, simple, fun stuff of marching band and pep band, not the more stuffy pieces of concert bands and orchestras.

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Romney talking about the last years being "a detour not a destination" - GOP playing on bad memory, how the mess started way before Obama.

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Broncos do one of those "12th Man" shticks? I'd assume Denver's real 12th Man was the altitude and lack of oxygen.

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New Blender of Love Digest
(Amber suggested the art-- brilliant!)

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John Huntsman PAC spot... "the world is literally collapsing around us" Really? F'in idiots.

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Hail Mary, full of grace,

But hail Vishnu, just in case.

I now have something that can, I think, fairly be called "a beard" (albeit one that's clipped fairly short.)

It's kind of tough changing my self-image to match this. Like, these eyes I'm looking through are looking over a bunch of facial hair.

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At the Boston Gaming HTML5 Tools Jam. Not To be confused with a jam for tools. I hope. #html5jam The games I most enjoyed over the past decade...

1. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City - the series is getting a little repetitive, but I think for sheer hours of enjoyment, these games top the list. GTA4 is in most ways a better game, but Vice City was my first, plus it had helicopters, and captured that 80s "Miami Vice" feel in spades. Man, I love any game with a helicopter. Anyway, the way this series put fun missions over something very like a "living breathing world" that was fun just to tool around in, playing with cars, cycles, and guns... it's hardly topped in all of game-dom. (Also neat how your character is basically the same at the end of the game- it's the player that knows where all the guns and cool things are.)
2. Rogue Squadron 2: Rogue Leader - I've always been a huge Star Wars fan boy, and honestly it's mostly because of the space ship stuff. This game that came out with the GameCube put you inside an X-wing... and that's all it had to do. The "Battle for Endor" level finale was the first time I saw anything of that scale, with just swarms of TIEs - the classic "There's too many of them!" line came home for the first time.
3. Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction HULK SMASH!!! Captured the crazy kinetic energy of being a superpowered being like nothing I've seen.
4. Earth Defense Force 2017 - best B-movie game ever, and probably the one I've beaten the most often, usually pairing up with JZ to take on the vast hoards of supersized ants, giant leaping spiders, and walkers straight out of War of the Worlds. I don't know what was more awesome - taking on this absolutely vast AT-AT behemoth (you come to about its little tow) or just destroying one of the more "normal" humanoid (but huge) walkers, only to see its brother trudging through the fiery smoke, guns blazing.
5. Bangai-O - one of the last hurrahs for the Dreamcast, a game I wrote a full Walkthrough FAQ for, and the pinnacle of what can be done with many, many, many tiny sprites. Plus the whole "wait 'til you're on the verge of lazery death, THEN bust out the massive devastating-offense-is-the-best-defense superweapon" mechanic is superb.
6. Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts - the most recent game on this list. The format is pretty typical, Mario-64 hub world challenges, but the ability to build your own car, copter, boat, plane, hovercraft, jet, bulldozer... and have the mechanics of what you put together really matter, in a cartoon-physics-y kind of way... honestly, it kind of blows LEGO out of the water.
7. Spybotics: The Nightfall Incident - an online LEGO tie-in, actually, by the sadly shut-down Gamelab. Lego seems to be dropping the game, but it still lives on, like at that link. Another one I made a Walkthrough for - (Junkbot is another great gamelab/LLEGOteamup, that arguably as a lot more to do with actual building, but it didn't grab me quite as much as the SNAFU-meets-turn based strategy of this one)
8. Fantastic Contraption - another Flash game, this one with a great clever building and physics element. Challenging puzzles, plus the way they made it community based, allowing people to see how others took on the challenges, was great.
9. WarioWare: Twisted! - the original game introduced the world to microgames, the tiniest bits of gameplay pleasure imaginable, wrapped into continuous trail of challenging fun. Twisted kept up the tradition, with a unique gyro-sensor used in all kinds of imaginative ways - plus the toys and minigames they gave you to unlock were a serious inspiration for my Java Advent Calendar
10. Jet Set Radio Future - some people still prefer the ground-breaking Dreamcast that basically showed the gaming world what Cel-shading could be. The xbox version raised the bar, making it more kinetic, and (IMO) wisely dumped the fiddly graffiti minigame. The soundtrack was also fantastic, probably more songs from here made it into my iPod than even DDR.

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Honorable Mentions:
Two categories of honorable mentoins: also-rans, and multiplayer...

Multiplayer games provide me with many hours of bonding fun with my buds and family - Dr. Mario has risen to prominence, though it's pretty old at this point- but in terms of play this weekend, it plus "Puzzle League" were the go-to games.. Super Monkey Ball 2's Monkey Target is brilliant, the Dogfight is fantastic, Monkey Punch is just pure mayhem, and even the race was a good holdover 'til Mario Kart came out. (Mario Kart being another series not to be sneezed at.) Finally Super Smash Bros Melee took the brilliant middle-school "What if X fought Y" of the orignal and made it kinetic.

Also-Rans: Mercenaries 2 may be the only game to really let me enjoy driving a tank around this generation - lots of little tactical "figure out how to get through this" options with lots of weapons, vehicles, and huge explosions. Crimson Skies was a good prelude to Rogue Squadron, flying an old combat fighter around in an stylish alternate history, where the time between the World Wars was quite different... Super Mario Galaxies was just plain cool Gears of War and Halo both get props for their Co-op modes, one of my favorite forms of gaming.

Finally, how can I forget my own labor of love , JoustPong for the Atari 2600???
All joking - and fears that it cost me my marriage (though that might be mixing cause and effect) aside - this is a great little head-to-head game, as we demonstrated at the New England Classic Gamers tourney we had.

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Off to see Monster Trucks in New Hampshire... for real.

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Man, monster trucks are LOUD. I like when they use 'em like bulldozers to adjust the rows of car before they roll over them. There's a Homer Simpson quote I've been thinking of:

When it comes to compliments, women are ravenous blood-sucking monsters always wanting more . . . more . . . MORE! And if you give it to them, you'll get plenty back in return.

Though lately, substitute "Kirk" for "women" and "free time for goofy projects" for "compliments".

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Video of the Moment

--Flight of the Conchords, Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros

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Quote of the Moment

"jazz is its own propaganda."

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Reading some '62 LOOK magazines, a nice followup to the Bryson Thunderbolt book. Winning article title: "HAITI: A sad, sad neighbor"

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LOOK ad slogan: "Make It Coffee. Make It Often. Make It Right". Also, forgot that "magic marker" was a brandname, ala Kleenex.

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Other LOOK ad notes: Bell shilling self (part of "the prosperity of the nation") Also, light sodas and beers are showing up.

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Sunday MIT Puzzle Hunt prep, like 2/3 of the people had iPhones (also macbooks) Miller's B'day dinner, 3 or 4 Android G1s. Interesting.

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After over a year, the experiment is over: time to switch the iPhone back to AM/PM- I just wasn't changing my thinking to 24 hour time.

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Got my Todo "Today or Overdue" list down to < 10 for the first time in like a month, sheesh. So one factoid from the Charles Schulz bio:

Classical music was attracting so many new aficionados that by 1955 some 35 million people would attend musical performances--more than twice that year's ticket buyers to major league baseball games.

That seems amazing to me! I wonder if it has to do with aspirational feel of the times, or what.

But even now I have to deal with the reality that I only dig classical when it's fast. Last night in Nyack I slept in my mom's living room. It has skylights and some other big high windows... great for light, not so good for washing, or video projectors during the day. (Actually during the day it's almost too bright... so far the only places where I really dig skylights are in bathrooms and cars.)

But I did get to sleep once or twice bathed in moonlight, the moon was really bright, maybe enough to read by. You definately get a small touch of something... I dunno, cosmic, or magical, or vaguely supernatural in that kind of setting. It's that great gentle glow, the photons from the sun reflecting off the moon picking up a certain... moondustness I guess.

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Deleted Video of the Moment
Lore had a nice compilation w/ custom music of Cyriak's stuff I was over at Miller's last night for a birthday party with an element of boardgaming. We played the new "Turbo" edition of Cranium...didn't seem quite as good as the original despite the addition of a little electronic timer doodad and "dice roll" combo.

My "shadow dyslexia" came into play, though, with this one puzzle of "Team Gnilleps", where teammaters had to spell words backwards, alternating letters. I was weirdly terrible at it...there'd be a word like astrophysics, and all I had to say was "a" to finish it off, and I came up with "r"...and I made a similar mistake, again throwing in an "r" where it didn't belong. It's so odd...I'm ok with spelling, I have a decent head for detail...it was a little disconcerting, actually.

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Truism of the Moment

"I know... I hear what I want to hear."
"And then you say it."

he's right on, I do have this comedy bit where if I hear something incorrectly, realize it, but find what I originally heard funny, I will try to milk that for a laugh. Link of the Moment
LAN3 mentioned this chat about phobias, most notably, fear about embarassment in public... didn't realize it could come from watching other people getting embarrassed, but I can see how that kind of cringing feeling could turn into a full blown phobia.

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Article of the Moment
Via boingboing, Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sleep (But Were Too Afraid To Ask.) I didn't know that possibly the "most natural" sleep pattern is asleep at dusk, then waking up once during the night. But I already sensed that this nation has just no commitment to making bedrooms adequately dark.

Hmm, I wonder if curtains might be the key to making my house better...both in terms of warmer (without the ghetto look of syran-wrap like sheets) and darker, for the bedroom and the TV room.

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Quote of the Moment

Innumeracy can lead... to the sense that one doesn't really count.

Quote of the Moment

The love story was hooey. There was no love there unless you paid $3 for it.

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Link of the Moment
Not Fooling Anybody is a look at retail shops converted for use as...well, other retail shops. Oddly interesting viewing.

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Passages and Online Tool of the Moment

An attempt by Byzantium to impose its will on Bulgaria had ended badly, when the emperor Nicephorus died in combat, his skull being encased in silver by his enemy and turned into a drinking goblet.

Bulgaria's new alphabet allowed it to develop its own literature, and buttressed a doomed bid for independence, which finally ended in a truly horrible fashion in 1014, when the Byzantine emperor, Basil, `the Bulgarian slayer', put out the eyes of 14,000 captive Bulgarians.

I refound these passages using Amazon.com's cool new "Search Inside This Book" feature. I found a typo or two inside the search results that weren't in the book, and for some reason the page references were like 10-20 pages off, but still, it's an awesome feature.

Wow, Byzantium and Bulgaria...that skull-to-goblet thing is pretty cool, though that mass blinding is one of the most horrible things I've ever read...some claim he blinded men in groups of 100, leaving one man with a single eye to lead his 99 fellows. (Some say that's where sayings like "blind leading the blind" or "in the kingdom of the blind the one eyed man is king" but I'm not so sure of that, or positive that the story is 100% true as printed there.) Quote of the Moment

The number system is like human life. First you have the natural numbers. The ones that are whole and positive. Like the numbers of a small child. But human consciousness expands. The child discovers longing. Do you know the mathematical expression for longing? The negative numbers. The formalization of the feeling that you're missing something.

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Music Quote of the Moment

I don't have any definite ideas but I have a feeling that I can only get at by describing this low budget Italian movie that I saw on TV the other night. It was real weird. There are these two be bop horn players out there blowing in this completely deserted field, and one guy, is lying on his, back and the other guy is standing on his head.
Then, while they are playing, these spys wearing bubble sunglasses, come running in and start shooting each other, but the two horn players just keep right on playing, and finally everybody kills each other and these guys are still out there and they're playing this stuff that sounds sort of like roller derby music and then the movie just ends. Real nuts. Anyway, that's sort of how I feel about music in 2002.

via Bill the Splut, who also posts some predictions that were a bit more on target, in ways good and bad. Stayed up 'til one rewriting a prototype from scratch. Rewarding but draining: it was actually easier to build it from the ground up than to wrestle with proprietary J2EE crap.

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News of the Moment
Naked Homerobbers in Bangladesh. John says he heard about this on CNN in Jersey. The idea is they just walk naked into houses, and the shy residents are so flustered they leave. I guess this eyewitness report says it all: "The womenfolk were so embarrassed by the nudity of the well-built men that they ran away from their homes, giving a free hand to the robbers to decamp with their valuables."

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Quote of a Past Moment

I just want a lover who'll make me chicken soup when I'm sick.

Found that in an old Usenet .sig on Google.

I think she's found what she was looking for since then. Pretty funny link: 100 Most Annoying Things of the Year 2000 (from X-Entertainment via dotcult)

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Quote of the Moment

What did I tell you about sharing?"
"...nothing?

I read Henry Allen's What It Felt Like. It's a fairly slim volume, but I think it does a pretty decent job of capturing the mood of each decade of the 20th Century. He seems biased against the last few decades, though. Oh well. Subjectivity is the new Objectivity. (Or at least that's what it looks like to me.)

Quotes in the book:

"We must reflect that where so much strength is spent on finding a way of telling the truth the truth itself is bound to reach us in a rather exhausted and chaotic condition."

That's the one the teacher's on?

(Hmm. Neither of those quotes seemed as good as they did in context.)

I weigh 4 1/2 pounds less than I did last Monday. Ah, the easy rewards of the first days of weight loss. If only it were all that easy.