2025.02.13
His caresses were so delicate that they were almost like a teasing, an evanescent challenge which she feared to respond to as it might vanish. His fingers teased her, and withdrew when they had aroused her, his mouth teased her and then eluded hers, his face and body came so near, espoused her every limb, and then slid away into the darkness. He would seek every curve and nook he could exert the pressure of his warm slender body against and suddenly lie still, leaving her in suspense. When he took her mouth he moved away from her hands, when she answered the pressure of his thighs, he ceased to exert it. Nowhere would he allow a long enough fusion, but tasting every embrace, every area of her body and then deserting it, as if to ignite only and then elude the final welding. A teasing, warm, trembling, elusive short circuit of the senses as mobile and restless as he had been all day, and here at night, with the street lamp revealing their nudity but not his eyes, she was roused to an almost unbearable expectation of pleasure. He had made of her body a bush of roses of Sharon, exfoliating pollen, each prepared for delight.
So long delayed, so long teased that when possession came it avenged the waiting by a long, prolonged, deep thrusting ecstasy.
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"A day in the Life of Sue Republican.
Sue gets up at 6 a.m. and fills her coffeepot with water to prepare her morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards.
With her first swallow of coffee, she takes her daily medication. Her medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to insure their safety and that they work as advertised.
All but $10 of her medications are paid for by her employer's medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance - now Sue gets it too.
She prepares her morning breakfast, bacon and eggs. Sue's bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.
In the shower, Sue reaches for her shampoo. Her bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient and its amount in the total contents because some crybaby liberal fought for her right to know what she was putting on her body and how much it contained.
Sue dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air she breathes is clean because some environmentalist wacko liberal fought for laws to stop industries from polluting our air.
She walks to the subway station for her government-subsidized ride to work. It saves her considerable money in parking and transportation fees because some fancy-pants liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.
Sue begins her work day. She has a good job with excellent pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some lazy liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Sue's employer pays these standards because Sue's employer doesn't want his employees to call the union.
If Sue is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, she'll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some stupid liberal didn't think she should lose her home because of her temporary misfortune.
It's noon and Sue needs to make a bank deposit so she can pay some bills. Sue's deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Sue's money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Great Depression.
Sue has to pay her Fannie Mae-underwritten mortgage and her below-market federal student loan because some elitist liberal decided that Sue and the government would be better off if she was educated and earned more money over her lifetime.
Sue is home from work. She plans to visit her father this evening at his farm home in the country. She gets in her car for the drive. Her car is among the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought for car safety standards.
She arrives at her childhood home. Her generation was the third to live in the house financed by Farmers' Home Administration because bankers didn't want to make rural loans. The house didn't have electricity until some big-government liberal stuck his nose where it didn't belong and demanded rural electrification.
She is happy to see her father, who is now retired. Her father lives on Social Security and a union pension because some wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Sue wouldn't have to.
Sue gets back in her car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show. The radio host keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. He doesn't mention that Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Sue enjoys throughout her day. Sue agrees: "We don't need those big-government liberals ruining our lives! After all, I'm self-made and believe everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have."
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2024.02.13
This poem was in my head this morning:
liFe is Not aLL jazz and Joy)N.B. - heNry is a beetle scab who produced poems for Don Marquis when archy the cockroach went on strike.
sMiles and suNNy weaTher!
EVERy golD has it'S aLloy!
toHOld tHe Stuff together!
!if LUCk is good! why maN aliVE!
weLcoMe iT! And ch eer iT!
buT if THE drinK'S two seven five
Try to griN! AND beer iT!
heNry!
2023.02.13
Before the book really gets into its themes of Artificial Realities, the "real world" - close enough to our own to be very recognizable - has a technology that has stuck with me, a really powerful virtual assistant called "Camel's Eye":
Upstairs, in the bedroom that doubled as an office, Maria switched on her terminal and glanced at a summary of the twenty-one items of mail which had arrived since she'd last checked. All were classified as "Junk"; there was nothing from anyone she knew – and nothing remotely like an offer of paid work. Camel's Eye, her screening software, had identified six pleas for donations from charities (all worthy causes, but Maria hardened her heart); five invitations to enter lotteries and competitions; seven retail catalogs (all of which boasted that they'd been tailored to her personality and "current lifestyle requirements" – but Camel's Eye had assessed their contents and found nothing of interest); and three interactives.and later:
She started again on the letter. After three drafts of the first paragraph – all eliciting the same response from Camel's Eye: You'll hate this when you re-read it later. Trust me. – she finally admitted to herself that she was wasted. She shut down everything and crawled into bed.With what I've been seeing from ChatGPT, I think we are on the verge of having this technological capability. (Of course, with modern tech, there's always the question of who's interesting is the software truly minding...)
The "real world" on the book had a lot of video conferencing, but projected that often people would prefer to use software reconstructions of themselves as avatars, ala Max Headroom.
2022.02.13
It's the Year of the Tiger!
(He says, noticing, cripes, his own birth sign as another 12-year cycle has gone by :-D )
Led by that sports betting spot, there's a strong Ancient Rome vibe in a lot of the ads, which is kind of an odd flex for our late empire days.
How the hell did Bobsled happen? Like, skiing, there were hills, ice skating, there were frozen ponds. But somehow sledding, they started making these giant runs covered in ice?
It seems weird that so many movies aren't available for streaming, like even to rent or buy individually. After watching the Get Back documentary and hearing all the late era Beatles' referencing Hamburg, I want to rewatch this pretty decent movie "Backbeat" about their time there. (Great soundtrack; they had modern bands cover their songs with a kind of punk-ish vibe, trying to convey how the music was pretty raw for its time.) So it's either my DVD of it, or maybe I'll order the Blu-Ray, since now even my unfussy eyes note so much less than 1080p resolution.
2021.02.13
There's no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day. No question about it. The people that stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president. And having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories and reckless hyperbole, which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on the Earth.THEN IMPEACH THE @$@$^%^#@!& YA NUMBNUTS. SEND HIM A MESSAGE AND STOP HIM FROM RUNNING AGAIN.
2020.02.13
"You and Greg were having a little..."I sort of aspire to being that kind of easy-going...
"--Craig"
"You and Craig... so you weren't talking to Greg about this."
"No... what?"
"It's a relief, just because I know, I mean..."
"No I said Craig."
"Fine, if it's Craig it's not as much of a problem."
"Why, what's ...wrong with Greg?"
"Just me and Greg, we've been having a little bit of a..."
"About what?"
"A contretemps."
"About what?"
"Uhhm"
"He's the easiest, easiest man to get along with that I think I've ever met in my entire life"
"Well, that's the thing. He's almost a bit too easy going, isn't he, and um, started to rile me a little bit, basically I was having lunch with him and my wife, and um, he was just being SO easy going... that um...you know I picked him up on it. And he responded to THAT by... carrying on being easy-going. And at that point I had to leave, I was absolutely... I was in a red fury."
This is a rather young podcast, mentioned on Beef and Dairy Network Podcast - both are these great and FUNNY, improv-feeling British comedies, really playing in that space of keeping a stiff-upper lip through all kinds of madness and/or personal irritations, both keeping up their own little meta-fictions (the former pretending to be a small neighborhood newsletter replacement, but utterly ineptly edited, and the latter being a long running food industry information source.
bummer if we lose Betelgeuse! And psychologically rather upsetting.
2019.02.13
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For me fretting about a decision is also about forgetting that there's no god's eye view even possible - no means of looking forward and back in time with perfect knowledge, and thus no ability to consistently judge what the right course is, or was, or will be.
This is beyond there not being someone or some thing to punish me just for the sake of not having made the optimal choice, which is the passage's point - that all the universe provides is circumstance and consequences, not judgement with punishment or reward.
(But even without that cosmic judge, it's easy to live in fear of my future self regarding my present self with scorn. So I try and be sympathetic and empathetic with my past self - that bozo was doing about the best he could with what he got, prisoner of a a chain of cause and effect going back to the start of the universe, as are we all.)
UPDATE: on my FB Matt I. brought up a good counter:
The OP is totally wrong--I'm not fretting that the universe will punish me, I'm really worried precisely that it *won't* punish me so there's no real incentive for me to do the right thing, and I have to be extra careful as a result.I think the original passage doesn't half to be read s 100% selfish - like you could be anxious that others will be punished for your choice - but the point is that someone could be blasé about their own choices as long as the negative consequences were on others is a good one.
UPDATE TO THE UPDATE: Both Matt and my ex Mo seemed to read the passage in the sense of personal good vs group benefit moral sense, but that spectrum didn't even register to me until Matt started talking about it - on closer inspection I think the difference is in the phrase "Right Decision" - I read it exclusively as "Correct Decision" while Matt and Maureen seem to have read it as "Morally Righteous Decision".
"We go straight from the gut, right sir? That's where the truth lies, right down here in the gut. Do you know you have more nerve endings in your gut than you have in your head? You can look it up. I know some of you are going to say "I did look it up, and that's not true." That's 'cause you looked it up in a book." Steve Colbert was the John the Baptist of Truthiness, but Trump is its Jesus. It is amazing how his followers will believe him over EVERY other source of information. Case in point:
‘Oh, crime actually stayed the same.’ Didn’t stay the same! It went way down. … These people, you know, you’d think they’d want to get to the bottom of a problem … not try and pull the wool over everybody’s eyes.”
Then Trump delivered his closing pitch, a direct appeal to intuition over evidence. You don’t need to check the numbers, he argued, since you already know walls work. “It’s fake news. I’m telling you, it’s just fake news,” the president jeered. “And you know what? You wouldn’t even have to know. You can say that automatically, without even knowing. It’s, like, it’s obvious, it’s common sense.”
you: the world has meaning
you: the world has no meaning
you: the world has meaning but not the kind I want
you: the world has meaning but only to me
you: i imbue the world w meaning
you: meaninglessness is a form of meaning
you: the world itself is meaning
the world:
2018.02.13
1. What if you don't receive your box one month?
2. What if you're homeless?
3. What if you don't have a place to receive mail?
4. What if you move frequently?
5. What if you have allergies?
6. What if the box gets wet, or animals get into it?
I guess the general Republican impulse to privatize and channel government action through existing businesses stops when they have a chance to make people feel shitty about not having a lot of money.
2017.02.13
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2016.02.13
2015.02.13
He began with the first, serving up a long soliloquy about life, marriage, journalism, why we're here, why we die, why things begin, why they end. As someone who had also been through a divorce himself, making a few unscheduled stops in hell before coming back, he was impassioned. He explained that everything -- every relationship, every person, every job -- has its time in life, and then, as he noted, all of a sudden it doesn't. He told me I could feel sorry for myself that something was ending, or be excited and appreciative that it had ever even existed. He talked about his wife and daughters as an example of the good things life throws at you.
It's easier to put on slippers than to carpet the world.
2014.02.13
2013.02.13
It's hard for me to conceive not knowing that kind of thing, and so I'm worried about my ability to explain it. "Uhhhh-- it's kind of a chat program, except you're texting with a REALLY stupid robot."
Man Ray coming back? That was the only club I knew how to go to!
A human is a system for converting dust billions of years ago into dust billions of years from now via a roundabout process which involves checking email a lot.
http://kirkdev.blogspot.com/ -- on my dev blog, the web gets yet another "getting started with node.js / wow node.js is SO COOL" blog post.
2012.02.13
For my devblog I made a mockup of basalmiq's big blue arrow. The way it always rotates to point to the middle of the thing is a subtle but terrific bit of User Interface design!
A thing about time is how things you anticipate (trips, graduations, product launches. etc) can all come to pass no matter how far ahead, but so does growing older...
http://www.mcfunkypants.com/nanoLD/ Loved Pile o' Gears, the made-in-48-minutes nanogames. Games that provide accomplishment w/o overstaying their welcome!
2011.02.13
--I also like that they used my lucky number's worth of shirts
http://www.boingboing.net/2011/02/13/waltham-mass-becomes.html My family's stomping grounds to become "Steampunkville" - What hath God wrought
I hope kitty enjoys me repeatedly throwing his toy mouse to go fetch and isn't just like "DUDE I PUT THAT MOUSE *HERE*. GOD DAMN."
2010.02.13
Always loved this Chemical Brothers song--
Sunday morning I'm waking upThere's a more literal video interpretation of the song with a pretty young woman in it, but it's not quite as magical
Can't even focus on a coffee cup
Don't even know who's bed I'm in
Where do I start
Where do I begin
[Reading] "How much sex you do you think is had in the Olympic Village? My guess: A lot."
"...I think I hear that every Olympics."
"Hm, yeah. And maybe it's more, you know, after the events, they don't want to sex away their game."
"Well I don't think you can sex away, like, 'Curling'"
http://is.gd/8k2ct - no woman's ski jump in the Olympics, when the world record is held by a woman, sounds like total bullshit.
Ooh they're BRAND-NAME Advil... wow....
2009.02.13
Judd Gregg is a total wuss. Republicans are the new "Dead-Enders". A lukewarm stimulus might be worse than no stimulus, in part 'cause Republicans can say "well we TRIED"
Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised.It's a good point. It also means that our stress can go up as other's problems become our own, and empathy fatigue can set in.
Tonight around 6:30 the unix timestamp will be 1234567890!
Pridential Center Gamestop sold the last copy of the game I frickin' pre-ordered to the guy in line in front of me. WTF GameStop? Just what do you mean by "preorder"?
more on today's Trader Joe ad
now wait a minute y'all- this dance ain't for everybody only the sexy people so all you fly mothers get on out there and dance, dance i say
http://www.moonmilk.com/ - ranjit is making an instrument a day. Nifty!
2008.02.13
It's temporarily back, but it looks like I'll have to give up my decade+ long luxury of saying "sure, anything @alienbill.com gets to me, so just use whatever username you find most amusing."
Lately I have been giving the same email to companies who ask for one, but there are still a lot of email addresses I'd ideally like to support, and I'm trying to think of ways to best determine which ones that should be.
It's really sad that the spammers are winning like this. The geek archivist purist in me longs for email addresses to be eternal.
Courtroom Exchange of the Moment
Attorney: So you saw that, did you?It's a good point! Most of us can see for lightyears, for certain values of "see".
Witness: Yes, I did.
Attorney: That was pretty far from you. How far can you see?
Witness: I can see the moon, how far is that?
Interview of the Moment
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Blacktron Renegade |
Nowadays, man, it's clear really brilliant fanfolks are working there. I've heard about the strenuous audition process Lego has developed, and much of the sets they come up with (especially with all the new joint and lever type pieces) seem cooler than anything I would throw together.
2007.02.13
Video of the Moment
Cute attempt at a revival of the classic newsreel, the month in review, at Slate... some amusing vintage footage, all in b+w w/ the scratches and old-timey announcer.
FAQ of the Moment
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The day after I finished the game, Slashdot pointed out that one of the GameFAQs entries for it is the entire script, along with some commentary, finishing with an attempt to piece the various games together into a single narrative (or, as the author argues, forked... one set following the "alternate timeline" if the Link of "Ocarina of Time" hadn't saved the world)
I guess I was kind of amused by the writing style, sort of Elevated "Comicbook Store Guy" prose...
This is of course the second guide I have partaken in, the first being a Gold Medal Guide I wrote for the oft-shunned but oddly addictive Star Fox Assault. It's a draughty little game, open as cannon fodder to those more willing to mince their teeth at its flaws, but it exposed to me the world of guide crafting, a world I have only approached with a detached torpidity since my last guide, one where I can espouse my love affair with the game and yet am still on due trajectory to paint around its corners and write anything but a full length guide. Twilight Princess was a likely candidate, but the availability of the Wii sunk that battle ship rather swiftly as I spent two weeks on a gladiatorial blood lust making Walmart employers quit in a fit of rage, swearing they'd die happy if they never heard the word Wii again.Anyway, it was interesting to skim through that all, see his theories, and catch up on story bits I might not have payed enough attention to my first time through.
2006.02.13
I sat there and tried to puzzle out what I would ask Mrs. Stanhunt, and what I would do with what I learned, if I learned something. I was playing this case existential, maybe a bit too existential. I needed a lead. I needed a client. Hell, I even needed a sandwich. There was probably little chance of Celeste Stanhunt coming downstairs and offering me a sandwich.Cyberpunkish Noir, very stylistic with some cool ideas. I'm not sure who recommended it to me but it was really good.
Video of the Moment
LAN3 msg'd me with:
Have you seen this? It's an excerpt from the british motorhead show called "Top Gear", wherein they test out the manueverability of a little city-car (the Toyota Aygo) by having 10 of them play soccer, in car.That is so cool. I love small city-cars. Plus, car soccer looks like it would make a grat videogame. (Heh... I think there was a car in the UK called the VW Polo, that would have been ever more apropos for the sport.)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1858640896825067657
Video of a Past Moment
We were watching some Winter Olympics last night. There was the ski jump... man, it's amazing to see at the very end of the jump, as the skier is acting as an airfoil-- reminds me of some of my flying/gliding dream images. Anyway, "Ask Yahoo!" answer Who's the "agony of defeat" guy from "The Wide World of Sports", which is the infamous failed ski jump attempt, and thanks to Yahoo Video (which seems to have a much better selection that Google's video service) I was able to find the relevant show introduction. Wheeee!
Observation of the Moment
I was trying to figure out why I was just not impressed by the NYC blizzard with its twenty inches...so I googled and found out that that monster I dug out from last year was when I was close to Salem, which had a whopping 38 inches.
Also, compared to this photo I have of an early '96 blizzard in NYC...well, I guess it's how much the snow drifts rather than the amount falling, but '96 seems more amazing to me.
2005.02.13
I have to say though, I hate the word "potable", maybe because I sill kind of see the word "potty" in it. Do we really need a different word than "drinkable"?
Heh, remember when Perrier seemed like a really classy thing? Back when it still seemed a little odd to pay for water in small bottles. Than came Evian and all the would-be-clever people pointing out that it spells "naive" backwards...at least Perrier has boubles, and an interesting flavor.
Today's title comes from a poster at Bernie Shulman's (a grocery chain in Cleveland that had these neat hand-drawn posters) back in the early 90s.
2004.02.13
Public Service of the Moment
If you have any reason to believe that your day may end up being short of your daily minimum allotment of David Hasselhoff, or if you are of German Descent*, Please Click Here
Prayer of the Moment
<Firefly> Time for my prayers:For those not in the know, it's a parody of a certain type of hacker talk...kinda clever, actually.
<Firefly> Our Father, who 0wnz heaven, j00 r0ck!
<Firefly> May all 0ur base someday be belong to you!
<Firefly> May j00 0wn earth just like j00 0wn heaven.
<Firefly> Give us this day our warez, mp3z, and pr0n through a phat pipe.
<Firefly> And cut us some slack when we act like n00b lamerz, just as we teach n00bz when they act lame on us.
<Firefly> Please don't give us root access on some poor d00d'z box when we're too pissed off to think about what's right and wrong, and if you could keep the fbi off our backs, we'd appreciate it.
<Firefly> For j00 0wn r00t on all our b0x3s 4ever and ever, 4m3n.
Online Toy of the Moment
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News Coverage of the Moment
The Daily Show invents the Bush-on-Meet-the-Press drinking game! *Hic*
2003.02.13
UPDATE: According to the analysis of my Referer log, I've gotten over 150 hits by people searching for variations on "cheese eating surrender monkeys", which I used as a title Monday. Guess that explains it. (The phrase comes from a Simpsons quote, Groundskeeper Willie teaching a French class, that has been adopted by the right wing media lately.)
Quote of the Moment
"Weaseling out of things is what separates us from the animals. Except for weasels, I guess."Quoted by Ranjit, I've found a few wordings of it online, but his is funniest.
News of the Moment
Osama (might be) vowing to die a martyr in the next year or so. Idle speculation: he is dead, these tapes are coming from an impersonator, and they don't think they can keep it up. There was that big todo over that last tape, and while our officials declared the real deal, some scholars in other countries weren't as sure. Of course, this is just random speculation, take it with a grain of salt.
Image of the Moment
![]() | --Inspired by a Conan O'Brien monologue (explaining to Bush that the transition was from Bert to Ernie.) Very soothing, hey? |
Headline of the Moment
North Korea Wants Arms and More Aid From U.S. At first I thought they were asking from arms from the USA, which would be kind of funny. Even still it's a weird headline. But mostly, I want to comment on Kim Jong Il. They says he's a bit of a playboy, and you know what? He looks it. Like an evil bon vivant, and I'll bet you his constant sunglasses and swept back hair are the epitome of North Korean cool. He's straight outta a James Bond flick. Err, Austin Powers. Well, how about some kooky villain in a Japanese fighting game?
It's interesting how nuclear proliferation might change the world situation, impinging on what the USA can do as "sole superpower". I don't think the danger is the missiles though, it's smuggled nukes, whether by nations or by independent groups.
2002.02.13
We have two options:I wrangled the lines just a bit to rhyme, but I really like the playfulness inherent in these lines. And then we found poetry...
(a) hide under the bed (b) run and scream in fear
the a turned into an angel, and the b into a mug of beer
Link of the Moment
Take a look at this guy's cover letter page. As Portal of Evil put it, "He may have all kinds of computer experience, but he lacks a certain something when it comes to putting together a resume that does not make your head explode." I think he must've formed his sense of visual design from NASCAR.
Oh yeah, speaking of all things résumé-ish...I'll be out of work in 2 months... time to take this weak job market head on.
2001.02.13
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Game of the Moment
Came home sick. Really felt unwell. Spent too much time unlocking every screen in Yoshi's Story, a way-too-cute platformer for the N64.
Television of the Moment
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In a dream, It occurs to me that maybe America is so arrogant because we're the only country to put a person on the moon.
99-2-13
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"A casual stroll through a lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything."
--Nietzsche
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My mom just mentioned that my Dad was 23 when they got married... *YIKES*
(at the Fantasticks with Mo + Mom, remembering awaiting her contact while in line at the thrift store)
98-2-13
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