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At the risk of playing the role of dangerously out of touch old man.... listening to 1991's "Into the Great Wide Open" and how it used "He went to Hollywood, got a tattoo" as a kind of character marker. Like, it's weird how tattoos went from daring to ubiquitous in like 30 years.

Unless life also gives you sugar, you're going to end up with some really bad lemonade.

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Disney is secretly run by a True Fae because the two elements of Arcadia are stories and contracts so by using complex contracts to get control of all stories it can become the the most powerful being in Faerie send tweet

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In 2153, humans escaped from their ruined planet with the help of an AI-controlled fleet whose goal was to find humans a safe place for them to live and put themselves in cryo-sleep. When humans woke from their sleep they found a variety of messages begging humans to stop their mechanical god

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Harvard Square turkey.
Two pointless notes from the quarantine:

1. When I break from WFH for the day, I generally grab my personal laptop, my phone (that's been providing music) and my iPad mini (that's been on todo list duty) and grab the pile to trundle with from my desk to the living room or wherever. I call this pile... "my tech stack", har har.

2. A silver lining to the dark cloud of never put in the work to learn to cook is that small discoveries seem amazing. Like, my go-to breakfast for quarantine is "banana with nutella on a flax/oat bran/whole wheat wrap". 3 months in and many bananas later I realize it's like twice as good if you slice the banana first, rather than just treating it like a fruity hot dog. The mouth feel is greatly improved and I think there's more surface area for the flavor, more "banana meets that-permitted-in-the-morning-frosting-that-is-nutella" action I think of this treat from 2008 every time I walk out of water in a clingy bathing suit. (CONTENT WARNING: not for people who are offended by the phrase "man tits" which pretty much starts the song.)

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I really like this approach to Theodicy (why God permits evil):

via Got on page B7 of the Boston Globe, reporting on a Cosecha anti-family-separation rally that BABAM! backed.

Had I know I'd'a worn a better T-shirt than Rick and Morty.

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Boston, which used to be a city of a thousand nooks and crannies, back-alley restaurants and shops, dive bars and ice cream parlors hidden under its elevated, is now one long, monotonous wall of modern skyscraper.

I mostly feel this in Harvard Square. Too many landlords holding out for too much rent from too stable and boring a business, like another f'in Bank Branch or CVS. Squares with nothing but empty lots and boring as dishwater franchises are a blight on our land. I think they should be dealt with via tax breaks for funky, less-corporate businesses and harsh tax penalties for landlords who just sit on spots, waiting for the right boring client and bringing down the neighborhood values for everyone.

I'm looking over
My dead dog Rover
Who I overran with the mower...
One leg is missing
The other one's gone
The third is in pieces
All across the front lawn-
No use explaining
The one remaining
It's stuck to the kitchen door!
I'm looking over
my dead dog Rover
Who I overran with the mower...

Man, hadn't thought of that camp song for ages 'til I was at Cora's dance recital today and one of the groups used the more traditional "4 Leaf Clover" version. Trump recently "Accepted Christ". Which Christian values has Trump been exemplifying, exactly?

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I made a print map for JP Porchfest again!



I talk about the process and compare it to last year's on my devblog. On my devblog, economics, culture, and electronic communication preference - Some takeaways from an article about how WhatsApp voice memos are becoming the predominant electronic communication format in Buenos Aires, and the parallels with the long standing Flilpino texting culture.

"Do not suffer life to stagnate; it will grow muddy for want of motion: commit yourself again to the current of the world."

Henry Hitchings' book "Defining the World" describes Samuel Johnson's post-Dictionary life thus: "

The Johnson of legend is Johnson the pensioner, free to ramble, idle and adventure, to travel with Boswell and Hebrides and sleep on hay in his riding coat, to try hunting (which he did not enjoy) and impersonating a kangaroo (which he did), to 'have a frisk' with his much younger friends and dine on veal pie with plums and sugar, to investigate ghosts, to teach himself Dutch, and to laugh uninhibitedly 'like a rhinocerous'.

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TIL (well, last Saturday); cars these days are smarter than my 10 year old Scion, and keep the power for the radio and windows on until you open the door.
http://kirkdev.blogspot.com/2014/06/improved-ux-in-cars.html The Success of Udemy -- Having worked 3 years on an online learning site, I gotta say, I don't think I understand how everything works.

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VOTED

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My Alien Bill Gallery inspired Madam Luna to ask for another commission...
she'd been watching Giant-themed Anime, may have been an influence...

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Sex, Gender, and Toilets. Study on the signage.

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As I get older, I don't enjoy the same things I once enjoyed.
But I enjoy new and different things!
...
I just don't enjoy them as much as I used to enjoy the things I no longer enjoy.

From Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal:

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http://www.noisemademedoit.com/dial-up-modem-slowed/ -- horror show sound track by slowing down the modem noise. --via 22words.
--via. So Vuvuzela jokes are really running their course, but "Insistendo quasi le vespe" (roughly "insistently, like a wasp") is a nice touch. I kind of forgot how sheet music tended to have stuff in Italian on it, which seems quaint now. (And I think English instructions are becoming more common.)

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Feel somehow validated that the default iOS 4 background is the same one I picked for iPad.

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BTW, thanks for the 1AM "Welcome to AT&T!" text, assholes. #att #attsucks #attfail

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Did not get an iPhone today. Just drew a 4 on my old one with a Sharpie. Felt better.

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CNN headlines, mildly disappointing: "iPhone 4 spurs excitement, beefs" I was kind of hoping the story would be more meat-related.

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iPhone, iPad, no Macs -- I'd like to think that I'm less of a "Apple Fanboi" and more of a "Touchscreen Junkie".

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If a June night could talk, it would probably boast that it invented romance.

I was a few months behind in updating my java/javascript page. The choice of 50x50 icons is a challenge, but kind of a fun one... today's entry is just an exercise in seeing how various presentations of the links look - I don't know if it's any more or less compelling without the written description of what's going on. I took out 3 or 4 duplicate or non-java things to make a nice box, but that innumeracy thing comes up, where (to me at least) 49 things in a 7x7 box looks more like... I dunno, thirty-odd something.

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We reason deeply when we forcibly feel.

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Taking the train to DC. Did a lot of train travel in Japan, and now I'm jonesing for Calpis/Calpico, like the ultimate train drink from there.

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Man, twitters full of MJ's death... I just want him to come back as a Thriller zombie. Also: Farrah and her friends in that swimsuit... Ugh, just one of those days where there doesn't seem time to get a good kisrael together... so here is a baby laughing in slow motion.

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My own Boston parking pass! Excitement and a half!

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The Central Square benches are one hell of a slice of life. Like a bus stop, without the bus. I've had a lot of "Hi! I'm tired this afternoon. Interested in chatting to pretty girl?" SPAM as of late. It makes me wonder if the phrase "tired this afternoon" bit is helping it through Gmail's spamfilter, if it capitalizes on some international fatigue or malaise expressed in ordinary mail. Or, more likely, it's just a short message, and thus harder pattern to seperate from normal short emails.

I'm always tempted to try to send joke e-mails to friends following the spam patterns, but I guess the risk of my mail being mistaken for the real thing is just too great. And maybe they won't get it either.

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Video of the Moment
This weekend I subjected myself to a Larry the Cable Guy concert (or whatever they call an hour or two of recorded stage "comedy"). I guess the accent reminds me of hanging out with my cousins in downstate Ohio back in the day. A few laughs as well, but too much dumb, mean-spirited, and/or gross-out humor.

Anyway, here's a video of the guy before the accent and personae, in this weirdly-high-strung 80s-comedy-show manner. Nowadays this guy really has the pandering thing down.

Yesterday was the memorial service for my Great Uncle Frank Moody. We learned he used to quip that with a name Nathaniel Francis Moody he had all his bases covered... Nathaniel the disciple of Jesus, Saint Francis so revered among Catholics, and the great protestant evangelist DL Moody.

He had been cremated, so there was the urn (a sealed green marble box) at the front, with some photographs of him...when he was young he looked a bit like Valentino, actually. He was a Brigadier in the Salvation Army and so the service was Salvationist, with a small brass ensemble, and everyone singing... the upbeat rendition of Beulah Land with clapping during the chorus (after the presiding officer mentioned Uncle Franks love of shaking a tambourine to that song) was really moving, I think more so than a somber song would have been at that point.

Afterwards I got to catch up with the Scheinfeldt cousins, always a blast. I learned some of them check out this site from time to time, guess I have to watch myself in this place.

Sometimes when I hear scripture these days, I'm struck at the similarities among Judaism, Christianity, and Islam... sometimes I realize that the tone of the Bible is often closer to its "desert religion" roots than the Westernized interpretation I grew up in, a little more harsh, a certain Middle Eastern spiritual vibe. It's hard to put my finger on exactly.

Actually, something in the service made me think about a theological point. One of the readings was from 1 Corinthians, about the resurrection of the dead at the world. But also during the service, the idea that Uncle Frank had already received his place in Heaven was expressed. I've definitely heard more about the second idea, from cartoons about people up at the pearly gates to words of comfort during funerals. The two ideas aren't easily reconciled, though I guess they don't quite contradict each other either.

I got to talking to Ksenia about Russian Orthodox thought. It has a few interesting ideas...after someone's death there's a 40-day period before the person's fate is determined. Friends and Family can pray and try to help the person get into Heaven and not Hell...but then, it sounds like that's not the eternal reward or punishment, but just what goes on until the end of the world, at which point the sacrifice and atonement of Jesus Christ should allow everyone to live in the new kingdom. It's an interesting idea, and I appreciate the relative lack of eternal hellfire.

In reading the full 1 Corinthians chapter, it resolved one thing for me... I that that bodily resurrection is an important idea for many sects, which is why some shun organ donation (that shunning is a tremendous humanist sin, I'd say) and cremation. But verses 35-38 cover that, and use a metaphor how just like you plant a seed, not wheat itself, to get wheat, there might not be a 1:1 correspondance between this body and the next.

Tangent, in writing about this I wanted to find out if the traditional Jewish dislike of tattoos has any roots in an idea about resuurection and I found this page. Ideas like not wanting to echo the tattoos Holocaust as well as "this body is like a loaner car, you want to keep it in good condition" get more play than any talk of resurrection. But I did learn that there's Jewsploitation band, probably a parody of the White Supremicist group Skrewdriver, called "Jewdriver".

Oy.

UPDATE: Good Rant about the Flag Burning Amendment. I love the "VFW Test". I swear the need to pass a law against something that's not even happening much anyway is a retarded crossover of church and state...making it a holy object suggest a church MADE UP of the state. Yes, I'm very grateful to everyone who has fought for this nation; no I don't think this is a good way of making sure they're treated with proper honor.

• Unfinished Essay of the Moment
  So lately I've been thinking about this question: "what's the point of acting like a grownup?" To quote Paul in the bible, "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things." The thing is, I was kind of a precocious kid, read some fairly advanced books, developed a rationalistic worldview, tried to foster a taste for jazz and classical. And of course now that I'm knocking on the door of early middle age, my tastes veer towards that of a younger person...I like video games, I'm the supplier of office toys for my workroom, I really like "graphic novels", all that stuff.

  As I get older, I don't enjoy the same things I once enjoyed.
  But I enjoy new and different things!
  ...
  I just don't enjoy them as much as I used to enjoy the things I no longer enjoy.

• Slashdot on a book talking about How Employees who play Video Games are different. It reminds me of one thing I liked about school relative to work; in school, if the challenge was outside of the whole class's capability, that was more or less the teacher's responsibility. Work doesn't have that kind of safety net.
• Lots of Old Commercials
• The truly terrible film "What the BLEEP do we know" did tell me about Masaru Emoto, who claims water resonates with the good or bad thoughts people have around it, and claims to be able to capture that on film. The pictures are pretty if nothing else, though consensus is it's a far cry from a doubleblind study...
• indienudes, "art & porn links"
• Photos of the feet of famous musicians in performance.
• My dad hated gangsters, just had a visceral dislike of the whole scene, just the brutality and domineering nature of 'em. Couldn't stomache Sinatra, thought "The Godfather"'s glorification of the lifestyle was horrendous. So now I alwayas feel a little guilty when I like some bit of that, like "The Sorpranos". I mean the whole idea of "respect" is pretty compelling, but they do tend to underplay what a threat they can be to innocent people not in the group.

Awww, crap...I got new glasses yesterday, and along with my haircut this different (first hairstyle change since like 3rd grade, except during that unfortunate time in middle school) I was all set to show of my new look...but I realized there was one issue:

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Seperated at Birth? of the Moment

John Ritter in "Sling Blade"		Kirk Israel in real life.

Sigh. Well, worst case scenario, I can get new frames from Eye-Q...

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Quote of the Moment

They say that time changes things, but actually you have to change them yourself.

Hence this recent makeover!

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Game of the Moment
A pre-emptive I made when LAN3 took over that one weekend: Just in case I don't get to update the page over the weekend, here's an odd little game: ROFL Attack. Almost, but not quite, ASCII art. Usenet Posting of the Moment
Warning, slightly raunchy content follows:

Subject: Re: Getting Love Warts
From: "Steve Howarth"
Newsgroups: alt.2600, alt.dissolved-reality, alt.folklore.urban

"Sassy Red" wrote:

Does everyone who knocks off a little piese of ass with out asking get love warts ? I's never had any such thing before last week, and i has been with a girl many other times but never did i get a spot on my tool or even a sore nut when i was done poking her.

Hey, Cletus! You got the Internet, now, I see.

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Web Toy of the Moment
I don't think this guy has an official connection to Google, but Aaron Swartz has made an interesting tool that lets you see what ads would come up if you were part of Google's AdSense program. It's cool seeing what Google really thinks your site is all about.
I tell you, I'm very tempted to look into installing this on LoveBlender... I've always liked Google's approach to Ads before, the stuff is ontopic, and it would be nice for that site to finally start carrying its own weight...

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Advice of the Moment

Just don't create a file called -rf.

You probably have to be a computer geek who knows Unix to get that one.

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News of the Moment
I'm so delighted by incredibly nasty war waged by people trying to install religion-based government, Islamic or otherwise.

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Link of the Moment
Slate.com captured what looks to be screenshots from a the Bush/Cheney '04 website prototype. Unintentionally hilarious and telling in parts. Oy. I can feel myself getting a little anxious again, with the July 4th threat focus and ongoing economic doldrums. (The economy...how bad can it get? Hopefully not as bad as all that.) I'll probably have a bit less of an immediate, personal stake tied up in how both of those things turn out than I imagine, but I can feel my free floating anxiety/neuroses trying to latch on.

Bush isn't helping. He had his moment, the world's eyes were on him, and he just shoves Arafat into that big old "leaders the USA (currently) finds unacceptable" bin. We're acting like such wannabe Caesers, thinking we can appoint the govenors of the little regions beneath us. Jeez-o-man, we got gall. He gets points for point to a future for a nation of Palestine, but...man. Why the hell is the world looking to us anyway? Where is Europe in all this? For crying out loud, we got a not-too-bright oilman who didn't even win the popular vote at the helm...look elsewhere people! We'll try to distract him with some drilling in Alaska, you go lead the world!

Sometimes I want to change my name and ditch that whole "Israel" thing. I just want to avoid that karmic link. Roihl is a pretty cool name. Uncommon, too, I'd be one of like 5 or 6 in the country. kroihl.com. Hrrm.

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Link of the Moment
Salon had a cool piece in praise of Pac-Man. I always thought that the overall look and sound of that game have held up really well over the years, not to mention the gameplay (I think the secret is the surprisingly complex behavior of the ghosts). The image to the left is a tiling Pac-Man wallpaper I made at tilemachine, one of a series of classic-game-themed graphics...you can right click and set it as your wallpaper if you're feeling masochistic.

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Quote of the Moment

The Vatican came down with a new ruling: no surrogate mothers. Good thing they didn't make this rule before Jesus was born.

Why is it that libraries around here tend not to be open when you might actually want to go to one? It's like a crazy conspiracy on behalf of old people and kids.

Speaking of being quiet... Mimes. Why are there so many jokes about them? There are so many not terribly amusing lines about how it's ok to kill them, how annoying they are... I mean, I haven't seen one for years and years, (the last one was doing an audience warmup at Cleveland Sea World, actually was pretty good.) but the jokes go on, and on, and on. Were they that bad? Were people traumatized by being mocked by mimes?

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Raunchy Quote of the Moment

"Isn't that what it's all about? The work? Creating all the things you have, the accomplishments?"
    "The career? It's good for one thing. You know what it all gets down to? What the notoriety and the fame are all about?"
"What?"
    "Pussy! Fame gets you better pussy, kid!"

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News Story of the Moment

So many motorists were concerned that a cow walking in knee-deep water in a flooded field was stuck that it caused a traffic jam near De Bary, FL. To get traffic moving again--and stop 911 calls to the Highway Patrol about a "drowning" cow--highway workers setup an electronic sign to flash the message "The Cow is OK" to passing cars. But two days later, the sign was still there, causing a traffic jam as motorists looked for a cow, which had long since walked away.