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Photos of me by others:

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Sam Alito Got Knighted... Just Like The Founding Fathers EXPLICITLY MADE UNCONSTITUTIONAL

Cool, cool.

Strict originalists my ass.

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The best way to find out if you can trust somebody, is to trust them.

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Other Folks'...

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via Vanessa Mourao (photo by her husband), at the School of Honk Birthday celebration at the Powderhouse in Somerville

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No matter what instrument you are playing you can't miss the first beat or you're through.

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This idea of purity and you're never compromised and you're always politically woke and all that stuff... You should get over that quickly. The world is messy. There are ambiguities. People who do really good stuff have flaws. People who you are fighting may love their kids and, you know, share certain things with you.

One danger I see among young people particular on college campuses is a sense -- among certain young people, and this is accelerated by social media -- that the way of me making change is to be as judgmental as possible about other people, and that's enough. If I tweet or hashtag about how you didn't do something right or used the wrong verb, then I can sit back and feel pretty good about myself, cuz, 'Man, you see how woke I was, I called you out.' Get on TV. Watch my show. Watch Grown-ish.

That's not activism. That's not bringing about change. If all you're doing is casting stones, you're probably not going to get that far. That's easy to do.

"...Even as a stimulus for reminiscence, a treasured book is more important than a dance card, or the photo that freezes you in mid-teeter at the edge of the Grand Canyon, because such a book can be a significant event in the history of your reading, and your reading should be an essential segment of your character and your life. Unlike the love we've made or meals we've eaten, books congregate to form a record around us of what they've fed our stomachs or our brains. These are not a hunter's trophies but the living animals themselves."

Not sure I agree with all of it but it's well put. The whole piece is a celebration of the physical character of books (but only briefly puts a knock on e-readers.)

I had the idea that after year of mostly e-reading I should purchase physical copies of the books I deemed 4 or 5 star - though those would hang around as pristine copies, devoid of signs of the physical journeys I undertook with it, that Gass so praises.

The flip side to it: unread books accumulate in Kindle-space too, of course, but the stack on the bottom of my bedside table (often graphic novels or things I couldn't get e-copies of) is somehow more condemning than the lists on the screen.

(Ah well. I think to my friend Jessica's kind of habit of having favorite authors she can meet in person autograph her Kindle device, which I find endearingly quirky.)

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A lot of the jokes are kinda sexist and predictable but Carol Burnett doing a gender-swap Star Trek Original Series is worth knowing about -

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On the Augean Stables of comment spam, and git-r-done ux. Slate:The iPhone X Takes Hand Gestures Too Far

I've never been a fan of gesture interfaces, and life with an iPhone X requires a whole new slew of them. (Conversely, I've always been a big fan of the home button; an easy to access "lets take it from the top" escape hatch can be enormously centering, like how when I click on a website's name in their header on any page I go to the site homepage.)

That's one of problems with the designer's dream of being such world-beater designers they they can stop having to actually, you know, design- having achieved the zen of "a piece of featureless glass"... the phone then just consists of an OS and apps - but having to designate certain finger moves as "ok, now you're communicating with the OS" makes a less known reliable channel, and one prone to accidental invocations, and takes away from the language of gestures that apps are allowed to use.

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"America lacks that common sense. It has extraordinary sense instead, which is why, even now, even in the middle of its great darkness, artists and entrepreneurs still love America, still need it, still want to move there. America is the place where you can come up with your own meaning."

But, you're entitled to your own opinion. You are not entitled to your own facts. This is why Scott Adam's "Where Facts Don't Matter" stance is absolute anathema to me, one of the most immoral ways someone can be. Between HONK! and Halloween, this month was mostly music, and some art.

The 7th has a close up of a baritone player's cigarette (the player is French, of course), 24th has me trying to master a hula hoop, and the 28th is a cat that has grown use to like one trombone but 12 at once is just too much. Also the Jack-O-Lanterns I helped with near the end; I like the tiny face and just inscribing the word "Pumpkin"

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"Seeing someone reading a book you love is seeing a book recommending a person"
--??? I have another normal One Second Everyday coming, but I made a second set of a selfie-style shot everyday... the result wasn't as good as the normal one, but kind of good...

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"[In a halloween straightjacket] I think I fell asleep- this thing is like a Temple Grandin hug!"

For a show that is so corny and occasionally problematic in other ways, sometimes it really tickles me.

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On the one hand, I kind of like the
THANK YOU
TOM MENINO
message on the DoT electronic billboards. On the other hand, All five I've seen were over heavy, slow traffic areas, which give them a kind of sarcastic "Thanks, Obama" feel.

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Slate tackles something I've wondered about: When did young folks start using both backpack straps? Found around 25 songs ("3 star and up") in October. 4 stars in red, links prefaced with a * are particularly fun to watch videos.

Bigband and/or Bigdrums

• *Yeah Yeah (Willy Moon) Admittedly I almost like the 30 second Apple ad better, but the percussion in this song makes it the only one I'm labeling with 4-stars this month.
• Sparkling Diamonds (Moulin Rouge! Soundtrack) I've had the album for a while... can't believe I didn't give the beautiful horn hit at the begining 3 stars years ago!

Love Found

• Collide (Howie Day) Soft and sweet, almost shmaltzy.
• Rhythm Of Love (Plain White T's) Also soft and sweet but with ukuleles.
• *That Man (Caro Emerald) Veronika mentioned this album last year. Besides the nice retro feel, I love the faux-phonecall wooing by some Don Juan (at about 3:16 in)
• Drive By (Train) Maybe technically more Love Lost? Whatevs.

Love Lost

• Tonight You Belong to Me (Janet Klein) That video is actually Zooey Deschanel but there's a ukulele instructional video for this song by Janet Klein.
• *50 Ways To Say Goodbye (Train) Funny video for a slightly bitter song... more songs should have this much mariachi!
• Good, Bad, Ugly (Ani Difranco) Another song that deserved more stars than I gave it. "open open open open open open all the time"
• Paper Girl (July Talk) Alternating growly and sweet.
• *If You Think You Need Some Lovin (Pomplamoose) I love the "making of the song" videos for this, along with Nataly Dawn's way of looking at the camera out of the corner of her eye.
• Not Big [Explicit] (Lily Allen) Heh, harsh.

Hiphop

• Sesame Street [Explicit] (Blowfly) Oh man, the lyrics of this A-Z rundown are funny and FILTHY, but the beat is SO GOOD.
• He Got Game (Public Enemy) Dig Chuck D's lyrics ("folks don't even own themselves / paying mental rent to corporate presidents") overcome Flava Flav's rambles on the Explicit version.
• Girl On Fire (Inferno Version) (Alicia Keys / Nicki Minaj) The sparse but huge beat and rap intro make up for the overly repetitive chorus.
• Pony Pop (DJ Amtrak / Ginuwine / Lil Wayne) There's a whole blog Dancing Along to Pony, and it's a great riff, but better when mashed up with some modern sexed up hiphop.
• *Gold Digger (Glee Cast) Funny how every "ass" is censored-- makes the core message left behind that much more offensive. Still, the choral backgrounds punchup a good song.
• *Frank Sinatra vs Freddie Mercury (Epic Rap Battles of History)

80s/90s Retro

• 25 Or 6 To 4 (Remastered) (Chicago) I think my jazz band played this one. (I like DJ Magnet's Best of Bootie mashup "Chicago Bump" a bit better)
• Mama Told Me Not To Come (The Wolfgang Press) Cover as seen in the movie "Party Girl"

Rural

• East Bound And Down (Jerry Reed) From "Smokey and the Bandit", not sure where I saw it. Fun song though.
• Johnny Law (William Elliott Whitmore) Banjo player at Harvard Square was covering this.

Other

• *Thank Heavens for Little Girls (Ruby and Lesley Rankine) Ha, I had to rip this from the commercial that I loved in the 90s. It turns out there was no full length version of the song. There's a minute version of the commercial, but the 30 seconds has the good bits and no voiceover.
• Monsters (Monsters Are Waiting) A suicide girls video once had this odd little work.
• Red Alert (K5) Surprisingly hard club track to find, despite its use in "Chasing Amy"

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What did the guy say to his glasses? I can see right through you.

Joke I made up this morning. While looking for my glasses.

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Fetch from the stick's PoV:

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We can't say that steroids caused any one home run by Barry Bonds, but steroids sure helped him hit more and hit them farther. Now we have weather on steroids.

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fun visual puns about disney + star wars -- only 1 darth-in-mickey ears.

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I will never apologize for America

I will never apologize for the United States -- I don't care what the facts are...

I hate Republicans. The idea that we are above apology is disgusting.

--Messing around with trying to get beyond simple lines and definite edges in my doodling. I like how it looks more dynamic, though I don't know if it would work with color.

AFOL A Blocumentary from AFOL on Vimeo.

--My mom mentioned a Sunday Morning special on these guys... I really need to break out by giant tub of bricks more often!

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It's kind of telling and damning of the gamer community how many Wikipedia video game pages get stuck on the game's "coming soon" phase.

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from Wendy's-- it's not a fork or a spoon or even a spork....
more of a "spoo"
--JZ pointed this one out to me a while back. Spooky! (This was yesterday's entry 'til I made the Jack-O-Lantern thing...)

So one of my playlists is called "Psyched", and its meant to be music that's energizing to work to.

Some of the songs aren't necessarily that fast but they have a certain feel... I thought of it in terms and invoking this certain kind of dance, and only recently did I realize that the dance I was thinking of was Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith in the original movie Clerks:



Looking for that, I found the 1 2 3, A B C dance number from Clerks 2... man, that song has it all-- (beides some raw PG13 language etc), pretty gal bopping along in a tank top, individuals gettin' into the groove, extended version of the song w/ a nice drumbreak, big bollywood/Drew Carey show group dancing, terrific punch line. 2 thumbs up.

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Article of the Moment
Why Zen Software Design Does Not Come From Japan. While I kind of dislike the facile "UI elegance and minimalism = ZEN!" bit, the insights as to how Japanese cellphones are bullet-point-based, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink, minimalism is for old art was intriguing. I wish that I didn't get the feeling Windows Vista was heading the same way. (I started a thread on slashdot about Windows Vista, and how things stack up against OSX, etc etc that I think got fairly good, at least for people interested in the topic.)

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"Davis Square: the Paris of the 90s". Heh. It's really tough to dress for an autumnal commute that's split between riding a bike (cold and windy) and a T-ride (warm and toasty).

I bought some serious bike gloves, with rubber grips and odd padding, like my hand was wearing falsies. So now that I'm bundling up with those gloves and my Nokia winter hat, I guess it's time to give up the sandals. Plus, my toes were frickin' freezing.

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List of the Moment
Slate's running a bunch of excerpts from Military Blogs, people stationed in Iraq, and I found the list of "good-to-have equipment" captivating, its mix of humdrum civilian goods (MP3 players, 12V car chargers) and military specialty needs (Drop Leg Holster, non-sand-attacting weapons lube).

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Quote of the Moment

The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously.

Sometimes I feel that's my modus operandi, but then I think the problem is that I take EVERYTHING too seriously, or rather, I just proceed from one narrow, momentarily all-encompassing-pursuit to another, and so the side effect is that when everything is taken so seriously, nothing is.

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Literary Mystery of the Moment
Ugh, I'm turning into such a Slate groupie. Anyway, here's Slate's Joshua Glen tackling a literary mystery I hadn't heard of, the "little nameless object" manufactured in Woollett, Mass, in Henry James' The Ambassadors. He makes a good case, and covers the history of the mystery very well.

Miller got some Halloween candy for last night, but we live on a poor street for trick-or-treaters, so we get to keep all the candy for ourselves.

The thing is, Miller and I have a fundamental disagreement about candy: for me, there's a near absolute hierarchy: any Halloween candy with chocolate is more desirable than anything without. There might be an exception to this rule now and then, but in general it holds. Miller disagrees, claiming that chocolate can get squished and mushed and it really is more situation dependent than that.

Heretic!

But seriously, any one else want to weigh in?

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Politics of the Moment
Jimminy Crickets, it's not bad enough Kerry lost the 2004 election, now he's trying to poison the democrat's mid-term chances, attracting attention in the most negative way possible, and away from the already fading interest in Republican scandals. The implication that American troops are undereducated ignoramus, that military life is the option once you haven't applied yourself in other fields, is the least politically correct thing I've heard any politician utter in recent memory. In the comments TSM points out the missing "us", but it was a dumb joke to begin with, and terribly delivered. More in the comments.

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Image and Video of the Moment
A pelican eating a pigeon, via this cellar.org's Image of the Day. The youtube video was pretty amazing as well. And frankly, funny. It's a combination of that "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park" vibe along with the sheer comedy gold of a pelican's big wobbly underbeak. I wonder if the pelican is at risk for damage from a scratchy pecky pigeon. Or for coughing up feathers for the next week.

Article of the Moment
This guy makes beekeeping sound pretty dang cool.

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Definitions of the Moment

SCIENCE: A way of finding things out and then making them work. Science explains what is happening around us the whole time. So does RELIGION, but science is better because it comes up with more understandable excuses when it's wrong. There is a lot more Science than you think.

from A Scientific Encyclopedia
for the Inquiring Young Nome
by Angalo de Haberdasheri

Geared as children's literature but a very good read, especially the first one "Truckers". Quote of the Moment

Every player who excels in the college game has a modicum of bloodlust; as Bill Parcells once noted, football isn't a game for well-adjusted adults.

And with that, the Patriots record-breaking, absolutely historic winning streak came to an end...

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Link of the Moment
You probably have to be geeky to get this but this Slashdot link comparing Linux Gentoo users to "Ricers" really amused me...because I tend to see computers as more-or-less appliances, at least as far as the hardware and OS goes, I'm amused by people who go nuts trying to tweak their systems. ("Ricers" is a disparaging term for guys who take Japanese cars and tweak them for "better performance"...the most obvious sign of Ricers are super big rear spoilers and those giant exhaust pipes)

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Video of the Moment

--Cobra Commander for President! Stop the wasteful GI Joe Boondoggle that's taking the taxpayers money!

Welcome to November!

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Video of the Moment
This is how the world ends / This is how the world ends / This is how the world ends / Not with a bang but a flash video. Ok, maybe some bangs in there too. (It sounds a bit like Mario Twins, not sure if its the same guys or not.)

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Gamer Link of the Moment
I found this making of (the Xbox game) Halo article reprinted from the UK "Edge" magaine was a decent read, though I'm yet to really have played the game. Another month has arrived. Time goes by quickly, on the other hand events at the start of October seema long long way away; I wasn't even doing intraday updates of kisrael.com.

Added two new pages to the Features sidebar, both compilations of previous work: small gif cinema and the javascript gamebuttons. The latter page got some attention on one of my favorite sites (and uncredited sources of kisrael links) boingboing, who called it "just about the coolest goddamned webthing, ever". I resisted urge to be a further hit whore by adding in a lot of links back to the daily entries the games premiered in.

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Mixed Metaphor of the Moment

I broke your pomegranate cherry?

Indeed, I had never had a pomegranate before. What an odd, alien-seeming fruit, where you scoop out the red seeds from their white nesting lattice and then chew their covering.

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Game Geek Link of the Moment
It's the GameSpy Grudge Match. This week: Mega Man vs. Bomberman. Their archive and writing is decent, though probably not as sharp as the original WWWF Grudgematch...its set of past matches is worth skimming through, from "Gary Coleman vs. Webster" to "Bill the Cat vs. Odie". Link of the Moment
Somehow I missed the Wil Wheaton Responds To Your Questions when it first came out on slashdot, but John was talking about. He got an early big break in "Stand By Me" and he also played Wesley on Star Trek: The Next Generation. (He was kind of the Barney the Dinosaur of the show, the character it was cool for everyone to hate.) Interestingly, he's become a fairly mainstream geek, albeit one who can act. He runs his own website and takes everything in good humor, as long as you don't think an abundance of "I was with your mother last night" jokes eliminates the possiblity of "good" humor.

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Funny of the Moment

I've seen news reports that the PO is going to irradiate the mail with gamma rays. Gamma rays and microwaves are so completely different that I can easily believe that one would work, but not the other. Microwaves are actually radio waves, which are much, much lower on the electromagnetic spectrum than gamma rays.

"HULK DELIVER THROUGH SLEET!
HULK DELIVER THROUGH RAIN!
HULK SMASH GLOOM OF NIGHT!!!!"

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Flash Movie of the Moment
The Screener is a minimalist flash movie, four brief episodes. Not screamingly funny but with a quirky appeal. (via cruel site of the day)