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If I drink water I will have to go to the bathroom and how can I use the bathroom when my people are in bondage?

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Another time I blog about is when I figure something out that I've been trying to understand for a long time, in some cases my whole life. That still happens. The other day I found myself talking with a friend about love, why when someone says "I love you" it doesn't mean what it seems to. Love comes from understanding someone well enough that you know what they desire, what they ache to have, and you to try to help them get it. See all the qualifications in that. Try. Help. Them. In other words, you can love someone when you know them. And you don't give them what they want, you help them get it. You can't love someone who your whole idea of is based on a dream you have about them. That's different. Anyway, lots more to say about all this. It's a recurring topic. It might be the *only* topic. Someday they'll invent an AI that can analyze my writing and tell me if I've ever written for any other purpose than being worthy of love.

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Like, my God is not an old man in the sky. It's a metaphor for a mystery that absolutely transcends all categories of human thought, including being and non-being, but that's too many words for the back of a quarter. That's Joseph Campbell. I got all the best teachers later in life. Like Barry Taylor, the road manager for AC/DC, said, "'God' is the name of the blanket we put over the mystery to give it a shape." Shouldn't I have learned that in church? Why am I learning this from Barry Taylor...the road manager for AC/DC?

Tickled by the namedrop of Joseph Campbell who I'm reading now. Probably the best "wisdom from metal reference" since Ted Lasso's Roy Kent quoted Motley Crue's Nikki Sixx: "You Gotta Date Your Wife"

Just 'cuz we're all babies doesn't mean there's a sitter.

Unfortunately, victims of serial killers will forever be paired together with Google search results, digitally entombing them

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Too little water and you die. Too much water and you die. The right amount of water and you still die, just not from water.

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(this is a poem
which like the old joke goes
may just mean that the lines end
before the sentences do)

you've been dealt a bad hand;
born with a brain so desperate
to keep you safe
to ward you away from
a world full of dangers
that it overshoots;
a barrage of warning flares
that sets the landscape on fire

(even a lovely garden of career
one you bought seed and supplies for
and worked and worked
tilled soil
sowed seed
dirt under fingernails -
those fucking fear flares
burnt that too)

and one day (back with
the fires tamped down)
we found each other

but, what am i?

sometimes a lonely guy to be around

sunday school taught me
the view from God's throne -
(the unreachable vantage point that persists
even if there's no butt in that chair)
and the only feeling that matters
is to keep any other feeling
in line
aligned

my own fear fire was laced with brimstone
and even now i can't can't can't
be willfully responsible
for letting situations go wrong
(that brings damnation
eternal and hot
and unmakes me)

so i live in responsibility
and I love in admiration
both proceeding from the outside in
- but what if love needs be the inside out

when we found each other
i loved your laugh and your love
...and i'd help you play that hand you were dealt
now i'm haunted that maybe
I was just another bad draw

(there is no end here
this space left intentionally blank
for us to write
what comes next)


My "first half/second half" galleries of our NOLA trip had more of an eye for the photos that worked well visually... these are photos that didn't make the cut but help tell the story of a lovely week, a story we might want to refresh our memories of later.

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Fun "Best of" Video for my far and away favorite way to spend a Sunday afternoon, the street style teaching marching band that is School of Honk :-D

doctor: treatment is simple. go see orville, very funny clown
pagliacci: what about pagliacci?
doctor: pagliacci? man i could not name a more suckass clown
pagliacci:
doctor: just downright dogshit of a clown

This twitter joke has been stuck with my head for months. If you don't quite get it, see this page (starting with the 3rd panel) about the Watchmen comic most geeks would know it from

Someone tweeted the follow up "doctor: pagliacci not even one of the better-known clowns"

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A few months back, my fiancé decided to unearth his first ever email account. He was surprised and crushed to learn that Hotmail had deleted it over a decade ago. It got me thinking about my physical relics, which live in a plastic bin that he and I have hauled through half a dozen moves: a CD bearing saved photos, though neither of our computers contains a disc drive; a beloved mug that now leaks through a crack; a champagne cork from the day we got engaged. Pack rat though I am, I've been appraising my life all along. When we left Washington, D.C., for Boston a year ago, I threw out a decade's worth of birthday cards and the notes from a recent writing workshop I remember as useless--but kept the fervent birthday letters my mother always writes, and the college syllabi of philosophy books that I keep telling myself I'll revisit someday. I've been wondering which of my digital records are worth carrying like that overfull box--not as heavy, but no less consciously accounted for. I'll never reassemble every scrap of myself I've scattered across Facebook, but I've started downloading my favorite photos and saving them to the cloud. I don't expect to make the historical record, but if the archivists ever came knocking, I'd want to have saved my own annals, and decided for myself what to throw away.

LOL, I know that "but if the archivists ever came knocking" hope. (What's life without just a touch of delusional grandiosity?)

So some of the trick is to curate - I mean keep that overfull box on some drive, but at some point make a better online or better yet physical scrapbook of just the best stuff. That's what I did with my years bestof photos series, for instance, and some of the ideas I want to bake into this timelines display I've been messing with. Here are seven words the CDC has been told it's not allowed to use:

• Evidence-based
• Science-based
• Vulnerable
• Entitlement
• Diversity
• Transgender
• Fetus

Here's two more words: FUCK TRUMP.

Here are some more words: take your reality-denying list and shove it up your Orwellian ass.

People who argue the Democrats are more prone to "political correct speech" etc? Fuck off. This is the god damn CDC - public health is one of the cornerstones of what civilization does to make life better, and you saying "reality-based" is verboten? You screaming sons of bitches.

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UPDATE: Semi-legit attempt to see it from "their" side... I guess it's all like "Well NASA should stick to space only because all this earth science stuff hurts our tender belief system, and CDC should still to germies and cooties because we're so VERY VERY sensitive"

Still, this is unacceptable.

advent day 16
advent day 16

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I'm thinking of giving http://kirk.is/ (still my system of record) a makeover. Trying to think of bloglike things I'd roughly like it to look like; so far my best bet is http://kottke.org/

Some the big ideas are get rid of the sidebar except for a few important links, and stop drawing boxes around everything.
Any other blog sites people find particularly attractive?

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I liked the question-centric and true-to-life nature of this video about roommates. (PG13)
advent day 16

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Ever have a month where you just want to curl up and listen to "Long December" on infinite repeat? (Sorry to sound like I'm emo'ing out... it's a long story, or at least 3 or 4 medium length ones.)
advent day 16

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Had the cat fed, had showered, and was brushing my teeth when I realized it was in fact Sunday. Biggest internal calendar fail for me in a while!

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What Science Says About Gun Control short answer: is it's pretty much a wash so far, and people will always argue as part of their identity/group affiliation, which seems pretty likely to (and about) me.

But relax, gun funs! The NRA's got your back. As This Modern World comic says: "Barring some seismic realignment in this country, the gun control debate is all but settled--and your side won. The occasional horrific civillian massacre is just the price the rest of us have to pay.

Over and over again, apparently."

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Be very careful about your cape. Don't use it for sexual high jinks. It can get ugly-- trust me. Also, be careful when flushing.

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There's no need to wait for the end of the world. It ends a little bit every day.

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I was a hipster before hipsters were popular. You probably never heard of me.

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Ooh, I just processed my first GitHub pull request! For http://lowLag.alienbill.com/ -- now I feel a little bit more like a real open source dev.

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You are the music, while the music lasts.

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I've seen enough on the Internet that nothing fazes me. I think that cost me a small piece of my soul, but it beats just watching cat videos all day.

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I fucking hate Thoreau. Pastoralist sentimental bullshit. He'd rather exist in wonder and ignorance than knowledge.

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After a year of calling the project Darwin, at the company party they're assigning "awards" based on different animals per person-so telling

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And I'm the Platypus... guess that works. Subtext: you're an odd duck (so to speak.) I was worried it was going to be one of the Sea-Monkeys I keep in a little tank thing on my desk.
--"Cat Diaries: The First Ever Movie Filmed by Cats!" via

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Obama just signed a new bill to fight childhood obesity. That totally screws up the GOP's planned Modest Proposal Act of 2011.

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My buddy JZ got hold of Row 3 seats for the Celtics, right behind their bench, invited me along.... sweet!

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[On a masturbation] As I record this now, however, I wonder why I didn't think through more of the possibilities. Why did I assume that God, if He was watching, necessarily disapproved of how I was spilling my seed? Why did it not occur to me that if the sky did not fall in as it witnessed my zealous and unflagging self-abuse, this might be because the sky did not judge it a sin? Nor did I have the imagination to conceive of my dead ancestors equally smiling on my actions: go on, my son, enjoy it while you've got it, there won't be much more of that once you're a disembodied spirit, so have another one for us. Perhaps Grandpa would have taken his celestial pipe out of his mouth and whispered complicitly, "I once knew a very nice girl called Mabel."

Man, it's been a long time since I've read such a well crafted book.

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We should think more about it, and accustom ourselves to the thought of death. We can't allow the fear of death to creep up on us unexpectedly. We have to make the fear familiar, and one way is to write about it. I don't think writing and thinking about death is characteristic only of old men. I think that if people began thinking about death sooner, they'd make fewer foolish mistakes.

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He even had a dry run at the deathbed utterance. "The last time I nearly died, my almost last words were, 'Make sure that Ben gets my copy of Bekker's Aristotle.'" He adds that his wife found this "insufficiently affectionate."

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Waiting for God to reveal himself, I believe that his prime minister, Chance, governs this sad world just as well.

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http://www.javaworld.com/community/node/3156 - 10 Business Lessons I Learned from Playing Dungeons & Dragons:

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http://usedwigs.com/video-stop-sign-designed-by-committee/

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God, with a sword, can make a man a king. But a king, with a sword, can only make a man a knight. A knight, with a sword, can make a man a corpse. So... I kind of forgot where I was going there.

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http://is.gd/5qkkO - just donated to Beau's virtual Salvation Army Christmas kettle. Still a grueling time for charities - give if you can! Following up yesterday's entry, a host of related animated GIFs. It's a very... hmm, what's the animated/motion equivalent of photogenic?... event.

There is something to be said for the viewpoint that the same guy hurling a shoe at Saddam would have been killed, and that the ability to have that kind of expression is a positive sign, though I wouldn't say that justifies the last 5 or 6 years there.

BoingBoing also thought it was amusing to mock the articles pointing out that it wasn't a friendly gesture, but I'm not sure Americans get the symbolism I'm told is there.

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Quote of the Moment

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.

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Dumbest thing on my iPhone: a datebook entry, copied over from the old Palm, that today is the 10-year date-iversary with the ex. I don't like this weather.

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Joke of the Moment

A seeker has heard that the wisest guru in all of India lives atop India's highest mountain. So the seeker treks over hill and Delhi until he reaches the fabled mountain. It's incredibly steep, and more than once he slips and falls. By the time he reaches the top, he is full of cuts and bruises, but there is the guru, sitting cross-legged in front of his cave.

"O, wise guru," the seeker says, "I have come to you to ask what the secret of life is."

"Ah, yes, the secret of life," the guru says, "The secret of life is a teacup."

"A teacup? I came all the way up here to find the meaning of life, and you tell me it's a teacup!"

The guru shrugs. "So maybe it isn't a teacup."

I love this one, it's take on the struggle and possible futility of the search for Ultimate Truth.

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Animation of the Moment

--An Atari Nightmare by Harveyjames, from this TGQ thread, based on my animations. Not sure if this thumbnail does justice to the full version.

Bleh, projector bulb done blow up. Gotta figure out if there's some place in the area to get a new one or if I have to do it online...

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Article of the MOment
Via slashdot, it's The Ten Most Dangerous Touys of All Time. Seriously, why would someone want a belt-buckle mounted capgun?

Photo, Link, and Anecdote of the Moment

--Squirrel and Peanut, from CuteOverload.com.. a great antidote when you see gross stuff on the 'Net. Cute story: my mom tried to get me to eat peas, putting them into a medley of other veggies. Apparently I dutilfully tucked each pea into my cheeks, and then spit them out in a neat little row when I was done. Was my mom surprised!

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How-To of the Moment
How To Write a Fruitcake Joke. I'm always a fan of such serious and studious sounding approaches to silly topics.

Of course, that's just a call to envision a world where jokes about fruitcakes are No Laughing Matter! Stop the Hate! Hug a Fruitcake Today!

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Quote of the Moment

Everything is a miracle. It is a miracle that one does not dissolve in one's bath like a lump of sugar.

Company party today...kind of a low-budget affair this year, just for the development team, sometimes they have a larger all-company bash in February or so.

I dragged in the semi-pro karaoke machine I have, along with the pretty big collection of karaoke CDs (around 114). Makes me a little melancholy, getting the karaoke machine was one of the last big projects Mo and I collaborated on...she typed in all the track titles, I made some small computer programs to sort and organize them, by artist then by song, so we could printout the "menus". Between that and the some old party mix CDs I reconstituted, "just in case", that remind me of the old parties we used to throw...sigh.

People who aren't easily offended and slightly hip to Japanese trends should check out this Lore Brand Comic. Of course, I think most of the people who will get the joke are probably the same type who won't be offended by it...

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Funny of the Moment

warning: in case of rapture, this car will be swerving like hell to avoid all the empty cars.

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Spin Doctoring of the Moment

Lehner disputed the suggestion that the exercise had failed, saying it simply was not completed.

"We weren't able to complete the test that we had planned," Lehner said. "I definitely wouldn't categorize it as a setback of any kind. The test had been planned for a while so it's a disappointment for those of us who were working on it. We will isolate the anomaly and fix it."

That's great. Can "We weren't able to complete the test that we had planned" be parlayed into "We weren't able to shoot down the Korean missile that we had hoped to"?

Missile Defence is such a quixotic thing. I've heard it sayed that Reagan's "USSR's Panic over 'Star Wars' Defense Killed It" has been way overstated; they knew that it was going to be much easier to crank up the offense (lots of missiles, lots of decoys) than to make a defense that could handle it.

What keeps us safe from any missile launch we could then track is our ability to respond in kind with devastating effect. What these programs completely miss, and where the money would be better spent in homeland defense, is the truck nuke shipped in to one of our port cities. Quote of the Moment

If I drink water I will have to go to the bathroom and how can I use the bathroom when my people are in bondage?

I haven't meant to lead w/ the Saddam news 3 days in a row, I don't think it's THAT big of a deal, but this was a pretty delightful non-sequitor.

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Link of the Moment
Bill pointed out that the Picture of Everything is pretty cool, a giant labor of love for all things pop-culturey in hand-drawn cartoon form. Click to zoom in and see everything...

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Ramble of the Moment
I'm losing my grip on popculture slang. I didn't catch on to that Snoop Dogg "izzle"-speak 'til after people were already making fun of it...and now we have Snoop Dogg saying "now hold on just one manizzle" on an AOL ad, and something similar in that Old Navy spot with the switchboard operator.

The izzle-speak is kind of odd. I keep getting this image of some black rap artist going "Fajizzle to my bonizzle to the zagizzle lizzle tizzle... mizzle......... hizzle. Aw, I don't even know what I'm sayin' anymore." News of the Moment
Gore isn't going to run in 2004. It's too bad, I really like him. I don't know if he was the candidate with the best chance of beating War "Hero" Bush. 'Course without the absolute retardedness of the electoral college...(And while we're ranting and taking cheap snipes: Yeah, Nader, Gore obviously would've been just as bad as Bush. Pheh.)

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Publishing Thoughts of the Moment
Topic points from an essay by publisher Tim O'Reilly. (For non-geeks, O'Reilly is known for a series of terrific techie books, with various, somewhat randomly selected animals selected for each topic and used on the cover.)

1. Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy.
2. Piracy is progressive taxation
3. Customers want to do the right thing, if they can.
4. Shoplifting is a bigger threat than piracy.
5. File sharing networks don't threaten book, music, or film publishing. They threaten existing publishers.
6. "Free" is eventually replaced by a higher-quality paid service
7. There's more than one way to do it.

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Funny of the Moment

"Come with us."
"Where?"
"El Perro Fumando."
"'The Smoking Dog'?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"If you wear something blue, you get $2 off a giant blue margarita."
"You know, I make a pretty good living. I can actually afford to wear what I want and pay full price."
"I'm not promoting the economic upside as much as I am the opportunity to drink something giant and blue."

Since my mom's in town, my family had early Christmas yesterday, and one of things I asked for (and got) was the complete set of this very funny show. Toy of the Moment
What's your Smurf Name? They've compiled a pretty good list of adjective names. If you don't care about preserving a sense of Smurfy Magic, "View Source" of the page, and read through what they came up with.

One thing I noticed about Smurfs, relatively recently: their heads are huge. Papa Smurf's beard kind of hides it here, but they are like footballs balanced on their scrawny little shoulders.

The Official Smurf Site has some interesting history about the boys in blue. (click on "Facts" on the left navbar.) The "history" page propagates the line that they are "three apples high". This always seemed weird when we heard it in the original cartoon, because unless you're talking crabapples, the Smurfs are shorter than that. Years later in middle school French I realize that there's an expression, you say a short person is "as tall as three apples", and that this literal usage of the expression is meant to be a joke that just doesn't translate very well.

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Quote of the Moment

The appreciation of pleasing decay is an important one because it is so often neglected

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Link of the Moment
An interesting study Social Networks and the Prediction of Romantic Relationship State and Fate... turns out if you want to know the likely future of a heterosexual romance, don't ask the couple, and don't ask his friends, it's her friends who will have the most realistic appraisal.