More than 4% improvement over last time
Maddest of mad props to anyone who knows what the title of this post means.
Totally unrelated, 3 more deceased and, as before, 2 painlessly and 1 not so much. Still not feeling too badly about it.
I noticed that a lot of so-called designers on HGTV say that a particular style is "shabby chic." There's nothing chic about a beat up piece of furniture falling apart in my living room. And you can't just dress something up by adding 'chic' at the end. If you could, I think you'd see a lot of designers from Alabama bringing "trailer-park chic" to trendy boutiques. And the upper midwest would be the epicenter of "racist chic." I still hate Illinois nazis.
I think it's unfair that women can fart from their vagine but guys can't do the same from their genitalia. If I could, I'd use it to blow up balloons.
Of the winter solstice
I hadn't thought about the connection to today, the shortest day/longest night of our northern hemisphere world, until literally a moment ago. The ancients celebrated it as the death of the sun, followed by the birth of a new sun, so it makes sense. What I did think about was how, after leaving the church, I thought buddhism was the answer for me. They both say don't kill, but I killed. Thrice in two days. It didn't bring me any pleasure to kill them but I consoled myself with necessity and how it was self-defense, in a way. Obi-Wan said that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view. The trilogy is full of buddhist concepts. But buddhism, like the trilogy, is also full of supernatural fantasy, which I eventually decided didn't fit me either. Two of them died quickly, as far as I could tell, and without any additional effort on my part. The other did not, as Dylan Thomas would have you, go gentle into that good night.
"Rage, rage against the dying of the light." By my hand that light was snuffed.
Song on my mind, aboard a southwest train 5300 miles from home
When the rain is blowing in your face,
And the whole world is on your case,
I could offer you a warm embrace
To make you feel my love.
When the evening shadows and the stars appear,
And there is no one there to dry your tears,
I could hold you for a million years
To make you feel my love.
I know you haven’t made your mind up yet
But I would never do you wrong.
I’ve known it from the moment that we met
No doubt in my mind where you belong.
I’d go hungry, I’d go black and blue,
I’d go crawling down the avenue.
There’s nothing that I wouldn’t do
To make you feel my love.
The storms are raging on the rollin’ sea,
And on the highway of regret
The winds of change are blowing wild and free.
You ain’t seen nothing like me yet.
I could make you happy, make your dreams come true.
Nothing that I wouldn’t do.
Go to the ends of the earth for you
To make you feel my love.
Current events
Photo: Pakistani investigators inspect the crater caused by a car bomb
AFP: Rizwan Tabussum
I think that picture is useless without knowing what the place looked like before the bomb. Am I supposed to believe that this wasn't already a burned-up shithole? That there was a white picket fence and a perfectly manicured lawn off of which the owner/intended victim would run out and yell at the neighborhood children, "Quit playing 'kick-the-chinese-made-type-59-anti-personnel-landmine' in my yard!" A little 'before & after' context, please.
I am tired of wars that destroy stuff of no value. Still, I think the taliban should apologize for wrecking this man's dirt.
We are experiencing technical difficulties
Pardon the delay.
Last week, my computer crashed like it hasn't crashed in YEARS. I'm talking old-school blue screen of death. I pride myself on having set up my computer in such a way that recovering from a system crash is pretty easy and I shouldn't have to worry about my data. But the BSOD is unusual and got me flustered so I panicked. My attempts to restore the system only made it worse and I did wind up losing some stuff. Stuff that I wouldn't have lost if I had remained calm. Not everything
(the pr0n is ok), but there was
effort involved in what was lost - a sold week's worth of photoshopping photos that I hadn't backed-up. The originals are ok, so it's back to square one now that I've got my basic platform restored. And come to find out, the blue screen was caused by a Microsoft update patch. I blithely clicked "ok" without reading it when they told me it was an important patch. I'm sure there are some famous quotes out there on complacency, but I don't really care to google them.
Vacation debrief, part 1
It was barely a year ago that I renewed my passport and packed a bag, headed for 3 weeks in Vietnam. I make no secret of my love of the far east. That last sentence sounded better in my head, since it implies that one might want to keep such an affection private.
Mom, dad, I'm coming out of the black lacquer wardrobe: I love East Asia. (See, isn't that silly?) I have felt more at home there than in my own bed, so perhaps I was asian in a former life. Unfortunately, I don't really believe in past lives, so that probably isn't it, but that doesn't mean that something about the orient doesn't resonate with me. Vietnam always intrigued me, and the travel shows made it look really quaint and hospitable.
(Ha!) When Tattoo-girl came along, who is of Vietnamese descent, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to check it out. Except that she wasn't interested. I wore her down though, and the trip last year was a little bit about exploring and experiencing her roots.
My own ancestry is far less exotic, in my opinion. I think I'm like most people in that I associate my ancestral identity with that of my father and his father and his father, and so on. Family research has shown that my oldest known patrilineal ancestor came to Louisiana from Europe around 1720, making me an eigth-generation American. Wait, do you count from the first guy or the first guy to be born here? Does it matter that the guy born in Europe died in America but before it was the United States? Well, however you count it, my 6th-Great Grandfather was the guy on the boat and since he didn't come to Lousiana from Canada that makes me creole, not cajun. I had heard my grandmother say this once and it didn't register with me at the time because I had always associated creole with Caribbean creole, which implies African descent. I just thought I knew more about authentic Lousiana cuisine than anyone who dumped a whole tin of cayenne pepper into a pot and called it cajun food. It's not as important anymore, but once upon a time it was a big deal and being creole was much more preferable than cajun. Creole, as applied in Lousiana, is a word derived from Spanish meaning 'colonist' (not just French, but Spanish and even German) and was therefore used by people who considered themselves more "pure European" than those who intermarried with Native Americans or Africans. America prides itself on that phrase about all men being equal, but the vast majority of us are descended from societies that clung (some of which still cling) to class distinctions and old habits die hard. As proof, every few years, one political party or another trots out the class warfare card and more often than not we play right into it. Three of my ancestors fought in the American Revolution under the Spanish flag of Galvez and yes, a few of them owned a slave or two and fought on the wrong side of the Civil War. But this is also not an entry about slavery or guilt. I don't condone it, I merely understand it in context and we can discuss it later if you'd like.
So where did that first old coonass come from, anyway? Records indicate that he came from Flanders, once an independent region but now mostly coastal Belgium (including Brussels) with a little bit of northeastern France and southwestern Holland. Unfortunately, Flanders is about the same size as Maryland, so one can't just show up and expect to find his ancestral village and distant cousins. To my knowledge, my family has never claimed to descend from royalty, so it was just some anonymous patch of dirt (probably owned by someone else) that Great^6 Granddad walked away from. Nevertheless, I decided that I wanted to go see it and that I wanted to drag Tattoo-girl there too.
Where I was
Top 10 U.S. Cities
There was a story on the radio one recent morning that listed the Top 10 Cities in America for something or other. Like you, I got to wondering which cities appear most often on Top 10 lists, so I've compiled a list...
Top 10 U.S. Cities appearing on Top 10 U.S. Cities lists | 10.
7. (tie)
5. (tie)
3. (tie)
2.
1. | - Dallas, TX
- Austin, TX
- Boston, MA
- Houston, TX
- San Francisco, CA
- Seattle, WA
- Los Angeles, CA
- New York, NY
- Chicago, IL
- Washington, DC |
These were the results from 21 recent surveys
(source: internet) including, but not limited to:
- Top 10 cities with new hotel rooms
- Top 10 wettest cities
- Top 10 cities to find a job after the military
- Top 10 miserable cities
- Top 10 happiest cities
- Top 10 cities to find a pet sitter
- Top 10 largest credit card debtor cities
And I know you're going to want the rest of the data, so here are the other cities that made one of the Top 10 Cities lists that I sourced:
11. (tie) Atlanta, Miami, Philadelphia, Portland
15. (tie) Cleveland, Denver, San Diego, San Jose
19. (tie) Boulder, Canton, Detroit, Fayetteville, Honolulu, Las Vegas, Madison, Minneapolis, Nashville, New Orleans, Orlando, Pensacola, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, Tucson
35. (tie) Albuquerque, Ames, Anchorage, Asheville, Athens, Bakersfield, Baton Rouge, Bellevue, Berkeley, Buffalo, Burlington, Cambridge, Charleston, Charlotte, Charlottesville, Cheyenne, Cincinatti, College Station, Colorado Springs, Columbia, Des Moine, Duluth, Eden Prairie, El Paso, Eugene, Fishers, Flagstaff, Flint, Fort Collins, Fort Worth, Fresno, Hanford, Harrisburg, Holland, Huntsville, Jackson, Jacksonville (FL), Jacksonville (NC), Jersey City, Lafayette, Lake Charles, McKinney, Memphis, Milwaukee, Mobile, Naperville, Newton, Oakland, Ogden, Oklahoma City, Olympia, Overland Park, Oxnard, Pittsburg, Port Arthur, Providence, Provo, Raleigh, Rochester, Rogers,
Sacramento, San Angelo, San Louis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Santa Rosa, St. Louis, Stockton, Tallahassee, Tampa, Toledo, Topeka, Visalia, W. Hartford, W. Palm Beach, Waco, Wilmington, Winston-Salem, Youngstown
Congratulations to ALL the winners.
What to do if a Somali warlord goes to your gym
Somali warlords are dicks. Not only do they hog the machines, but they leave them all sweaty & gross afterwards. Seriously, would it kill them to mix it up with a little cardio on any of the 15 available ellipticals? Plus, when they move into your neighborhood, the price of recreational drugs usually goes up.
(Ed. note: victimless crime) But they are for-real criminals too, so here are some tips for getting rid of them...
1. Unless your gym is outside the confines of the US, do not call the CIA. Inside the US, you have to call the FBI. Do not call your local Police or Sheriff's department. More than likely, they don't know where Somalia is and will arrest you for reporting what they think is a
World of Warcraft character.
2. Confirm that the individual is in fact a Somali warlord. The FBI hates a false alarm and one incorrect accusation is usually all it takes to get you on their "Boy who cried Wolf" list and then they won't take you seriously should you happen to spot
DB Cooper at the grocery store or Mormon polygamists buying Ikea meatballs.
(yum!) Steps for correctly identifying Somali warlords:
a. Is he a big, black guy? If yes, then chances are good that he's a Somali warlord, but this is not what's known in the law-enforcement community as positive ID.
b. Does he refuse to use the fingerprint ID system at the gym entrance?
c. Does the towel-guy refer to him as Colonel, but instead of pronouncing it
Kerr-nell he says
Coll-o-nell?
d. Subtly drop references to your friend
(always use the buddy system, plus he can spot you for bench presses) about the movie
Black Hawk Down and how much you hate the ending [SPOILER ALERT] where all the Marines get rescued. If you notice that he's nodding in agreement, he's probably a Somali warlord.
3. Distract him and lure him into a smaller training room away from his henchmen. Remember Somali warlords are often muslims, so the standard lure of a free ham sandwich is not likely to work. This doesn't need to be complicated though. If you get access to the gym's PA system, you can make an announcement that the UN shipment of food and medical supplies is being delivered to the yoga studio immediately after Zumba class. The opportunity to steal a UN shipment of food and medical supplies is too tempting for any Somali warlord to pass up. Timing your ruse for
after Zumba class also minimizes the chance of innocent bystanders getting hurt and/or used as human shields.
4. Subdue him, but do not use guns. Although the weapon of choice for most Somali warlords is the AK-47, they are known to sometimes carry rocket launchers. The
M72 LAW, for example, folds up and can be concealed in a gym bag. Do not be unprepared though, as hand combat is your best choice and likely to escape the notice of gym officials as "sparring."
Krav Maga is an excellent choice. The details of this step will have to be up to you to determine, since that's not really my thing.
(Ed. note: He's a lover, not a fighter) 5. Once your Somali warlord is out of commission you can safely call the authorities. Tying him up with a jump rope may call attention to the fact that you're tying a dude up in the yoga room and you may not want that kind of reputation. Instead, use resistance bands which have the added bonus of looking, to the casual observer, like a one-on-one training session. The henchmen (see step 3) will flee once their leader has been corralled, so there's nothing left to worry about.
6. Call the FBI and collect your reward!
(Ed. note: This is not a promise of reward or compensation, offer void in the US)
ick!
I hate it when the automatic toilet flusher goes off and I'm still sitting there. What, like I don't exist anymore? That would seem to prove the
nonexistence of self. When I wash my hands under the automatic faucet, I've demonstrated
dependent arising. Not that they aren't both fundamentals of
emptiness.
Hmm, if vampires can't see their reflection in a mirror, can they use automatic hand-dryers?
(ed.: Buddha never mentioned vampires) I bet they walk into a lot of automatic doors too. That must suck, because I know how embarassing it is. And then you jump up and down, waving your arms trying to activate it. But if I could kill everyone who witnessed it, it would suck a little less.
*sigh*
Over the past few weeks I had been collecting thoughts that made me laugh and I wanted to share them with you. But the tsunami came at kind of bad time for me. Natural disasters are inconsiderate like that, I suppose, and before you know it a self-immolation joke isn't as funny as it used to be.
I've been preparing for the next trip abroad. I had JUST clicked 'submit' on the order for my new camera when the phone rang from a contractor to tell me that he wanted an additional $1500. That set off a shitstorm of yelling, fraud allegations, and lawyers
(ok, one lawyer) that I used to sleep with.
Something cool did happen recently though: I received a warning letter from my ISP about illegally sharing copyrighted content. Rather than shut it all down, I did the obvious and began using my neighbor's wifi for the illegal stuff. I may be a criminal, but I'm not a leech. One recent, overcast morning, while setting up my laptop in the 38th-floor window of a downtown high-rise, I noticed the sun shining through a break in the clouds, illuminating a small patch of the neighborhood below. It was exactly like the maproom scene in
Raiders. The dot of light moving across the tiny buildings paused briefly to shine on the Federal Reserve Bank, which must be a sign, since that's where the gold is. I'm not worried about nazis, I just hope it's not protected by snakes.
You've got a 6th toe on your left foot? On the right?
Although I watch a lot of TV, and by a lot I mean a LOT, I always make time to read before turning out the lights. What passes for non-fiction on TV is garbage
(hello, History Channel, I'm talking to you) so I gravitate to the sitcoms. For example, I'm downright giddy that
Californication is back in its 4th season. Not that I'm unhappy about
Top Gear coming back for it's 16th. But when it comes to books, I don't know, I just can't go for fiction unless it's funny. I was only moderately imaginative as child and though I'm still very childish I like to think I'm still imaginative. When people ask me to
Guess What? I take it as a challenge. I just lost my taste for fictional literature along the way, including losing my belief in the supernatural. I've been around for a while now and seen some pretty incredible stuff. For a time, I barely engaged my senses, but I have seen the light. To fully experience the beauty the world has to offer takes all five senses. I can't help but think that if there was a sixth, especially the ability to read other people's minds, it would all become ugly again.
A day late
"There is indeed a peculiar charm, both in friendship and in Eros, about those moments when Appreciative love lies, as it were, curled up asleep, and the mere ease and ordinariness of the relationship (free as solitude, yet neither is alone) wraps us round. No need to talk. No need to make love. No needs at all except perhaps to stir the fire."
- C. S. Lewis
Let's just talk about the weather
Another wintery front came through town yesterday. It's downright cold, for the South anyway. The brisk north wind is somewhat invigorating. It makes me want to lace up my sneakers and go running.
Running, however, makes me want to stop.
