Tuesday, January 31, 2006

I still don't get how you can carry a baby almost to term and not know you're pregnant. What, the kicking is some wicked gas for months? (link)

Rasputin!

oooooooh! Too bad I'm broke again.

This should surprise no one.

Robo-domination wha?

I want one of these too. I've had horrible itching all this winter.

Custom-ordering sides for the mattress seems like a bad thing. Probably because I don't have a specific side (turning wouldn't work either because of the zones on this thing, head to toe and top to bottom).

heh.
Stargate goes MMO

Star Wars Mythbusters

Space stuff

The end of paper--how they gonna pay out our tips the end of the night in a cashless economy?
To the suits at TBS: Why aren't you airing Groundhog Day on Groundhog Day!? C'mon, it's tradition! What's next, do I have to go buy a DVD of A Christmas Story instead of getting to watch the marathon on TBS this Christmas?
From the Kunsan base newspaper:

The Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2005 amends the military manual for courts-martial, making the punishment for using a prostitute the same as that for being a prostitute...

Under the new act, any servicemember convicted of patronizing a prostitute can receive a dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of all pay and allowances and one year of confinement...

Whether people realize it or not, most women involved in prostitution are there against their will, he said, and supporting that industry – even by going to a strip club or bar that allows prostitution – supports the worldwide human trafficking industry. “If you spend money there, you’re giving money to the traffickers, and traffickers are criminals,” he said.

What the hell kind of cracked logic is this? It's the same logic as the ONDCP ads that tell you if you buy a joint from the kid down the road who grows a couple plants you're supporting terrorists. Wha? (And we'll ignore that those opium poppies that make the terr'rists their livings are also sold by tons to our government and medical research companies to make, umm, MEDICINE)...

Visiting a strip club that looks the other way when a girl gets a little closer than Kosher supports human-trafficking pimps? Wha? (And we'll ignore that in a lot of Europe and parts of Nevada, prostitution is entirely legal and a choice grown women make for their lives--nope, all prostitutes have been sold into slavery now).
Eliza, where the devil are my slippers?

Soft stove. Trippy.

Surf around We Make Money Not Art if you've got a while. Some really neat, trippy, and bizarre stuff.

I know I sleep better with background noise. If Spirit's around while I sleep I can (usually) sleep peacefully to no other sound than his breathing--but anyone else I've been involved with hasn't had that effect and I've still needed music or noise to sleep well. The post is about white noise, but the first bit also helps explain why a radio or TV set might help me sleep as well. Some of it's just that I can sleep better with a distraction from my own thoughts.

I think wristbands are last year's trend. This is still kinda nifty.

Two good opinion pieces from the New York Times on the State of the Union--not the actual state of our union nor the current president's speech, but the institution that the speech is.

Sharkey arrested--this campaign is cool news, but may not be the best thing that ever happened to that family.

One last piece from BoingBoing before I go finish the laundry: Prosecutor demos BDSM in court. Yeah, with asphyxiation play or other play that limits responses, I can see a sub having a heart attack that goes unnoticed until it's too late. However, responding by chopping up the body is just a Bad Idea (tm).
Wax divinations

Found the site while googling to clarify a point. Looks excellent.

Also, lots of Wicca books on Overstock.com

If I ever get out of debt and have a little shopping money, I love bidz.com and overstock.com.
SongTapper. Tap out the rhythm of a song with your spacebar and it'll tell you what the song is. Probably no help if you sing "Where da hood at" to the tune of "Karma Chameleon,"1 but for the rest of us, who occasionally ask, "What the hell is this song in my head!? You know, it goes da da da daaaaaaa de bop bop la la la..." this is a great tool.

1. I love that ad.
One heck of a career move.
Oh, hell no. A private diary, fine. But if my kid is young enough for me to feel the need to monitory his/her IM conversations, s/he sure as hell isn't going to be locking me out of 'em. These aren't phone calls or letters with friends... this is a medium over which communication with lots of strangers is possible and one that makes it easy for predators to make contacts. I'm all for the internet and IMing, but different cautions are necessary than with other forms of communication. If I were worried enough that my kid was hiding something and s/he got something like this to keep me out of it, I'd be responding by severely limiting computer access. And keep in mind, I'm really liberal when it comes to kids being allowed to act as adults as far as they're capable. I think kids should be taught to handle alcohol in a social setting from preschool age by being allowed to drink it (with sharp limits, of course, but an ounce or two of weak wine isn't harmful to a child), and I was deeply offended when a piercer told me the other day he thought it was immoral to pierce a sixteen-year-old's navel because of the inherent sexuality of it--at no point since the dawn of man has a 16-year-old not been a sexual being, however our society wishes to infantilize adolescents and even young 20somethings at times. But there are trust and responsibility issues at stake here. I like the idea of a password-protected flash drive--I'd buy 'em myself if the price were right--but I don't like the way this is marketed.

These are cool
.

Fat virus
?

Cory Doctorow sums up drug prohibition beautifully.

I want some of these.

Wow
.

Y'all remember that Sharkey guy who's running for governor of Minnesota on a vampire platform? His wife has been fired from their local school district, apparently for being a pagan. I'd expect that crap here in SC, but how did Minnesota not get the memo that religious discrimination against public employees is against federal law? More here.

If I ever get out of the credit card I have now, I am never getting another.

A subject of discussion this week has been power/totem animals. I think we've identified Spirit with the Raven, and I've always identified with owls.

Car-lighter sex toys?

You mean Sleepless in Seattle wasn't a horror flick all by itself?

Because God forbid we be comfortable or have fun while we're learning!

Ahhh. Irony.

Duh.

This is a neat idea. Surfing things you'd like to keep private on a public/shared computer, less so.

Chewbacca blog.

I've wanted to do something like this at times. Right now it's enough that I know what I believe.

Modern knitting!

Who makes these things?

I think I'd like to try these.

Monday, January 30, 2006

OK, I take it back. I do have a few links for today.

Self-heating canned hot chocolate. And the kids' version of same. I note the picture also shows Chai and green tea varieties of the adult one. Wish I lived near a Target. I'd try some. Not gonna drive an hour for it.

Yet another kitchen tool I'd love to have even though I never cook any more. I'm going to be hunting back through this blog to find the cooking implements someday when I am in a more, err, domestic situation.

Petabyte
storage arrays are now a reality.

Smart is the new black. Speaking of custom shirts, there were two I wanted to find or have made, and lo and behold, they're both out there. I really, really do want the Spongmonkeys one. It's broken for checking out right now. And the exchange rate might kill me.

Ahahahahahaha!














Thank you, Spirit. I'm glad they had to be re-delivered... I was in exactly the mood to need that bit of romantic gush today--not that it would have been less appreciated a week ago.

For the peanut gallery, the card says, "Your eyes are the stars of my Universe. Happy Valentine's Day!" Valentine's Day is a touchy subject 'round here, being my former wedding anniversary, and I'm a little touchy and emotionally wrung-out in only the way holding your best friend's or sibling's new-born baby can cause today. Only really baby-phobic or adamantly childless women can hold new babies (save their own) without feeling a deep sort of longing, even if they aren't really planning on having (more) children in the near future (or at all). I have too much to be really sad about it, but am still emotionally on edge. My friend's new baby is adorable, though. Only about 2/3 the size mine was at birth (and the lucky mom had about 4 hours of labor and no tearing or episiotomy--we should all be so blessed!) and sweet and sleepy--I see now why all the nurses remarked so much on how alert mine was in the days after birth.

Thank you for the update, Mr. Martin. Also, thank you way in advance for continuing Arya's storyline in this book. I enjoyed Feast. I did. Especially the way Cersei's part finished. And the deeper look at Dorne. But the next one promises so much more of the parts I'm most attached to... (Personal friends who're here because I promised to put all my links here--you may not care about the above unless you've actually started reading the books I left yas--and Spirit, I know you're on other books for now).

Anyway, that's it for today. This isn't usually my personal forum, but I'm tired, and not really surfing, so my messages for the world today are more personal than usual.

Blessed be,
Cricket

Sunday, January 29, 2006

Hey, little boy, do you want some candy?

I find CandyBlog's chocolate reviews fascinating. They read like wine reviews, but when I taste wine I "get" what they're talking about when they say something has an oaky flavor or chocolate notes or (...). When it comes to chocolate, I don't get a lot of the descriptions. Some of them I do, but getting cherry or grape notes from a good chocolate bar is beyond me. It's still awesome that someone else does.

Ewwwwwwwwwwwwww.


I'm torn by this. I don't actually know whether a weekend at a posh hotel or this would be a nicer gift. Guess that makes me halfway to really cool.

Ohhhhhhh I need a bag of these. I'll need chocolate to brace for the onslaught when the ex starts feeling maudlin about what would be our 8th wedding anniversary. I still have some Ghana mild/extra cacao bars, too, but might as well treat myself to something seasonal. Hey, does anyone with any pull know who we have to... kiss up to... at Hershey to keep the Cookies 'N' Mint bars around? When they go, they're gone for years.

These seem a little naughty. All the good really-naughty candy companies seem to have gone.

Whenever I see furniture that looks simple yet appealing, it turns out to be really expensive (by my own definition and means).

Friday, January 27, 2006

This looked like a simple social-engineering type experiment from the name--but it looks clear that except for the title and the nod to it in the form "X people have broken the rules..." they actually are asking people to call.

It's about time.

Now there's security.

Making staves.

Duh.

Speaking as someone in a military town who loves a military man, a whole lot of people with those yellow ribbons aren't sacrificing "two Wolf Blitzer shows a day"--they're sacrificing precious months or years with their loved ones, their fathers (or mothers, yes), their children. Not all of them support the war (or voted in a way that pushed for it), but not supporting the troops would mean deeply betraying those we love. Not supporting the war means we disagree with the political climate. It's not a wuss or incompatible position.

No word on geek moms yet.

Thursday, January 26, 2006

Lots of one-line posts today. Anyway, it suddenly occurs to me that Zen Koans and Aesop's Fables have a lot in common--stories that for some are pointless, short, and go nowhere, and for others contain the treasured wisdom of the Ages.
A comment on AskMeFi struck me deeply. I think I'll meditate on it.
This doesn't strike me as a great idea, yet somehow I can think of a few people for whom it would be a perfect gift.

One of the big stories the last couple days is about Chinese Google. Best comment so far: "Most of my favorite web sites would blind a Chinese potato farmer."

I've seen this before without quite the same level of cute. Still worth a smile.

This L.A.Times article on the Papal encyclical strikes me as both right and wrong. If instead of taking sex casually, we use the physical side of love to connect with the spiritual side of it--not confusing or connecting it with the kind of emotional love that creates a long-term commitment, but using the heart of sex to get in touch with ourselves and the greater Spirit--then eros by itself can be worthwhile. The connections they make are right, but twisted in the way that certain Churches twist everything.

This is dead on. My stupid customer story for the week: "What's this in my blue cheese?" "Appears to be a shred of lettuce, sir." "Can I get a new one?" "Of course, sir." Took me 5 minutes to get it because once I got into the kitchen I lost it laughing. God forbid the man get LETTUCE in his salad.

Postsecret is an excellent blog (I only wish the archives remained accessible each new week). Two of them reminded me of someone close to me this week (you know who you are, I'm sure): this one and this one.

Some people are really bored, I think.

Seeing Saturn.

Utah needs to go get laid or something. The whole state.

This looked more fun with the toys with a real person at the other end. NSFW and YMMV.

How do you stick a playstation controller--never mind. I don't wanna know.

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

From the folk who brought you Demotivators (and trademarked the frowny face emoticon) come BitterSweets! Valentines for yourself or that horrid Ex... While you're there, check out "DespairWear." I'm thinking I'd like an "Unleash the power of Mediocrity" tee.

This is one hell of a design statement.

Speaking of candy hearts, All your candy are belong to us!

Real Men of Genius parodies

Some people are seriously geeks. I think I'm in love (just kidding babe!)

WTF?

This is interesting. I find that naturally my body wants a pattern where I sleep from about 3-4AM to 10Am and then again from about 3-4PM to about 6, which is more bimodal than what this guy is talking about and is also impossible to actually do as I have to hold a job and be with my kid.

Also interesting. Lists as "nonpartisan think tank." Opinions on that?
This guy should probably be the envy of every straight man in the world.

I agree with this. The school was stupid, though--it would've gotten old and gotten no attention after about a week if they hadn't decided to get all censoring on him. But the bottom line is if everything's covered then let people wear what they freaking well want. It will be less distracting to the learning environment if you don't make a big deal. I'll exempt Daisy Dukes and micro-minis here; I do see where those cause a distraction.

No shit, Sherlock. Why d'ya think everyone's been up in arms about a possible draft when there's been little to no government discussion or acknowledgment of the possibility?

Huh??

I'm not sure if I've discussed gays in the military on this blog or not (suddenly I'm reminded of Nathan Lane in drag saying, "Well THERE'S a silly issue! Those uniforms! Those haircuts!! I mean, who CARES!?"), but it's one of those things on which I'm very opinionated (just a few of those out there--I know I've gone off on the Crusade against Drugs before)--here's an article on the military losing a lot of healthcare professionals and other officers to their own policies on gays. Interesting point that after the beating-to-death of PFC Winchell (by others who believed him to be gay), 1/6 of the discharges related to homosexuality a couple years later were at that one base. That suggests to me that a lot of people came out either in support or fear at that point. Anyway, I've known military guys who were gay, and I hate to see what that does to them. There was a gay guy in my high school, the valedictorian of the senior class when I was a freshman, whom everyone knew was gay but his family, who were very involved in the church and for whom "knowing," as opposed to the uneasy denial, would've meant making the hard choice between Church and family. The NT does say to abandon your family and follow Jesus. But the Church is not Christ. The Church is not even the Body or Spirit of Christ. And how many churches now drop even the pretense of worshiping God the Father or the Triune in favor of direct and sole worship of the Christ? Jesus himself, the miracluous Rabbi of the Gospels, would call it blasphemy.

Ew. It was bad enough the time I had to buy TP at a bus station in Korea.

Point of discussion--is it OK to throw leaves, banana peels, apple cores, and other natural biodegradables by the roadside?

Out of 300 men in a class-action, 284 were in arrears on child support? Aside from the part where having been in jail made them more likely to have been behind, I don't think it's statistically likely that that many prisoners have kids and are separated from the mothers--is it?

"Money means nothing to me?"
You know, if that's true, I'd be more than happy to take some off your hands. Or you could've donated the ticket to charity before cashing it. No? Then the money means something.
The major question this raises is, where did they find enough people who still believe what politicians say to do this study?

Deals:
Great price on a 320GB HDD

Best Buy takes its rebates digital.

_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_

E3 takes itself too seriously, organizers now officially no fun.

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

One more: friggin' AWESOME bookshelf

It's naptime, to be shortly followed by get ready for work time. Have a great day!
What, no booger-nose counterpart?

I would SO buy that Dork Tower book just for the cover.

Last night someone at work was complaining that the Pig has implemented a system wherein you can pay for your groceries using your thumbprint. Now, I read this. When I was in high school old students used to come in and visit the teachers. Now you need 4 forms of ID and a background check to visit a school where you're not a student or an employee...

I'm thinking this should be worth the money for a whole lot of people (Spirit, babe, take a look)

Nummy.
I mentioned issues with the ages of reason and informed consent yesterday. Many people told me I'd feel differently as an adult/when I was over 21. But I still believe that letting younger folk make their own decisions with a reasonable degree of supervision is the best way to learn. This book review on the prevalence of oral sex among teens reminds me of this. This is not a morality issue. This is not an age issue, either--they know what they're doing. Don't condescend. This *is* a public health issue where it's actually going on (as opposed to virally spreading, the newest suburban legend), and teens need to be interacted with--their guardians and mentors and friends need to make sure they know that you can get some pretty wicked-horrible stuff this way unless you use protection and are absolutely certain of the sexual histories of your partners. This is true for 40somethings, too, but most of the older folk who engage in serial or multiple-partner or "swinging" sexual activity know all this well and take every possible precaution including regular testing. Spirit, whose daughter is soon to enter teenagedom, may disagree strongly with me that it's OK at all for teens to have any sort of sexual relations or contact, but to me, it's human nature, and it's a little hypocritical for thinking adults who don't believe sex is inherently sinful (because that's a whole other can of worms), who even believe sex is something potentially spiritual, can also believe that it should be denied others because of simple numbers (I am NOT saying 12-year-olds should go out and experiment with sex, drugs, and alcohol--just saying that our bodies and minds grow at their own rates that have nothing to do with the government's or society's arbitrary definitions of "old enough") or because they're our offspring and we cannot bear the idea of them growing into certain activities--my dad's still in denial that I've had sex and I've made him a grandfather that way.

You know that parasite in cat litter that makes it a bad idea for pregnant women to change the kitty litter? Apparently it has some other effects (though humans had been thought largely unaffected by it).

These are sort of fun. I was redirected there from "Mensa-test" dot com. I still have an SAT score (pre-1993--I took the test in 7th and 9th grades before they changed the test, though the ones that counted for me were post-recenter) high enough to join MENSA without testing, but I know my own IQ is phenomenal, and I just don't feel like the hassle or paying a membership fee for what would amount to self-congratulatory showing off. Hell, I can do that for free. I've sat and stared at the backs of my checks and done my bag entirely in my head as people go "What are you DOING?" and the other week I did another girl's bag standing at a table since she wouldn't come in the office and my boss said she had to be there (he was at the same table)... I just stood there and did it in my head and she got all paranoid like "What are you doing, looking at my tips?" Boss says, "No." I just kept doing it and she tries to hand me a calculator and boss says, "She doesn't need that." I counted her cash and said, OK, hon, you're all set, go clean, and retreated back into my office. That's showing off in a way that's subtle and elegant.

This is really cool.

Iceland goes gas-free. Too bad we don't all live over underground hot springs.

Gorgeous as well as useful to understanding EM theory.

Yeah. We're fat and we're happy. Get the hell over it already.

Making a black hole "fireball" in a particle accelerator

Gangs with machetes. What does this change in the gun control debate?
Fireworks factory explosion

Lessig is becoming an icon (err, I didn't intend to mean "avatar," but it was so appropriate I thought I'd leave the pun alone). I'd still really like to try out Second Life, but it's one of those things where my close RL friends would need to be playing for me to interact with, or it would take away the time I have to interact with them (mostly via IM right now due to a 7000-mile gap). I'm pretty sure it's free to play it and use as a virtual-world chat program, but you have to pay for anything good (the good news being, if you buy the virtual land from them and set up shop, well, some people are making a living playing this--well, then, I had a friend making more money than I make monthly playing the ladders in Diablo 2 and getting cool rare stuff--it was nowhere near his normal income, and he was giving it all to his wife for pocket money).

Appropriately, good SF is generally more available online and through other technological means than other genres. And congrats on the nomination, Mr. Doctorow.

Also from BoingBoing, finally--fashion I can understand.

I agree with this in principle, but in practice, it's more likely that a man will do certain things if you're all clean-shaven, and after I shave once, I have to keep doing it, or go through maddening itching for weeks while it grows back. Easier to just take a razor to it than pay a damned fortune in salon Brazilian waxes (OK I'd like to do that just once, but can't justify the expense, nor letting the hair grow out enough for the wax to grab).

Google News is out of Beta, but what's the point in personalizing Google News home when you can do the same thing with a personalized Google homepage and add custom content, games, RSS feeds, etc.?

I think this is good news. Wonder how expensive it'll run.

The West Wing will end after this year. Aside from their reasons, I don't think it'd be the same show once there's a new president--and if Vinick were to win, most of the White House staff would be changed as well.

Conservatives take Parliament. From the BBC header--"Canada has swung to the right in a general election after 12 years of Liberal rule increasingly overshadowed by allegations of corruption." No shit? What government in power for over a decade isn't overshadowed by allegations of corruption?
Duh.

Yep. That's what I was saying earlier.

There's a bigger issue here than ratings--the arbitrary lines we've drawn between childhood and adulthood, the way we define reason and consent.

Watched the president's speech today. I actually liked some of what he had to say. Mainly on visas for migrant (Mexican) workers.

I tend to agree with this--at least the general point, that compromise toward the center is not the way to get things done.

Hahaha yeah everyone post smut and make your site potentially illegal!

Wanna spy on what other people are searching for?

This is great, but from what I've seen they aren't (yet) looking to match the terms searched with the individuals searching.

Monday, January 23, 2006

OK I'm going now. But first one last comment: I want this book. It actually looks interesting but the title alone is worth keeping it out for display.
The tale of the beached XBox.

Nice (decent space, really sturdy) external mini-HDDs

Seahawks blew out the Panthers yesterday. :(

This guy was hardcore.

These chairs look nice, if expensive. Like, if I win the lottery and build a cabin in the mountains those will be on the porch.

Someone paid a dollar and twenty-six cents
for 850 empty Starburst wrappers. Why do I have this odd feeling the last laugh will be on the seller when the buyer makes some kind of jewelry or art from the damned things and sells for 10000% profit? Like those Capri Sun pouch purses. Those are cute.

I love the Exploratorium. Check out Candy-o-Matic here.
PVP is usually a video game strip. I got to it when going through the Dork Tower archives years ago and finding a crossover week and have been hooked since, so am coming at it from the perspective of the "other" kind of gamer. Therefore, Mr. Kurtz: Best. Punch line. EVER.

This looks like a good idea. But none of my DVDs have boxes these days. It's like someone was giving iPods for CDs. But none of mine have the cases and liner notes, which were required. Who keeps those around nowadays? (OK for DVDs yeah but I mostly keep those in a binder too)

I finally started messing around with Pandora. I don't think it's the right service for me, really--I guess to me songs speak more from the lyrics. I like the songs I like for the overall feeling they give me, but what Pandora thinks are "musically similar" or related by music "genome" aren't songs with the same "feel" to me. I wanted songs like "Rough Sex" by Lords of Acid (most people who know me are more used to me, say, belting out Tommy James and the Shondells in the kitchen, but my tastes in music as everything else are eclectic, and the kitchen music stays on Jukebox Gold). I like some of what it feeds back to me, but none of it has that feeling--OK, I'll take that back. The fifth or so hit was "Melt," by The Start, which is right on, and then another LoA song, "Stripper." So I guess it's kind of hit-and-miss. I think the point is that they don't pay as much attention I'd like to lyrical themes. If I'm looking for a whole station's worth of songs like "Rough Sex," I'm in the mood for some sexual heat lyrically, and if I'm looking for a station's worth of songs like "Don't wanna miss a thing," I'm in a more tender mood and want to hear love songs that lean kind of rock-ballad... well, you get the idea.

Once you register, you can start telling it what you like and don't like. Maybe I'll get it figuring out what I like sooner or later, after all.

I like this tat finder tool. I think I want a custom job anyway when I can get some ink done--but this makes me more inclined to buy printer ink if I have the dough when my taxes get back. Just checked the IRS site and they say the 31st. Good enough. Also figured out that if the paperwork doesn't work out there will be one significant advantage to waiting until after 31 December to get married again--that I can file Head of Household and make a ton of extra dough per Uncle Sam, and use it to move when we can get married. Not a reason to wait, a consolation if I have to.

This is an awesome picture.

Earth View--realtime daylight/darkness and light patterns on the Earth's surface. If you click the view from Moon--well, I was trying to figure it out and logically it seems to me that the Earth should be in the same "moon phase" from the Moon as the Moon is from the Earth--but if that's accurate and this is accurate, they're precisely inverted from each other? If that's accurate, it almost seems to me that that should be the basis of a religion, the secret phase being the dark part of the moon.

So when did Death get the black cowl and cloak? Seems he used to just be a skeleton. Sometimes with a foppish hat.

This is peacenik to the extreme, and accordingly, has some nice hippie ideas on copyright.

How big a business is this really? Dog tags for everyone! Let's find a way to add RFID chips and emboss little images on the back and we can use em instead of any or all government issued ID! Personal aside: Spirit, I really do think you should order new ones since you updated some vital information on yours. From the AF, natch. And yeah, I know, no one says "Natch" any more. It's OK. Really. ...All right, come to think of it, the key tags are sort of cool. Anyway I'm not ordering any form of ID, novel or real, until my next 2 name changes go through.

Green home building
.

I'm settling in to read this, so I'll leave you with this last link for a while. Fascinating.

Sunday, January 22, 2006

A 2005 in pictures montage

Ahhhhhhh a recipe for the kind of pinkish sauce you get at Japanese places. I have a full belly and am still hit by a sudden craving for teppanyaki cuisine.

Cartoon network just gave me a great bonus--my favorite episode of American Dad ("Stan of Arabia") followed by my favorite episode of Family Guy ("Emission Impossible"--the one with Wallace Shawn as a sperm).

Another recipe for the same stuff. This looks a little hotter.

Great advice on codec packs if you've ever had problems with those.

Good design website--seems to be about well-designed products of all sorts. Nice. I found a link on there to retractable (vanishing nib) fountain pens. I haven't used a fountain pen in years because of leak problems but I always loved them.

Just found out that school registration has already started for the kids. I may not know for sure where I will be in September, but I think I should be going down there to get a registration packet tomorrow. Or sometime this week. Well, at least, I'll call.

A diatribe against chiropractic "medicine." Exactly right--chiropractors who are too into chiropractic theory do real damage by not acknowledging the interaction of the various body systems rather than simply assuming that joints and vertebrae subtly out of place and pressing the nerves are to blame for all our ills--even real muscular injuries. I think the chiropractor my folks dragged me to at the age of 10 messed me up forever and am unlikely to be convinced otherwise.

On the other hand, I'm not the kind of skeptic most of these folk are--I know I can feel what's wrong with other people simply by using my fingers a lot of the time. The thing is that reflexologists and acupuncturists and "healing touch" providers claim to be alternatives to medicine rather than licensed medical professionals. OK, Massage therapy is a grey area there.

Oh, the insanity. That's a horribly-designed site, aside from the insanity involved, but the rantings of madmen are generally interesting to hear or read. But seriously, read the bit about 1/3 down about the four 24-hour days in "one rotation of the earth." First, each of those is a separate rotation, and secondly, how does the guy get "four?" What's so magical about noon and midnight? And on most of the globe sunup-sunup or sundown-sundown isn't 24 hours exactly (and if he defines midnight and midday by daylight and darkness instead of the clock, those aren't either--and if he's going by the clock, well, I can define hundreds of 24-hour days that make a single rotation of the earth). Yeah, I rationalize the irrational. Call it a quirk. (Actually this guy claims the clock is a lie, too, so he's clearly going on Sun Time).

Stone pages.

I think some new diet pills (green tea herbal things) are making me a little weird. They're putting me more on the schedule I "should" be on because when they wear off at night I'm out of energy and all but passing out, but it's *weird* since I'm used to being up very late. Ah, well, sleep calls. Good night.
This is sort of entertaining. Some nice pics along the way.

Saturday, January 21, 2006

Somehow I don't see myself freaking out if my genetic offspring were stolen at the zygote stage.
In case anyone's tempted to believe this pile of fundamentalist bull, I present to you a quotation from the page:
CHAOS: A self-made form of occultism taught through role-playing games such as Warhammer. According to one devotee, "Chaos is the opposite of order. Since everything changes, there is no right or no wrong -- only the quest for pleasure. The 8-pointed star represents the many different directions of chaos and the many ways you can follow it. We worship deamons and angels, and when we die, Chaos rewards us with the pleasures we liked in life. Chaos is everywhere, it blows in the wind..." See Chaos Magic

In case you missed it, let me repeat: "A self-made form of occultism taught through roleplaying games..."

Fuck off.

Friday, January 20, 2006

If this is true, it's rather sick. Anyone got info on the relative merits of the armors and a good reason for the directive if it was issued?

I try to respect all religions as different ways of viewing the many faces of God, but I will never, never, never get Islam. And yeah, I'll go with the same commentary on Judeo-Christian cultures that have had similar restrictions on women and sexuality to modern-day Islamic countries'. Actually, there's a part of the article that points out that to a point the Muslim world is more open about sexuality than ours. Figures. I don't get Fundamentalists or how they became the dominant voice of American society or why sex, one of the greatest gifts of the Universe, has become the greatest and worst sin of all in the minds of so many billions of people. Yes, billions. No, that's not an exaggeration. And yes, I do know why--control--you can't control happy, content people, so making them afraid and ashamed of their own natural desires and feelings confuses and shames them into believing you can lead them to freedom from themselves--governments and churches both have an interest in promoting that.

The above link is NSFW. So is this one.

My favorite Shakespeare quotation describes well many of the greater mysteries in life: "There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
That's either an awesome set of religious experiences or an amazingly clear look at a schizoid decline. Or both--only in this day and age do we separate the madmen from the saints.

Disturbing
candy packaging

This looks kind of good.

You know, fuck history. Even if the historical Pocahontas was a pimply twelve-year-old who never made it with John Smith (but did marry that other John!)... it's still a good story.

Genghis Khan rocked.

Oooooooooooh.

Picture
of the tickets by phone

Oink.

This makes me feel sad. Which makes it pretty effective advertising.

Um. Ow. A mild version like the shocker in the shock tanks might be a fun prank to play on the kids someone. Hey, I got you this new controller...

This
is so, so wrong. Play it. If you're at least 18. And you've ever wanted to watch Mary Ann and Ginger get it on. You know you have. Who hasn't?

This reminds me of the Baen book, "Minerva Wakes," my friend lent me. Bed monsters. Heh.
Lawsuits. I understand lawsuits for pain and suffering when coffee causes you to need a skin graft, as previously discussed. If the coffee has a human body part in it? You talk to the manager then take it straight to the police unless they have a good explanation. You never eat there again. The business does not owe you a million dollars. I've found possibly dangerous stuff in my food before. I called the company and got coupons for new food. Gross stuff, same thing. If you actually ingest part of something with human bits in it the company should pay for you to get checked out and tested for any weird diseases that could be passed along that way, sure, and suing for that I can see. But trying to get rich claiming you found blood or a finger in your food is a sure route to trouble.

Ted looks like a good thing. Show quality might suffer, though.

Someone needs to make a list like this for REAL (i.e. not video) gamers.

More in a bit, time for an XBox break with the kid.

Thursday, January 19, 2006

I think I'd like to get these, except I don't want to either change the piercing nightly or sleep with my glasses on. If they had an easy way to mount the lenses, just take those on and off a piercing that stayed in? Oh, yeah. Spirit had the PRK surgery and hasn't needed glasses in years now--I watched them do the surgery. It was really cool but there's a film "skin" stuff over the eye and watching them scrape that off someone's eye... well let's say it'd make a decent opening scene to a horror film. It looks like they're doing something awful if bloodless and it turns out that it's just eye-correction surgery but you're left with that sense of the willies and then the eye surgery was with a spooked out laser and leaves the person with the ability to see certain horrible supernatural things (or the eye doctor is the focus of the thriller...). I almost passed out but like half an hour later when they were done and we were leaving.
It's time for Cricket's fantasy shopping list!

This is a good price on a flash drive (Apropos of that I also clicked on a sub-1" HDD. This does seem to have tremendous possibilities, but it seems that for speed-related reasons, increasing the amount of data per space available on flash drives is the way of the future--getting rid of HDDs altogether would speed us up a lot).

This is just plain cool

This makes my tummy growl

I want one of these, too, but it would make me re-set up my usual computer-using area.

Maybe if I have a little splurge money once I TCB with the tax funds, I'll get that iPod I've been wanting. Or just an MP3 player. Hmmmmmm.

o_o

(Yeah, it's not much of a comment, but I'll include a "this is so cool I'd think hard about getting it were I designing a dream house"--though really I'd probably get a big garden-style jacuzzi tub for the bathroom and one of the washer/dryer cabinets that do it all in one unit if I had the money to have the house I truly wanted. Don't get me started on the bar/game room today).
Cool manhole covers--that was one of the interesting things I noticed in Korea, decorative manhole covers--I have pictures of a couple.

ohhhhhh, demo.

Note to Jack Thompson...

Part of me says, "awesome," but parts of me get the willies thinking about this.

Ewwwwwwwww.

This is a damned good idea.

I like this page's writeup on the original Nintendo Power writeup of SMB2. "Egg-spitting transvestite dinosaurs!" I still remember reading the original manual when I got that game... "Ostro thinks he's a girl, so he spits eggs." That still makes no got-dang (nod to Hank Hill there) sense.

Why yes, sometimes it is strange to have the sort of memory that you suddenly realize you have a clear page-image including text from something you read 18 years ago. Thanks for asking.

That Nintendo Power link really is awesome, though. My sis still has our old Nintendo and games. Wonder if I could get it working.

Speaking of Nintendo nostalgia and a photographic memory, the commercial bonus at the end is missing the beginning part. Before "NIN-TEN-DO--It's a cereal, WOW!" it went, "Nin-ten-do, it's for break-fast now!"

Someone made as much in the last year repackaging and selling open-source software as I did busting my hump waiting tables. Sometimes I wonder why I don't think of these things, but ultimately, I need to accept that I'm never going to be wealthy because I don't have the motivation. Yeah, I could run or manage a business, and have had some ideas for stores that I could deal with working 70-80 hours a week to make them work as small businesses (especially in the type of setting where I could have the kids there with me after school to do their homework and chill out), but the werewithal to innovate and to create is beyond me. But I'm never going to get rich doing something cool online.

This reminds me of something else a few years ago... ahh, this... Not least because it was put out on the wire services that the young man committed suicide by webcam. The logs aren't online any more at the MeFi link.

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Good lord. Star Wars transformers? Note to self, do NOT let the kid see those unless you have means to find and dough to buy those.
This scotch ad is priceless.

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Aft'noon quick links:

Radar scope

Grow your own soup?

A lighter look: is Pluto a planet? top-tens a la Letterman
I've been seeing a lot about teledildonics lately (link is NSFW). Today, I stumbled across this. I can see the appeal of games like Second Life. I don't know that this is a good idea for most of us--if you get strangers involved on this level one is inevitably going to move on with real life and the other will be too involved with the virtual world and take it personally, especially when you're making babies out of their real-life images. Isn't the point in these games to have a virtual image that's not all that like you? Why wouldn't the babies look like that? ...Anyway, I digress. Taking virtual sex itself to this level might be a damned good idea. Although if you're talking about someone you already have a relationship with just getting the Sinulators and a good webcam would probably be more fun.

It may just be sex-life and electronics day. While the computer in the bedroom can create a platform for a virtual sex life, a television in the bedroom can take away from a real one. My first thought was that it might be the other way around--that the TVs were in the bedrooms because the people were having less sex--but the study even did a breakdown by what types of shows were more likely to keep people from having sex (versus the ones people would pause or stop watching to get it on).

I don't like this story. It leaves out the vital question as to "who gets screwed on this deal?" Yeah, it'd be awesome to get back a car 37 years after it was stolen new, and turn out to be one hell of an appreciated investment (a classic 'Vette no less--$10k when it hasn't got a gas tank?), but when the three owners the police can trace are all innocent of the theft--is the dude that just bought the car for $10k just out ten grand? Or is the guy who sold him the car out the car and the money? That's not right. And it's wrong that the story wanted to play up how cool it would be to get the car back after all that time without realizing that while that guy gave up hope 30 years ago of getting the car, there is at least one other real victim of the whole process here, or telling us what happened to the other people involved. Am I saying the guy shouldn't get his car back? No. But I'm not clear on how the car kept being sold without anyone else figuring out it was stolen (obviously it was still in stolen-vehicles databases), and there should be a title record even if it goes across several states (which it clearly does). There needs to be a way to figure out who took the car and sue him for the loss/damages (then again, someone who was a car-thief in '69 may or may not be living by now--dangerous profession and all).

Calvin occasionally has some great insights on the world.
I know I already posted about the talking vibrators, but BoingBoing made me honestly laugh out loud with their list of top ten "voices" they do not need to hear from their sex toys. 10-2 are priceless. #1--if your lover is far away or unavailable or worse, hearing their voice might bring a comfort deeper than simple sexuality that's also capable of enhancing sexuality. What on earth is wrong with that? OK, people who need to hear their own voices during sex have serious narcissism problems.

They also linked to some eight-bit games on WebZen.

This is interesting. Drugs will always be controversial--are they an escape from the mundane or a means of seeking a higher consciousness? This thread on Ask Metafilter shows some very strong and in some cases to my way of thinking harsh opinions on the subject. To which I say, why can't they be both? To some, both at the same time; to others, a journey of discovery of the Self and other realms; to others, merely an escape hatch or a simple crutch (OK, LSD and shrooms aren't crutches--but several drugs, legal, controlled, or otherwise--can be). Don't try this at home, kids, it ain't worth the jail time unless you find that trip important enough to be worth some serious prison time in the name of civil disobedience. But also, why is it so wrong to want to escape? Is all pain weakness? Is it inherently worse to quietly drink or smoke marijuana to escape the pain of losing a loved one than to take any other medication? And if it is inherently more wrong, does that give us the right as a society to inflict even absolute good on others? All right, that was too far off the beaten path, but if anyone stumbles on this, what's your thinking? And have you done it to find out? I don't do drugs because I 've got a kid who doesn't need his mom to be in jail and because he does need a mom who's capable of caring for him (also don't drink more than a single serving of alcohol if he's in my care). But I do believe the shamans were on to (as well as "on") something with their hallucinogens.

This looks really interesting. Reading the blurb on /.'s front page didn't pique my interest so much but I wanted to take a look as the "low magic fantasy setting" reminded me first of Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" series (which game I really do want to try out). Looking at the deeper review makes me want to try Iron Heroes as well.

This ties back with all the drug bits from lately, and is also a funny little piece of writing. (Should be the first comment at that link).

Kids' bike helmets

Oooooooh, toys. Science geek toys, at that.

Newest on my to-get list for my kid: Lego contraptions book

As I poke around the Klutz site, I note a startling lack of Koosh balls. Didn't they make those? I know the first thing I remember seeing the Klutz brand on was a book that came with one and suggested fun things to do with them. I love those things. Note to whomever--they are lots of fun as pool toys, but buy dedicated Koosh for the swimming pool. They don't take well to repeated chlorinated-water-logging. The Klutz site itself has some great stuff of the "too much fun to realize they're learning something" variety.

These hearts are pretty.

I understand this academically, but as my line of work is pretty much entirely interruptions, it's entirely academic--even when I'm doing office work, a great deal of the work is fielding phone calls (and it takes me far less than a half-hour to get back on track unless I actually spend that half-hour fielding more phone calls or tracking people down or taking messages for them). It does make me wonder how or if I could fit into a regular office routine at this point.

Once again, I'm glad I don't live in Anchorage right now.

Quotes, 1-10 words (no, really. A one-word quotation, then a two-word, up to 10). Don't necessarily agree with those assessments, but I'm not a career-oriented website, either. Ultimately, the love what you do thing is nice, but if you are limited in marketable skills, time, money, and options (for other reasons like being limited to a certain geographic area), doing whatever you have to do feed and house yourself and your children is more important. All those quotations are worth a read (and worth thinking of what other important ideas can be summed up so succinctly).

Monday, January 16, 2006

This is awesome: high-speed images of shock waves

Spirit, that little nicotine/caffeine energy drink thingy? Its commercials are bad. Bad, bad, bad.

The sample text here reminds me of some of those garbage Usenet posts I used to see a lot. Almost like weird Beatnik poetry (if you'll pardon the redundancy) in a way.

BoingBoing also had some plush Tetris blocks.

The crusade against drugs has gone way too far when basic and necessary medicines are banned or their manufacturers sued because some dumbass can use it in his meth lab. The guy's making meth, ok? He'll get his hands on some illegal pseudoephedrine, and the rest of us will suffer the loss of one of the best basic OTC cold medicines.

And to end the afternoon, a history of names.
I got FoxyTunes working. And found its alarm clock and sleep timer functions. A guy at work was complaining to me last week that he had gotten home the night before and found his laptop gone. "It's not the computer--OK, a $2000 Compaq computer--I could live with that. It's what's on it. I couldn't pay a bill tomorrow. I really couldn't. All my investments are on it..." Guy waits tables and drinks like a fish at 30, so I don't know where he's got money to invest from (poker winnings, maybe--he seems to be a mostly-winning gambler). Actually, he's getting some kind of karmic strike, or someone's screwing with him personally--it's the fourth or fifth piece of electronic equipment he's had stolen in a month or so, from work and home. Anyway, damned if this piece of electronics isn't now my alarm clock, entertainment center, and primary means of communication as well as bill-paying center. I know exactly what he means.

I'm also playing around with skins for FireFox and FoxyTunes (started with FT, then some of the small captures had buttons I found more appealing than the defaults, at least today). Ahh, it was Noia eXtreme that caught my eye.

You know, if I entered this many contests, I still wouldn't win any. I've gone through at least one period of several years of faithfully entering contests, and the most I've won is $100. Kid enters toy giveaways and won a Ripped-Pants! Spongebob. Unfortunately, he doesn't have the best sense of time, and is absolutely convinced that it's been much longer than 6-8 weeks already.

The kid just informed me that if he had $10m we'd get everything we wanted. We talked about it and decided with that kind of dough we could live on a cruise ship for 120 years. More if it were invested properly, natch. We could find 2 more people to share our cabin, probably get a discount, and still make a lifetime of it. Be a hell of an education, too.

Best of google video
.

I want to want to [not a typo] undertake projects like this make-your-0wn-DVR, but just reading it for very long gives me a headache. More of that genre here.

"A number of primate species display [scent] changes during their fertile period, but the majority of scientists believed that this was not the case with humans." The majority of scientists are also male. Girls, did any of you not believe your scent changed with your cycle every month? Actually, I'm not sure how a majority of any subset of the human population believed that--most of us have been or lived intimately with a woman, unless most of the scientists believing that were too young or too reclusive to have married.

Speaking of women's health, some folk in the UK are claiming we're too careful about what pregnant women put in their bodies. This is about medications, but even beyond that, I fully agree--having been a pregnant woman in the last decade and threatened with prosecution should I so much as look at alcohol (never mind that in many countries watered wine is still standard or that opiate analgesics are considered pregnancy-safe--one sip of champagne and you're a child abuser) and given reams of statistics on which fish I should avoid due to mercury risks, I'd say sometimes just taking care of ourselves as best we can is the best idea.

I want one.

All I can say is Ouch.

Screw RFID e-Passports. I want mandatory biometric standard passports, as in it reads my fingerprint and I can go anywhere, never needing a flippin' passport. For that matter, I want the same standard on military bases and all other secure installations. Visitor's pass? You get coded in with a time-limit.

When /. had a headline about an RFID-blocking wallet, a poster complained that they'd hoped for something different. I'm not sure why--that site is exactly what I expected it to be. Foil and duct tape, yep yep. If you're all THAT worried about it and don't like the geekiness of carrying a duct-tape wallet (I'd carry one but I'd want colored duct tape), just wrap anything you're worried about in foil, for crying out loud. Some people put RFID things in their wallets so they *can* be read without taking them out.

Uhhhhhh... yeah. Next up, The Crusades: the MMO. Oh, wait.

Well, it's lunchtime, and UComics is dead.

Sunday, January 15, 2006

29-21 Car. Bathtime for the sprout, so I leave you with toast. Found my favorite under #213 (minus the dunking in cold milk part). One up top that suggested re-toasting after topping with peanut butter and marshmallows will be high-priority once I get past this bug.
Follow your nose. It always knows... (apologies to Toucan Sam and the Kellogg Corporation)

Go Panthers! It's been a fairly close game thus far. 16-7 CAR at halftime. Game stats here.

I don't know why I like CribCandy so much. It's basically overpriced designer furniture and housewares I will never be able to afford. And I'm usually not that style-conscious, but I like some of the stuff.

These look like some very nice scented candles (and body butters and soaps). Prices look a little steep at first until I note that the $35 pillar candle is 3 inches diameter and NINE inches tall. Some of the little 3-oz soy candles are under $5, and those are usually more expensive as they're longer- and cleaner-burning than wax. They make me wish they could figure out how to effectively send scents over the TV or website. I also clicked a bunch of other scent sites, but all very steep for what I'd usually pay to fragrance my room--nice incense and decent candles are not all that expensive, compared to a few ounces of room spray that would last me a couple months at most selling for $30-ish. I still have half a coffee candle I was sent as a gift months ago (also, I like to rotate the scents).

No, I don't read Japanese either, but this is amusing for about five minutes. The power bar starts going too fast to time after a couple rounds, and in the rounds where it doesn't look like she's wearing panties, I'm really not sure what I'm supposed to click. NSFW site--aside from the very softcore anime there're some naughty pictures at the bottom.

Lots of advice for first-timers wanting tattoos.

Blogger seems to be down at the moment. I may have to copy this and save it for later. As it tries to autosave it tells me it can't connect, and it took me several minutes to get to this page, so it may just be a fluke that I connected in the first place.

Panthers are holding up, 23-14 against Chicago.

23-21. Darn.
The gods of chocolate smile upon you. As an aside, I find it interesting that representations such as the Goddess of Willendorf and the Venus of Laussel exist at all, yet many insist that there was never a matriarchal, mother-worshipping prehistoric society. The first and obvjous thing to venerate as we learn to worship is Birth.

Any questions?

This would be almost as scary to see on your date's dad's wall as Spirit's sword collection... No pics, they're all boxed up. Sorry.

I'll disagree with the tag "essential" for a lot of these--some aren't even "good"--but this is definitely a good basic list of free programs.

Medical anomalies... Ok, this isn't "normal" reading, but still interesting. The "Obstetric anomalies" page starts with several stories about women giving birth while unconscious or sleeping. Sure, that's the way! The prolificity chapter starts with some of the darker chapters (to my modern Western sensibilities) of history, Eastern and Western. Hey, has anyone read Lowry's _The Giver_? They Release an infant because they can't have twins in the society, and the one who is marginally smaller, thus weaker, is removed from the society.

Satellite pictures of earth--neat. If you know where a satellite is, you can even get a picture from one that's not in their list.

This is adult and NSFW: comprehensive list of sexual positions, kinks, info, etc. It's on a science and philosophy site that's more than worth a look.

Yes, but does it have cable internet? No, I wouldn't make a really good treehugger, hippie liberal though I can be.
Extending the forbidden library from earlier, Censorship quotes.

This is sort of fun if you play with images or if you game and aren't great at drawing your characters.

10 rules for being human

Saturday, January 14, 2006

Just got a call from Spirit--one of our other friends stationed with him is apparently experiencing some form of paralysis. My prayers are with you, my friend.

As usual, a couple links before work (or before I go attempt to figure out what I can eat before work):
Forbidden and banned books. I especially like how each book on the list includes a "(purchase)" link to the book at Amazon. That's style. "Clan of the Cave Bear" made the list because of "graphic sex descriptions," but the other books in the series did not. CotCB contains passages that refer loosely to a different attitude toward sex ("Boys bounced on girls in imitation of their parents," and "hymens were pierced young...") and passages of violent but not sexually detailed rape incidents. The other books in the series have passages of what in any other books might be considered outright pornography. This may be why Earth's Children is one of my favorite book series.

Ten commandments of the ethical atheist would also seem to apply to spiritual seekers and humanists. Worth a read, at any rate.
Now here's something I'd lean toward labelling a frivolous lawsuit. In case anyone reading this isn't a close personal friend so hasn't heard my rant about the most common example of a "frivolous" suit, please read this before you spout off about coffee, OK? Thanks. (Google search on same subject--the ATLA press room links are good as well--and you can find some real frivolous suits listed in these links that will make your head spin, though all the ones on the Stella Awards email forward are completely debunked across these sites). If the guy actually did drive to Ohio from Alabama... but hell, what cyberstalker would just take pictures of the house? You can get the same thing online via satellite free, as in, without spending a couple hundred bucks in gas money.

My stomach hurts today, and I find myself oddly longing for a Starbucks coffee. Unfortunately, the nearest Starbucks is, well, far enough from here that while I could make it there and back before work, it'd be really, really silly of me. Maybe I'll go splurge $7 at the new Quizno's instead.

Friday, January 13, 2006

I've been messing with my X-Box (I'm just not that great at video games any more, though I used to kick ass at Tekken 3 when it first came out once I figured out the angel's neat flippy combo move thing--couldn't have told you how to do it but my fingers knew the motion, which is like some other things in life, but I digress), then I twisted my knee and have been trying to patch that enough to work on it, so anyway, I haven't been surfing a lot or felt much like blogging the links I have surfed, but I wanted to share this gem before work: Pat Robertson transmogrified into frog. And for my conservative friends who are the old-school sort--kick ass, take names, keep the government out of the bedroom and the doctor's office and the opium den--I respect your beliefs, but I will not respect or vote for a member of the Republican party until the party leadership gets out of bed with the "Family Values" crowd (I have strong family values. They don't include most of what the AFA calls family values) and guys like Robertson and Falwell.

Rant off, got called into work early, gotta go.
Who comes up with this stuff?

Maybe I'll get my kid to make a Lego version of the Book of Shadows (well, there's a kids' version...)

Thursday, January 12, 2006

You never really believe that "one more" crap, do you?

Fun Gothic Name Generator. It seems to have some consistency--I left the page and reloaded it and got the same results, name by name.

Putting my kid's first/last in gives him the Goth name of "Delusional the Perky." Not only does this sound like something out of SuperMunchkin, it's the most incredibly randomly fitting thing the web's come up with for me--and I find a lot of things scarily accurate at times. My favorite that it came up with for me was "Dementia Black." I think I may just use that someday for a character.

I'm Stumbling through Goth-Culture sites. Don't ask me why. If I didn't think that one of two things would happen (either I'd hurt my tips or my boss would decide I was being "scary" again and send me home) I'd be going in to work tonight in goth-style makeup... I don't know why I feel that urge so strongly today. But when most of the clientele is middle-aged middle-class churchgoing Bible Belt folk, alienating your most direct source of income is a BAD idea.

On Cookie Monster and hedonism.

I've been seeing a lot of this type of clothing. Again, I'd be violating the uniform policy. Then again, they can't afford to send me home. What a dilemma.

Yes, yes, of course I could get some tattoo-sleeve shirts to wear outside work. I would and might, too (if they weren't so costly--I can get real good-sized tats for those prices). But I'm really not sure that would be as much fun as wearing one to work.

Here's a nice gallery of tattoos. Spirit won a prize for one of his once. It was featured in White Wolf Magazine.

OK now I really am gettin ready for work.
One more link: Drac in a box. Gothic clothing. Very cool stuff, full men's and kid's lines.
It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel... scared. Well, if I were going to join a DVD club of SF/horror movies being mailed to me monthly, It'd have to be 50s B-movies. Actually, I could get into that. Maybe a Stephen King DVD club. Alternate his own crap movies with his top movies list from "Danse Macabre." I'd be hip to that.

This is a good set of links for a rainy day.

Oh, wow. Talk about your backward compatibility...

Here's a nice list of links, too: 10 Pages you should know about

Kudos to Sooty!

Right on.

I can't get into the homepage right now, but the writeup on BoingBoing looks promising. I'm doubting there's a local chapter for my kid, though.

Tempting
, but I'd better not.

I may be a little clutter-prone but this is ridiculous.

Coming back to a nickel near you: Thomas Jefferson--and not in profile.

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Ow.

Is this a new art trend?

I can see the "no thanks" crowd's point, but I can also see the appeal of this (better if it had a USB/webcam-type camera than a VCR/TV-recording one).

Dogster
? Hell, I'm too old to even understand the appeal of MySpace, so whatever.

The only things smarter than this post on Scott Adams's blog are the comments to it. This statement: "those who use & 'believe' in the word traditional tend to dismiss new (ie anything less than 100yo) as inherently wrong &/or evil (challenging) in some way."--by a poster called Blue is profound, if it misses the even-more-important point that many of those "traditional" values and thoughts were never held in the way the "traditional values" crowd hold them now. They long for the values of their childhood, in which they remember the good but not the bad. "TGOD(tnw)"* used to be used on Usenet (how many different uses of the word "use" can you come up with in a single clause?) to describe the phenomenon of "family values" folks and Neocon politicials who remember a childhood of being sheltered from everything that didn't fit within a narrow worldview and don't remember that those values included racism and sexism built into society by tradition and law.

Someone Dugg today's Foxtrot--which is now for me showing only the top half of the Doonesbury comic. I don't remember the joke--damn.

No comment
on the taste of the People in question. None whatsoever.

*The Good Old Days (that never were)
Before I leave for work I'll leave ya with a funny little flash animation on The End of the World.

Got my XBox in today (thanks Spirit!) so may be playing around with that more than surfing between work and bed. Then again... maybe not.
Fascinating. Well, gotta get ready for work again. Have a great day!
Scientists find that meditation not only reduces stress but also reshapes the brain


Clerks 2 teaser trailer
I lost a post with lots of links in it because of a browser crash. Blogspot doesn't seem to save the draft between sessions. Mostly it was well-written headlines and a link to an article about the IRS freezing a bunch of poor people's (average income US$13k) income tax returns related to possible fraud around the Earned Income Credit. This is my demographic, and not what I need to hear right now.

This is a great idea. Like all those supposed codes going around in every high school that every high schooler "knows about" and none actually subscribe to (I did have a cousin who collected can tabs from every guy she made out with in middle school, but generally, all those codes are bogus and just generate press and scare the crap out of the establishment)--but genuine. Just needs a way to personalize it better (like a pagan partner central logo with any number of other symbols on the inside stylized like the shirt design). As it is I wouldn't buy most of the clothing but will probably buy a whole bunch of mini buttons. I might even wear them all to work to see if people ask.

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

Thoughts on a Wiccan countermovement.
This garfield randomizer is neat. It takes three random panels and makes a little garfield strip. Sometimes it makes an odd kind of sense.
Will Wright just gets more impressive as time goes by. His games are about gameplay more than graphics, and guess what? People still play them! Not that the graphics don't become more central over time... but sometimes the earliest games are still the best precisely because it was before graphics got in the way of gameplay.

Will Wright and Sid Meier deserve our thanks and our game money. And they have them, over an over again.

Monday, January 09, 2006

From Boing Boing, Five Year Old Gets Drunk at Applebee's ...What five-year-old wouldn't have taken ONE sip of an LIT and said, "Mommy, my juice tastes funny?" If my kid's juice tastes funny I *take a sip.*

Lawsuit aside, if that happened in my restaurant, the server and bartender who let it happen would both likely be fired and face direct legal repercussions.
Yet another problem with the infernal war on drugs.

I'm not blind, but I want to work at one of these places. Ahhhhhh, to never again hear a complaint that someone's piece of meat, charred to an unappetizing grey, is "bleeding" because some of the natural juices from the meat ended up on the plate.
Here's a link to a new story about Molly B., the cow I mentioned last night.
Sweet. I want some.
OK so I haven't made it to bed yet. Was meditating, then wanted to describe the experience. Long story short I found myself drawn to Mt. Fuji. Then because describing it involved talking about the steps, including letting myself go numb, I noticed that Gmail had shown related and sponsored pages--about sciatica and diabetes-caused numbness. So I started poking around to see what other gems I had and got drawn into reading some spiritual pages (and shopping pages...).

Secular humanism isn't really my thing--I'm too spiritual-leaning to believe that way except on my most jaded days--but it's a good and admirable path for those who choose to eschew faith as superstition. The original concept of humanism isn't explicitly secular, but liberally religious (the founder of humanism was a Unitarian minister, and I do lean Unitarian, sort of). I guess Spiritual Humanism fits in with my brand of ecclectic neopaganism. This form of Pantheism might come too close to rejecting the idea that there's a greater Spirit to the Universe for me, though I agree with some of the ideas. Their FAQ does draw parallels with pagan ideals, so while this deserves more reading and research for me, I do believe in a God who is (or can be) Personal, even if S/He is the Spirit of the Universe itself or contained within it.

These are too cute. "Ganesh is my Om boy?" I'd wear that just to watch people say "huh?" That dragon shirt is gorgeous, too. Each shirt is a link to a category--more T-shirts to add to the endless list of things I'd buy if I suddenly had more money than Monty Burns. I tell ya I'd buy a big house to store it all in, then blow through that man's entire fortune online in a week. Anyway, I also really like this.

Meditation Expert has a lot of meditations across several religious beliefs. It's mostly trying to sell you something, and leans toward east Asian styles of belief and meditation, but looks like it contains enough interesting reading (PDF file link) to keep me busy for a while. The PDF eBook goes back to the sometimes-held believe that semen is vital to the essence of the human body, and that to achieve spiritual and physical health men must hold back from ejaculation during orgasm. This does make men "multiorgasmic" but from research I have read on the supposedly multiorgasmic male (the study I read had found *one* man in thousands who did not require recuperation time--I forget the technical term--after orgasm) these ejaculate-less "orgasms" are very far in sensation, chemistry, and brain effect from the real thing. And if it is a vital part of the essence of Man? Then giving to me of his essence is the greatest gift a lover can bring to me.

DailyOM
looks like it might have some meditations that are more up my alley.

More places to spend money I'm never going to have. I like the prayer wheel amulet.

Your name with viking runes.

A spice page that includes the medicinal properties of the spices.

If the idea of the end of the world doesn't fill you with any sort of fear, does that make you skeptical, fatalistic, or exceptionally well-balanced?

This reminds me of my idea that restaurants should have lights like airplanes for service, only maybe several of them--a light for "requires service" and a light for "requires bussing," maybe that light up a board in the kitchen, or at least a set of lights at the table, one of which means "needs cleaning" and one of which means "DO NOT BUS." Nothing worse than having to comp an expensive drink because a busser stuffed a napkin in it just as the solo patron returned from the bathroom to the table. Unless it's having to comp a whole meal because the same busser cleared the last 5 bites of someone's steak...

Some gorgeous art. More. Tendreams appears to have a lot of nice art.

This guy makes a great case for micropayments.

Darkly Gothic poetry generator. Comes up with some oddly pretty stuff, in a funny sarcastic kind of way.

Cows With Guns reminds me of the story from last week about the cow who went on the run, swimming an icy-cold river and narrowly avoiding being hit by a train before her recapture.

Ick.

These
become more uniform with each passing year. (reference for older ones)

Names of God. There's a SF story in which the end of the world is brought about by the discovery of the last unknown name of God.

So, now I will really go to bed. Night, world.