ApatheticLiberalDepressingPostModernEvangelicalRedNeckTechnoApocalypse

In case anybody's still keeping score, I weighed in at 154 lbs today. Just thought you might want to know.

stream of consciousness

Just came back from watching V for Vendetta. Natalie as cute as ever. Anarchy as mystifying as ever. I know Chesterton got a novel (The Man Who Was Thursday) out of a gang of anarchists; one shot at and killed US President William McKinley in 1901; another assassinated Franz Ferdinand, sparking WW1; and they seem in general to have been conspiring everywhere in Europe a century ago. Still doesn't convince me that anarchy would make the world a better place. Unless you kill everybody at once. Not sure if misanthropy's really a political philosophy.

Graham Greene can be more Orwellian than Orwell. Triple Pursuit consisted of the black realism of This Gun for Hire, the psychological thriller The Third Man, and the comic Our Man in Havana. Greene has impeccable plots. Characters verge on being interchangeable, but what they all share is deep, religious guilt. What Greene's books don't have is much of a distinctly identifiable literary style; no sentences to savor. Irony, however, can be especially delicious.

idiot

One highlight of this weekend's expedition to Cades Cove was Idiot. [Others included a jump with Yué into the water at Abrams Falls as it was about time for something (I still love you, Chris Cumings!)] Perfect for large groups, this card game is apparently universal. I first learned it from Mrs. Ward, my 7th & 8th grade history & language & everything-else-not-science teacher when our car broke down as we & my mom were traveling to Nashville back in the dark ages, before the simultaneous discovery of Rook and Dr Pepper. I relearned it last year from some Chinese students when we went camping at Mt Rogers up in Virginia. And I re-relearned it this year with the same Chinese students after they all agreed that they hadn't taught us correctly the first time. By nature the game defies description, but I thought I'd give it a try, and, in the process, combine all three versions of the rules.

Cards: Use a single 52-card deck (American, hereafter AM), two 52-card decks combined (Chinese 1, C1), or two decks with jokers (Chinese 2, C2). Three is the highest card, four the lowest (AM, C1). Two is the highest card (C2), but can be superseded by high and low jokers (the first is the colorful joker, the other is black and white). Remove 3's and 4's so all players will have an equal number of cards (AM). Deal all cards. Women may not deal; it is beneath them (C1/C2).

Objective: The object in all forms of the game is to get rid of all your cards and become President. The last player with cards remaining becomes the Idiot, and must deal the next round. The second player out of cards becomes Vice President, followed by as many Commoners as necessary, and the second-to-last becomes Vice Idiot. Other terms may be temporarily substituted during the game as required to ensure witty conversation.

Before the Round: The benefits of office are prestige, and higher cards. In the American version, players arrange themselves by rank: the President may occupy most comfortable chair, with VP to his/her left, followed by Commoners 1 to n, until the VI and Idiot come around full circle. The Idiot must give his/her two highest cards to the President, who returns the favor by giving her/his two lowest cards (AM, C1) or two worst (C2, subtle but important difference, as you don't have to break up multiples if you don't want to). Similarly, the VP and VI exchange 1 card. For the first hand, the player selected as President (AM - chosen drawing cards before dealing), the player to the left of the dealer (C1), or the dealer (C2) leads first.

Playing: The first player may lead any card, two cards of the same rank, three cards of the same rank, or four (AM). In C1/C2, holding four or more of the same rank is called a "bomb", which out-ranks every other card, jokers included, excluding bombs of higher-valued cards (ie. a 'bomb' of 7's is inferior to a 'bomb' of Queens) or bigger ("Atomic") bombs comprised of five, six, or even eight cards. The next player (to the left) may follow this lead by playing a higher (not equal) card. Pairs or triples must be matched by higher pairs or triples. Players are encouraged to shout the number and value ("two 10's!") especially when playing under restrictive conditions such as a tent or intoxication (C1/C2). One may pass at any time for any reason. It is generally best to lead one's lowest cards first. Being stuck with a single 4 late in the hand can be deadly. Play continues around the circle with cards getting higher and higher. Each time around a player may pass or play, until the cards are so obscenely high that everyone passes. The Idiot then must clear the cards (AM). The player who played the last, highest card now gets to lead. Play continues in this fashion until someone runs out of cards and becomes President effective the next hand. It is regarded as particularly classy to go out by playing a string of high cards which no other players can top (AM), followed by a bomb (C1/C2). A less glamorous, but also effective, strategy is to save up pairs and triples against an opponent with single cards remaining and then go out by playing nothing but multiples. If the current President is not the first one out, s/he is deposed and will automatically become Idiot (C1/C2), but continues to play out his/her current term. The remaining players continue to play, now competing for the job of VP, then 1st Commoner, etc... Once all positions have been decided and one person is stuck with remaining cards, the hand is over. Players switch seats (AM) and the next hand begins.

Quitting: There is no endpoint to the game as there is no effective running score. Fatigue, snack shortage, and the long-awaited descent of poetic justice on one who has been President (or Idiot) multiple hands in a row are all acceptable excuses for adjournment.

bonus interview!

One of the free videos at the downtown library is a documentary on the Theremin, which contains this interview [4MB] with Beach Boy Brian Wilson. Despite or because of drugs and mental illness, Wilson was finally able to release SMiLE, 'the unfinished Beach Boys album,' in 2004. A longer cut of 'Good Vibrations,' which does not, and never did, use a theremin for the 'oooh-wee-ooh' effect on the chorus—the interview's hilariously awesome nonetheless—is that album's final track.

weekend reading

None of these have any relation to the others. For those of you who love the NEA, this essay does a good job explaining how multiple choice tests became de rigeur in American higher education.

Here's a BBC slideshow with pictures of a Taliban graveyard that has become a shrine. Such shrines are a very common facet of Islam in the Indian subcontinent. Most have the same ratty look; people leave bright strips of cloth for blessing. In most cases, the shrine is situated around the grave of a 'pir', or holy man. What's intriguing is that the Taliban were and are opposed to this and other practices of 'folk Islam'; in their view, it makes idols of the dead.

Finally, an article about the first Renaissance humanists who chose to write in immortal Latin rather than the vulgar languages, and ended up widely unread.

no sense of history

I watched snatches of the Oscars Sunday night in case there was anything funny, but it was mostly pretty forced.

What was funny was the logic of George Clooney's acceptance speech where he praised Hollywood for being 'out of touch' with the rest of the country. This, he said, meant that Hollywood was taking the lead on issues such as AIDS, racial prejudice, etc. The film industry, in his eyes, is the vanguard of American social progress.

I don't have a problem with Hollywood [hereafter 'HW'] being liberal or whatever you wish to call that conglomeration of political views. HW is, after all, part of this country (as are WalMart, Enron, the Sierra Club, Pat Robertson and NARAL). Nor do I have a problem with with HW thinking it is what America ought to be. To be American is to assume that at any minute the entire country is in complete agreement with you, and whoever is not is a blathering idiot. HW fits right into this grand American tradition.

What irritates me is HW thinking that making a film about "an issue" is the same as "doing something about [insert problem]". Every Oscar ceremony I've ever watched has succumbed to this idiocy. If you believe everything you've seen on TV, you'd think that the film industry has been responsible for every social and political change since 1900. For example, back in the dark days of the 1970s before we were born, but after the Beatles, the film All the President''s Men caused the downfall of the Nixon presidency. In the same way films like Apocalypse Now, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, and Rambo caused the US to pull out of Vietnam. As Brokeback Mountain will, in the years to come, inspire gay Americans to bravely take up cattle ranching. And I would be prejudiced if I omitted the key roles played by Denzel Washington & Morgan Freeman & Halle Berry in singlehandedly ending desegregation from the 1980s onwards. Or how, in the year 1999, American Beauty, a soap opera with a larger budget, espoused the revolutionary idea that life in the suburbs could be confining and suppressive. [Then again, I suppose no one in HW has ever heard of Henrik Ibsen.] And most characters in films who have AIDS are white gay males, because there are no affected African women.

HW is a reactionary cash-making machine masquerading as the center of progressive radical art.

Personally, I think good movie is a good story. Nothing more, nothing less. W.H. Auden, in his elegy for Yeats,' penned the line "poetry makes nothing happen". Movies don't, either.

muskrat lent

'No, they're baby squirrels and one's inside my jacket!' the guy two floors up on an extension ladder screamed. I was standing well enough back because he expected to be pulling an old birds' nest out of the eaves. Neither of us was expecting four blind, clawless young squirrels to fall out of the roof and end up clinging to the bush below. They sqeaked like mice, and momma squirrel came around the back of the house and shot up the ivy into her nest. But she was too frightened to come out. A squirrel expert, thankfully, was on scene; he knew a vet, and, moreover, his grandmother had bottle-fed a one and it now behaved like a hyperactive cat.

I think the squirrel expert found homes for all four squirrel-lets. They will either be bottle-fed a mixture of Bud and Cheetos by kind-hearted construction workers, or taken to the university to be naturally raised by sock-puppet-wearing grad students, much to the chagrin of my coworker, who was hoping for some free lunch. Indeed, the idea of roasting them did cross my mind. In my defense, it was a rather cold day and a fire would have been nice. If you're of inquisitive palate and would rather have muskrat or capybara in the next month or so, you're theologically approved.

neurobiology

Read about neurogenesis, stress, marmosets, lab rats, and a Swedish cowboy to learn how antidepressants work, and the relationship between early childhood stress and brain damage. Personally, I recommend chocolate and caffeine: I have a mug of the latter as soon as I get to work, and a handful of the former just before leaving.

I haven't been reading so much lately; blame it on Monty Python shows on PBS or something. Plus most of the stuff on my list is not available at the library. So I guess I should add some stuff to my list that is there. If you have any suggestions on Japanese or Latin-American novelists let me know. I feel a strange urge to read something from those parts of the world.

biography

Truth is still stranger than fiction: 'The Freshman'.

saga

We've finally had some snow down here; just enough to make everything look as cold as it feels. Between the Winter Olympics, Jared Diamond discussing the Viking expansion into the Atlantic (Icelandic novelist Halldór Laxness: "When all is said and done, life is first and foremost salt fish"), Björk, and reading Beowulf, I'm on a Viking kick right now. A somewhat-related article mentioned "figures from Icelandic sagas, including Grim Ketilsson Hairy-Cheeks and poets named Audun the Uninspired and Eyvind the Plagiarist." Wonderful appellations (or epithets)! There must be a good parody of Beowulf and/or Hamlet lurking in there. The conflation of Hamlet with Grendel is suggested by John Gardner's novel Grendel, a timeless, moving story of a bloodthirsty, misunderstood monster undergoing existential crisis. Anyhow, the next time you see a person of Nordic ancestry, check them for weapons.

I'm not as geeky as I thought

Well, I've gone and had a bad Linux experience. My uncle gave me his old pc to see if I could fix it up (the hard drive was having problems) and give it to someone who needs one. "Great" I thought, "a chance to install Ubuntu Linux. Shouldn't take but a few hours." And it took about 20 minutes, once I got the computer vacuumed out.

Then, eight hours later, it became clear that Linux is not very friendly towards software-based modems (which most newer modems are, alas), seeing as they need Windows to function. I did find several instructions on how to get such modems up and running under Linux, and I have to admit that they threw me for a loop. I'm just not up to compiling my own binaries. Heck, I couldn't even figure out why permissions weren't set right for a folder which one of the guides referred to. I wasn't even sure if it was the right folder as it was only referred to by name, and not by path.

So I gave up & sold out. I got out my copy of Windows 98. Now the hard drive is 10GB smaller, because the MS installer couldn't find the Linux partitions, and I've spent the better part of my spare time the last few days downloading Windows updates and some decent software.

It hurts to say it for having such high hopes, but there are some downright stupid things about Ubuntu. No precompiled package for winmodem support, if one exists, which is may not. The default media player, Totem, doesn't play mp3 or dvds. So even though Ubuntu comes free on cd, Linux all but requires broadband access to get up and running.

die, bob costas, die!

My least-favorite sportscaster of all time is still CBS's Armen Keteyian, capable of reducing the tactics and pain of the Tour de France into a nice bicycle ride through pretty fields with nice old castles on the hills—but Bob Costas certain gives him a run for his money. Nothing on American TV is more agonizing than time-delayed international sporting events. I know who won, you stupid morons, because I have internet access! Quit pretending these events are occurring live. Quit breaking coverage of six-hour-old event A to take us over to 'what just happened' in eight-hour-old event B. Just show the tape, uninterrupted & uncut!

Die, Bob Costas, and all your kind! I am nonplussed by your banal soliloquizing about the triumph of the human spirit despite sudden and unexpected tragedy, the nobleness of physical competition, and the beauteous body-poems of graceful athletic movement soaring to uncharted heights. We are Americans. We do not desire to hear your scriptwriter's attempts at Soviet propaganda. Give me the play-by-play or give me death.

Better to hear the boringly obvious narration than all this claptrap about competitors winging their way towards glorious immortal destiny in the annals of sport. We are men—lies do not become us: the athletes are exhausted, flushed & sweaty; the hockey players smell like pigs; their clothing, excepting the figure skaters modeling for Victoria's Secret, has been stitched together from corporate logos. The Olympics Games are not about amateur sport; they are a giant grotesque pageant paid for by Coca-Cola and McDonalds. The goal is to win big, get lucrative sponsorships, and humiliate other nations.

If you must do commentary, Bob Costas, show me the money! Tell me how many endangered yak indigenous to a single, poverty-stricken valley in Tibet to were slaughtered to make one teaspoon of wax for Bode Miller's skis! Tell me the going rate for a French judge! Tell me, tell us all, the steroids of choice for this season! Show us the biotech labs where they are made! Then, if you can still bear to say it, will I listen as you say: the Olympic Games are a celebration of peace, bringing the world together.

one more thing

At the risk of adding more fuel to fire, I thought I should mention that, in Urdu, the word ÿØÿßÔªßÔ∫∂ , transliterated as 'danish' & pronounced "donnish", means 'wisdom.'

church sign of the times

'Fundamentalist. Premillenialist. Everyone Welcome.'

cartoon violence

This is that informative, penetrating post on religious humor which will explain everything to everyone. It was going to be titled 'Blasphemy is the Soul of Wit' and feature, after a brief historical and cultural overview of the major religious traditions, close readings of rabbi, priest, preacher, and mullah jokes. Furthermore, it was going to examine religion in critically acclaimed modern novels such as Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, the short stories of Isak Dinesen and Flannery O'Connor, Naghib Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy, and anything else I could think of sitting on my bookshelf (omitting works by modern American Jewish writers which I don't read because there are too damn many of them), in order to make the case that religious humor is, for better and worse, part of a (the?) humanistic tradition.

Anyhow, if you haven't guessed yet, that essay did not get written. It's a problem I have. My excuse is that good ideas express themselves precisely the first time in the mind, and regurgitation is unpleasant. So I give you my notes.

Monty Python is British. Empty-church Anglican.

On the other hand, the Scripture reading in The Meaning of Life is a great job of parody.

[Scene:a school chapel.] Headmaster: And spotteth twice they the camels before the third hour. And so the Midianites went forth to Ram Gilead in Kadesh Bilgemath by Shor Ethra Regalion, to the house of Gash-Bil-Betheul-Bazda, he who brought the butter dish to Balshazar and the tent peg to the house of Rashomon, and there slew they the goats, yea, and placed they the bits in little pots. Here endeth the lesson.

See also Life of Brian and the musical number 'Every Sperm is Sacred'. Can't write more without dying of laughter.

Rabbi Jokes: Subscribing as I do to the Fiddler on the Roof version of Jewishness [...]

I don't know what room there is for humor in Islam.

That is: I do not know of any tradition of Muslims making jokes about themselves.

It's just all rather serious. All the time.

Christopher Buckley's Florence of Arabia suggests to me that 1001 Nights, old as it is, could be profitably studied for clues to [the inner workings of ] the Saudi royal family.

superbowl commercials

My favorite superbowl commercial is still the 'Herding Cats' spot of a few years back. This year's have been lackluster to this point [the whole game]. Here's my list of commercials that I'd watch again:

1. The subtitled FedEx commercial with the caveman sending a letter by pterodactyl ["because FedEx hasn't been invented yet"], seeing it swallowed by T-rex, getting fired by his caveboss, kicking a small raptor in frustration, and finally being stomped by a large, leathery dinosaur foot.

Also, the Rolling Stones are a scary definition of entertainment.

bombs away

Another way to consider the tragedy of upper-class housing projects is this: if Osama & Co. were to nuke the 4000 sf. homes of WildSaddleWillowRarityOakTurkeyBrookeMillPointeCreekRunLanding, there would probably be more lapdogs killed than people.

On a related note, have you noticed how new indie churches are being named like subdivisions? I've recently noticed 'NorthStar' and 'CrossPointe.' [Pause for evil chills to run up spine.] 'Willow Creek' escapes for actually being named after a place. I'm not against picking trendy names totally void of geographic connections (though now I say that, doesn't it smack of gnosticism?); after all, older denominational churches ('First Presbyterian', 'Third Baptist') are named, and often built, like banks. I suppose that having a brand name church makes it easier to merchandise or outsource. Finally, of course, urban churches have cool, intriguing names like 'New House of Harvest' and 'Water Angel Ministries.' (Any ideas what a 'water angel' is?)

the state of the union

Seemed quite happy to forget the last year, and jumped ahead to the coming year's agenda. Unfortunately, the IRS is still quite taken with the past. At least my taxes are done before February.

fake is the new real

In the course of my job, I have largely unsupervised access to the houses of well-to-do people. By 'well-to-do,' I mean 'filthy rich,' an wholly inaccurate phrase insinuating that poverty is pure and ennobling. In my experience, I have noticed no income-dependent moral qualities, although I—or anyone else in this country—can hardly claim to be poor. I have a collection of filthy jeans and cotton shirts which I wear to work, though, for two reasons. First, to suggest that I come into regular, necessary contact with dirt. Second, to remind myself that I do not sully my existence with designer clothing. The clothes say: although I am not poor, I could be, without difficulty. This claim to hypothetical victimhood is, perversely, quite a hit with my self-esteem. At home, of course, dirt is forbidden. I take my muddied shoes off at the door, wash my hands every half-hour, and wipe the kitchen counter clean of the least breadcrumb.

A similar mania for cleanliness haunts the houses of the filthy rich. When I started this essay, I intended at this point to quote Lord Acton ("Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely"), draw the analogy between wealth and power, and cleverly portray how wealth settles over all the surfaces of contemporary life like dust, or germs. I would then, quite reasonably, propose that wealth is the condition of having too much, and clinch the argument with a catalogue of the hot tubs, the myriad walk-in closets, the multiple porches, the three-car garages, the strange stairway alcoves, grotto-like, awaiting statues and dripping candles. It is not hard to see these grandiose buildings as excessive. What is more striking is their emptiness.

But it seems so odd to think that the wealth of the filthy rich is invisible wealth. True, there are not enough Picassos to go around; yet I continually expect, upon entering a room, evident clues to its inhabitants' personality. I expect to be able to infer signs of a soul's uniqueness from its surroundings. What I find instead, time and again, are houses that seem never to have been lived in. Formal rooms, populated by matching furniture, resemble the rooms of a hotel. They embody the very idea of a space inhabited anonymously and briefly.

What is the hotel? A manufactured experience. The lowest common denominator of taste. The triumph of color-coordinated decor. The hotel is a transient paradise, created by interior designers, embodying the appearance of wealth without the substance. In its chambers lie pile upon pile of worthless objects, a hoard without purpose. Vases of dry reeds which hold no water. Tables of iron wrought in senseless patterns, fastened to laminate wood with the cheapest screws. These things are half-truths; they wish to be real, and yet are so pitifully fabricated that they are unable even to tell that lie. "Fake!" they scream. "Fraud." Even the hand-crafted artifacts are no longer made to be used. The marks of long wear, the rounded edges, and the scars of daily life are all fictions.

And now unto the homes they come, the vampire hordes, multiplying their bleak, meaningless ideology. Wealth without cost. Art without use. Space without soul.

dawkins deconstructed

the fake plants, however, are in counseling

Things happening in Moscow: "Britain's Foreign Office has denied any improper conduct with Russian NGOs or fake rocks."

go steelers!

Although this will all be of no lasting consequence in another two weeks, I just thought I should let you know who I'll be rooting for.

non-random surfing

Got up this morning & took my car down for an oil change, which I've been putting off ever since getting the new (used) transmission installed last year. Then on to the library to pick up "The beginning stages of ..." by The Polyphonic Spree. They're like a cult—white robes with rainbow trim, and their songs are infused with hippie optimism—but they make music instead of doing other cult-like things, so it's all good. Listen especially for the trumpets, which play anything from doing-their-own thing fanfares to sickly-sounding mouth exercises.

Show making me wish I could watch Ethiopian TV: Ethiopian Idol.

In Morocco, "an historic compromise, one that is compatible with both the International Bill of Human Rights and Sharia."

hot sauce

First off, I apologize to anyone who ever saw me mix orange juice, salt, pepper, and tabasco and then claim that it was good. I was deluded.

The afternoon headache brought on by hot-sauce sampling at lunch is receding, thanks in large part to a big mug of black tea (cream & sugar, please). There may have been some caffeine issues involved in this migraine. As I had to be at work earlier than usual this morning, I was unable to access the office kitchen and set the coffeepot brewing.

Hot sauce, nonetheless, is an addictive product. It fascinates me that different sauces produce markedly different sensations. The sauce I tried last week gave, over the course of ten seconds, the sensation of an icicle steadily growing from my tongue through the roof of my mouth, and into my brain. Whereas one of the sauces I had today (due to the delay between tasting and headache, I don't know which one) created that broad band of pain across the forehead, somewhat wider than Rambo's headband, and less sweaty. Today is also the 100th birthday of the chemist who discovered LSD.

these were too good to pass up

And I couldn't resist. Winner for best parody poem of 2006 is this remake of the "Dies Irae" [about halfway down the page]. And the winner for best travel writing of 2006 is a piece about a walk across Andorra. Both are rugged. And satirical.

touching books

I think I'm the "former roommate who once proposed starting a publishing company based on making books not for content but for physical beauty"—and even if I'm not, I've already fabricated the memory of making that statement so I can include it in my memoir. Btw, Nate, marvelous timing for that post: I just this week got an old hardcover copy of The Little Prince read by someone with dirty hands and a fondness for marking the touchingly philosophical bits with pencil. With a dust jacket that feels like brown paper, the book just begs to be touched, which is probably what got it into trouble in the first place.

While matte covers have become fairly commonplace on paperbacks (a pleasant commonplace—I can see myself swirlingly reflected in oily fingerprints of my own making from the glossy cover of my Penguin Classics' Jane Eyre) I have yet to acquire a paperback with the right combination of cover and pages. The Little, Brown and Company edition of J.D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey is near-perfect: 6¬æ" tall, matte cover, and no-nonsense font. But already-yellowed son-of-newsprint pages spoil the effect. (Complicated analogies to women come to mind in which I will not indulge.) Elizabeth Bishop's Complete Poems has the right sort of pages, and the oversized titles, twenty-point at least, restore some of the elegance stolen by the pink plastic cover.

My favorite large-format books have to be Edward Tufte's trilogy on informative illustration, which begins with the Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Tufte started his own publishing company so he could print his books the way he wanted to. The illustrations include some of the most unique maps and charts ever created: a 'cyclogram' hand-drawn by a cosmonaut recording orbital sunrises and sunsets against the details of 96 days spent in space; a timetable, annotated in Japanese, of the Indonesian railway system. The paper is, well, creamy. (Loamy, I'd add, if I had an eye that could spot the soil as well as it can the word.)

Last and highest praise for Don Quixote, in 1941 Random House edition with woodcuts. This book's bound like a hymnal, weighty; the text settles between lavish margins and flows around woodcuts of varying hue. I close my eyes and run my fingers down the page and feel relief, those tiny ridges, the inky reminders of type.

I know this is totally irrelevant, but did I mention that Scrubs is back on TV Tuesdays at 9pm? Okay, now I don't have to bore you with a whole post about the show.

cores and rumors of dual cores

Surprise surprise—Apple announces a new Intel-powered laptop at Macworld: the MacBook Pro. The real story may be that Steve Jobs did not, at the end of his presentation, introduce any new product with his trademark phrase "One more thing." So was there, is there, anything missing? I hope so.

meanwhile, back at the alma mater

You can tell I pay a lot of attention to goings on at the old school when I find out about them from another blog, which has a link to a national newspaper.

qotw

"I'm not a redneck, I'm Appalachian-American!"

i'm henry the viii i am

This is the way Masterpiece Theater began this evening:

Scene: death bed of Henry VII, an old man with white hair.
Henry VII: "Arthur!" ➀
Henry VIII: "No, I'm Henry."
VII: "You must answer me these questions ➁ before I die: What is the first duty of a king?".
VIII: "To wage war and levy taxes."
VII: "No, to have an heir to the throne. Aaaaaaaaargh! [dies] ➂"

That's three, yes, three unintentional Monty Python references in the first minute! [Lyrics for the title song here.]

money burning a hole in my pocket

To begin with, I love my Powerbook, I really do. But it's getting sluggish and rehabilitation options are limited. The processor upgrade to a G4/500Mhz costs ~$300. Memory prices for this relic will probably never come down below $100. Then there's the static buildup on the headphone jack that clears up when I touch a finger to the line-in jack. And the finicky hard drive that takes a few minutes to spin up and generally get with it after waking from sleep. And the 20 minutes of life left on the battery. Etc.

So I've been thinking about maybe, possibly, getting another computer, in a supplemental capacity of course, to do cool processor-intensive things that this one won't. Like copy dvds. Or record digital tv. Or play older Windows games that I can't really run at the moment. I've been using Firefox a bit attempting to get ready. If I were coming from IE, I'd be impressed. But I'm using OmniWeb, so I'm not. There are some useful extensions, but they're not all the way yet.

The problem is I can't for the life of me commit to switching OSs. My original plan was to piece together a MythTV box running Linux, and have it dual-boot into Windows for games. It would be the cheaper option, and there's a geek factor involved in Linux setup far surpassing my current geekiness. But the emotional part of me just can't give up the hearty chewy goodness that is Mac. I sense a long search on Ebay for a dual G4 PowerMac. Unless the rumored Tiger binary that runs on Intel systems should happen to find its way to me.

a stomach odyssey

Gluttony, not writer's block or vacation [alas!], is to blame for this two-week posting hiatus. My suppers recently have consisted of: (a) chewy chocolate fudge [I cooked it over boiling water like the recipe said to avoid burning the bottom as I usually do, and ended up with barely-solid goo. Delicious, though.] (b) key lime pie [no problem here] (c) black&blue berry pie [bottom crust a tad too thick, I think] and (d) beer [Sam Adam's variety pack]. Now although I do subscribe to the "life is short: eat dessert first" school of thought, I actually have good reason for sticking with the sweets: I have begun taking long, stomach-filling lunch breaks at work. When I get home, I have only the slightest space left—and dessert fills it perfectly. Then I'm ready to sleep.

Just in case you're hungry, here's my list of the better cheap meals in the area: Gondolier Italian Restaurant's $4.95 salad (heaped on a dinner plate!) and small one-topping pizza. Golden Girls for peanut-butter pie [yes, I can too have it for lunch!]. Corner Pizzeria's $6.99 three-topping calzone, which occupies a pizza pan. And of course Countryside Restaurant $8.95 all-you-can-eat fish, chicken, hush puppies, and fries—good use of an hour in which one would otherwise have to be working.

If I accidentally made any New Year's resolutions, I can guarantee they've been broken.

what I wrote

fat of the land