November Linkdump

Thursday ended before I got done with it.

Here's everything I've had open in a tab for the last month thinking I was going to get around to doing something with it.


Stem cell controversy: effectively over.
Now let's get on with the business of growing larger penises for insecure men.

Covering the Mouse.
A blog of covers of Disney songs. I like the idea, but this is like, a mini-series blog, right? Are there really that many cover tunes of Disney songs?

Update! Kurtis assures me that he has enough Disney cover tunes to last until the heat death of the universe. Go have a listen, whydoncha.

Heavy Ink.
This might be my new comic book store. I can't tell yet.

Photos and video of real-life Shaolin monks.

Tricksy military camouflage.
Rubber tanks! Neat!

How to make your own tact-tiles.
The manufacturer of this RPG aid apparently decided they were tired of making money or something. I emailed them six months ago asking when they might be selling their wares again, and they said they wouldn't make any more at least through the end of the year, and now their Web site is down. So screw it, I'll make my own.

What's a Bushel?

Ruminating on yesterday's post, I think it's pretty interesting that I barely mentioned Jesus in any of that.

I've spent a lot of my adult life attempting to modulate my Jesus vibe so as to not scare the heathens and pagans around me.

I used to think it might be because I was ashamed of Christ, but that's just self-flagellatory Bible-talk people use to try to make you feel bad. It's not true. I don't even know what that means. I've never been ashamed of Christ. I've never had any reason to be. I just didn't want to scare anybody off.

So I would talk about love, sacrifice, and forgiveness but almost never in a way that acknowledged Christ as the source or goal of that goodness.

The people close to me knew the standard Christian line, I think. They didn't need me to wave the Jesus flag to know what I was talking about. Besides, I hated seeing the uncertain, trapped-animal looks in their eyes when I brought up Christ explicitly.

But now I think I need to wave it more. Not acknowledging Jesus sort of... leads to fuzzy thinking.

And, I'm more at peace now with the discomfort brought by talking about Jesus in public. People might get the trapped-animal look when I bring up Jesus, but the best solution to that is to talk about him, and then continue being a normal person. In fact, that's probably the best rule of thumb for American Evangelicals I can think of: Mention Jesus, and then don't be loony afterward.

I doubt this new inclination will affect my demeanor. It'll probably take a few years to settle in. I'll likely forget about it as a discrete concept within a few weeks. But as part of Advent, I hope to try to interact with Jesus like he's active instead of a figurehead.

The Waiting Game

Although I grew up thoroughly religious, and occasionally Christian, Advent was a non-issue. I remember people lighting funny-colored candles during Sunday morning worship service, but so often some song-and-dance routine was going on down front: baby dedications, handbell choirs, lay people solemnly trudging up to read the Bible. The rituals around Advent seemed part of the showbiz, keeping things interesting. Is what I would have thought if I had any conscious thoughts about it.

I'm more curious and skeptical about my religion now. Once I started poking around, I discovered an entire year-long calendar of stuff in the official Church orthodoxy, of which Easter and Christmas are just the standouts. But there's more.

Like Advent. Advent formally starts the fourth Sunday before Christmas. Some years that can be as early as November 24, but this year it's December 2. Advent is meant to be a time of anticipatory waiting, not just for Christ's first coming, but also for his next coming.

I've become increasingly aware of Advent in the last few years, and this year I'm making a point to... care, I guess. I have a book of Advent readings, and with startlingly little thought, I volunteered myself into leading Advent reflections in my weekly small group (which starts tomorrow, which is why I'm ruminating on this four days before go time).

As with many of my religious dabblings, I don't go in with a lot of expectation. I don't know what I'm doing, and I don't have a goal other than to fiddle with the knobs and see what happens. Sometimes that turns out to be meaningful, and sometimes I get done and feel no less bewildered than when I started.

Is that a dumb way to do religion? I can't tell. It might be. But I like experimenting, and I like simple hope, free from disappointment.

Which I suppose is a very Advent-y thing to be doing.

Doubletalk

Here's a word game I made up. I found words with doubled letters, and put them with clues. It reminded me of the good old days when I worked for the newspaper and made up puzzles to put on the comics page to fill space. It was fun and weird to make up puzzles for work--it was so fun, sometimes I felt like I was slacking on the job.

This one isn't especially hard, but there's a couple of obscure ones. Have fun!

a a _ _ _ _ _ _ : Earth pig
_ _ b b _ : A hare shy
_ _ c c _ _ _ _ : Short work
_ d d _ _ : Snake totaler
_ _ e e : A sworded affair
_ f f _ _ _ : No effect
_ g g : It's no spring chicken
_ _ _ _ h h _ _ _ _ : He's all thumbs
_ _ i i _ _ : Half a biathlon
_ _ j j _ : A pillar in his community
_ _ _ k k _ _ : One who goes boldly
_ _ l l : Don't get bent on it
_ _ m m _ _ : Comes before down, time
_ n n _ _ : Bored in French class
_ o o _ : Old-timey GPS
_ p p _ _ : Computer, records
_ _ q q _ _ _ : Pharaoh dead zone
_ r r : It's human
_ s s _ _ : Things I Think
_ _ t t _ : Bruce Wayne's alter-ego
_ _ _ u u _ : Suck-up
_ _ v v _ _ : Fired up
_ _ w w _ _ : National dance party
x x _ : Blackjack!
_ _ z z _ _ : What are you doing?


I couldn't find any yy words that aren't nowhere places in Scandinavia or Turkey, and that's not fun. Really, I was pushing it with qq.

Essential, but Superficial

I finished The Essential 55: An Award-Winning Educator's Rules for Discovering the Successful Student in Every Child this weekend, after long trysts with non-printed media.

The Short Version: Famous educator, Ron Clark lays out his 55 rules for how to teach children to, essentially, be successful humans. Some of his rules cover homework and listening in class, but many more are about table manners and common courtesy.

My Take: The book contains a lot of truth, although the writing contains sleep-inducing cliches and is so relentlessly positive, it borders on pollyanna. If one were reading this as a how-to manual, one would have to read between the lines. Although Clark is a success at his chosen profession, that's because he has devoted his whole self to teaching, not because of 55 rules.

You know how, when you're a kid, and you see your teacher in the grocery store, and your little mind is blown because you see this person out of context? After reading this book, one wonders if Clark is ever out of context. He talks about baking brownies for his students every night, and taking them on week-long field trips, planning surprises for them... the logistics alone would take all my time, without any of that pesky pedagogy.

What he never directly says is, "You must give all of yourself to the children you teach, by means of convictions so deep and personal that I cannot convey why this is done. Only that it must be so."

This is not a complaint, but rather a caveat. The book contains excellent lessons about motivating people, especially the young form of people. But the rub is not the lessons themselves, as much as in applying them, and following through on them.

Like many supposed how-to books, I read this and wanted the how-to behind the book: How to WANT to do _______. Armed with that elusive giveadamn, I suspect many lessons would seem uselessly self-evident. Without it, they're an interesting, but baffling set of laws that you'll apply haphazardly.

It's good for teachers, and useful for students of leadership and motivation.

Water Shots

Today was a big photo shoot for Unda Water.

Unda Water is a non-profit bottled water organization, affiliated with our church, that I am basically in charge of. We sell bottled water in fair trade coffee shops here in Philadelphia and send the proceeds to provide clean water for people who don't have it. Our current batch of water, for instance, will fund well-digging efforts in North Africa.

One bottle of Unda Water provides a month of clean drinking water for someone in a developing country. For reals, everybody. It's a great deal.

So that's a good gig. But then earlier in the week, my friend, Dave (the photographer from the pirate party), volunteered to do a photo shoot for us if I would art direct.

I am sick and feeble this weekend. I would very much like to have slept through the sun today, and then shuffled around the house in my socks and pajamas playing with my Nintendo DS. But when a professional photographer enthusiastically offers to do a pro bono shoot for your charity's product, you don't get a sick day. You put your misery in a special place and go be an art director.

I would post a couple shots here, but it's late and every photo is like 3 megs because they're such ridiculous quality. I believe you can zoom into the atomic level with these shots.

If you bothered to follow the link in the first sentence, you will probably see an ugly placeholder site. Now that we have an amazing set of photos, I have all-new impetus to finish editing down my too-wordy copy and get the REAL site going.

Woo + Hoo = Me underneath it all.

Black Friday

Thanksgiving Day is good, but I'm really thankful for the day after T'give, when people go back to their lairs and lie around quietly.

As is my yearly tradition, I almost-but-not-quite participated in Buy Nothing Day on the day after Thanksgiving. For the unacquainted, here's the Wikipedia entry, and here's the Adbusters page on it.

Back in the day, I used to print BND posters, hang them in my cube, and talk it up among my friends. Theseadays, I just try to quietly observe it myself.

Regardless, in most years I wind up going out to eat on BND, and spend at least a little money. I tap on the anti-consumerism drum all year long, so I'm comfortable with a little blackness on this Friday.

Thanks

Gratitude is hard to cultivate. I'm glad we have a holiday devoted to it. It would be nice to have more of these:

January 30, Calmwaits.
With a month of winter left, you take the day to express your patience with cold, dead spots in life.

Second Friday in July , Kindmakings Day (observed).
Forget "random acts of kindness" crap. This is a day when you put up decorations, plan surprises, give gifts, and work intentionally on being kind to people around you, especially people who you conventionally disregard like waiters, postal workers, and grocery store checkout people.

August 22, Gentlewords.
A day where you resolve to make gentleness more important than your expectations, particularly toward yourself.


And hey, thanks for reading.

Yo Ho

As promised, pictures from Saturday night's pirate birthday party. Photos by the always-energetic, highly skilled, available for weddings and bar-mitzvahs, -- and dare I say, good friend? -- Dave Difuntorum. The guy's one of them camera whatdyacallems... virtuosos.


It was a joint party, for Meredith and Jon, sister and brother duo whose birthdays are close, turning 30 and 34 respectively.




Meredith (right) officiates the parrot-naming contest. As you can see, we assembled a papercraft parrot to sit on her shoulder for the evening. The finalist names on the authentic high-seas markerboard behind her:

• Vivian
• Humperdink
• Brian the Bird
• Eye Patchless
• Legless Lenny

Legless Lenny was the overwhelming favARRRite. Here, you can see why:



Cap'n Jon is probably not as drunk as he appears.



To the right is busty wench, Alison, Jon's lovely wife, and plotter extraordinaire. The entire evening would have been four people drinking Tab in our living room without her piratical wiles.

The smile, I believe, indicates some manner of skulduggery.

In a room full of captains and stylish swashbucklers, I dressed as a mere swabbie. Nearly every picture Dave took of me involves my mouth perilously wide open, as though I am so scurvy-ridden, I am preparing to eat an orange whole.

That's me on the left, with my friend, John, who did not dress up. As punishment, he does not get his name bolded.


We would have made him walk the plank if it had not been 40 degrees outside. I mean, we're pirates, but that's just cruel.









I would also like to point out that I am shedding my tradition of "Internet paranoia" here. I have had a long-standing rule not to post pictures of myself or family, and not to mention my last name on this site. So as to avoid complications.

Today, I'm chucking that rule because 1) BlogaDay is ravenous for content, and I don't have enough considered, cooly detached opinions on things to fill space without talking about myself; and 2) anybody who means me harm probably already has enough ammo to do it from context clues in this blog. Really, being oblique here only prevents me from making new friends and reconnecting with old ones. I'm not so booked I don't need friends.

Arr, matey.

A Moment for Reflection

Daily original content is hard.

I used to work for a small daily newspaper, and the editor-in-chief, whose managerial skills were only faintly detectable through induction, wrote the editorial personally every day. I doubt he would have trusted anyone else's judgment.

Sometimes he wrote them at the last minute, and one day he was sitting around trying to figure out what to write about and he mused to the office, "What am I mad about today?"

That's actually a fine way to generate content. However, bitching for a living damages your soul. It's self-induced, professional waterboarding.

So I resist the urge to troll news sites for outrage choruses to join, or fish up a further-refined opinion on the economic problems we done got ourselfs into in the U.S., or to engage in protracted curmudgeonliness. It would fill column inches, but it would not fill me, or dear reader, you.

Besides, lately it comes down to this: Greed is bad. Wean yourself from it.

I know, I'm robbing myself of valuable content distilling truths so pure. But perhaps removing anger and admonitions from the menu will allow me to experiment with subtler drafts.

It might also lead to more skipped days during BlogaDay, but my resolve is firm! Forward!

Papers, Please!

I've been playing around with papercraft. I've made a couple of things, but the most time intensive one so far was this beetle.



There was a lot of fine cutting involved, and the instructions were in Korean, so M and I just followed the pictures to put it together. She was a huge help during the boring parts.



I'd tell you where I got it, except I don't remember. The Internet?

Here's the final product. Snazzy!



And another one, eating a battery for scale.

Nothing to See Here

M's big birthday party tonight, just got home and cleaned up. Pictures forthcoming. Too groggy to post anything thoughtful or considered.

Out.

Savings Bind

Newsweek flies the red and yellow flag about the coming Fiscal Tsunami in the U.S.

David Walker, comptroller general of the U.S. and head of the Government Accountability Office (an audit and investigation arm of Congress), has some excellent sound bites on the big economic Phillips-head bearing down on us. Here's one:

Just for perspective, can you compare the size of this fiscal "tsunami" [to the size of particular spending programs]?
Well, you could decide not to renew the Bush tax cuts, you could eliminate all foreign aid, eliminate all earmarks, eliminate NASA, eliminate the National Endowment for Humanities and eliminate the entire Defense Department tomorrow, and you still wouldn't solve the problem.

Also, some generally damning, responsibility-oriented things that someone needs to be saying:

When people see these statistics, eyes tend to glaze over. There is not a sense of urgency out there in the land. So why should people feel a sense of urgency? Politicians aren't expressing a sense of urgency. No one feels that the crunch is coming tomorrow.
We have a failure of leadership in America, and it is a bipartisan problem.

Crisis Mode

It's a Biblical truth that being a good follower of Christ means you must live in expectation of crisis. cf. the parable of the ten virgins, and building your house on rock. We're supposed to live in expectation of Christ's return, which will mean, without any undue drama, the end of the world as we know it.

It's like we're expected to live in bomb shelters. But still, you know, hang out with the neighbors.

I'm not saying that's undoable, or a bad idea. In some contexts, the end of the world is not presented as a bad thing. It's a party, and your job is to make sure you're ready when the party starts.

Regardless, as a Christ follower, it means that on some level, you are constantly, constantly, waiting for something catastrophic to happen. In all the senses of the word catastrophe.

The value of crises is that they are reliable dumbshit cleaners. Living in crisis preparation mode constantly reduces the number of useless choices you have to make in life. When your house is on fire, you don't care whether your peanut butter is chunky or smooth. And living with the idea of what you'll do if your house was on fire doesn't leave you with room to care if you're using a PC or a Macintosh.

I've been walking around with this idea in my head for a while, and it's good and right, but I find it annoying. Because sometimes I want to have a beach house, you know? I'm not coming out pro-sin, but could we maybe let our guards down and have that be okay.

There's more to this idea, and it takes a left turn into being a grown-up. It's about how becoming who God wants you to be is the ultimate maturity thing. But I don't have it figured out well yet, so I'm leaving it half-finished here.

How to Be Interesting

After a brief night's rest, I'm thinking that it's easy to sit back and criticize. And in the words of Jack Handy, that's what I like about it. It's easy.

But then, I keep thinking. And the thinking that I think is this: I can do a way better list, and I can do it with up to 40% less Internet douchebaggery.

Mr. Davies's list consists of driving yourself to become interesting through aggressive documentation, primarily on the Internet. But if you start empty, you don't become interesting through the power of broadcasting.

The gig starts inside, with a change of intent. Nobody ever puts that on their cute little lists: Step 1, Be Ready to Alter Your Mind and Spirit to Be, in Effect, a Different Person.

Let's assume you've passed that milestone.

How to Be Interesting
A list of 10 things, by Jefftyjeffjeff

1. Visit another country. The more you travel, the more interesting you become. It's like a natural law.
2. Learn to play half a dozen songs on a musical instrument. If you want to get good, then go ahead. But learn half a dozen pop or rock songs from anywhere in the last couple of decades, and you're set.
3. Find someone you think is interesting and ask lots of dumb questions about them.
4. Okay, fine, blog if you must. It forces you to create.
5. Make something. This is a another good one from Russel. Just make something with your hands.
6. Do something you're bad at. This is a catch-all category. Although as a general rule, it's better to work to your strengths and outsource your weaknesses, you get more interesting as a result of forcing yourself to be terrible.
7. Volunteer for something. I recommend Habitat for Humanity because there's probably one near you, and in all my years of free labor, I've seen no other charity where it is so easy to see that what you're doing is directly, immediately helping someone else.
8. Be silent on a regular basis. Unexpected things happen when you keep your yap shut.
9. Be part of a community. Find a group and embed yourself. This is harder than it sounds, I know, but do it anyway.
10. Find or create outputs. Several of them. Most of this list is designed to funnel interesting things into you, but to finish the job, you need someone to think you're interesting. Find an audience and play to them.

Interestingness

Pretend it's still Tuesday.

Here's something I've had lying around for about a year. It's one dude's list of ways to be "interesting."

Russel Davies... hell, I don't know what he's done. He writes like one of those bloggy know-it-alls. But isn't chutzpah worth something? Besides, it's 2:30 in the morning on a school night and I've obviously never cared to check his credentials before. I don't see me starting now.

Point is, he wrote this post a year ago that was catchy enough to bookmark, and occasionally I scratch my armpit while reading it. It's called How to Be Interesting.

It's a list of ten things that smack of Internet douchebag-ism, some of which are good ideas anyway. I mean, if you don't have an Internet connection, half his list is useless. And I strongly suspect that people managed to be interesting at least as far back as 1976, which I believe was pre-Internet in some countries, such as Canada.

Okay, there's no reason to be snarky. We can assume he's not making an exhaustive list, and -- full disclosure -- I would probably be an Internet douchebag if I had an iota of giveadamn for programming. I would love to be an Internet maverick with a spunky Web domain missing a vowel, and a business plan that involves moon rocks and user generated content. "It'll be like that Snow Crunch book, except... except everybody's penguins! On the moon! We'll get Morgan Freeman to do the narration!" (That's me talking to a venture capitalist. Secretly, I just want him to buy me an Aeron chair and a computer and leave me alone).

Actually, we already sort of have this.

Anyway, Russel Davies's list of 10 things. I'm doing 2, 6, 9, and 10. I don't see me ever getting around to doing 1,3, or 7. The rest... hmm... maybe? I've been considering that interview thing in the last few weeks.

What I think is actually sort of insidious is his bias for mediated life. His goal is to make you stop and examine more often. But, and I speak from cruel experience here, if you spend your time filtering, editing, recontextualizing your life for presentation in various media, you spend less time just living the thing. Writing it down is good. Living a life worth writing down takes precedence.

And my life worth writing down is freaking going to bed GOODNIGHT.

Wonderfalls Flat

Wonderfalls was a short-lived TV series executive produced by Tim Minear, who has written for other things that my people have enjoyed, such as X-Files and Angel and the beloved, doomed Firefly.

Only four episodes of Wonderfalls aired, but they made 13, and FOX released them on a DVD in 2005. We've watched about half the set, and I'm not sure we'll finish it.

The shtick is that inanimate objects talk to the protagonist, Jaye, and tell her to do mysterious things that indirectly help people.

Which sounds clever enough, except for the bad execution. The objects give vague instructions, and for things to seem magical and otherwordly, you need your oracles to deliver specific cryptic messages. When the object says "Destroy her!" what, exactly, is it telling Jaye to do? Cut the antagonist's brake line, or just post unflattering pictures of her on MySpace? AND, though generative ends can (and do) come from destruction, it's kind of jerky for these spirit-guide inanimate objects to tell her to do cruel things, when the same ends could be achieved through other means.

Also, Jaye is not likable. The actress playing her is doing a good job of selling that she's a disaffected, self-absorbed semi-bitch. Because that's what's coming across, and that's not fun to watch. I mean, if there was some wink-and-nod subtext attached it would be different, but there ain't.

Further, the characters are inconsistent and act on poorly-explained motives.

And finally, the relationships are cartoons. There are lesbian characters acting out the cliche "gay characters are people too" storylines thrown into so MANY stinking dramas. Really, seriously, we've got enough of those. Stop now, please. Please?

Also, apparently, the key to relationship happiness is to stop working on the complex, broken relationship you have, and jump to another one, which will bring you instant, uncomplicated, lifelong joy. Because relationship hopping, that works out well for most people, right?

The show isn't terrible, but it's annoying when it's bad, and that might put me off watching the rest of the series. We'll see.

Synergistic Follow-up

Post number dos, to make up for last week's slip.

Combining themes from two of this week's posts: articles from the Guardian and the International Herald Tribune on Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul, respectively.

--> The Guardian has a fascinating primer on Mike Huckabee, introducing him to their British readers. It also reveals just how different media understandings are outside the US. I like how they say that he has "burst into the leading pack of the race for his party's nomination."

I don't think anyone in the US thinks Mike Huckabee has burst into anything. He's asked Stephen Colbert to be his running mate three times, but very few people have heard of him here either.

--> The IHT does a "ain't the Internet amazin'?" story on Ron Paul, featuring a curiously framed photo of the senator, as though he is telling a camera that his captors treat him well, and we should release their political prisoners.

The article's good though. Check it out.


I doubt either of these guys will get the Republican nomination, but I'm intrigued how both stories paint a picture of these dark horse candidates, on the VERGE of springing into the real race, when they're both at least half a lap behind the front runners.

Still, I'd vote for either of these men before anyone else currently in the race.

Milked

When I remember, I read non-American newspapers: The Guardian, Hindustan Times, and International Herald Tribune, all well-written, informative newspapers which tell you things American newspapers do not.

The IHT, for instance, is the source of today's post, In a growing world, milk is the new oil. I'd heard that milk was going up, but isn't everything going up? The American dollar is worth slightly less than the Canadian dollar right now, for the love of Shatner. Of course milk is expensive!

But there's more ahoof here:

"There's a world shortage of milk," said Philip Goode, manager of international policy at Dairy Australia in Canberra.

But the biggest force driving up milk prices is the same one that has driven up prices for conventional commodities like iron ore and copper: a roaring global economy. Rising incomes, from China and India to Latin America and the Middle East, are lifting millions of people out of poverty and into the middle class.

It turns out that, along with zippy cars and flat-panel TVs, milk is the mark of new money, a significant source of protein that factors into much of any affluent person's diet. Milk goes into infant formulas, chocolates, ice cream and cheese. Most baked goods contain butter, and coffee chains like Starbucks sell more milk than coffee.

We're still big, big milk suppliers ourselves, so our prices are not going up as quickly as other nations' costs. But still. Good century, America. We had a good one.

Second Monster

After some experimentation and a respectable amount of putting-off, early this morning I finished Grouphug (grau-FUG).

Grouphug was a scattershot of experiments. Methodical me was all like, "Let's only make one change at a time, and see how that's different." Cliff-diver me was just interested in trying new things. Ultimately, cliff diving took the gold, while "planning ahead" barely qualified.

New lessons:

• Stuff limbs better to keep them from having little creases.
• This furry fabric looks like it'd be cool, but it's actually a bitch.
  
• I thought attaching a band of satiny purple to orange fur would be a neat color and texture contrast. It is, but it's unraveling in a few places, and the stitching in the back is coming apart. It's just a suboptimal fabric.
  
• Also, I wanted it to be a random stripe, not a belt. Must consider monster anatomy more before beginning.
• Soft cotton will be the main event from here on in.
• Horns: I was trying for curved horns. I got cones. Must cut horns in the final shape first.
• Eyes: Can't tell if I like the googly eyes. Can't tell if it matters whether I like them.
  
• Mouth: I drew it on paper before I cut it out of cloth, and I like the drawing better. I was going for jagged fangs, from someone whose primary experience with expressions was reading the Wikipedia entry on "smiles." The smile is sufficiently hideous, but not endearingly inept as I was hoping for. I don't really know how to get what I'm going for here.
  
• Eyebrows: Hell if I know.
• Stitching facial features on was too hard with the fur. So I used super glue. WTF? I guess it worked, but the method is imprecise and my fingers all have glue warts now.

Next monster will be an offshoot of lessons learned from Grouphug, but I have invented all new dumbfounding challenges so the process can safely continue to be unpredictable.

Internet fn

Found a map of the world's Internet suffixes. Do you know what countries these top-level domain types are associated with? Answers below DON'T PEEK. If I knew how to do one of those "below the fold" things I would.

.cd
.tv
.am
.fm
.pm
.mc
.dj
.cx
.gg
.bo (tee-hee)
.ch


There are 245 in all. I wonder if some Pokemaniac has tried to collect a domain in each of them?







Democratic Republic of Congo
Tuvalu
Armenia
Federated States of Micronesia
Saint Pierre and Miguelos
Monaco
Djibouti
Christmas Island
Guernsey
Bolivia
Switzerland (China would be ".cn". Crazy non-English speakers. )

Don't Make Me Vote for Ralph Nader AGAIN

Pat Robertson endorses Rudy Giuliani.

As if you needed any more evidence that an enormous political machine runs the American electoral process, Pat and Rudy are the latest footnote in Wikipedia's entry on strange bedfellows.

But what astounds me, what makes me stare out the window mouth agape, is that there's a candidate who Pat Robertson's constituency would marry their daughters to in the form of Mike Huckabee.

(Metaphorically, of course. If they were actually going to marry their daughters that way, it'd be to Mitt Romney. ZING!)

At least superficially (which is where most of us do our voting), Mike Huckabee has everything that got George Bush elected, except for Constitution-optional advisors.

He's anti- all the things a conservative Republican should be anti-. He's unreservedly Christian. He's politically right, but still has intelligible things to say about the environment. There's no aura of doubt around him like every other Republican frontrunner. And from all accounts I've read, he's likeable as an ice cream truck driver.

Why are Republicans not stampeding to elect this guy? Listening to NPR this morning, I was dismayed to realize that my two likely choices in 2008 would be Clinton and Giuliani. After eight years on the Fantabulous Dubya Fiasco Cavalcade, this is what replaces him? Argh. Argh.

The best chance Huckabee has at this point is a piano falling on a key person in someone else's camp. But it's not like I want to hope for that.

UPDATE, Nov. 9: Pat Robertson may endorse Rudy Giuliani, but Chuck Norris endorses Mike Huckabee. The only reason Chuck himself has never run for president is that no human could withstand the race, and all extradimensional creatures are afraid.

Sci-Fi Style

Writing about reading has given me motive to finish something. Just finished reading Rudy Rucker’s new novel Postsingular, and it’s a well-written novel, full of wonderful and strange ideas, well-presented, and like nearly all sci-fi I read, kind of empty.

I like science-fiction. I don’t like most science-fiction novels. As I’m reading, I follow the characters and skim their ideas and see the reality this author has created and is trying to sell me, I almost always think, “This is your future reality? This is all you’ve got?”

So today in the shower, I was trying to figure out why that is. Here’s what I’ve got so far.

1. Sci-fi writers are more invested in their ideas than their humans, or at least equally invested, which means they’re still only half-invested in people, because they also must spend a LOT of time artfully explaining theoretical physics/chemistry/agronomy so the story remains science fiction rather than science fantasy. Which leads to less fleshed out people.
2. Here’s where I walk into a minefield: They leave God out. Some sci-fi novelists flirt with Buddhism, or take vague (often deprecatory) swipes at other established religions. But otherwise God has no existence. Ignoring God imperils your fiction to irrelevancy.
   

Also, maybe your reality. But if I start there, then I've stopped meddling and gone to preaching.

The humanity, the sense of realness in most sci-fi stories is not jeopardized by the introduction of fantastical ideas, but by the refusal to properly address the rest of reality that you're proposing reacts to them. I want my sci-fi writers to be better engaged with the world, the people in it, and themselves so they can sell those parts too, along with the changes that come from a worldwide nanobot swarm and unfolding the 8th dimension within our understanding.

I don't think that's too much to ask. I just think it's hard.

Read for yourself! Mr. Rucker is giving away the book in pdf form under Creative Commons license. It is worth the time you'll spend on it, despite my misgivings about the whole field.

Reading is for Railroads

I have a wave of new books here at Casa Pienso, like a dozen in the last month, and here is the number I've read: The big goose egg. Zeroteen. None.

I've started almost all of them, but then like a poodle in a fire hydrant factory, I'm off after something else and when I notice what I'm doing, I am aggrieved in ways unlike a poodle.

Here's most of my list, followed by the page number I'm on, and commentary:

• Danse Macabre by Stephen King. Page 100-something. I can't get into this like I meant to, and I haven't opened it in 6 months. I might give up on it soon.
  
• Pilgrim's Regress by C.S. Lewis. Maybe 2/3 done. I was reading this when we moved, and then I lost track of it. It's pretty good. I'll probably go back to it before the end of the year.
  
• I Am America (And so Can You)! by Stephen Colbert et al. Page 50-ish. This is funny, but it's a one-joke book. I think it's better read in several short sittings.
• The Essential 55 by Ron Clark. About half done. This is an inner-city grade school teacher's 55 rules to train kids to be socialized humans rather than modern barbarians. There are good rules for how to interact with anybody in here though, and if you're not careful, you might just learn something before you're through. Hey hey hey.
  
• The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester. Page xiii. Only finished the preface to this book about the overseeing editor of the OED and his greatest volunteer assistant, an inmate at an asylum for the criminally insane.
  
• A Short Life of Christ by Everett F. Harrison. Page 0. I assume it's about Jesus or somebody.
  
• Better Not Bigger by Eben Fodor. Page 0. I think it's about gentrification.
  
• Becoming Dad: Black Men and the Journey to Fatherhood by Leonard Pitts, Jr. Page 40-ish. Leonard Pitts, Jr. is an exceptionally clear thinker, and I just wanted to read anything he had to say. This is the only book he's written, so I'm reading it.
• Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug. Page 37. A thin book about Web usability.
• We Don't Die We Kill Ourselves by Roger L. De Haan. Page I don't remember. My mechanic had a heart scare and diabetes trouble this year, and he now has a convert's zeal about eating well. So in addition to repairing my brakes, he gave me this book.
  
• Stupid Sock Creatures by John Murphy. Page 13. My lovely wife bought this for me off my amazon wish list because I have been making plush monsters, and this is a good book for that sort of behavior.
  
• The History of the Hobbit by John Rateliff. Page 0. John is a former colleague of mine, and dare I say, a "friend." He is the most knowledgeable guy I know about Lord of the Rings, and you'll just have to trust me when I say that's not faint praise. I know people who can speak Elvish. John Ratliff knows more than those freaks (who are dear to me. They are dear freaks.).

This isn't even all of them! Sweet baby Moses in a handbasket, won't someone lock me in a room with a comfy chaise lounge so I can't get any more distracted from reading these freaking things?

Not counting BlogaDay, of course. BlogaDay soldiers on!

We Regret to Inform You

Early in the attempt, BlogaDay has already missed a day. Our Internet access went away yesterday for poorly-understood reasons, so Sunday the 4th got a bye.

I'll double-post one day this week to make up for it, and persist in trucking.

Also, my Skyrates game is suffering. There are cartoon aviator animals who are not getting vital goods delivered, so it's not all about YOU okay?

Copywriting Is Fun.

What I've done at work is moved from proofreading to being a sometime copywriter because they need one around here, but the proofreader who can also write copy is way cheaper.

I've done copywriting before, but never had the title. I did it as the editor of whatever periodical I was working on because somebody had to. It was always a sideline to the real job. Which apparently disguises the fact that when it's your only job, copywriting is fun.

A few weeks ago, I got to make up some chipper-sounding crap about salad dressing. SALAD DRESSING, PEOPLE. I tolerate salad, and have no truck with dressing them, but for a couple of days, I was Mr. Salad Dressing, Esquire.

And it was a blast. Even now, when I'm doing less creative copy stuff for drugs instead of Tangy Blue Cheese Napa Valley Buttermilk Ranch Dressing, it's still kind of fun.

I'm tempted to say, "If I'd known this was fun, I'd have started years ago." but that would be false because my act wasn't together enough years ago to enjoy it like I do now. Now that I've staggered around doing odd jobs and nonsense, I have a real appreciation for this:

A challenging job alongside creative, motivated co-workers, that is seriously not that hard. I sit in a chair and type on an ergonomic keyboard. It's not like I'm hauling lumber.

Unfortunately, the contract ends in a few weeks, so I might have to move on. But now that I can legitimately put "copywriter" on my resume and show some portfolio pieces, it shouldn't be too hard to find more work.

At least that's what they tell me. They said that about grantwriting too, and then I spent four months unable to get a nonprofit in this city to waste a stamp telling me no.

Maybe it's time to stop listening to people who have no stake in my well being. And maybe it's time to go back to sourcing copy for anti-cholesterol drugs which is way more fun than it sounds!

Jam Sessions

For my recently-passed birthday, my recent mother-in-law got me a Nintendo DS.

I love computer games. Oh boy. Oh boy I do. But they are monstrous money and time sinks, and I have to evaluate how I spend my life, and the ROI on electronic games is almost never ever favorable.

Actually, World of Warcraft has gotten me really decent, paying work. So the gazillion hours I've spent playing WoW is justifiable.

Okay, let's not overthink this. The point is, if I start bringing a PS3 and an Xbox 360 and a PSP and a Wii and Deep Blue and WOPR and a pong-playing Univac into my life, then other things have to go away, and those other things are also pretty important.

Also, the insidiousness of things is that once you own them, you are responsible for using them and taking care of them. You're not just buying a thing, you're buying a new focus for your give-a-damn, which is my most precious resource, moreso than money and time.

So I don't play computer games nearly as much as my yearning, child-like heart would wish.

But now I have a DS.

I have one cartridge: Jam Sessions. It's a bare bones guitar sim. You can strum the touch screen like a guitar, and you press the buttons to pick chords.

That's it. Sorry I didn't warn you about spoilers. But that's it. And it's great.

Listen, I don't know if you've ever tried to learn a musical instrument. I've tried to learn a few. It's hard. I don't have the constitution to do a lot of hard things. But this is significantly less hard than actually learning to play guitar. Also, less expensive and less painful.

Another advantage: When I'm done, I can't play Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass on a guitar.

Criminy, why do they still sell guitars?

Where I Get Photos

A few months ago, I wanted to make my blog less ugly without doing any real work. So I started putting pictures up with posts. Where do I get them, you might ask?

Internet theft, naturally. Case closed.

But then I thought I could be more specific.

The horrible truth is that the only pictures here I took are of Ulorg and Groovy's paint job which I did 18 months ago. And yesterday's photo. I took that one. Shame abides! Why do they even let me own a camera?

BUT! But! Here is my secret: Morguefile is full of free-to-use photos that aren't even infringing on other people's copyrights, not even technically!

Morguefile is just a bunch of people taking pictures and then posting them online for anybody to use for nearly any reason, commercial or otherwise. You don't have to pay money. You don't even have to credit photographers.

There are still legal limitations. Like, if it's a person, you still have to get a model release. And the original photographer retains copyright, unless he or she releases the photo into public domain. It's just that the photographer lets you use it for no money.

And as I am fond of saying, free is my favorite price.

BlogaDay

I have ideas for posts allatime, but mostly I'm all eloquent and shit when I'm driving, which is possibly the worst time to be that way, unless you count being in secret prison for crimes nobody will charge you with. I suppose that's a worse time to try to write down your clever little thoughts.

Point being that November is rapidly becoming National [Accomplish Something] Month. Novels or operas or giant bas relief sculptures (NaBaReSculMo). As we all know, by the time something's been properly parodied, the original phenomenon is dying. And by the time I get around to parodying it, you're looking at faded daguerreotypes of the original phenomenon, wondering why no one ever smiled back then.

ALL YOUR DAGUERREOTYPES ARE BELONG TO US.

But I'm doing it anyway, my own little dog-and-pony variation of NaNoWriMo. All November long, I'm posting here every day. It's called BlogaDay.

I just made this up. Don't look for a BlogaDay signup site and t-shirts and freaking podcasts. Although if you send me $30, I'll make an awesome BlogaDay t-shirt for you.

The main reason I'm doing this is I'd really like to break out of the killing habit of making sure that what I have to say is well-researched and original before I post it. Those sound like good criteria, but I never write anything doing that.

So November? In November? I'm writing something every day here. It might just be a repost of whatever I saw that day at Neatorama, but damn the photon torpedos.

For the love of Christmas, I just spent 4 minutes trying to find a Klingon translation of the word "damn" for a joke that approximately zero people will get. This is what I have to contend with. This is why I only post once every locust year.

So. Every day. Something. I will still try to be clever or interesting, but really, you'll just have to smile politely when I'm not. Ready? Go.