I’m strangely fascinated by the concept of this blog. I think that this is something that would have been a good idea in college, at least to break the ice.
This reminds me of the guy who showered with a hundred women.
Month: June 2006
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Shameless Mercantilism II
Look! Better Amazon links over there on the sidebar. Now things are not nearly as mercenary as before.
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The Gospel
In case you have not being paying attention to the most important religous revolution of our times, the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster has released their canonical Gospels.
Looks like something to add to the Amazon wish list.
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Shameless Mercantilism? Or Laziness?
The astute among you (or the not-so-blind) will notice the Amazon Links on the sidebar of the blog.
Don’t get all huffy! I don’t expect to make any money with this thing. I’ve let my book list die over the last year or so, and have recently decided it needs to make some sort of comeback. I’ve seen on www.sfsignal.com a nice sidebar that lists what people are currently reading and thought “gee, that looks cool. I should do that!”
Voila! Although I’m not currenlty satisfied. I do not like how blatantly commercial it all looks (although I used the option to not show prices, as you can see. I don’t really care if anybody clicks through and buys these books on my account. I don’t really care if I get any checks from amazon for sending people their way. I just want a low maintenance, non hassling way to get book titles and images up on my blog.
Come back later and see if it has changed. I’ll tweak it as time goes by.
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Summer Solstice
Tomorrow is the summer solstice, known as the first day of summer to Americans. Why do we call this the first day of summer? Weather-wise, it’s more like the end of the first third of summer. Oh well…
I trolled for some Solstice Superstitions. Most of them hark to druidish type things, and were too boring for this blog. Here’s one I like: (from http://www.geocities.com/traditions_uk/midsummer.html)
If on Midsummer’s Eve, you approach a fern leaf backwards, without looking, and – without touching the leaf – collect the seed (spores), they have to power to make you invisible.
So, I’ll be gathering myself some fern spores tomorrow. Right after I balance eggs on end.
For note, tomorrow we enter the blissful days of summer at 1223 Universal Time, which is 0723 EST which is 8:23 Eastern Daylight Time for us American east coasters. What will you be doing? I’ll be getting my teeth cleaned.
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God hates Shrimp
The title says it all. I guess we can’t eat Penguins, either. Not unless we catch them on land.
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Acronyms (Initialisms) and You!
I run across numerous acronyms and initialisms in my job. It’s not as bad as the military, but there are plenty, let me tell you.
I’m reading a report this morning and happen across the following quote, which lists an interesting initialism:
The High Hazard Location System (HSP) is a flexible…*
HSP? Where did they get that? Freaky…
*NCHRP Synthesis 295: Statistical Methods in Higway Analysis
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Moronic Self Loathing = "Treasure Hunt"
I just wasted 45 minutes of my life. Usually, I don’t mind pissing away the allotted time I have before death, but this time, I resent it right down to my toenails.
We Tivo’d NBC’s Treasure Hunt (to which I refuse to hyperlink) this evening. We sat down and started up the Tivo and slowwwwly our brains melted away.
Quick synopsis: Several teams of three persons are given clues in a competitive race to be first to find a treasure. I imagine this is NBC’s response to The Great Race, but I’ve never watched that so I can’t say for certain.
This has got to be the most inane, moronic, stupid, insipid, and even degrading show I’ve watched in years! There’s no “hunt” about this treasure hunt. Each team is given a very specific path to follow and they can’t move on until they’ve got it right. I was hoping the helicopters waiting to take the Alaskan teams on their second trip would allow them to go to the wrong spot, but alas, that was not how the producers wanted it to be. They could not move until they’d figured the clue out correctly. Damn stupid.
Suffice to say, I’ll not be watching any more of that tripe.
[my apologies to all Tripe lovers in the world]
UPDATE: After ranting above, I found this article that reviews the show. The man who writes that review talks about the product placement in the show, namely that each team is equipped with a Laptop with special access to Ask.com, a Visa Card, and a Motorola Razor. This sort of thing is normal, except, of course, for the Razor to Ring Ring Ring while they’re in the middle of freaking nowhere Alaska and Hawaii. Pardon me, but I didn’t see the cell tower mounted to the glacier nearby.
I’m still pissed about this show. I watched all three seasons of Average Joe, but there at least I knew what I was in for, and got what I bargained for. NBC is soooo going down in my estimation.
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Prairie Home, Hurricanes, and Levi's Call
Messy title, for a messy post. Here goes…
We saw A Prairie Home Companion on Friday. I confess that I had high expectations for this movie, given the character of the radio show from Minnesota Public Radio. We arrived a few minutes before show time and didn’t have any problem getting seats. Let’s just say that if I had to pick the type of people who would show up for this movie, you would have found them all sitting around us. I felt like the cast of a Woody Allen movie.
Speaking of a Woody Allen movie, one was advertised during previews. Again, surprise, surprise. This one looks interesting, however, and it has Scarlett Johannsen and Hugh Jackman in it, which is always good for me.
Movie Review: Clustered and Claustrophobic. There were times when all of the actors (and this was a Who’s Who of Hollywood) were talking incessantly at the same time, and it was driving me nuts. Just SHUT UP people! If that’s what really
toesgoes on behind curtains at the show, I don’t understand why there haven’t been murders. There was no overarching theme that I could detect, merely several interwoven plot lines that didn’t seem to have much to do with each other. Given that Garrison Keillor wrote this, I’m sure there were deep dark levels of meaning and symbology that I missed, but I don’t go to movies to sit and THINK about them. I’m not an indie foreign film kind of guy. Overall, I was disappointed, especially because it seemed like nothing ever happened. The whole movie was just…nothing ever happening. Very annoying. For reference, my favorite character throughout was Guy Noir, played by Kevin Kline.If you want a glowing comment, go to the imdb site and read it. I’d recommend it as a rental for anyone who’s interested. Don’t pay the $8.50 to see it in the theater.
Next up! The Carolina Hurricanes sure got served last night. I don’t recall any Stanley Cup game 6’s where one team sucked quite that badly. They should give up and join the Atlanta Braves, who are plumbing the depths of suckedness right now.
Lastly, and this is more of a rant than anything else, but you would figure, if a state goes through all of the effort to set up an AMBER Alert system (missing child notification, which is a Levi’s Call in Georgia), and especially in the Atlanta Metropolitan area where we use highway message boards, radio calls, cable tv alerts, etc., that I would be able to find information regarding said alert when it appears across my spanish-language World Cup channel!
Nope! All of the relevant Georgia Bureau of Investigation websites are hosed, probably by people trying to get the info on the alert. All of the local news channels have…nothing on their webpages regarding this. Georgia-Navigator, which is the website for the Georgia DOT and it’s traffic management system has nothing.
The System is not working… So much for Big Brother. I Just checked again and all of the georgia.gov websites are still hosed. Maybe georgia should invest in some more servers…
Update 1253: Still no findable information on the AMBER Alert. The Georgia-navigator site at least is showing that the message boards around town are displaying “CHILD ABDUCTION ALERT, BLUE CHEVY S-10 P/U, TAG UNKNOWN.” GBI’s website for Levi’s call doesn’t have any current info, it’s solely about the requirements for issuing a Levi’s Call. Blah blah blah. The system isn’t working!
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Googledemort?
Performing my duty as the NY Times’ bitch, I mention this story (which you probably won’t be able to access after today) wherein they speak of a new data center that Google is building in Oregon.
The fact that Google is behind the data center, referred to locally as Project 02, has been reported in the local press. But many officials in The Dalles, including the city attorney and the city manager, said they could not comment on the project because they signed confidentiality agreements with Google last year.
“No one says the ‘G’ word,” said Diane Sherwood, executive director of the Port of Klickitat, Wash., directly across the river from The Dalles, who is not bound by such agreements. “It’s a little bit like He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named in Harry Potter.”
Heh heh. Voldemort and Google are teaming up to take over the world! Maybe Bill Gates is Voldemort? Nahhhh. He’s too “pretty.”