Category: Blather

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Blather

Three Monkeys

According to the Chinese Calendar, 2004 is the Year of the Monkey (link link link). And so was 1968, the year I was born (August 25th, coming soon, now would be a good time to mark your calendar, wink-wink nudge-nudge, now that everyone’s moved to Trillian and isn’t getting automatic ICQ reminders).
Which means that this year, I’ll be Three Monkeys old.
Three Monkeys, image from some online catalog
Here is a collection of three monkey figures, and here’s an explanation of source for the recurring image.

Now, I detest birthdays, mine most of all, because they are “your special day”, and therefore have a tendency to make me feel totally not special, mundane, puny, and old. I can measure my life goals and achievements, and strengthen my conviction that I am quite pathetic.
But at the same time, I keep wishing that one of those damn things will be special. And I figure that my three monkeys birthday would be a fine occassion for this.
Because waiting until I’m Forty is just too depressing (although it’s a pretty short wait).
I was 12 when I was one monkey old, 24 when I was two monkeys old, and I’ll be 48 when I’m four monkeys old, and I’ll probably not live to see 12 monkeys, so no reason to wait for a Terry Gilliam marathon. Sort of gives you prespective, I think.

Categories
Blather BlogTalk

Journals, Dairies, Logs

So this weekend I read this article about a man who wrote down his every thought for three months (and had no time to do anything else…) He described this as a pretty awesome experience, something someone should do once or twice in their life, to get a chance to actually think about the big questions of life in depth, or whatever.
Note, you laptoppers, that he used Pen and Paper, the ultimate tool for recording thought.
I recalled this tonight, while wishing to blog Tal’s awesome entry about dairies and journals. There should be a link here, a fitting segue, but let’s just pretend I wrote it and just go straight to quoting Tal (about the diaries of anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski):

The thing is, diaries are used for all kinds of mental bowel movements. Experiments, castigations, blowing off steam, lying, bullshitting, mental doodling, intellectual masturbation, whatnot. Malinowski’s real thoughts may have been entirely the opposite of what he wrote down in the diaries. It’s an important historical document for its general existence as such, including some important details, but it says nothing about Malinowski as a person, except that he was very intelligent, humorous, romantic, had a temper (a well known fact), and was an honest person, trying to be objective about everything, even himself. Whether he succeeded or not should be evaluated according to his accomplished publications, not his nightly doodles for himself.

Categories
Blather Software and Programming

sod@off.org is taken

While playing the Realplayer bit mentioned in the previous item, Realplayer insisted on an upgrade. I had heard this install process might be less evil than the one which blackened Real’s reputation in the past, but it still insists on a registration with personal details (hmm. Last time this would pop-up at start up and I could skip it with multiple “cancel” clicks, but this time it’s built into the installer. Less evil my ass).
Anyway, while filling in bogus details, I was amused to learn that the account sod@off.org was taken. So I added some stronger language. I am now registered at Real as sod@offyoustupiddicks.org.

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Blather BlogTalk long Oddities Resources

Blog It All And Come Back Alone

(This post’s title is a tribute to what is probably the best-named Spaghetti Western of all time.)
Shiffer‘s comment on the Superbaby post (personal correspondance, as they say in the science journals when they don’t have a citation to offer) emphasized how I am a victim of my sources: I post links to stuff I see on other blogs, like most other bloggers do, thus perpetuating an incestious cycle.
So, I’m going to post a bunch of links that I found on other blogs, or on other sites with RSS feeds. This is sort of a linkdump, which I might make a habit of doing (instead of having massive pages with just one half sentence of content). So:
Apparently , the mother-child bond is an addiction or something:

Pleasure receptors best known for helping the body respond to morphine and opium may also hold the key to mother-child bonding, scientists reported on Thursday.
Mice pups genetically engineered to lack these receptors — doorways into cells — were unable to properly bond to their mothers and did not show the natural distress when separated from her, the researchers said.

Next, virtual reality can function as an anesthetic: a study case involving applying heaters to people’s feet while immersing them in a VR of an icy canyon populated by penguins and snowmen shows that not only does this distract them from the pain, it apparently makes them feel it less.
If that was a personalized link for Israel, in that I only posted it because he reads this blog, here’s one for Ijon, from boingboing. Check out the moose on that Canada Day coin.
I’ve still got some science links, one about glassy steel (adding rare elements to iron, researchers made amorphous, non-crystaline steel, that’s lighter and stronger, as well as non-magnetic), and other one’s about bees, a study showing how genetic diversity helps honeybees regulate the temperature of their hives: The new work shows that bees with different fathers start fanning at slightly different temperatures. This stops sudden colony-wide shifts between warming and cooling behaviours, and keeps the temperature in the nest more constant..
Last, a link to Jay Pinkerton’s blog, mentioned by a commentator on this boingboing item. He writes funny shit (if you would have felt more comfortable if I’d written “funny stuff, it’s probably not your cup of tea), and has helpfully made a best hits list of his favorite articles, but browse the blog archives for parody art and such.

Categories
Blather Comics Science Fiction and Fantasy

Fanboy Hell

Sigh. So on Tuesday I passed on a link to an article I found here. Now, I hadn’t read through the whole article, or the other articles linked to in the original post, or the comments posted on it, the first of which is genuinely disturbed by the very mention of this writer.
So I followed another link, and saw Doc Nebula’s rant about Kurt Busiek, which the aforementioned commentator described when he wrote: You have to understand, _his side_ of his ‘grudge’ with Busiek makes him look unbalanced. . Elsewhere, someone called it truly fascinating in its awfulness.
Damn. It’s sad. That’s probably the most depressing web page I’ve read in a very long time.
And when I went back and finished reading the article on Superhero sexuality I linked to earlier, and saw how, as Doc Nebula himself noted in his conclusion, it has transformed over its considerable length from a witty and cheerful romp into a peeved and sullen rant about his least favorite bits of superhero comic tawdriness, and how he brings up something as obscure as The Liberty Project, dwelling on it just long enough to strongly reinforce the impression that he’s got “issues” about the writer (Busiek) and his wife.
So it becomes very clear that this guy I linked to, this erudite and well-read fan, is, well, a Dark One.
But then, reading Sheldon Teitelbaum’s account of Harlan Ellison’s “feud” with him over here (For 15 years, perhaps longer, the ”shrying” Svengali of Sherman Oaks swings headless chickens about his pointed head while cursing my name in French fanzines and in prologues to failed screenplays.), I guess the lure of the Dark Side is ever-present in the geek lifestyle.