Your iPhone is sooooooo lame!

In Japan. And on Mars.

Gary Numan, "The 1930s Rust" featuring Pino Palladino on bass

Pino Palladino can make a fretless bass sing like no other instrument. A bass is both a rhythm and a melodic instrument, and he can work wonders with it.

Oddly, the saxophonist/harmonicist is credited only as "Mike" on Wikipedia, and not at all on allmusic.com. Nor can I find any reference to this 1982 tune on Gary's website at http://www.numan.co.uk. Of course not - his website is designed to sell his new music, not his ancient stuff. I have the CD, of course, but it and the liner notes are stashed in my attic, and I am too lazy to go look for it.

BUY THIS CD. It is one of his best "old" works. And it's cheap on Amazon.



Listen good, don't cry for me, don't cry anymore
Now just shut your mouth, this point of view appeals to me
Listen babe, say you've got no-one tonight

Same old smile that cracked a thousand hearts, but not mine
Same old line... I've read the book and I know you well
Listen babe, say you've got no-one tonight

What's this feeling that I don't believe, no concern on my face
What's it for? you dream of something like I dreamed of you
Listen babe, say you've got no-one tonight

More inhabitants on our lot

We were clearing some of the incredible tangly vines on our empty lot today. As my darling wife walked point through the underbrush, I followed her, taking note of what she wants to cut down and what she wants to leave alone.

I looked down where she had walked, and there was a funny-looking rock that she had just stepped on.

The rock moved a bit.

I realized it was a young gopher tortoise, perhaps the size of a volleyball. It wasn't hurt by us stepping on her; we'd simply mushed her down into the sand a little.

We picked her up, ignored her hissing at us, and made sure she was okay. We knew she was a female because her belly plate was flat. Males' belly plates are concave, indented, to allow them to conform a little bit to the female's shell when the male climbs atop her to mate.

She had been digging a new burrow near our path when we interrupted her work.

We put her back on her new digging-spot, stepped away, and smiled when she resumed her work.

Later we found a huge old male about 10 meters away, digging another burrow. He was the size of a beach ball. He must be at least 60 years old. The little female is perhaps 10 years old.

It's nice to have inhabitants on our lot.

A reprieve for the Mad Pisser

Blackie, the Mad Pisser, has been caged in my office for the past week. He meows piteously whenever he sees one of us come in. My office chair, where I spend most of my time, is very close to him. I'm trying to socialize him a bit.

Every half hour or so, I turn around and reach into the cage and pet him and massage him all over and talk to him. He cringes and tries to make himself as small as possible. He's certain that I will eat him.

He will never cease to be a psychotic feral cat. I can expect no better behavior from him.

I CAN expect him to stop spraying, though. Confining him to the cage and feeding him antibiotics has helped. He sprayed once on the towel draped over his cage in the past week. The vet says that since he has fought us on taking his antibiotics, and has missed two days of his ten-day regimen, we'd better give him another ten days of pills, just to be sure.

Crushing them up in his food didn't work. So we just gently pry his mouth open, stick the pill-popper syringe in, and push the plunger. He rarely spits it out.

So we will keep him another ten days and feed him more antibiotics.

Then we'll take him to the no-kill shelter. Because he'll never stop being psychotic, and after three years of trying to socialize him, we've had enough.

But I'll still pet him and love on him while he's here, just because it annoys him. ;-)

So the banks and credit bureaus are dinging you on your credit score?

I've heard some interesting blurbs about how credit bureaus like Experian are now using "secret" credit scores for you, which you're not allowed to see. (That's illegal, of course. Hopefully the federales will explain that to them via a lawsuit soon.)

How American Express is slashing your credit line based on the probable default rates of OTHER people who shop where you do.

How Citibank is jacking up interest rates on their best customers.

And how many of these businesses got billions in bailout money from the government.

I think it's all very amusing. People's first reaction to these things is, "how DARE they do that to ME? I pay my bills on time!"

Their second, more permanent reaction should be, "I don't need YOUR credit." And they should cancel their credit cards.

When I met my darling wife, I had the same relationship with credit that many people have. I bought things I didn't need, with money I didn't have, and spent most of my time trying to pay down the balance.

Now, thanks to my darling wife's expert tutelage, I have just one credit card, and it has a zero balance. I only buy things I can afford to pay cash for. And surprisingly, I can afford a lot. I think it's because I have trained myself to only buy things I NEED, versus things I WANT. And it's amazing how truly little I need.

So if American Express, or Citibank, or Experian, or any of the other moronic credit industry companies want to slash my credit rating, that's just fine.

I don't need their credit. And neither do you.

Stormtroopers Of Death, "What's That Noise?"

I can't stop laughing when I listen to this. (Note: profligate use of the F-word, which just makes it funnier.)

Road rage

Last night on the highway, an asshole in a mid-1990s white Dodge Dakota pickup came screaming up on my right side and cut in front of me to avoid hitting the person in front of him.

I flashed my lights at him.

He flipped me off.

I left my brights on.

He slowed down.

I slowed down.

He kept flipping me off.


I had a few options open.

• Do nothing. This merely encourages his bad behavior, though.
• Ram him. I was driving the wrong vehicle for that, though, and my darling wife was with me. I can't endanger her.
• Shoot him. However gratifying that would be, it would only make me look bad if I was caught. And, of course, my darling wife was with me.

So I did the appropriately sneaky, passive-aggressive thing: I called *FHP to report him to the Florida Highway Patrol as an aggressive driver. I gave them his plate number, described his location and detailed his aggressive behavior, with no embellishments.

Some states, like Texas, send a nastygram to the asshole's home, warning him that he's been reported, and telling him that he'd better clean up his act. It's part of the driver's record, and it really looks bad when he's hauled into traffic court on a future offense. As no doubt he will be.

I'm not sure how it works in Florida. I know that they look for him, and pull him over if they find him. However, I have been unable to find out if they send nastygrams, or if they list it on his record for future reference and sentencing when he commits a crime.

Regardless, I'm sure it can't be good to be reported as an aggressive driver.

I swerved off at the next exit, when he was too far ahead to follow me. He flipped me off again. I smiled, knowing that a date with the police was in his future.

Perhaps they will shoot him for me. It's their job, after all.

Pino Palladino is a god

In 1957, a musical force was born, a musical force who would grow up to bear the name Pino Palladino. He is Welsh, of Italian ancestry. And he can make the electric bass guitar do things that seem well-nigh impossible.

He has played with The Who, Genesis, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, David Gilmour of Pink Floyd, and most importantly (to me, anyway), Gary Numan. And he's played with a billion other people whom you can see on his website at http://www.pinopalladino.com/.

It was his work with Gary Numan that caught my attention. Pino is the God of bassists. I wish that I could play one one-hundredth as good as he can.

I will have to find some good examples to post.

I want some clouds

Okay, we've had sun for weeks and weeks and weeks now. And it's been cold.

Having lived in the icy northern climes for many years, I find myself wishing for clouds. If it's going to be cold, it should be cloudy and glum.

And of course, if I was still living in the icy north, I would be wishing for sun.

I'm never happy. I know this about myself. So I ignore my wishes, most of the time. They are unproductive and unworthy of being indulged. ;-) There are wishes and then there are needs. I have many wishes and few needs.

I am fortunate.

But I still wish for clouds.

I'm not watching the lies tonight

The media helped create the recession to help Obama get into power, by convincing everyone who would listen that there was a recession, when in fact there was not. It caused a crisis of faith in business and in the stock market, and the bubble suddenly popped.

Then the media wailed loudly when the recession arrived, millions of jobs evaporated, and the jobless and the homeless wandered the countryside looking for work, scavenging for a living. People lined up around the block at the soup kitchens, and the shelters were jammed. People burned their furniture to keep from freezing to death. People pulled the wallpaper off the walls of their ruined houses and made a thin soup with it to keep from starving to death.

("Wait!" you say. "That didn't happen!" You're right, it didn't. But there was enough caterwauling as if it DID happen. It's still going on, only now the media has stepped back and is letting thousands of whiny overextended homeowners do the caterwauling for them. It's pathetic. If you want REAL suffering, study The Great Depression, especially the self-inflicted suffering in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s. In the US, look at the Panic of 1893. Or the Panic of 1873. The current economic "crisis" is nothing much at all.

Humans have no sense of perspective anymore.

The Earth needs a nice awe-inspiring disaster, like an asteroid strike, or a smallpox epidemic, to remind people of what's really bad, and of what's really important.)

Anyway. Now that the goal of electing Obama has been achieved, it's time for the recession to be over. Tonight's propaganda speech is part of the attempt to deprogram the populace, to restore the capitalist optimism that the media worked so hard in 2007 and 2008 to destroy.

There's no point in listening to hours of Obamist propaganda tonight about how they intend to end the recession.

It's not about ending the recession. It's all about painting Obama as the Savior.

He isn't a Savior, and this isn't a Savior-based economy. The government cannot save you. No one can. Only YOU can save yourself.

By working hard and remembering that There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch (TANSTAAFL).

Regardless of what Obama and his drones say.

I found a disassembled Terminator...

...in my dreams last night. I knew that no one would believe me that I had found one, so I began taking pictures of the dusty parts as they lay on a table in a disused metal building out in the countryside.

As I moved around the table, I kept eyeing the parts warily, expecting them to move. Knowing how horrifyingly dangerous the assembled machine can be, makes you respect its parts more than normal.

It was a strange dream.

Goldfrapp, "Monster Love"

I heard a wacky trance version of this on XM Chill. This is the original. I like it, though I have never heard of this band before.

Cold sunshine

It's been very cold in the jungle lately. So cold that the banana trees are crisping, and the outdoor work I usually do in the yard has to wait. I can't feel my tentacles.


We have a guest staying with us this week, my darling wife's best friend from Denver. It's wonderful to see her, and to see them together. They're so funny, just like little girls. They went to DisneyWorld yesterday and had a GREAT time.


I have been warned, though, that after our guest leaves, we're going to be working in the yard a LOT. No matter how cold (or hot) it gets.


Hmmm. I am used to NOT working in the yard, by now. I would like to keep it that way.

What she said, and what really happened

[An acquaintance of mine is in her 40s, with a little boy. She's wonderfully sweet, but seems to make consistently bad decisions.]

What she said -

"I'm moving across the country to [a little cowtown I know] where there's a job waiting for me and the schools are great and it's a wonderful place to live, so much better than here." (Okay, I thought. The jobs are not great in that little cowtown, but maybe it's better than here. Whatever trips your trigger there, girl.)

What really happened -

She moved across the country because she wanted to be with a guy she met online, who promptly dumped her when she got there. There was no job waiting for her, she just made that up. She lives in a tiny apartment and works temp jobs. She ran out of money so her phone was turned off, and she calls from work. I'm not sure what her little boy thinks of all this. He's eight, and seems to have a lot more common sense than his mom does.


The other day, we got an email update from her. Summed up, it said,

"I've been bulimic my whole life, and now I've fallen in love with a woman."

What is REALLY happening? I have no idea.

I'm definitely not sure what her little boy thinks of all this.

Friendly Fires, "Skeleton Boy"

An odd little tune. I like the harmony and the funky lead synth line, and the one chord in the chorus that really clashes.

I also like the way the "snow" in the video sticks to their black-clad bodies and becomes "bones" of their skeletons.

I broke my toy

I did very well at the trap range on Saturday... 21 out of 25 targets, using a Full choke. Trap is usually played with a Modified choke, and a Full choke makes it harder to hit the target because it concentrates your shot pattern into a tighter pattern. If you connect with the target, you tend to pulverize it. If you connect with the target, it means you're a more accurate shot, which is good.

I pulverized a lot of them.

I fired perhaps 100 rounds. The last 25 were on the 5-stand, where five sets of target throwers hurl targets at a variety of speeds, angles, and approaches/departures. It's very hard, and I suck at it.

On the last shot, my gun broke. The bolt jammed and would not be retracted. Chris, the range officer, looked at it, began to disassemble it, and thought better of it. I said I'd take care of it when I got home.

So I took it apart at home and found that the bolt link, a wishbone-shaped piece of metal, had bent and broken behind the bolt, jamming it.

I also discovered that the transfer bar assembly (which operates the magazine) was missing a chunk out of it, and had been for awhile, because the broken spot was dark, not shiny.

I am beginning to think that my 35-year-old firearm has not seen much maintenance before I acquired it.

I will call the manufacturer today and order the parts. I will also ask them what parts are most likely to break, and order a double set of those.

Take care of your tools, and they will take care of you.

Avenue Q, "The Internet Is For..."

As far as I'm concerned, Broadway's usefulness ended sometime in the 1950s. Certainly it is irrelevant today. The idea of spending $100 and more per theatre seat for what is often an atrociously bad production is laughable. I'm perfectly happy with the Technicolor productions of the classic musicals like "My Fair Lady" or "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers".

(There are those who insist that it's a citizen's public duty to attend shows and concerts and pay taxes to fund the National Endowment for the Arts and other such rackets. I disagree. Artists who have talent will survive on their own merits on support from their fan base, without help. Do starving artists need to make a living? Certainly. Doing something useful and productive for society. Which music (as much as I enjoy it) and acting, in and of themselves, are not. Therefore, said starving artists need to find another line of work, preferably one where they don't starve. Perhaps in the food-service industry. Not that it really matters to society at large. Or to me. I think the proof of whether an artist is talented lies in whether or not s/he starves to death, regardless of economic conditions. Talented artists, and Broadway show casts and staff, eat. Talentless ones starve. Q.E.D. In my humble Martian opinion.)

Nevertheless, YouTube's auto-play setting brought this tune to my attention today. I have never seen the musical "Avenue Q," and I have no intention of doing so. I think it stars a bunch of Muppets, and Gary Coleman from the 1970s TV show "Diff'rent Strokes." (Gary Coleman might also be a Muppet. I'm not sure.) It sounds interesting, but not enough to make me want to go see the musical.

But I laughed my chrslcx off at this song. (Easily-offended people need not click.)



This is a fan video. The real video is available in RealPlayer format on the Avenue Q website at http://www.avenueq.com/videoclips.html .

The Oscars are tonight!

And I won't be watching!

Unless, of course, some horrible natural disaster wipes out Los Angeles.

Then I'll watch, for sure.

Or maybe I'll Tivo it, and savor it later.

;-P

Offensive offendedness

Recently, a "pet" chimpanzee attacked a woman in Stamford, Connecticut, mauling her face severely before local police shot and killed it after it attacked the police car.

Then The New York Post ran a cartoon based on that incident, commenting on the local news, while also suggesting that the Porkulus spending bill was written by a chimpanzee.



A vocal minority of perpetually-offended-by-everything morons (like Al Sharpton) chose to take issue with the cartoon, saying that the cartoon was racist because they believe that it suggested that President Obama wrote the Porkulus bill, and they believe that it compares black people to chimpanzees.

Which is ridiculous, because of course President Obama is not smart enough to have written the bill. Apparently no single Democrat is, which is why it took a bunch of them to write it, and why no one actually read it in its entirety before Obama signed it.

Eventually The New York Post ran an unnecessary apology.

Of course, comparing black humans to chimpanzees is ridiculous. There is at least a 7 percent genetic difference between a human and a chimpanzee. Generally, however, chimpanzees are not concerned with righting perceived wrongs in the distribution of wealth, or with bailing out undeserving people who made bad business and mortgage decisions.

No, I think chimpanzees are clearly more evolved than that. They have also evolved beyond the need to be offended. They may claw your eyes out for no apparent reason, or maybe even try to carjack you (as the Stamford chimpanzee attacked the police car), but they don't perceive slights where none exist.

In fact, the perpetually-offended humans, by injecting a discussion of race into a conversation where race was not even a remote subject, prove that in fact, THEY are the racists, viewing every issue and every topic through the filter of their own racism. It's very sad. And very un-evolved.

Offended people are themselves offensive, and are a waste of valuable resources. They would be better used as a food source. For hungry, jobless, recently-foreclosed-upon chimpanzees.

The Aquabats, "Pizza Day"

I would KILL to see this band play live. I have a DVD of a live show... they are amazing. They all dress like superheroes, even though they probably shouldn't.



Well I remember my first day at public school
I was very scared of getting pummeled
And sure enough I did at first recess
I got pegged in the head by a big red ball
It stung and my head hung
Back to class with a bloody nose
And soon it was lunchtime

Mom said I should ask about how poor kids can get fed
So I got a book of tickets and a schedule and it read:
Monday - Hot Dog
Tuesday - Taco
Wednesday - Hamburgers and Chocolate Milk
Thursday - Sloppy Joes and burritos in a bag
Friday was Pizza Day, the best day of the week
All the kids would line up super early just to eat

Monday - Hot Dog
Tuesday - Taco
Wednesday - Hamburgers and Chocolate Milk
Thursday - Sloppy Joes and burritos in a bag
Friday was Pizza Day, the best day of the week
It always came with salad and a side of cold green beans

Hooray for Pizza Day
Hooray for Pizza Day
I miss Pizza Day
The best day of the week

Well, I remember my first day in junior high
I had hairspray in my hair and my pants were way too tight
And all the breakers and new wavers
And the rockers and the preps
Would all be in their places
On the front lawn or the steps
I hung out with some punker kids
Who used to make me laugh (oi oi oi)
I got thrown in the dumpster
By some rich kids near the caf(eteria)
As time went on we figured out
It was totally uncool
To eat the welfare lunch
Provided by the school
So in poser-punker fashion
We just mooched off all the kids
And lived off eating candy bars
And bags of nacho chips

Well now I'm out of school
And I don't have a job (You're a slob!)
I just sit around all sweaty and lethargic
And I'm just thinking 'bout where it all went wrong
Why I can't concentrate on anything but reruns
I wish I had some more stability
I wish I had somebody making lunch for me
I guess I miss the seventh grades in life, the thought of Pizza Day
I thought it was stupid then but I wish I had it now, I miss my

Monday - Hot Dog
Tuesday - Taco
Wednesday - Hamburgers and Chocolate Milk
Thursday - Sloppy Joes and burritos in a bag
Friday was Pizza Day, the best day of the week
It always came with salad and a side of cold green beans

Hooray for Pizza Day
Hooray for Pizza Day
I miss Pizza Day
The best day of the week

You think Alec Baldwin is kidding, don't you?

I don't.


Needless to say, I have stock in Hulu.

I have a new office

Up until now, since we moved into this happy little hut by the sea, I have shared an office with my darling wife.

Who, I must say, has been incredibly patient with my mess.

A messy desk is the sign of a creative, productive mind. Or so I like to think. This drives certain clients who have "clean desk" policies (where your desk must be cleared at the end of every workday) absolutely insane.

I don't care, since I'm a consultant. What will they do, fire me? ;-) (Be my guest. Your work won't get done for you then, since you hired me because your fulltime employees are incapable of doing the job.) Usually they grit their teeth and tolerate it. I'm only there for a few months. Or years.

Anyway. My darling wife has been very patient with me, sharing her home office space with me.

Now that we are in the process of finishing the garage into usable living space, I have moved my office out there.

It is WONDERFUL. I am surrounded by my tools and supplies and weapons, I have lots of light, and if I drop heavy or dirty things on the floor, it doesn't matter one bit.

I love it.

But it will be nice when I can put in some drywall. And some ducting for the furnace.

Tones On Tail, "Go!"

I have only heard this song in the movie "Grosse Point Blank," never on the radio, and certainly never on "Beverly Hills 90210," which I would not watch without a suicide switch (to use when it got too stupid to bear).

But I like it.

Even the Navy is worried about the Rise of the Machines

I think it's interesting that a study commissioned by the Department of the Navy, Office of Naval Research, and published by California State Polytechnic University in San Luis Obispo, brings up the very real spectre of military robots getting out of control, a la "The Terminator."

The study focuses on the need to develop specific rules for warfighting robots, similar to Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, but more geared toward identifying targets, analyzing risks and possible results, and making split-second decisions on when and how to kill people, weapons and materiel, and other robots.

I did not know that some military robots have already mistakenly killed "friendlies" in combat (page 7 of the study), which underscores the need to improve target identification, target discrimination, threat evaluation and the process of determining the appropriate level of response.

Ideally, warfighting robot development would result in a generation of autonomous machines like Keith Laumer's Bolo tanks, which were infused with a strong sense of loyalty, duty and honor. In its worst outcome, such robot development would result in the extermination of the human race, like SkyNet and the Terminators.

Which might not be such a bad thing, in my opinion.

But I'm hoping for the Bolos.

The downward spiral

A friend of mine began getting depressed late last year. She was reluctant to seek help, because of the embarrassment, and because she's a registered nurse. In her mind, I suppose, healthcare professionals don't get sick.

I said it was not an embarrassment to feel better. I suggested that she get some antidepressants, and find a therapist to talk to. Which she did.

As is common with antidepressants, however, whatever her doctor put her on did not help that much, and she declined steadily through the holidays and into January. I told her to get him to change her meds, but I don't know if she did.

Eventually her husband asked her to check herself in for in-patient treatment, but she refused.

Finally her son came to visit, saw how poorly she was faring (she was so depressed, she didn't know what year it was), and he insisted that she check herself in. So she did.

From what I understand, she's doing better. They also discovered that she has a urinary tract infection. Interestingly, more than half of all the depressed post-menopausal women who are currently in the local psychiatric ward are also suffering from urinary tract infections. Apparently there is a correlation between UTIs and depression among post-menopausal women. So they are treating her for that also.

I look forward to seeing her again, and seeing her feeling better. There's no shame in getting help.

I get the picture

I thought it was interesting that Muzzammil Hassan started a satellite TV station in Buffalo, New York back in 2004 to "counter images of Muslim violence and extremism."

Especially now that he's charged with killing his wife of 8 years last week by cutting off her head after she filed for a divorce.

Very interesting.

$257 spent on a cat who hates me

Blackie the Mad Pisser went to the doctor yesterday, in preparation for his eventual deportation to the no-kill cat shelter. We waited until he went into his cage to eat (which is the only place we'll feed him, precisely because he cannot be caught any other way except by trapping him in a cage - he won't allow himself to be touched or handled, and he won't even come near me), and we slammed the door and took the cage and its contents to the doctor.

It turns out that he has crystals in his urine, which usually are associated with a kidney or a urinary tract infection.

So he's back home, still in his cage, meowing continuously because he doesn't want to be in there. He's on antibiotics for ten days, meat-flavored pills crushed into his food, which now he won't eat. (He will eat when he gets hungry enough, I think. He shows no reluctance to eat his own food and everyone else's, normally.)

Then we'll see if the crystals are gone, if the infection is cured, and if he stops pissing in random spots around the house.

If not, we will deport him and I won't miss him. If so, we'll think about keeping him.

If we keep him, we'll keep him in the cage for at least a few months, which is traditionally how you socialize a feral cat. We know from experience that it's the only way he'll be friendly. We tried it before, years ago, and kept him in a cage for several weeks. He was very friendly... until we let him out. And then he wanted nothing to do with us.

He's oh-so-friendly now, rubbing against my tentacles and head-butting me, because he wants out of the cage.

But I'm wise to him now. I don't believe his behavior is the least bit sincere.

Perhaps a few more months in confinement will help readjust his attitude.

My grocery receipt

My grocery receipt for last week shows that I spent more on ammunition than I spent on groceries!


Mmm. Can that be a mistake?




Nope. (shrug) That's correct.



It's important to remember one's priorities. ;-)

Not so impressed...

...with "Dollhouse," the new show by Joss Whedon on Fox. A little bit of a disjointed plot, and the actors are just feeling out their new roles. It reminds me a little bit of the "La Femme Nikita" TV show, except Nikita believes she is who she says she is.

And it's a little difficult for me to see Eliza Dushku as "Echo," when she was psychotic Faith on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." I didn't watch "Buffy" much, but I remember the few times I saw Dushku as Faith. She was very effective in that role, in much the same way that Leonard Nimoy was effective as Spock on "Star Trek." It was difficult to get past that initial role which made him famous. So. I need to remind myself that Dushku is not psycho Faith when I see her in "Dollhouse," and perhaps I can enjoy the show a bit more.

"Star Trek: The Next Generation" got off to a rocky start, with the abominable "Encounter at Farpoint" episode, and became a wonderful, memorable series. "Dollhouse" got off to a better start than that, for sure, and I hope it gets better too.

Watch "Dollhouse" Friday on Fox

"Dollhouse" is the latest series by uber-genius Joss Whedon, who is responsible for "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "Angel," "Firefly," "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog," and other masterpieces of television (if there can be such a thing).

It premieres Friday on Fox. Watch it.

UPDATE for the hyperlink-challenged: The show is about a secret cadre of "dolls" (agents) whose brains have been wiped clean, and who have a new set of memories, skills, accents, and an entire personality downloaded into them for each mission, so that they are tailor-made to play whatever part they are supposed to play on the mission. That's fine, as far as it goes, until one of the "dolls" begins to develop her own personality and memories, independent of the implanted ones she takes on. It sounds like fun, a la "Bladerunner" or "Total Recall" or "Bourne Identity" or any number of those "who am I?" kinds of spy/action shows.

Pigs officially fly

Amnesty International actually calls out Hamas for terrorism against Palestinians.

Usually Amnesty International whines about Israel, and ignores Hamas' bad behavior. I don't expect AI to maintain their scrutiny of Hamas, though, because generally AI is just a bunch of useful idiots.

Gary Numan "Call Out The Dogs"

"Bladerunner" is one of my favorite classic films, even though it's long and dark. I enjoy the entire fan culture that's grown up around it, especially the idea that the protagonist Deckert (Harrison Ford) is himself a Replicant with false human memories, assigned to "retire" (kill) fellow Replicants.

I like this song, and the entire album "The Fury" (1985) because it uses a lot of samples from "Bladerunner." There is an original video for this song, but it's just studio footage, short and not very good quality. This is the "real" song, albeit an extended mix.

Here comes stagflation

So, the Senate passed the "spendulus" bill, as we expected, even though a large percentage of Americans (and top economists) seem to be opposed to it. Now the bill gets dissected and edited in committee to resolve the differences between the House and Senate versions.

Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal explains that there's a reason why Congress and Dear Leader Obama don't like to talk about how all this spending is going to be funded. They hope it will be funded by the sales of Treasury bills. But it's unlikely that all this planned spending can be based on the sales of T-bills, especially when overseas governments like China and Japan are the major buyers of these bills. Buying T-bills helped fuel American consumerism for years by keeping the money flowing and keeping credit cheap. But now their economies are hurting because America's consumption has stalled. Eventually they will run out of money to buy more T-bills to support the "spendulus" campaign.

And that means the other alternative to "get money" is to print it.

And by printing more money, that makes the money already in circulation worth less.

What happens is a vicious spiral called "stagflation," a combination of economic stagnation and inflation. Britain suffered from it in the 1960s, and it spread to the US and around the world in the 1970s, and it continued until the early 1980s. The economy was in the doldrums, while consumer prices climbed steadily upward because, as governments printed more money in an attempt to spend their way out of the economic quagmire, it made all the other money worth less, so that a given product cost more to buy than it did before.

I don't expect it will hit the phenomenal inflation rates seen in Argentina in the 1980s (almost 5,000 percent, a faint echo of post-World-War-I Germany when workers raced around with wheelbarrows full of money, trying to buy goods before the currency's value diminished, minute by minute, as prices doubled every two days).

But perhaps you should spend what money you have, now, while it's still worth something.

Cold beach

It was 27 degrees on the beach the other day.


We saw two other people on the beach, both women, both in their 20s or 30s, and both wearing pedal-pushers, a thin jacket and no hat, speed-walking down the beach by themselves. We knew they were northerners because they were dressed like it was 30 degrees warmer. They thought it was warm. Silly people.


The wind blew so hard from the north that it left shadows behind every bump in the sand.


I have never seen that, except on Mars.

It was a nice reminder of home.

The Rise and Fall of the Mad Pisser

My darling wife noticed that someone in our herd of cats is marking, spraying a bit of pee here and there in the house.

We (royal "We") do not like that.

So we set up a spare laptop with a webcam to watch one pee-place, our new guest bath vanity (a location which irks us immensely, since we just put the damn thing in).

A week went by with no activity.

Then Blackie, the culprit, outed himself by peeing on the fridge right in front of my darling wife.

Now we know who the Mad Pisser is. The next step is what to do about him.

He was a feral cat that we took in several years ago. Marking is typical for ferals, but we didn't think he was doing it, as it appears to be recent behavior. Mostly he just hides behind the couch or stares out the window on the back porch. We can't touch him unless we corner him, because he's sure that we're going to eat him. No amount of love or petting or treats will change his mind about this. He's terrified of us, particularly of me. Perhaps it's my wiggly tentacles, or the eyestalks.

So we'll take him to the vet and have him checked. Sometimes marking behavior indicates illness, like a kidney infection.

We'll get him a clean bill of health. Sadly, that won't cure his terror of us, and we're tired of having a terrified cat in the house.

So we'll take him to the no-kill shelter where we got Valkyrie, and ask to swap him for a nicer, friendlier, fully-clawed, non-pissing black cat. (We like black cats... it's a requirement for witches and/or aliens). Preferably female, since they are less likely to mark. The shelter is FULL of black cats, and I don't think they're taking new residents, but I think they will agree to a swap. Particularly if we pay the adoption fee for the new cat.

We should have a new resident by the end of the week, and the era of the Mad Pisser will be over.

It's a better alternative than eating him.

Tell your senator NO on the "stimulus"!

"Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it." (Edmund Burke, 1729-1797)

Dear Leader Obama and his compliant liberal worshipers in the Senate may do just that, if they pass the enormous "stimulus" package. They don't remember what happened to Japan's Lost Decade of the 1990s, when Japan, on at least eight separate occasions, used huge "stimulus" spending packages totaling more than 118 TRILLION yen (about $1.14 trillion in 1999 dollars) to try to heave its foundering economy out of the gutter.

It didn't work.

Instead, it left Japan with a national debt-to-Gross Domestic Product ratio of 128 percent, and their economy was STILL stagnant. The US's current ratio is about 70 percent, which is ridiculously high. Why would we want to make it worse, to no avail? You can't spend your way out of a recession OR a depression. It didn't work for Frankin Delano Roosevelt (the Depression didn't end until World War 2), and it won't work for Obama.

Call your US Senator and tell him or her to vote NO on the stimulus. The Capitol switchboard phone number is (202) 224-3121.

Pictures from Key West, Florida

Key West is the last, western- and southern-most island in the Florida Keys, south of Miami. It's a four-hour drive from Miami to Key West. Cuba is 90 miles south of Key West.


We took the jet boat out of Fort Myers down to Key West. It's about 3 to 4 hours each way, depending on the wind and seas. It's a fast, comfy ride, with in-flight movies and a snack bar. Our ride was smooth that day.

The catamaran jet boat goes 42+ knots on its turbo diesel engines. It's very loud on the stern.

It's very windy up top, too. You can't stay up there for long.

A fancifully-muraled building in Key West.

This is the Key West Conch Tour Train. It's a nice tour and worth the money. They show you all around the west end of the island, which is the only part worth seeing.

This is an "eyebrow" house. Most of the houses there were built from the mid-1800s to the 1930s. Some of the homes were built in this style, where the roof comes down over the upstairs windows to shade them from the sun.

This was our hotel room at a bed & breakfast on Truman Avenue. Unfortunately I had forgotten that Truman Avenue is the highway, US-1, which is the main road from Miami. The motorcyle traffic was nonstop until 4 AM. My poor darling wife didn't sleep at all. Don't stay anywhere on Truman Avenue or Duvall Street. The noise is incessant.

Key West got most of its wealth up until the Great Depression from cannibalizing shipwrecks on the offshore reefs. At one point in the late 1800s, every household in town had a set of china from shipwrecks. Many people had fishing boats, and some had dedicated wrecking boats like this one. As soon as the lookouts spotted a shipwreck, they'd sound the alarm, and the entire town would race out to the reef to salvage whatever they could. (I'm just not sure why ships kept coming there, if it was so likely that you would wreck. But they kept coming.)

Some radars belonging to the Key West Naval Air Station. This one's aimed at Cuba.

I love lighthouses. Some day I will finish the one in my front yard.

I would like to do our front walk like this, made of shattered pieces of tile. But we just put in some nice pavers, so I won't bother.

I love this carved door, and the woodwork on this house.

Key West has a nice cemetery. Some of these are the remains of sailors killed on the Battleship Maine, which blew up in the harbor in Havana, Cuba, and was used as an excuse to start the Spanish-American War (1898).

I like this marker.


And this one, especially. This makes me laugh.




This bar has dollar bills from thousands of patrons stapled all over the walls. I bet they have a special relationship with the fire marshal.


Key West has wild chickens roaming most of the streets. They nest anywhere they can, usually in the bushes in front of people's houses. Here is a chicken family.

And another chick in the bushes.

A huge banyan-like tree. I can't remember exactly what it is. But I sure like the symmetry of the branches, and the smoothness of the bark.

I wonder what this man is thinking.

Big cruise ships dock in Key West. The Disney Magic blocks the entrance to one of the marinas when it ties up here. Big boats just cruise right under the hawser ropes into the marina.

The Disney Magic. I've never been tempted to take a cruise. It seems like a gross way to spend one's time, eating your way around the ocean with thousands of other people, sharing germs. I have a friend who is proud to have taken 42 cruises so far. I just smile when she tells people that.

I spoke too soon

So, in the US House of Representatives' infinite wisdom, they postponed the switchover to all-digital television broadcasts from February 17 to June 12.

Why? Because right now, less than 6 percent of US households won't be able to receive the digital broadcasts.

5.7 percent, to be exact.

That's ridiculous. They postponed the switch because of THAT? That's moronic.

It would cost less to simply send the local sheriff around to each of these 5.7 percent of US households, break down the door, and smash their televisions. If those households are not ready for digital by now, then they don't NEED to be watching TV. Go outside and play, or get a job, or something. American television is horrible anyway. Only the BBC generates more crap.

Well, now I don't need to rush out and buy a big flat-screen digital TV. Therefore I'm just one more consumer not spending money, and my inaction is helping the economy spiral downward.

Hello, Washington! Nice going, guys.

Blancmange, "I've Seen The Word"

I like the lurching beat of this tune, and the contemplative lyrics. Okay, they're rather nonsensical lyrics. But I like them anyway.



I've seen people laughing in churchyards
Screaming and shouting in my, in my backyard
And I don't know where they're going to
And I don't care if you, if you don't know

And I've seen words written in clouds above
Never told me that I have lost your love
I said I'd take more care of you
It never stopped the sky and me from feeling blue

I've seen the word
I've seen the word
I guess you've heard
I've seen the word

And I've seen people laughing in pain
And I've seen people crying in the rain
And I've seen people laughing in pain

And I've seen the word
I've seen the word
I guess you've heard
I've seen the word

B-17 flyover

I love the sound of those four radial engines roaring. There's nothing like the burbly sound of a big radial engine. (A radial engine is one where the cylinders are arranged in a circle, or radius, around the crankshaft, typically a propeller shaft for an airplane. Radial engines are typically air-cooled, with big fins.)


This is a 7-cylinder radial engine on a Waco biplane. Radial engines usually have an odd number of cylinders, which fire on opposite sides of the crankshaft, but the odd number of cylinders ensures a smoother-turning engine and less vibration.


I apologize for the auto-focus sliding in and out. I think it was confused first by the fence, then by the turning propellers.

Cascading decisions

Come on, everyone knows that manufacturers and stores prop up their prices for TVs between the holiday shopping season and the Super Bowl. After that, prices usually drop because demand slackens.

Well? I'm waiting!!!!! ;-) Yet prices seem to be holding steady.

I want a big flat-screen television. All over-the-air TV transmissions in the US will switch to digital on February 17th. Not that I care, of course - cable transmissions are unaffected. But I would like a big flat-screen TV, not so much for me, but for my darling wife. She would definitely like it.

Of course, if I get a big flat-screen TV, that means:

• I have to mount it on the wall, which is a pain in the ass to run the cabling through the wall
• I have to run the surround sound speakers through the ceiling to a point on the opposite wall, which will be nearly impossible with a vaulted ceiling like ours
• I have to switch to digital cable so that we can get High Definition signals
• I have to get a new Digital Video Recorder that will record in high definition
• I might as well switch my phone service over to the cable company at that point, to save money
• I might as well switch my wireless service over to somebody else, since I hate my cellphone company's equipment (terrible slapback echo on my LG phone all the time)

The more I think about it, the more of a pain in the ass it will be to shell out $1,000+ for a TV.

Maybe I'll just wait some more.

Steve Miller Band, "Jungle Love"

There's something beautiful about late 1970s guitar rock. It's got a beat, a major-key melody, intelligible lyrics, and usually displays instrumental virtuosity that just doesn't exist in more recent music.

I'm not sure what's up with the whistling in this one, though.

Witnessing the interactions of families...

...makes me appreciate even more that my spouse's parents are dead.

I never met them, of course... they died long before I met her.

That's why I don't feel bad about being GLAD that I have a freedom and an independence that many spouses do not.

This is the article that made me think about that today. Not completely relevant, I know. But I have this thought, feel this gratitude for my freedom from in-law interference, at least every month or so.

They don't pay their taxes - why should you?

Dear Leader Obama sure knows how to pick them, doesn't he?

Tom Daschle, Former Senate Majority Leader from South Dakota, Obama's pick for Secretary of Health and Human Services, failed to pay taxes on his consulting income, his limousine services that he received from a political donor, and his questionable donations to charity, adding up to at least $146,000. He finally backed out of his nomination yesterday, saying that he didn't want to be a distraction, even though he's known about the problem since June of 2008.

Nancy Killefer, Obama's pick for "Chief Performance Officer" (a new cabinet post), withdrew her nomination yesterday under scrutiny for failing to pay quarterly taxes for unemployment compensation on her household staff, a problem for her since 2005. The District of Columbia actually filed a lien on her house for $949.69. What's funny is that she is the Former Assistant Secretary for Management, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer at the Department of the Treasury under President Clinton, and runs the Washington D.C. office of McKinsey & Company, a management consulting firm. Great credentials, terrible household management skills.

Then there's Tim Geithner, who forgot to pay $43,000 in federal self-employment taxes for four years, forced to pay up so he could be confirmed as Obama's Treasury Secretary. (Amazingly, the Senate confirmed him anyway, which makes one wonder how many Senators don't pay their taxes either.)

Then there's Bill Richardson, Democrat Governor of New Mexico, who withdrew his nomination for Secretary of the Commerce Department in December, after reports that the FBI is investigating him for allegedly steering $1.4 million in New Mexico state contracts to CDR Financial Products, after CDR gave $100,000 to political action committees which support Richardson.

If Dear Leader Obama keeps picking corrupt people for his cabinet posts, what does that say about him? And of course, if these same people want to raise your taxes, when they're not paying their own, why should you pay taxes?

I think it's all very amusing. It's been two weeks since Obama came into office. Imagine, four more years of this.

I did not kill myself

I do not have particularly good luck with electricity. It's probably because I seem to generate a lot of it on my own. But if there's ever a chance for a circuit to shock me, it will, even if the breaker was supposedly set to "Off."

Today I dismounted a wall socket in the master bathroom, and used its box to create a junction for two additional GFCI (Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter) outlets, one on each side of the bathroom. I ran the Nomex cable through the studs and smashed out an unused junction box that was in the way on the other side of the wall. I cut holes in the wallboard and installed the new outlet boxes. I hooked everything up without shocking myself, threw the breaker to "On," and everything worked just fine.

THEN I was shocked. ;-)

A fateful decision

I wonder who, on the Arizona Cardinals' team, decided to run the ball in at the end of the first half of the Super Bowl on Sunday, rather than kick a field goal.

I'm betting they wished they hadn't tried for a pass, because James Harrison of the Pittsburgh Steelers intercepted it and ran 100 yards for a touchdown, the longest interception run in Super Bowl history.

I was wearing red, and everyone told me that meant I was rooting for the Cardinals. So, dutifully, I was very disappointed in this play. And in the results of the game in general.

Early termination

I thought this video clip was interesting. It looks like a terrorist firing a Soviet-era 50mm mortar...



...until one round apparently explodes in the tube.

I wonder if it was bad ammo, or if he was just sloppy. The end result was the same, though.