And it never stops. That's what it's like in my head, all the time. Either it's music made by other people, or it's music that my brain makes by itself.
Earplugs don't help. Only sleep helps. And sometimes even then, the music in my head wakes me up.
I often notice it only when it stops, briefly. Then it starts again.
I wish it took requests.
Here's a delightful, if completely unnecessary, office widget - a bubble-wrap calendar.
That's still not as good as the periodic table shower curtain.
I read that the Obama administration forced the resignation of General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner this past weekend.
On the one tentacle, it's disturbing that a government figure can order the firing of a private individual. On another tentacle, it's perfectly appropriate to fire Wagoner, since he helped run GM into the ground, and it's surviving at the moment only because of the government's largesse (and yours, whether you wanted to help or not).
But one wonders why Obama hasn't fired the leadership of all the banks, insurance companies, and other businesses that are getting bailouts. The argument that many of those leaders have already been replaced is a weak one. Many still remain, sheltered from the repercussions of their misdeeds, and benefiting from the porkulus money.
I'm not the only one who wonders at the selectivity of Obama's axe. What about Ron Gettelfinger, the president of the United Auto Workers union? GM's absurdly-high costs are a direct result of the extravagant salaries and benefits that the UAW negotiated for GM's employees. The UAW says it is renegotiating its contracts with the carmakers, but I don't think it's going to make any substantive difference.
No, I don't expect Obama to lift a finger to restrain the unions, especially not after requiring that all states which conduct construction projects using porkulus money must pay union wages to the workers on those projects.
The unions supported Obama in the election, and Obama will reward them with more money and more power, which will only make the economic recovery more difficult as the unions sop up the cash, paying themselves higher-than-market wages and benefits.
It's sad that only Wagoner got the axe, when there are so many more people who need to feel its whispering passage also.
I was riding the parking bus to the terminal yesterday. Near me, a scruffy man in his 20s sat, playing with his Crackberry. He had a scraggly beard, stupid-looking glasses (aren't they all, these days?) and a T-shirt with a large picture of Chuck Norris on it, and the words:
"I Don't Need a Weapon. I AM One."
He had his boarding pass in his hand.
Sadly, he was not going to the same concourse I was. I had a strong urge to follow him through the security screening area and watch what happened to him when the Transportation Safety Administration agents read his shirt.
TSA people are not paid very much. They are especially not paid to have a sense of humor. They ARE paid to be paranoid and suspicious of everyone, which is why I get along very well with them. What they get paid to think about, I just think about as a hobby.
For example, when I got into the terminal, the fire alarm was screaming. It had been screaming for 20 minutes, driving the ticket agents bananas. A barely-intelligible PA announcement mumbled periodically, saying that the fire alarm was being tested, and that we should ignore any audio or visual fire warnings.
"Hmmmm," I thought. "Now would be the perfect time to start a fire."
I didn't, of course, because I hadn't come prepared. Besides, I had a plane to catch. Maybe next time, though.
But see, those evil thoughts are best kept on the inside, where the TSA people cannot see them. Certainly one should not wear them on one's clothing.
If you're going to be evil, you should not advertise it unnecessarily. And if you don't mean to be evil, you sure as hell should not act like you want to be. Because the TSA will just corral you and herd you off to a windowless room where they will quiz you for hours on your poor fashion sense.
I don't know this from personal experience, of course. But I have seen it happen occasionally to people who forgot Rule Number Two: Do Not Fuck With The TSA. Because they will educate you very quickly on what is permissible and what is not permissible to do, say, possess, or wear when you are traveling by civilian passenger aircraft in this sector of planet Earth.
And it is pretty much guaranteed to be unpleasant.
After hearing "Paper Planes" by M.I.A., I just randomly clicked some links to her songs on YouTube.
I really like this one. I always enjoy songs that meld the chorus and verses together at the end. Please pardon the video's inappropriate choice of photographs.
I mashed up a a coconut outside by the back wall
shoot a pro for eating up my mango
Daddy was home, huntin' up the rubble
Get your mama, quick get the polo (?!)
We had no idea we were cookin' for commando
Everybody coming forward with a truckload
Big head with players on the down low
like a coffee and filled with the info (?)
And now that we rock now, we're macho
and that's what we wanted all along
And that's right, that's the laws of our ghetto
And now we see that things are not simple
I can't have videos made by Sony, yo
Spring films of Rocky and Rambo
Role model from Bollywood to jungle
We learned about using from our heroes
Aviator shades, no winds with the grenade
Kicking out in camouflage and band-aid
Homemade tin records that ricochet
When it's hot, we all make lemonade
Picked out a name and got my new uniform,
girl gladiator, step in the stadium
One next to chick now, talkin' rebellion
cyanide pill hangin' like medallion
And now that we rock now, we're macho
and that's what we wanted all along
And that's right, that's the laws of our ghetto
And now we see that things are not simple
I was in my seat, buckled up, ready to go, when raised voices from across the airplane's center aisle caught my attention.
I couldn't really follow the conversation, because Neurosonic was screaming in my headphones, but the gist of the problem was that a beefy, shaven-headed man in his 40s did not like the fact that the flight attendant was moving his bag to another bin to make more room.
She told him, perhaps somewhat brusquely, that she had to make more room and that where his bag had been stowed created a safety issue.
He mouthed off some more.
She told him to knock it off.
(I was watching with one eye and listening with only one-quarter of an ear, so it was rather like watching a drive-in movie over the fence, from the top of the the next hill.)
The flight attendant went away with his bag and stowed it somewhere. Another came to find out what Mr. Mouthy's problem was. (I think he was just an asshole, which she couldn't help him with, sadly, since flight attendants are supposed to be unarmed. Not pilots, though. He was lucky it wasn't the pilot. Hell, he was lucky I was not the pilot.)
He mouthed off to her also.
An older, beefy, shaven-headed man next to me (Mr. Mouthy's lover? Older brother? Fellow asshole? It was unclear to me) spoke up in Mr. Mouthy's defense, saying that the first flight attendant had been out of line in the way she spoke to Mr. Mouthy.
I looked the other way, because when the Federal Aviation Administration lightning strikes, wielded by the almighty Flight Attendant, I do not want to get hit. I simply want to get where I'm going, with my skin and bags intact.
For you see, both balding men had forgotten Rule Number One aboard civilian passenger aircraft in this sector of planet Earth: Thou Shalt Not Fuck With The Flight Crew. It does not matter if it's the pilot, the co-pilot, the senior flight attendant, or the most junior flight attendant. Do not fuck with ANY of them. They all hold your life in their hands, and if you piss them off, they will make your life very difficult.
Mr. Mouthy did not know this, or perhaps did not care.
The first flight attendant came to talk to him again. She read him the riot act very quietly. He mouthed back very quietly. That was a mistake.
She summoned a gate agent, a large, no-nonsense 40-something woman with an impressive fistful of bag tags, which I'm sure could have done a lot of damage if wielded properly. Sadly, I didn't get to see her wield them.
She ordered him to take his relocated bag out of the bin and come with her, or she would bring the police to assist.
He meekly got up and got his bag and got off the plane. After another ten-minute delay to retrieve Mr. Mouthy's other bags out of the hold below us, the cabin doors slammed, we backed away and took off, sans Mr. Mouthy and his bags.
Remember Rule Number One. Because the flight crew will remind you forcibly if you forget.
THUMP THUMP.
The drinking glasses rattled in the cupboards.
By chance, we were watching Fox News, where they were televising the landing of the space shuttle, live.
That noise we heard was the shuttle passing by overhead. We raced outside to see it, but it was too far up to see in the bright afternoon sunshine.
Still, that was pretty cool.
Decades from now, when humans finally develop antigravity, and chemical rockets are as antiquated as the horse and buggy, we can remember the day we heard the shuttle passing by, so loud, compared to the silent ships of tomorrow, drifting groundward and skyward like soap bubbles.
This is a cute song that I heard at the end of a movie that I was ignoring on television.
This is a very bizarre video. It looks like it was filmed in China. I'm surprised that such Western decadence would be on such public display in China.
But I know a man who has big hair like the man in the video. Of course, the man I know has an enormous braincase. It gives his hair that poofy lift.
The names have been changed to protect the guilty, but I'm reasonably certain that the Franz Kafka International Airport is actually Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR).
Or Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL).
Nope. I recognize that guy with the mustache. It's Newark.
In other news, North Korea is ready to test an intercontinental ballistic missile which could reach the United States.
Good for them. I'm hoping that New Jersey is their first target. Nice New Jerseyite readers of this blog are encouraged to evacuate to sunnier, politer climes. All other New Jerseyites are advised to pay no attention to the North Koreans until it is too late.
My client told me today that they are going to offer replicas of Captain Kirk's command chair from "Star Trek" in their loyalty points catalog. Apparently a company is making them now, for $2700 apiece. My client's customers earn loyalty points, like airline miles, for buying certain products. They can cash them in for goodies from the catalog. This chair is one of them.
My client is buying a few of them and will store them in the warehouse where I am working.
I will have to get a picture.
I myself will be more interested when they begin selling a working phaser. Or a live photon torpedo. Although delightfully droll and antiquated by Martian standards, I enjoy such trinkets, because they have some utility. Something like taking your great-grandfather's flintlock fowling piece out for an afternoon of hunting.
And if my neighbor S's broken leg was not enough to ruin her month, she found out from the exterminator that termites have moved from the trees over her house into her attic, and have done thousands of dollars worth of damage.
Keep in mind that only a few months ago, both of S's dogs died within a few weeks of each other...one from old age, and the other from a broken heart (missing its sibling).
And only two years ago, S's husband of 25 years was killed on a scooter by a hit-and-run driver three blocks from their house.
And because of her broken leg, she had to ask my wife to return S's new pet kitten to the shelter where she got him a few months ago after her dogs died. He was too much to handle, and had a nasty habit of running between her legs and tripping her. When she gets back on her crutches, there's no way she can risk having him trip her again.
I think S has suffered more than enough in the past couple of years. I have no idea how she manages.
I need to buy some of Grand Funk Railroad's CDs. They are a classic example of 70s guitar rock.
I was late to a meeting. The group was arguing about when Memorial Day is (the day after they run the Indianapolis 500 race, of course. Duh). The tall, pretty business analyst announced that her birthday was that weekend, too. Just in case any of the group wanted to commemorate the occasion.
"With a moment of silence?" I suggested.
That earned me a whack.
I mentioned recently that I'm not keen on cruise ships, because it seems like a weird, sedentary way to take a vacation. Cooped up in a big metal can, with thousands of other people, sharing germs, eating your way around the ocean in a giant floating smorgasbord before you catch a norovirus and wind up with acute gastroenteritis for the rest of the cruise.
It doesn't seem like that much fun to me.
I'm thinking my neighbor S is not interested in cruises anymore either, after what happened to her.
An organization with which she is affiliated decided to take a weeklong cruise around the Caribbean. She wasn't thrilled at the idea, but they expected her to go, because she's one of the group's coordinators.
So she organized the cruise and hosted the departure party, and they all left on the ship together.
The very next day, she was selling tickets to some event on the ship, when she got up from her table, tangled her feet in her chair, twisted her right leg and fell on it, shattering it in a nasty compound fracture, where the bone is sticking through the skin.
The ship's surgeon set the bone as best as he could, bandaged her up, and they airlifted her to Grand Cayman Island, where they wouldn't take her insurance, but they would eventually operate on her to clean the wound, set the bone properly and stitch her up. After she waited in the emergency room for 8 hours. And after she maxed out two credit cards to pay for the helicopter flight and her surgery.
It was clear that her cruise was over, so she tried to get a flight home. Only there isn't one, from there. So she flew to Miami instead, and checked into another hospital where they WILL take her insurance. There, they operated on her once again to insert metal pins and rods to hold her leg together. She was there for the rest of her cruise week.
Now she's home, sitting in a wheelchair where she'll be for the next two months. After that, she'll be on crutches for at least another two months.
She may never walk properly again, because when she fell, the shattering bones of her leg also sliced through all the tendons and ligaments near her foot, so she can't control it anymore.
And this incident was a nasty wake-up call to the fact that she probably has advanced osteoporosis, because of the way her leg broke.
A good friend of hers who accompanied her on the cruise did not accompany her to Grand Cayman or to Miami, because the cruise line was supposed to send a representative to stay with S through her ordeal. Only the cruise line never did, and so S was alone through all of this until she got to Miami, when another friend came and stayed with her to take care of her.
The cast on her leg is truly impressive. I didn't have time to draw a rendition of "The Last Supper" on it last weekend, but I will do so this coming weekend.
Nope. You couldn't pay me to take a cruise. ;-)
I met a fellow consultant today at my new client. She recognized me from working with me on another project nearly 15 years ago.
I was embarrassed, because I often can't remember people I worked with six months ago. I like to think that it's because I work with so many people in so many places. But I think my memory should be better than it is.
Still, it was nice that she remembered me. We reminisced about our project together so many years ago, and the people we both knew. She rattled off names, and I grasped at fleeting images of faces and places as they flitted by, shaken out like dust from the tattered shreds of my memory.
In the TV series "Quantum Leap," Scott Bakula's character, Dr. Sam Beckett, leaps from life to life throughout history. As a result, his memory becomes "swiss cheese," and he is usually unable to recall most of the details of his real life. He only knows that he doesn't know where or when he has just Leaped, and he knows that he is not who people think he is.
My memory is swiss cheese too, I think.
Am I who people think I am?
Probably not.
It's morally wrong to read instructions, of course. It goes against everything a Martian stands for. The idea of a piece of paper telling you what to do is repugnant. You instinctively know how to operate things, whether it's a stapler or a compressor or a bulldozer. You are a Martian.
Yet I gave in to temptation yesterday, and read the instructions on how to install a pendant light in the bathroom ceiling. (I had already cut holes in the ceiling, installed new metal mounting boxes in the attic, and re-routed the electrical wiring from where the light fixture used to be on the adjacent wall over to where I needed it now.)
And thank goodness I did read the instructions, because as I read, I realized that I had bought the wrong type of lights - they used a candelabra-base bulb (very small) rather than a standard medium-base bulb.
I had to leave for the airport in two hours, so we rushed to Lowe's and found another pair of pendant lights with the correct bulb sockets.
I got one installed before I had to leave. So at least there is light in the bathroom. And we were able to use the beautiful glass shades from the other pair of pendant lights, which is wonderful.
I will finish up THAT job next weekend.
I always thought this song was so pretty and so wistful. Unrequited love seems to be a recurring theme for many humans. They often don't appreciate who they have, and instead they often want someone they can't have. I think that it's basically a hormonal response which ensures the maximum dispersal of genetic material, by making humans retard their sexual activity with their current mate, which in turn increases their desire for sexual activity with a new mate. Never appreciating what they have, always seeking another. It's a nice way to ensure species propagation and a broad gene pool, but it seems to be quite destructive on an individual, emotional level.
Asexual reproduction is so much simpler. But it seldom inspires lovely songs like this one.
...to help themselves.
A friend of mine had spent years helping his ne'er-do-well sister, always bailing her out of whatever trouble she was in, always there to catch her when she fell.
And she never learned. No, instead she learned how to be helpless, how to never become better than the failure she was.
And so finally my friend got sick of it, and moved away to another state, leaving his sister to fend for herself. It was a tough decision for him to make, but he did it because he had to preserve himself and his sanity, regardless of whether his sister could make it without him.
And, shockingly, she learned how to take care of herself without his help. Yes, it was painful; yes, it was scary for her, but she learned.
And un-shockingly, she learned that she felt better about herself. More capable. More strong. More powerful.
Only by suddenly being deprived of my friend's constant help, did she learn that she did not actually need help.
I think this lesson can be applied on the macro level as well, to welfare recipients. To individuals, and to entire countries.
Stop giving people welfare, and they will learn to fend for themselves.
Stop giving countries foreign aid, and they will learn to fend for themselves.
And they will also stop hating you for being so helpful, when you were strong and they were not.
Remember after 9/11, when the Federal Flight Deck Officers program (FFDO) began? The Federal Air Marshal Service began training commercial pilots who volunteered to carry guns in the cockpit. Those pilots who wanted to arm themselves to help prevent a terrorist from taking over the plane, could do something to stop such an attack.
There are rumors that the FFDO program is being strangled, with its funding being shifted into more inspections of pilots.
The TSA denies it.
I certainly hope the FFDO program isn't being curtailed or canceled. If passengers aren't allowed to carry weapons to defend themselves (as they were up until 1973), somebody should. If the government and the airlines force passengers to be helpless, than it's the government's and the airlines' responsibility to protect those passengers.
This song makes me laugh. Jason Darr is spot-on in his criticism of the manufactured "stars" in the music industry today. The reference to Saturday Night Live is about Ashlee Simpson's very obvious screwup in 2005, but he could be talking about any of them... Britney Spears, Jessica Simpson, Paris Hilton (who has tried singing), Miley Cyrus, or any other number of talentless people who are more famous for their marketing than for any actual accomplishments.
Everything under the sun
Going to hell
In an episode of SNL
Busted on the tv
You ugly girl
You cannot sing
Can't even lip synch
Apparently money
Can even buy you dignity
Never wanna forget
In a couple of days
It doesn't matter what they say
in the press I guess
Am I the only one
Feeling the itch 'cause they're
Giving away the Billboard award
To some phony little bitch?
So what would you know
About how your song goes?
Just let that tape roll
So many faces
Of so many people
Are covered in stupid
And all they wanna do is get in
I know that your parents
Are brother and sister
It's idiot season
So let the hunting begin
Since practice wasn't on the list
Clearly talent doesn't exist
Maybe Joe can buy you
A set of bigger tits
Apologize to the world
And admit that you were wrong
Whose dick did you have to suck to
Get the number one song?
Well who's this little cow
Who's got my elbow in her mouth
To keep the sound from coming out?
I'm sure your daddy's really proud
But he knows what we all know
So many faces
Of so many people
Are covered in stupid
And all they wanna do is get in
I know that your parents
Are brother and sister
It's idiot season
So let the hunting begin
I think the problem with many bloggers, including myself, is that we write about things which make us angry or annoyed. There are SO many things that inspire us to be angry or annoyed in the world. It's hard not to be caught up in that inspiration.
So I'm going to write about something that makes me happy. And that is, doing things which make my wonderful wife happy.
My darling wife is very much a nester. She spends a fair amount of time making our nest a beautiful place to be. She works hard in the yard to plant beautiful flowers and plants, and to make them grow. She works hard in the house to decorate it and to make it a friendly, inviting, and attractive place to be. She prepares wonderful meals for me. She does the laundry, even when she's feeling sick. She takes care of our cats, which is a good thing, because if she didn't, I would probably neglect them unto starvation. I am a bad father.
So I like to do things for my wonderful wife which make her happy, such as work on the house.
She has always wanted a pink house. So last weekend we began painting the house a pretty shade of light pink. (It's the jungle. Pink houses are relatively common, and generally are not considered to be tacky. Generally.)
Unfortunately, the shade of pink that we mutually agreed upon is not the same shade that it appeared to be on the card sample. On the wall of the house, it darkened to a much deeper shade of pink, far darker than we had anticipated.
Now the house clashes with the red brick of the front walkway.
This is a Bad Thing, says my darling wife.
She was very concerned about it. We discussed several ways to change the color of the front walkway, from staining the bricks a darker color, to painting them a lighter color, to replacing them completely.
Nothing seemed like a really good solution.
So I suggested that we repaint the house a more suitable shade of pink.
My darling wife feels badly about it.
I don't. I want to make the house pretty for her. I want her to be happy in it.
If I need to paint the house again, so be it. And again after that, if necessary, to ensure her happiness. Paint is cheap and easy to apply.
(But I draw the line at four repaints.)
Thanks to FM radio disc jockeys who never, ever announce who is playing and what song they're playing, I never knew the name of this tune, nor did I know who recorded it.
Yet the chorus is instantly recognizable. And so when they played it on XM the other day, I recognized it, read the display on the radio, and now I know what it's called and who recorded it.
Baltimora is Jimmy McShane, from Northern Ireland. Sadly, this was his only hit, I think. A true one-hit wonder.
My current client allows streaming audio on their network. I think this is because they have massive processing power and bandwidth on their network, because most of their business comes in via their website. Anyway, it means that I can listen to XM Radio as I work.
I was listening to National Public Radio, which is unusual, because their bias irritates me too much to listen to them regularly. I think I had gotten tired of the jangly guitars on the Alt Nation channel, and so somehow I wound up on NPR.
The NPR West Coast program, "Day To Day," ran a story (the link is here, you can listen) about how the economy has hit families hard, and has forced some of them to become homeless. This story was about a man, his wife and three children, who now live in a motel in Southern California. On its face, their situation was sad. But the more I listened, the angrier I got... not at the family's plight, but at the flaws in the story and the way the reporter was trying to portray them.
The whole story was trying to paint them as victims of the current economy, and to show how the children were suffering from lack of a stable home life. Yet the worst they could come up with was that the girl has no privacy, and has to do her homework sitting on her bed, balancing her book in her lap. Oh, the horror! Oddly, they didn't mention the younger 8-year-old brother at all. I thought that was interesting. Perhaps he's doing just fine in school. No sympathy to be had there, then.
This is why I don't listen to National Public Radio. Their conceited mindset is just too annoying to bear.
Oh, and the show, "Day To Day," has been cancelled. Friday is their last day.
I can see why.
So now I'm pissed off and writing about it. It's my own fault, of course. I chose to listen to NPR, against my better judgment. I'm all about personal responsibility. I blame myself for allowing myself to be irritated.
Perhaps that's the measure of a good radio story, is how much of a response it elicits in its listeners.
In that respect, it was a good radio story. In almost all other respects, it was a miserable, stupid story, and it made me angry that I wasted 8 minutes of my life listening to it, and 10 minutes of my life writing about it. And that should make YOU angry too, because you've wasted 5 minutes of your life reading about it. ;-)
There, I feel better. ;-)))))
Natasha Richardson, actress wife of actor Liam Neelson, died of a brain injury after falling on the bunny hill at Mont Tremblant, a Quebec ski resort north of Montreal.
There are so many other actors and actresses who would make the world a better place by dying. But no, it had to be her.
It's always the good ones who die before their time.
The hotel copy of the McPaper (a.k.a. USA Today) had an article about this book. It's called "Terminator and Philosophy," edited by William Irwin, Richard Brown and Kevin Decker.
Work at my new client is going well. They seem to like me, and I am busy being productive.
I am uploading 400+ documents into Microsoft Sharepoint, a file-sharing website that claims to eliminate the need for network drives. You can assign metadata to documents, and that's what I'm doing. There are two ways to do that:
Sadly, I am not allowed to use method #2, because I lack the plug-in to do it. And the only person who can help me get it is out this week. So I will do it the slow way, and be finished with that task tomorrow. It doesn't matter, really - I get paid the same.
I had a nice meeting this morning with one of the business analysts. Later, another BA came over and began asking me questions about pricing setup. I had to plead ignorance, because pricing is quite tricky, and it's been eight years since I took a class in it. I've forgotten most of what I once knew, and I would rather not hazard a guess which would be incorrect. She said that was fine, she was just making sure she used whatever knowledge resources she could find, before paying money to bring in another consultant. She said the first BA had been saying nice things about me, after our morning meeting.
That was very pleasing to hear.
President Obama declined an invitation to speak at The Gridiron Club's annual dinner on March 21st, a by-invitation-only gathering of the United States' 65 most powerful media figures, in Washington DC.
He's the first president in 124 years, since Grover Cleveland in 1885, to refuse to attend the Club's dinner during his first year in office.
Obama said it conflicted with his daughters' spring break plans in Chicago. He's sending Vice President Joe Biden to speak at The Gridiron Club instead.
I think that's hilarious. After all the hype and propaganda that the media put out for Obama to get him elected, he thanks them by spurning their elite members. They served his purpose, and now they don't merit his attention.
How deliciously ironic.
Recently the Rocky Mountain News stopped publishing in Denver, after 150 years.
Now the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has died a merciful death after 146 years. It is reduced to a web-only presence, which will soon vanish completely, I think.
"“Tonight will be the final run, so let’s do it right,” publisher Roger Oglesby told the newsroom" [of the Seattle P-I].
I said to myself, "Why start now? Doing it wrong is how you ran yourself out of business."
I have no sympathy for the old media. They are dying because they are irrelevant. Because they presume to be the arbiters of news, of what's important to think about, and worse, what you should think about it. They routinely present a liberal point of view which is quite out-of-step with reality, and with the rest of the world. And that is why their readership is plummeting.
The Tribune Company, owner of The Chicago Tribune and The Los Angeles Tribune, is bankrupt. The Minneapolis Star Tribune is bankrupt. Philadelphia Media Holdings, owner of The Philadelphia Enquirer and The Philadelphia Daily News, is bankrupt. The New York Times recently sold off half of its building to raise cash to keep operating.
They all deserve to die a thousand miserable deaths. And with their deaths, the media marketplace will become freer and more balanced than ever before. The power to decide what news is, and how to present it, is shifting from the old media to the people themselves, the people who once "consumed" the news that the old media saw fit to supply.
It's a good time to be alive.
This is one of my favorite Erasure tunes.
I chose this particular video because in it, Andy Bell looks fairly normal. ;-)
I was very surprised to learn today that AIG, the massive insurance company of which American citizens now own 80 percent, paid out insurance policies on toxic debt to many people, many times over, on the same investments which went bad.
How is that possible? Because "investors were allowed to buy insurance on bonds they didn’t even own." (See page 2 of the article.) And so for a single investment, AIG accepted insurance premiums against that investment going bad, from dozens of investors.
That's like AIG selling me a life insurance policy on you. And selling the same policy to all your relatives. And to all your friends. And so when you die, the insurance company pays all of us, not just your bereaved spouse.
That's ridiculous, of course. Your life is only worth $50,000. Or $500,000. Or a million. Depends on who you ask, really. (In time of war, unless you're a soldier, your life is worth exactly nothing. Check your insurance policies. Most say that the policy does not apply to acts of war.)
But during peacetime, there IS a limit to the monetary value of your life.
Not in AIG's playbook, though. Apparently there's no limit to the value of an investment. And so they happily charged insurance premiums to whoever wanted to pay them, and they didn't care how many policies they sold on a single investment.
That's amazing.
And who do we have to thank for such chicanery? Congress, says the article. And former President Bill Clinton.
Very interesting.
But the rules don't apply to artists, of course. Especially deadbeat artists who quit making car payments and then mutilate the car.
I think Chrysler should send someone around to explain to her the concept of "pay your bills or return our property in good condition." With a baseball bat.
Then, of course, universal healthcare can take care of her.
(I wonder, will there be universal funeral care, as well? It's the next logical step. It's already been done, back in the Middle Ages. It was called "dump the bodies in a mass grave.")
Today I start a new project for a few months in Cleveland, Ohio.
I'm always nervous when I start at a new client. It's the first day of school, and I am the new kid.
But I've been here before. I know this client, from work I did here several years ago. Some of the people I worked with are still there, they tell me. I may even remember them (but probably not).
So why am I nervous?
Just because.
I'm sure everything will go fine. By the end of the week, I will be "in the groove," happy and productive again.
A friend of mine said he was going to do something, and the reason he gave didn't seem to add up. I guessed at his real reason for doing it, and filed it away for future reference.
A month later, he told me a little more about what he was doing. I pressed him for details, and what he told me (without actually saying it) helped fill in the blanks.
My guess at his real motivation for doing it was correct.
I smiled to myself.
I think human psychology is interesting, if a bit twisted and randomized. People often do things, and then explain away their reasons for doing them. They seldom state their real reasons for action, especially if what they are doing is difficult or painful. They may even believe their rationalizations. It's interesting to observe.
I would enjoy being a psychologist.
Or a detective.
For some reason, I am well-liked in the real world. I expect it's because people don't really know me very well. ;-)
I sometimes attend meetings of clubs that my darling wife belongs to, to show support for her and to participate with her in things she likes. It's not that I'm terribly interested in those things, but I do learn useful information now and then. And she likes that I attend.
I have skipped the last few meetings of one of her clubs. And oddly, those club members kept asking my wife where I was.
So I decided to go this week. And I was pleasantly surprised by the warm welcome I got. After all, I'm not a member of this club, and these are not my friends - they are my wife's friends.
But they were glad to see me anyway, and I got hugs from several people.
Perhaps these are my friends, and I am too stupid to see it.
Perhaps I belong anyway, even though I'm not a member.
that Sarah Palin's pregnant teenaged daughter broke up with her boyfriend.
During the presidential campaign, they had professed their desire to get married.
Now that it no longer matters, of course, they're not so desirous. ;-)
This one always makes me laugh. I like the energy of it.
I had always pictured the singer as a brunette (which I now see that she is), but I didn't picture her as a plump one. Somehow the song seems even funnier this way.
And as a consumer, you are required to accept your miserable fate, and you must subject yourself to be bombarded by advertising from every quarter.
Including this space.
That is, until alien technology retrieved from crashed UFOs allows advertisers to beam images and compulsions directly into your brain, completely bypassing those old-fashioned and inefficient advertising technologies like radio and television and print.
Actually, a modified tractor beam could merely yank all the cash out of your wallet, and to hell with the advertising. That's a much more efficient mechanism for the transfer of wealth from you, the poor (and growing poorer) consumer, to the wealthy media companies and their advertising clients. It would be more interesting to watch cash flying through the air, winging its way across cities and towns and countryside to various collection points, than to cheat and merely siphon money electronically out of your bank accounts, like the government and the stock market does.
But I digress.
Qwaider suggested that it's not necessarily an evil thing to "monetize" your blog. I disagree. I think it's completely evil, and therefore it is forbidden, and therefore it is attractive.
Not because I'm looking to make money. The pittance that I could earn here would pale in comparison to the money I find in Coke machines, or cash-back money left behind in the self-checkout cash register trays at The Home Depot (my darling wife has found $40 so far).
It's more of an experiment to see what advertising does, and what kind of advertisers would show ads on an alien's blog. Recently I have been put in charge of my company's Internet advertising, and I am learning a lot about how advertising works from an advertiser's point of view. I am creating and placing ads and watching how they perform, and people in the office tell me that incoming sales calls are up.
It would be interesting to see how Internet advertising works from the ad-carrier's point of view. Therefore I've opened this page to some advertising.
If any ads actually display here, I don't care if you click on them. I have trained my brain to ignore advertising on all other web pages, so I would expect that you have trained your brain to do the same.
But if you do notice them, let me know what you think of them.
I went to see my accountant yesterday and give him my tax materials, so that he could prepare my tax return.
We are of a similar mind on many things, he and I. He would make a good Martian. Perhaps he is one, and I simply failed to recognize his secret signs.
We are both concerned about the coming inflation which will result from the US Treasury printing money to fund the Porkulus spending.
I mentioned that friends of mine are buying precious metals.
He said that's risky in itself, since the price of those metals varies based on industrial demand. If industrial production slows drastically, the price of precious metals will drop. As they have already since late last year.
Instead, he recommended buying Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS) directly from the US Treasury at http://www.savingsbonds.gov/. They are securities which are tied to the Consumer Price Index, and their principal amount varies with inflation (or deflation, although you are assured of getting your original amount back, regardless of how much deflation occurs). Since inflation is pretty much assured under the Obama regime, you will get your money back, adjusted for inflation, plus interest paid every six months during the term of the bond. They are also exempt from state and local taxes.
You pay no brokerage fee, since you buy them direct from the government. You can buy 5, 10, and 20-year bonds.
Interesting.
Some of my friends, who have little faith in the US Government, would regard TIPS as a risky investment. They expect the country to disintegrate under the "leadership" of The One.
I don't. Therefore I think TIPS are a better bet than gold or silver.
I'm still collecting lead and brass, though. ;-)
Read this, and see if you don't have the same urge that I do, to smack her. "Deep friendship type of love" is the one that will sustain your relationship for your whole life. And she thinks that's a bad thing.
I have known many women who suffered, in so many ways:
Those women suffered. This woman has no idea what suffering is, I think.
The really sad thing is, there's millions of humans like this, who don't recognize a good thing when they have it.
...since Maytag has recalled 1.6 million refrigerators because they could catch fire. ;-)
Bereft of Martian textiles which repel dirt, I was forced to buy my own terrestrial washer and dryer machines when I acquired my first domicile here. I spared no expense, and bought top-of-the-line front-loading Maytags.
It was later that I discovered that the design of their control boards included a non-removable fuse. If the fuse blew, the entire control board had to be replaced, at a then-hefty price of $300, or about one-quarter of the cost of the entire unit. I learned this from The Maytag Repairman who visited my domicile to perform other repairs on the washer and dryer. He told me that the average life of the washer's control board was three years.
I looked at my watch, and posted an ad for the washer and dryer the next day. I quickly found a buyer, a hotel operator in the mountains who already had several similar Maytag units, and liked them because of their low water usage. (Yes, they use very little water when they're broken, I didn't say to him.) So he was happy to acquire them, and I was happy to get rid of them.
My darling wife-to-be had Kenmore appliances. She liked the washer particularly because it had a huge drum which would accommodate comforters and blankets easily, which the front-load Maytags would not. But her Kenmores bit the dust soon after we married.
At the Sears Scratch And Dent Appliance Outlet, we acquired replacements. And they happen to be Maytags. But they are top-loading, old-technology units, with regular buttons and wind-up timers. The old, proven technology is usually the best.
And they have soldiered on, happily, for several years now, without a fire or flood or other catastrophe.
Perhaps I should put a call in to The Maytag Repairman for a maintenance check.
Just in case.
Maya Alrupragasam is a Sri Lankan singer known as "M.I.A.". I understand that her original "Paper Planes" tune was featured in a movie trailer for "Pineapple Express" and then was remixed for the soundtrack of "Slumdog Millionaire," neither of which I have seen.
The original tune is somewhat lackluster, built around a guitar riff from The Clash's 1982 song "Straight To Hell" from the Combat Rock album. (I think M.I.A. chose that song because it addresses the same themes as her song, poverty among Asian children.) The original "Paper Planes"chorus features gunshots and cash register sounds, but the remix has edited them out, and has added a funky guitar riff and a Bollywood beat. I think this version is much more fun.
I fly like paper, get high like planes
If you catch me at the border I got visas in my name
If you come around here, I make 'em all day
I get one down in a second if you wait
Sometimes I think sitting on trains
Every stop I get to I'm clocking that game
Everyone's a winner, we're making our fame
Bonafide hustler making my name
All I wanna do is ... and a ... and a take your money
All I wanna do is ... and a ... and a take your money
Pirate skulls and bones
Sticks and stones and weed and bongs
Running when we hit 'em
Lethal poison through their system
No one on the corner has swagger like us
Hit me on my Burner prepaid wireless
We pack and deliver like UPS trucks
Already going hell just pumping that gas
All I wanna do is ... and a ... and a take your money
All I wanna do is ... and a ... and a take your money
M.I.A.Third world democracy
Yeah, I got more records than the K.G.B.
So, uh, no funny business
Some some some I some I murder
Some I some I let go
Some some some I some I murder
Some I some I let go
All I wanna do is ... and a ... and a take your money
All I wanna do is ... and a ... and a take your money
UPDATE: For the purists, here is a link to the official video from Universal Music Group. ;-)
I showed my lighthouse to a friend from Rhode Island. She said that it looked just like the lighthouse near her house up north.
In my short experience on this planet, I've had more than a few interviews with people who are in a position to award a contract or to hire me for a task.
The best way to know whether the interview went well is to measure how quickly they contact you afterward.
Any lower response speed than three days, and you probably didn't get the job. Especially if there's no response at all. I don't expect a response after an interview, because to expect a response merely annoys me when a response is not forthcoming. Employers can be quite disorganized, which is usually a reason why the previous person quit, and why they need to hire someone new (you). Or perhaps they're simply rude. But you are still obligated to send a thank-you email or letter to each of your interviewers, to show that YOU know how to be polite.
To avoid worrying about how the interview went, and whether they will hire you:
Then forget about the interview, and begin preparing for your next interview. Each interview is merely a practice run for the next interview. It's important to keep that in mind, so that you stay calm and don't place too much importance on the interview at hand.
If you are meant to get the job, you will get it. If you don't, someone else needs you more.
And you will always wind up wherever you were meant to be, where you can do the most good.
Or, in my case, where I can do the most damage. ;-)
I've always found the concept of lighthouses fascinating. A lighthouse is such a simple machine, with almost no moving parts, and yet it performs such an important service (such as helping ships avoid running aground).
So I built one. It's small, only seven feet tall. But I think it looks fairly realistic, right down to the rotating beacon on top, complete with a Fresnel lens. I placed windows around it in a spiral pattern, to follow the spiral staircase that is normally found inside lighthouses. And it's lit from the inside by a strand of Christmas lights that cascade down the inside from the top. It even has a little door at the bottom, with a brass doorknob (okay, it's an oval-head screw).
I have only to add a handrail around the edge of the top platform.
And a foghorn. ;-)
And then it will be complete.
I only hope that it does not attract a monster.
And this is why.
Though I can't imagine trying to get that thing pregnant. No wonder the victim would not cooperate.
I want to like "Dollhouse." I want Joss Whedon (the show's creator) to succeed. But I'm just not getting into it.
For me, I think it's the choice of Eliza Dushku as the lead. I just can't take her very seriously as "Echo," the uber-agent who gets programmed every episode to fulfill a mission.
Or Fran Kranz as the geeky programmer who runs the lab which programs Echo and her fellow agents for their missions.
And Amy Acker ("Fred" from the "Angel" series) is wasted as the resident doctor who oversees Echo's health. She was delightful in Whedon's show "Angel," but she's wooden in this show.
Oh well. Maybe Whedon will bring "Firefly" back. ;-)
And along with "Dollhouse," I'm un-Tivo-ing "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles." Again, I want the show to succeed because the Terminator franchise is a fantastic one. But personally, I can't maintain the level of paranoia needed to stay interested in episode after episode after episode of killer machines from the future trying to kill John Connor. You would think that just once, just once, one of the Terminators would get lucky. And it would be the end of the show. But no. And I find the cast to be a bit lackluster, especially Thomas Dekker as John Connor. He annoys me, always whining and doing dumb things which would normally get him killed. The show's high point is Summer Glau as Cameron, a Terminator of an unknown type, assigned to protect John. Summer has a background with Joss Whedon, portraying River Tam on Whedon's show, "Firefly." She does "weird" really well. And it's fun to see a pretty slip of a girl wreaking havoc, Terminator-style.
At least "Reaper" is back on the air. I have missed that show. I hope they keep it going. Ray Wise as the Devil is hilarious.
I do my best to ignore daytime television, but as I got myself a cup of ersatz coffee yesterday, Dr. Phil was castigating a suburbanite father who wanted to spend his $300,000 retirement fund (not a very big retirement fund, as long as we're mentioning it here) and take out a second mortgage to send his two daughters to private colleges which cost $40,000 a year.
Clearly Daddy was a moron, and Dr. Phil explained that to him, in about so many words. (I was not clear why Mommy, sitting next to Daddy with a plastic smile on her face, didn't beat some sense into his soft head before they exposed his stupidity on national television.)
Send your girls to state schools that you can afford, Dr. Phil said. They don't need to be going to expensive colleges when they don't have the money. If they can win scholarships, great. But otherwise, be practical, and go to less-expensive schools.
The value of what you learn, and of your degree, will be nearly the same, I think. The value of Ivy-league degrees lies in who you go to school with, not so much in what you learn there. The relationships formed at Ivy-league schools normally carry those students through their careers, no matter how stupid or ill-prepared they actually are. (And many of them are. Exhibit A: the current U.S. President. Exhibit B: the just-retired U.S. President.)
Then I read this article today by Michael Arceneaux, who admits that it was a mistake to take out massive student loans to become a writer. In fact, he was offered the job he had dreamed of getting with his degree, only to find that it did not pay enough to let him pay back his student loans.
Clearly Mr. Arceneaux is a moron as well. Or at least not very good at planning ahead. One of the first things you should do when you go to college is plan to major in something that pays more than McDonald's does. Which journalism generally does not. I learned this early on in my college career. It did not deter me from finishing one of my degrees (in journalism), but I made sure to waste no time trying to find a job in that field, or to try to make a living at it. All of my classmates who tried to get jobs in journalism were still waiting tables years later, hoping for their big break. I've lost track of them all, of course, not that I tried to stay in touch. One of them wound up as a reporter at a TV station in Akron, Ohio, I think. Woohoo. I expect most of them eventually turned to more lucrative enterprises, like selling drugs.
It's one thing to major in something that pays little, if you have the money to spend. It's a feat of idiocy to borrow huge sums of money to major in something that pays little. It's only slightly less risky to borrow huge sums of money to major in something that pays well. Your chosen field might evaporate before you get out of school. Or your grades might not be good enough to get a decent job in your chosen field (I know electrical engineering can be that way).
No, college IS worth it, but only if you go to a college you can afford. If it's a state school, fine, go there. There's no shame in that. Even if it's a two-year college, that's fine, as long as you transfer the credits to a "real" school and finish a four-year degree.
But to take out huge student loans that you'll be paying on for 20 or 30 years is just ludicrous. And parents and high school advisors should tell kids that, before they make a huge mistake that will haunt them for decades.
Unfortunately, your President is incapable of putting two sentences together without help.
It's sad. Remember, Iowahawk pointed out this problem with The One last year, before the election. And Obama's prompter-less flailing is well-documented on YouTube.
I think it's interesting, the sharp uptick in media criticism of Dear Leader in the past week. Case in point, resident ninny David Brooks at The New York Times, who admitted this week that "moderates" like him have been "forced to confront the reality that Barack Obama is not who we thought he was." Ha. Who DID they think he was?
Oh, yes, I remember. The Messiah.
I enjoy Earth music, and a good way to sample a variety of it is through Sirius-XM satellite radio. However, XM tells me that as of next week, web access is no longer free for XM radio subscribers. Instead, you must pay extra. I expected this, since they are flirting with bankruptcy.
Unfortunately, I mostly listen to XM Radio on the internet. I'm rarely in my car. Because I normally travel, I'm not home to use the car much.
So, I have a few choices:
A friend of mine is estranged from her sister, who is a raging alcoholic and drug abuser. I have met that sister... and she is a poster child for the idea that demonic possession is real. You can see it in her face, in her eyes, in her voice, the way her body moves. Something inhuman inhabits that body and animates it.
Perhaps, as an alien, I am more sensitive to such things.
Anyway, this friend had not spoken to her demonically-possessed sister in several years, and had lost track of her. She felt guilty about it. Plus, relatives were asking where the lost sister was. So she placed an ad on a reunion site. I'm not sure how those things work, but out of the blue, my friend got an email from a strange address.
"Why are you looking for me?" is all it said.
My friend began to reply in a friendly manner. I said, "How do you know who that is? Confirm her identity first."
So she did. "Are you [insert name here] of [insert place of origin here]?"
A couple of days later, the reply came. "I am [insert name here], your sister."
And that was all.
A couple of days after that, another email came. "I'll ask the question again: why are you looking for me? And who else have you given my email address to?"
Not terribly friendly, but then, she IS demonically-possessed. And probably being pursued by creditors.
My friend replied, saying simply, "Your uncle was looking for you."
And then her reply bounced with a Spam notification. Demonically-possessed sister had flagged my friend as spam without even waiting for an answer.
Psycho. My friend is much better off without her.
UPDATE: I forwarded my friend's email for her, to her sister, thinking that it would make it through. Nope. Her sister had shut down her email account completely.
Psycho.
For the first time since Microsoft integrated Internet Explorer into Windows in 1997, the latest build of Windows 7 lets you remove Internet Explorer.
Wonders never cease.
Now, will they start shipping Windows with Firefox, or Safari? That will be proof that the world has indeed ended.
A misuse of the 911 system calls for a beating with a metal police flashlight, at the very least.
Where is Judge Dredd when we need him?
"The Mentalist" is a wonderful show on CBS, airing Tuesdays (tonight!) at 9 Eastern. It's got a terrific cast and I love their interaction. Everyone gets some screen time, and we slowly learn about them, not so much about their past, but about their personalities.
I like it because it's generally a kinder, gentler "CSI". It's not only about figuring out how some horrible crime occurred, but about catching the perpetrator by using good old fashioned police work and some rather amazing intuitive guesses. I like the fact that the crimes are not discussed in great detail so as to give stupid people in the audience ideas about how to commit the same crime in real life. It's more about how the police work together to gather the facts and to deduce what happened, and to finally trap the perpetrator into admitting his or her guilt.
The thing that I enjoy most, though, is Tim Kang playing Kimball Cho, one of the police investigators. He's basically channelling Jack Webb from "Dragnet" the entire time. And Jack Webb was THE quintessential detective. His trademark was his dry, deadpan delivery and "just the facts, ma'am" demeanor. Tim Kang honors Webb's memory with every episode of "The Mentalist."
The Dow is down below 7,000, the first time it's been that low since 1995. Wah. I remember 1995. Big deal. I remember when it hit 14,000 in 2007, and I thought THAT was scary, because I knew it was not based on reality.
It irritates me more that the government is giving AIG another $30 billion, because they've pissed away the other three bailouts ($85 billion in September, another $38 billion in October, another $34 billion in November, and now another $30 billion, totalling $186 billion). Since they got busted for their big vacation retreat in October, it doesn't look like AIG has changed anything about their spending or their business plan. There is no such thing as "too big to fail." AIG just posted the largest quarterly loss of any U.S. company in history - nearly $62 billion in 4Q 2008. And yet the government gives them more money. Ridiculous.
I laughed the other day when a friend of mine told me that all her 401k contributions that she made in 2008 had vanished. She would have been better off had she just set the cash on fire, she said. Now she's buying precious metals.
I agree. I'm stashing all my cash in a safe place. And I'm buying other precious metals, like brass and lead (principal ingredients in ammunition). ;-)
My friend came home from the psychiatric ward the other day. I'm told she's doing better but she has her ups and downs. They have her on a cocktail of drugs, and she goes back every weekday for six hours of outpatient therapy. It's a long-enough drive up there that her husband drives her there, then goes and reads in the library for six hours, then goes and picks her up and takes her home. Luckily they're both retired, or this schedule wouldn't work. ;-)
I'm glad she's doing better. "One day at a time," says her husband.
I'm not sure who I feel sorry for more, though... her, or him.
In the jungle, creeping, tangly vines infest the sandy soil. They launch themselves out of the ground at a rate of several inches a day, and climb up into trees, coating them with a green leafy net which feeds the vine... and which strangles the tree.
Normally the vines are kept in check by regularly-scheduled forest fires. Sadly, humans deem fire to be a bad thing, and therefore they suppress fires whenever they can. This lets the vines spread unchecked.
Other than a flamethrower, the only tools available to fight the vines are:
The hedge trimmers rely on a back-and-forth sawing motion of two toothy blades to cut the vines. Unfortunately, many vines are woody, and they tend to jam in the blades' teeth, or they break the gears that drive the blades (unless the gears are metal, which is unusual).
The chainsaws, rototillers and brush hogs rely on spinning wheels to deliver their power. The vines, when cut, tend to wrap around the wheels and stop them, even the brush hog.
Nevertheless, we rented a brush hog this past weekend and, with much toil, cleared about a fifth of our vine-covered lot. It was brutal, heavy work.
Now a happy piece of our lot looks like a viney moonscape; the ground is littered with trails of vines which come up out of the sand, meander along for awhile, then disappear beneath the sand again. The rototiller will have to cut those. But at least there are no longer huge, man-high mounds of vines with dead trees under them.
Now that the vines are mown flat to the ground, we can keep them down with the regular lawnmower.
We hope.
If not, perhaps my darling wife will let me use the flamethrower.
We're in the middle of remodeling our master bathroom.
Our bathroom is big enough that we decided to take a chunk out of it and make a linen closet, since we didn't really have one. The blue drywall is the back side of our linen closet, which faces into the bedroom.
I added a knee wall to separate the toilet area from the sink area. How to make it stable? Anchor it to the wall, and anchor it to the floor in a zigzag pattern with Tapcon concrete screws. If you don't do the screws in a zigzag pattern, it WILL wobble. I found that out the hard way.
We had our plumber cap the water and drain lines in the wall where they used to be (straight ahead in the picture), and he put in new ones to the left, behind the new blue drywall. The old laundry room used to be on the other side of that wall, so water and drain lines were already there. Easy enough to use.
When we had the walls open, we let one of our residents out into the room.
