| O.O |
[Jul. 9th, 2009|02:17 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  amazed | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Beatles: Magical Mystery Tour | ] |
Whoa. |
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| While feeling very much like a Dinosaur |
[Jul. 8th, 2009|01:50 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | cheerful | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Kansas: The Pinnacle | ] |
Overheard while walking through a cloud of pot smoke issuing from a neighbor's apartment: "I hate, like... I hate, you know, when... like..."
*****
Caramba! Mexican Bomb Hammers! I can only assume that it's either Darwin's Birthday, or else some deranged festival in honour of Thor.
*****
They saved Michael Jackson's brain! |
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| St. Osawatomie Preserve Us! |
[Jul. 7th, 2009|03:55 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | cheerful | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Kansas: Borne on Wings of Steel | ] |
Astonishingly, it's being treated as major news that Social Security numbers can be guessed. I thought that was common knowledge. The first three digits show where your card was issued* or (after 1988) where you were born, the two in the middle show your date of issue if before 1988, and DOB if after, and the last four are your unique ID. There are only 10,000 possible results if date and place of birth (or date and place of issue) are known. We were told the outlines of the system in high school, and it's only become more predictable since then.
I suspect that the government is trying to build support for some sort of change in the system. Like as not, it's for no good purpose, or they'd just out and say it without the buildup.
* except (and I have no idea why) for railroad workers who got their numbers in the initial issue in the 1930s. Railroad workers (my great grandfather was one) have a special code.
*****
I had occasion to go to Wal-Mart Sunday. While I was there, I took a look through their generally unpromising CD aisle. They had a triple set of Kansas albums for $9. You get 'Kansas' (aka 'John Brown'), 'Masque' and 'Monolith', all for $9. They weren't even that cheap on vinyl. |
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|
| Woo! |
[Jul. 4th, 2009|12:47 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | schadenfreude! | ] |
Woot! Palin's quit, and left it to her successor to sort out the mess. This should effectively wreck any chances of running for national office in future. My Fourth is much more festive now :) |
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|
| The Fourth of July |
[Jul. 4th, 2009|02:20 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  discontent | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean. | ] |
So, the Fourth of July... always a day of mixed feelings. On the one hoof, jingoism comes naturally to me. I'm quite comfortable covering everything in bunting, roaring out "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean"*, and rejoicing in the fact that 90% of mankind justly dreads our wrath. On the other hoof, we took up arms against our Annointed and Undoubted Sovereign, George III. Lasting good cannot come of that. The seeds of the Republic's destruction were sown at the moment of its birth.
*Yes, I know the words. |
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|
| I lawled. I lawled and lawled. |
[Jul. 3rd, 2009|03:34 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  lawl | ] |
Swiped from ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) woyro:
Farrah Faucett died and went to heaven.
At the Pearly Gates, Saint Peter told her that since she had been such a nice person, she would be given one last wish before passing through the gates
Farrah said, "I wish that all the world's children were safe." |
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| You Can't Always Get What You Want |
[Jun. 27th, 2009|03:57 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | cheerful | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Stones: Paint it Black | ] |
It's been a deathy week for celebrities. Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, and the remaining bits of Michael Jackson, all at once.
*****
When I was in high school, every guy that I knew seemed to have that one particular poster of Farrah Fawcett. Except me - the poster than hung over my bed was a cute chestnut mare.
*****
I'm amazed at all of the people having a fit over Jackson. One of the cow-orkers was so distressed he had to go home early. Even at the height of the man's career, I always considered him a fairly minor musician, albeit a spectacular stage presence. That's my loss, I suppose - everyone else seemed to find him deeply impressive. I'm used to holding the minority opinion by now.
The best Jackson quip I've heard so far is that as his body is largely made of plastic, there are plans afoot to melt him down into MJ dolls for little boys to play with. It's only fair.
Earlier, some pre-teen boys were out by the pool doing the 'Michael Jackson' dive, which apparently consists of singing a few bars of a Jackson song in a fakey falsetto, then staggering around groaning and clutching your chest before toppling dramatically into the pool.
*****
The Price is Right Blog. I think I may have actually beaten austin_dern to this.
*****
Woot! ESPN is going to show the game against Brazil live!
*****
Only Detroit could manage to have a scandal involving sludge. |
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| Some things you're never really prepared for |
[Jun. 25th, 2009|04:02 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  "Playmate Struts"?!? | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Styx: "Misto Roboto" | ] |
So, Obama blew up some 80 Taliban and their relatives at a funeral in one swell foop, apparently as a reprisal for their assassinating one of 'our' tribal chieftains. I'm sure the resulting round of funerals will be sparsely attended :)
*****
It looks like our guys actually beat mighty Spain to get into the finals in the soccer championship. I'm still confused as to how we managed to get into the semi-finals when we lost two of our three games. I'll also admit I never even heard of the Confederations Cup until about a week ago. Sadly, there don't seem to be any Columbus Crew players on the team, not even the mighty HedgeDuck.
*****
The President of Zambia gets peed on by a monkey. I admire his aplomb.
*****
Oh, my...
I can't even think of anything to say here. My brain has locked up. I am so going to have one of these! |
|
|
| This Land |
[Jun. 22nd, 2009|01:13 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | LOL! | ] |
This Land will Surely Vote for Me!
I somehow missed this until now. It's pretty much a dead-on parody of the 2004 election campaign. If you weren't in the States, and were wondering what you'd missed, this is it in a nutshell. |
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| Death to the Dictator! |
[Jun. 16th, 2009|03:26 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | schadenfreude | ] |
Madmanjihad seems to have decided that it would be an opportune time to travel abroad. With any luck he'll make his return in handcuffs, to stand trial and be executed by the free Iranian people. |
|
|
| Ranty, Ranty, Bo-Banty! |
[Jun. 14th, 2009|08:20 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  Ranty | ] |
A proposal for a way to make Flint liveable again. It's a superficially sensible plan, but I don't think they've given sufficient consideration to how the people from the surviving neighborhoods are going to react to having slumdwellers moved into their areas. The people left in the decaying areas are generally the most ignorant and least civilized of the lot. I think plopping them down in the suburbs is just going to result in another round of middle class flight. A possible solution might be for the city to guarantee housing resale values for those having the poor resettled among them.
I can't help but note as well that when the W administration proposed resettling people from the destroyed areas of New Orleans and letting those areas return to nature, it was because they were racist and meanspirited. When the O administration proposes doing the same thing, it's because they're visionary and green. However you spin it, it's really obvious that a lot of cities have no real reason to exist anymore, at least at their present sizes. The jobs are gone, and the poor are left behind at loose ends.
*****
It was interesting that Luca de Montezemolo was chosen to wave the flag at LeMans. I'm sure the ACO would really like to have Ferrari back again. Coincidentally or not, a lot of Speed Channel's history spots this year tended to focus on the Ferarri/Ford battle of the '60s. I suppose it might just be the spirit of the times. That too started out with lots of ritual threat displays and apocalyptic warnings, but it ended up as one of the great ages of motorsports.
I'm struck by how badly in disarray the FIA appears. They've spent the past few years stumbling from one fuckup to the next, but nothing like this season. I'd intended to write about this at the time of the Malaysian GP, but didn't get around to it. I have a strong sense that there's no real master plan within F1 anymore, or possibly two or more competing master plans. Malaysia really crystallized this for me.
If I lived in Malaysia, and had bought a ticket for that race, I'd be livid. Everyone knew it would rain in the late afternoon. It does that every day there. Everyone warned them about that. And despite that, they decided to schedule it then anyway so they could maximize the European TV audience. That might make some sense, except that they keep pulling out of European venues to hold races in places like Abu Dhabi and Bahrain. France itself, the birthplace of Grand Prix racing, no longer has a race. Holland is gone. Imola's gone. Britain and Belgium barely managed to keep their races by spending tons of money. And in all of these places, it wasn't that the track wasn't up to standard, or that the fans had lost interest. F1 pulled out because the press and entertainment facilities weren't suitable for modern corporate and media events.
It's becoming increasingly plain that they're not really interested in the audience at the track - they're promoting the television and advertising end of it. Those are lucrative markets, to be sure, but ultimately they're based on the sport itself remaining healthy. If you make tracks pay a king's ransom for you to bring your series there, then you screw their ticket holders over by running the race under conditions that disadvantage those fans for the sake of the television market, that doesn't maintain a healthy sport. That part I can understand at least - that's common rapaciousness. F1 wants the tracks to bear the costs, while they reap the profits. It's immoral, but it's rational.
What I can't understand is the attitude that while Europe is their core market, they can get away with slowly moving the actual races away from Europe. Do they really think that they're going to maintain interest in the series if people can't go to the race once in a while? Watching stuff on TV is well and good, but it's not the same as the sense of taking part that comes from going to the track.
And none of this even begins to address the arbitrary rules changes, like the medals, and KERS, and the price caps.
On the whole, I think it would be just as well if the manufacturers left and started their own series. I'm not at all sure that the FIA has the good of the sport and the fans in mind anymore.
*****
The 1906 French GP at LeMans. The first ever Grand Prix, organized by the ACF, forerunner of the ACO. Most sports have their beginnings lost in the mist - modern GP racing began right here. |
|
|
| Telegraphic Iniquity |
[Jun. 13th, 2009|08:53 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | cheerful | ] |
An interesting theory on where geomagnetism arises. I'd have to spend a few hours reading my old physics books to even hope to do approximations, but on first impression there hardly seems enough water in the oceans to do that.
*****
I wanted devilled eggs, but had no mustard. I made them with the mustard from a can of sardines, and mashed up some sardine in it too. That turned out remarkably well. According to Wikipedia, that's close to a common German variant made with anchovies. The FlasterQat likes the filling, even though he's not ordinarily a great mustard-eater.
Wikipedia claims that devilled egg plates are peculiarly American. Poking around a bit turns up none priced in pounds - they're all USD. That seems odd to me. Devilled egg plates are such a common piece of serving ware here. Wal-Mart sells them, even. Giant Weasel has disposable plastic ones for carry-ins.
*****
I chipped one of my plates the other day. Churchill Pottery has quit making Blue Willow, which is a bit of a surprise to me, since that seems to be the universal favourite. Fortunately there are about a dozen other potteries making that pattern, and for some idea I like the thought of having slight variations among my plates. I think that's because my grandmother's set was that way. She had bits and pieces from all over, some quite old, and one serving bowl was the red version too.
Imagine if modern copyright controls had been in place in 1790. Willow and all of the other popular transfer wares would never have achieved their iconic status. It's possibly silly, but I feel very enriched for being able to have the same service that the Victorian middle class prized. It makes me feel connected to the past.
Transfer ware is a member of that class of items that austin_dern was musing upon the other day, that begins as a luxury of the rich, and within a few generations is regarded as a necessity for all. It's hard to understand how poor most people were just 200 years ago.
*****
So, by six hours into LeMans the Audi factory team was already down to only one car that could credibly win. It's six hours later now, and they're still holding on to second, but I don't think they can catch the lead Pugeot. They're certainly giving it their best try.
Sometime I need to attend a 24 hour race. |
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|
| LeMans weekend |
[Jun. 13th, 2009|03:08 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | calm | ] |
So, it's time for LeMans! Speed Channel has a spotter's guide. Lola is painted in an updated version of the beautiful old Gulf livery. I shall still support what's left of Auto-Union :)
*****
It's the fifth anniversary of the Butterfluff's passing. |
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