# 01 Nov 2005, 08:18AM: Meta-Political Thoughts: As election time swings round again, Leonard's ponderings from last year come back to relevance.
# 01 Nov 2005, 09:18AM: How Can It Be?: Listening to the new Franz Ferdinand CD as I turn on my work computer and start getting into the customer service tool. How can it be that life is this awesome?
# 02 Nov 2005, 06:40AM: The Inconceivable:
According to my mom, my dad is actually okay with the fact that I am dating Leonard.
In many ways, Leonard is like my dad. They are engineers with creative side endeavors. They love puns and trivia. They don't drink alcohol. They are well respected in their communities. And they are dependable workers.
Unlike my dad, Leonard gets along with me almost all the time.
But I love them both.
# 02 Nov 2005, 12:12PM: Quotable Quips: Today I found myself quoting Keynes or Galbraith, one of those: "In the long run we are all dead."
# 02 Nov 2005, 12:32PM: Music In My Cube At Work:
I have some sufficiently non-mainstream music in this pile, so I am going to say bah to my insecurities and share the list of CDs on the shelf in my cube here at Salon:
Right now, The Mountain Goats are soothing me. I cannot resist "Southwood Plantation Road", "Game Shows Touch Our Lives", "Idylls Of The King", or "No Children". ....
I am not going to lose you and
I don't know why the songs are soothing, but they are.
Update: I can vicariously feel the hate I would feel in an awful relationship, and hear elegant expressions of it, and I am soothed both by the beauty of the songs and the fact that I'm not either person in this (fictional?) horrible relationship.
I've got you
You've got whatever's left of me to get
Our conversations are like minefields
No one's found a safe way through one yet
We are going to stay married
In this house like a Louisiana graveyard
Where nothing stays buried
And I handed you a drink of the lovely little thing
and
On which our survival depends
People say friends don't destroy one another
What do they know about friends?
I hope that our few remaining friends
Give up on trying to save us
I hope we come up with a failsafe plot
To piss off the dumb few that forgave us
I hope the fences we mended
Fall down beneath their own weight
And I hope we hang on past the last exit
I hope it's already too late
And I hope the junkyard a few blocks from here
Someday burns down
And I hope the rising black smoke carries me far away
And I never come back to this town
Again in my life
I hope I lie
And tell everyone you were a good wife
And I hope you die
I hope we both die
# 02 Nov 2005, 12:37PM: The One Thing I Forgot:
was the one thing I meant to mention. Kris and Leonard: "Idylls of the King" by The Mountain Goats starts with "This place" and yet is not awful. Also includes "And the shrieking of innumerable gibbons."
If I had listened to Scott Rosenberg and Jim Fisher I'd have been turned on to the Goats years ago. My fault.
# 02 Nov 2005, 04:50PM GMT+5:30: Sweet Lyrics:
Reading Vikram Seth's The Golden Gate, a novel in sonnets. I like recognizing the scattered nice (precisely fitted) rhymes, and familiar external and internal locations. I adored A Suitable Boy as I loved Anna Karenina. This one, I don't know yet, but there are some wrenching passages about love:
and
"...Quit bugging
Me, will you, Ed -- I'm sick of lugging
This tragic burden week by week.
Some light refreshment -- so to speak --
Is what I thirst for. Ed, I love you,
But don't exhume this; there's no sense
In scouring ruins. Why condense
The happiness that floats above you
By seeding it with doubt and pain,
Crystals that force it down as rain?"
As Phil talks on, his eyes grow radiant.
Ed thinks of the first time they met.
The weeks have warped the placid gradient
On which his even wheels were set.
Neither the sense, at every meeting,
Of his heart's full and rapid beating,
Nor the abrupt and scalding rush
Of redness to his face, the flush
When he feels Phil's eyes resting upon him,
But something infinite and slow
And tide-like holds his life in tow.
The salt of human love upon him,
To it his leached will yields control,
Whether it stings or heals his soul.
# 02 Nov 2005, 06:38PM: Memento Mori, or, Ashes To Ashes In Your Mouth:
I am listening to Tallahassee over and over, not eating enough, staying too late at work, wanting to see The Weather Man.
It is as though I am so happy, with all of this unexpected good luck, with the poker machine suddenly showing me one cherry and then another and another, that I seek out tragedy, feeling sad defensively and ahead of time, overachieving and trying to reach the next game's defeat early, again.
# 03 Nov 2005, 06:00AM: Links Of The Morning, If Old:
Doesn't a management training program for tech companies sound like a great idea? Also, how to get your resume read if you apply.
Almost three years later, even I have to strain to get the Berkeley-specific humor from my comedy routine during my appearance on Bear in Mind.
# 03 Nov 2005, 04:16PM: Free Ticket To TMBG Concert:
My college friend Camille is now an independent booking agent for musicians. She showed Angel and me around Brooklyn. More recently, she arranged for me two free tickets to tonight's They Might Be Giants concert at Bimbo's 365 Club, which I hear is a nice venue. Anyone want to be my geek-rock companion tonight?
Insta-Update: got someone, namely Eric. Vinay goes to movies with me, Joe goes to comedy with me, and Eric goes to concerts with me, or so it seems.
# 03 Nov 2005, 11:59PM: Good Show, Old Chap:
The They Might Be Giants show was the most fun show I've attended in recent memory. TMBG put on a clinic in effective use of crowd, lights, patter, and sheer rockin'. My slightly heeled boots helped me see over the crowd -- thanks, forecasts of rain!
Wow, John Linnell and John Flansburgh are cute. Do I think this because all rockers look hot on stage? Because I know they must be geeks because they are TMBG? Because they physically fit the stereotypes? Because I associate my attraction to geeks with all the paraphernalia of geekdom, like Linux and Neal Stephenson and TMBG?
Even "Ana Ng," performed in front of a mass of cheering fans who sing along, becomes an uplifting song. And I understand "New York City" much better now.
The opener was fantastic. Corn Mo plays accordion and piano and sings. The old-timey piano reminds me of TMBG or Ben Folds, and the accordion and the lyrics remind me of TMBG or Weird Al. Terrific patter.
Tomorrow TMBG plays a completely different set. I have a strong urge to go.
# 04 Nov 2005, 01:50PM: A Quarter You Can't Understand: Slacktivist, trying to figure out the lowest plausible approval rating for a politician, links to discussion positing "a 27% Crazification Factor in any population".
# 04 Nov 2005, 04:09PM: Start The Editor: A few days this week I've needed some fire and motion.
# 06 Nov 2005, 07:41AM: Reading about Rockin':
I'm hesitant to buy clothing advertising my fandom of a band. I'm afraid of being a poser, and of inflicting bad musical taste on others, and even of sharing some rather intense personal sentiments and thus showing vulnerability.
So, at the Corn Mo/They Might Be Giants show Thursday night, I instead bought a Corn Mo CD and a DVD of the TMBG documentary, Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns. Last night Leonard and I watched Gigantic, me for the second time.
On the second viewing, and upon watching a few music videos in the DVD extras, I find myself understanding some lyrics more than I ever did before (e.g., "Birdhouse In Your Soul" and "She's An Angel").
I laughed really hard at the spoof of The Civil War, and Leonard at the Syd Straw interviews.
TMBG released Mink Car on September 11, 2001 (an event not listed on a huge list of Sept. 11 anniversaries). So we see a lot of video from promotional appearances they made in the days beforehand -- Conan O'Brien, The Daily Show, some local radio gig, and finally, at midnight, a release-party performance at a Tower Records in NYC. Almost every movie or book I see that contains that sort of early-September-2001 buildup does it to counterpoint the sudden tragedy of the terrorist attacks. (Fahrenheit 9/11, predictably, does this to great effect.) But Gigantic doesn't mention them once. I'll have to check the commentary track; I can't believe that two guys who have lived in New York for decades had nothing to say or feel about that day.
# 06 Nov 2005, 07:47AM: Sad And Happy Link Post:
"There is something about getting a tattoo in times of severe stress that helps to alleviate the pain. You can put a finger on it, place the pain instead of fingering the emotional parts of you that are better left untouched."
"What I could not understand for the life of me is why she would not get on one of the other many willing exercise machines: stairmasters, bikes, treadmill, rowers. It was as if she made a pact with satan himself (or the CEO of Precor) that she would not use any other machine if her thighs were kept, you know, 'just right.'"
# 06 Nov 2005, 08:13AM: A James Spader Character Shows Up In Table Talk:
The sticking point for my annoyance: A Salon reader doesn't care whether s/he is harsh towards people who write to Salon's advice columnist.
For this person, someone s/he hasn't met isn't worthy of empathy or mercy, and heartfelt requests for advice by such a person are indistinguishable from fiction.
People who care will always get hurt by people who don't.
Good faith is so easy to dismiss and so hard to regain.I treat [this forum] -- more like a lit-crit class, where the letter is the "text." I don't feel any more obligated to safeguard the [letter-writer's] responses than I would if we were talking about something written by Dostoyevsky or Mark Twain.
# 06 Nov 2005, 08:44AM: You Get To Be a Writer By Writing:
Politicians love to complain about special interests, doctors about patients who dismiss preventive care, and publishing drones about unsolicited manuscripts: the slush pile. In the comments to that post, some readers find it suspicious that literary agents find a greater proportion of usable material in slush piles than do publishing houses. I find it eminently plausible. Writers who know that agents are useful are probably less insane, on average, than writers who submit directly to publishers. Such writers would also try to find agents who would fit them, instead of scattershooting manuscripts at unsuitable but famous publishers.
I had a lovely dinner at Town Hall (Howard and Fremont, downtown SF) on Friday night with a few acquaintances. One asked me what sort of stuff I'd like to write, were I to write for a living. I find it hard to imagine writing longform well, but right now, I can chug along writing one column a week, and if it were a fulltime job I could probably squeeze out three a week that would be worth reading. I have a lot of practice and life experience left to go before I could be a powerhouse like Jon Carroll, who finds something interesting to say and a clever way to say it five times a week.
Anyway, I'm building a clips file and exercising my various writing muscles. So, on the day I have to send something for consideration, solicited or no, reputation and talent (and connections?) will help. Also, someday there will be a thriving "non-white, non-black woman who can make funny" niche, the way we currently have "white woman writing poignantly and humorously about middle-class single women's romantic mishaps" and "non-white man or woman writing soulfully and magical-realistically about food and love" niches.
# 06 Nov 2005, 08:49AM: Comedy = Tragedy + Paradigm Shift: Leonard's relative Nate Oman is always saying interesting things. Example: "I have always had a soft spot for Prometheus. I figure that to a greater or lesser extent we are probably going to basically fail at most everything that we do. That being the case, fail big. Set yourself a monstrous goal like toppling divinity and go down heroically, I say. The remarkable thing about Mormonism, of course, is that it takes the Prometheus story and retells it as comedy."
# 06 Nov 2005, 08:59AM: One Box Mushroom Bites @5.39ea:
The new MC Masala column muses the receipts we acquire without really meaning to.
It is possible to log something, and it benefits someone to do it, and so it is done, in all these myriad ways. And if someone put her mind to it, she could correlate all these records to get a sense of me, a shell or a skeleton, depicting what I ate and borrowed and bought, the contours of my signature.
# 06 Nov 2005, 11:48AM: Bay Buffet: Just talked to my mom about, among other things, Hindu temples in San Francisco. It's good to know which ones are run by Hare Krishna/ISKCON, which ones are rabidly Vaishnavite/Saivite/whatever, and which ones are primarily spaces for intellectual contemplation. The temples in Livermore, Sunnyvale, Fremont, etc., which the nineties Indian diaspora built, are places where kids run around and Indians chant while dripping ghee onto idols. A "Vedanta Center" is more like a garden/bookstore combo where white people learn yoga. In my experience. Mom says I could enjoy the Palaniswami Temple and Shri Swaminarayan Mandir.
# 07 Nov 2005, 07:56AM: East Bay Denizens & Franken Fans Take Note:
Will Franken's one-man sketch comedy performances have traditionally taken place after 9pm, making it hard for people from out of town to get home afterward at a reasonable hour. His current Marsh run, however, includes Sunday night performances at 7pm every week between now and December 3rd. The show lets out before 9pm and it's just a few blocks to the 24th & Mission BART station.
I saw the show last night. Highlights of the set for this run: "Conference Call," the new skit "Voice of God" (which includes a bonus callback to the title "Good Luck With It" bit), "Movie: The Remake/Matrixian Philosophy," "Q&A," and "18th Century." Also, the mix CD "overture" that you hear as the audience arrives and leaves includes a track from "Switched on Bach." So I'd be willing to go again.
This run has the highest per-ticket cost of any Franken show I've seen; then again, there's no one- or two-drink minimum, and for the first time the ticketholder gets an actual paper program. I speculate that any given multilevel performance venue, like The Marsh, uses profits from high ticket prices on select shows to subsidize the low ticket prices for less well-known shows/performers who are trying to build audiences. Franken has gone through that entire cycle, then, at The Marsh.
In other cycle hypotheses, many smart suburban/small-town/small-city Californians I knew went to Berkeley, then moved to San Francisco, and are now moving to New York. I assume they will then move back to smaller towns to have kids. I assume.
# 07 Nov 2005, 05:40PM: Cheering Exchange: "Hold on, I was thinking about a bit you do in your stand-up act and realized you have a mixed metaphor! Here is a suggested fix." "Oh, thanks for noticing! I'll fix that."
# 08 Nov 2005, 10:11AM: Yearly Complaint: I hereby complain about California's Proposition 73 and San Francisco's Proposition H.
# 08 Nov 2005, 04:54PM: RIP: Michael Piller, a man whose work lives on in my and so many fond memories, has died. Via Wil Wheaton's tribute.
# 08 Nov 2005, 05:43PM: Sounds Like Satire But Isn't: "In addition, the board rewrote the definition of science, so that it is no longer limited to the search for natural explanations of phenomena."
# 09 Nov 2005, 02:07PM: Limitations Of The Form, or, "There shall be grief.":
The webcomic Cat And Girl hits it out of the ballpark nearly every time. The author admits to ripping off Calvin and Hobbes but I don't mind; she gets her nuggets of wisdom across very effectively in the form she's chosen. I've been thinking about certain topics that I want to write about yet are really hard to address in a newspaper column. Jon Carroll made some fine hay of this problem: My current "how could I do that in 750 words?" topics include:However, a flamenco piece crying out for limiting subsidies to agribusiness would probably be unsuccessful no matter how talented the performers, and a newspaper column seeking to tap the deepest reservoirs of pity and terror and hopeless love has a probable failure rate of close to 100 percent.
# 09 Nov 2005, 05:44PM: Predictable Praise: Last night, to soothe my angst, Leonard played me some Leonard tunes on the gee-tar. Man, his recent stuff is incredibly awesome. I hope he can record it soon.
# 10 Nov 2005, 01:22PM: Thoughts On Maturity: Hugo Schwyzer on becoming a mature person. Cuts at me the same way Brendan's post on the same topic still does.
# 11 Nov 2005, 12:47PM: Self-Contradiction Comes Free With The Unhappy Meal: I hear complaints about Salon's redesign and feel the urge to dismiss them as the rants of a cranky, vocal minority. But now that Arrested Development is either cancelled or about two inches from cancelled, I am that cranky minority. It was the best thing ever! How dare Fox actually listen to its viewers and give them what they want? They need to teach its viewers what to want by giving them good stuff, i.e., things I like. Bah to stupid taste! The pernicious bollocks that is mass media's stranglehold over certain awesome cultural artifacts pains me.
# 12 Nov 2005, 11:49AM: Alan Alda, Terrell Owens, and Merlin Mann:
Fred Clark mused recently on the use and misuse of the word "professional." The word these days basically means "polite" or "courteous" rather than "competent at one's trade or craft," but commenters argue over whether courtesy is part of certain job definitions.
My particular life hack when it comes to "professional behavior" is dressing in a business-casual manner when I need to have a productive day at work. It tricks me into working. Or it helps.
# 13 Nov 2005, 09:43PM: Salon: A Wacky Retrospective: Gary Kamiya writes a funny and poignant review of Salon's ten-year history.
# 14 Nov 2005, 08:11AM: Map Of Our Past:
When I last saw Eric, we had a wide-ranging conversation. We talked about flatmates, and music (what with being at the TMBG show), and our careers, and the shape of the tech industry. We laughed at the dominance of Goohoo (Google + Yahoo) in sucking available tech talent away from other companies and academe.
I playfully supposed an EU/Airbus-style consortium of minor and obsolete search engines, trying to topple Goohoo's dominance. "I can just imagine Inktomi, Altavista, Excite, Hotbot, AskJeeves, Go, and Northern Light getting together," I said.
Eric said, "It's kind of scary that you can just reel them off like that."
# 14 Nov 2005, 11:06AM: Tetris Is Awesome: I love Tetris so much.
# 14 Nov 2005, 11:50AM: Yep, That's Optimus Prime: I'm transcribing some comics from Spamusement!. It's made me pay more attention to the details and buried assumptions in many strips, e.g., "its not even funny when you do that".
# 14 Nov 2005, 12:51PM: Sky-High Praise:
And I thought Gary Kamiya's Salon retrospective affected me! The letters to the editor warm my heart.
Without equivocation or exaggeration, I can say that I've more or less been on an eight-year quest to join your staff....
I am who I am because of Salon.com.
I thank you like a son thanks a mother....
Flattery will get you everywhere.
I grew up reading Salon, if you can fathom that....
# 15 Nov 2005, 06:22AM GMT+5:30: It Always Comes Back:
I thought Alan Furst's Dark Star would be a science-fiction novel, probably because I confused it with the film of the same name. Now that I'm two-thirds through, I've firmly convinced myself that it's Yet Another Europe-in-the-1930s Spy Novel, and a very good one. I like it much better than I liked Tim Powers's Cold War spy novel Declare, not just because there's no woo-woo fantasy, but because Furst does not hide from the reader important facts and memories attached to his viewpoint character.
Spoilers: Our protagonist, a Soviet journalist drawn/coerced into espionage, travels Europe in the guise of writing for Pravda. Szara witnesses Kristallnacht and reports back to his spymaster:
"In a word?"
"If you like."
"An abomination."
Goldman's mask slipped briefly and Szara had a momentary view of the man beneath it. "We shall settle with them this time, and in a way they will not forget," he said softly. "The world will yet thank God for Joseph Stalin."
Pre-WWII Europe seems to have unlimited reserves of irony.
"And Germany?" [Goldman] asked.
# 15 Nov 2005, 01:38PM: Not So Unthinkable: I wonder how many of these promises their makers kept.
# 15 Nov 2005, 03:57PM: Kris Loves The Bones:
So this MC Masala is for him, and for a great biology teacher.
Mr. Porter reminded me that excellence was a worthy goal, and that finding loopholes and taking advantage of goodwill wasn't the way to get there.
I don't remember his words. I remember that femur landing softly on my lab table....
# 16 Nov 2005, 07:58AM: Request to Morpheus/Sandman/Subconscious:
Please refrain from giving me more dreams like the one last night. Hugh Laurie is fine; anxiety about seeing a Hugh Laurie performance is not. And term papers and transportation anxieties are right out. In general, avoid horribly driven school buses and giant campuses that are supposed to be my high school or UC Berkeley but resemble neither.
I kind of liked the girls who were rapping at me as part of a school project, though.
But someone thinking I was a model? Uh, no.
# 16 Nov 2005, 02:06PM: Exception: I almost never link to Amazon.com deals. But this is a fantastic deal: both full seasons of Arrested Development for $31.94. Via Wil Wheaton's weblog.
# 16 Nov 2005, 04:00PM: Hard Lesson Number 5823675: Sometimes jerks are right and "he is a jerk" is not a sufficient reason to ignore his criticisms and suggestions.
# 17 Nov 2005, 10:44AM: Terrible And Inevitable:
I have jerky customers, but at least I escape constant profane tirades blaming the worker for outsourcing.
And OF COURSE the Indians who work in those call centers will generalize from their experiences, and begin to believe that USians are generally jerks who think they're entitled to everything. People all around the world separate their disapproval of the US government from their opinions of the population of the US. And these rude, foolish North Americans make it easier and easier to let that distinction slip.
# 17 Nov 2005, 04:37PM: Old Anagrams: I Will Alarm Islamic Owls and Hen Gonads still make me laugh.
# 18 Nov 2005, 08:27AM: Christmas Suggestion:
At Susanna's request I hereby link to my wantlist. If you are determined to give me a physical object rather than donate to a worthy charity or simply wish me happy holidays, you might pool your cash towards this sewing machine which would get a lot of use around these parts. I have a pile of slightly torn clothes that only need five minutes' work with a machine (or me being a putz for hours on end) for repair.
Also, I plan on being in San Francisco the week between Christmas and New Year's (partially because I'm attending a wedding in Oakland just before the year ends), so if you would like to socialize that week, I'll be available.
# 18 Nov 2005, 04:25PM: Mike Daisey Makes Me Laugh:
Slate published an excerpt from Mike Daisey's monologue Monopoly!. I may have embarrassed myself by guffawing at length in my cubicle.
By simultaneously exploring the bizarre history of the Manhattan Transit Authority's epic subway system and his own gawkish status as a new New Yorker, Mike Daisey tells the story of coming to a new city to make a new life in the last, hot, glorious summer before everything changed....
Invincible Summer ... can be seen for one night only at Long Wharf Theatre on December 10, 2005.
The Long Wharf Theatre is in New Haven, Connecticut. Could I manufacture a reason to be in New Haven in three weeks? or in Maine in late January? I mean, he's going to talk about the history of New York City transit!Invincible Summer
# 20 Nov 2005, 10:05AM: Mourning Russia:
According to Freedom House (via an article in the Atlantic Monthly, December issue), Russia is now less free than it was in 1990. This week's MC Masala is "Mourning the Russia that liberated me".
Meanwhile, a representative from a summer language-immersion program in Vermont tried to recruit my Russian class. I met him in a campus food court and listened uncomfortably as he tried to sell me on the great leap forward my language skills would take after only six weeks at Middlebury. Finally, I blurted, "Immersion scares the hell out of me. If I'm going to have the hell scared out of me, I want it to happen in Russia."
# 20 Nov 2005, 05:44PM: Post-Thanksgiving Traditions One Week Early:
My family used to see a movie the day after Thanksgiving, and lots of US residents shop for Christmas presents in the three days after Thanksgiving. Instead, I saw the new Harry Potter movie yesterday, and shopped for gifts today. I've finally got a routine for holiday shopping. If I see specific things I think will appeal to someone, or are on Leonard's family members' wishlists, I get them. Everyone else gets a card, a calendar, or a charity donation in their name.
The Harry Potter film was fantastic at atmosphere and suspense, not so hot at the richness of the world, the social relationships that make the universe so textured. And huge subplots went missing. Ah well, someday someone will make seven giant TV miniseries for the books.
# 21 Nov 2005, 03:48PM: Surprise: I still find it surprising that Christmas is on the exact same date every year.
# 22 Nov 2005, 07:01AM: Cute Human Interest Story: Immigrants learn the meaning and traditions of Thanksgiving.
# 22 Nov 2005, 12:57PM: Women Have Hair, Men Don't: Sometimes Steven Frank draws women in a way I find charming. Examples: "she likes peeping on girls" and "if you only had this years ago".
# 23 Nov 2005, 01:15PM: Data Point: I just mailed a package and bought stamps (American Scientists) at the post office, just an ordinary Salon customer/holiday card-sending transaction, and I felt nervous and dry-mouthed as though I were going on a date. What the?
# 24 Nov 2005, 10:59AM: Nonexistent Shirt:
Sumana: Should we dress up for Thanksgiving at your uncle's?
Leonard: No, we don't need to dress up.
Sumana: OK. I'll put on my ripped Poison t-shirt, then.
# 24 Nov 2005, 11:06AM: Happy Thanksgiving!: Jon Carroll's Thanksgiving column, as annually reprinted.
# 24 Nov 2005, 10:08PM: Thanks, Earth: I can report, not just advise, a happy Thanksgiving. Food and fun, as the saying goes. The fun included Taboo, Once Upon A Time, San Juan, Settlers of Catan, Illuminati, and the film Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. That film makes such wonderful Thanksgiving viewing; it only seemed better the second time, with a heart full of gratitude.
# 25 Nov 2005, 02:30PM: Links For A Long Weekend:
Last year, I received a holiday present from an person I'd never met, sent to my work address. It was We, a dystopia by Yevgeny Zamyatin. It was a great gift, catering to my interests in Russia, sci-fi, and politics, despite the fact that I had already read We. So, the moral of the story.
When are church members, especially bloggers, allowed to criticize church leaders? There was a guy named Martin Luther who answered this question rather a while back.
Hugo Schwyzer, in telling us that atonement theory drew him to Christianity, wrote: "I first came to love Jesus because He died for me, not because some progressive preacher told me that he 'successfully embodied a radical new ethic of inclusiveness and community!'." And that reminded me of something Seth had written: "One thing I notice is that only a tiny percentage of people who call doctrines they don't believe inspirational will spend any significant amount of time studying them for inspiration."
Finally, two of the most appealing pop-culture Christians of recent times -- Fred Rogers and Johnny Cash.
# 27 Nov 2005, 08:29AM: Column and Moving Sale:
MC Masala this week recounts the tale of the one and only hickey I've ever gotten.
Also, my friends Steve and Alice Shipman are selling stuff at great prices so they don't have to move it across the country. (Bah to friends moving great distances away! But huzzah for neat opportunities and cheap airfares!) There is awesome stuff.I gibbered that it was a bug bite and looked, pleading, at the nurse. She saw the desperation in my eyes.
# 28 Nov 2005, 11:29AM GMT+5:30: Reading Lists:
An alternative (of sorts) to Personal MBA. Of Mr. Spolsky's tentative list, I've read:
# 29 Nov 2005, 07:08PM: A Champion: Brendan, Ian, et al. are welcome.
# 29 Nov 2005, 09:08PM: Music And Linking: Leonard is practicing a song that intentionally sounds like 1990s alt-rock. It makes me nostalgic every time he plays it.
# 30 Nov 2005, 11:10AM: Nonlucid Dreams:
A few nights ago: I'm a happy little boy, traveling off to war, hanging off the back of a kindly mentor as we ride horseback up to the eastern shores of Canada. Suddenly - Nazis! We're in the Sudetenland! We have to escape! A guy with a dangling cigarette's smoke obscuring his five o'clock shadow helps lead us out. This guy is my colleague from Salon, Mark Follman.
Last night: I'm sitting in a Catholic church, observing services. A really low-level clergyman who looks like Dave Foley with a goatee hassles me and an old woman sitting near me. Then he has me follow him to an office. I receive a Ziploc food storage container that holds some slightly melted vanilla ice cream, and a Country Crock tub of fake butter labelled AVEDA, and possibly some paperwork and scripture. He tells me I am now an officer of the court. I try to explain that I really shouldn't be, what with not necessarily believing in God or Jesus and definitely not believing in the apostolic authority of the Catholic Church, when I wake up.
Oh yeah, and there was the one a few weeks back where I was in a Fry/Laurie adaptation of Wodehouse, complete with farcical discomfiture over a small dog, and then I took a cooking class that proceeded all around me as I rode a conveyor belt through the course.
# 30 Nov 2005, 03:32PM: Smart Dirty Jokes: Funny interview with an actor who's on Arrested Development. And another and another.
# 30 Nov 2005, 04:41PM: Chocolate-Milk-Through-The-Nose Hilarious Aside: "(Ben Folds' desolate "Brick" is also set at Christmastime, yet somehow it isn't regarded as a holiday favorite either.)"
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