Intellectual Poison

Well, I should have known better than to talk about the sleepover with the pup before it happened. I got home from work last night to a message from the farm lady saying that she had changed her mind because she was concerned about parvo.

Now parvo is serious, its a nasty viral disease that can take a healthy dog and put him into the hospital for five days or so if you're lucky. If you're not lucky and don't catch it in time then your dog is going to die. And they don't die gently. Its a very, very uncool disease. But with that said, the likelihood of Nande catching it during a supervised sleepover at the house just a few days before we take her home for good is almost nil.

Here's some more info on it, ParvoFaq.

But the real reason I'm posting about this is to vent some frustration. According to the plan we'd established in the beginning, we should have Nande home now. Instead we have to wait until Tuesday which is when the pups are exactly 10 weeks old. I called her and left a message saying that we will be out after work on Tuesday to pick up our dog. No ifs ands or buts about it because, honestly, this crap is emotionally taxing and we just want to have our dog home.

The lady isn't mean or anything like that. She's just a little barmy and overprotective of the pups and a little overinquisitive into our ability to take care of a dog properly. The way I see it, we wanted a dog, we have the space, time and extra love for a dog and dammit, we're going to get one. P and I will be utterly heartbroken if we don't get Nande but I don't think it will come to that. Although I don't know, the lady is whacked, that's for sure. And the slippery slope thing is maddening. One day its one thing and the next its another.

She's attached to the puppies and giving them away will be extremely emotional for her. I can respect that but its time. The pups are old enough, have learned enough from their mother and its time for them to get into their homes and really begin to bond with their new families. Prolonging the goodbye process will only make it harder on her and the two boys. I feel badly for them but they all knew this was coming and they should been mentally preparing for it all along instead of this stuff.

All I want to do now is get Nande home. Start her life here with us. And not miss out on any more time we can spend with her and her with us.
Luckily we'll have the ultrasound to distract us on Monday and I've got the sweet hot news press releases going out Monday morning so I'll have plenty to keep me occupied.

But come Tuesday, I don't think either of us are going to put up with any more shenanigans. We'll get our dog and bring her home.

The weekend's just about here and things will be hopping all weekend long. Starting with the first sleepover with Nande tonight before she has her final weekend at the farm and the family out there can start their goodbyes. There's gonna be lots more painting this weekend, I think we're tackling the nursery tomorrow and I'm going to do my best to get some riding in as I've been slacking badly on it lately and that just kind of blows.

But Monday, Monday is a big day, huge even! We've got the big ultrasound coming up, the one where the little munchkin's gender is discernible to a practiced eye and maybe even to our eyes. P is still adamant that we not know the sex of the baby but we'll see what the video holds. And yes, I will be posting pics of screen captures to share the speedy growth of the little dude or dudette. I can't wait!

But in the interim, I came across a link to The Singing Babies Company on MeFi today and I think I might be getting the two DVD set soon. P's starting to play classical music into her belly at night right now to start "culturing" the monkey. The whole thing is getting more and more real everyday and its both exciting as hell and scary too. But my books are telling me that my reactions are natural (even the whole, let's turn the house into Fort Knox phase) thus far.

Monday's big, Tuesday's big because we get to take Nande home and then the rest of the week will be great fun!
Oh yeah, I've also got a major big press release going out Monday morning that'll loads of fun to follow up on. Hey Ryan you let me know if you're looking for Linux info. I've got it, lots and lots of it and I think you'll get a good laugh out of the release.)

Um yeah, the sexual abuse by the clergy? Yeah, they'd underestimated the total number of counts by at least half, Study Finds 10,600 Children Abused by U.S. Priests. And I'm sure there will be more coming out as we move forward. These reports are also all self reported incidents by the priests themselves so its pretty extremely likely that they've "forgotten" a few here and there. But hey, what's a little sexual abuse between the God conduit and parish anyway?

But no, let's fight against gay marriage because that's an affront to God! Male priests buggering pre-teen boys is apparently okay but letting two people of the same enjoy the legal and societal benefits of a civil union is pure evil incarnate. The hypocrisy of the church is maddening and the "faithful" are alot like mindless little sheep.

By the way, is anyone going after these priests for the actual crimes that they have committed? They are pedophiles who should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. They need to recognize that they are causing tremendous harm and they are not above the law. Sure, we could allow "God's law" to get 'em back after they die but that's crap. If these priests weren't hiding in church then they'd be thrown in the nastiest prison available and treated like the despicable scum bags they really are. They should be registered as sexual predators and have to live their lives like the freakin' molesters they really are.

Gay marriage is bad? Isn't buggering a 12 year old far, far worse? What's the message that's being sent here?

How about a damned Constitutional Amendment to make it a federal crime to sexually abuse children in your parish? Oh wait, it already is against the law to have sexual contact with minors, regardless of their sex.

Another week of the only this time there's a twist where the order of the day is rhyming or responding in verse. It was far harder to come up with questions than I first thought. Have some fun, take your time, getting the Cheddar up late isn't a crime and over the weekend or next week is fine.

And whoever can figure out what rhymes with orange gets the bonus prize this week!

1. What is your favorite poem or verse? Why?
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor, Rich Man, Poor Man, Beggarman, Thief.

I like it alot
'Cause a bad memory I got
And, the shorter the better
For this week's Cheddar.

2. Describe your family.
My little family is growing
From the kids we've been sowing
The addition of the pup
Will lift us both up
A word or two about my wife
Without her I'd have no need of life
My mother's a pediatric saint
Married to Steve, Hemingway he ain't
My sister and her family live in Maine
Too cold for me, what a pain
My brother's family lives in New York
Too much action, I feel like a dork
And my step-mom lives in Floridada
Near my elderly German grandmama.
I will spare you the rest of the clan
For on and on would have to be the plan.

3. What line in a song or poem do people always screw up that drives you nuts?
Its My Country Tis of thee, Sweet Land of Liberty you barmy drunk dinks.
You come to the country, pretend your patriotism and every thinks
There goes an ass without an ounce of class
And he should remember that his shit still stinks.

4. Are there poems or songs that you intentionally change the words to?
A song once song by a rock band
Had a line in it that I took in hand
I changed the words I'd said
And then I bit off me head
And buried it deep in the sand.

5. Make up a standard limerick about something funny that happened in the last couple of days.
Driving, driving, driving from home to work
Watching, watching, watching a guy be a jerk
He races into openings in his truck
Only to get blocked and stuck
And then drifts behind me again to lurk.

6. How about a haiku about your last intense emotional moment?
A moment of zen
Amid the noise of the world
And peace reigns again.

7. What's caught your eye in the news lately?
Making liars rich for selling books
About making up lies for news
Turning back all dirty looks
And laughing while cheating your dues
Shortcuts to success
A smirk like a jerk
Your life is a mess
And I hope you never again find work.

A smirking jerkin in charge
Was AWOL while others were dying
Drinking and driving at large
Never a thought for all of the lying.
Paybacks a bitch and the time is coming
To send him home to his ranch estate
And revile his memory for his rampant dumbing
And his ability to generate anti-US hate.

A candidate's run killed by replay
An attack against a voice of justice and right
Shame upon the media for the display
And for attempting to continue a nation's plight.

It ain't pretty and it ain't good but that's this week's from the House of Huh?

Get some!

First, the good stuff, the new word. It came to me while reading No Particular Order.

oddles - a myriad of strange bits of trivia.

And the spam observation.
Do spammers really think that they're garbage mail will get opened more often if the omit any subject line and just send it from some jumble of letters @hotmail.com? Or the nimrods who go with the Re: Account Cancelled jhskdka crap?

Is there any thought that goes into spam messages or do they blast and keep blasting until they make some money or have to go and change their diapers or have thier souls reinflated again.

Also, news has a new strain of the MyDoom virus making the rounds but this one is actually quite a bit more malicious in that it does delete data. Don't be the idiot who unleashed the virus in your office, don't open attachments from people you don't know, tell people you do know to give you a headsup before sending an attachment or risk being castigated for utter stupidity.

[Update: Ryan dropped a link in the comments to an article he wrote for IBM's eServer Magazine that's all about spam. Good information and interesting to read his "serious" writing as opposed to the blog.]

U.S. Man Jailed for Luring Children to Porn Sites, he got 30 months in prison and I would truly, truly not like to be in his shoes. I've only heard rumors about what happens to people who prey on kids in prison but I would imagine he'll be lucky to get out alive.

Which is, you know, just fine with me. Its not like he's a decent human being or anything who mistakenly downloaded music. He set out with a plan to lure kids to porn sites by having slightly misspelled names of popular kids brands like Disneyland, Britney Spears and others. Which, basically, makes him a walking piece of shit who deserves every bit of horror that awaits his pathetic loser ass in prison.

I have been slacking on new pics of the pups. Today wasn't a great day for pics as it rained like a mofo. But here are a few and a couple of others.

Nande (it's 1.1 MB so be forewarned, here's a smaller version 160k) and then there's two wrinkly faces (1.3 MB and a smaller version) and what?(1.3 MB, and a smaller version) Also, SuperMo!

And last, what I think is maybe my best picture ever, Jagr in clover.

I park my truck on the third floor of garage next door to my office. I can look out my window and see my truck looking down at me from up there. I like to park where I park for a reason.

Some of you may remember last summer's tales about the lady with the pick up truck and the dog that would howl for hours when she'd leave it in the truck parked right smack under my window.

Well now, the same lady but without the dog, parks her stupid truck next to mine and every single goddamned time she pulls in at an angle to make it damned near impossible to get to my door to leave at the end of the day. So I typed up a note and stuck it to her window today and requested that she take the time to park properly.

No threats, no impoliteness or anything else. Just please park so I can get to my truck.

We'll see what happens tomorrow although there's a reasonable chance the rain has destroyed the note but maybe I'll leave an extra one just to be sure.

No, its not a huge deal but it sure is a pain in the fucking ass to have to do the sideways limbo between two wet trucks to get into my truck to go home. And its totally unnecessary too.

The fact that she parks up there illegally is just the spit on the burger too.

Oral Sex Linked to Mouth Cancer

I've been putting together a new site called Meta Poison that's basically just a top level view of what's happening in the news on this site. But I've also added a few other RSS feeds to it, namely Sedalina, Stiletto Philosophy, David Grenier and Gizmodo. I would have added some others but it would appear that not all that many folks are syndicating yet and NorCal Bikers syndication doesn't work right for me yet.

Since I know virtually nothing about coding and literally less than nothing about Java aside from the fact that it still bogs my Mac down if I've got too many other apps rolling at the same time. So, instead of learning how to do it myself, I did the next best thing and looked for someone who'd already done the hard work for me and created a nice, easy to use interface.

Enter, Easy Java RSS Feeds, a simple interface for creating instant Java based feeds for your site. Its configurable, modifiable and easy. All good things and the resultant code is simple to cut and paste into your sites.

And, if the Button Maker were functional then I'd already have a sweet little IP | Meta button along with all the others. But its been busted for a good week now and I'm not sure if its ever coming back so I may just Photoshop the button myself. But check out the Easy Feeds link, its good stuff if you're looking to create a feed page. There's also a cool and easy way to add RSS feeds to your MyYahoo pages too!

New Words, Not One, Not Two but Three New Words at Once
As usually happens, I get some of my best thinking done on the way home while sitting in traffic that crawls along for no good reason. So I either people watch or think. And last night was a thinkin' drive. Two new words in fifteen miles and one left over from a draft post yesterday.

confidensing - getting somebody to agree to one secret to be held and then cramming in a couple more before the contract is set.

supraman - someone who's invincible only in their own mind.

rodification - as in, "Yeah, Bob, your project that you're about to deliver and have been putting in 90 hours a week on for the last fourteen months, yeah, the board decided to make some changes. We're going to need to switch it from a Java based tool to XML with a five layer security encryption and retinal scans." Basically, you get shafted by some executive's arbitrary additions to a project just so he can say he was a part of it without considering the thousands of hours already put in on it.

With a nod to the guys from OPM, let's catch up on what's happening around Casa de Huh? these days.

The good news is that our silent partner in the home buying activities came down this weekend along with my mother-in-law too. They got a chance to see the house as its slowly coming together and were surprised at how well put together the place is right now. P had been preparing them for the worst and the place was only mildly out of sorts with the exception of the upstairs which was all whacked from moving all of the stuff from the office so we could paint.

Anyway, they were pleased and we got a chance to go over some ideas and thoughts for how to improve the space for us but also to add value to it for when we do sell. We also learned that all of the money we put into the place for repairs and improvements will be tallied up and added to our final totals after the house has been sold. That means that we're investing in the house itself and will get all of the money we put in back and that's a nice thing to know.

So we discussed some of our plans to make the house a better space. Some of the ideas included removing most of the walls from the bottom part of the staircase so that the front entryway is opened up into the rest of the house. Doing something similar at the top of the stairs would also help alot too. Adding a new window to the office was discussed as well as installing one of the tube skylights. The difference being that we'd likely have to hire someone to do at least the first skylight so we can figure out how to do it properly. The window is something that we can do on our own right now. And it would also allow for better airflow and sight lines as well as more and better light. So we're planning a run to Home Depot to pick up a window maybe this coming weekend, maybe even two, one for the master bedroom as well. And maybe a skylight too, for the master bathroom. It might be good if our tax return doesn't come this week but it doesn't matter as we'll have home improvement money available soon in any case.

The backyard is going to get a bunch of work done to it. Like the huge bush, George has an electric chainsaw that'll tear that sucker down in a couple of hours and give us back a bunch more yard space. The fence line at the end of the yard needs attention to make it servicable and the area just inside the fence is going to get dug out, retaining walls put in and the space will be made to be usable instead of the muddy, sloppy mess that it is now. The plan is to move the gate up when we redo the fence, dig out the space into the yard, lay in some railroad tie steps and walls and blend it into the yard smoothly instead of the ugliness it is now. The corner of the fence will also get a new board or two soon so that the neighbor's rottie can't just decide to come on over for a visit whenever it wants to.

I would like to do something so that our deck doesn't feel quite as exposed to the neighborhood either. And to our neighbors. We're thinking about some sort of deck covering with a partial wall to give us some privacy. Right now, if we're out on the deck and the neighbors come out, its like they're in the same room and just a little funky. Not that we dislike them at all, just that we want to feel that the space is our own.

Anyway, some home improvement resources that I've been exploring as well as my Black and Decker Home Improvement Book, the Repair-Home.com Directory and Home Improvement Calculators

And then there's the DPChallenge that I am going to try and get in on more often. This week's challenge is Conflict and some pics of the puppies rolling around would have been perfect. But oh well, I'll have to get in on it next time.

I just wrote a short note to Senator Dianne Feinstein about ShrubCo's plan to amend our Constitution to ban same-sex marriages. Its not like there's anything else going on in the world right now, is there? Oh yeah, that whole War on Terrorism thing, oh that can wait until we make America safe from them gay folks!

And what did I get back as a response?

Thanks for the email but......well, let's just see.....

"Thank you for using Congress.org

CONGRESS.ORG ACTION TIP...

To rise above the the crowd, ALWAYS have your letter hand-delivered to Congress via EXTRA IMPACT for only $4.95

EXTRA IMPACT is a Congress.org service provided in part by Western Union.

Click here: http://www.congress.org/congressorg/extraimpact/"

Basically, they want you to pay $5 so that some Western Union punk carries your heartfelt fury right to the office of the person you're contacting. Oh boy! Wow! Where they'll still not read it and Western Union just basically took you for a five spot and your message still dies upon delivery. Democracy, its not just about being ineffective, its about paying to be ineffective.

Bush Backs Anti-Gay Marriage Amendment

What's the deal here? Why are all of these repressed wankers all scared by the concept of allowing two people to marry each other if they love each other and want to enjoy the protections a union would give them?

Can any of you anti-gay-marriage people tell me what the problem is? Make an argument based on rational fact and not sentiment. Show me how your life will be affected by allowing gays to marry. Demonstrate a rational reason for your marriage is a man and a woman stance, why should it be held to man and woman and not man and man or woman and woman?

Gavin Newsom is shaking things up and he's already gotten a thumbs up from Mayor Daley of Chicago. Yes, the majority of America is against gay marriage but that doesn't make it right to discriminate based on majority prejudice. Equal protection for all is a fundamental tenet of the law and an anti-gay marriage law would obviously contradict that basic right.

Why this is still an issue is beyond me. Why people are threatened by what others do behind closed doors is beyond me (especially when they're usually just as, if not more, deviant than any activities that they are speaking out against, can you hear me, Governor Perry?).

[Update: Check out Dear Mary for a site dedicated to sending Mary Cheney, a lesbian activist who also happens to have the Vice President of the USA as her dad, a man who's on board with Shrub to try and amend our Constitution with this anti-same-sex discrimination drivel, the site sends Mary letters by surfers to the site. Plaintive requests for her insight and help in this important battle for equal rights. And, just in case you're still unsure whether this is discrimination or not, insert black or African-American anytime you see gay or same-sex and then see how the copy reads.]

Because I'm a marketing fuck, I come up with names all the time, so here's a list of blog names that I've been kicking around for a week or two. Feel free to use any of the names, just drop me a note to let me know.

- One Hand Slapping
- The Victory Dance
- The Rock I've Been Living Under
- Monkey Bites
- Shotgun Politik
- I Think, Therefore, Shut the Hell Up
- I Stink, therefore I Blog
- Chronic Tonic
- My Monkey has a Boner
- Mental Vomit - what one of my relatives referred to Intellectual Poison two Thanksgivings ago
- The Bitter Business Bureau

And I'm sure I'll have a bunch more popping up as soon as I post this. But its a start.

And A Few New Spots I've Been Reading
My Smurfs, a slightly hard to read in Netscape personal blog, and A Small Victory (thanks to Ryan for the connect).

I just got a response from DeanforAmerica from my letter I'd written them thanking them for their efforts during the campaign and lamenting Big Media's assassination of him and the campaign by overplaying that stupid out of context scream/yell thing. I wanted to recognize their efforts and let them know that Dean still has alot of cred with me as well as lots of others, I'm sure.

I've seen the footage from the crowd and there was nothing unusual about it and damn, Howard made one hell of an excellent speech! I was charged up from it and am very saddened by the loss of his fire from the campaign trail.

Oh yeah, someone needs to smack Ralph Nader upside the head really, really hard. He has no chance of winning even though he's an extraordinarily intelligent and articulate man. He has great ideas but playing spoiler again so that the GOP numbnuts can take another 4 years worth of illicit money from the country and the world is tantamount to being a traitor. He says that the Democrats and Republicans are one and the same but he's very, very wrong. And Kerry had better bust his friggin' ass to not get "Gored" by Nader in this next election. What about Kerry and Nader together? Maybe.

Since it still feels a little like the weekend to me as I was out yesterday with gnarly allergies and lots of soreness from all the painting, I'm going to wrap up one last thought from this weekend's shopping mad frenzy of spending.

We had occasion to stop in at an unfinished furniture place because we're looking to pick up a matched set of bedside tables. I'd been in there before, used to know the owner from years ago at the health club and yadda, yadda, yadda. Anyway, almost from the moment we walked in the front door, there was a sales guy who rolled over to us, handed me his card and let us know that he'd check back in with us once we got to the nightstands in the other room.

That's fine, no worries. Whatever.

As we walked through the first room and were on our way into the larger second room, another salesbot introduced himself and tried to snark the other guy's sale. But the other guy dropped on him like a dive bomber and they had a short, whispered and very heated little exchange.

Having worked in the utter hell that is furniture sales on commissions, I knew what was up. Its tax time and people have large checks to pump back into the economy and every new customer is a potential big sale. So the sales guys were like rabbits on crank and really made a fucking pest of themselves. We got to the nightstand area and pop came the first guy again with his smarmy buy-something smile and limp dick handshake. I banished him by basically turning my back on him and walking away down the narrow aisle. And when I got to the end of the aisle, there was his chubby competitor looking to slide in from the side again. He started to say something and I turned my back on him while saying that I truly dislike over attendant sales people in loud enough voice for both to hear.

But that didn't dissuade the first guy, who's sale it technically would have been, from swooping back in for one more try.

Bear in mind that we'd only been there for about ten minutes at the most by this time and they had interupted us no less than five times to try and get their slimy little hands on some easy money.

Anyway, after the fifth time, we waited until he was distracted and walked out a side door.

The place was called Sweets in the Nude on Soquel just outside of Capitola off 41st Ave. and I can highly recommend NOT shopping there, ever.

I can understand the desire to make sales, I can understand knowing that there are people coming in with big money to spend but I cannot even begin to tap into the short sightedness that these two idiots were engaged in by pestering the holy hell out of us. As such, I'd never shop there again, would highly recommend to anyone who'd listen to not shop there and to tell them to tell their friends. Nobody needs to have an irritating shopping experience like that.

If they'd been easier to push away, if they'd been less infantile in trying to steal each other's sales (which gets a rise out of me because of the little prick who used to do the same thing to me when I was in furniture sales) and if they'd been able to take a friggin' hint and back off some then maybe I'd consider the place again. But no, they burned us and they can go screw for all I care now. Bastards.

I do wish I still knew the owner because I'd let him know what a truly shitty experience those two guys inflicted upon us.

Remembering that I left my driver's side window halfway down, the truck parked on the incline to present the open window to the sky and then it raining from about midnight on will make for a wee bit of a wet ass ride to work this morning.

Of course, my other option is to take the motorcycle but I think I'll stick with the truck and the wet butt issues.

The song is Walkie Talkie Man and is good enough to listen to on its own without the vid. But the video is excellent.

I went with the Top Speed Quicktime feed.

via Eat Your Vegetables

Yesterday was a definite spend day for us. Three main major stops and tabs well in excess of a hundred bucks at each. Orchard Supply was the priciest of the three at just over a couple of hundred bucks.

But oh the goodies we got!

In my garage now, I have a sweet Gorilla Tough workbench with a work light on a retractable cord. The bench now houses my power tools and random pieces, its got a peg board on the back so I'll be able to put the most used tools in easy reach at all times. It was even fun to put together, all except for the drawers and their stupid designs but that's alright. The bench kicks ass.

Upstairs, my office is now a very relaxing and warming shade of green. We bought a couple of gallons of paint to start working on the rooms. I also got something called a paintstick, its basically a paintroller with a suction handle that can be filled up with an amazing amount of paint. I was able to pretty well do an entire wall before having to refill it and I painted the entire room in under an hour. There is still the fine work to get to but the vast majority of the room is done and it was pretty straightforward and basic to do.

Downstairs, in the kitchen, we have a new dog crate for our pending puppy (who's undergone a name change most likely but I'll get to that later). Its a big crate with a door that opens to both sides and the entire crate can collapse into itself for travelling, it even came with a carry handle to strap around it. The other cool new goodie is an instant corral, eight or nine or ten sections of fence connected up together so its very, very easy to create a safe zone for the pup without crowding her in at all. And we continue to add to the stockpile of pup toys, we came across a goose that honks instead of squeaks at Trader Joe's.

And TJ's was a big trip this time. Some impulse purchases, some alcohol replenishment purchases and really just a whole bunch of food too. Along with some of the other goodies that are only at Trader Joe's like a quart of pomegranate juice, reggiano, Cabot extra sharp cheddar, the spicy hummus and jalapeno bean chips, edamame, gorgonzola gnocchi, and everything else that's unusual but great.

One thing I can tell you is that working a paintroller is pretty good exercise, especially having to push in the plunger to push paint. I'm not sore today but I can feel my back, shoulders and arms are a little leadened up.

But we're going to go and see the pup in a little bit and take the momma for a walk. Then we'll probably paint for a bit and get the office finished up and put back together.

[Update: Another trip to OSH and we're wrapping up the office right now. It's going to be a very cool spot to work from.]

Rumorfilter: Gov. of Texas Perry Caught in Bed with his Sec. of State.

Conjecture? Yes.

Funny none the less? Yep.

[Update: Apparently the URL above has died, so here's a new one.]

This was sobering but I am looking forward to going and seeing Reflecting Absence (image) for myself. Its part of the larger competition site and you can actually look at all of the submitted designs.

via MeFi

It had to happen. Take one geek up too late + one CafePress shop long left dormant + one Adobe Photoshop program + an hour or two and you end up with goodness like the Intellectual Poison Bumper Sticker and the Intellectual Poison Thong.

More for fun than a get rich quick scheme. I like playing with stuff and this could be alot of fun. I've also updated my Republic of Seabright brand logos as well, but they have some more work before they'll be ready for prime time.

I just came across some of Yahoo's info on how to add Metafilter's RSS feed to my MyYahoo home page and then spent a little time to figure out how to add Intellectual Poison's RSS feed as well.

And now, below the twin stacks of linky buttons, there's an Add to MyYahoo button! Super cool and super easy. Thanks Yahoo!

In today's Morning Fix:
That great genius heretic Joseph Campbell summed it up best when he said, "The wicked thing about both the little and the great 'collective faiths', prehistoric and historic, is that they all, without exception, pretend to hold encompassed in their ritualized mythologies all of the truth ever to be known.

"They are therefore cursed, and they curse all who accept them, with what I shall call the 'error of the found truth,' or, in mythological language, the sin against the Holy Ghost.

"They set up against the revelations of the spirit the barriers of their own petrified belief, and, therefore, within the ban of their control, mythology, as they shape it, serves the end only of binding potential individuals to whatever system of sentiments may have seemed to the shapers of the past (now sanctified as saints, sages, ancestors or even gods) to be appropriate to their concept of a great society."

Amen, Mr.'s Morford and Campbell.

I heard from one of my ex's the other day, we email back and forth every month or so just to stay in touch. She let me know that her husband has turned the corner and looks like he will recover from his recent heart attack and pneumonia. That was the good news.

The bad news (though that depends on whether you knew him or the circumstances) is that her sister's husband, a guy I knew when he was around 300 pounds, had gotten himself to 465 pounds. That's almost a quarter ton for cripe's sake! Anyway, that was as far as he was able to push the boundaries of his expansion. He died in his sleep because his heart wasn't able to continue.

The lesson to be learned here is that, if you watch your weight climb and don't do a damned thing about it except reach for the jumbo sized bag of pork rinds (which are a truly disgusting snack food if there ever was one) then you will wake up dead one day. Her sister is in a mixture of shock and relief. And, while the story is an interesting one, I don't have the time to break into it here.

But rereading the email makes me want to go and workout or go for a long bike ride or something outside and energetic.

New Linky to Surf
I found Calpundit the other night while link surfing from blogs and liked it. Actually, I was thinking of compiling a link list of all the pundits I can find.

Which begs the question, can anyone just decide to be a pundit? Or do you have to undergo a series of examinations before you're allowed to punditize yourself? I am thinking the former rather than the latter.

I've almost certainly written about the idiots at our paycheck cutting company continuing to remove money from my checks for an insurance coverage that I've had revoked and I'm no longer the company's client. Well, the fucking idiots did it again, removed enough money to cover myself and P though she hasn't been their client since last year. And it means they get to hold on to my money again for the weekend. I think, instead of letting our HR person deal with this, I'm going to call the moron in charge and let them know that once was a pain, twice was a hassle, three times was fucking ridiculous and four times means someone's going to get smacked upside the head.

The other theft was a soft theft of $300 from our apartment security deposit by the money grubbing marshmallows at Kendall & Potter Property Management. After getting assurances that there were no other charges, they added in the $300 charge for breaking our lease even though they didn't lose a dime of income because the apartment was filled and we paid the rent to fill the gap in any case. We are seriously considering a BBB report and possibly even taking the jerks to small claims court. Kendall & Potter has an institutionalized policy of lying and misdirection they use to confound the process. I can think of at least three occasions when either of the two women involved lied, knew they were lying and didn't even bother to give the first damn about it.

And Some Commute Time Humor
Now, I've been lucky enough to not have to commute for a few years and I will admit that I wish I could still ride my bike into work. And I actually came up with a plan to do just that, sort of. But first, a quick laugh at some idiot in an Xterra's expense.

On the drive into town this morning, I was entertained to point of open laughter at this guy's stupidity. He wanted to get around a pack of cars rolling along at about 75 miles an hour in the fast lane. So he'd swing his truck into the slow lane, accelerate like a madman, slam on his brakes as he approached the slow moving cars in the lane, wait until all of the pack had gotten by him and then swing back in behind me to wait for his next opening. He did this three times in just a few miles, the last time in the funky confluence of onramps and offramps right around Capitola. Instead of being able to swing back in behind me though, he got buried behind a whole bunch of cars during the merge and was lost from sight quickly. All his efforts to get ahead did nothing but land him further and further behind. And I do think there's a lesson there. The quick lesson is that hey, you want to pass with impugnity, get a freakin' motorcycle. The longer lesson is that sometimes, despite your best efforts to get ahead, you end up further behind than if you'd just stayed your original course.

Ah, because you are ugly, like the grasshopper.

Anyway, my other revelation came to me last night at a Survivor/Birthday party. There's no reason I can't drive into my old neighborhood, park my truck and then ride my bike down to work from there. Sure, its a little backwards and silly but it gets me back in the saddle, keeps me grounded in my neighborhood and is just crazy enough to work perfectly. I won't do it everyday, of course, but a few days a week would be cool. Especially for afterwork when I can get some hangin' out time with my crew. But this stupid misty rain stuff has got to stop before then.

Well, here's this week's , not sure how my responses will be because I'm pretty well damned pissed off this morning but let's get into the questions anyway.

1. What was your last good deed for a stranger?
Last week I picked up a hitchhiker, the first time in several years I think. Turns out she was trying to get to the hospital to take care of her little sister who'd just been admitted. That felt kind of good to do.

2. Describe the last relationship that ended badly or with regrets.
The most recent one, at least a year and a half ago was ugly. There was a guy who was planning on moving into my house, slept with my freshly ex'ed girl and got the boot. She didn't take that very well at all and we both ended up screaming at each other in the street. I said many awful things that I wish I could take back. But then again, now she's falsifying AA attendance forms so maybe much of what I said was mean but true.

3. Do you love or hate your job? Why?
I love my job most of the time. I make editors happy, I get sweet coverage in top shelf outlets like Business Week, USA Today, MSNBC, eWeek, InformationWeek, CNET and more. I'm not thrilled with the drive but overall I know I've got a very sweet arrangement going.

4. What was the strangest place you've lived?
The cabin in Lyme, New Hampshire was nice. No phone, no electricity, no running water, no bathroom indoors, no heat aside from a woodstove. But a huge pond all to myself, acres of land to explore and freedom to spend entire weekends walking around buck naked. I think of it as my personal fortress of solitude.

5. What blogs do you occasionally read just because you have no idea why anyone would have any interest in reading them?
Well, this question came up because I don't understand the attraction of one particular blog but there are plenty of others. The Dullest Blog in the World is beyond stupid. Joshua's blog is another one that I can't read. And then there are the random, look at my kitty blogs I come across.

6. Have you engaged in comment wars before? On your blog or on someone else's? What was the war about?
Yep, I have in the past and have in the present. On other blogs. About stupid stuff like being an asshole to someone when they're already knocked down.

7. Do you ban IP's and commenters? Who and why?
No, but I do delete comments from trolls and spammers. I'd ban IP's but its far too easy to jump to another spot with a clean IP and post your spew still.

8. What is the first thing you notice about someone when you first meet them?
Eyes and smile usually. Also, if their eyes stay on me or wander, which is distracting and mildly rude.

9. Have you already made up your mind about the next Presidential Election?
Yep, Anybody But Bush in '04. Even Al Sharpton would have been an improvement.

Okay, so that's my for the week. Not the most exciting one I've done but it helped slide the anger off me and that's worth the price of admission alone.

In what can only get worse, Players Rally Around Coach Barnett, who has been suspended for inappropriate comments about the fourth alleged rape by his football players, this time of their backup kicker, Katie Hnida. The players are calling this a witch hunt and other inflammatory crap when the fact is that he's been utterly terrible in dealing with the growing number of rape charges being levelled at his players.

Personal attacks against someone who's levelling sexual assault charges is about the dumbest thing he could have done. And he deserves to be suspended pending the outcome of the investigation. Any coach that willfully attempts to cover up a crime, especially a rape by one of his players of another player on his team, is idiotic, short sighted and bound to create an amazingly ugly backlash against the team, the school and the whole stupid state. Barnett was quoted as saying he would back his player 100 percent in the event that charges were filed. No mention of whether it matters if the guy was guilty of raping her or not, just that he was going to stand by his player.

Its the same myopia that people get surrounding the Kobe Bryant trial. People don't believe that he raped the girl, that she must have been a gold digger and they very conveniently overlook the fact that Kobe committed adultery, lied about it, bought his wife a ridiculously humongous hush-up diamond and has now admitted to having sex with the girl, though he says it was consensual. People with no special access to knowledge about the case are swearing up and down that he's innocent because he's a star athlete so the girl must have wanted to bang him. Get your collective heads out of your collective asses, athletes are human, they're weak and craven and stupid and able to get lost in the moment just like the rest of us. I don't know if Kobe raped the girl or not, I don't know if the Colorado University football player raped his teammate or the others raped the other women, but I'm for damn sure going to give the benefit of the doubt to the victim and not to the accussed.

[Update: By the way, it occured to me last night that the coach's statements are kind of stupid in another way. He said he'd stand behind his players one hundred percent but he's got one player who's accussing another player of raping her, who's he going to support? Obviously he went with the guy and then mouthed about the athletic ability of Katie which is entirely stupid and the coach should end up losing his job over this at the very least. If it turns out that he has helped to cover up any of the rapes then he should face jailtime.]

And Another New Word
This one came to me during a conference call with my research director today. And no, he wasn't annoying about it at all.
Exactistician - one of those people that cannot cope with estimations, cannot deal with rounded off stats and must correct people when they misquote or mispeak about some number. It isn't necessarily a bad trait but it can be damned annoying.

Unless we, the people, rise up and defend our Constitutional rights, they will be taken away by jackass numbnuts politicians intent on pushing the people into shiny metal boxes where they can be watched at all times of the day or night.

Go and read David Grenier for a much more cogent post about what this is all about. Voice your support, vote, protest, take part in the process or you lose your right to complain when you no longer have the right to complain openly about our government.