The Great Cosmic Ballet

Maybe "great" and "cosmic" together are redundant. It certainly seems so to me just now, but I'll leave it in there anyway. And it's probably not so cosmic either, because I have nothing at all to say about Mars coming by except that I saw it in Santa Fe, out on a sleeping bag in the backyard with LK while critters crawled over us excitedly and then again in Merion PA just a couple of nights ago, and like almost everything else in this comparison, the Santa Fe version was brighter, cleaner, and more vividly hued. I expect the "local" Mars view paled (ha!) in comparison because of smoggy foggy moisture and more ambient light from the city. Or maybe it was just that the last time I saw it I was snuggled with my honey under the stars, and this time it was me standing out in the driveway while Newton hung out at the screen door, wondering if he could somehow parlay this odd new development into a new meal opportunity between dinner and breakfast. Sadly, he never achieved this. He's probably forgotten all about it by now.

But I didn't come here to talk about Mars (although I found that there are plenty of the usual whackos out there who would probably pull their kids out of school in preparation for armageddon, if their kids were in school yet). I came to talk about the yin and yang of the good and the bad, and the balance that is sometimes achieved. Like, for instance, LK is coming home tonight!!! Yay! Hooray for me, well for us. Extra legs in the bed, says Newton, is a good thing. I tend to agree. And the trip was supposed to take her until tomorrow, but she made good time over the last few days, even though she was delayed because of emergency root canal and crown replacement things. Yuck. So in preparation for this joyous reunion, my hard drive decided to go south on me this morning. Bloody thing won't reboot. Kind of like having your brain in the freezer, although I am typing on my work backup brain so it's not critical. Now in the cosmic balance, the positive most assuredly outweighs the negative here (by like a factor of four million times the speed of stupid in the current presidential administration, just to pick a round number). Still, it's a curious quirk of my psychology that I'm inclined to view these events as related in more that temporal proximity. It's that old catholic thing, I guess. It's how I was indoctrinated. Strange to identify it that way and still fall victim to it occasionally.

Now I'll let you all in on a little secret, since LK will not read this before she comes home (she's been having online access problems while on the road -- say, maybe we need TWO new computers! How much fun will that be? If we did that [and we won't because it's impossible to justify the expense, even with the additional savings in our honeymoon costs, since we are flying to Italy for FREE]) I would definitely make one of those new additions a MAC-based OS. Yupper. Would love an iBook in the family. I'd love it like my own. We'd have to keep it in the box and set it down near the PC, so they could sniff each other and and acclimate before we could leave them alone in the same room all day. )

Stop me before I parenthetically-sub-sub-reference again...

As I was saying (hey, what's that?) the trick to tonight is going to be all the flowers and champagne and most of all the sparkly-clean house that will await my bride to be upon her return. See how easy that was to type out without a parenthesis? Sheesh. After 500+ miles of driving today alone, I think that's the absolute least I can do. And maybe I will have calmed down by then...Nah.

posted by MT at 12:20 PM |

Ah, Saturday...
I woke up quite naturally at 6:00 am, which brings me back to childhood where I could leap out of bed before the sun on a weekend, but earth moving equipment and blasting caps could not achieve the same result during the week. Lots of things on my plate later today (mostly cleaning because YAY LK is coming back from Santa Fe next week and I must prepare the nest for my lady. Newton! Stop shedding! And if you keep eating the spider plants and then yakking them up all over the house, I will slay you.) So I sit here now in a swirling miasma of frenzied multimedia influences -- blogs and news sites and some casual crap here online, TV over there, getting ready for Mystery Science Theater. And all is right with the world.

I've removed the 'Fair and Balanced' from the headline because the powers that be have sided with sanity: a federal judge correctly ruled against the Fox network in the case against Al Franken's book. I love the opening salvo. "This is an easy one," says the judge. Of course, one wonders why it made it this far. My favorite line from the story:

Attorney Dori Hanswirth, representing Fox News...contended that Franken's book cover did not qualify as satire.

"This is much too subtle to be considered a parody," she said.

Have a little faith, Dori. People aren't as stupid as all that. Well, not always.




posted by MT at 8:39 AM |

We Love Arnold Dot Com

It does not get any better than this. This combines the cringe factor of reality TV with the blinding witlessness of actors who believe that they might actually be able to perform an appendectomy because they once played a surgeon on the tube. I give you Arnold for Governer.

This site has some priceless quotes from the man himself. A pity they haven't been more systematic at cataloging the dates. Here is just a smattering:

Arnold Speaks On the Status of Women

"But no one that has been around me would believe that a woman would be complaining about me holding her."

"It was a handful. I never know if my wife’s watching. I’ll tell her it was a stuntman." [after touching British TV host's breast on air]

"The women should have the choice. The women should decide what they want to do with their bodies. I'm all for that." [on abortion]

"Now, I would just like to say thank you very much to my wonderful wife, who is the greatest wife in the world and the greatest friend that I have -- I want to thank her for being here with me, for being such a great partner, and Maria if you don’t mind to say a few words also, big hand for my wife Maria!" [announcing his candidacy]

"Your daughter has a great butt" [to Eunice Kennedy Shriver, Arnold's future mother-in-law, shortly after meeting Maria]

"Any woman who thinks, 'My biological clock is ticking and I want a baby and it doesn't matter if I have a husband or not' -- well, without running anyone down, that is a mistake."

[discussing a scene in T3, in which he pushes the female cyborg's face into a toilet bowl] "I saw this toilet bowl. How many times do you get away with this -- to take a woman, grab her upside down, and bury her face in a toilet bowl? I wanted to have something floating there ... The thing is, you can do it, because in the end, I didn't do it to a woman -- she's a machine! We could get away with it without being crucified by who-knows-what group."

[after Sylvester Stallone invited him to join an all-male club]"I told him it was the worst thing he could do. That we're living in a very sensitive time period, when women were struggling for equality. I said I didn't agree with half the stuff they were talking about, but a club like that would offend every smart woman in the country."

"As much as when you see a blonde with great tits and a great ass, you say to yourself, 'Hey, she must be stupid or must have nothing else to offer', which maybe is the case many times. But then again there is the one that is as smart as her breasts look, great as her face looks, beautiful as her whole body looks gorgeous, you know, so people are shocked."

People are shocked all right. Strap yourselves in.


posted by MT at 6:36 PM |

Fake it until you make it.

No there is nothing sexual about that. Well, nothing intentionally sexual. There's plenty otherwise. And we could have a flavorful discussion about that, but I had something else to say.

This is about the ever-present work anxiety. It comes in waves. Coming off a few weeks of, oh let's say 25% chargeability on average (which affects nothing regarding pay, but to all and sundry in power it looks like Santa Fe was a big vacation, which would be a lie cause I was working, yuh huh, I was too and shut up!) things are changing. Naturally after such a paper thin period, my workload suddenly becomes explosive. Peaks and troughs, as they say. And naturally with the peaks comes the fretting. Being challenged job-wise is a good thing, surely, but this isn't about challenge, this is about pointless anxious arm-flapping. Not sure how to solve this client's problem. Not sure what the best approach is going to be for this situation, given what I know. And what comes from that is two corollary assumptions: 1) that I SHOULD be able to (regardless of whether that's true or not, it's just the instant thought that occurs) and 2) somehow they'll figure it out (and 'they' can be anyone, client, coworker, boss). Which is symptomatic of a general fear of fraudulence...or rather, fear that one might actually be a fraud, and it's only a matter of time before the world finds out.

So with all of that self-disclosure you might think I would round out with an epiphany of sorts, what with all the current and pending wonderfulness in my life. But it wasn't my realization, but but some rather offhand and indifferent advice I got. The advice was simply to fake it. Just pretend. And this suggestion came from a fairly successful co-worker. Don't worry if you can't cut it. Just keep the plates twirling, never mind that man behind the curtain, and eventually you pick it up.

Hell of a thing, that. On the one hand, duh. That's no way to run an empire. On the other hand, as Eddie Izzard likes to say, it's 70% how you look, 20% how you sound, and 10% what you say. So what's wrong with a little pomp and flourish while you're scrambling on the inside? It just simply never occurred to me before. And then I realized I was behaving as if I were invested in this job in some way. Which I am. As a job. It's not a career. Just how I make money. But even so, this leaves me with a vaguely uneasy existential reflux. Missing something important, somehow. Need to think at this a while.

On a lighter note...

I've always liked Bill Maher, although his humor is somewhat uneven, often, it appears, in the service of being politically incorrect. I suspect that this might be more in the delivery, because he's often brilliantly funny on paper. Observe:

August 06, 2003
CHARLEY DANIELS FLIP FLOPS ON BOOK LEARNIN'

If you’re wondering what to do with yourself after N.A.S.C.A.R. season wraps up, look no further than Ain’t No Rag: Freedom, Family, and the Flag. It’s a collection of musings by noted white trash icon Charley Daniels on subjects ranging from American flags to American flag bumper stickers to what to do to a hippie if you catch him trying to burn your American flag, which is apparently all those hippies ever want to do. Clearly Daniels is trying to broaden his fan base here to include people who can read, but I liked him a lot more when he was writing songs about things people can relate to like when Satan went down to Georgia for a fiddling contest. Before Ain’t No Rag I was ambivalent on the issue of flag burning. Now I find myself reconsidering the question of book burning.

posted by MT at 7:36 PM |

Tower of Babel, sorta...

Link via Memepool: an accent database, complete with IPA translation (/geek) courtesy of George Mason university. Database contains 264 speech samples, all readings of the same paragraph. So now you'll be able to identify the homeland of that interesting fellow in the next cube who speaks with an accent...should aid our amateur sleuthing efforts to no end. Anyone remember the name of that Sherlock Holmes story where all of the witnesses to the crime said that the voice they heard sounded like "a foreigner?" Of course that was the key, since the witnesses were multinational -- this led Holmes to conclude that the perpetrator was not even a human being. Turned out to be an orangutan (orang-ootang, I believed was the spelling in that novel, which us seventh or eighth graders thought was immeasurably funny to say out loud, with the hyphen in there). Okay, kind of a far-fetched story, and completely unrelated to the folks at George Mason...

Be sure to listen to the examples from Sweden. You will find that neither of them sounds like the Swedish Chef from the Muppet Show. Which is powerful strange, and frankly calls the validity of this whole project into question.


posted by MT at 12:51 PM |

Weird little piecemeal day

Spent all day in front of the computer (no surprise there) but it's irritating the hell out of me. My ADD is clanging like gangbusters. Hey! What's That! Hey! What's That!? (Which for those of you who know is the very funny text from a [I think] Far Side cartoon whose caption is: "The entire thought process of a puppy.")

It's been like that.

More later, maybe. But here's some random oddness.

First, the new title. Check out Tom Tomorrow for an explanation (Bill O'Reilly...As Jeff Spicoli might say, you dick.)

Second, funniest bumper sticker I haven't seen yet: "We are the proud parents of a California Gubernatorial Candidate"

Third, copying directly from Bittershack (who is linking from metafilter): our viewers comment on the blackout.

"I welcome our new Amish overlords."

"Let's make some babies."

"I just got a papercut but there was no evidence of terrorist activity."

"We have power in Georgia. Also indoor plumbing, some of us."

"DEFCON 1, Bears over the Pole. God bless you Richard Nixon, wherever you are."

"Unconfirmed reports of a plauge of locusts heading from the south."

"Somebody must have plugged in their Dancing Santa."

Whee. Who moved my food dish?


posted by MT at 5:36 PM |

"Now is that any way to behave at a rock and roll concert?"
Jim Morrison

My ears are still buzzing from the Jethro Tull concert here at the Mann Center for the Performing arts.

Holy shit.

I found out quite by accident that Tull was going to be playing in town and bought the tickets while still in Santa Fe. God bless the internet and obsessive fan sites like this one to bring us such news. Now I've gone on and on about Ian and the boys before, but let me just say these old guys sure know how to put on a show. I wish LK could have been here to see this one.

I was not the oldest one in the audience, surprise of surprises. It was actually a rather scintillating cross-section of people, ranging from the "folks in the band" age range (50s-60s), us thirty-somethings, a few kids (and wee kids: at least a handful of the ten and under set). And all this on a school night! (for me).

Now, lest this site become ClothMother's Music Reviews: The Classics to Classic Rock! I'll just encourage anyone with even a passing interest in this band to take in a show if it comes to town. Best money I've spent in a long time. With 35 years of material to draw from, they managed to run the gamut, with some startling new interpretations and medleys of old favorites, and some of the most skillful flute playing you'll find. Like a liquid silver rapier. What emotional range. Damn fun time.

PS to the rowdy asshole to my left who began yelling "Aqualung!" right after the opening number: You dick. Anyone who has ever been to one of these things knows the band ends the main set with that song, followed by the encore which will include (at least) Locomotive Breath, at least one other, and will close with Cheerio. Have another beer. Dick.

Best overheard conversation
The cover artist was a fellow named Willy Porter (never heard of him, but I hear he gets quite some play on XPN, the best college radio station ever). The folks to the right of me were fans, and right after the opening set Boyfriend dashed off to pick up one of the CDs on sale. Boyfriend comes back, CD in hand, signed by the musician, and shows it to Girlfriend:

"Take a look at this. Signed by Willy Porter himself. I even shook his hand"
"Shit! Where was I?"
"Sitting right here. "
"Shit! I can't believe it!"
"Want to go meet him? He's still up there signing autographs."
(Pause) "Nah."

Way to get over your disappointment.


I have to go to sleep now. Cheerio.

posted by MT at 11:48 PM |