| euziere |
[10 Dec 2009|08:46pm] |
euziere (my girlfriend, for those of you joining late) is finally moving to San Francisco. She'll be here on Sunday! I'm looking forward to having some time with her -- we're been long-distance for way too long.
I wanted to post about this a while ago, but I was also going to make that the official job search networking post on her behalf. But she's still refining exactly what she wants to say about that, so I'm just posting this now. euziere is coming to town! Yay!
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| west coast party again |
[10 Dec 2009|08:42pm] |
I was planning a farm party-style party out west for late January, but it seems like interest has cooled a bit. Also, venues are a bit expensive, and we need to be able to accurately predict how many people we're going to have. But if folks still want to go for it, I will get back on the job immediately and finalize some plans. Please let me know if you're still interested in coming out here either on MLK weekend (1/18) or the weekend before, and you think you can probably make it.
Thanks!
- Michael
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| KW 5: Torments 1:6 |
[10 Dec 2009|03:16pm] |
Before I forget, the prayer Mister McElroy gave me over the phone.
“My God, I have sinned against you. I chose to do wrong and failed to do good. I have sinned against you. And for this I have been Damned. I will go forth and do as you bid me, to be an example of what it means to be Damned. I have sinned against you, O God. I Am Damned.”
They locked me in my room like I had asked, which is good, because to leave I’d have to damage her door or ruin the window, compromising both her trust and my haven, both of which are unacceptable.
I look like something uncovered by a careless bulldozer in Egypt, a husk of something curled up like a dry root and leaking sand on an examination table, something researchers pick and peel and brush at with extreme care, muttering to themselves about how well-preserved I am with my garb and bracelet—that thing! I’m still wearing it?—and checking my teeth to guess at my diet and my age.
The fact that this fast is so challenging, so punishing to me, that it lays bare my almost crippling weakness towards gluttony and sloth, proves that it is the right thing to do. It is the proper penance. I have my small consolations: the Ecclesiastic calendar she let me borrow, my language, which is stumping me at the moment and has proven an excellent distraction for a couple of hours, the Testament itself…
Tonight I managed to recite it all aloud from memory, twice. On the third time, I stumbled and lost my place when I got to the beginning of Torments, and got caught up in the following lines:
T2:1 Each night I awaken and hunger digs its claws into my belly. 2:3 I walk through the streets of the city like a beggar and a thief, shaking with hunger. I cannot find sustenance. 6:7 I am too lowly a servant for this task. 7:4 The wilderness and fields are no place for a being such as I. 7:9 In the dark and hungry nights, I doubt. 8:1-2 My world shrinks to three things: hunger and doubt and the knowledge that I must succeed.
Another consolation, the talk with Mister McElroy’s. Calling him was invaluable. His prayer, his advice. His willingness to hear my confession of despicable weakness, his simple questions which struck at the core of the issue, and gave me no shelter. Hearing him, I heard my own voice talking to Jessica, drawing her out and giving her no shelter from the reality of the wilderness she finds herself in and her destructive sin. I heard my own voice coaxing her towards action, towards sacrifice, towards atonement. I can’t know for certain if she had the ears to hear.
But I heard Mister McElroy. Regarding the fasting, and my sin, but also regarding what I must do when Josephine brings me my break-fast.
“Be a true wolf, then.”
He condones what I feared I must do. But what does It condone? From It, I have no consolation. I listen to my heart but the silence is unbroken. I look into my heart but the darkness is undiminished. I reach out with my heart but I feel no guiding pressure.
T1:6 All is death and darkness, and hunger walks through them.
O, God. I call to you and your face is turned away.
What must I do?
Why don’t you answer?
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| SPF fail. |
[10 Dec 2009|10:10am] |
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music |
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Shirley Manson -- Samson & Delilah |
] |
Well, SPF sure is working great. Nicely done, guys. I'm not sure I've gotten a single piece of spam that SpamAssassin didn't flag as SPF_PASS. Temperatures dropping, spam rising. Lately I'm getting dozens a day that SA doesn't catch. Tragedy.
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| not sure whether to call him/her/it lazarus yet... |
[10 Dec 2009|07:11am] |
The believed-dead jellyfish started moving again.
Due to the cold weather, the temperature in the jellyfish tank had dropped and was now too low, even though the tank heater was at the maximum setting. I turned up the heat in my apartment to compensate, at least until I can get a better heater (the guy I got the jellies from will trade mine in for free.)
I'm not sure whether the one jellyfish is out of the woods. It's...ummm...like, kind of folded differently than the other two, I guess...it looks kind of like it's not strong enough to pump itself in the way that...geez, I don't know the terminology for any of this. Anyway, maybe it's sick and it'll get better over time now that the temperature is right. On the other hand, it's getting stuck against the side of the tank a lot, and I think they're supposed to do better when they're moving or something.
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| Privacy |
[09 Dec 2009|11:22pm] |
| [ |
music |
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Shirley Manson -- Samson & Delilah |
] |
- Google CEO Schmidt is a douche. Schneier responds. "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." This is the same guy who blacklisted CNET for publishing personal info about him that they found by googling.
- Facebook changed their privacy policy, and largely screwed the pooch. Where by "the pooch" I mean "you" and by "screwed" I mean, if any of your friends ever posts a quiz result or installs any other app, the author of that quiz/app is able to get all of your Facebook details -- name, gender, city, friends, photos, pages, etc.
To be clear: installing an app doesn't just give away that information about you. It gives away that information about everyone who has friended you, and there is no way for them to opt out.
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| tick |
[09 Dec 2009|11:00pm] |
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music |
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Shirley Manson -- Samson & Delilah |
] |
Apparently this clock is a video of someone manually re-drawing the hands... for twelve hours. I'd say that was time well spent! |
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| handicapped accessibility |
[09 Dec 2009|10:51pm] |
| [ |
music |
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Shirley Manson -- Samson & Delilah |
] |
 If he was truly committed, he'd have hooked up
a catheter so that he could use the rear cock. Previously.
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| Colorado is filled with crazy |
[09 Dec 2009|08:51pm] |
Waitress: How is everything?
RBF: Actually, um, I'm surprised that there is pork in this [huevos rancheros].
Waitress: It said green chile on the menu.
RBF: [confused look] Yes...that's a vegetable.
Waitress: It has pork in it. Green chile usually has pork in it.
RBF's Head: So what do they plant to grow green chiles in Colorado?!?
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| Samson and Delilah |
[09 Dec 2009|07:16pm] |
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I find that this song has been on repeat for several hours now. I am compelled to force it on you as well. I also like the pacing of this scene with the music.
The previous episode was nicely done as well. |
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| A Word About the Weekend |
[09 Dec 2009|12:41pm] |
On Saturday evening, I continued my Mediocre Aerialist tradition. I put my (borrowed, half-length) silks up at a gallery in Alameda, where I did a 5-10 minute improvised set and a duet with a fabulous operatic singer, J. The ceilings were very, very low, which severely limited my repetoire and made separating the tissu at any height rather awkward, but I acquitted myself passably well and J, in all of his makeup artist/Sister of Perpetual Indulgence/opera singer glory, was so wonderful that I could just concentrate on enjoying his performance and staring at him meaningfully instead of mentally cataloguing my every screw-up.
M wore a crown of icicles and sang while A bellydanced. T displayed her trompe l'oeil paintings with their gilt door knockers and oil-and-beer woodgrain and veined multi-colored marble. A photographer set up a studio in the back room with an array of magical-looking props. S sold her jewelry and someone I do not know sold a variety of wrought iron figures, including a bat skeleton which I would have purchased if only I had a wall to hang it on. Fashion designers and their gazelle-creature models scurried around backstage. K showed a collection that was made almost entirely of the sort of thing that I wear clubbing: little corset-vest things, bare midriffs, pouffy bustled skirts to just below the knee, and kid leather gloves, topped with big hair and jaunty little hats. I would have happily purchased just about any of it. In fact, I think that I need one of those hats.
People asked how long I had been performing and said nice things about my act. The owners of the gallery asked if they could hire me the next time that they need an aerialist, and I said yes, but that next time I would bring a rope rather than a tissu. J and I toasted to our successful collaboration with rum and cokes because we were all out of champagne. I talked to people that I had not seen in a long time and felt pleasantly reconnected to many of the things that I had enjoyed about Burning Man - the notion that people might get together to create a maximum level of beauty with a minimum of fuss. I was pleased to know so many talented people, to stand next to them, and possibly be thought of as one of them.
In the morning, I woke up and went to the Deco sale, where I promptly spent half of the previous night's aerialist earnings on an enormous black velvet hat, which is sure to help in my continued efforts to impersonate Cleo de Merode, and a pair of a crocheted summer gloves. At my very next aerials class, I climbed thirty feet up in the air because I no longer had to practice with that low-ceilinged gallery space in mind, mastered a tricky move that required a lot of flexibility, and created a new drop.
I may now declare my weekend a success.
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| new cartoon |
[09 Dec 2009|12:59am] |
| [ |
music |
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bad lieutenant port of call new orleans |
] |
New cartoon up on my website.
www.tmcm.com
Another really good interview.... if only, when I'd started, people had read my comics before they did interviews, I wouldn't be so cynical now.
http://popshifter.com/?s=shannon+wheeler
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| I, for one, continue to welcome our new race of Atomic Supermen. |
[08 Dec 2009|06:41pm] |
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music |
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Placebo -- Space Monkey |
] |
 Super Strength Substance One Step Closer to Human Trials You may remember Liam Hoekstra, the baby apparently born without the myostatin gene, and similarly enabled animals that have absurd strength. Using gene therapy, NCH scientists were able to get follistatin (a myostatin blocker) to promote phenomenal muscle growth in the quadriceps of macaque monkeys. NCH is now working with the FDA to perform the preliminary steps necessary for a human clinical trial. We could see a superman gene therapy available in the next decade. Macaques were observed for 15 months after receiving a gene therapy that promoted follistatin (and blocked myostatin) in their quadriceps. There was no observed damage to internal organs, the treatment only seemed to affect skeletal muscle, the reproductive cycles and cells functioned normally, and there was no reported damaged to tendons or ligaments. The macaques exhibited enhanced muscle growth for 12 weeks after treatment, beyond which muscle mass stabilized. The average circumference of the animals quadriceps increased by 15%. Using electric stimulation (you can't order a monkey to lift weights) scientists were able to observe profound increases in leg strength. One specimen demonstrated a 78% increase over control results. Along with Muscular Dystrophy treatments, and therapies for muscle loss in old age, the defeat of myostatin could lead to an effective way for all of us to get fit fast. No workouts necessary, eat almost all you want, and have a body like Adonis. However, if there's one thing I'm sure we DON'T need, it's super-powered Macaques.
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| A Word About Thanksgiving |
[08 Dec 2009|03:46pm] |
I would like to say a word about Thanksgiving. I know that it already well into December - shut up. I don't harbor any illusions about keeping a detailed record of my life. Sometimes I fall behind. Sometimes I leave things out. But I did not want to leave out Thanksgiving, not in the wretched year of 2009.
In all fairness, 2009 is not quite so bad at 2008. At this time last year, I was waiting for my cat to die. But Thanksgiving marks the beginning of the Holidays, all winter cheer and tables full of food, and my life is still in boxes. My life is likely to remain in boxes until March. And so, for the first year in living memory, J and I did not cook anything on Thanksgiving. We went to visit my co-worker and her friends for an early meal, where J carved the turkey and made some emergency gravy while the rest of us pondered which one of our co-workers at the Mysterious Workplace we would eat in the event of an apocalypse that drove us to cannibalism. Sorry, Vegan Pacifist Co-worker, you will be the first to fall. We snuck out before dessert so that we might still have room left over for Thanksgiving Part II, which was to take place at the bartender's apartment and for which we also did not cook a single damned thing, not even soup, because we don't know where the stick blender is.
The bartender's house makes me sad, not because of the places where the ceiling is threatening to cave in and crush us all, which certainly upsets the bartender, but because it serves to remind me that J and I are unable to host Thanksgiving. This is the table where we are not serving food. These guests are not sprawled across my living room. J and (mostly J) I have not toiled in the kitchen all day. This is not my tableware, which weirdly upsets me more than anything because last year I'd finally bought a proper gravy boat and now my gravy boat is wrapped in newspaper, sitting in a cardboard box somewhere in Oakland, unused and unloved.
The bartender's Thanksgiving dinner is almost entirely catered by T, who has planned this dinner with the kind of precision one normally one might expect for the landing of a Mars rover. She has made individually-roasted squabs for all twenty-something of us. While I myself am not a squabavore, I deeply admire the scope of her ambition. T's vision for this dinner is gloriously over-the-top. She has pickled pears months in advance. She has soaked raisins in rum. There is a wild rice stuffing and brussels sprouts that I think have been cooked in bacon fat and beets (glorious beets!) and a lot of brightly-colored roasted root vegetables and nearly as many pies as there are guests. I eat until I am ready to explode, then I pause for cheese and nitrous and feeding tiny little bits of chicken to K's itty bitty dog. I returned to the Fallback Position dizzy and tipsy and full, resolved to change in order to go dance on a box at MEAT, and promptly fell asleep on the couch.
I should be thankful to eat delicious food in the company of witty and charming people (and a very small dog). And I have to admit that for a little while, I was happy and pleased, but it's just a thin coat of happiness around a bitter chewy center. I miss my Bunker. I want it back.
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