Progress is a comfortable disease

Patriotism just got a little easier.

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 02:57:03 GMT

Still too mentally and emotionally drained to undertake a full post-mortem of yesterday's momentous election. Maybe tomorrow. There's a lot to say, but there's a lot I need to process first. So for now, I'll leave you with some words Trey Ellis wrote a few days ago which echoes a small part of what I'm feeling right now:

"I'm a patriot. Since I was a child I have always loved my country. But if Obama really does win, then I think I will feel — perhaps for the first time — that my country loves me back."

Spontaneous Parade, Election Night 2008

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 08:22:27 GMT

Pacific Ave, Santa Cruz.

True story...

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 06:46:56 GMT

According to FiveThirtyEight.com:

So a canvasser goes to a woman's door in Washington, Pennsylvania. Knocks. Woman answers. Knocker asks who she's planning to vote for. She isn't sure, has to ask her husband who she's voting for. Husband is off in another room watching some game. Canvasser hears him yell back, "We're votin' for the nigger!"

Woman turns back to canvasser, and says brightly and matter of factly: "We're voting for the nigger."

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 01:45:18 GMT

Also, happy birthday to aergern. Damn, I know a lot of people born near the beginning of October.

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 21:44:01 GMT

Happy Birthday, phogg!

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 04:59:01 GMT

Trust David Schwimmer to stifle even Simon Pegg's innate hilarity. Cliched storyline and mawkish gags -- could this movie BE any less funny?

Last.fm Sociomap

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 21:15:32 GMT

The first of many June birthdays...

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 08:24:50 GMT

LJ tells me today is joe_haldeman's birthday.

Happy birthday, Joe. Best of luck reaching that next power of two.

The opposite of epiphany.

Tue, 06 May 2008 06:45:02 GMT

It's a sad day when posting to an online forum leads you to realize that your expectations of intellect and rhetorical ability on the internet have been spoiled by the high standard of discourse available on Slashdot.

So?

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 07:33:51 GMT

Mentally composing love notes to Helen Thomas.

Rest in peace, Arthur.

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 05:54:02 GMT

This can't be a good thing.

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 03:21:00 GMT

At least I scored lower than kwakhed.

Video Smackdown: Techno Flashback Edition

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 06:32:48 GMT

KLF - Doctorin' The Tardis

L.A. Style - James Brown Is Dead

View Poll: #1150772

(With apologies to drokk.)

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 05:49:52 GMT

Shakin' Jesse: The Home Game is a qualified success.

Next time, less instant coffee.

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 19:54:39 GMT

Anyone else seeing Autechre, April 5 @ the Mezzanine?

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 08:05:54 GMT

...Oh, fuck, no.

And on a completely unrelated note...

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 09:51:36 GMT

Separated at birth?

Caro's return

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 09:30:55 GMT

While I will profess great respect and appreciation for our Gallic bretheren, it's not often that I find myself wishing I were French.

But oh, this is one of those times.

http://www.dante01.com/

Not so much as a limited release date announced for the U.S.

@#$%.

Show of hands.

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 22:36:00 GMT

Okay, so who's going to see Tori at the Paramount, weekend after next? What nights?

Happy Halloween

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 06:41:28 GMT

http://stage6.divx.com/The-Last-Stop/video/1176822/Night-of-The-Living-Dead

(DivX required)

In which Morpheus learns some physics.

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 21:12:43 GMT

How did it never before occur to me from whom Agent Smith clearly ... borrowed ... his style ... of deliberate ... diction?

(Thanks to causticjb.)

Another book list

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 23:22:17 GMT

These are the top 200 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users (as of some time this week). As usual, bold what you have read, italicise what you started but couldn't finish, and strike through what you couldn't stand. The numbers after each one are the number of LT users who used the tag of that book.

(as near as I recall...)

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (149)
Anna Karenina (132)
Crime and punishment (121)
Catch-22 (117)
One hundred years of solitude (115)
Wuthering Heights (110)
Life of Pi : a novel (94)
The name of the rose (91) (Does it count that I've seen the entire movie? Probably not.)
Don Quixote (91)
Moby Dick (86)
Ulysses (84)
Madame Bovary (83)
The Odyssey (83)
Pride and prejudice (83)
Jane Eyre (80)
A tale of two cities (80)
The brothers Karamazov (80)
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies (79)
War and peace (78)
Vanity fair (74)
The time traveler's wife (73)
The Iliad (73)
Emma (73)
The Blind Assassin (73)
The kite runner (71)
Mrs. Dalloway (70)
Great expectations (70)
American gods : a novel (68)
A heartbreaking work of staggering genius (67)
Atlas shrugged (67)
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books (66)
Memoirs of a Geisha (66)
Middlesex (66)
Quicksilver (66)
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West … (65)
The Canterbury tales (64)
The historian : a novel (63)
A portrait of the artist as a young man (63)
Love in the time of cholera (62)
Brave new world (61)
The Fountainhead (61)
Foucault's pendulum (61)
Middlemarch (61)
Frankenstein (59)
The Count of Monte Cristo (59)
Dracula (59)
A clockwork orange (59) (Again, seen the movie, never got around to finishing the book.)
Anansi boys : a novel (58)
The once and future king (57)
The grapes of wrath (57)
The poisonwood Bible : a novel (57)
1984 (57)
Angels & demons (56)
The inferno (56)
The satanic verses (55)
Sense and sensibility (55)
The picture of Dorian Gray (55)
Mansfield Park (55)
One flew over the cuckoo's nest (54)
To the lighthouse (54)
Tess of the D'Urbervilles (54)
Oliver Twist (54)
Gulliver's travels (53)
Les misérables (53)
The corrections (53)
The amazing adventures of Kavalier and Clay : a novel (52)
The curious incident of the dog in the night-time (52)
Dune (51)
The prince (51)
The sound and the fury (51)
Angela's ashes : a memoir (51)
The god of small things (51)
A people's history of the United States : 1492-present (51)
Cryptonomicon (50)
Neverwhere (50)
A confederacy of dunces (50)
A short history of nearly everything (50)
Dubliners (50)
The unbearable lightness of being (49)
Beloved : a novel (49)
Slaughterhouse-five (49)
The scarlet letter (48)
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Pu… (48)
The mists of Avalon (47)
Oryx and Crake : a novel (47)
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed (47)
Cloud atlas : a novel (47)
The confusion (46)
Lolita (46)
Persuasion (46)
Northanger abbey (46)
The catcher in the rye (46)
On the road (46)
The hunchback of Notre Dame (45)
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of… (45)
Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance : an inquiry into … (45)
The Aeneid (45)
Watership Down (44)
Gravity's rainbow (44)
In cold blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its … (44)
White teeth (44)
Treasure Island (44)
David Copperfield (44)
The three musketeers (44)
Cold mountain (43)
Robinson Crusoe (43)
The bell jar (43)
The secret life of bees (43)
Beowulf : a new verse translation (43)
The plague (43)
The Master and Margarita (43)
Atonement : a novel (42)
The handmaid's tale (42)
Lady Chatterley's lover (41)
Underworld (41)
Little Women (41)
A brief history of time : from the big bang to black holes (41)
Stardust (41)
Jude the obscure (41)
The chronicles of Narnia (40)
Possession : a romance (40)
Fast food nation : the dark side of the all-American meal (40)
Never let me go (40)
The trial (40)
Kafka on the shore (40)
Bleak House (40)
Sons and lovers (40)
Alias Grace (39)
The Arabian nights (39)
Baudolino (39)
Confessions (39)
The great Gatsby (39)
To kill a mockingbird (39)
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Gla… (39)
The alchemist (39)
Candide, or, Optimism (39)
Snow falling on cedars (39)
Midnight in the garden of good and evil : a Savannah story (39)
Midnight's children (39)
White Oleander (39)
A passage to India (39)
The elegant universe : superstrings, hidden dimensions, and … (39)
The house of the seven gables (39)
The lovely bones : a novel (38)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (38)
The amber spyglass (38)
The histories (38)
Swann's way (38)
The shadow of the wind (38)
Fahrenheit 451 (38)
Good omens (38)
Running with scissors : a memoir (38)
Everything is illuminated : a novel (38)
The divine comedy (38)
Paradise lost (38)
The English patient (38)
Uncle Tom's cabin (38)
The Origin of Species (37)
The plot against America (37)
The history of Tom Jones, a foundling (37)
Silas Marner (37)
The hours (37)
Prodigal summer : a novel (37)
The bonesetter's daughter (37)
Doctor Zhivago (37)
The shipping mews (36)
The phantom of the Opera (36)
The portrait of a lady (36)
Blink : the power of thinking without thinking (36)
Heart of darkness (36)
The Robber Bride (36)
The last of the Mohicans (36)
The age of innocence (36)
~~The system of the world (35)~~
Tropic of cancer (35)
The mayor of Casterbridge (35)
The Gormenghast novels (35)
The gunslinger (35)
The golden compass (35)
The Republic of Plato (35)
The remains of the day (35)
Cat's eye (35)
Eragon (35)
A game of thrones (35)
Sophie's world : a novel about the history of philosophy (34)
The island of the day before (34)
The good earth (34)
A prayer for Owen Meany : a novel (34)
The devil in the white city : murder, magic, and madness at … (34)
A farewell to arms (34)
East of Eden (34)
The book thief (34)
Animal farm : a fairy story (34)

43 completed out of 200.

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 07:00:21 GMT

Stumbled into this Real Time with Bill Maher panel discussion a few minutes ago while flipping channels and quickly got sucked in. It's unfortunately not every day you get to see someone articulate these things directly to one of the Democratic Congresscritters while he squirms and rationalizes, much less watch it on national television.

I remember ending up pretty disgusted with Maher when he was on ABC, but he seems to have redeemed himself somewhat in his new HBO incarnation.

By the magic of YouTube:

My Summer Vacation

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 22:30:10 GMT

Full gallery of (mostly blurry, indistinct) photos coming soon.
(I have now labeled/captioned 18 of 250 photos. Progress!)

I can has cold.

Sun, 12 Aug 2007 07:43:08 GMT

Achoo.