Good idea
Open Source Creativity Bush Co. Inc
(I’m leaving out WMD - because no one has found them, ditto Sadddam Hussein’s link to al-Qaeda, remember those? They were justifications for the war? You know, the thing that we’ve been doing instead of finding bin Laden? )
Well, some fun loving folks decided to feed it some “interesting” slogans. Enjoy!
http://revbilly.com/revsite/sloganator1/sloganator/index.html
Well, it’s official, the day of my vacation’s commencement is tomorrow.
Tomorrow I hop a flight to JFK at noon and, thanks to living on the left coast, I will land there at 8:15 and then catch my Koniklijkeluchtvaartmaatschappij flight to the city on the dam on the Amstel.
I didn’t have that great of an impression of A’dam last time I was there. Was it the aura of my study abroad had worn off? Had the UK exodus as per the Maastrict treaty worn away the Dutch-ness? Can’t say.
Up side is i get to see soopah-sistah, Mr. Cave Cheese himself, and perhaps Big Al (who is now looking to return to the Continent).
That said, instead of blogging about life I’m going to be living a bit of it. Pics to come upon the return. This is the first trip I’ve taken in a while where laptops are not coming along.
Fear not, iPod of Doom is ready, I’ve got a billion magazines to catch up on (as well as the 2nd book in the His Dark Materials Series, The Subtle Knife, Eco’s Travels in Hyperreality, and Fisk’s Pity the Nation).
Most diets forbid you to drink alcohol (whiskey and rye and grape and vodka, tequila and gin, all my friends). As a result, if you decide you need to drink that last quarter bottle of wine before you go on vacation, and you drink it, you will get seriously crunked up.
My teetotaling sister is going to be able to see me under the table in Europa.
:: chagrinned ::
If you’re like me and enjoy your tea, newspaper, luxurious slippers, lovely PJs with a side of California sunshine on the patio on Sunday morning, you might enjoy A&E’s superb new show “Breakfast with the Arts.”
In this weekend’s episode a number of very talented opera singers performed an eclectic collection of arias.
Most interesting were the interviews conducted with the ladies after their respective performances.
I will be heading back to the place where my genetic data spent some time as of Wednesday of this week.
I’m trying hard not to mentally check out at work.
Don’t worry I can hack it, I worked support for years. That means that I can stay Buddhically disengaged while being engaged.
I went shooting with some of my friends. We headed on over to the range in Milpitas and fired some find weapons. The progeny of Ol’ Monkeyface proved to have inherited his progenitor’s taste for fine weaponry. He chronicles (and shows!) the adventure here.
I took out the Desert Eagle 9mm first. After trying out my friend’s Ruger 9mm I definitely preferred it to the DE. I went in and swapped my DE for the Sig-Sauer 232 .380 cal which both I and Mice were really fond of. The 232 has a really smooth trigger and I like the fact that there’s no slide-release.
I have to be honest though, I’m not much of a shot. I should really take some classes or something.
To be honest though, as I confided in The Army Guy:
Steven: You know, I don’t care if I hit anything. I just like shooting guns. I mean, if i actually hit something, it’s just bonus.
TAG: (puts arm around shoulder) I know, I know.
Cracked me up. The range had a sale on the Sig that i fired, they had a used one. Maybe when I get back from vacation….
Anyway, after that I had to book over to Mountain View to go to yoga.
Firearms and yoga? Yes, it’s a bit of a duality thing [ “You know, the Jungian thing.” - Pvt. Joker, Full Metal Jacket ]
This concept is explored in an interesting fashion over at everything2 in this node entry.
I may be
pro-Separation between church and state
and I may have reconciled, to some degree, my difficulty with God (but not religion)
But I think George Bush’s war on stem-cell research is cutting us off (no pun intended) from the greatest source of analgesic research ever known. It would be like stopping the genome project halfway through.
To follow this religious-right-backed Ludditism will set US BioPharma back into irrelevance. It would be like eschewing the microscope or the double helix model. Realize that this is the sensibility you are ushering in when you vote Republican.
http://salon.com/tech/feature/2004/03/25/stem_cells/index.html
Xeni Jardin writes for BoingBoing.
X is a short form of “christ” like “christ-mas”
Thus
Christeni…Christ e…n…i.
ine is the reverse
Christ + ine
Is this all a clever abbbreviation and anagramization of her name?
Clever in any case.
[ Note: This is a personal statement. I won’t ridicule Bobby Brown or pop art or politics. If you want more of that come back tomorrow. ]
It’s a truism that befits the most hackneyed scriptwriter:
Tear-eyed JOHN DOE kneels, staring out the window as thunder and lightning rage.
JOHN DOE
“Dear God, please [ do something / grant something ]
Later…
AUXILLARY CHARACTER
But JOHN, you asked for X, and instead you got Z, how did God answer your prayer?
JOHN DOE
Well you see, AUXILLARY CHARACTER, God doesn’t answer your prayers the way you ask all the time, He took care of me in the way He thought I needed to be taken care of, not the way I thought I needed to be helped.
[ Screenwriting Note: Having the characters say the above dialog shows how incredibly lazy you are. You need to find a way to have the characters show this profound moment. ]
But my friends, it’s true, God does answer your prayers, but it’s often in a way different than you expected.
Once upon a time I was very much in love with a young lady. Like the aforementioned hackneyed script, boy met girl, boy loved girl, girl loved boy, and then the relationship ended: somewhere between ambition and options, possibility and promises.
Due to the situations surrounding the close of that relationship, things were very unresolved at the finish. The fabric of emotions and memories that a couple weaves together in the course of a relationship forms a tightly knitted fabric - ours was very tight and very taught.
During some relationships the couple’s acidic chemistry unravels what they have worked to create. Other times the couple takes large blades and cleaves the fabric clean in two, each walking away with their piece, to unravel and fray on their own.
In my case, the cleaving did not happen. Likewise we did not constantly irritate each other and feed each others urge to unravel. Instead something, for me anyway, far worse happened, the fabric kept a few threads together (or maybe I just imagined that it did) and against all hope and reality, something was kept painfully alive, in me at any rate, that should have been allowed to sadly, tragically, and peacefully end - for that’s what these things do.
It has been very, very hard to let go.
For years I kept thinking “I’m over it, I’m over it” … and to a large extent this worked. I’ve dated and met people and my life has not been stunted. On the one hand the bar was raised very high, but I knew that this kind of bliss could find me yet again.
But last night I watched a movie that so keenly reminded me of this young lady that I had something similar to what alcoholics call falling off the wagon. It was like in “A Beautiful Mind” where the Nash character says that he is on a diet for the mind, he does not indulge his flights of fantasy. I realized that “over it” was just an arbitrary line in the creavasses of the mind. Into one of those crevasses I allowed myself to fall - I could taste the food, hear the music, hear the voice.
I got drunk on loneliness, remembered bliss, and the ambrosial flavor of memories washed clean of negativity by time.
But last night in the depth of this binge, like an alcoholic, I found clarity and begged, or prayed for a solution. I asked for the solution, I asked for peace. I lay in my bed wanting to have it all be over - like when the room won’t stop spinning after too much gin. In short, I asked for the last few threads to be clipped, I asked for freedom, I asked for a miracle: tell me what happened to her and let me know it’s irrevocably decided.
I lost the capacity for tears (save weeping) many years ago so no visceral lacrimosal activity could trigger the brain drugs that assuage these feelings. Bless?d sleep came to me or, as the Bard says it, “Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,”
I woke up this morning and peace hadn’t found me. The miracle wasn’t in my morning email. The antidote was not sitting in the Mercedes next to me.
Like those that are sick with the alcohol disease, I thirsted again. I took a brief skip around the internet and allowed the hangover to drive me to Google - like an alcoholic heading for an early a.m. bar to get clear from the delirium of the night before. I wanted to get a sip of facts. I am a searcheratus so I knew I might find the answer. Yes, my friends, I’m ashamed to say that I did a bit of cyberstalking (don’t lie, you’ve done it too you hypocrite).
I found out that the young lady had recently wed and was moving on, moving elsewhere. Married. Gone was she I knew, instead a new life, a new flesh, a new name - and I was left with merely a memory. I knew my prayer had been answered.
I blessed this memory, it wasn’t the husk of something dead, this story doesn’t end up with me with a hatful of hollow, it was the first seed of love’s blossom.
Babies must grow, the old must die and we must learn to let go.
…but God it’s hard sometimes. Je sais, je sais, que l’amour est d?r
I blessed her and her spouse and their future together. I thanked her for the love she and that memory had given me - for what a great gift - to have loved and have been loved. I blessed the strength I gave her when she needed it and I blessed the faith she had in me when I needed it.
I was still.
Good night sweet memory. Farewell and good luck sweet girl. I’m giving the pearl you lent me back to the sea, knowing it will find its source again.
Epilogue: The last part of my therapy was write this and share it with the world, share it with myself by writing it.
I’m just another guy on the internet spilling guts for no apparent reason humiliating himself, I know — but somehow it’s helped.
I can’t want to burden my friends with this — this is something i have to work through and write about. Strangely, I can publish it on the internet for the world to see — I’m baffled as well.
Good readers, keep praying or asking for help from the beyond, but be open for unexpected answers. There is a plan for your life, there is a path you are fated to walk, and there is a glorious fate for you tomorrow.
Thank God for Lucinda Williams at times like these.
Brown was released from DeKalb county jail … to attend a paternity suit hearing.
C’mon, look at those big puppy-dawg eyes — this is not the kid of guy who would urinate in your squadcar, is it?