Month: January 2004

In the Syracuse apartment complex where we lived last winter, when it snowed the snow-blower guys would be out in force at five in the morning, which was a bit of an impediment to sleeping, since our bedroom window overlooked the front walk. Well, now that we’re back in Buffalo, our window doesn’t overlook our front walk, but it does overlook the front walk of the next building over. However, the news isn’t all bad — the guys here do their blowing around six. Oh well.

(Even worse is that I can’t even make coffee yet, since I’m the only one up and I’m one of those anal coffee lovers who grinds the beans fresh each time out. I could have tea, I suppose, but I’ve never found tea to be much of a “waking” beverage.)

So, I like it when I get up really early, start noodling around Blogistan, and find funny stuff:

:: Some folks have decided to wage a stealth war on….a font. I can’t say I’d given it much thought, but I actually don’t like that font, come to think of it. I have something like 500 fonts on this machine, and I use about six of them. (via Angie McKaig)

:: Beavis lives. No, really. (via Dead Parrot Society)

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Fans of George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire fantasy series may wish to note that he has altered his “Where’s the next book?” bulletin on his website.

Basically, he still isn’t done with A Feast for Crows, but he’s somewhat less “not done” than he was before. Or something like that.

I’ve avoided Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series because I didn’t want to fall into the trap of waiting basically forever for a series to reach its end. (Well, Jordan’s crappy writing helps in that regard.) But now, Martin’s got me in that trap anyway. Yeesh.

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I’ve been watching old first-season episodes of The West Wing recently: our local WB affiliate runs one each Saturday night at 10:00, and this week I discovered that my library has the complete first season on DVD. Having now watched most of the latter half of the first season again, many of these episodes for the first time since their first airing, I wonder once again: What, exactly, ever became of the Moira Kelly character (who was also supremely annoying)?

And in watching just a moment or two of the commentaries, I caught Aaron Sorkin saying something like, “I view the whole show as a novel, and each episode as a single chapter.” Which made me think, “Geez, Sorkin must be a pretty bad novelist then.” Plotlines are introduced and then disappear, entire characters disappear, et cetera.

And once again, I write an entire blog post with no point whatsoever. Go figure.

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Sean continues his delusional attachment to the New England Stupid Patriots. It’s really sad to see, really. He wasn’t this way in college….must be the sleep-deprivation from raising twins. I’m sure he’ll come around eventually.

And since I brought up football, I might as well join in the head-shaking over Rams coach Mike Martz, who has now managed to cost his team both a Super Bowl win and a berth in the NFC Championship Game in the space of three years by making dumb-assed decisions. Thirty seconds left, with one timeout at his disposal, and he makes no effort to go for the end zone and the win. Instead, he decides to play for overtime, which almost worked out, but ultimately didn’t.

I wonder if Rams fans wake up in the middle of the night, cold and sweaty, as they realize what might have been, had Dick Vermeil not been dumped in Martz’s favor.

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I ripped a fascinating arts-related question off Terry Teachout yesterday and posted it to Collaboratory. Go weigh in! (We’re not like MeFi; you don’t have to be a member to comment!)

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One of the nice things about not being a “political blogger” — I comment on politics when I feel like it, and that’s not terribly often — is that I don’t have any desire, inclination, or incentive to watch those crappy Sunday morning talk shows. Instead, I spend my Sunday mornings listening to classical music. Right now I’m playing “Fantasy on Osaka Folk Tunes” by Hiroshi Ohguri (1918-1982), and I suspect I’m having a much better time than the poor bloggers out there who, out of habit or necessity or because they just can’t help it, are watching George Will act thoughtful or Chris Matthews act interesting or Tim Russert acting like a journalist.

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Check out A Voyage to Arcturus, a blog that seems to be largely about science and space policy, by Jay Manifold (whose name sounds, in my ears, exactly like the name of one of those “super-competent everyman” types you used to find as protagonists in Heinlein and Asimov stories — and I mean that as a compliment!).

He seems fairly sceptical about the recent/impending Big Space Policy Announcement by the Bush Administration, and I tend to agree: this strikes me as a big dollop of pork to the aerospace industry (big in Southern states), as well as a mildly transparent attempt to get the “vision thing” out there. The timing also interests me: they seem to have sat on this announcement until the initial results of the Spirit Rover mission were in (I wonder if this would have come out if the mission had failed), and there is political timing as well: the Iowa Caucuses are right around the corner, so this gives something of a positive to the President as the Democratic infighting rises to fever-pitch, and it also means that the announcement will probably be a bit of a distant memory when the fall campaign rolls around.

I want to see some specifics, but in a time when the country’s fiscal outlook is a giant disaster, in an election year, and coming from a President in whose scientific interest and acumen I have little faith, I’m really feeling that skepticism is the way to go.

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An old friend of mine from my Usenet days recently e-mailed this to me, and I found it quite funny. (It’s even funnier if you’re familiar with Gilbert and Sullivan, specifically The Pirates of Penzance.) I thought about changing it about to refer to bloggers as opposed to newsgroup people, but it still seems to me that blogging is much less given to endless flamewars than the newsgroups are, by virtue of the fact that blog posts inevitably sink farther on the main page and, ultimately, into the Archives. Plus, blog posts that are part of a larger debate — even a cantankerous one — still tend to exists side-by-side with other posts about other things, which is not really true of the newsgroups. Anyway, here it is:

“I am the very model of a Newsgroup Personality

I intersperse obscenity with tedious banality.

Addresses I have plenty of, both genuine and ghosted to,

On all the countless newsgroups that my drivel is cross-posted to.

Your bandwidth I will fritter with my whining and my snivelling,

And you’re the one who pays the bill downloading all my drivelling.

My enemies are numerous, and no one would be blaming you

For thinking me a dickhead after I’ve been rudely flaming you.

I hate to lose an argument (by now I should be used to it).

I wouldn’t know a valid point if I was introduced to it.

My learning is extensive but consists of mindless trivia,

Designed to fan my ego, which is larger than Bolivia.

The comments that I vomit forth, disguised as jest and drollery,

Are really just an exercise in unremitting trollery.

I say I’m frank and forthright, but that’s merely lies and vanity,

The gibberings of one who’s at the limit of his sanity.

If only I could get a life, as many people tell me to;

If only mum could find a circus freak-show she could sell me to;

If I go off to Zanzibar to paint the local scenery;

If I lose all my fingers in a mishap with machinery;

If I survive to forty, which is somewhat problematical;

If what I post was more mature, or slightly more grammatical;

If I could learn to spell a bit, and maybe even punctuate;

Would I still be the loathsome and objectionable prat you hate?

But while I have this tiresome urge to prance around and show my face,

It’s simply isn’t safe for normal people here in cyberspace.

To stick me in Old Sparky and turn on the electricity

Would be a fitting punishment for my egocentricity.

I always have the last word; so, with utmost finality,

That’s all from me, the model of a Newsgroup Personality!”

(I don’t know who the author is, because several searches turned this thing up in a number of very disparate newsgroups.)

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Just a quick note of welcome to readers following TBogg‘s link (and thanks to him, obviously, for that link in the first place). Feel free to stick around, leave comments, but please don’t put your drinks down unless you use a coaster. I’ve got to maintain appearances. This ain’t your bachelor’s blog, you know — the wife gets home later, and she’ll be mad if she finds cup-rings on the woodwork.

As you might surmise, I’m not the most political of bloggers in terms of content, but I am a staunch liberal and I am also a recently-announced supporter of General Clark’s candidacy. (That Dean fellow is just too angry. Bill Safire said so.)

Enjoy, and I hope you’ll all come back frequently.

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I suspect it’s probably cheating to dig up something funky made of Legos, since one of the Web’s prime functions in the first place is the storage of images of funky things made of Legos. But, well, you can’t go wrong with Lego Cthulhu.

(I know, I know, for some reason the blogivator doesn’t seem to be going to the top floor today. I’ll put a couple of things up over on Collaboratory, and I may post here again later if the brain-fog dissipates.)

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