Month: December 2006

A couple of bits o’ weirdness for y’all!

(And the fact that I said “y’all” is not one of the Bursts of Weirdness. Just so you know.)

:: It’s hard doing all the introspection necessary to coming up with good New Year’s resolutions for ourselves, which is why I’m glad that there’s this handy widget that does the work for you! Just keep refreshing until you get one you like, and then post the handy code, like so:

In the year 2007 I resolve to: Train my cats to hunt hamsters. Get your resolution here.

First, to get some hamsters. Oh yes…. (via Laura, whose own resolution is pretty funny; I’d like to see her demonstrate that particular hobby at her workplace. Hilarity would just ensue, I tell you!)

:: I don’t really want one of these. I just want to see its carrying case.

That’s all!

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There’s a friend of mine from my elementary and junior high school days whom I think about from time to time. His name was Mark Jensen, and he and I enjoyed many a fine moment of pre-teen geekery together. We saw Return of the Jedi together on the second night it was out; we watched an awful lot of MTV together; played Dungeons and Dragons (the simpler version, not AD&D); we hung out in the computer room at my father’s college playing the local variant of the classic Colossal Cave game*; we hung out at Mark’s house playing great Atari games like Pitfall and Adventure and whatever else.

(Mark would also occasionally get pissed at me, usually on the basis that, in his words, I was being a “dickhead”. I, of course, thought no such thing — but now, twenty-odd years later, I look back at think, “Damn, I really was being a dickhead. Boy, self-awareness years later is just useful as hell, isn’t it?)

Anyhow, I used to try Googling Mark’s name on occasion, but “Mark Jensen” isn’t a terribly unusual name, so there was really no way for me to narrow down the two million or so hits for “Mark Jensen” to the guy I knew. Oh well.

But then, just an hour or so ago, I decide to do one of a bit of ego-checking on Google by searching under my own name, and wouldn’t you know it — I find Mark’s GameSpot profile, wherein he mentions me at one point. That’s just friggin’ spooky, man.

It turns out that you have to have a GameSpot profile of your own before you can send a message to one of their users, so maybe I’ll set one of those up for myself sometime in the next day or two. Meantime, Mark, if by some chance you’re already reading this blog, drop me a line. Sounds like you’ve been busy.

* Wow, was Colossal Cave the funnest thing ever! I loved that damn game, even though the student at my father’s university who had put it on the mainframe was highly territorial about it, refusing to give me hints about some of the game’s tougher puzzles and even going so far as to add his own puzzles to the game, including one that had no solution at all.

Anyhow, it’s a great game, if you like the old text-adventure thing.

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Go over to Jennifer’s place and wish her a happy belated birthday, unless you happen to own a time machine in which case you can go back in time and offer her a happy on-time birthday.

Of course, the nice thing about a belated birthday wish is that you don’t have to say something like “Hope you have a nice birthday”, because you know if they already did or not. Jen did, of course, have a nice birthday, so I’m spared saying something like “Well, better luck next year.” I gotta get to that cheesecake place one of these days.

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In case anyone missed it, I’m taking submissions for a special Sentential Links post, in which my readers can submit links to posts from any blogs they wish, highlighting any post from the past year they found worthy. Details at the head of this post. If I don’t get enough submissions, obviously I can’t do the Special Post! The only “rule” is that I’d like to avoid political stuff if possible, mainly because I’m unlikely to willingly link a right-wing political post, and I do enough highlighting left-wing political stuff on my own.

Leave submissions in comments either here or on the earlier post.

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He’s dead.

A few years ago I watched a PBS show — Frontline, maybe, or something like that — which detailed the early years of Saddam Hussein’s power in Iraq. There was one sequence that I found especially chilling: it was a moment in which Saddam cemented his power. I can’t remember all of the details, but it was a large gathering in an auditorium or some such place where Saddam gathered several hundred (or maybe thousand) high-ranking people from throughout the country. As he sat at a table up on the stage, Saddam read off a list of names, one by one, and after each name, a couple of armed guards would come down the aisles, find the persons named, and escort them outside to their own executions. Some of those named shouted curses at Saddam as they were led outside; Saddam merely picked up his cigarette and took a drag and read the next name on the list.

I suspect that people like Saddam come in two basic varieties: those who believe that their reigns will be the ones that last, and that they will be the ones who will die in old age, still in power; and those who know that they will more likely meet their end in a hail of bullets fired at them while they stand blindfolded against a wall, or at the end of a hangman’s rope. From all of Saddam’s actions over the last few years, he seems to have been of the former variety, which makes him a lot less interesting, in my view. He’s just what he always was: a deluded guy who wreaked a lot of evil in his life. Sadly, he’ll manage to loom larger in history than he ever should have, because of geography and because of someone else’s mistakes in dealing with him. I look at Saddam Hussein and I wonder how on Earth someone so small managed to become someone who will loom large in this particular segment of history.

I’m not wild about the way Saddam’s trial was handled, but I can’t say that justice wasn’t done, either, so that, for me, is pretty much of a wash. And I can’t say that this is a milestone one way or the other. Saddam will be a martyr for some of the violent people in Iraq, to be sure, but I strongly suspect that a lot of the other violent people in Iraq — maybe even the majority of violent people in Iraq — don’t really give two shits about Saddam Hussein and never have. The toppling of Saddam’s regime nearly four years ago, the deaths of his sons, his own capture, the “transfer of power”, Saddam’s trial, Zarqawi’s death — none of those events were of any larger significance in a war that continues to spiral out of control, so I see little reason to suppose Saddam’s death will be one, either. The world is neither a better place nor a worse place with him gone. His days of significance are long past, and his death, while certainly deserved, is pretty meaningless.

If he really wanted to be a martyr, though, he’d have killed himself to avoid capture. So Saddam died an insignificant coward. And the war will go on just fine without him. And on. And on. And on.

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I answered the following questions at the end of 2004 and 2005; here are the answers to the same questions, as decided by the events of 2006.

Did you keep your New Years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

I usually don’t make official “resolutions”, but I did read more, so there’s something done that I wanted to do. I also managed to learn a lot more on the job, starting with actual carpentry. For 2007 I plan to read even more (including some of that actual literary stuff), and I absolutely plan to write more. In 2006 I didn’t write much at all, except for what I’ve done on this blog. I’ll definitely get back to serializing The Promised King, sooner rather than later (an announcement thereof is forthcoming soon!).

Did anyone close to you give birth?

No, but a number of ladies I know from The Store are expecting, including one very dear friend of mine.

Oh, wait — people in Blogistan count, right? Alan had himself a second child! Huzzah!!

Did anyone close to you die?

My Uncle Jerry died a couple of weeks ago. I wasn’t exactly close to him, having not seen him since my wedding in 1997 (he caught the garter at the reception), but he was a great guy who will be sadly missed by those to whom he was close. Other than that, my year was pretty much Reaper-Free.

What countries did you visit?

The usual: Hoth, Bespin, Endor, Coruscant, Middle Earth, Fionavar, Westeros, and the fine city of Metropolis. We also went to Canada.

What would you like to have in 2006 that you lacked in 2005?

Finished manuscripts; a DSL hookup; the ability to do more carpentry. Oh, and peace and love.

What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Reading, listening, learning, living.

What was your biggest failure?

Not finishing The Promised King, Book Two. (Third year in a row! Yay!)

What was the best thing you bought?

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers complete score box set; jewelry for The Wife; the complete Firefly on DVD; bottles of spiced rum; a KitchenAid mixer; a new digital camera; books for me and The Wife and The Daughter.

Whose behavior merited celebration?

The Daughter, who has remained sweet, smart, a handful at times, and generally a very good student. And the American voters.

Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

George W. Bush and his entire administration; any rightwingers who still cling desperately to the notions that global warming doesn’t exist or that Iraq is a place of burgeoning peace if only the MSM would tell us so or that the forced removal of the Bible from all households at the hands of armed UN soldiers is imminent.

Where did most of your money go?

Food, books, DVDs, music, food, books, food. Oh, and rum. Quite a bit of rum.

What did you get really excited about?

The two BloggerCons I was able to attend; Superman Returns; Guy Gavriel Kay’s new novel (coming early next year); the hippies winning The Amazing Race; JP Losman’s positive development as an NFL quarterback; the rise of the soon-to-be Stanley Cup champion Buffalo Sabres.

What song will always remind you of 2005?

“Some Enchanted Evening”, from South Pacific. Not really sure why, but this year I learned its lyrics.

Compared to this time last year, are you happier or sadder?

Happier.

Thinner or fatter?

I know I’ve gained some weight. Not enough to really worry about, but I think it’s time to start going the other way.

Richer or poorer?

In terms of money, about the same, although I think I’m learning to make financial decisions that are less bad, and I’m picking up skills that will keep me employable for as long as I can pick up a tool. After all, there’s only so much service-work that can be outsourced to Mumbai, and there will always be broken things that need fixing or walls that need painted.

What do you wish you’d done more of?

Writing and walking. I love walking. And drinking water (even though I drink plenty of it to begin with).

What do you wish you’d done less of?

Reading political stuff online. All it does is get me pissed, with no outlet except producing more political stuff online. It’s self-replicating, and as the elections got closer, I found myself pushing my inclination to avoid political posting down more and more. This has always been primarily a personal blog.

Oh, and eating pizza.

How will you be spending Christmas?

This quiz is meant to be done before Christmas — but no matter. We went to church on Christmas eve, and then we came home to open presents. Next morning we set out four or five more presents for The Daughter (these were the “Santa” gifts), and spent the rest of the day relaxing and helping her play with her new stuff.

Did you fall in love in 2005?

My answer from last year still applies: I fall in love on a daily basis. Who ever said that you can only fall in love with someone once?

How many one-night stands?

Like I’m gonna tell you that!

What was your favorite TV program?

Scrubs, American Idol, The Amazing Race, The Office, My Name is Earl, House, Grey’s Anatomy.

Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

Alex Ovechkin and Rod Brind’Amour. They must be destroyed!!!

(Generally, I don’t like to hate people. It’s such a useless emotion, when you get down to it.)

What was the best book you read?

Maybe I should blog about books more, since I can name a bunch of wonderful ones I read that I barely mentioned, if at all, in this space. I read three books by Anthony Bourdain (Kitchen Confidential, A Cook’s Tour, The Nasty Bits) that I loved. A book called The Beggar King and the Secret of Happiness that I checked out of the library on a whim and loved so much that I gave a copy to my best friend for Christmas. And the remarkable Little Chapel on the River: A Pub, a Town, and the Search for What Matters Most, which I blogged about here. That last book moved me deeply.

What was your greatest musical discovery?

This was more a year of musical rediscovery for me. I rediscovered Howard Hanson, Tchaikovsky, and a number of other composers.

What did you want and get?

A new computer and the afore-mentioned KitchenAid mixer! Huzzah!

What did you want and not get?

In spite of my lack of enough interest in one to buy one myself, I did enter a contest at The Store to win an iPod. I didn’t win. Oh well.

What were your favorite films of this year?

Casino Royale, Superman Returns, Cars.

What did you do on your birthday?

I had to work and The Wife had to work, so we celebrated a few days later, if memory serves. What did we do? I can’t remember. We probably went out to eat.

How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2006?

Why would I change my personal fashion concept? I just don’t get fashion, people wearing whatever a group of magazines tell them is “in” that year. Shouldn’t what’s “in” be in because people buy a lot of it, as opposed to people buying a lot of what’s “in” because it’s “in”? Isn’t that the central point of one of Plato’s Dialogues or something? Anyway, same as always: I’m your hippie workwear guy. Tie-dyes or solid colors; overalls from September to May.

What kept you sane?

Sanity is overrated — but I suppose The Wife and Daughter, my friends, and the various voices from Blogistan, Buffalo Prefecture and beyond, did the job as well as anybody.

Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

Kate Walsh, Teri Polo, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Jewel Staite.

What political issue stirred you the most?

It was an election year. I didn’t need a single issue to stir me up.

Who did you miss?

My son, my friends who don’t live in Buffalo.

Who was the best new person you met?

Aside from a couple of them, all of the fine Buffalo bloggers whose acquaintance I’ve made in real life, I made this year. And they’re all fine, fine people whose blogs I either read daily or should read daily. (Say, when’s the next official BloggerCon, folks?)

Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2006:

Not all learned in 2006, actually, but reinforced: The Internet is made of people. Rush more, blitz less. Don’t punt when you’re trailing or when you’re in your opponent’s territory. Democracy works, at least sometimes. Not all tears are an evil. Cool-whip is a miracle substance. So is ice cream. Use your library; limiting your reading to only those books you can afford to buy is madness. OpenOffice is a quality program. From pizza to quiche to apple to coconut cream, pie is the greatest of foods. We’re not meant to be alone. No object fits in your hand so perfectly as your wife’s hand, and no object fits so perfectly on your shoulder as your child’s head. Keep smiling, because you never know what life will throw in your face next!

And don’t take it all so seriously.

Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:

I don’t know if you can see
The changes that have come over me
In these last few days I’ve been afraid
That I might drift away
So I’ve been telling old stories, singing songs
That make me think about where I came from
And that’s the reason why I seem
So far away today

CHORUS:

Oh, but let me tell you that I love you
That I think about you all the time
Caledonia you’re calling me
And now I’m going home
If I should become a stranger
You know that it would make me more than sad
Caledonia’s been everything
I’ve ever had

Now I have moved and I’ve kept on moving
Proved the points that I needed proving
Lost the friends that I needed losing
Found others on the way
I have kissed the ladies and left them crying
Stolen dreams, yes there’s no denying
I have traveled hard with coattails flying
Somewhere in the wind

(Chorus)

Now I’m sitting here before the fire
The empty room, the forest choir
The flames that could not get any higher
They’ve withered now they’ve gone
But I’m steady thinking my way is clear
And I know what I will do tomorrow
When the hands are shaken and the kisses flow
Then I will disappear….

(Chorus, 2x)

–“Caledonia”, by Dougie MacLean

And thus ends another year.

(This isn’t the last post of this year, however, so don’t stop checking in!)

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Find below a list of the Best Posts from this blog in 2006, as chosen by a selection committee of…well, me. Any newer readers may enjoy perusing these posts — after which time they may break their fingers in their haste to click the “Back” button on their browsers, but hey, you never know.

First, I’ll single out the two complete short stories I posted in this space this year: “Elizabeth and Andrew”, a tale about music and love and letters exchanged across time in a library book, and “What Happened to the Huntsman?”, which reveals, well, what happened to the Huntsman in Snow White.

How to make Pastitsio
Entering the Wagnerian Universe
How to Drill Screws Into Masonry
Dinner at Buffalo’s Gaudiest Restaurant
My first BloggerCon: a smashing success!
I’m uneasy about the prospects for Spiderman 3
Mozart at 250
Mozart at 250, part deux
Jonah Goldberg, Boy Idiot
Stuff I’ve Done (a blog quiz thing)

Thurman. Still waiting for Canton. Grrrrr.
Lester and Julio: a portentous arrival
R Stillers won the Super Bowl!
Tough Love (a short story)
John Scalzi is evil and must be destroyed.
Kid-Lit (a blog quiz thing)
Fueling my blog-quiz addiction
ER needs a DNR
A blog-quiz about books

Back to Fionavar
The magic of used books
A musical blog-quiz
Yet another blog-quiz
Still another blog-quiz (Do you detect a theme here?)
Dick Cheney: evil alien disguised as a man

Rum. I like it.
James Bond, Cold Warrior?
Book review: The Stupidest Angel
Thoughts on Narnia
Borodin and my entry into the world of string quartets
Response to SDB’s article on Hayao Miyazaki
Into the Depths of the Stars! (announcing my space-opera reading project)

Ice Cream: I Like It
Filing CDs: My system for musical madness
Liveblogging the West Wing series finale
Weirdness from the Mouths of Libertarians

Worst Incentive EVER.
Oh NO! Someone will see Teh Boobies!
Why customer service sucks in this country
Cat versus Toilet Paper
Superman Returns

I am a Patriot
How I nearly quit blogging entirely, but returned out of spite
On the fountain pen
Superman’s Secret Identity (incomprehensible to non-Buffalonians)
Fun with Fruit and Mayonnaise (and not what you think, either)
How to Write like Mary Kunz Goldman
Favorite Episodes of Favorite TV Shows
Recapping the Renaissance Faire

How Dead Poets Society should have ended
Ask Me Anything!: The Roundup (with links to the earlier posts in that series)
King Kong
A quiz about books
Cars: what a weird movie!
The birth-pangs of the New Middle East
Screw the high school football players.
The Sparrow
Favorite TV characters of mine
A post in which I get hot under the collar because some nitwit badmouths Buffalo

GAH! Teh stupid! It burns!
Pound for pound, the most error-filled Football Predictions Post in Byzantium’s Shores history
A post in which my troubled relationship with Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip begins
Chicago Deep Dish Pizza is NOTNOTNOTNOTNOTNOTNOT a casserole, dammit!
A few good books you should read
Studio 60‘s second episode
Studio 60: I sure bitch a lot about this series
Nope, not content to stop writing about Studio 60
Space opera: I like it!
Wow, that’s one big October snowstorm!
Breaking new ground! Writing about Studio 60.
Sports Memories

John Kerry hates everything about you!
How to Fix the NFL
How to prepare yummy chicken
The best James Bond Quiz ever!
A Boy, a Girl, and a Customs Agent

Overrated movies and my thoughts thereof
Blathering about Studio 60
God bless the xenophobes!
Bond is Back
My Christmas gifts for Blogistan!
Carl Sagan: The Candle Still Burns

Enjoy some or all of these posts. Enjoy them or the puppy gets it.

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I was five years old when Gerald Ford left office as President, so I have no memories at all of his political life. From what I’ve read, he was a genial President and what the country needed in the aftermath of Watergate. Personally, I’ve always believed that his pardoning of Richard Nixon was probably the right thing to do, and that things might have been better had Ford been elected in 1976. (For one thing, had Ford been elected in 1976, there likely would never have been a President Reagan. And if no President Reagan, then maybe no Bush dynasty.)

That’s about all I can say about Ford, really. His whole time as President was spent during a time when my most pressing concerns were how soon Sesame Street would be on.

When I read the news this morning, I have to admit that my first thought was not of anything Ford ever did, but of the line in Airplane!: “He’s alive, but unconscious. Just like Gerald Ford.” I wonder if Ford was the first President to find himself a regular punchline, given the concurrent rise of Saturday Night Live? Anyone have any thoughts on this?

Anyway, condolences to the Ford family.

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