| thou shalt not |
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--Life magazine put together this kind of noir parody of the Hays Code "Thou Shalt Nots", what you weren't allowed to show in movies of the time. I. Law Defeated II. Inside of Thigh III. Lace Lingerie IV. Dead Man V. Narcotics VI. Drinking VII. Exposed Bosom VIII. Gambling IX. Pointing Gun X. Tommy Gun Seems like it would have been more efficient to have the woman pointing a Tommy Gun rather than having it awkwardly posed on the cop's head, but hey. |
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| it goes around and around |
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As a sidenote, I cranked up my "Twitter journal" viewer to show my 5 last tweets rather than just 3. On the one hand, I'm happy to have less of the "well I don't want to post because I'll push something clever off" thing (yeah, I know) but on the other hand, I'm posting more trivial stuff (yeah, I REALLY know.)
Anyway, went to a real life Drive-In last night, out in Mendon, with Ariana and Shawn. Pretty cool, $20 buys you a carload, you can bring along some lawnchairs and a radio... we saw "Tropic Thunder" and "Pineapple Express", both kind of goofy spoofs, not bad End-of-Summer Drive-In Fair. Passage of the Moment "Pooh," asked Piglet, "did you remember to help Owl remove that--" "Of course," said Pooh. "I have a phonographic memory, you know." "You mean," said Rabbit, "a photographic memory." "No," insisted Pooh. "Phonographic. It goes around and around. Sometimes it gets stuck. That's why I remember things so well." --Benjamin Hoff, "The Te of Piglet", kind of a disappointment. especially compared to its companion "The Tao of Pooh". This book is more preachy and pedantic and ultimately apocalyptic in its outlook... Hoff almost seems to be turning himself into a messianic, or at least redepemptive, figure for Piglet and some of the other Pooh characters. Infectous Music of the Moment Do You Like The Hot Hot Tamale? Weebl continues the tradition of super-catchy music and hypnotic videos, like Kenya back in the day. |
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| another bug |
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--Methuen MA, 2007.09.03
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| deerhill and dale |
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My last day of "vacation"... trying to rush around making ready for party and a future housemate.
Ksenia and I went up to Vermont. Brattleboro on the way in was pretty nifty. We stayed at a place called the Deerhill Inn, and I gotta say that of the 3 or so B+Bs I've stayed at, this one is definitely tops. We did the whole web search thing (and man those room photos start looking all alike after a short while) and this one stood out... at first because of the webdesign, but it turns out that's a reflection of the place itself. For starters the room (we stayed in the Dahlia room) looked great in the photos and had the full set of amenities: fireplace, tub with jacuzzi jets, TV/DVD, even wireless 'Net so I didn't feel like a total refugee. Then it turns out that the grounds were beautifully done as well, with better landscaping and a much better view than any other place I've been in...they even feature a small pool. Breakfast was great (though I'm getting the sneaking suspicion it's fairly easy for B+Bs to throw together breakfasts that seem impressive and taste wonderful...) but the place also has a (price-y) built-in restaurant... we had a great creme brulee via something like room service. Plus you can order these various packages, in-room massage, dinner things, etc... I splurged for some champagne and local chocolates. Oh, and if you poke around the site, the "last minute deals" links is pretty damn bargain-riffic. I guess in short it manages to get the best of both worlds, some of the features of a small hotel without sacrificing much of the personal feel of a smaller B+B. Yesterday we also went to the Billings Farm outside of Woodstock. Ksenia had an urge to commune with cows a bit, and that was the place to do it, along with stocking up on Maple Syrup. And Maple Candy. And Maple-infused Seltzer. Etc. Plus, they had some ice cream made from milk from the herd. Kind of weird to think you're ingesting something that might well have come out of the creature you were just petting 15 minutes earlier. We also did a little factory outletting in Manchester. I had more trouble than I expected explaining the Factory Outlet concept to Ksenia, especially after she saw some of the brands (I stocked up on amusing boxers at Banana Republic) and the prices (Giorgio Armani had shirts at 90% off...which makes a $500 shirt just barely outside of what I'll pay, rather than considering the price "bat-s*** insane") and the fact that there didn't actually seem to be any factories nearby. Plus, I got my first ever speeding-ticket. Boo, Hiss, frickin' Vermont pseudo-highways going straight through the middle of their little podunk towns. Quote of the Moment "You are a little soul carrying around a corpse." --Epictetus, via Candi. Cool and memorable way of putting the situation, though I'm not crazy about the hint of "Cartesian Dualism" (soul and body as distinct and separable) it carries. |
| tiger tiger burning...well, pretty bright, actually |
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Advice of the Moment "But keeping feelings bottled up is like holding an angry tiger by the tail: Unless you hold on tight, he'll kill you--metaphorically. Realistically, if you have a tiger by the tail, he'll kill you whether you hold on or not. In fact, if you hold his tail he'll probably find you quicker. All he has to do is follow his body down to the end of his tail, and there you are. But not for long. Sure, technically you might be able to continue holding on to the tail while he is gnawing on your skull, but this is merely a muscle reflex. Let's face it, once the head leaves the body, you aren't doing much of anything. I guess my point is, don't touch tigers' tails. They don't like it. They are very flexible and have powerful paws with razor sharp, retratable claws. I don't even want to talk about the teeth." --"Russel Hokes" in "Wigfield: The Can-Do Town That Just May Not". My 'net connection has been down as much as up this weekend...yesterday I got a lot of reading done, two books, two small graphic novels. That was a nice change of pace. Link of the Moment How I Failed The Turing Test. I've argued for a while that chatbots have passed a watered-down form of the test; if people aren't paying attention, and sometimes even if they are, they think these chatscripts are humans. (And vice versa, now...) |
| everyone loves pi |
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Quote of the Moment "Love is like pi - natural, irrational, and very important." Lisa Hoffman, the top of the page quote for this month's Blender of Love digest. Not sure if I really like the quote or not, but ah well. Had a hard time coming up with a good "feature", settled on a brief link to this relationship quiz. Ramble of the Boat Heh, not much of an update today...I had a serious attack of lazy. Pretty busy weekend, but today feels oddly like a Sunday. I was worried it was going to feel like a Saturday...I feel totally ripped off when I'm at work on a day that feels like it's the day after a Saturday. |
| the barcode of the beast |
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You know what I need? Some program that would take text, pipe
it through a text-to-speech synthesizer, record the result as a wav file,
and then let me burn it to a CD. I think they have something like that for the Apple iPod, except it makes files that can be loaded onto your MP3 player. And then, of course, I'd have to find e-texts that I really want to listen to. And not get sick of that robovoice...
Toy of the Moment Conceptually neat (but with a fragile implementation) barcode clock. Actually, that site has lots of random barcode themed stuff. 
Article of the MomentVery cool and readable History of Nintendo's NES for the 20th anniversary of the Famicom, the original Japanese version. A nice two-person format, and mini-reviews of lots of games, broken up by year. Great reading for anyone who grew up during the 80s, not just for classic video game nerds like me. |
| [insert size joke here] |
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Backlog Link of the Moment Tiny Games for Windows. They're really really tiny. Unfortunately, some of the more interesting arcade ones on the right need the original ROMS to work...but one of my favorites, Tiny Invaders (shown actual size here: 
) doesn't. It's a bit smaller than most of them, and shows up in the SysTraym by the clock. (Make sure to read the read me files they include to know the controls.)
Lite News of the Moment My mom actually sent this one along, UK McDonalds to make hedgehog friendly icecream cups. I'm just getting this image of chubby English hedgehogs. Quote of the Moment "Life isn't, and has never been, a 2-0 home victory against the League leaders after a fish-and-chip lunch." --Nick Hornby, "Fever Pitch". A lot of UKisms I'm not quite picking up in this book. Maybe I like this quote because it has some of the lingo, but not too much. |
| car50k |
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My dear old cute Honda Civic rolled over to 50,000 miles yesterday. I'm proud of this car. It has a goofy color, a frog holder for its stuffed frog, and I paid for it with my own money. I bought it new right before I graduated from college, in 1996. It has taken me to Cleveland and Ocean Grove and back. And to Pittsburgh, which is where I learned it can go 100 miles on rainslick highway with 5 people bundled in (with my a cappella group, chasing the other car in order to make it to a concert on time.)
I love the color of this car. It's a bit flamboyant but is aggressively cheerful and reminds me of spring after any rain. 
I wanted to put up this picture for another reason...after I want to college and my Mom moved to NYC, we realized we didn't have any pictures with our beloved metalflake-orange-bronze ford aerostar minivan. (The "pumpkin carriage") That was the vehicle I learned to drive in, and the one I have other fond memories of being inside its upholstered confines. But no pictures of it, and I didn't want the same think to happen to the kermitmobile.
Online Toy of the Moment Similar to this one school filmstrip in the 1970s, a powers of 10 visualization toy. You start out at 1023 meters out, where our galaxy is just the brightest splotch, go to 1013, about the size of our solar system, to 106, the southeastern USA, and then end up zooming in on a single leaf in Florida, until at 10-15 you're staring a proton in the face. You can let it run on automatic, or press the button at the bottom to engage manual control of the zooming. Quote of the Moment With the gay sexual revolution in San Francisco, he was finally free to express that side of himself openly. This was a wonderful thing, but the effects of it were confusing and bizarre for my brother and me. With him, the Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name became the Love That Would Not Shut Up. --from the Salon.com story Curse of the Hippie Parents, a good read. |