This Blog is Not Dead

It is simply waiting for me to get my life in order.  Nothing major.  It's just that I have no time these days for anything like long-form writing.  I'll be back.  Or I'll die of frustration.

It's the Least Wonderful Time of the Year

The holiday season.  Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, Solstice, HumanLight, Kwanzaa, Festivus, Eid al-Adha, Boxing Day, Feast of Stephen, Soyal, Yule, Life Day.  Phooey.  Flummery.  I suppose humbug would be traditional.  In my line of work it means that my time and energy are at their greatest premium.  So this is my annual announcement that you will hear less from me than usual.  I'll try to surface for air from time to time, but don't hold your breath.  Enjoy your holidays.  Bah!

As the Blogoshere Turns

I really don't like Jar Jar Binks and I've never seen the appeal of cartoons designed to look like Legos, so it's saying something that the Video O' the Week is a Lego cartoon featuring Jar Jar Binks.  It's another great post on Electronic Cerebrectomy.

As the Blogoshere Turns

It's been a good week in Lake Blogosphere.  I've bumped into a few things that I rather liked.

I found our Video O' the Week via Folderol.  It's on a baseball blog called Foul Territory and shows the Texas Rangers, my current favorite team (go Rangers, beat those Yankees!) celebrating their division championship.  While normally such locker room celebrations feature champagne showers, the Rangers had a special ginger ale-only celebration for outfielder Josh Hamilton, who is a recovering alcoholic.  That, my friends, is what we mean by the word "team."

Our Cat O' the Week is also a video.  Incurable Insomniac presents Cat vs. Printer -- The Translation (warning--NSFW language).

In the Picture O' the Week our Canadian correspondent Calvin gazes south from his Cave of Cool to remind us that the presidency of Barack Obama contains an element of positive change for America that is as beautiful as it is exciting.  And if you think I'm being hyperbolic, you obviously haven't been paying attention for the last couple of centuries.

Finally, the Post O' the Week is by Bill Peschel.  It's a true tale of a literary hoax involving Jean Shepherd (of A Christmas Story fame), Theodore Sturgeon, Frank Kelly Freas, Ian and Betty Ballantine, saucy bawds, and seventeenth century sex scandals.  How can you not love that?

As the Blogoshere Turns

Another light week of monitoring the great blogophere brings us the Picture(s) O' the Week.  Love these takes on Starry Night from Popped Culture.  Go forth and be enlightened.

As the Blogoshere Turns

A short spin of the Blogosphere this week as we focus on the Cats O' the Week. Jaquandor warns of of the impending danger of Laser Cats!

Yesterday my mother told me that my niece is going to play laser tag. I told her what that meant and spent the next five minutes assuring her that no one would lose their eyesight.

Cats would be awesome at laser tag.

As the Blogoshere Turns

I've had a pretty full week and haven't had a whole lot of time to myself, but I did run across some good stuff that I thought I'd share with you.  Once again, if I can't produce a good blog myself, the least I can do is point out some that you should be following.

Our Video O' the Week is from Popped Culture, with an important message for the god in your life.

Our Picture O' the Week is from the Gunslinger.  Yvonne Craig.  Bikini.  And I just lost half my readers.

For the rest of you, check out the overall Post O' the Week.  It is from 27b/6 and is the most fun that a blogger can have with a troll.

Work Work Work Work, Hello Boys, Have a Good Night's Rest?

My time is consumed by work lately.  I won't be back here for a few days at least. 

Sounds like fun, doesn't it?

As the Blogoshere Turns

Greetings fellow travelers in Blogistan. Since this blog is fairly dull I consider it a public service to point out blogs that are fairly interesting. Here are this week's clever bits.

Our Picture 'O the Week comes from the Gunslinger and is memory of the good old days when the future was cool and belonged to us.

Kudos to Calvin, he of the Canadian Cave of Cool, for finding this charming moment that is The Video 'O the Week. It represents everything that is good and right about sports, so it is a pretty rare site these days.

The overall Post 'O the Week is to be found on the Back of the Cereal Box. It's all about when nature goes horribly wrong! No, not really, but it is quite interesting.

As the Blogoshere Turns

I've been not-blogging for most of this month, but I'll dip my toe back in with a look at a couple of things that tickled my fancy.

Our Picture O' the Week is on Electronic Cerebrectomy.  Shazam!

Our Post O' the Week is on Popped Culture.  It is a helpful introduction to beards.  There are, of course, only three kinds of people without beards; women, children, and those who seek to emulate them.

Update

Sorry for the blog silence.  I've been distracted lately.  Back to normal nonsense soon.

As the Blogoshere Turns

Our official Picture O' the Week is at the Gunslinger, and it is . . . beguiling.

Our Video O' the Week is Jane Austen's Fight Club.  It's been all over the place but I think the first place I saw it was at Folderol.  If you haven't see it yet, you should.

The Cat O' the Week is another one from the Gunslinger.  He's just keeping Papa company.

Finally, the Book Review O' the Week was written by Jaquandor.  I'm not sure if I'll read the book, but I enjoyed reading the review.

As the Blogoshere Turns

We've got a tie for Picture O' the Week, and both of them are from the same great blog, Popped Culture.  There's just so much to love in Monkey Knife Fight Club.  While I've got my money on Blip, I'm really worried about Jace.  I'm also loving this image of our old pal Woody.  Reach for the sky.

The Video O' the Week is from MobyLives.  It's terrific footage of Arthur Conan Doyle talking about Sherlock Holmes and psychic phenomena

It's Not Dead Jim

Good news for people who read. Blogging isn't dead after all. This essay by Corey Doctorow makes the case quite well. If you're interested in this sort of thing, please read it.

I was going to post this link on my Twitter feed, but that seemed a bit self defeating.

As the Blogoshere Turns Episode 2

Our Post O' the Week come from Oz and Ends. It points out what happens when the mainstream media tries to cover science, and highlights the perfidy of a big drug company. All that and it's about my all-time favorite disease, diabetes!

Our Movie Review O' the Week comes from Calvin's Canadian Cave of Coolness. It's about Batman, which is plenty cool for me

Our Video O' the Week also comes from the Cave of Cool. It's called Key Lime Pie and you've just got to see it.

(edit: link fixed)

As the Blogoshere Turns

Post O' the Week:
I commend to you this post on Culture Kills, possibly because I find the topic, fear, to be quite interesting, but mostly because of this line: “(clowns have testicles for a reason)”

Silence

I've been kind of quiet here lately. I've been dealing with some demons. Things should be getting back to what passes for normal shortly.

Spring Cleaning

I just got a bit bored with the way things look around here, so I updated the layout of the old blog. Hope you don't mind. I think I like it.

A Bunch of Questions

I first saw this at Calvin's Canadian Cave of Coolness. Looked interesting. Then I saw Jaquandor do it. I don't usually play, but what the heck, I'm in a mood.

1. What were doing 10 years ago?

Having a nervous breakdown. Really.

2. Five snacks that you enjoy in a perfect, non weight-gaining world?

In this perfect world diabetes has been cured: popcorn, Pop-Tarts, anything with cheese, anything with maple sugar, donuts.

3. Five things you would do if you were a billionaire:

Buy a house in the Back Bay and another in the White Mountains. Make sure my family never wanted for anything, ever. Travel a bit. Create a charitable foundation with a silly name so I could hear it on TV; “This program is made possible by the generous support of the Fartentooter Foundation.” And I could use a new pair of shoes.

4. Three of your habits:

Cracking my knuckles, singing for no reason, wasting time.

5. Five jobs that you've had:

Movie usher, video game room attendant, salesman, mortgage banker, bookseller.

6. Five places that you've lived:

Near Boston. That's about it.

7. Five things that you did yesterday:

Went to work. Bought shampoo (they were out of realpoo). Took pills. Blogged about hawks. Read some history.

8. Five people you would want to get to know more about:

Hitler, Jesus, Franklin, Poe, me.

9. Abortion: for or against it?

When it comes to matters of rights and social issues you will usually find me supporting individual liberty against the power of a coercive government. While the decision to destroy a living fetus is morally and ethically complex, I do not want legislators or bureaucrats to make these decisions for us. I am also a strong supporter of the concept of equal protection under the law. A significant restriction of individual liberty and personal choice that is placed on one sex only is necessarily unequal and unacceptable.

10. Do you think the world would fail with a female president?

The question is absurd. Did Israel fail with Golda Meir? Did the UK fail with Margaret Thatcher? Is Germany failing with Angela Merkel? Female heads of government are accepted around the world. They are no more or less prone to failure than males.

11. Do you believe in the death penalty?

I'm of two minds on this. On the one hand some crimes are so terrible that the penalty should be death. On the other hand I don't trust such a decision to human beings and I don't want to put the power of life and death in the hands of any government.

12. Do you wish marijuana would be legalized already?

Of course. See previous answers about individual liberty. I've never tried the stuff, don't want to, and disprove of it in general, but I don't think you, me, or Uncle Sam should have the right to tell people what not to do to themselves.

13. Are you for or against premarital sex?

None of my damn business.

14. Do you think same sex marriage should be legalized?

Do you remember what I said a bit ago about equal protection under the law? It's right there in the Constitution. Fourteenth Amendment in fact. You could look it up, as they say. How can you grant a right to one group of people and deny it to another and think that such an act is constitutionally acceptable?

15. Do you think it's wrong that so many Hispanics are illegally moving to the USA?

Wrong for who? Certainly not wrong for the migrants. Apparently not wrong for the people who are hiring them. Not wrong for Americans who wish to purchase the goods and services that their work provides. What is wrong is the “illegal” part. I'm told that if we could wave a magic wand and stop all illegal immigration it would cause several industries that rely on the labor to collapse. Obviously allowing people to enter the country only to take advantage of our social programs does us no good, but those who are willing and able to work or go to school should have a path to legal immigration. On the other hand I am concerned about the number of people who cross our borders without permission every year. The ability to secure borders is one of the basic security functions of government. A better job needs to be done to enforce the border laws that we have.

16. Should the alcohol age be lowered to eighteen?

Yes. Americans have a strange attitude toward alcohol. We treat it as a bad thing, something children need to be protected from. The supermarket in my town has a liquor section. If you have a bottle or a six-pack with your groceries the cashier, if he is under twenty-one, must stop and call an older supervisor to pick up the bottle, run it past the bar code scanner, and put it in a bag. He is legally enjoined from touching the package, as if it's close proximity could somehow contaminate his innocent soul. This is precisely how you create an attractive forbidden fruit and this is precisely what leads to secret and binge drinking. We need a more reasonable way to introduce young people to alcohol.

17. Should the war in Iraq be called off?

A couple of weeks ago Iraq held nationwide elections. It was another important step the people of that country took toward creating the second free and democratic nation-state in the Middle East. On that day the forces of evil (an archaic expression, yes, but appropriate nonetheless) bombed polling places, fired mortars into crowds, and shot at people waiting to vote. So the answer is yes. The people who would murder indiscriminately in order to terrify people to the point that they would surrender their freedom and bow to the will of the killers should call off the war immediately. I'm going to guess that this will not happen. It seems to me that the United States now has a responsibility to help the people of Iraq secure their country against tyranny and terror. We have promised them that we would do this thing and then leave. The president and the Joint Chiefs say that this should be accomplished by next year. I'm looking forward to it. So, I imagine, is Iraq.

18. Assisted suicide is illegal: do you agree?

Back to individual liberty again. If someone wants to die why do we feel that the government should have any power over the decision? And if that someone wants assistance so that the death is clean, painless, and dignified, then why not? If the law says no, “then the law is a ass.”

19. Do you believe in spanking children?

"Speak roughly to your little boy,
And beat him when he sneezes:
He only does it to annoy,
Because he knows it teases."

20.Do you worry that others will judge you from reading some of your answers?

Worry? No. "Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

Twitter is Now Officially Un-Cool

It's true! If I'm doing it then it must have gotten past the cool stage. Go here if you feel like it, or check out the Twitter gadget on my sidebar.

I'm still not comfortable saying that I am tweeting. Can I call it hooting? Probably not. I'll bet it's in the fine print.