10 - 2002 | ***Dave Does the Blog

Trick-or-Treat Report

Despite temps in the teens, I think we had a pretty good turn-out. We didn’t get rid of nearly enough candy (for which read, “We bought way too much candy,…

Despite temps in the teens, I think we had a pretty good turn-out. We didn’t get rid of nearly enough candy (for which read, “We bought way too much candy, so now we shall have to eat it, the horror, the horror”), but we had pretty good attendance.

Kitten got to wear her tiger costume to Margie’s office, and we also braved the cold to go around to several neighborhood houses, where she wowed them with her rendition of “Tick teet!” and “Tank’oo!” and “Rrowr!”

After exhausting the neighborhood (and before Daddy’s ears froze off), we headed back home, then drove over to Jackie & Doyce’s for the annual “Isn’t She Cute?” Fest. We discovered, via Justin’s ninja costume, that Katherine knows all about stabbing people with swords, which is either mildly disturbing or something to be proud of.

A kiss is just a kiss

Heavens to Betsy. I don’t know whether to be pleased or apalled that some school administrators aren’t focusing all their time on suspending students for pseudo-violent behavior. Instead, some are pursuing pseudo-lacivious behavior, as is the case here, where a football player was given a two day “in-school suspesion,” including being kept out of playing in the homecoming game, for …

… attacking his girlfriend?
… groping his girlfriend?
… fondling his girlfriend?
… dropping to the ground atop his girlfriend (or vice-versa)?
… liplocking with his girlfriend, with Maximum Tongue Action™?

Nope. For giving his girlfriend a kiss on the forehead.

Imagine what would have happened had he kissed her hand, Southern Gentlemanliness or no.

The district considers “inappropriate” contact between students a no-no and leaves it up to principals to decide exactly what is inappropriate.

Yeah, because that’s a way to ensure clear, consistent, and non-arbitrary exercise of power.

Rodney Bowler, Union Grove principal, said kissing, hugging excessively and other physical contact distracts students from academics.
“We run a strong academic environment in which kissing is not an activity that needs to take place in the school building,” he said.

Yeah, it should take place out by the bike racks, like it did in my days.

Come on. Was he smooching with his sweetie in class? Nope. In the library? Nope. In study hall? Nope. In the hallway. What sort of “academics” was he being distracted from while there?

And how come the girl (who presumably gave up her forehead to the kiss willingly) isn’t getting busted for this?

If anything is being learned from this, it’s not chaste restraint and focus on academics within school walls. It’s hyperbole, as the suspended student laments:

“It hurt me so bad, my senior year missing my homecoming game. I’m going to be scarred for life. I’ll have no stories to tell my kids.”

Fishers of Men

On this week’s Thursday Thumb-Twiddler, I asked for slogans to encourage people to eat more fish. Some of the better responses I got: So many fish, so many tastes. Fish:…

On this week’s Thursday Thumb-Twiddler, I asked for slogans to encourage people to eat more fish. Some of the better responses I got:

So many fish, so many tastes.
Fish: Brain Food That’s Soggy
Eat fish, Get thin
Fish – Just Eat It
If it’s cooked, you won’t get sick!
Fish is food for your brain.
“Fish Tastes Better Than I Do” – It would be Lil Kim holding a red snapper and saying fish tastes better than she does. Well, you know how many men want to get to the center of her?
Fish – It’s not just for food poisoning any more!
‘Dive into diversity’ – with several different, delicious-looking dishes to accompany the words, voiced by a sexy male voice, probably British and – sorry, got distracted for a moment.

Interesting folks you meet on the Internet …

All Clear

A French woman, 56, flying home from a wedding in Indiana, got fed up with being wanded around the chest, so she stripped off her sweater, blouse and bra to…

A French woman, 56, flying home from a wedding in Indiana, got fed up with being wanded around the chest, so she stripped off her sweater, blouse and bra to demonstrate that she wasn’t carrying anything illegal right there.

Hilarity — and the closure of the security line for ten minutes — ensued.

Now it seems that, under the post-9/11 security laws, she may face up to three years in prison …

(The link above is to the rather crude Babelfish translation; the original German is here.)

(For a boring English version of the story, see here.)

(via BoingBoing)

Bestriding

Which Marvel Super-Hero are You? Actually, not a bad pick. Even if he is dead, and I never was all that ga-ga about the character while he was alive….

Which Marvel Super-Hero are You?

Actually, not a bad pick. Even if he is dead, and I never was all that ga-ga about the character while he was alive. Which, maybe, says something.

Which Marvel Super-Heroine are You?

Not my fave, for sure, but, yeah, I can see the resemblance, down to the “teacher’s pet” side of things.

(via ToaFD)

Interview as a Vampire

The Great Archives determine you to have gone by the identity: &nbsp Ahab Brown Known in some parts of the world as: &nbsp Devil of Blood The Great Archives Record: &nbsp Thirsty, unstoppable…

The Great Archives determine you to have gone by the identity:
&nbsp  Ahab Brown
Known in some parts of the world as:
&nbsp  Devil of Blood
The Great Archives Record:
&nbsp  Thirsty, unstoppable and vicious.

What’s your vampire name?

(Hmmmmm. I might be able to use that in my story …)

(via SfAD)

Threesome

It’s the Thursday Threesome, Halloween Style….

It’s the Thursday Threesome, Halloween Style.

Continue reading “Threesome”

Thnowy Thursday

It’s Thursday, which means it’s time for your letters The Thursday Thumb-Twiddler….

It’s Thursday, which means it’s time for ~~your letters~~ The Thursday Thumb-Twiddler.

Continue reading “Thnowy Thursday”

“He’s a witch!”

Your (no-doubt) Halloween-related news: Academics say historians have ignored the suffering of thousands of male witches. Canadians Andrew Gow and Lara Apps say they have been marginalised by researchers who…

Your (no-doubt) Halloween-related news:

Academics say historians have ignored the suffering of thousands of male witches.
Canadians Andrew Gow and Lara Apps say they have been marginalised by researchers who have focussed on the persecution of female witches.
They claim 25% of the estimated 60,000 witches executed in Europe between 1450 and 1750 were men.

Fair enough. Gow, however, loses all his credibility when he further notes:

“Look at Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Look at Bewitched and other popular TV depictions of witches and witchcraft. They all revolve around women
exclusively.”

Bosh. Doctor Bombay, Uncle Arthur, not to mention Sam’s father, the mighty Maurice, were all key members of the Bewitched cast.

I hate shoddy research.

Ultraviolet

Wow. About six months ago or so I picked up a twin DVD set for a British miniseries called Ultraviolet. The box (well, the Daily Mail)calls the 1998 show “a…

Wow.

About six months ago or so I picked up a twin DVD set for a British miniseries called Ultraviolet. The box (well, the Daily Mail)calls the 1998 show “a dark, stylish vampire thriller for the X-Files generation.”

Well … yeah, they’re right.

It’s dark. Perforce, much of the action occurs at night. And nowhere does night time seem darker, more treacherous than in London.

It’s stylish. The music is simple, lulling while menacing. The fx are kept to a (nice) minimum. The direction is straightforward. It’s all much more sinister and suspenseful than flashy and bloody. Though there is, indeed, blood.

As to the rest — the “v” word is never actually used, but the vampire concept has never been so nicely brought up to date. This is what vampires would be like, how they would behave, how humanity would respond to them.

It’s the story of a small group of government operatives — including the young police detective recruited in the first episode — who are the British response to the vampire threat. That sounds really cheesy, but, in many ways, the series is not much different from a tale of a mysterious government unit fighting some sort of a terrorist movement. There’s just enough v-stuff, enough pseudo-science, to give it an extra frisson of terror.

It’s not Buffy, or even Angel. It’s not witty. Its violence is more subtle. Its horror is more pervasive. It’s darker, more threatening. The moral quandaries, the psychological conundra are deeper. And yet with just as many subplots and ongoing twists, as sophisticated a plot and a world in the course of six episodes as, frankly, either of those shows over multiple seasons.

This is good stuff, people. If you like the X-Files (not the glitzy fx eps, but the something is out there ones, if you like suspense thrillers, if you want something really dark, and really scary, and really good … watch Ultraviolet.

With two you get spam roll

China is planning to eases restrictions on the “.cn” domain. It is thought that there are many companies outside of China that want to have a .cn web page. “We…

China is planning to eases restrictions on the “.cn” domain. It is thought that there are many companies outside of China that want to have a .cn web page.

“We expect tens of thousands of companies to apply for the .cn domain. We expect great demand from foreign companies eager to secure a presence in China’s Internet space. This is also significant as it is the first time China is opening up to allow for foreign players in the Internet domain name market.”

Wait until all those foreign players discover that everyone assumes mail coming from .cn accounts is spam, due to their loose regulations and unrestricted relays.

Kettles, pots, that sort of thing

Let me get this straight. According to Ted Rall, George Bush may be behind Paul Wellstone’s death, even though Rall admits there’s no reason to think that he was, and…

Let me get this straight. According to Ted Rall, George Bush may be behind Paul Wellstone’s death, even though Rall admits there’s no reason to think that he was, and even though Rall admits that the GOP thought he was vulnerable to defeat, certainly more vulnerable than any successor candidate.

It’s also obviously suspicious to Rall that so many politicians die in plane crashes, even though it’s also understandable that it happens more frequently to politicians who rely so much on our Rall-admitted awful civil aviation system. And clearly the lack of black boxes (at least as reported) is suspicious, even though under other lights the Rall would be railing against shoddy regulation of the air industry.

And, of course, the only reason we’re having this conversation, according to Rall, is because the Dubyans have created such an environment of divisiveness, of cruel, unfounded accusations and villification, nay, demonization of their opponents.

Yeesh.

(via InstaPundit and Transterrestrial Musings)

Icy

Bitch of a drive home tonight. I’ll be the first to admit I’ve gotten to be gun-shy about icy highways (a few sliding-360-turn-sliding-into-intersections-sliding-into-dividers will do that to you). But I saw plenty of other vehicles twisting, turning, and sliding along C470 in the Kipling/Santa Fe area, too, so I’ll just be glad I got home safely.

And that I have a wife who knows how to mix a martini.

A good sign, I suppose

No New News or direct contact from my New Boss regarding What the Frell I’m Doing, but .. … he approved the expense report for my trip two weeks ago….

No New News or direct contact from my New Boss regarding What the Frell I’m Doing, but ..

… he approved the expense report for my trip two weeks ago.
… I got approval for my new laptop.
… he replied very quickly to an e-mail I sent him querying about some software he’d mentioned during my trip out there.

So I’m clearly … well, so far so good. Or not bad. I guess.

Words mean things

Very cool ongoing US English Dialect Survey going on. Register and let folks know how pronouciations and idioms vary around the country. I found two things fascinating: 1. I realize…

Very cool ongoing US English Dialect Survey going on. Register and let folks know how pronouciations and idioms vary around the country.

I found two things fascinating:

1. I realize that I pronounce some thing differently now than I did when I was growing up.

2. There’s an amazing array of idioms for some common things. E.g.,

74. What do you call the little gray creature (that looks like an insect but is actually a crustacean) that rolls up into a ball when you touch it?
a) pill bug
b) doodle bug
c) potato bug
d) roly poly
e) sow bug
f) basketball bug
g) twiddle bug
h) roll-up bug
i) wood louse
j) millipede
k) centipede
l) I know what this creature is, but have no word for it
m) I have no idea what this creature is
n) other:

I grew up using (e) (and having an odd mental conflation with soy sauce), but I hear (a) a lot, too, and some of the others — and it isn’t always clear with words of this sort when other folks do have different names for them. I mean, how often do you discuss sow bugs with your friends, fergoshsakes.

(One place where you do run across these sorts of differences is, of all place, children’s books — which makes sense, I guess, since they often are describing the world around them to new eyes.)

Cool stuff. And there’s maps for each question’s answers, too.

Entertainment Value

Here’s a remarkable game that simulates what the Internet experiences is really like. Try the Realistic Internet Simulator….

Here’s a remarkable game that simulates what the Internet experiences is really like. Try the Realistic Internet Simulator.

The Scammer in the Darkness

Which will get to Randolph Carter first — the Nigerian 419 scammer e-mailing him, or the minions of the dread Cthulhu? Just marvelous. (via TofFD)…

Which will get to Randolph Carter first — the Nigerian 419 scammer e-mailing him, or the minions of the dread Cthulhu?

Just marvelous.

(via TofFD)

Well, I have a solution …

… but it involves a baseball bat, knee caps, and a demonstration of one or two of Newton’s Laws. Seem’s that someone’s figured out how to spam Movable Type comments…

… but it involves a baseball bat, knee caps, and a demonstration of one or two of Newton’s Laws.

Seem’s that someone’s figured out how to spam Movable Type comments pages. It all makes pretty grim reading.

If it’s possible to access your comments by just incrementing a number, and possible to leave a comment by just sending an HTTP POST request (yes, Movable Type users, that’s you, among others), you should know that you are vulnerable to being flooded with comments. All it takes is a moron spammer like “Mike Johnson” of “www.las-vegas-real-estate-1.com” with enough scripting ability (very little) and gall (quite a bit) to write a script that starts with your first entry number and runs through to the last, sending POST after POST with his moron spammer website link and witless comment text.

The Trotts were planning on rolling out comment registration for MT soon, and may be forced to do it sooner, but that’s a solution that nobody likes (myself included), and it’s not clear that’s a solid long-term solution, anyway.

(via ToaFD)

Veggie, veggie, fruit-fruit!

It’s time for this week’s Tuesday This-or-That….

It’s time for this week’s Tuesday This-or-That.

Continue reading “Veggie, veggie, fruit-fruit!”

What’s new is, er, newer again

Eleventy zillion years ago — well, actually, last June — I wrote of the meme of typing your name plus “is” into Google to see what comes up. Well, the…

Eleventy zillion years ago — well, actually, last June — I wrote of the meme of typing your name plus “is” into Google to see what comes up.

Well, the wonder of the Internet is that there’s always someone around out there to automate the easy. Hence, Googlism.

Continue reading “What’s new is, er, newer again”