OK, yes yes yes, I’m way late to the party, but geohashing is wicked-cool.  Programmed spontaneity!  I’d put it at much cooler than geocaching and almost as cool as DCP (there are links in the post proper).

So, I said that I was willing to compromise on paid-for abortions in order to effect health care reform.  I’ve been thinking a lot about this, and, though it upsets me, I think I really am.  Bob Mike called it having someone “thrown under the bus for this thing”.  I don’t think that’s entirely true, but there’s some truth in it.

In any case, let me balance that a little bit with the Vedder Tuesday for this week.

Porch

What the fuck is this world running to?
You didn’t leave a message, at least I
Could have learned your voice one last time
Daily minefield, this could be my time.  ‘Bout you?
Would you hit me?
Would you hit me?

All the bills go by and initiatives are taken up by the middle
There ain’t gonna be any middle any more
And the cross I’m bearing home ain’t indicative of my place
Left the porch
Left the porch

Hear my name, take a good look
This could be the day!
Hold my hand, walk beside me
I just need to say:

There’s something
There’s something I don’t mind
There’s a choice in my time
I don’t think changing it –
Not a good time to make a change for it
There is something in this that’s different
I know how I want to live
How I want to choose

Hear my name, take a good look
This could be the day!
Hold my hand, lie beside me
I just need to say:

I could not take
Just one day
I knew when I would not ever
Touch you
Hold you
Feel you
In my arms
Never again

Back next week.

All Vedder Tuesday

I have this unerring knack for hearing errors in American accents.  An actor will start talking in a movie, and, if I’m with someone and I’m not in the theater, I’ll say, “Oh, he/she isn’t American, is he/she?”  When I’m with my mom, she’ll always say “sounds fine to me”.  But I’m never wrong.  I have false negatives, to be sure: Jamie Bamber’s IMDB profile says he is English, but if he has a British accent in real life, the accent is perfect to me in BSG (I can’t tell with Kandyse McClure on that show, either.)  But when I was first introduced to Hugh Laurie, Naomi Watts, Ioan Gruffudd, Simon Baker, and on and on including, tonight, Mischa Barton — I’ve thought “Oooh.  Wrong.”

Now, I can’t always tell certain Australian accents from South African accents, which I assume should be easy.  But that doesn’t annoy me.  The American bit does, because it sounds insulting: it is almost always a little too broad, a little too flat, a little too lifeless, and I’ll think, “Hey, we do not sound that bad.  Knock it off!”  Fortunately, incredibly patronizing accents (Kenneth Branaugh, Catherine Zeta-Jones, etc.) are not the norm.  But it will often severely detract from my enjoyment of a film.  It can be forgiven by making up a theoretical American accent, one so stylized (Hugo Weaving, Eddie Izzard) that it’s kind of just there — after all, Stallone is American — but when it’s supposed to be perfect, and it’s not.  Gah.

Within my lifetime, Mel Gibson and Nicole Kidman perfected theirs.  It’s clearly possible.  Yes, it does make me wince at how badly American actors could be butchering non-American accents.  But, come on.  Voice.  Training.  Please.

• RT @thinkgeek: Carl Sagan remix http://j.mp/rwPUo [I love AutoTune. I just wish the artist didn't make him sound like Kermit the Frog.] #
• RT @greenchangeorg http://bit.ly/1Do71w "If (not paying for abortions) is the price of health care reform, are you willing to pay it?" *YES* #
• RT @NYTimeskrugman: What ever happened to "Commie"? http://bit.ly/4pKkrQ [Reminds me of #MargaretCho's "Redneck to English Dictionary" bit] #
• RT @greenchangeorg: http://bit.ly/tD4kg "[O]ne percent of Americans are millionaires, 44 percent of those serving in Congress [are]" #
• RT @BrentSpiner: RT @Rev_Chappy @BrentSpiner 50's WAY BEFORE MY TIME!–So you're only into what's happened in your time? Hmm. Well rounded. #
• I'm writing a #ZombieMovie based on Matthew 27:51-53. (Not really.  But really look it up: http://bit.ly/3g5sGP
  ) #
• #MM #MusicMonday: #FlowingTears's 2005 album #Razorbliss? Best album I've heard all year.  #Amazon (aff.): http://bit.ly/1bTQXY #
• #MM #MusicMonday two Mondays from now will have to be #ThemCrookedVultures, right? For everyone. Can I hold my breath for 8 days? Let's see. #
• "Maybe there is a God, but he's a real art lover." http://xkcd.com/29/  (Apparently at some point I'm supposed to start hating this comic.) #

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Via Richard Eriksson’s (low bandwith, high-content-value) blog comes a link to a MetaFilter post (“Hi.  Whatcha reading?”) that is a link to an article entitled “Schrödinger’s Rapist: or a guy’s guide to approaching strange women without being maced”

MetaFilter’s gotten better, in that there is higher SNR and fewer trolls, but OMG it’s still MetaFilter and there is just so much content of such varying intermingled quality, and one is hopping between scores of parallel conversations/arguments/rants with some balance of informed contributors, automatic arguers, trolls, and land-mine comments such as the in-line personal rape account that has upset my stomach for the last hour.

I don’t really know what to do with this topic, so I’m putting it there for discussion.  What I can say is that I know I’m big, hairy, and strange, and that, beyond the uncountable number of times I’ve feigned an untied shoelace or an urgent and immediate appointment across the street (in order to avoid a woman’s thinking I’m following her, and to avoid, meta-ly, her thinking that I’m aware that she thinks I’m following her), I actually stay home from events sometimes because I’m worried about sending the wrong messages (e.g., I’ll go to a Tool concert alone, but I won’t go to a Tori Amos concert, let alone a festival moshpit show, alone.)

Am I bitter about this?  A tiny bit, but then I feel guilty about feeling even a tiny bit bitter about this, in a similar way to how I’ll die a little bit inside whenever I lock my car door whenever I see someone with a particular lunging stroll pass, a walking pattern which is not equally distributed among ethnicities in my area.  The fact is: I am absurdly big, I am ridiculously strong, I’m far from clean-cut-and-shaven, and I have this Atlasload of male guilt.

OK.  That’s what I’ve got in me so far.  Thoughts?

When Niall had his sixth birthday last month, we had a birthday at Chuck E Cheese’s.  Because they’re six, my mom made the other boy¹ a small bag of “stuff” so he wouldn’t feel left out.  We warned Niall of this in advance, and at first he was very upset, then worked through it, making sure, in his words, “His toys won’t be bigger than mine, will they?”

I was listening to a truly vile Republican on KPCC today — one of those insufferable brats who worries that his fellow citizens could get rewards, too, but might — might might might — be OK with it if he can guarantee that he will be much more equal than everyone else.

Niall is six, and I can work on training him out of it.  The Repubs, though: I just want Obama to match the picture and say:

¹ Yes, singular.  Really, it’s OK: 1 is the ideal number of guests as far as Niall is concerned, being the smallest integer greater than or equal to the number of guests he’s comfortable having (approximately 0.4).  There is so much of me in him.  While I think I can program out the greed in him, I have no idea how — or, indeed, whether — to code having an easier time at parties, or to like people more.  Something something Jenn something something LiveJournal something something the first indication of a culture clash is people who would use fucking LiveJournal in the first place something something [redacted].

• Internet conn down again. At least with Twitter I can post about it. 7733362433 by voice. #

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• RT @BrentSpiner: Check this out. This is safe to spread. http://bit.ly/2fnGlc #
• #Nightmares.  Constant, unrelenting, horrible, incapacitating, inescapable nightmares.  Gah.  At least I finally woke up. #
• #unfollowme is #tt? Two thoughts. 1) That's what "block" is for. 2) Click on that #tt? Their r allota ilitterate ppl on Twitter ZOMG. #
• Actually, several nightmares would be good #shortstories. 'Strings' started as a nightmare. I'd still rather be sleeping, NOW and PEACEFULLY #
• I started following a Parisian WebTV producer (?). Sounds like something I'd do. Maybe not sober. I can read the French tweets, but, weird. #
• No! I'm composing a long post about English #grammar in my head. With tables and everything. Instead of SLEEPING. Ambien. Email. Again. Plz. #

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• #bitly allocates shortcuts pseudorandomly(?). [a-zA-Z0-9]{6} gives ~57B slots. At what density will they go to {7}? What is it NOW? Guesses? #
• 1000 random #bitly URLs to check for density. Four uniq then 46 COPIES of http://bit.ly/2SfyU9
  Did someone massively #spam this URL? #
• Can't wait for #MusicMonday: #FlowingTears's 2005 album #Razorbliss? Best album I've heard all year.  #Amazon (aff.): http://bit.ly/1bTQXY #
• #TT #beforeiselfdestruct? I wouldn't mind if #50Cent self-destructed. #KurtCobain did it with 8 fewer shots. C'mon, slacker! #
• HUGE fireworks display outside. ??? #British #Procrastinators, a day late for #BonfireNight? #GuyFawkesNight #
• I'm in a test group. Why don't I want to see #RTs by people I don't follow?  I *like* RTs by people I don't follow. It helps my self-esteem. #
• What's good for #Google is good for America? For YOU? Good enough for #FoxNews, anyway. Gah #richpeople. http://bit.ly/3VWq9G #recession #
• Hmm.  My obsession with my newly-found band #FlowingTears may be psychiatrically relevant . Keep an eye on me, OK?  Hmm.  #bipolar #
• #ff @nickmote @tmaufer @scott_lowe @BrentSpiner @MumblingNerd @denyreligion @duhism @postsecret @PRI @sillygwailo @greenchangeorg @brizzly #
• I've been #ff-ed by @whisky2dot0 under #whisky. So, quick, something useful: 1959 Whyte & Whyte #Glenfarclas! w00t! (The '69 is great too.) #
• We're absolutely BESET by a new tribe of obnoxious #atheists: http://bit.ly/4b2nhD
  #atheism #humor #

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• RT @webupd8 Ubuntu & Windows: Use Allmyapps For A One Click Installer Of All Your Favourite Applications ~ http://bit.ly/1Dtkmi #
• RT @BrentSpiner: RT "Have a problem with someone basing a fictional character on you?" – Prefer it to basing me on a fictional character. #
• Try this on #commandline to #tweet: « curl -u username:password -d status="My tweet" http://bit.ly/2bqd8C
  » #linux #twittertools #
• Best decorative use of #freckles ever: http://bit.ly/76IZG
  #tattoo #tattoos #tattooing (not counting #evangelinelilly http://bit.ly/pYrXr
  ) #
• Getting cold enough that I will probably need to light my heater's pilot light tomorrow.  Or, you know, yesterday.  NO INSULATION.  Gah. #
• #RunawayToyotas: Now that it's a "thing", it happened to me, and it totaled the car. There's one sample for you! http://bit.ly/4ttzWy #

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• Now yes to computer, no to Internet. Better! Voice still best: 77-333-MCGEE #
• Still can't write more of 'Strings' story without tears. If I ever finish it should be good. #scifi #
• Why is #cheese so expensive in California? #
• RT @duhism: Grateful for 5 things = happiness. For 10 = bliss. For 100…Seriously, dude? Now you're just being obnoxious. http://duhism.com #
• Trying to tweet using #curl from the #Ubuntu #commandline. #

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• RT @strangerthings: Walking through Walmart with children makes me realize just how much I am *not* into "stuff." #
• The cognitive load of reading and listening to NPR simultaneously seems no greater than driving plus radio, but I can't do it. Gah language! #
• And yet there's no BONG at 4:20 — @big_ben_clock #
• RT @kimthomas 11 ways to miss the point on the Internet. "When you’re reduced to attacking people who agree with you…" http://bit.ly/xJan6 #
• It only becomes meta after the comments. Bravo. (Gah. I thought Americans were the ones incapable of grokking irony.) http://bit.ly/3LuarI #

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I was reading a magazine article with Battlestar Galactica‘s Tricia Helfer, about the new BSG movie.  She explained that she is “unwilling to use a body double”, so we would see “a little bit of skin from her” in the movie.  And I’m thinking, “Wait — there are people who could and would be a nude body double for Tricia Helfer?  Are there — um — lots of them?  Do they live near here?”

I was listening to The World (Best.  Program.  Ever.)  A reporter was interviewing a woman in Nigeria about her family’s economics.  She was looking for a job to help support herself, her husband, and her nine children.

I think I see a possible area for optimizing Nigerian family economics.

Could we, like, petition the Vatican or something?  Petition them to sell all their (billions of dollars worth of) assets, give the money to Oxfam, and transition all the priests to, say, gardening?  Small-scale rural heirloom vegetable gardening, maybe?  With the gardens at least, say, 10km from the nearest primary school?

</snark>

I went nuts when my healthcare provider (back when I was employed by a company, and therefore deserved a healthcare provider) started paying for chiropractic “treatments” (here, previously.)  The theory of chiropractic is that all disease is caused by “subluxations” of the spine.  Something something energy lines.  But the real reason that this was covered, presumably, was that the co-pay was $40 for each of the patient’s visits, and the practitioner was paid $50 per visit, which works out to a rather good bargain in for-profit medical care.

Then medical plans started covering acupuncture.  And, maybe, apothecary visits.  And, whatever whatever.  And now the Senate healthcare bill …

For real …

Wants to cover prayer.  Prayer.  The patient can have a Christian Science practitioner paid $20 – $40 per day to pray for him.  Gah!  I so fucking wish I were making this up.

The bill was inserted by Orrin Hatch (booga booga booga!)

Oh, and John Kerry and Ted Kennedy.  WTF?

And politicians wonder at my, and my fellow skeptics’ — um — skepticism (?) of how their sponsors affect their votes, and how their personal religious views affect their votes, and how we can’t trust a motherfucking word that comes out of their dripping mouths.

Which leads to one last observation: Damn, is this the best work-at-home opportunity I’ve ever heard of.  Except I would be mortified to charge somebody $20 – $40 to pretend to pray for him.  But that’s really not what I do best.  How about this: I will charge any interested reader $10 per day to write a short blog post about how awesome he is.  I’ll also cross-post it to Twitter.  I will also implore, in every post, that all relevant authorities, deities, forces, energies, dragons, readers, and teapots also believe that the reader is cool.  But don’t expect me to spend more than a few minutes at it per day: I wouldn’t want you to think I was in the charity business for charitable reasons.

Graphic found at an atheist site today:

OK, so, look, you know I’m not wont to give Judeo-Christian scripture the benefit of the doubt.  I’d jump on the former if it were remotely fair.  But it isn’t.

I’ve been reading Bart Ehrman’s Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew, which is absolutely fascinating.  If you thought The Da Vinci Code was kinda cool, and felt like it was “taking a class”, and plowed through the hack writing for the neato stuff about religious secrecy, then, well, you’re an idiot, but a forgivable one; it was nicely packaged.  But Lost Christianities was the book you wanted to read all along.  I know it doesn’t have albino assassins or anything in it, but it’s still gripping.  And while the Luke 19 bit isn’t directly addressed in Ehrman, his books give one a much better understanding of the heterogeneity of early doctrinaires and the numerous forgeries, flame wars, actual flames, actual wars, and other assorted weird stuff going on in 2^nd-3^rd century proto-Christendom.

So, here’s Luke 19, in overview:

Verses 1 – 10: “Zacchaeus was a wee little man, a wee little man was he”
Verses 11 – 24: Parable of the Talents, which neocons love so much because they can interpret it as blessing the super-rich who make all their money by investing
Verse 25: “Can I get a witness?!”
Verses 26 – 27: OMFG Hail Hitler!!!1!
Verses 28 on: And then he went to the Mount of Olives, and his disciples stole a horse, and he taught random stuff that was probably furiously modified by later writers, and cried and shit.

Great.  Let’s go back to verses 26 to 27.  Read it in context.  Here it is in KJV:

19:24  And he said unto them that stood by, Take from him the pound, and give it to him that hath ten pounds.
19:25 (And they said unto him, Lord, he hath ten pounds.)
19:26 For I say unto you, That unto every one which hath shall be given; and from him that hath not, even that he hath shall be taken away from him.
19:27 But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me.
19:28 And when he had thus spoken, he went before, ascending up to Jerusalem.
19:29 And it came to pass, when he was come nigh to Bethphage and Bethany, at the mount called the mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples,

There is no way that was in the original.  Damn.  Even in translation it stands out in glaring blood-red.  Look, atheists: you can’t just take random verses out of context and call Christians Nazis.  You need to glork the context a bit more.  I know it’s weird to talk about the impropriety of surreptitiously corrupting Sci-Fi for later generations, but you are not helping if you just stand at the sidelines and throw stuff into the argument.

I had a hard time choosing this week.  Because of the events of the last week, I thought anything I chose could have subtext read into it.  If you don’t get that, that’s fine, and if you want subtext for this, go ahead, it’s probably there — but I’ll put this out as a great set of lyrics.

Save You

I’m gonna save you, fucker; I’m not gonna lose you
Feeling cocky and strong, can’t let you go
Too important to me, too important to us, we’d be lost without you
Baby, let yourself fall: I’m right below you now

And fuck me if I say something you don’t wanna hear, fuck me
And fuck me if you only hear what you wanna hear
Fuck me if I care: but I’m not leaving here

You helped me when I was down; I’ll help when you’re down
Why are you hitting yourself?  Come on, hit me instead!
Let’s pick up your will, it’s grown fat and lazy
I’m sympathetic as well, but don’t go on me now

And I’m not living this life without you, I’m selfish and clear
And you’re not leaving here without me, I don’t wanna be without my best friend
Wake up to see you could have it all

‘Cause there is but you, something within you
It’s taken control; let’s beat it, get up, let’s go
Oh, you’re in your own world, let’s see the whole world
Let’s pick up your soul

And fuck me if I say something you don’t wanna hear, fuck me
And fuck me if you only hear the treble in your head
Please help me to help you help yourself
Help me help yourself
Please want me to
Please let me to
Help you!

All Vedder Tuesday

• Whoever thought cats could be trusted with sharp weapons on their limbs needs his head examined. #
• "We could not find a match for the [...] Reentry Number you entered".  That's fine.  I really wanted to retype for 2.5 hours of work. #
• RT @henkvaness: Halloween joke in http://www.google.com/robots.txt : trick or treat, see screenshot  http://bit.ly/EPrDX #
• My #PageRank went from 4 to 0 when I rebranded my site name & URL.  I hoped #301s and the same content would preserve it. http://mcgees.org #
• #TT: #TheCranberries's "I Can't Be With You" takes me back to a 15-y.o. #highschool breakup.  Lame, yes?  #musicmemory #
• "Weakness fading into warmth that became perfect, endless darkness." — #JimButcher.  Phone is on, but only call in emergency. #Purplesleep! #

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Hey, you remember some years ago when we all headed over to WWDN to, essentially, make fun of someone, and he turned out to be an admirable, decent, articulate, multi-faceted, stand-up example of a guy?  Well, Brent Spiner‘s now on Twitter.  And the man is a genius, in an amping-snarkitude-and-wit-to-eleven kind of way.

Just remember, when he’s parrying people, he’s actually saying “fuck you”, and remember that when he says “fuck you” to them, he’s actually saying “fuck you” to you, and remember that even though he just told you to go fuck yourself, the man’s got a rapier.  Or, in better words than mine, from his abduction fantasy:

I drifted higher and higher. I was convinced I was a part of the light. But I wasn’t. It was a portal of some sort and I was being sucked in.  It felt strange.  Unlike any sucking experience I’ve ever had.

• #HappySamhain, everyone! Tell stories about departed friends, light two bonfires, set out extra silverware, and do some accounting! #samhain #
• Thanks for the grooming, #cat, but would you switch to a different square cm? #

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• RT @denyreligion: http://bit.ly/1nwUgE [Or: The rest are Mediterranean Mystery Religions, except for ours, which is 100% correct] #atheism #
• RT @greenchangeorg: 40% of Obama's top fundraisers got gov. posts: http://bit.ly/4uBbda [Anyone vet this? Some of them look OK. The others?] #
• Would my #TwitterFollowers click through to http://mcgees.org? Nothing sketchy, I just need test a new click-based. #WP / #Twtter widget. #

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• Bravo, @HomeDepot, for not yielding to (silly) pressure in the "button story" http://bit.ly/3ri4jd http://bit.ly/3do2Il #
• Yummy #melodic #Celtic #gothic #femalefronted #folk #metal: http://bit.ly/1oC5l
  (Yes, odd. Think #Solas meets #Sirenia) #Midnattsol #music #
• Would you pay for a #RegularExpression-enabled #Google search account? Plz answer and RT #googleregexp [me: yes, $100/yr] #
• Peet's #Coffee email: "Can an #urban #mushroom company #SaveTheWorld?"  I'm guessing "No". http://bit.ly/3BvSik
  @PeetsHomestead #
• RT @PeetsHomestead: A regular customer just did a wonderful thing. She bought a drink for the 9th customer following her http://bit.ly/Vza50 #
• Help: What variety of store would have the cheapest #candles? Halloween store? Big box? Craft? 99c? I need about two dozen *today*. #candle #
• Mega mega huge huge huge recommendation for @Brizzly. Should be the default online #TwitterClient. 10 referrals –> http://bit.ly/2snC0b #

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• "No batteries required – powered by wishful thinking" Control-a-Cat remote control http://bit.ly/4AKV7
  [insert Scientology joke] #
• #Baconnaise: #bacon-flavored mayonnaise! http://bit.ly/1aQOIU
  [vegetarian and kosher. ohhhhh-kay (?)]  No kickback on these links, BTW. #

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» Disability Doc

I just went to my state-appointed disability doctor today.  Different one from last time.  This doctor actually seemed to care.

The nurse had taken my blood pressure.  It was high.  Without health insurance I have been unable to afford medication out-of-pocket.  The doctor went about explaining it to me:

Doc:  Your blood pressure is very high.  It should be [switch to kindergarten teacher voice] One.  Thir.  Tee.  Oh.  Ver.  Nine.  Tee.  Or lower.

And I’m thinking, What the fuck, doc?  I was in an on-the-job accident, I didn’t have my frontal lobe removed.  Quick, I thought.  I need a shibboleth.

Joshua:  It’s the diastolic that’s especially bothering me about that.

And a light goes on behind her eyes.  Gooooood doctor, I think.  Maybe we can talk like adults now.

» A Levenshtein Edit Distance of “maybe pay attention to the computer”

I was pretty sure that I was going to spell “shibboleth” and “diastolic” correctly in that previous sentence.  And I seemed to.  So I tried appending a ‘q’ to the end of each, and Firefox recognized the modifications as errors.  I have to do this because of an apparent bug in Firefox in which the spell-checker will sometimes turn off without warning, leaving me wondering if there are false negatives.  Which leads me to a story that:

My ex-wife was/is one of the worst spellers I have ever met.  She makes my father look like the O.E.D.  When she was first telling me where her parents live, and where [Redacted.  Gawd.  The casual reader has no idea how much shit I redact -- how much shit I unilaterally redact, as far as blogs go -- about the divorce.  I believe that discretion is the better part of valor, but I can't even allude to the fact that I'm being discreet without losing valor.  So I'm going to spend one whuffie on this rather innocuous story that I'd probably tell about anyone, and one more on this very allusion to valor.  If that's enough to send you on your way, happy trails.  Nine fucking years.  Aargh.]

Anyway.  She emailed me her parents’ address, and I was going to drive down there with my mother.  My mother was looking up directions on Mapquest.  I read the address from my email, and said “The street is ‘Vangard’.  Without a ‘u’.”  Good thing for fuzzy matches.  The street is, of course, ‘Vanguard’.

So at one point in our marriage, Jenn had left a printout for work on the coffee table and my eyes caught a few words moving past it.  There was a glaring typo.  I said, as meekly as I could, “Hey, do you want me to edit this for typos?”  She said “yes”.

So I’m reading this document, and it’s just riddled with misspelled words.  So I fix them with a pen.  And, to help, I tell her, “There’s a setting you can turn on in Microsoft Word so that it underlines typos in red as you type them.”

And she says, “Oh, it’s on, the computer is just wrong a lot of the time.”

Thank whatever that she caught the typo on the tattoo artist’s essay for her second (and fucking huge) tattoo with a line from a friend’s poem surrounding it.  She didn’t let me copy-edit that.

OK, maybe that was more than one whuffie.  I don’t care.

» Macintrash

I’m typing this — once again — one one of my Mom’s MacBooks.  Firefox had slowed to a crawl.  I tried quitting it to restart it, but, no, you apparently can’t restart an application through the application menu if it’s stopped responding.  But I also couldn’t do anything else on the system; full freeze.  So I hard-power-cycled it (thank you, Steve, that the OS did not override that), the computer restarted, and: Firefox is gone from the quick-launch menu!  I thought I was missing it but, no, it just wasn’t there.  Then I realized I was being foolish: of course when an application crashes you should remove the ability to restart it quickly it in the future.  Doing otherwise would be ludicrous.

(Yes, I know I’m typing this on that very Mac.  To avoid hypocrisy — as far as can be avoided after this post — I’m turning it off as soon as I hit “Publish”.)

(And yes, I know, I’m in a terrible mood.  Sorry.)

I have a shirt that I love from ThinkGeek.  It reads:

This is through-and-through a math joke, to the point that I think few people who see it really get how funny it is.  Niall doesn’t get it, either, but at least he’s super-gracious about it:

“Daddy, I know you really like that shirt, but I don’t want you to store two-plus-two-equals-five in your brain, because two-plus-two-equals-four.  OK?”

• Damn, atted porn #spam.  Aargh.  I wish the "bottom feeders" would *actually* go to the bottom of the ocean.  I mean that in a nice way. #
• So head-over-heels for #FlowingTears's 'Firedream'. The lyrics are cheesy #heavymetal #satanism, but just ignore them. http://bit.ly/24phBE #

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Eight!  Eight is great!  (or, at least, good enough for Rebecca Gayheart)  This may be the longest any mcgees.org tradition has gone on.

In commemoration of that — or, you know, just because I feel like it — I’m pulling out a huge heavy-hitter this week.

Marker In the Sand

There is a marker;
No one sees it ’cause the sand
Has covered over
All the messages it kept;
From misunderstanding
What Original Truth was,
And now expanding
In a faith, but not in love

What went wrong?
Walking tightrope high
Over moral ground
Seeing visions of
Falling up somehow.
Oh, do come down!
With the living let what is living love.
So unforgiving, yet needing forgiveness first

God, what do you say?

Those undecided
Needn’t have faith to be free;
And those misguided,
There was a plan for them to be!
Now you’ve got both sides
Claiming ‘Killing in God’s Name’,
But God is nowhere to be found, conveniently

What goes on?
Walking tightrope high
Over moral ground.
Walk the bridges before you burn them down!
Do come ’round
With the living let what is living love.
Unforgiving, yet needing forgiveness first

God, what do you say?
God, what do you say?

I feel a sickness,
A sickness coming over me,
Like watching freedom
Being sucked straight out to sea.
And the solution?
Well, from me, far would it be
But the delusion is feeling dangerous to me

What goes wrong?
Walking tightrope high
Over moral ground
Seeing visions of falling up somehow
Oh, do come down!
With the living let what is living love,
Unforgiving yet needing forgiveness first

Oh, what do you say?
God, what do you say?

Calling out, calling out!
I’m calling out, calling out!

Back next week!

All Vedder Tuesday

• When someone begins every third sentence "To be honest", I wonder what's going on the other two-thirds of the time. *BAD* habit. #
• I have this *sublime* #grossout story that just happened to me — absolutely hilarious — and I can't bring myself to inflict it on anyone. #
• #LivKristine's "Blue Emptiness" just showed up on last.fm radio. I've loved this song since I first heard it. http://bit.ly/awYXp
  #faith #
• RT @denyreligion: Create Your Own Pedo Priest Halloween Costume #atheism http://bit.ly/3b2cgM [NOT FUNNY. Hateful and inappropriate.] #
• It's going to bother some people that I'm writing this, but #Razorbliss is an *awesome* #albumname. http://bit.ly/2CcvSU
  #FlowingTears #
• Thank you @SenatorReid for standing up for America & putting a public option in the Senate bill. Sign and RT: http://is.gd/4CQRf [next: 60!] #
• Cool site (only explored stats so far): @twerpscan http://bit.ly/1hv0Y1
  #twitterapps #twittertools #
• #FlowingTears, "Firedream"; #EddieVedder, "Long Nights" #MusicMonday #MM #

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• RT @denyreligion: Jesus Christ on a Unicorn Commemorative Plate #atheism #humor http://bit.ly/3u5oAw (this is funny, right?  not just mean?) #
• Don't forget, #Jesus was a #Republican http://bit.ly/4w7hG0 [sharp inhalation of breath] #atheism #religion #gop #hc09 #hc #
• Every #bitly link I include, I get an immediate six visits.  Do some #Twitterapps pre-fetch pages?  Or just expand the URLs? #
• Waiting for #Twitter to implement a weighted authority calculation to replace #Followers, to combat zombie followers. Has to be soon, right? #
• Story i'm writing –  Strings – keeps moving me to tears. Either best time to write or worst. #
• Worst. Stopping. #
• Can someone email me some #Ambien?  65mg should do it. #

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I’ve been using last.fm for about 2.5 years now (hi Karina!), and I’ve been scrobbling my music for much of that time.  Eventually, patterns should emerge.  Such as this compilation of my “Top Artists” that it displays for me:

1. Pearl Jam
2. Eddie Izzard
3. Nirvana
4. The Chieftains
5. Frédéric Chopin
6. Tally Hall
7. Queensrÿche
8. Stone Temple Pilots
9. Led Zeppelin
10. Argerich / Freire / Kremer / Maisky [performing Saint-Saëns's Le Carnaval des Animaux]
11. Lacuna Coil
12. Tool
13. Rush
14. Dream Theater
15. Loreena McKennitt

I’m not sure I could/would have come up with that exact list in that exact order on my own, but, yes, that’s a pretty good ranking of my tastes, save maybe the Saint-Saëns, which is pretty much all Aquarium, and pretty much all Niall.

Now, why and how that list could represent the top 15 choices of one person is left as an exercise to a suitably intrepid and demented reader.