Temp

My brother and some others have started a project called Occupy The Mailbox that aims to have visitors to Occupy Wall Street write traditional letters to their friends and family, and gives them the opportunity to have them published to the site.

Follow that link, and also follow @OccupyMailbox for updates.

Nerdiversary!  I started playing the game Magic: The Gathering 18 years ago today — and I still play weekly.  I must celebrate.  Celebrate my Magic-geekiness reaching majority.  Take it to the UK and buy it a beer or something.

You scoff or chortle?  The game’s mechanics taught me important concepts of computer science, early and well.  Learning to trade was a better immersion in economic theory than any Intro to Econ class ever created.  Group play taught me lessons in game theory that I still mentally refer to.  Selling a binder of cards bought me the computer on which I taught myself to program, and that led to a career.  And the draw to play the game got me out of my bedroom and forced a socially-awkward and introverted kid out into the world.

Have I taught Niall this game?  You bet I have!  And he loves it.  Here’s to another 18 years of this fantastic game entertaining, educating, and inspiring people.

I was playing Magic at my local gaming store tonight, and had the following exchange:

Me:  “Do you have an extra Endless Ranks of the Dead?”

Opponent, pointing at a drafting table:  “No, but ask John.”

Me:  “Which one’s John?”

Opponent:  “The guy in black.”

Me, seeing five:  “That … doesn’t really narrow it down.”

Opponent:  “In the black sweatshirt.”

Me, seeing three:  “…”

Opponent:  “Sitting next to the guy in the red shirt.”

Me, seeing two:  “…”

Opponent:  “With the beard.”

Me:  “Oh, him.  Thanks”

Yes, “Occupy Wall Street” is on my mind.  Yes, that’s why I selected these lyrics today.

½ Full

Climbing over mountains
Floating out on the sea
Far from lights of a city
The elements they speak to me

Whispering that life
Existed long before greed
Balancing the world
On its knee

Don’t see some men as half empty
See them half full of shit
Thinking that we’re all but slaves

There ain’t gonna be
No middle anymore
It’s been said before

The haves be having more
Yet still bored

Won’t someone save?
Won’t someone save the world?

This one’s for search engine visitors:  As of 17 September 2011, trying a distribution upgrade of Ubuntu Natty Narwhal to the Oneiric Ocelot beta on a Toshiba T135D notebook will leave your computer in an unusable state and will require a full re-install of Natty.  Don’t try it yet.

There is now a dedicated blog for this project

I have a blog feature that’s had thirty instances?  Wow.  I’m choosing Severed Hand this week — an ode to psychotropics.  “What is human, what is more?  I’ll answer this when I get home.”

Severed Hand

Big man stands behind an open door
Said, “Leave your lady on the cement floor.”
“Got some kicks, want to take a ride?”
I said, “Yeah!”
“Take your pick, leave yourself behind.”
I said, “Yeah!”

I’ve no fear but for falling down
So look out below!  I am falling now!
Oh please understand I just need, my friend,
A way — a way — a way home

Tried to walk, found a severed hand
Recognized it from the wedding band
Said “It’s ok, do you want some more?”
I said, “Yeah!”
“You’ll see dragons after 3 or 4.”
I said, “Yeah!”

“Understand I’m not falling down,”
I said.  “Look around, the room’s taller now”
I can’t close my eyes, ’cause I see the sound in waves –
In waves — lets me stay calm

If I don’t lose control
Explore and not explode
A preternatural other plane
With the power to maintain

Like a tear in all we know
Once dissolved we are free to grow
What is human, what is more?
I’ll answer this when I get home

I received an email today that began thusly:

Thanks for being a Starbucks customer – but has it been a while since we’ve seen you?  We’ve noticed that your Starbucks Card ending in 3603 has not been used for over two years.  And as of 6/29/2010, it has a balance of over $5.

My first response was “I … have a Starbucks card?”

The email gave me a link to the site where, if I had lost the card, I could transfer the balance over to another card I have, or if I didn’t have another card, they would mail me a new one.

“Oh, great,” I thought.  “What kind of service fee is it going to be for them to mail me a new card?”  I thought about going to a Starbucks and buying a card just to avoid the $1.50-or-whatever.

You know what the service fee is for a new card?  $0.00.  Zip.  Zero.  Nothing.  There’s a gift card with $6.40 on it that I forgot I had and that I definitely forgot having registered on their site, and the company sent me an email offering to cancel the card and send me a new one for free.

I know someone must have run the numbers and decided that increased sales would far outweigh the cost to the company, but I don’t care.  I just got $6.40 credit at Starbucks.  That’s two whole London Fogs.  Bravo — and thank you — Starbucks.

“And the meanings that get left behind.  All the innocents lost at one time.  We’re all different behind the eyes.
There’s no need to hide.”  Marvelous song.

I Am Mine

The selfish, they are all standing in line
Faithing and hoping to buy themselves time
Me, I figure as each breath goes by
I only own my mind

The North is to South what the clock is to time
There’s east and there’s west and there’s everywhere life
I know I was born and I know that I’ll die
The in between is mine
I am mine

And the feeling, it gets left behind
All the innocence lost at one time
Significant, behind the eyes
There’s no need to hide
We’re safe tonight

The ocean is full ’cause everyone’s crying
The full moon is looking for friends at high tide
The sorrow grows bigger when the sorrow’s denied
I only know my mind
I am mine

And the meaning, it gets left behind
All the innocents lost at one time
Significant, behind the eyes
There’s no need to hide
We’re safe tonight

And the feelings that get left behind
All the innocents broken with lies
Significance, between the lines
(We may need to hide)

And the meanings that get left behind
All the innocents lost at one time
We’re all different behind the eyes
There’s no need to hide

I’ve come to recognize an unflattering character trait in myself:  I become uncomfortable when someone’s knowledge in any domain is not a subset of my own.  Usually this leads me to study rather than pretend — usually — but, still, kind of icky.

So, if you were wondering why I know large amounts about a vast field of subjects I have no real reason to — something multiple people have brought up recently — that’s the primary answer.

That’s also a bit more than I’m comfortable admitting anywhere.

Readers know I obsess about songs from time to time.  And, oh man am I obsessing over “Miles Away” by The Corin Tucker Band, from 1,000 Years.  The whole album is stunning, but this song is transcendent.

Miles Away

New moon peeking through
Now the sky is brand new
Feel it on my skin, is it night or noon?
It’s been the blackest night for quite some time
Since my love left with that heart of mine
It kept on ticking, I don’t know why

(Chorus:)
Now this rock bottom hurt has a whole new feel
It feels like the moon since I saw you here
And the light that comes from your face
Brightens this place
Tell me who needs a sun when it goes away?
It sets on me every single day

Darlin’, I’ll get my light from a star who is miles away

If I look too long will I lose my place?
I get caught staring into space
You see, my dear, there’s much I’d like to erase
It’s later now, my eyes adjust
Ooh, what a pretty boy he was
Pretty is as pretty does

(chorus x 3)

Today, walking home:

Teen-I-don’t-know: Werral d’weed at?

Me: What?

Teen: Werral da weed at?

Me: Where all the WEED at?

Teen: Yeah. How much you got on you?

Me: Um … none?

Teen: But you got your Rockstar [Energy Drink].

Me: Yeah. It’s good shit.

Other teen: We’re gonna go get some right now!

Me: Weed?

Other teen: Yeah.

Me: That’s … good.

Teen: See ya!

You thought I had stopped this feature, huh?  Well, I have.  I’ve just had these lyrics cycling in my mind for hours — about how myth can control us — and how we can reclaim the notion of faithfulness, as faith in our loved ones.

Faithful

Plaque on the wall says that no one’s slept here
It’s rare to come upon a bridge that has not been around
Or been stepped on
Whatever the notions we laced in our prayers,
The man upstairs is used to all of this noise
I’m through with screaming

And echoes nobody hears, it goes, it goes, it goes
Like echoes nobody hears, it goes, it goes, it goes
We’re faithful, we all believe, we all believe it (4x)

And echoes nobody hears, it goes, it goes, it goes (2x)
We’re faithful, we all believe, we all believe it (3x)
So faithful, we all believe, we all believe it

Myth is belief in the game,
Controls that keep us in a box of fear
We never listen
Voice inside so drowned out, drowned
You are, you are, you are everything
And everything is you
Me, you, you, me, it’s all related
What’s a boy to do?
Just be darling and I will be too  –
Faithful to you

All Vedder Tuesday

I love this song’s lyrics: Socially conscious; empowering; bitterly satirical at points.  The music is fantastic, too.  Enjoy.

Song of Choice

Early every year the seeds are growing
Unseen, unheard, they lie beneath the ground
Would you know before the leaves are showing
That with weeds all your garden will abound?

If you close your eyes, stop your ears
Hold your mouth, how can you know?
The seeds you cannot see may not be there
The seeds you cannot hear may never grow

In January you’ve still got the choice
You can cut the weeds before they start to bud
If you leave them to grow higher, they’ll silence your voice
And in December you may pay with your blood

Close your eyes, stop your ears
Close your mouth and take it slow
Let others take the lead and you bring up the rear
And later you can say you didn’t know

Every day another vulture takes flight
There’s another danger born every morning
In the darkness of your blindness the beast will learn to bite
How can you fight if you can’t recognize a warning?

Close your eyes, stop your ears
Close your mouth and then you know
Let others take the lead and you bring up the rear
And later you can say you didn’t know

Today you may earn a living wage
Tomorrow you may be on the dole
Though there’s millions going hungry, you needn’t disengage
For it’s them not you that’s fallen in the hole

It’s all right for you if you run with the pack
It’s all right if you agree with all they do
If the Fascist Party’s slowly climbing back
It’s not here yet, so what’s it got to do with you?

The weeds are all around us and they’re growing
It will soon be too late for the knife
If you leave them on the wind that around the world is blowing
You may pay for your silence with your life

Close your eyes, stop your ears
Close your mouth, they’re never there
And if it happens here, they’ll never come for you
Because they’ll know you really didn’t care

You know what’s great?  Activist music.  Especially when it’s screaming heavy metal.

Like this track from Los Angeles band System of a Down.  Here are the lyrics:

Prison Song

They’re trying to build a prison
They’re trying to build a prison

Following the rights movements
You clamped down with your iron fists.
Drugs became conveniently
Available for all the kids.
Following the rights movements
You clamped down with your iron fists.
Drugs became conveniently
Available for all the kids.

I buy my crack, my smack, my bitch,
Right here in Hollywood

Nearly 2 million Americans are incarcerated
In the prison system of the U.S.

They’re trying to build a prison

They’re trying to build a prison
They’re trying to build a prison
They’re trying to build a prison
For you and me to live in.
Another prison system
Another prison system
Another prison system

Minor drug offenders fill your prisons
You don’t even flinch
All our taxes paying for your wars
Against the new non-rich,
Minor drug offenders fill your prisons
You don’t even flinch
All our taxes paying for your wars
Against the new non-rich

I buy my crack, my smack, my bitch,
Right here in Hollywood

The percentage of Americans in the prison system (prison system), has doubled since 1985

They’re trying to build a prison

They’re trying to build a prison
They’re trying to build a prison
They’re trying to build a prison
Another prison system
Another prison system
Another prison system
For you and me, you and me

They’re trying to build a prison
They’re trying to build a prison
They’re trying to build a prison
For you and me
Oh baby, you and me

All research and successful drug policy shows
That treatment should be increased,
And law enforcement decreased
While abolishing mandatory minimum sentences.
All research and successful drug policy shows
That treatment should be increased
And law enforcement decreased
While abolishing mandatory minimum sentences.

Utilizing drugs to pay for secret wars around the world,
Drugs are now your global policy,
Now you police the globe.

I buy my crack, my smack, my bitch,
Right here in Hollywood

Drug money is used to rig elections
And train brutal corporate-sponsored
Dictators around the world.

They’re trying to build a prison

They’re trying to build a prison
They’re trying to build a prison
They’re trying to build a prison
For you and me to live in.
Another prison system
Another prison system
Another prison system
For you and me
They’re trying to build a prison,
They’re trying to build a prison,
They’re trying to build a prison,
For you and me.
Oh baby, you and me!

Most fathers probably find their seven-year-olds hilarious at times.  Niall, I think, is objectively hilarious.

1. Niall and I were at the home of my father and his wife (“Nana Judy”).  They have a wooden fort installed for him.  He draws a sign to put at the entrance:

For your safty: no adults or human humen girls allowed

My father asks him about it:

My father:  It’s not safe for girls?

Niall:  No.

My father:  Why not?

Niall:  They might get hurt.

My father:  How?

Niall:  They might get pushed off.

2. Niall comes to me and tells me that he wants to build a trapdoor in it.  He describes it, and how it will work, carefully watching to make sure I think it’s a good idea.  Then he says, “OK.  Well, first I need to ask permission to use the chainsaw.”  He says this Christopher-Robin-level politely — as if he could sweet-talk his way into it.

3. Nana Judy is holding a sick rabbit near their hutch, and Niall inquires after it in an unusual but endearing order:

Niall:  What’s his name?

Judy:  ‘Rex’.

Niall:  What is he?

OK, my enamorment might be paternal sentimentalism.  If so, shush.  I’m going to pretend otherwise. 

Niall, my mom (his “Nonna”), and I were driving today and stuck in traffic.  Niall was frustrated:

Niall:  This is why humans should have teleporters!

Nonna: {to give him something fun to talk about:}  Oh, good idea!  Why don’t you grow up and build them?

Niall:  No.

Nonna:  Why not?

Niall:  {helpfully:}  Because it’s impossible.  You can’t make teleporters any more than you can make light sabers.

What makes these moments so charming is that his comments are completely innocent.  There’s no sarcasm, no ridicule; it’s just, “I have some information that you apparently don’t, so I’ll share it.”

Walking by a bus stop today, I was addressed by a woman waiting there:

Woman:  “Excuse me, sir?”

Me:  “Yes?”

Woman:  “Can I ask you a question?”

Me:  “Sure.”

Woman:  “[Hesitantly:] Decent people don’t make fun of other people, right?”

Me:  “Riiiiight.”

Woman:  “…”

Me:  “?”

Woman:  “…”

Me:  “Is that your whole question?”

Woman:  “Yes.  But they don’t, right?”

Me:  “That’s right.”

Woman:  “Thanks.”

Do you know comedian/musician/philosopher Tim Minchin?  If you do, you will be chiding me for taking so long to discover him.  If not, drop everything.  Watch at least a couple of these.

Maybe start here?

Then maybe move on to an eco-awareness song (that takes the piss out of activist rock stars)?

And a song about “Prejudice, the language of prejudice, and the power of the language of prejudice”, with regard to that one taboo word:

A ten minute jazz-backed beat poem about critical thinking?  (No, trust me, watch this):

And round it out with an immensely touching piece that has immediately become my favorite Christmas song.  Of all time.

Full text of the essay “Imagination and Radicals” by Grant Allen, collected in Post-Prandial Philosophy (1894), on the topic of conservatism vs. radicalism.  Well worth a read.

IMAGINATION AND RADICALS

Conservatism, I believe, is mainly due to want of imagination.

In saying this, I do not for a moment mean to deny the other and equally obvious truth that Conservatism, in the lump, is a euphemism for selfishness.  But the two ideas have much in common.  Selfish people are apt to be unimaginative: unimaginative people are apt to be selfish.  Clearly to realise the condition of the unfortunate is the beginning of philanthropy.  Clearly to realise the rights of others is the beginning of justice.  “Put yourself in his place” strikes the keynote of ethics.  Stupid people can only see their own side of a question: they cannot even imagine any other side possible.  So, as a rule, stupid people are Conservative.  They cling to what they have; they dread revision, redistribution, justice.  Also, if a man has imagination he is likely to be Radical, even though selfish; while if he has no imagination he is likely to be Conservative, even though otherwise good and kind-hearted.  Some men are Conservative from defects of heart, while some are Conservative from defects of head.  Conversely, most imaginative people are Radical; for even a bad man may sometimes uphold the side of right because he has intelligence enough to understand that things might be better managed in the future for all than they are in the present.

But when I say that Conservatism is mainly due to want of imagination, I mean more than that.  Most people are wholly unable to conceive in their own minds any state of things very different from the one they have been born and brought up in.  The picturing power is lacking.  They can conceive the past, it is true, more or less vaguely—because they have always heard things once were so, and because the past is generally realisable still by the light of the relics it has bequeathed to the present.  But they can’t at all conceive the future.  Imagination fails them.  Innumerable difficulties crop up for them in the way of every proposed improvement.  Before there was any County Council for London, such people thought municipal government for the metropolis an insoluble problem.  Now that Home Rule quivers trembling in the balance, they think it would pass the wit of man to devise in the future a federal league for the component elements of the United Kingdom; in spite of the fact that the wit of man has already devised one for the States of the Union, for the Provinces of the Dominion, for the component Cantons of the Swiss Republic.  To the unimaginative mind difficulties everywhere seem almost insuperable.  It shrinks before trifles.  “Impossible!” said Napoleon.  “There is no such word in my dictionary!” He had been trained in the school of the French Revolution—which was not carried out by unimaginative pettifoggers.

To people without imagination any change you propose seems at once impracticable.  They are ready to bring up endless objections to the mode of working it.  There would be this difficulty in the way, and that difficulty, and the other one.  You would think, to hear them talk, the world as it stands was absolutely perfect, and moved without a hitch in all its bearings.  They don’t see that every existing institution just bristles with difficulties—and that the difficulties are met or got over somehow.  Often enough while they swallow the camel of existing abuses they strain at some gnat which they fancy they see flying in at the window of Utopia or of the Millennium.  “If your reform were carried,” they say in effect, “we should, doubtless, get rid of such and such flagrant evils; but the streets in November would be just as muddy as ever, and slight inconvenience might be caused in certain improbable contingencies to the duke or the cotton-spinner, the squire or the mine-owner.” They omit to note that much graver inconvenience is caused at present to the millions who are shut out from the fields and the sunshine, who are sweated all day for a miserable wage, or who are forced to pay fancy prices for fuel to gratify the rapacity of a handful of coal-grabbers.

Lack of imagination makes people fail to see the evils that are; makes them fail to realise the good that might be.

I often fancy to myself what such people would say if land had always been communal property, and some one now proposed to hand it over absolutely to the dukes, the squires, the game-preservers, and the coal-owners.  “‘Tis impossible,” they would exclaim; “the thing wouldn’t be workable.  Why, a single landlord might own half Westminster! A single landlord might own all Sutherlandshire! The hypothetical Duke of Westminster might put bars to the streets; he might impede locomotion; he might refuse to let certain people to whom he objected take up their residence in any part of his territory; he might prevent them from following their own trades or professions; he might even descend to such petty tyranny as tabooing brass plates on the doors of houses.  And what would you do then? The thing isn’t possible.  The Duke of Sutherland, again, might shut up all Sutherlandshire; might turn whole vast tracts into grouse-moor or deer-forest; might prevent harmless tourists from walking up the mountains.  And surely free Britons would never submit to that.  The bare idea is ridiculous.  The squire of a rural parish might turn out the Dissenters; might refuse to let land for the erection of chapels; might behave like a petty King Augustus of Scilly.  Indeed, there would be nothing to prevent an American alien from buying up square miles of purple heather in Scotland, and shutting the inhabitants of these British Isles out of their own inheritance.  Sites might be refused for needful public purposes; fancy prices might be asked for pure cupidity.  Speculators would job land for the sake of unearned increment; towns would have to grow as landlords willed, irrespective of the wants or convenience of the community.  Theoretically, I don’t even see that Lord Rothschild mightn’t buy up the whole area of Middlesex, and turn London into a Golden House of Nero.  Your scheme can’t be worked.  The anomalies are too obvious.”

They are indeed.  Yet I doubt whether the unimaginative would quite have foreseen them: the things they foresee are less real and possible.  But they urge against every reform such objections as I have parodied; and they urge them about matters of far less vital importance.  The existing system exists; they know its abuses, its checks and its counter-checks.  The system of the future does not yet exist; and they can’t imagine how its far slighter difficulties could ever be smoothed over.  They are not the least staggered by the appalling reality of the Duke of Westminster or the Duke of Sutherland; not the least staggered by the sinister power of a conspiracy of coal-owners to paralyse a great nation with the horrors of a fuel famine.  But they are staggered by their bogey that State ownership of land might give rise to a certain amount of jobbery and corruption on the part of officials.  They think it better that the dukes and the squires should get all the rent than that the State should get most of it, with the possibility of a percentage being corruptly embezzled by the functionaries who manage it.  This shows want of imagination.  It is as though one should say to one’s clerk, “All your income shall be paid in future to the Duke of Westminster, and not to yourself, for his sole use and benefit; because we, your employers, are afraid that if we give you your salary in person, you may let some of it be stolen from you or badly invested.” How transparently absurd! We want our income ourselves, to spend as we please.  We would rather risk losing one per cent.  of it in bad investments than let all be swallowed up by the dukes and the landlords.

It is the same throughout.  Want of imagination makes people exaggerate the difficulties and dangers of every new scheme, because they can’t picture constructively to themselves the details of its working.  Men with great picturing power, like Shelley or Robespierre, are always very advanced Radicals, and potentially revolutionists.  The difficulty they see is not the difficulty of making the thing work, but the difficulty of convincing less clear-headed people of its desirability and practicability.  A great many Conservatives, who are Conservative from selfishness, would be Radicals if only they could feel for themselves that even their own petty interests and pleasures are not really menaced.  The squires and the dukes can’t realise how much happier even they would be in a free, a beautiful, and a well-organised community.  Imaginative minds can picture a world where everything is so ordered that life comes as a constant æsthetic delight to everybody.  They know that that world could be realised to-morrow—if only all others could picture it to themselves as vividly as they do.  But they also know that it can only be attained in the end by long ages of struggle, and by slow evolution of the essentially imaginative ethical faculty.  For right action depends most of all, in the last resort, upon a graphic conception of the feelings of others.

Get it as free e-text, or buy the dead trees version:

While in the car with my mom, Pearl Jam’s “Yellow Ledbetter” comes on my iPod:

Mom:  Boy, does this take me back!  Driving you or your [younger] brother around in high school!

Joshua:  It’s old enough to have been me.  It was released as a B-side in 1992.

M:  {amazed:} A B-side?!  What the hell was the A-side?!

J:  “Jeremy”.

M:  {ponders:} Oh, yeah, OK.  I can see that.

How cool is it that my mom can have this conversation?

Movie buffs want to help me brainstorm? What songs have directors ruined for you by playing over a horrific event?

Usually it only hits me when talented directors do this; they create images seared into my mind that are evoked every subsequent time I hear the song.

Off the top of my head: “Love Hurts”, as a sheriff grieves over his step-daughter, shot by police; Johnny Mathis’s “Wonderful, Wonderful”, which accompanies deformed brothers as they beat a policeman and his wife to death in their home; “The Hokey Pokey”, played while a possessed doll tries to kill a girl’s mother; and (obviously) Stealers Wheel’s “Stuck in the Middle”, which accompanies one of the most-disturbing torture scenes of the ’90s (again of a cop — what’s with the recurrent police theme in these scenes?)

Contributions?

I was taking to a friend while he was browsing a dating site.  He read the bio of a woman that began “A feisty, smack-talking girl who….”  So, naturally, I went off on one of my meandering jokes:

She only talks about smack?  That would be weird:

“What’s your favorite color?”

“Do you like heroin?”

“Um … have you ever been to Disneyland?”

“I really like heroin.”

“So … who’s your favorite Disney princess?”

“The heroine?”

“Stop it!”

“No, that was a real response!”

‎”Zenith” is a viewer-sponsored, torrent-distributed video series released under a Creative Commons license. Their first episode has been published, and donors are being courted to finish the series — with some fascinating incentives for donating.

Zenith (2011) by Anonymous

Without giving spoilers:  it’s near-future dystopian SF conspiracy/thriller, the fuckers at the MPAA would likely give it an ‘R’ rating, and it’s really great.  It’s released under a Creative Commons license and is free and legal to watch and download.

I received a fantastic response to my previous complaint to the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority.  Bravo.

[Clarification:  Those are links, above.  Click here to see the response.]

On the BBC World Service today, a Libyan rebel plead for the establishment of a no-fly zone, tactical air strikes, and “everything short of having foot soldiers on our land, because we can do [that]“.  He continued, “as Libyan people we shall not forget any good deed that will come from any country in the world. We as a country are quite rich with resources: oil, and everything. And we will remember who our friends are!  And will definitely reward them greatly.”

His plea shows how much of a national security and energy independence issue this is, beyond being a humanitarian and human rights crisis.  If you have isolationist tendencies, or know those who do, please consider this and pass it on.  If you won’t do it for the blood, do it for the oil.

This is what I said to my Senators when I called them:

This is Joshua McGee in El Monte, California.  I am calling to ask the Senator to support intervention in Libya through the establishment of a no-fly zone.

I am a longtime supporter of the Senator’s.  I realize that this could face opposition from isolationists.  A Libyan protester on the BBC pleaded today that they, quote, “shall not forget any good deed that will come from ANY country in the world. We as a country are quite rich with resources: oil, and everything. And we will REMEMBER who our friends are!”

I believe that this is not just a human rights issue but a national security and energy independence issue.  If we don’t step up to the plate and another country does, this could drastically affect energy and, therefore, security balance in the world.

Americans: please contact your Senators.

Timeline for ordering pizza from Pizza Hut tonight:

18:10  Place order at pizzahut.com for pizza delivery at 19:00.

18:50  Friend Nathan arrives, hungry.

19:00  Pizza fails to show up.

19:15  Pizza continues to fail to show up.

19:30  Call pizza restaurant.  Have the following exchange:

Employee:  “Hi, thank you for calling Pizza Hut.  This is Krysdgasdl (phonetically).  Will this order be for delivery or carryout?

Me:  “Actually I’m checking on an order status.  This is Joshua at [address].”

Krysdgasdl:  “Oh, that order’s out already.”

Me:  “That means that the pizza’s been made, has left the store, and the delivery guy is on his way?”  (Yes, I honestly asked the question just like this.)

Krysdgasdl:  “Yes, it should be there soon.”

19:45  No pizza.

20:00  No.  Fucking.  Pizza.  For real.

20:15  Call pizza restaurant.  Have the following exchange:

Krysdgasdl:  “Hi, thank you for calling Pizza Hut.  This is Krysdgasdl.  Will this order be for delivery or carryout?”

Me:  “I’m checking on the status of an order.  This is Joshua at [address] again.”

Krysdgasdl:  “What?”

Me:  “This is Joshua McGee at [full address].  I called before?”

Krysdgasdl:  “Oh, yeah.  You’re Josh?”

Me:  “Yes.”

Krysdgasdl:  “Umm … that order was cancelled.”

Me:  “Excuse me?”

Krysdgasdl:  “It’s showing here as cancelled.”

Me:  “…”

Krysdgasdl:  “Oh, I think I know what happened!”

Me:  “Yes?”

Krysdgasdl:  “We ran out of pan crust, so we cancelled your order.  Would you like to place an order with another kind of crust?”

Me:  “Well … you … you could have called me!”

Krysdgasdl:  “I’m really sorry.  We could discount the pizza.”

Me:  “No, cancel it.  We’re going out.”

Krysdgasdl:  “Is there anything else I can do?”

Me:  “No, you’ve been very helpful.  Thank you.”

I’ve written some new scripts for Magic: The Gathering players.  They all come together on this page to help players choose dual lands.

I’d like a couple of things:

1. If you’re a Magic player, am I missing any cards?  I’ve started a discussion at MOTL where I’m getting good feedback, but if you have any and are not a member there, please leave it here.  (edit: no, I’m not missing any, but some might still be in the wrong places)
2. If you’re are a player or just wiling to wade through it, do you see any bugs? (edit: looking good so far, after the last upgrade)
3. I’m getting an error when clicking the Facebook “Like” button.  Would you try clicking it and seeing if you get the red “Error” message?  No, I’m not fishing for Likes — feel free to immediately Unlike — I’d just like to know if I’m the only one getting the error. (edit: fixed)

Thanks!

My brother (a regular contributor here) has written a surreal humorous poem that may-or-may-not be entitled “A Poem”.  It begins:

I

did

not

write

this

poem

I

compiled

it

It really is great.  Check it out.