I’ve noticed that I seem to get more comments posting from my mind as opposed to little regular things, like the word of the day or evil news. That makes me feel really good, sort of an ego boost that there’s a conversational level to the writing.

I slept the sleep of the dead last night…mixed visions of axe murder and tolkien swirling through my mind…I don’t remember my dreams, as they evaporated with the phone ringing this morning at about 6 am. A wrong number, and it was enough of a jolt to bounce any memory (if there was any to begin with) out of my skull and down the road. An idea that I’ve put forth before, probably a few times, because I think it’s a neat one is this… the brain works on electrical impulses following pathways feeding information back and forth… I was thinking that just the right combination of thoughts could make all the impulses run in one direction, thereby magnetizing your head. some combination of the memory of the scent of bunt toast, your shoes on the first day of school and wiggling the fingers on your left hand, perhaps.

I think It’d be neat to be able to stick, or even attract paperclips and other small metal objects to your forehead…. ball bearings and such. I need to get info on how much voltage and amperage the brain runs on to figure out how powerful a magnet a person could make of said brain.

Confuse your camping friends! upset the compass, or frighten away salmon with similarly charged heads! attract would be attacker’s knives and bullets! (hmm… maybe that last one isn’t so great)… maybe tug them around by buckles. Degauss monitors?

I admit it.

I like Bagpipe music, and the instrument itself. It’s just cool… weird spindly wooden legs, a big belly that can have neato plaids or designs on it… a capacity to send folks that don’t like it running for the hills at a record pace. Draws nifty images in my mind of skeletal armies from Bedknobs & Broomsticks and thoughts of taking my sweetie to Irish / Scottish festivals… just being out in cool weather on a green field. I have an urge to toss a hammer, throw a caber, and dance.

I also like Banjo, Dulcimer, and Fife. So there. (But I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for brass… must be the German in me.)

“Hey, Scotto, the program doesn’t work.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Oh, the duece you say.”

“Well… why?”

“I don’t know. What error did it give you?”

“Error?”

“Yes, error. I’m assuming that you know that it doesn’t work because you got an error.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, what was it?”

“Um. It said ‘Failure’ or something.”

“‘Or something’?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, then. Thanks for that exhaustive problem report. I’ll get right on it.”

[update] 2:20pm

Error corrected, when it turns out the printer was out of paper. Blarg.

Anyone remember when HP stood for Hewlett-Packard, not Harry Potter?

Random Scotto factoid #5908346

Also, any time anyone in a movie says, “I mean it!” I can’t stop myself from thinking (in a deep, slightly slurred voice) “Anybody want a peanut?”

US Government Crazy Since 60’s
=================================
“In the early 1960s, America’s top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba.”…

The plans had the written approval of all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and were presented to President Kennedy’s defense secretary, Robert McNamara, in March 1962. But they apparently were rejected by the civilian leadership and have gone undisclosed for nearly 40 years.

Going Up Katie Couric’s Bunghole
=================================
This year alone, over 129,000 people will be diagnosed with colon cancer — a disease that is 90 percent curable — if caught early. The trick is to get tested. On NBC’s “Today” show, in part two of a week-long series, “Confronting Colon Cancer,” the show takes a look at having a colonoscopy — considered the most effective test for colon cancer. In this case, it’s Katie Couric’s colon that’s going to be tested. The story begins the night before, as Katie prepares for her first colonoscopy. Watch this special report from Katie Couric.

and now, I’m off to the PO to send off some gifties. 🙂

Quote of the day, from The Daily Show – “Tolkien fans make Trekkies look like dilettantes.” So true.

heterodox (HET-uh-ruh-doks), adjective:
1. Contrary to or differing from some acknowledged standard, especially in church doctrine or dogma; unorthodox.
2. Holding unorthodox opinions or doctrines.
Heterodox comes from Greek heterodoxos, “of another opinion,” from hetero-, “other” + doxa, “opinion,” from dokein, “to believe.”

okie doke… so I dug into social crit last night.

the two short essays (well, one was a speech, but you know what I mean.) were nice, and I got about midway into C&P. (I also discovered I have about 5 more holiday cards that I thave to send out today…. oopsie, but that’s beside the point) Well… it is translated from Russian. Character names are still foriegn, lots of “ov’s” like Raskolnikov, Svidrigaïlov, Zamitov, and Marmeladov. So far, the book’s about the planning and the execution of a murder, a poor man wiping out a nasty pawnbroker for the money that she has. Quite a lot of imagery, dreams of him visiting his mother’s grave with his father, seeing a horse beaten to death, his cramped apartment, drunks and people being beaten and having reputations ruined by folks who have money… Ultimately the idea of killing goes from a repugnant idea to something that’s reasonable.(He rationalizes it, thinking that he’ll do good works with her money, and that she’s never done anything good with it in her life…so that polishing her off is actually a lesser evil) He ends up blunting her skull with the flat of an axe, and is discovered by her sister, who got her head cleft for her trouble… that’s where I called it quits for the evening.

Overall, it’s a lot quicker read than I’d thought…. maybe a 1/4 into the tale. I’ll be interested in seeing where the religious overtones start to really come in.

I’ve downloaded the whole “Achieving goodness in a complex world ” portion of the social criticism website into my palmtop, for reading in bed.

Tonight’s selections will include Thucydides – Pericles’ funeral oration from The Peloponnesian War, then Albert Camus – Writing in an age of insanity: for truth, liberty and optimism (Nobel lecture)/// and if I swallow that whole, I’ll move on to start on Fyodor Dostoyevsky – Crime and Punishment (Which will surely take me more than one night. 🙂 ) A classic I never got around to in high school…. it seemed ot be offered for reading in all the classes but mine. Long overdue read.

Sweet and sweeter… the database program for WiD has come together in record time, and seems to be very polite to the ancient laptops that they’re using. I sort of wanted to experiment with wireless, but they’re really not up to that sort of spending level yet… (but they said they’d let me know if it was to happen, I was the guy for the job!) Perhaps a few more days of debugging, (Ideally with work being as slow as it is here, maybe 2 more days) and the mission will be complete!

I just have to do fine-tuning now, lay out the reports the way they’d like, and teach folks how to use it. Very simple system, identical to the paperwork they used previously… but with drop downs to spare them repetetive typing. if they want official paperwork, all they have to do is print it.

I’m very proud of myself. 🙂 The guts of the program were all in my library already, and there were precious few bugs to iron out at all.

Get a new company harassment policy in the mail. There’s a list of NOs, kind of like you’d see at a hotel pool. I’ve only had the list in my possession for a second but No. 5 is already my favorite: No Taunting.

Man. That’s going to be tough.

Not a lot happenning today… Dale’s back, and Sappho’s out and about, so I’m sort of chugging steadily along, wrapped a few holiday presents, even! I suspect that come 5pm, things are going to get tricky.

Ol’ Dirty Bastard is on the radio. “It’s all good,” he says.

An absolutely exhaustive list of articles on social criticism. The very last section on the page is called “Achieving goodness in a complex world”.

Hooray for online shopping!

Now, I just need to grab some tape from work, and wrap some of these lovely local ones are….(and I have to get Blackie a new toy, since some naughty orange cat who will go nameless (see icon) got into my goodybag and played with it to the point where it’s not fit to give away, now.)

Holiday cards are winging to folks today… huzzah!

I think that toys are coming in more and more weirdly-shaped packages these days. What ever happened to tossing it in a cardboard box, with a little cellophane window on it? Why the huge thick semi-laminate vaccuum formed on there?

refractory (rih-FRAK-tuh-ree), adjective:
1. Stubbornly disobedient; unmanageable.
2. Resisting ordinary treatment or cure.
3. Difficult to melt or work; capable of enduring high temperature.

Refractory comes from Latin refractarius, “stubborn,” from refragari, “to oppose, to withstand, to thwart.”

occiput (OK-suh-put) noun, plural occipita (ok-SIP-i-tah) or occiputs

The back part of the head or skull.

[From Middle English, from Latin occipit, from oc-, from ob- (against) + ciput, from caput (head).]

Senator Smoot (Republican, Ut.)
Is planning a ban on smut.
Oh rooti-ti-toot for Smoot of Ut.
And his reverend occiput.
Smite, Smoot, smite for Ut.,
Grit your molars and do your dut.,
Gird up your l–ns,
Smite h-p and th-gh,
We’ll all be Kansas
By and by.

Opening para of Ogden Nash’s 1931 poem on Sen. Reed Smoot whose anti-porn stance led to a newspaper headline “Smoot Smites Smut”.

refractory (rih-FRAK-tuh-ree), adjective:
1. Stubbornly disobedient; unmanageable.
2. Resisting ordinary treatment or cure.
3. Difficult to melt or work; capable of enduring high temperature.

Refractory comes from Latin refractarius, “stubborn,” from refragari, “to oppose, to withstand, to thwart.”

occiput (OK-suh-put) noun, plural occipita (ok-SIP-i-tah) or occiputs

The back part of the head or skull.

[From Middle English, from Latin occipit, from oc-, from ob- (against) + ciput, from caput (head).]

Senator Smoot (Republican, Ut.)
Is planning a ban on smut.
Oh rooti-ti-toot for Smoot of Ut.
And his reverend occiput.
Smite, Smoot, smite for Ut.,
Grit your molars and do your dut.,
Gird up your l–ns,
Smite h-p and th-gh,
We’ll all be Kansas
By and by.

Opening para of Ogden Nash’s 1931 poem on Sen. Reed Smoot whose anti-porn stance led to a newspaper headline “Smoot Smites Smut”.