Some Words

A friend showed me this:

I was at work and we were talking about private wikis, and how useful we really thought they were, compared to other things available. For a lot of project management, I imagine that this would be the better option.

Every time I see one of these things, I can’t help but wonder: Is this the one that will make me actually pay attention to the calendar I set? I thought I had that with iCal, but I’ve been very bad about following it recently. The little warnings come up, but I just close the window. In the end, you’re either organized or your not. But this might be a way to keep everything looking neat, if you’re already on the path.

I’m not talking about the British paper. My rss feed grows at an alarming rate. Every few weeks I try to trim it back down. How many witty takes on national politics does one need? There has been one blog that has stayed on the list for longer than almost any of the others. It’s not a political blog. It’s Gizmodo. Every day they put up around 50 posts. I go through all of them.

60% of them are new cell phone models, or worse cell phone and iPod decoration tips. I don’t care about how flashy my cell phone is. I got the free model. It calls people when I press buttons. Job done.

20% of it is existing tech that I don’t really need to hear the latest advances in. Do I really give a fuck that Sony has a new LCD HDTV out, that is 3″ bigger than the last one, or does 1080i? No. I might by one some time soon, but I’ll do the research then.

10% of it is stuff like glowing alarm clocks that tell you the weather. If it’s blue, it’s sunny! Of course there are other things, but that’s about the level of utility.

5% is Mac rumors that I could get from other sites.

5% MIGHT be something cool and new. Or it could be more cell phone stuff!

And yet I don’t take if off the feed. I don’t get it. It’s like I’ve invited the big hairy whore of mass commerce inside my brain for tea, and now I’m too polite to get it out. Maybe if some of these gizmoes had even marginal utility, with which to improve my life, but I can find those at other sites. And even as I’m writing this, I still haven’t removed it from the feed. I amaze myself.

Thank you Boing Boing. Without you I would not be able to scream:

“This is the state I live in!”

Sadly I do not have an audio file of my friend Cassie ranting about “Sweet Martha’s Cookies and a glass of milk.” As you can see the Minnesota state fair is mostly about shoving deep fried phallic symbols into your mouth. Is it any wonder that this is a relatively gay friendly blue state?

When I drive home from work these days, I always go past the Red Dragon. I do not stop. The Red Dragon is a booze death zone to me now. Half the drinks have 151 snuck in under cover of ice and fruit juice. All of them seem to come in enormous brandy glasses. Two of them can put most of the people I know under, and the really heavy drinkers I know tend to top out at three or four. On top of all this the classics are horribly done there.

So as I’m going by this time I have to stop for a light. A girl, who may have been there with a fake id, comes running out into the road. She has a sign. It reads, “Help a poor college girl by buying her a drink?” Now, at first I was a little shocked, lets leave the panhandling to the desperate cases I think. But then I realized that this is an ingenious plan. A) She was really small. She only needed this to work once and she’d be set for the night. B) Whatever guy in a car does give her the money, he’s off in his car when the light changes. This means that if he turns out to be an ass who thinks that buying her a drink means he’s entitled to anything… away he goes. C) It looked hilarious. She really understood how absurd the whole thing was. You could see it in her face. D) On some level I wish I’d thought of it when I was her age. I still wouldn’t have been cute enough to pull it off, but I wish I’d thought of it.

Last night Mark and I ventured down into the basement. Our landlord, while trying to rent the place, did a little fixing up. Only a very little. The basement, which used to look like the end of The French Connection, now looks like a good place to hide a body. We found a lot of things down there. There were powertools, doors, things that past residents had left behind. There was also a box of things that belong to our friend Strandberg. His college experience is in a small box that was sitting under my stuff. When he picked up the things he had left before going to Korea to teach for a year, I thought he had missed something.

There was a wooden statue, blown glass, some books, cigars, some pictures, and the case for his diploma. We were disapointed to see that the diploma was missing. Now I’ll never get that degree in Poli Sci/Internation Relations.

Well, before I start babbling about Dr. Who, let’s link this guy. That man is apparently the last person ever to know that The Onion is not a real newspaper. Someone give this man a gold star.

As for Dr. Who…

I watched the last episode of the latest season last night. While I generally like the new series, and am glad it was revived, there were several things about the whole season that left me a little cold. First off the constant needing to up the ante is going to become a problem soon. In the first season they bring back the Daleks. It’s big, it’s dramatic, it’s a series being revived. You have to pull out some stops then. But in the second season they clearly felt the need to top themselves. You just can’t make a trend of that. Not when you’ve brought two of his three arch enemies back. It just isn’t good management of tension.

Taking Billy Piper out of the series was odd too. From an acting standpoint I actually agree with it. While she was good, her chemistry with Tennant was not as good as it was with Eccleston. The way they got her out of the series was silly, but silly is what Dr. Who does. They could have been less over the top about it though. I wouldn’t have complained about that. The second season has a bunch of little bits where it goes from arch to… well it just get to be a little too over the top. I say that as someone who likes Dr. Who for being over the top. These moments never lasted long, but they left me feeling a little off about the writting. Then the openning of the two parter the ended this season came. It couldn’t have been less subtle if they had hired James Earle Jones to intone, “it’s foreshadowing motherfuckers,” at the start of the episode. Also, you know they won’t follow through with killing her off, so it just highlights the verbal loophole that they leave themselves.

That being said, it is a childrens show I’m getting worked up about.

Well, after a frustrating final game of the world cup there’s plenty of talk going on. I felt for most of the game like the Italians must have paid off the ref. They mugged the French all over the field and fell down like they were drunk (though the French did their fair share of falling). People are talking about Zidane head butting an Italian player, but there are rumors that he did it because of a racial slur. What they don’t talk about is how he kept his cool after they first went WWE on him and injured his arm. That first one was a no call too.

You know what? If that player did call him a “dirty terrorist” or something along those lines? Good for Zidane if the other player did. After the big push against racism by FIFA? A player using ethnic slurs on the pitch? That should get a red card, not the headbutt. Headbutt racism. I should have stickers made up that say that. And remember, Italy doesn’t exactly have a spotless record on this subject.

And I also saw the last episode of this season of Dr. Who. I’m feeling like going to bed now though, so I’ll cover that tomorrow.

Ice-T is going to produce a rap album by David Hasselhoff. There is no joke I can make. I just don’t know what to say.

Now don’t tell HUAC, but I’m not really a fan of baseball. That being said I couldn’t help but notice that the Tigers stopped sucking. They even have the best record in baseball right now. I just happened upon an article about how only three teams have had better records. Even though I don’t care much about the Tigers this makes me sad. Here’s why:

The Wings just had one of the best regular seasons in NHL history. Then? Out in the first round to the Oilers, who come within a win of the cup. (third team to do that in as many seasons) Top if off with Stevie Y retiring, though it was probably time.

The Pistons also had an amazing season. Then they lose to the Heat in the conference finals (admitedly not as bad as going out first round to the 8th seed) and Big Ben goes to Chi Town.

So I hear that the Tigers are having an amazing season? Fear. They’re gonna have the best record then not make it out of the first round. Then one of the pitching staff will need back surgery or something.

After that only one thing can happen. Barry Sanders will come out of retirement and lead the Lions to a 15-1 season, fulfilling the dream that Lions fans would not shut up about for years after his retirement. He will then burst into flames and die on the field in the first round of the playoffs.

Last night I completed a short story. This is always a nerve wracking experience for me. I jettison a lot of ideas after having started on them. There is nothing wrong with this as I see it. There are plenty of times that I have an idea that is much better when I have it than when I write it. Sometimes I put bad ideas on hold thinking they might just need some aging, sometimes I recycle them as little bits of other, bigger, things, and sometimes I just throw them out.

This can get discouraging very quickly though, and I always look forward to the completed parts. It also means, for whatever reason, that I worry a lot about the stories I am about to complete. I usually feel that is where it all goes wrong, when it goes wrong. Most often I worry that I am cutting the story short because I want to be able to say I finished one.

Last night I have the last three sentences, and was about to link them to the rest of the text. I deleted the line breaks to join them with another paragraph. Then I made them their own paragraph. Then I tried adding a sentence. Then I deleted it. Then I realized that I had spent ten minutes doing that.

I saved the file and closed it. It’s done, as a first draft.

Chaya left the porch door open last night, letting a swarm of flies in. I killed, by my count, over 30 today, and there were still a ton in the apartment. All that fly swatting took time. I had gone down to the hardware store for fly paper, but the only thing they had turned out to be toxic. The package said it shouldn’t be used in rooms that humans would regularly enter. I can’t tell you how useful I found that.

In other news, our landlord decided that the best way to rent the aparment for when we leave was by having us show the place. He calls from Wayzata to let us know to show the people around. He doesn’t call on one of our phones. He has the person who’s looking at the apartment hand the phone to us. Mark talked to him on speaker phone at one point, and the people who were looking at the apartment got to hear said landlord outline what we pay vs what they would pay. High commedy. Really, given the state of the place, squirrels in the walls, the basement from the end of The French Connection, the water damage, the broken dishwasher and washing machine. I have no idea why we haven’t managed to get it rented for him yet…

Futurama’s back bitch.

The discussion at billywest.com