On volcanoes and colds

Vesuvius Due For Giant Eruption

"There was this Bronze-Age eruption about 4,000 years ago, and then 2,000 years ago there was the A.D. 79 event. It seems that just about every 2,000 years, there's been a major eruption of this scale at Vesuvius," said Sheridan.

I don't know why I think this is cool. I just do. As cool as the potential for life on Europa? No. But still, cool. In an opposite way, I guess, as Vesuvius is about geological activity killing life, but Europa's all about the cultivating of life. Alien life forms. Sucre, they're just bateria, but... Dude. Millions of years ago, so were we.

Speaking of single-celled life forms, I have myself a very nasty cold. Everyone else has a cold, too, so I guess I'm just being fashionable, in a sincerely lemming-like way.

Today's a day of baking banana bread (we have about forty-five frozen bananas sitting in our freezer, waiting to be turned into a baked good) and figuring out my personal finances and being sick. I wish it were a day of chocolate, laughter, and very good sex, but it's not. I'd even go for a day of laughter and good movies. Actually, that'd probably lead to a lot less chaffing. Yes, I would rather today were a day of laughter and good movies than of banana bread baking, balancing personal finances, and coming down with a horrible cold.

I'm going to go lie down now. Go read about Vesuvius. Learning things is groovy.

GSB: All Braff, all the time!

Holy crap! Zach Braff has a blog! He started it up when he was working on Garden State, apparently, but has very awesomely decided to keep it going. And he makes his own posts! Not an assistant, or a publicity wonk, but young Master Zach himself, posting!

...I don't know why I'm so tickled by this. But I am. Hear that? That's me, squeeing.

*squee!*

Also, he makes an awesome reference to Shotgate, or whatever the hell they're calling it now, in his most recent post.

Awesome!

*squee!!*

Score!

I just went through a bag I haven't used since early December and discovered a packet of Kurogoma (black sesame) Pocky! \/\/007! I am l33t sp34king with joy!

Mmmmmmmm. Pockypockypockypockypockypockypockypockypockypockypockypockypockypocky. *Cookie-Monster-style munch*

Crap. Now it's all gone. *wah*

...Hey! Melty Kiss! Three Melty Kisses! *squee!*

...

Two Melty Kisses!

Ow. My back hurts.

God, what was I going to say? I can't remember. I purposely opened up Manage Posts in order to write something, but I'm so freakin' distracted by this back pain that I can't think straight.

Fudgemonkey.

I have a house to catalogue. I don't have time to sit here, typing pointless crap into a computer in order to post it for all to see upon the interwebs.

Oh! This is completely unrelated to the original purpose to this post, but I thought I'd remind folks that those people who suffered through Hurricane Katrina who were without housing and living in government-subsidized hotel rooms have been kicked out of their rooms and are now homeless. PLEASE GIVE WHAT YOU CAN TO THE CHARITIES ABOVE. These folks still need our individual help and the help of reputable charities, as our government is too busy misusing its funds (tax cuts for the rich and corporations, corporate welfare, paychecks for Tom Delay and Karl Rove) to help the neediest.

For the Octopuses

I take it you all have already seen this, but, just in case, Pharyngula has a post about an octopus attacking an ROV. An epic battle between monster and machine! Epic!

That all said, my cat, Lucy, is going insane. In a cute way, but, man. Weird.

Also, I'm looking for housing in the City and my mom might be, too, as it looks like she might lose the house and everything she owns.

One of my favorite (true) stories

I haven't updated, for real, in forever. I've been spending my sporadic time online either looking for a job or downloading manga scanlations. I haven't checked my e-mail accounts with regularity in ages, except for the account where the job search results from various websites are sent.

So, I update now, sitting at the desk I set up in September or so for my monitor and keyboard and mouse. The computer I prefer to use while sitting on the sofa, but the internet connection, crappy as it is, doesn't go that far. It should, the router thing should work that far and further, but it barely works here, in the same room. I sit at my desk, trying to sit up straight and hold my hands in a position which would do least damage.

The window above my desk is high and wide, and has two laminated construction paper cutouts taped to it which my eldest nephew, S--, made while in preschool: one a basic shape of a person, with dot eyes and nose and line smile, the other an outline of his hand at that age, both with his name written on them in the teacher's neat pen. They are there to ward off the birds which had flown into the window, slammed against it, and fallen into the bush below. They have all, so far, recovered after a few moments' rest, but I didn't like being surprised by the sudden slam or the thought that, one day, one of the birds would not shake itself together and fly off. Also, I miss the kid, and the laminated cutouts have nostalgic value. The window is black behind the cutouts, the ceiling fan and the ceiling tiles casting pale reflections in the lower half, and the bright, dime-sized moon glowing past black silohoutte branches beyond.

I have little to do, beyond the job search and house cleaning. I try to read, but I'm too often distracted by dark thoughts of debt and bills to focus on what's in front of me. I cannot bring myself to read fiction for some reason, so I take in small bits of a biography on William Shakespeare and a biography of Benjamin Franklin, depending on where I left which book and where I am at hat moment. I haven't updated the reading list on this site in forever. I can't be bothered to go in and correct the template, especially when I'm not sure for how long the router will work.

I finally checked my AOL account today, to which I have a lot of mass e-mail sent. Going through the Writer's Almanac e-mail, I found in the December, 24, 2005, e-mail, this story from WWI, which I haven't heard in ages but have loved since I first heard about it when I was in elementary school:

It's Christmas Eve, and it was on this day in 1914 that the last known Christmas truce occurred, during World War I. German troops fighting in Belgium began decorating their trenches and singing Christmas carols. Their enemy, the British, soon joined in the caroling. The war was put on hold, and the soldiers greeted each other in "No Man's Land," exchanging gifts of whiskey and cigars. In many areas, the truce held until Christmas night, while in other places the truce did not end until New Year's Day. In one area, the opposing sides played a soccer match together.

British commanders Sir John French and Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien disapproved of the truce, and they ordered artillery bombardments on Christmas Eve in the remaining years of the war. Troops were also rotated with regularity to keep them from growing too familiar with the enemy troops in the close quarters of trench warfare. The Christmas truce was a war tradition of the 19th century, and its disappearance marked the end of wartime protocols of that time.

I wasn't aware before of the commanders ordering the end of the truce tradition. Makes me dislike them even more than I did before. When I first heard the story, it was as the origin of the English version of "Silent Night" and "O Tannenbaum," both of which were sung by German troops. The British troops returned their own traditional carols, and a bugler played. Or something. I can't remember exactly. It's possible that both sides knew "Silent Night" and sang it to each other in their native tongues. I should read the link The Writer's Almanac set up.

I like the idea of a truce on holy days. There are a lot of them, minor ones, mostly, on the Catholic calendar. I'm sure there are plenty in the Muslim and Jewish calendars, too. Maybe if we could all just hold truces on these various holy days, we could keep our war-mongering, pugnacious natures to just a few days of the year. All I know is, I'm exhausted. I'm tired of the fighting. I don't know why we can't just stop, all of us, every side. Just stop.

*pop* goes the champagne*crack* goes my spine, three days into my new year resolutions

Happy Thanksgiving!...I'm bored

I am waiting for dinner to be ready and my brother to arrive. I am sitting on my behind, half-watching some cartoon with pseudo-Asian characters in it. Mostly, I'm wasting time by, yes, making more Gaia Dream Creator mascots.

I'm on my sister's computer, so I can't save the pictures. So, I'm posting even more mascots here. Tra la.

Oh, man, this is addictive

I should be in bed, as I have to get up early to catch the train to Boston, but I simply cannot stop making little dudes and dudettes at Gaia Dream Creator. An example of the strange products of my mind is below:

Crap! Once more, FOX cancels shows I really like.

I went to IMDB, just futzing around as I wait for dinner time to roll around, when I see something about Arrested Development getting canned. "No way! Crap!" I shouted, but I couldn't get into the piece, as IMDB's gotten retarded about access. So, USA Today had to tell me the news. Something about 7th Heaven getting dropped, which is good, as it sucked ass, but...Shit! Two of the funniest shows currently on television, AD and Kitchn Confidential, are the latest victims of FOX executives' asshattedry:

It looks like curtains, too, for Fox's comedy Arrested Development, which never translated its Emmy Award and critical raves into a broader popularity.

Fox didn't announce the end of the show, but said it wouldn't order a full season's worth of 22 episodes. Barring a miraculous turnaround, that usually means a series is kaput.

Critics loved the quirky comedy starring Jason Bateman, and it won the Emmy for best comedy last year. But its already paltry ratings dropped precipitously this season, averaging 4.3 million viewers on Monday nights.

Fox also decided against a full season order for Kitchen Confidential.

Two of my favorite authors when I was 22

From The Writer's Almanac from American Public Media, October 15, 2005:

It's the birthday of the novelist P.G. Wodehouse, (Pelham Grenville Wodehouse), born in Guildford, England (1881). His father was a magistrate in Hong Kong. His mother traveled back and forth between England and Hong Kong, so Wodehouse was raised by a series of aunts. He wanted desperately to go to college, but his father went bankrupt and couldn't pay for his education. Wodehouse got a job as a bank clerk instead and started writing humorous stories and poems on the side.

It was as a journalist that Wodehouse first came to the United States—to cover a boxing match—and he fell in love with America right away. He said, "Being [in America] was like being in heaven without going to all the bother and expense of dying."

He moved to Greenwich Village in 1909 and started to write stories for the Saturday Evening Post about an imaginary cartoonish England, full of very polite but brain-dead aristocrats such as Bertie Wooster, who was looked after by his butler Jeeves. The first Jeeves book, My Man Jeeves, came out in 1919, and it was followed by many others.

People who knew P.G. Wodehouse said that he was incredibly dull in person, not a funny man at all, and did not seem to have any emotions. But he authored some of the funniest books in the English language.

P.G. Wodehouse wrote, "It was a onfusion of ideas between him and one of the lions he was hunting in Kenya that had caused A.B. Spottsworth to make the obituary column. He thought the lion was dead, and the lion thought it wasn't."

It's the birthday of the novelist Italo Calvino, born in Santiago de Las Vegas, Cuba (1923), who edited the anthology Italian Folktales.

Celluloid adventures of Little Trooper Sugar Kat

Sugar Kat in Bad Blood Loss

In this fully-fledged masterpiece, Sugar Kat (Jennifer Aniston) is a retired prisoner with a terrible past. She is forced to interrogate Angry Rabbit (Sarah Michelle Gellar) before her closest friend, SheepBoy (Pierce Brosnan), captures her. Predictably, she charges into a secret submarine with no thought to her own personal safety. See it because all of your friends will.

Produced by ianiceboy

I laughed so hard, I nearly peed myself

Yeah, yeah. I'll get to the serious post about Mississippi in a moment. Or something, First, I want to send you to this site, which you've probably already seen, as you're a LotR fan, too, and win at the internets, like, ALL THE TIME, whereas I am the PERENIAL LOSER. Still, it is sehr amusing, Dear Reader. Click-click!

It's Banned Book Week

Go read something that would piss someone in authority off. I suggest something from the list of banned books which can be found at this site.

Attention, Octopuses

You've seen and are fully aware of this, correct? No, it is not an octopus, but I do believe giant squid is on your list of demigods, neh?

"Two Americas" by John Edwards

Um, before I get to the post on the 1927 flood, I wanted to post this, which was in an e-mail I received on the second of this month. I wanted to post it then, but I kept getting distracted.

The incompetance of the DNC in forcing this man to the sidelines and shutting him up during the campaign was unbelievable. I'm really hoping that Dean can scour out the nimrods who keep good men like Edwards from speaking their minds in order to become more like the Republicans in power.

At any rate, on to the e-mail, which is eloquent. Please do read.

Dear [Sugar Kat],

During the campaign of 2004, I spoke often of the two Americas: the America of the privileged and the wealthy, and the America of those who lived from paycheck to paycheck. I spoke of the difference in the schools, the difference in the loan rates, the difference in opportunity. All of that pales today. Today - and for many days and weeks and months to follow - we see a harsher example of two Americas. We see the poor and working class of New Orleans who don't own a car and couldn't evacuate to hotels or families far from the target of Katrina. We see the suffering of families who lived from paycheck to paycheck and who followed the advice of officials and went to shelters at the Civic Center or the Superdome or stayed home to protect their possessions.

Now every single resident of New Orleans, regardless of their wealth or status, will have terrible losses and life-altering experiences. Every single resident will know and care about someone who was lost to this hurricane. But some, ranging from the very poorest to the working class unable to accumulate a cushion of assets to rely upon on a very, very rainy day, will suffer the most because they simply didn't have the means to evacuate. They suffered the most from Katrina because they always suffer the most.

These are Americans some of whom who left everything they possessed behind in order to save those they loved. These are Americans huddled with their children or pushing a wheelchair between rows of those too beaten or weak to stand. In this moment, we have to remember they are part of us, Americans who love their country and are part of our national community. In this moment, it is hard because our hair is clean and our clothes are washed and our eyes are not glazed with hopelessness. But these are our brothers and sisters, and we have to remember this not just for them, but for us. We must finally recognize that when any of us suffer, we are all weaker; it affects us all.

Commentators on television have expressed surprise, saying they think that most people didn't know there was such poverty in America. Thirty-seven million Americans live in poverty, most of them are the working poor, but it is clear that they have been invisible. But if these commentators are right, this tragedy can have a great influence, if we listen to its message.

The people most devastated have always lived on a razor blade, afraid of any setback, any illness, any job loss that could disrupt the fragile balance they achieved paycheck to paycheck. They didn't leave New Orleans because they couldn't leave. Some didn't leave their homes because they wanted to protect the hard-won possessions that made their lives a little easier.

The government released new poverty statistics this week. The number of Americans living in poverty rose again last year. Thirteen million children -- nearly one in every five -- lives in poverty. Close to 25 percent of all African Americans live in poverty. Twenty-three percent of the population in New Orleans lives in poverty. Those are chilling numbers. Because of Katrina, we have now seen many of the faces behind those numbers.

Poverty exists everywhere in America. It is in Detroit and El Paso. It is in Omaha, Nebraska and Stockton, California. It is in rural towns like Chillicothe, Ohio and Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Nearly half of the children in Detroit, Atlanta and Long Beach, California live in poverty. It doesn't have to be this way. We can begin embracing policies that offer opportunity, reward responsibility, and assume the dignity of each American.

There are immediate needs in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, and the first priority is meeting those, but after that, we need to think about the American community, about the one America we think we are, the one we talk about. We need people to feel more than sympathy with the victims, we need them to feel empathy with our national community that includes the poor. We have missed opportunities to make certain that all Americans would be more than huddled masses. We have been too slow to act in the face in the misery of our brothers and sisters. This is an ugly and horrifying wake-up call to America. Let us pray we answer this call. Now is the time to act.

- John

Look it up in your Funk & Wagnall's

Generally, when my grevious ignorance of legal terms and concepts raises its ugly head, I was able to send off an e-mail to my brother, who would send back a pithy and helpful response. Unfortunately for me, my brother was promoted and moved to civil law from habeas corpus, so he has absolutely no time to repair my faulty education. This is not good, as there are some points I'm a little fuzzy on which were discussed during the Roberts hearings. Rather, they were raised by the senators of the committee and Roberts dodged and weaved like a legal Casius Clay, only without the punching. Ah! I thought. I shall have to look it up in my Funk & Wagnall's! Unfortunately, I don't have my own copy of the venerable dictionary and I don't know where Mom put hers, so, off to Wikipedia! I post the following to help those who may not have a law degree and were also listening to the hearings.

Stare decisis: Stare decisis (Latin:[?stare? ?dekisis], Anglicisation:[?sta??i d??sa?s?s], 'to stand by things decided') is a Latin legal term, used in common law to express the notion that prior court decisions must be recognized as precedents, according to case law.

This doctrine is not held within most civil law jurisdictions as it is argued that this principle interferes with the right of judges to interpret law and the right of the legislature to make law. Most such systems, however, recognize the concept of jurisprudence constante, which argues that even though judges are independent, they should rule in a predictable and non-chaotic manner. Therefore, judges' right to interpret law does not preclude the adoption of a small number of selected binding case laws."

Habeas corpus: "In English Common Law habeas corpus is the name of several writs which may be issued by a judge ordering a prisoner to be brought before the court. More commonly, the name refers to a specific writ known in full as habeas corpus ad subjiciendum, a prerogative writ ordering that a prisoner be brought to the court so it can be determined whether or not he is being imprisoned lawfully.

The words habeas corpus ad subjiciendum are Latin for 'You (shall) have/hold the body to be subjected to (examination)', and are taken from the opening words of the writ in medieval times. Other habeas corpus writs also existed, e.g. habeas corpus ad testificandum ('You (shall) have/hold the body to bear witness', for the production of a prisoner to give evidence in court.

Known as the 'Great Writ', the writ of habeas corpus ad subjiciendum could formerly be used not only in criminal cases, but in cases of imprisonment for private debt. In many jurisdictions today the writ can also be issued against private individuals."

Other Latin legal terms can be found here, which is a useful resource for the lay person trying to follow some of the denser discussion at the hearings. It's your country, it's your laws, it's your Constitution. You should be able to understand what the people who represent you are saying when they discuss them.

Coming Up Next... A posting on the Mississippi flood of 1927 which you may find certain events during the aftermath to be eerily familiar.

Whee!

I believe, on the internet, this is called sporking. I may be wrong. But it's awesome, truly, whatever it may be.

Mark Twain: Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses

Friedman is pissed off

As well he should be. He's been more than a bit of an ass for the last few years, but it's good to see him rant at the right people for once. (Article requires free registration at The New York Times.)

Osama and Katrina - New York Times:

[...] An administration whose tax policy has been dominated by the toweringly selfish Grover Norquist - who has been quoted as saying: "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub" - doesn't have the instincts for this moment. Mr. Norquist is the only person about whom I would say this: I hope he owns property around the New Orleans levee that was never properly finished because of a lack of tax dollars. I hope his basement got flooded. And I hope that he was busy drowning government in his bathtub when the levee broke and that he had to wait for a U.S. Army helicopter to get out of town. [...]