Squublog

One of the reasons that I can't blog (again, excuses...) properly is that I've got shit so damned compartmentalized. I push and pull in here trying to keep things straight; fighting myselves over whether to keep up the walls; coming to conclusions then reversing them when "evidence" surfaces.

The anonymity thing is pretty constant, but it's also one that I find myself running up against a lot. At least I did in the past; more recently I'm pretty sure one of those editors in here traps the stuff before it even bubbles anywhere close to the surface. This morning a teeny-tiny bit of "evidence" (yeah, that's not what it is,) popped into focus for me. A post over at Saradighm Shift up and vanished. I got word that the reason for that has something to do with fears of collisions between real worlds and virtual ones. (I'm being vague here, of course, but if I've not been vague enough I can only apologize in advance or hindsight in the case that even this much of an information leak violates anyone's treaties.)

It's gotten to where I don't talk about 90% of what goes on in my areal-region. (Note: I can't fucking believe "areal" is a word.)

So since we're in the middle of some otherwhen, I'll peel back a layer. (Note: We're not really in the middle of any otherwhen at this point, as I've changed my mind and not included this as part of the thing that you may not have read about yet anyway and so you can safely ignore this whole shit here.) I've probably already at least hinted at this one, if not outright talked about it before (I'm almost certain I've talked about it before, as a matter of fact, and so I'm not really peeling back anything that's not barely concealed, but so what.)

I just about said, "I love American Idol." I can't quite go that far. But when it's on it's a must-see show for me (right now really the only one of those, although Survivor is close,) and it's not in any self-consciously ironic way. I like it because it's about people singing, and I like to hear people singing. I like it because it's a contest that sucks me into its drama.

I don't love it because it's cheesy. Now, anybody who isn't here in secret-American-Idol-fandom with me is responding to that with a big, "yeah, NO SHIT." There are two responses for that, though: one, I don't hate cheesy, in the right proportions. Over-cheesy can kill a thing for me, but my tolerance for cheese is probably a little higher than your average middle-aged anonymous faux-hip blogger. Second, American Idol is cheesy at worst.

I have this difficult relationship with schmaltz and cheese, I think, that comes out of my upbringing. Or maybe it's just inside me -- deep down inside, I have a big puddle of cheese. It goes beyond American Idol, though. Recently I find that I'm able to watch episodes of Lawrence Welk, all the way through, with the same lack of irony. I'm lucky that I'm able to do that also now with no residual "I'm-suck-a-dork" guilt, because my daughter (coming up on 16 months old now) enjoys the show. Granted, there's a high level of cheese and schmaltz there. I don't enjoy it in the same way as I do American Idol; in fact I'm not sure why I enjoy it. That puddle of cheese in my center is coated in a heavy layer of something I can't really put a single word on (though I'm tempted to make one up,) some kind of nostalgia for times I wasn't alive for in the first place. (Is that just a different usage for "nostalgia"?) (Nostemporalgia.) I've gotten similar pleasure out of listening to radio shows from way-back in the before-me.

So while I'm opened up here, I'll talk about something I've been kind of wanting to talk about for a couple of weeks now. The previous two weeks (as I write this) on AI featured the contestants performing all Beatles music. The first week worked really well, as most of the contestants did well with the theme (actually just Lennon / McCartney songs that week); the second week, which was apparently added due to some kind of popular demand, was a bit of a stretch for some of them. Some of the contestants are apparently pretty clueless about the Beatles, and it showed.

However, 22 year old Chikezie blew my mind two weeks running. He and the band took some big liberties with two Beatles tracks, and both of them were, for me, perfect examples of why I watch the show. Prior to that first Beatles week, Chikezie had shown himself to be a good soul singer, but he very often sang songs I just didn't care about (with an exception... I'll get there.)

The first Beatles song he did was "She's a Woman." It started with bluegrass instrumentation, then made a very nice jump into an uptempo rock performance. (If anything works, you can see the video here, on Fox's American Idol site.)

The following week he started with a chill-inducing ballad take on "I've Just Seen a Face," which then shifted styles with a harmonica break into an uptempo dobro-laden country and western deal. Again, his vocals were brilliant and I was floored that I'd seen something like this two weeks in a row on the show. (That video might be here.) That song is one of my mother's favorite Beatles songs, and I've known that and also loved the song since before I can remember. (That almost makes sense, right?) The day after the show she told me she also really enjoyed Chikezie's take on it.

For the record, it was that first Chikezie Beatles performance that led me to find Fox's site and watch some videos. I've watched both of those a number of times now, and they just keep getting better. If you're still here, I encourage you to check out his take on a song that I think is called "I Believe to my Soul," but probably isn't because guessing at song titles never works. That link might be here.

If those links don't work: The "I Believe" song is under Season 7 performances, Top 20 Boys; "She's a Woman" is under Top 12, and "I've Just Seen a Face" is under Top 11. (yeah, you'd really have to trust me to dig around their nutso site's navigation to dig these things up.)

What I would actually enjoy (I think) discussing is what it is people don't like about the show. I'll certainly grant that my tastes aren't typical, but I can't fathom anybody writing off the best performers and performances on this show as somehow second-rate. Wrapped in cheese or not, these people can sing, and their best performances are anything but derivative or uninteresting. (If I thought anybody'd be interested I'd continue with links to some of the stand-out performances by other contestants.)

Another thing I'm curious about is why I am already defending myself right there.

At any rate, tonight Chikezie bored the shit out of me doing some soulful ballad I'd never heard before. No matter what, he's got a great voice, but the song wasn't my thing. Tonight's stand-out for me, by far, was David Cook doing his version of Chris Cornell's take on "Billy Jean." I had no idea Chris Cornell had a take on that song at all, but I imagine I need to hear it if this thing tonight was any indication. (Sorry, I don't think Idol posts the videos on the night of the performances, so no link to that one.)

Tangentially: I noticed that the dobro player in the American Idol band is (at least sometimes) none-other than the apparently still completely unfamous dobro-player from the the Clark Brothers. Since none of you watch American Idol, you definitely didn't watch Next Great American Band, which is a shame. I loved it, too, and the Clark Brothers were very often fantastic on it. They ended up winning, though apparently it didn't even get enough viewers for this fact to merit being mentioned on Idol.

I'm perched at the top of the drop, the roller-coaster having been so painfully slow snicking its way up the front side. Three days off, followed by a weekend, and I've got no idea. Driving the 150 miles from my office-away-from-home back here tonight I started feeling a heavy sleep wanting to knock me out. I'm still awake because I've stored up a lot of man-I-wish-I-could-stay-up-late-and-work-on-a-project feelings over the past few months of pretty solid work, but there's a headache waiting in here, shoving around in the back of my neck and shooting bolts up to my temples, and I'm having a hard time getting that midnight motivation up out of the puddle its melted into on the floor.

A few things occurred to me during that trip, one of which is about the way blogging might really keep me from developing any of the kinds of things i used to publish on squub when it wasn't just a space filler with a blog on it. Thinking about that now I realize that that's probably more excuses, because some part of me thinks I need excuses.

In the time that I wrote those sentences some number of other threads of thought have disappeared. I think I've turned my writing on its head in the past some-amount-of-time: it's all about the tangential thoughts that happen in between thinking about actual things. The voice-over has taken over and the movie's just showing what looks like a random corner of a closet where the crew dropped a camera. All action stripped away.

Except of course voice-overs, I think, advance the plot. In fact I very often like them (I'm thinking here of Shawshank Redemption, and of a movie called The Minus Man with Owen Wilson so oddly cast as a serial killer, which movie I thought was brilliant at the time but I'm left now with only hazy recollections; suddenly thinking my tomorrow should be about finding that film and watching it.)

Then there's the theatrical version of Blade Runner, which I've never seen. I've got the director's cut (one of them) on DVD, having bought it because I'd been assured from 13 directions that it's a wonderful movie if seen that way. I didn't think so, at the time of my first viewing, and began wondering if I wouldn't enjoy it more with the voice-over. As I've gotten further away from that moment I've grown more fond of the film, while still, I think, having not managed to watch it again in its entirety. It sure does look brilliant, and there is a great pace to the slower parts. I think maybe the action sequences are too action-sequency.

So if the voice-over in your film was just the guy talking to himself, sort of trying to find his place on a page you're not seeing, trying to get back on track. Now of course the non-existent film I'm thinking of is more interesting to me than was my intention (though I hardly expect that I'm conveying anything about what's interesting about it here.)

There's an exposition, something is setup, some tension put in place, and just when we're expecting to switch to act 2 the camera falls to the floor and we see the corner, and the voice-over continues talking with no direction.

Wednesday (tomorrow) is the only real independent vacation day I've set up for myself here, though my original intention was to take all of my time off by myself. My wife and I decided we'd take our daughter to the National Aquarium in Baltimore on Thursday, and my wife also decided that Friday we should spend together doing something. It's a good idea, except that I've had a serious hankering for some alone time.

When is this being posted? Tonight, surely. Though I'm in the middle of an experiment I've probably not... no, it's not really an experiment, I actually know what that entails, that is to say I'm not testing some hypothesis, but am instead just doing something to see if it makes anything happen. Generally when I do that: nothing is made to happen.

I do miss myself. I'm in danger here of going where I don't want to go but I'm going to go there anyway. I was just paging through some of my earlier entries, from 2003, trying to see what I had to say about the war at the time. Prior to that I was reading Balloon Juice's Iraq War Retrospective, (thanks to Byzantium's Shores), where some guy I've never heard of, who supported the war from the start, talks about how he was wrong about everything he said about going into that war. I followed a link from there to something else that I don't feel like bothering with linking to (there are a lot of prepositions in that thing I just wrote,) and that got me to wondering what profound anti-warness had come out of me back when the thing was starting.

Turns out: while I used to be slightly more funnier (at least to my now-me, which might be a little biased,) I never really said much. At least I don't have much to try to work back up to, as far as substance goes.

Here's a zinger:

I noticed that there's some shit going on over in Iraq. Whoever the hell's naming these campaigns (far be it from me to do any sort of research to find out if these are somehow "official" titles or things news organizations make-up) needs to take a fucking class or something in how to make up titles that don't sound like bad Jean-Claude Van Damme movies. Operation Valiant Strike? Operation Iraqi Freedom? There's also a name I'm forgetting for the "operation" to protect us here at home, led by Tom Ridge. What about Operation Increase Approval Rating, or Operation Distract Everyone So They Forget I Can't Pronounce Nuclear? I'd really like to support the troops and all, but I just have trouble getting behind something so obviously scripted by people who think Maximum Risk and Sudden Death were good movie titles.

In fact, I bet if they could name this campaign something a bit cooler sounding then a whole bunch of those countries who don't support it now would change their tunes right away. How about something like Dark Desert: The Change of Regime?

Yeah, I know, that's even worse. That's why I don't blog much anymore. I've got nothin'.

(from this 'un.)

I also kind of enjoyed Build a Fort for Uncle Sam.

So, you know, keep your eyes peeled for that "experiment." Due to start sometime in the middle of June. Mark your calenders.

(Note to anybody who's unfamiliar with my anything: Don't mark your calenders.)

A year ago today, Dave Blackwood threw in his dirty towel. I've always just taken for granted the fact that he'd be back. I "wrote" a eulogy for him another time he retired here.

There's not much to say here about that. These brief blog entries about other peoples' blogs just don't do much for anybody. Then, this blog isn't meant to do much for anybody, and Blackwood sure as shit didn't do much for anybody. Par Example: Here he vomited (no, sorry, no pictures.) And then there's this (I'm posting the whole entry here, so don't bother following the link.):

I got out of the van and walked towards my apartment. I stopped to slap an ancient, enormously wide tree, as if to say, "hello old friend". Somehow I misjudged the distance and wound up scratching the fuck out of my left pinky on an exposed piece of bark. Don't ask me how it happened. I almost amputated the pinky but I thought I'd give it some time. I just hope I don't get some kind of infection and get killed by this 300-year old tree-bastard.

One of the weirder aspects of blogging (and online interaction in general) is the way you can develop something vaguely resembling friendships, and then they can just suddenly stop. It doesn't happen all that often for me; most bloggers with whom I've exchanged comments don't end up feeling like "friends" to me. But for some reason every once in a while I'll feel in some way connected to the person behind the blog. I rarely take the time to try to figure out why that is. That's the case with Blackwood -- I felt some kind of kinship with him and I never knew why. We emailed back and forth a few times, but most of our interactions were in each others' comments. And then he posted his farewell while I was busy not blogging for a while. Fucker.

contraneologsumist [kon-truh-nee-o-lawg-suhm-ist]
–noun
1. one who disapproves of the introduction of new words into one's native language.
2. one who refuses to use new or recently coined words in speaking or writing, possibly by reason of jealousy.


(prefixsuffix.com - usefulness!)

I've been in the middle of some not-feasibly timelined projects at work for a while now. The current one has punctured a hole in my entire being the size of which is larger than I am. But for the sake of argument I'll just call it a me-sized hole.

My desk here in my home office is, I've just noticed this morning, some kind of testament to the overwhelmedment I'm in the midst of.

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Cardhouse hits 13. I still don't really know why I visit this guy's thing all the time, and keep a link in my sidebar: the relationship feels really uneven. My adoration is apparently unrequited. At any rate, Squub's had a link to there since before there was a log on the end of it, and I still don't really know what "there" is. He talks about old packages and candy products sometimes. Cheers.

Relatedingly, Kottke.org turned 10 on the 14th. I'm a bit of a Squuby-come-lately to that place, but it has become my favorite of the few link-dump type blogs I visit. I love the layout; being an anti-feed-reader luddite, that's important. I also love the conciseness of most of the posts (the anniversary post is much longer than usual,) and the way the layout lends itself so well to the usual post length. BoingBoing has more content, and many overlaps, but it sometimes feels too busy. Maybe I prefer posts without pictures? The current layout for squublog owes somewhat to Kottke.org. I was inspired to sort of rip him off, in other words, but this is where I ended up.

Related: I hate the word "conciseness." thesaurus.reference.com says I could be using "concision" there, or "economy." Both of which sound better, but the former I couldn't think of (might not have even known the word,) and the latter means too many things.

Done?

Sometimes when I'm swinging back into the post-stuff end of my blogging pendulum, I find that I have lots of stuff I'd like to say at once; during those times I usually experience some sort of fantasy about having a slightly-differently-arranged blog that's maybe part wiki. Yesterday I had quite a few things I thought I was going to rant about, but I ended up inadvertently following a tangent right to the end.

Instead of right now following the tangent of trying to suddenly turn Squublog into Squubwiki (which doesn't work as a name at all anyway,) I'm just going to... do something different that I haven't thought out at all. (Didn't I talk about this whole blog/wiki thing before?)

Passwords and "Security" Questions

I can't get into ebay to buy something I need to buy. Why? My account's been locked out, it seems. I've got the username/password saved on my desktop PC, but when I get in there and try logging in with that it doesn't work. The other day I decided to do the "forgot your password?" thing (even though I know my password's one of maybe 3 things there,) and was presented with the security question. What's the name of the first school you attended?

I rarely answer those things correctly. Why? Because that's idiotic. Passwords are supposed to be hard to guess, and hard to brute-force, so my passwords are usually (when it matters, as in this case,) somewhat complicated. If some random person can bypass the password by entering an answer to a security question that wouldn't be difficult to figure out, what's the point? And since I don't lose/forget the passwords, I don't enter anything there that's even remotely rememberable. So my answers to those security questions might just be something like 30948uofajafdljvao, or whatever else comes out when I hit the keys on the keyboard with all my fingers a few times.

In cases where my password gets screwed up for some reason, I can usually just say, "Send the password to the email address on file for this account," or whatever. I've never had to actually answer a security question for this task: why should I? As the account holder, I don't care if some hacker tries to get in and asks that the password be sent to my account. He can't get into my account.

So, anyway -- I'm basically locked out of ebay and am not sure how to get around it except to start a new account, thus losing my seller rating and such.

Monitor

My nice, nearly 3 year old 17" flat-panel ViewSonic monitor is fritzed. I found out recently that it's still under warranty, so I decided to go through the process and have it fixed or replaced. At this point I've got the thing packed in a box (the box that came with my other flat-panel, an older 15" NEC, which I kept while for some reason not keeping the ViewSonic box,) but it's sitting on a chair in my basement waiting for me to get around to labeling it and taking it somewhere to have it shipped.

Losing My Place

I'm always disappointed when Squublog falls off of blogroll/sidebar things on other peoples' blogs. It's not that I don't understand and sympathize with the decision -- I'm very aware of my inability to be consistent, unless you consider going long stretches without posting only to be ended by a couple of disappointingly vapid posts about something that isn't-quite-what-I-thought-I-was-going-to-post to be some kind of consistency. In fact the dropping-from-a-list thing probably encourages me to try a little harder, at least for a day or two. However...

Time to Blog?

Right now I'm supposed to be working. I cut my lunch short to try to get something down here, but at this point I'm overstepping the bounds by being verbose. Even so, I don't have time to think anything through (as you'll see under one of the headers below.) My ideal time to write things like this is exactly during work-hours, and I just don't currently have a work schedule that gives me time to prognosticate.

Additionally, if I do really get into something I want to write about, I often end up being unable to complete the thing and it ends up sort of just hanging in my not-yet-done pile. I started one of those late last week and I'm sort of thinking it's never going to get finished (though it may end up being posted as-is sometime.)

Discussions

Used to be I'd be following, and participating in, a few spirited comment-fests on some more-likely-to-attract spirited comments blogs at any given time. Recently I'm more likely to just follow the conversations without participating, and if I DO participate it's just to offhandedly drop a (usually troll-like) comment somewhere that really I shouldn't have bothered posting.

I've never been able to get into the post-a-bunch-of-links style of blog entry, at least not more than once or twice a year or whatever, even though some of those types of entries are the ones that end up with the bunches of comments. But here are a couple of things I've been paying attention to:
Cynical-C's discussion about Guns. I'm pretty muddled about my thoughts on this subject, although as with a lot of things I find myself getting incredibly irritated with the fringe opinions from either side more than anything else. Collecting and shooting guns as a hobby doesn't make somebody an inbred; but laws outlawing assault weapons aren't violating a right.

Barrack Obama's Preacher - this is the stickiest of discussions for me right now, and this is where it becomes obvious that I just don't have time to do this the way I used to. Any brief remarks on the subject are bound to present my viewpoint in the wrong way. This post (and the ensuing "discussion" (can you say "echo chamber?")) at Primordial Slack actually made me a little sick this morning. For a minute or two I considered gathering up some of the comments there and posting them as an entry here; I'm curious about what some of my few readers would think were I suddenly to say stuff like this. Here are some samples:

"If I ever met him, my question to him would be, “If you and your God Damn America douchebag preacher hate America so God Damn Much, why would you want to become president of it?

It’s as retarded as me wanting to become president of the Gaza freaking Strip.

But, as I noted to Guyk a day or so ago, him having a preacher does sort of eliminate the whole him being a muzzie issue, right?"

"It doesn't automatically discount the Muslim connection."

"Now I am not sayin' that Obama is a radical raghead..but among the radical ragheads posturing as whatever to complete their goals is considered to be just fine.."

"I *am* saying that I think he's a radical raghead.

The change he wants is to pave the way for his buddies."

"As I drive arround town, I notice there are several banners put up by the Church of Christ supporting gay marriage and other items that The author of the Bible condemns. This is in Bible belt Kansas.
When I consider how lax Worthless Willie was on the Bible and claiming to be a Christian, It makes me worry all the more about Obama."

There's another brief discussion in this 2Blowhards post. Here though I am left feeling much less queezy, as there are many viewpoints being expressed there.

Again, if I had any time, I'd be responding to this, somehow. Not sure that it's worth it. Briefly, though, why the bad feeling in the guts at some of this response? For a start: an eight year old nephew of mine recently told his mother that if Obama gets elected to office all of the black people are going to attack all of the white people. When his mother asked where he'd gotten that idea, he told her that one of his aunts (another sister-in-law of mine) had told him such. I am so horribly disconcerted by everything about that that I can't really speak to the root of it. I was able to sort of blow that off, though, as the woman at the source of it really spews garbage on a regular basis. I hadn't really considered how much that sentiment is apparently wide-spread.

Listening To: My wife's shuffling mp3s. Currently some Van Halen song (Sammy Hagar era) that I really like more than I ever think I like Van Halen called, I think, "Shine On."

I remember when I used to have a blog here, right here, in this space, on this page. I would... post things in it, I think. It's something I did, posting things, in the blog, on my site. I sometimes wonder, "what were those things I posted? What did I do after I stopped thinking all I had to write about was how I didn't know what I could write about?"

It used to be that if I started a post and was interrupted in the middle I could inform the interrupter creating the interruption that I'd be done in a few minutes. Recently the interrupter is frequently the child of my self, who finishes with her babysitter and thus needs my attentions. She has yet to develop the requisite skills to do something quietly by herself when I tell her I'm in the middle of something and she needs to wait. No matter how patiently I might tell her, her response is usually something along the lines of, "waaaraaaar EHN! EHN! EHN!!" More recently she's developed some (slightly) more decipherable objections, such as, "Me! Me! Me," "Mine! Mine! Mine!" (being generous a tad there, as phonetically typed that's more of a "My! My! My!", which just a hint of "m" or "n" thrown there on the end,) and the currently laugh-inducing "NoNoNoNoNoNo!"

Having not previously had any children confronting me with such arguments, I'm never sure if the things she's doing are as astoundingly advanced as they might strike me initially. Although my first reaction to some of her shenanigans is very often to think (or say,) "Holy hell, she's smarter than a fourth grader!" when she does something like take a CD out of a CD player or put things away when I say, "Could you put those things away?" I don't really have anything to compare it to. She's 15 months old, plus some weeks, and that seems too young to be climbing all the way to the top of a jungle-gym spiral-sliding board thing to me, but what do I know?

Sometimes the way I'm learning to adjust to that sense of incredulity is a little dangerous. While accompanying her on said fifteen foot high sliding board metal plastic contraption the other day at the park, I quickly adjusted to her prowess. While at first I thought, "Wait, holy hell, she can't possibly climb this ladder thing... there's only one rung on the way up the thing, and the destination is as high as her head," after seeing her do it a couple of times I simply thought, "Ah, well, I guess she can climb shit well." I was right behind her, thinking that very thing, wondering to myself about whether other 15 month olds climbed ladders like that, when I sort of muted an alarm buzzing in my brain saying, "'Hey, dumb-ass, she's got her leg on the top rung and her other leg still down there on that one and that's a helluva reach she might not be able to," and was then only partially shocked when she toppled backward and hit her head on the metal railing of the thing. "Nice catch," I thought, standing there with my hands very near my pockets.

But (and this, I'm told, is pretty much universal,) toddlers have incredibly hard and resilient heads. She didn't even get herself a bump. Hopefully this is a good thing; she might try just a little bit harder to hold on to the ladder next time. Or maybe I'll pay attention better.

(NOTE: What I just wrote is absolutely not what I thought I was going to write. But I think the babysitter's back, and my little girl probably hasn't learned yet today to understand what I mean when I say, "Let me get to the point real quick...")

wtf is up with "Horton Hears a Who"? Every commercial I see for it contains a whole lot of stuff that sounds nothing at all like Dr. Seuss talk. What the hell is a Dr. Seuss story without Dr. Seuss language?

I like this "Atheist's Creed" written and posted by PZ Myers in this post at Pharyngula.

An atheist's creed

I believe in time,
matter, and energy,
which make up the whole of the world.

I believe in reason, evidence and the human mind,
the only tools we have;
they are the product of natural forces
in a majestic but impersonal universe,
grander and richer than we can imagine,
a source of endless opportunities for discovery.

I believe in the power of doubt;
I do not seek out reassurances,
but embrace the question,
and strive to challenge my own beliefs.

I accept human mortality.

We have but one life,
brief and full of struggle,
leavened with love and community,
learning and exploration,
beauty and the creation of
new life, new art, and new ideas.

I rejoice in this life that I have,
and in the grandeur of a world that preceded me,
and an earth that will abide without me.

I like it despite all the despites (which I'm not going into now) and I like it enough that I'm taking another easy out in this blog by quoting it in its entirety. I'm tempted to print it and hang it up somewhere, which isn't something I really do. I don't always agree with Prof. Myers, but here he's nailed something down very well, filled in a gap I hadn't even sufficiently known was there.