Monthly Archives: May 2004
Counteracting the Bloody Toe
Posted on May 16, 2004
All right, apparently the picture of my bloody stubbed toe caused a pregnant woman to toss her cookies and to swear off visiting the site for a few days until she was sure the offending toe had moved far enough down the queue that she wouldn’t see it first thing. Well, of course, the last […]
The Perils of Hide and Seek
Posted on May 15, 2004
Don’t ever let them tell you there’s such a thing as a friendly game of hide and seek. There are no friends in Hide and Seek. There is just hunter and quarry. If you’re not one, you’re the other. And if you’re the prey, you should expect to get bloody. Alternately, if you’re going to […]
Feed Me
Posted on May 15, 2004
Anyone who thinks writing a blog or journal is like feeding an ever-gaping mouth should try writing a book on a very short deadline. The Book of the Dumb 2 is on just such a deadline — it’s due in a couple of months — and so that means that that in order to finish […]
Meet the New Toy
Posted on May 14, 2004
I went out and bought myself a new digital camera yesterday: A Kodak EasyShare DX4530, photographed here by the Olympus Camedia C-21 which it is replacing. Which almost seems cruel, doesn’t it. Like the guy who’s being laid off being made to train the new guy who’s taking his job. Fortunately, they’re objects, without sense […]
Evaluating Stupidity
Posted on May 13, 2004
As most of you know, I’m spend a lot of my time recently banging out The Book of the Dumb 2 (“Now with 30% extra stupidity!”), and I imagine as most of you suspect, the task is not especially onerous, since there’s a whole world of stupidity out there. The hard part is not finding […]
Science and God, Part Mumble Mumble Mumble
Posted on May 13, 2004
Via Metafilter (which got it via Boing Boing, which got it via Slashdot), a really fascinating interview with Brother Guy Consolmagno, Curator of Meteorites at the Vatican Observatory. Among the number of things in the interview is a view of science as it relates to religion and to the appreciation of the universe, a few […]
DeLay, and the Frat Meme
Posted on May 13, 2004 5 Comments
Someone forwarded me a link to this story noting lawmakers’ general horrified reactions, and suggested I take special note of Tom DeLay’s reaction to the pictures, which is thus: House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, said he thought “some people are overreacting.” “The people who are against the war are using this to their political […]
Because I’m a Technical Idiot
Posted on May 12, 2004
Does anyone else out there using the Mozilla Firefox browser have problems viewing Blogspot-based blogs? The problem I have is that after the first couple of paragraphs all I get is gibberish that looks like this (taken from this blog): Since Iraq remains under U.S. military occupation, it seems unlikely that the Iraqi police would […]
Iraq Prison Follow-Up
Posted on May 12, 2004 1 Comment
Some various follow-up thoughts on the Iraq prison scandal: * A reader was wondering what I thought about the comparison (made in this commentary in the NYT by Luc Sante) of how the soldiers in the Abu Ghraib prison appear more or less like the white folk in pictures from the first part of the […]
Rant Arrives
Posted on May 11, 2004
My personal copies of Rant: Collected Ventings 1999 — 2004 arrived today, and I thought I’d display a copy with a thematically appropriate face. Overall it looks pretty nice, although I would say the cover seems susceptible to humidity, so if you decide you’d like a copy of your own, be sure to store it […]
The Right Message
Posted on May 11, 2004
Knicked from Instapundit, a church sign that well encapsulates my opinion on what faith should be about: I’ll be back later today. Before then I have a book proposal to revise, some Book of the Dumb entries to write, and, I don’t know, some sweaters to knit.
A Moment of Really Lame Introspection
Posted on May 10, 2004 1 Comment
Look, it’s me being all, like, pensive and grown up and crap like that. Don’t worry, it won’t last. I was going to write some massive retrospective of my life to date here, being that 35 is the Biblical midpoint of life, but I’ve tried starting it three times now, and even I can’t swallow […]
Torture
Posted on May 9, 2004
A German reader who was appalled at my suggestion last December that we make Saddam Hussein spend of the rest of his life in a box into which videotaped depositions of the victims of his regime were streamed endlessly (he thought it would be torture, whereas I would be more inclined to call it karmic […]
Reality TV, Magazine Style
Posted on May 8, 2004
From the cover of the Popular Science magazine that came in the mail today: We Force a Geek to Live on Tech From 1954 Now, that’s just cruel.
I Feel It In My Bones
Posted on May 7, 2004
Bad weather is here. Satellite connection is already out and if you think I’m going to spend the day on dialup, you can go back to 1996, where you came from. I’ll catch you later.
Shocking the Shockable Classes
Posted on May 6, 2004 1 Comment
Over at Electrolite, Patrick Nielsen Hayden is more than a little frustrated that the general discussion he wished to have about the utility of shocking the bourgeois has become a specific discussion of Ted Rall’s recent attempts to shock the said class, through the Pat Tillman cartoon and a column this week, which begins: “Now […]
Another Internet Milestone
Posted on May 5, 2004
I always wondered when the day would come when someone would auction off one of my book on eBay. It looks like today is that day. Actually, yesterday was — this auction’s already on its second day. Even so. The guy who’s selling it says of the book: “If you like the stupid criminals on […]
New Bathroom Reader
Posted on May 5, 2004
If you’re still looking for a gift for mom this Mother’s Day, allow me to suggest the Mom’s Bathtub Reader. This particular book was mostly written by Sue Steiner (which is why it’s her name on the cover), but I pitched in a few pieces on mom-related movies and music, and aside from that it’s […]
Rant: Collected Ventings 1999 – 2004
Posted on May 4, 2004
I’ve been muttering for some time about collecting up some of my most memorable rant-like Whatever entries into convenient book form, and since I won’t have another book out this year until at least September, now seems an excellent time to do it. So behold! Rant: Collected Ventings 1999 – 2004 — Five years and […]
Whatever Everyone Else is Saying