Thursday, November 30, 2006
Sign of the times
Outside my office (at and undisclosed super-secret location) is a bulletin board where I have posted a flier from the Adbuster's folks about "Buy Nothing Christmas." The ad has a picture of Santa who, posed like a Buddha, is levitating above the words "Rise Above It/Buy Nothing Christmas." Personally, I have no intention of buying absolutely nothing, but I thought the folks who are campaigning against our gluttonous society deserved a small amount of space to state their case.
It was interesting, therefore, to hear the following monologue outside my office today:"Buy Nothing Christmas?! Rise Above It?! What does that mean? ! Are they boycotting Christmas or something?!"
Ultimately this person proves the Buy Nothing Group's parsimonious point: Christmas has been converted wholesale into a commercial holiday where it is not just connoted with buying goods, but is denoted by egregious spending, excluding any other trifling religious significance of a person who called for disciples to give up all their goods and follow him. For the above commentator Christmas is only about buying things. To not buy things means that Christmas itself is being boycotted. Christ himself is not being celebrated. God is being denied. You are, in fact, an evil atheist if won't buy anything at Christmas time.
I guess they don't show the Charlie Brown Christmas Special any more, eh? ¶ 1:06 PM 5 comments
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Tuesday, November 28, 2006
I love you, you love me
A victory for satirists everywhere:"San Francisco - The corporate owners of the popular children's television character Barney the Purple Dinosaur have agreed to withdraw their baseless legal threats against a website publisher who parodied the character and to compensate him for fees expended in defending himself." (EFF: Breaking News)Yay! Yay! Let's all sing now! Yay! ¶ 11:57 AM 2 comments
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Monday, November 27, 2006
Local First Utah
Spiff: Local First Utah - HomeJennifer Napier-Pierce has a interview with Local First Utah's Gavin Noyes, executive director in episode #65 of her podcast Inside Utah. In a related topic, Napier-Pierce also talks to Christi Paulson on the idea of "slow food." ¶ 3:31 PM 0 comments
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Oops
I completely missed the 5th anniversary of Signifying nothing in this format and now I think it wants a divorce. ¶ 1:28 PM 1 comments
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Sunday, November 26, 2006
Three things learned over Thanksgiving Holiday
- Don't wash your cell phone and expect it to work again.
- There is a cool indicator just inside the battery compartment of a cell phone that indicates that the device has been immersed in liquid (see #1).
- It is still necessary to write down phone numbers despite having a cell phone (see #1).
("Arrogance", Cesare Ripa) ¶ 9:46 AM 4 comments
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Friday, November 24, 2006
Tales of Jr. High
The computer woman who reads aloud my blog posts at Talkr has a charming way of saying "muthafucker."See I got her to say it again. I am so laughing my ass off right now. ¶ 11:35 AM 4 comments
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Thursday, November 23, 2006
Eleven and one!
All yall muthafuckas still talking sheyat about our Jazz better shut the fuck right up now. Why? Down 20 points and pulled out a win in THEIR house, betyotch. That's right. Uh huh.We watched the game at Murphy's (a step down in bars) on Main Street in good old down town muthafuckin SLC.
Props.
(I swear too much.) ¶ 11:45 AM 2 comments
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Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Did someone say "4 day holiday devoted to gluttony in its various forms?"
Did someone say "4 day holiday devoted to gluttony in its various forms?", originally uploaded by Theorris.
¶ 4:45 PM 2 comments
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D-News Drives Hard in the Lane with an Easy Pronoun Antecedent Play, Shoots under the Basket, and Misses!
"AND FINALLY: A perhaps-telling quote from Jazz coach Jerry Sloan, on injuries: 'Last year, we had so many injuries I think guys prayed they're going to get hurt. That's what happens. The more you play that way the more you get hurt.' (deseretnews.com | Jazz feeling love from national media)So the Jazz players were praying that they would get hurt or players from other teams were praying that the Jazz players get hurt? What way are they playing? Religiously, complete with prayers? Why, pray tell, is this a telling quotation? (Quote is a verb not at noun, god damn you.)
Thanks once again, crack Deseret News sports editing team for making things crystal clear. ¶ 7:06 AM 1 comments
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Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Best song ever (November 2006 edition)
Witness my droogies:This wrinkle in time, can't give it no creditGo find the song somewhere. I'm begging you. Go find it. Seriously. ¶ 6:53 PM 2 comments
I thought about my space and I really got me down
(got me down)
I got me so down, I got me a headache
My heart is crammed in my cranium
And it still knows how to pound
I was counting the rings
And I fell into a sleep
I peeked to see if you were way back when
I was counting the trees
Until a day when there was one
I'd hoped beneath, asleep is where that you had been
(Frank Black, "Headache".)
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Monday, November 20, 2006
Solve this!
JAZZ: Larry H. Miller Renames the Home of the Utah JazzYay! Utah Jazz now represent bringing in high-level nuclear waste into Utah. Yay! Go team! Nuclearize us all!
Jesus.
At least the Jazz won again.
(By the way, EnergySolutions Arena qualifies as the fucking stupidest name ever in support one of the most heinously 1984-esque industries ever.) ¶ 9:46 PM 1 comments
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A very good stationary store
This must be the most surreal moment in television history. What the hell is up with Steve Allen and the piano? ¶ 9:26 PM 5 comments
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Wasn't Augustus Gloop Sucked up the Tube by this Point in the Movie?
All that time in Disneyland for Extremely Wealthy Hicks and the only good picture I get was this one. Yeesh. I was really looking forward to taking pictures of Nashville too. Sherman Alexie called the resort hotel we were all staying at "a perfect analogy of America." Next time that you see that your convention is at Opryland, beware: high prices, long lines, recycled air, and shattered dreams.
¶ 6:07 PM 1 comments
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Friday, November 17, 2006
Inside of the dome
See I told you the hotel is like Logan's Run. This was Carousel. Capricorn fives and sixteens.
¶ 3:55 PM 3 comments
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Thursday, November 16, 2006
Defect in the thermal shell
I hate it here. I'm sleeping in a mall.It is Logan's Run.
Let me run. ¶ 11:44 PM 0 comments
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Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Travel Easy
Another week and more travel. I caught these 3 in the Detroit airport last Sunday, I think. I assume he must have been traveling from the Middle East. His girl was absorbed in her People magazine and tried to get him to look at it. He ignored her. Her mother (or perhaps his) looked nervous the entire time. Perhaps all is not well in the relationship.
I fly out again tomorrow morning. Perhaps another relationship tableaux will be in the offing as I travel to the heart of the Middle South.
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No, Queequeg! Don't do it!
Oxford University Press blog (yes they have a blog) has something special for Lisa B.:"On November 14th, 1851 Herman Melville published Moby Dick, the classic tale of Captain Ahab's whale hunt." (OUPblog: This Day in History: Moby Dick is Published)¶ 5:54 AM 2 comments
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Tuesday, November 14, 2006
"I will destroy you!"
The phrase "shits and giggles" really pisses someone I know off.
¶ 12:13 PM 1 comments
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Sunday, November 12, 2006
Barfly
Either purposefully or unpurposefully some company has left their wireless completely unprotected here at DTW. I sit in the "Irish Pub" (I assume some sort of marketing sneezitch of Guiness Corp--are they owned by Miller/Busch whoever now?) and have decided I have a moment to type. Yesterday was running solid for me from 5:30 a.m. to midnight (both Mountain time.) Busy is the name for conferences when you take on leadership positions.Anywhosits since I don't write about my professional existence here, I feel I am breaching some confidence: even if it is with myself. I suppose Dr. Write might think my unwillingness to blog about my professional existence here as somehow unwholesome--or at least too compartmentalized. I prefer, however, to keep the job and all it entails mostly in its little cage in the attic--or is it the other way round? Anyway the professional commitments allow me to travel a lot so that, naturally, intrudes upon my personal life.
A guy right next to me just swilled a Tanqueray and something. Pre-flight jitters?
The best thing about this trip was a poetry slam last night led by local poet (and poetic impresario) Jeff Kass. I am not much on poetry slams as I think they are cliquish and generally ripe with the disaffected who feel they have a right to whine in quasi-poetry about anything and everything, but these kids were generally interesting to listen to--even the kid who had a poem about getting caught beating off--simply because he explained he wanted to get up in front of a crowd and recite about the most uncomfortable thing he could think of.
Now next to me is a teenager with a gold card trying to order a bloody mary and a beer. "Do you have some ID to show me?" the bartender asks. She is jaded and has a spider tattoo on her arm. The teenager runs off.
After the poetry event my professional friends and I headed off to an Ethiopian restaurant where we ate communally. Ethiopian food is more like Inidan than I expected.
So here I sit, working on my second New Castle, and now I think I've sort of become a barfly. A blogging barfly with my stuff strewn around the bar. It seems uncomfortable even for an airport. Security makes me come to the airport early, so I have a while to wait. ¶ 10:59 AM 3 comments
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Thursday, November 09, 2006
blue light special
I'm out of here for a couple of days. My Microtel, however, supposedly has wireless access, so expect an update from Ann Arbor. Maybe. If I feel like it. If I see anything interesting. Yeah, I can hear you now: "Some blue light special this is!"
Aren't they all that way? I mean you get over to the flashing podium in Big K and it turns out the blue light special is tighty whiteys.
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Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Adventures in voting
- Walk past the polling station with its American flag posted in a planter to another set of doors thinking they would not have put the voting booths in the Catholic church's sanctuary.
- Enter those doors, look around and realize you have the wrong place.
- Turn around and spot several people leaving the other doors you passed up and realize your mistake.
- Walk back to the flag, look around and note the "Vote hear!" sign on the wall by the other doors.
- Enter the doors, spot more signs that lead past the sanctuary to a set of stairs leading to the church's basement.
- Follow the signs down, turn left at the bottom of the stairs and spot the election judges processing fellow citizens to conduct their suffrage.
- Wait patiently for a few people to be signed in.
- State your name clearly and somewhat loudly so the geriatric poll worker hears you.
- Wait for her to find your name.
- Sign your name upside down opposite your name.
- Take a yellow card and step to the next poll worker who takes your card and says "I will clear out a voting card for you."
- Wait while the poll worker takes a device that looks like a calculator, slides the electronic voting card and punches a few numbers.
- Take the card from the election worker who indicates you the short line of voters directly across the hall.
- Think about taking pictures while waiting politely in line with your cell phone but decide against it.
- Wait for 2 minutes for a electronic polling station to clear and then saunter over to the machine.
- Insert your card into the machine and here it click.
- Watch as the card ejects and the screen reads "card cleared."
- Insert the card in twice more with each time having the card eject and the screen read the same.
- Walk back to the poll worker who gave you the card, avoiding the guy who eagerly wants to take the card away from you (that's his job) and state in a clear loud voice "It says the card is cleared."
- Listen to the poll worker say "oh my" as if it has never happened before.
- Watch the worker re-insert his card into the calculator-like device and ask you what number was on the yellow card you handed him.
- State "Which one? The precinct number or the number one?
- Listen to him state "the number one" and then take the card back from him eying the blue card with Utah's state seal and a microchip doohickey in a familiar brass contact plate cover goob.
- Return to the same Diebold polling station and reinsert the card.
- Vote.
- Conclude the voting by carefully reviewing your selections and then pressing the "Print Ballot" virtual button.
- Review the printed ballot scrolling through the right-hand side of the voting device to ensure all your votes are correct.
- Complete voting by selecting the appropriate screen item and remove the voting card from the device.
- Turn in the card to the previously mentioned eager poll worker.
- Eye the "I voted stickers."
- Don't request one and leave the polling place.
- Walk home thinking of various ways the system might be compromised or scandolously corrupt politicians might coerce the system if they actually gave you some sort of receipt for voting.
- Wonder if those "I voted!" sticker could be used by scandalously corrupt politicians in trade for booze for dipsomaniacs who are getting election-day DTs.
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Monday, November 06, 2006
Four and O
103 to 101 my droogies.Want to take bets on when the Jazz don't make it over 100? ¶ 9:30 PM 1 comments
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Sunday, November 05, 2006
3 games still over 100
106 my minions! 106! ¶ 12:45 PM 1 comments
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Saturday, November 04, 2006
Happy valley tour?
Hmm: the Starlight Mints are going to be in Provo at Velour on the 8th. Are they worth a trip into the land of extreme happiness? ¶ 10:24 AM 2 comments
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Friday, November 03, 2006
Ode fragment for Swamp Crotch AZ
The Jazz did show upAs young as they are
And proceeded to wipe
The floor of poor Phoenix
As old as they are
Nash Nash the gnashing
of the Teeth
108
One O eight.
Down fifteen at one point
And then back to win
What do you know?
We'll leave it at that. ¶ 9:44 PM 4 comments
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"Hatch Toy Only Available to High Powered Lobbyists"
Ashdown Action Figure!Best political advertisement ever. Ever.
EVER.
(I am absolutely not kidding. It is brilliant.) ¶ 12:32 PM 2 comments
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Thursday, November 02, 2006
I think it is because of the new ball
I've only got one thing to write to summarize the Jazz's walloping of Houston last night: "107 freaking points. 107 freaking points."OK that was two things, but since it is repetition it can count as one. I don't recall the last time the Jazz broke a hundred (although I'm sure they did it some time last year) but they haven't done it with such ease and adept play since 2 B.S.M. (Before Stockton-to-Malone). Boozer took it to the basket with authority. Miles held a solid outside. Williams showed he can lead a team. Fisher saved their asses when the team began a classic Jazz out-of-control spin in the 4th and brought them back to the afore-mentioned 107 freaking points. The only disappointment was Kirilenko, but his contribution really wasn't needed anyway because Yao was about as about as big a cry baby flat foot as Ostertag ever was last night.
See this is what you get when you let your players play rather than trying to coach them to death. This is also what you get when you pull things together and listen to your coach (something I saw Fisher doing intently which is so very different from how the last minute Jazz huddles of recent years have been.) They certainly weren't the dead, flat-footed Jazz of last season. Sloan even looked like he cared again. (And I am more than willing to give the guy a big break since his wife died the summer before last season.) Now that Sloan is remarried he seems like he is back into it. Maybe he is willing to accept change.
Crazy first-game-inspired prediction: Jazz make the second round of the play offs. ¶ 1:20 PM 1 comments
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