Yes, I have been terribly delinquent in my blogging. I’m a terrible person. Fine.
Moving on.
Driving down from Ithaca the other week (having been up there to visit Britt and Jason, who were back in town) I saw an unusual sign outside a church on NYS-79. It said simply “R U SAVED”. And I must admit that this bothered me somewhat. Because there are a couple of ways I can interpret this and none of them are terribly positive.
The first is that the church was just lacking letters, (perhaps the most charitable interpretation) which would just be sad. True, there was writing on the other side of the sign as well, but if they are really lacking the letters a, e, y and o, I think that church is in pretty dire straits.
A more disturbing possibility is that whoever put up the letters is sufficiently steeped in text messaging that they thought nothing of this approach to ‘spelling’. In which case the church probably needs to give some more serious thought to the matter of to whom they are going to entrust the important duty of putting up the letters on the sign by the road. Seriously.
Finally there is the possibility is that this is some sort of feeble attempt to connect with the modern text-messaging youth. In which case it is just tragic and misguided. Surely the question of whether or not you are saved is the single most important issue in existence, so spelling the words out completely seems like it might be worth the trouble? Imagine for a moment that you are on death row awaiting execution. I think you want the note from the governor notifying you of your pardon to say something other than “omg u r ok dude!”
Jesus supposedly walked on water, raised people (sorry, I mean ppl) from the dead, and turned water into wine. Is it too much to ask that we spell out words completely on his behalf? Apparently.
Here endeth the rant and the lesson.
Yes, Beth and I now have two delightful little kittens who are probably the two cutest creatures in the history of creation. I have been promising people pictures for a while and so now I’m getting around to putting them up. They don’t fully capture their cuteness, of course, nor are they the best pictures in the world, but they will have to do for now.
Their names are Odin and Loki. The names come from Norse mythology, although both our kitties are much nicer than their namesakes. Gods in Norse mythology aren’t really terribly pleasant. They’re brothers (there was initially some doubt as to their gender because they were quite young and their testicles hadn’t… come down) and very much enjoy doing everything together. Eating, playing, fighting, sometimes sleeping. Although when one of them is awake he’ll often try to wake the other one up in order to have a playmate.
Odin is the gray, stockier one, who is somewhat silvery actually, although that’s something that definitely doesn’t come through very well on the pictures. He likes to make all sorts of funny faces and is an extremely agreeable kitten. He’ll purr when you pick him up, even if he doesn’t actually want to be cuddled, just to let you know that he appreciates the sentiment, but he’d actually prefer to be off exploring, thank you very much, so he’ll be on his way now. He also likes to curl up on the floor near me when I’m working at the computer, just to sort of hang out in my general vicinity, even if he’s not actually sitting on my lap. Not as lithe or agile as Loki, but very solid.
Loki is an orange tabby who jumps all over the place. He was initially very opposed to sleeping as a concept, since it seemed to detract from the time he could have to play. Any distraction would keep him from sleeping, so he would go hide in little nooks where there were no distractions in order to be able to actually sleep, as witnessed in the pictures of him. If you tried to get him to sleep in your lap, he would generally be too distracted by your presence, the bed, the ceiling, the air, to be able to settle down. In the last two days, however, he’s settled down a lot and will now sit happily on my lap and take a nap while I type away on the computer. I think he was a bit skittish at the start. He was definitely smaller to begin with and is still quite a bit skinnier, but he’s gotten very long. He can jump to higher places than Odin can at the moment, but Odin is able to pin him in fights because of his superior body mass.
So far they both seem extremely happy, playing a lot, sleeping a lot, and being absolutely adorable.
I am frequently reminded of the xkcd cartoon about cat proximity when I see them and talk to them, however. It is a little disturbing.
Well, I missed hearing this on the radio, perhaps because I don’t really listen to the radio, but if you follow this link, you’ll get to see him answering the Proust quiz on NPR. Frank Oz as his most enduring creation being quite philosophical about a number of things. To see the video, click on the NPR Video Exclusive link (requires javascript).
Well, I haven’t been blogging very conscientiously lately, but this is because of a lot of things. However, it is not because of a lack of things to share with everyone.
To sum things up briefly, I’m following the election very closely because I’ve been rather inspired by Barack Obama and the message of his campaign. Hell, I’ve even been inspired by the will.i.am Yes We Can song. Although I think it’s better to hear Obama’s speech from the evening of the New Hampshire Primary (whence comes the text of the song).
Of course I would be remiss if I did not also mention John McCain’s ability to inspire us using just three words.
When looking at the qualities of Obama’s speeches, I was about to facetiously suggest that Ted Sorensen might be writing them (a chief advisor to JFK, who wrote all of his speeches), but when I looked him up on Wikipedia, I discovered that he has in fact endorsed Obama and written an acceptance speech for the convention. It doesn’t seem implausible that he’s doing a bit of ordinary speech-writing for Obama as well.
On the topic of people with time on their hands, I can only humbly bow down to the complete and utter awesomeness that is the creation of this guy and his friends. Not only did they recreate the Battle of Helm’s Deep last year in candy, this year they did one better and did a fantastic diorama of The Battle of Pelennor Fields.
I’m not sure which is higher, to be honest, my amazement at the coolness factor, or my amazement at the geek factor. He includes details like the head of the king over the entrance to the Tower of Ecthelion. And his commentary about the whole thing is also priceless. One could perhaps quibble with the fact that he chose to recreate the movie version of the Battle of Helm’s Deep rather than the book version, but I think he has the artistic license to do whichever he pleases. This is a man of vision we’re talking about, after all 
I can’t imagine what he might do next year. The fall of Gondolin? But that’s not described in nearly the same level of detail as Minas Tirith, so I don’t know that it would have the same visual impact, even if it were to be done.
I think that a great many things could be said about this artistic endeavour, about the sort of statement it’s making by the artist’s choice of a material like candy rather than something more lasting. How it’s a statement about the fleeting nature of all our accomplishments. How stories last forever, yet any sort of visualization is inherently temporary.
Furthermore, on a deeper level, that artificial distinctions of “good” and “evil” are as arbitrary as the differences between the colors of gummy bears. Looking even further, that truth and beauty can be found in all manner of things, even circus peanuts.
But most of all, we find that marshmallow plants are way cooler than ordinary plants. And that, yes, the Tower of Ecthelion is truly a biotchingly pimpin’ tower.
than I have time to write amusing reviews on amazon.
Like the ones written for the Bic pen found here. Particular props to the Cthulhu review, and to the reviewer urging people to not upgrade to the latest version of firmware, as it includes Bic’s dangerous and intrusive DRM software.
Highly entertaining and well worth the read. Credit, as is often the case with the interesting links that I post, goes to www.nodwick.com.
Or so I have been told from time to time. And so what is my current topic of grumpiness? Well, I’m glad you asked.
Recently I was watching some TV and happened to be seeing a commercial for Walmart advertising some of their marvelous offers for the holidays. Well, as they saw it, anyway. I’m not going to launch into a long tirade about Walmart in general, but will focus on one particular aspect of their sales pitch. They mentioned that online they have an even wider selection of goods than they do in-store, and so you can find just the thing for your loved ones by shopping at their online location, and then, here’s the truly remarkable thing, apparently: They will ship the items to a Walmart near you for free! That’s right, you won’t have to pay for them to ship these items to a retail store near you where you can then go and pick them up…
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of online shopping. But to advertise as if it were somehow a tremendous courtesy to the customer that they won’t charge you shipping something to their store? What will be next? Starbucks advertising that you can pour yourself free milk with your coffee! Not to mention free sugar! And free sweetener!
It’s all well and good that you can get a wider selection of goods from Walmart by being able to shop online, but it’s ultimately beneficial to the store that they don’t have to keep all these things in stock in all their stores. And the idea that they are giving you great customer service by not charging you to order these things in is simply absurd.
/end rant
Yes, I know, I’m an awful human being, and a terrible disappointment to everyone. Well, everyone who has been hoping to follow the exciting events vicariously by reading about them here on my blog.
And by everyone, I suppose I chiefly mean you, Maria. But anyway. I suppose I could make some sort of excuse, like try to say that I’ve been horribly busy and that I just haven’t had the time to write anything for the past many months. And while that is pretty much true, it’s also the case that I just kind of got out of the habit of writing anything. And then it got worse, and it seemed impossible to get back into things, and how could I possibly catch up on everything that had happened in the meantime.
So let’s just assume that I haven’t missed the past five or six months of blogging and that I haven’t been a terrible disappointment to you all, and I’ll try to start over. Emphasis on try. Who knows whether I’ll succeed.
Oh, and the lesson of the day is that while working in bed may sound like a great idea, actually sitting at a desk has achieved the level of popularity it has because it is in fact way more comfortable in the long run. My back is very stiff and sore. But the wireless in Beth’s apartment is really quite pathetic and doesn’t reach anywhere that I can sit down properly, so I’m restricted to being in one corner of the apartment. Where there are no work surfaces. Hence the sitting in bed, or lying down on the bed. Or sitting down in front of the bed with the computer on the bed. None of which works too well. Meh, I say.
Anyway, that’s enough of that for now.
Well, I’m sitting in an airport in Iceland writing this. Hopefully I’ll be writing some more details about the wedding later, as there’s rather a lot to tell.
However, the most important thing is that we got married and so Beth and I are now wife and husband. I’m now wearing a wedding ring and we’re tremendously happy about it. Overall the wedding was a tremendous success: the weather wasn’t too hot, everyone had a good time but the most important thing is really the end result.
Some (by which I mean several hundred) pictures of the wedding can be found at the photographer’s site here: (for the next couple of weeks at least). That includes a great many less than brilliant photos, so for those who want to wait until editorial control has been exerted, they may do so. I will post the better ones (which we’ll be getting on a CD) on my flickr account in due time. That will also be home to pictures from the honeymoon, which was in beautiful sunny Jamaica. I now understand even better why people talk about it being a tropical paradise, possibly even more so than Eleuthra, I think. Truly a fantastic trip and not one we were too happy to see end, but I suppose real life had to begin again. People with Facebook (I think it’s required that one have an account to view the pictures in there) can also see Maria’s pictures of the wedding there. And Eric and Allie’s pictures from their flickr account are here.
I managed to put off the return to normalcy by going to visit my parents for a week in Denmark (flying Iceland Air always means a stopover in Reykjavik, hence the location of this writing). That was quite nice, although I can’t really say that the climate of Denmark compares to that of Jamaica in any sort of favorable way. There will be at least another post (or two?) regarding events of the trip in Denmark since it also featured a ten year high school reunion, which was… interesting, to say the least.
This just in, in case you weren’t aware of it. The right to sunbathe in a bikini is a human right. This according to a group of women prisoners in Sweden demanding that they be permitted to wear bikinis when tanning. The full story is here.
Maybe this was mentioned in the UN Charter of Basic Human Rights and I just never noticed it?
The other great thing about this article is that it has an ad linking to the personals site for Female Prison Pen Pals, cleverly titled www.ladiesofthepen.com. Now really, how can you resist at least checking out that site and seeing what is there?
Well, I went there and looked at it a bit (although I do recommend that other people do the same) and found a number of things to amuse me. It boasts that it is “The premier internet introduction and dating service!”, which I thought was perhaps giving itself an awful lot of credit. Are most men really trying to date women in prison in the first place? But hey, I’m not here to judge. Well, ok, maybe a bit.
A membership to this excellent site not only lets you browse the members profiles and pictures (many of which seem to suggest that there are an awful lot of models in prison for some reason), but it lets you Verify Your Ladies’ Information
through our Prison Information Database. Yes, that’s right. You can, according to their page, Get current conviction, prior convictions, current release date, and other personal information about your “Lady of the Pen”. Only $24.95 – for One Year Membership! It’s worth it to know if she’s really telling you the truth. Unlimited Searches!
I guess the ability to check their current and prior convictions is so that you can be sure that when your prison sweetheart is telling you that she’s just in there because she cashed some bad checks, she’s not actually there for multiple aggravated assaults. Or the other way around, for that matter? All depending on what you want. Ladies of the Pen caters to all needs, I suppose.
Anyway, with only three weeks to go until my own wedding, I feel like I’d better get a move on if I’m going to make any use of a site like this. But are there likely to be any interesting women getting out of prison in the next couple of weeks? I suppose I’d have to use the Prison Information Database to find out for sure
