Beep Beep

If you don't yet have a song stuck in your head, be sure to check out Rocketboom today for the remedy.

(cross posted to Buzz and via Sutter)

Flopsy Shrugged

The third result for the query [ayn rand is a nut] is the following comment:

They like Ayn Rand books and raping bunny rabbits in the name of Liberty. And I'll be damned if those bunny fuckers are gonna hijiack our country.

Birthday triptych

photo credit: Lane Collins

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29

Time flies

I was born at 1:19a CST on September 24, 1976. Which means that today (the 23rd) is actually my birthday since I now live in California ... or at least I'll be 29 at 11:19p.

I've often thought it would be nice if you could somehow biologically sense the exact moment of your natal anniversary. You know, like a soft pop that you'd feel in your lungs, like a turkey timer going off, echoing the moment of your first breath.

Humans aren't well atuned to annual cycles, I guess. Something for a subsequent release.

Emblazened

Biz claims to have seen me in a blue blazer at some point in time and offers as proof a picture of me in a decidedly non-blue blazer.

That kid is whack, yo.

Moreover, he owes me a check for $18 since I last rocked the BB at my bar mitzvah. What kinda jackass shows up to your bar mitzvah uninvited and doesn't even give you a present. Also, when I was 13, Biz was, like, 24 ... which is pretty sketchy.

Funnily enough, I actually did go buy some wedding attire this weekend. This, as the result of a conversation with my mom:

Mom: So, you have something to wear to the wedding?

Me: Dunno ... what should I wear?

Mom: Well, a blazer would be nice.

Me: ...

Mom: Or just anything nice.

Me: ... I've got some Dockers.

Mom: So, we'll just tell everyone that you're from California.*

And I realized why I don't enjoy shopping for clothes ... I don't know how to dress myself. I've got no idea what pants go with what jacket go with what tie. When I finally got asked "Do you need any help?" I'd never been so ready to say "Yes!" in my entire life.

* This exchange measured out as a low-level Class 2 on the Jewish Mother Guilt Trip Scale - compliance was not strictly necessary but I wanted some new threads anyway.

Blog Search launches!

Activity Knowledge

I recently re-watched Errol Morris' first film, Gates of Heaven. It's plainly awesome. The second half, which concerns a family-run pet cemetery in Napa Valley, is stronger than the first half. But it's a ton of fun all around, especially as a portrait of Northern California in the late 1970s.

Amazingly, Bubbling Well Memorial Park is still around and living large on the World Wide Web.

I wonder how many fans of the film end up going to the cemetary just to check it out. It's tantalizing close to home.

Busted

Yesterday I rode my bike across the Golden Gate Bridge and all the way to Tiburon ... which is a whole municipality farther than I'd ever ridden before.

It was a lot of fun but today I feel as tho' I was suspended by my groin for about twelve hours.

Also the LA Blackout took out my blog for about 4 hours (Dreamhost, not Blogger, was affected).

I feel these things are connected somehow.

Each one teach one

What I learned from Joel Schumacher in the Lost Boys commentary: If you need to get maggots to squirm around, spritz them with lemon.

R Squared

Not sure how I didn't notice this earlier, but PlayOn has an amazingly good set of posts featuring statistical analysis of World of Warcraft.

Beautiful graphs, too.

The End

Joan Walsh in Salon:

The death toll from Katrina is likely to be higher than 9/11, but most of its victims will be black and poor, and I doubt we'll wage a war on poverty and neglect to match the war on terror launched after al-Qaida struck -- and if we did, I doubt it would be any more effective.