Friday, December 19, 2008

Congratulations, Auto-makers (or, Representative Democracy as an Oxymoron?)

The majority of the population was against a bailout.

We gave them one, anyway.

In all honesty, I can only imagine it was to simply make them shut up and go away. Unfortunately, they now know they can whine, beg and complain their way into an easy solution to their mistakes without ever having to admit their own responsibility.

Friday, December 12, 2008

Fifteen Minutes of Anonymous Fame (or, You Never Really Know What Happens with What You Type)

Approximately seven years ago, I posted a sleep-deprivation induced comment to an IRC channel.

Tonight, I was bored enough to conduct a search on my old handle.

That comment is everywhere.

And, by everywhere, I mean either sex-related or computer geek sites...at least, those that maintain some sort of quotes archive.

It is also, apparently, a popular .sig file line.

Too bad I can't claim copyright and charge everyone who has used it... I could probably live comfortably for the next year or two.

If you're interested in the quote, just Google "nytwind" (yes, by god, it was cheesy, *CHEESY* handle... and it's still in use today on my livejournal, because there are just too many people who know to find me using that nym).

Editted: No, thankfully, not all the Nytwinds out there are me. Some are even a bit more silly than I was... and I wouldn't have thought that entirely possible. I just thought I'd state that for record. Some of them make me wish I had never used the nym.

The Secretary of Sextography (or, The Passing of a Cultural Icon)


Bon nuit, ma chère. Vous ne seront pas oubliés.

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Brief Hiatus (or, The Fallout of, well, Fallout)

I'm an avid computer/console gamer. Always have been.

I finally managed to purchase a copy of the recently released Fallout 3.

It is, decidedly, impressive... much more than I was expecting, even from this series that can be traced back to the glory of Wasteland on the C64.

I will, of course, be spending a good bit of my limited free time trying to get at least one full playthrough accomplished before the holidays and school. As such, I won't be as prolific a poster as I was in November.

I'm way too easily distracted by a well-written, well-programmed game.

Monday, December 1, 2008

The Battle for the Livingroom (or, How "Diary" Blogs Can Be Acceptable) *Fluff Warning*

(Editted: To clarify Chris' position, as I put it too briefly in the original post, he doesn't believe in the posting of minutiae of daily life. Blog posts of a personal nature are well accepted... it's the posting of mundane, routine details with which he was concerned. I feel I misrepresented his views in the first paragraph of the original blog entry below.)

On our recent outing, Chris (Berry) and I briefly discussed personal blogs; respectively speaking, he doesn't believe in them, per se, and I have two or three that I update about twice a year. We both agreed there was never anything entertaining about reading or posting daily events in one's life.

And then I remembered this post I made quite a few months back that made me rethink my stance.

It's fluff, if you hadn't noticed from the title, so feel free to skip it and wait for a more substantial post.

Let the cut'n'paste begin:

There is old phrase refering to the concept of waking up in a perfectly content, pleasant mood for the day.

"Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed."

Let me be the first to explain to you the inconsistencies of this phrase and how being bright and bushy in the morning is not exactly the way you might’ve planned your day. Let me emphasize the nature of the terror and confusion bushy can bring to your first few waking moments.

Enter the squirrel.

Seriously.

Into the house.

In the morning.

I was *not* awake for the initial encounter with this tree-dwelling beast of havoc, this chirping, barking, snippity monstrosity of acorn-shoveling doom. I was gently shaken from my slumber to hear a phrase that contained the improbable combination of the two words: "squirrel" and "livingroom". (Note: No, "livingroom" is not a word in the technical sense, but we’ll afford it that luxury in this particular instance).

My response was a very logical and stoic, "A squirrel where?"

Now, mind you, I sleep in a form my scottish ancestors would call "regimental", except I do it without the kilt, et al. So, you know, in all respects, naked squirrel prancing is not one of the activities listed at the top of my "Things I’ve Always Wanted to Accomplish on a Sunday Morning at 7AM" list. In fact, it is something that, had I ever intentionally thought to do such a thing, I’d be whole-heartedly checking myself into the nearest mental facility/institution, fearing the worst.

And, honestly, who *really* wants to go bare-assed mano-e-mano with something designed to leap through the air, little teefs and claws bared, twitching its visciously cute, bushy tail.

I raise my hand as one of the, "No, not me’s".

It takes me a few minutes to wake up and clarify the situation I had so obviously misheard.

The clarification: "There’s a squirrel in the *livingroom*."

Now, at this point, I hear Killian providing a detailed description of the encounter in the common vernacular of the two-year old, which involves incredible word-streaming and exceptionally wide eyes.

Then I hear the unmistakable battle cry of the North American Grey Terror. I notice one of the cats in semi-stealth mode trying to push his way behind a box in the *livingroom*. And each time, there is the flicker of bushy, the bitter bark of fur-clad berserker.

The squirrel, contrary to my opinion as to how the world should work, *was* definitely in the *livingroom*.

This, I thought, was not a good thing. Not in the early hours of Sunday morning. Not ever, really, but certainly not at this moment in time, not at the present. Nor in the future, should we ever deal with time-travelling squirrels.

This brought to mind the second logical thought of the day, "How in the hell do you catch a squirrel? In your home? In your *livingroom*? How did it get in here? Why is it here? Where are the other squirrels? Is this one somehow mentally deficient? Is it a spy, a scout, a ninja? Is it stealing evidence, planting bugs (audio, not crawly)? Is it looking for nuts and, if so, is it after mine?"

So, I do the only thing an intelligent, superior species can do in a situation such as this... I Google it. And, did you know? Ehow.com has an article on catching squirrels. It does not, however, give a description of how to accomplish this task in your *livingroom* on a Sunday morning. Their idea involves a lot of baiting and waiting, the sorts of things one does when one is not half-naked with a deranged, dangerous bush rodent in your own, damned *livingroom*.

So, I did the sensible thing that all of us hearty warriors would in such dire straits. I sat down on the couch and watched it while smoking a cigarette.

Now, Megan, at this point, brings up the idea that maybe we should get it out of here. That maybe, just maybe, the *livingroom* was, decidedly, not the place for a squirrel to be. Perhaps, she noted, we should get...it...out.

This, of course, made sense. It was, after all, our *livingroom* and not the squirrel’s. He should not be all frenzily-cozied behind our empty box in this *livingroom* of *ours*. He should be denied his moment of triumph, this pointed mockery of our open windows. This squirrel should be evicted, expatriated, expunged and ex-*livingroom*.

So, we try to nudge him, ever so gently ( I believe I threw things towards it, but that, of course, was simply my natural, instinctive "I can kill mammoths" primoridal hunter coming through). And he, ever so gently, runs for the radiator.

And we jump back.

The squirrel has made a move. A bold, daring move.

And then he occupied the couch. And then the love seat. And then the couch. And then the radiator, again.

And we jumped. And we moved towards the door of the *livingroom*. And we jumped. And we cowered before this nimbly-prancy beast of the apocalypse.

Megan, being the source of human intellect and reason, opens the other window. I mean, the sheer madness of it! Would not more squirrels (ninjas) flood into this, our *livingroom*? Would we not find ourselves on the losing end of this war?

And the squirrel, with cruel intelligence gleaming in its beady, shifty, gunslinger eyes, occupies the couch.

And the loveseat.

And the couch.

And the *livingroom*.

And then dives out the window, vanishing into the morning with naught but the subtle tremor of terror in our limbs to remind us of this encounter.

This day, we lived....we survived. Until next Sunday Morning.

Until the next *livingroom*.