<p> First, the big news: I have a place to stay. It&#39;s nothing elaborate–a room in a house on 13th, near Logan Park–but I met both the landlord and the other guy in the house and hit it off really well. It has a kitchen and washer and dryer and a bathroom that I will only have to share if they bring in a person for the third room, which the landlord is not sure he&#39;s going to do. If he does, he says he&#39;ll give me a break on the rent.</p>

<p> First things first–I&#39;ve not gotten all that far in the book. Partly it&#39;s because I haven&#39;t been reading as much as I normally do, but partly because after two or three pages, I often glaze over a little bit; it&#39;s nothing if not dense.</p> <p> But it&#39;s also interesting. It&#39;s the first generally recognized history text, and the list of things it is the primary source for is pretty amazing.</p> <p> Apparently the Histories are the only source we have for information about the Battle of Marathon (an appropriate reference given what&#39;s going on in Athens).</p>

<p> So, I disabled my laptop yesterday by deleting (intentionally) the old static /dev directory–I mean, I&#39;m using udev, which builds the thing dynamically (and really, it does a very fine job), and a comment in the /etc/init.d/udev script suggested that it could be removed.</p> <p> So I did.</p> <p> There was no immediate havoc, but I couldn&#39;t reboot–the moment the kernel went to hand over control to /sbin/init, init would complain that it couldn&#39;t open an initial console.</p>

<p> Now, I didn&#39;t get much sleep last night–I was up until 2am, dealing with some issues surrounding transferring stuff to the iRiver using Linux that haven&#39;t been mentioned anywhere else that I&#39;ve seen (it has to do with case translation on files and directories whose names are exclusively upper-case and/or numbers), and with just general jitters.</p> <p> So I got back up four hours later, gave Ford his shot, showered and shaved off a weeks growth, got in the car, hit the ATM, and got to the airport.</p>

<p> So, it&#39;s official, I fly out at 8:10 tomorrow morning, touch down at 9:22am, make my way over to 430 South Capitol Street SE, and begin my work for the <a href="http://democrats.org/">Democratic National Committee</a>.</p> <p> I have a hotel room for five nights, and no scheduled accommodation after that; we&#39;re working on it. I don&#39;t know exactly what I&#39;m going to be doing; working on mining their donor/activist database, probably, unless they decide to put me on something else. I don&#39;t know exactly when I&#39;m going to be home next; my ticket out is one-way.</p>

<p> al gore we love you<br> no internet invented<br> popular vote won</p>

<p> <a href="http://www.wonkette.com/archives/wonkette-seeks-nubile-young-things-018882.php">Read about it here.</a></p> <p> But, of course, I don&#39;t live in DC at the moment, and I&#39;m not in a</p> <p> position to work for free.</p> <p> But I am in a position to compose haikus about Al Gore. How long do</p> <p> you think I can draw this sick joke out?</p>

<p> It is still true that I will occasionally pull out Concrete Blonde&#39;s Free, play along with the first half straight through, and then contemplate playing the second half, too. I can do that with the first album, too, and much of Bloodletting (Chet and Joy and Michelle and I saw them open for Sting in New Orleans after this album, as well as Vinx).</p> <p> And then came Walking in London, and Mexican Moon (on which tour I saw them play in a half-empty club in Boston during a blizzard) and then last years Group Therapy, none of which did much for me.</p>

<p> libapache-dbilogger-perl<br> libapache-session-perl<br> libdigest-hmac-perl<br> libdigest-perl</p> <p> Not a bad haul for one day.</p>

<p> From Neil Gaiman&#39;s journal:</p> <p> bq.. If you&#39;d like to read one of the Sandman parody issues of Cerebus, Dave [Sim] will send you one. He&#39;ll send it to you very happily, free of charge. He will sign it for you, too. And he won&#39;t charge you a thing. Not even postage.</p> <p> And if you&#39;re wondering what the catch is, it&#39;s this: Dave wants to know (as, I have to admit, do I) how many of the people out there in internet-land will actually go and do things that don&#39;t involve passively clicking on a link and going somewhere interesting. So what you have to do is write Dave a letter (not an e-mail. Dave doesn&#39;t have e-mail) telling him that you read that he&#39;ll send you a signed Cerebus, and telling him why you&#39;d like him to send you a copy. It&#39;s as easy as that. And, quite possibly as difficult.</p>

<p> So, in a fashion not unlike Canterbury Tales, a huge part of the The Golden Ass is actually Lucius telling tales that he hears while he&#39;s stuck in the form of an ass.</p> <p> One of the tales he hears is a retelling of Cupid and Psyche. I&#39;ll leave you to google it if you&#39;re not familiar with the story. The part that amuses me is towards the end, when Cupid begs Jupiter to get Venus leave off tormenting the poor girl. In my incredibly ancient copy of Bullfinch&#39;s Mythology (I literally cannot remember when I got this book–I was <em>maybe</em>) twelve), this is recounted so:</p>

<p> Look in the current events section, for Eric Alterman&#39;s book The Book on Bush: How George W. (Mis)leads America. Flip to the index. Look up &#34;Klinefelter, Anne&#34;.</p> <p> My favorite subversive.</p>

<p> I also read the book Big Fish, which Anne was able to get signed because the author actually lives around here, and spoke (for reasons no one entirely understands) before the Triangle Research Libraries Network, an organization to whose meetings she goes.</p> <p> Dan Wallace is very diligent, in speaking about his book, to say that, really, the movie is the screenwriter&#39;s. And, indeed, I have to say I agree with him. I thought the movie was glorious and sad and funny and gut-wrenching.</p>

<p> Warning, this post has changed focus on me three or four times. Its writing has been deeply recursive, and, at this point, may not actually make any sense to anyone but me.</p> <p> So, I decided to break out of my rut of constantly re-reading books; for whatever reason, one of my standard responses to having my brain occupied by other things–whether stress or a big project or whatever–is to retreat to re-reading books. I think this is because it keeps my eyes occupied, and stimulates the languages sections of my brain without really requiring, say, <em>thought</em>.</p>

<p> The ever-reliable Paul Krugman has <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/09/opinion/09KRUG.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists%2fPaul%20Krugman">a column discussing Kerry&#39;s Health Plan</a>. The point I would hope you would make to anyone in hearing range is this one:</p> <blockquote> <p>John Kerry has proposed an ambitious health care plan that would extend coverage to tens of millions of uninsured Americans, while reducing premiums for the insured. To pay for that plan, Mr. Kerry wants to rescind recent tax cuts for the roughly 3 percent of the population with incomes above $200,000.</p>

<p> She is, of course, the author of Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, a book that documents, among other things, that Wal-Mart doesn&#39;t necessarily pay its employees enough to shop at…Wal-Mart.</p> <p> Now, I&#39;m sure some will say that it&#39;s awfully overblown to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/04/opinion/04EHRE.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fContributors">compare George III and George W. Bush</a>, but she does a credible job of it. And she includes this important point on the issue of civil liberties:</p>

<p> Part of the reason, of course, is that I&#39;ve <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/05/technology/05systems.html?hp">been doing some work for these guys</a>.</p> <p> Just in case you thought I was something other than a pinko-commie-bedwetting-liberal.</p>

<p> Quite an <a href="http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0406/25/lkl.00.html">amusing interview</a>. I really liked this:</p> <blockquote> <p>STEWART: Very angry. Loves the Americans. Very big. Wants us to have bigger cars. Wants us to have bigger cars and as a little goof on us has only made a finite supply of oil. It&#39;s very – he&#39;s very funny. He&#39;s a trickster. Here&#39;s another little joke he did. He promised three different religions they were the chosen ones, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and then, funny, follow me, he put their holiest sites all in the same place. And then he backed away and he just wants to see who wants it more. That&#39;s what this is about. This is God going, hey, show me something, people.</p>

<p> JWZ mentions Sister Machine Gun <a href="http://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2004/06.html#17">in the latest DNA Lounge updatelet</a>.</p> <p> My only synth module–I use it with my guitar synth module–is a a Roland JV-1080 I bought seven or eight years ago from one of the members of Sister Machine Gun via the net.</p>

<p> I just put out the first official release of my DBIx::POS module (which, incidentally, is my first ever CPAN entry in roughly ten years of Perl development).</p> <p> This is the end-product of more than a years worth of effort in finding a good lightweight way of organizing and documenting the SQL code associated with a large application.</p> <p> This is not any sort of object mapping layer or automatic SQL generator; I keep looking at those sorts of things, and experimenting with them, and I keep coming back to plain old SQL. This will not save you any keystrokes–in fact, it&#39;s going to take more, because this is as much about documentation as anything else.</p>

<p> And I&#39;ve never had second thoughts. In the end, I don&#39;t know that there&#39;s anything more to say.</p>

<p> Robert Quine <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ/Music/06/08/music.quine.reut/">is dead of a heroin overdose at 61</a>.</p> <p> I can&#39;t say I have any significant knowledge of his guitar playing–Richard Hell and the Voidoids is on my perpetual list of &#34;Probably ought to look into that&#34;, and post-VU Lou Reed has never done much for me, and I haven&#39;t gotten around to buying Tom Waits&#39; Raindogs.</p> <p> In fact, the only thing of Richard Quine&#39;s I&#39;m familiar with is his guitar playing on Matthew Sweet&#39;s Girlfriend. Even so, that&#39;s enough. The opening of that song is something that makes me glad to be alive.</p>

<p> TNH (perhaps Teresa Nielsen Hayden to you) <a href="http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/005370.html#005370">has a link to a riveting narrative about using a hot-type Linotype printing press</a>. Well, actually, it&#39;s about progression in the printing industry, and talks about a bunch of other systems, too, but the hot-type press is the most fascinating.</p> <p> I could not tell you why, but I find things like this fascinating, just about regardless of the actual subject. I guess it&#39;s because it&#39;s about The Way Things Work, which I always find intriguing.</p>

<p> There is _so much sense in everything Roger Ebert says in <a href="http://www.suntimes.com/output/eb-feature/cst-ftr-moore18.html">his essay about Michael Moore&#39;s film Farenheit 9/11_</a> everyone should read it, and good people should take it to heart.</p> <p> I will, of course, only excerpt a little snide bit:</p> <blockquote> <p>…and yet in the days before the film opens June 25, there&#39;ll be bountiful reports by commentators who are shocked! shocked! that Moore&#39;s film is partisan. &#34;He doesn&#39;t tell both sides,&#34; we&#39;ll hear, especially on Fox News, which is so famous for telling both sides.</p>

<p> <a href="http://www.mainstgrillhmb.com/">The Main Street Grill</a><br> 435 Main Street<br> Half Moon Bay, CA 94019<br> (650) 726-5300<br> info@mainstgrillhmb.com</p> <p> So, when we were out in California, we decided–somewhat on the spur of the moment when our friend Laura found she and Michelle were going to be late meeting us in Berkeley–to drive down the coast to have breakfast on Saturday.</p> <p> We went to Half Moon Bay because it&#39;s within shouting distance of the apartment in El Granada where I stayed when I was working out there, and it seemed likely to have something reasonable.</p>

<p> Manual Miranda, the one who was only reluctantly let go after it became obvious that this couldn&#39;t be dismmissed as &#34;boys will be boys&#34; or whatever excuse the Republicans are using these days.</p> <p> Well, he&#39;s now the head of a new organization called the <a href="http://www.democrats.org/blog/display/00010728.html">Ethics in Nominations Project</a>.</p> <p> There is just absolutely nothing else to say. Nothing.</p>

<p> This is not entirely new–he&#39;s done it before, and I suspect he&#39;ll do it again; as best I can tell, it is in the nature of guitarists to accumulate guitars, and at least he&#39;s got a good reason for unloading the extras.</p> <p> Hell, I wish I was famous so I could unload a couple for charity; as it is, mine are merely &#34;used&#34;.</p> <p> However, among various bits and bobs that I would guess never saw much use–their only real value is that Clapton has owned them for a while, not that he necessarily played them–there are two very special guitars being auctioned.</p>

<p> In the two years I lived in Boston, I don&#39;t actually remember anywhere selling Boston Cream Pie. But <a href="http://fafblog.blogspot.com/2004_06_06_fafblog_archive.html#108718617404224818">this item on Fafblog</a> is enough to get me thinking about City Cafe.</p>

<p> <a href="http://fafblog.blogspot.com/2004_06_06_fafblog_archive.html#108713923245941570">I fear I am going to become assimilated into the ranks of Fafblog fandom.</a></p>

<p> So, we&#39;d just gotten done seeing the new Harry Potter film–there&#39;s something off on the pacing of the screenplay, but I think Alfonso Cuaron&#39;s storytelling abilities are amazing–and were going to the grocery store, when we were in a 4-car accident.</p> <p> This is not a fun way to spend your afternoon, I don&#39;t recommend it at all. No one was seriously hurt though I have to admit that unless I feel astoundingly better in the next 36 hours, I&#39;m going to the doctor on Monday for that most common of post-accident complaints, neck pain.</p>

<p> Andy Serkis has played Gollum, now <a href="http://scifi.com/scifiwire/art-main.html?2004-06%2F11%2F11.00.film">he&#39;s going to be Kong</a>.</p> <p> I guess it could be worse. <a href="http://imdb.com/name/nm0457511/">Imagine if your whole resume revolved around being the guy in the big rubber suit in Japanese monster films</a>.</p>

<p> Yeah, it&#39;s kind of esoteric, but Dan Armstrong was responsible for some very cool guitars. I will always think of Jeff &#34;Skunk&#34; Baxter with a Dan Armstrong guitar. I always wanted one, and although it&#39;s not like his passing is going to mean the end of their production, it&#39;s kind of sad to see him go.</p> <p> <a href=""><img src="http://news.harmony-central.com/Newp/1998/Dan-Armstrong-Guitars1.jpg" alt="http://news.harmony-central.com/Newp/1998/Dan-Armstrong-Guitars1.jpg" title="http://news.harmony-central.com/Newp/1998/Dan-Armstrong-Guitars1.jpg" /></a></p>

<p> Yes, I have begun reading <a href="http://gawker.com">Gawker</a> in order to escape the daily wretcheness of our situation. I mean, this is desperation for Schadenfreude. Anyway, <a href="http://www.gawker.com/topic/when-playwrights-attack-eve-enslers-vday-015984.php">this was kind of funny</a></p>

<p> I&#39;ve heard about wanting to run governments like corporations–which has long seemed stupid to me, based on the corporations into which I&#39;ve had insight–but this almost seems absurd.</p> <p> An <a href="http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5175105/site/newsweek/site/newsweek">MSNBC report</a> on the rapidly dissoving case against Jose Padilla–you know that American citizen they&#39;ve been holding as an &#34;enemy combatant&#34;, abrogating Habeas Corpus and, thereby, pissing on the Bill of Rights–includes this graf:</p> <blockquote> <p>The prospective case against Padilla would rely in part on material seized by the FBI in Afghanistan–principally an Al Qaeda &#34;new applicant form&#34; that, authorities said, the former Chicago gang member filled out in July 2000 to enter a terrorist training camp run by Osama bin Laden&#39;s organization.</p>

<p> Ogged <a href="http://www.unfogged.com/archives/week_2004_06_06.html#001957">nails the problem</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p>Like the mass of people who lived in the Soviet Union, or who are now living in Iran, you&#39;ll go about your business, making accommodations, and trying to get by. In fact, in Iran, you can easily hop in your car, go all across the country, camp where you like, build big fires, leave a mess, and drive like the devil. In many ways, there are far fewer regulations there. But we rightly call it a repressive society because of the way it treats dissenters and the accused, and because there is little accountability and limited democracy.</p>

<p> Mark Schmitt (aka <a href="http://markschmitt.typepad.com/decembrist/)">The Decembrist</a> has an article in the latest <a href="http://www.prospect.org/">American Prospect</a> discussing <a href="http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&amp;amp;name=ViewWeb&amp;amp;articleId=7814">entitlement programs and where we might go from here</a>.</p>

<p> After all, I worked at the University of Miami School of Law as their network administrator during a time of big changes that Michael didn&#39;t see the need for and didn&#39;t want to take part in. Such are the vagaries of institutions.</p> <p> However, Michael&#39;s <a href="http://www.discourse.net/archives/2004/06/apologia_pro_tormento_analyzing_the_first_56_pages_of_the_walker_working_group_report_aka_the_torture_memo.html">analysis of the Torture Memo</a> is well worth reading. In fact, I find myself adding his blog to my already overloaded daily reading.</p> <p> Now to try and do something that will pay, for a change.</p>

<p> The two people who read this space know that I am often proud of Massachusetts and its record of being a relatively progressive state.</p> <p> Which is why it disappoints me much to find out that the <a href="http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2004/06/08/t_to_check_packages_bags_at_random?mode=PF">MBTA has decided it can do random searches of passenger bags</a></p> <p> As <a href="http://jwz.livejournal.com/">jwz said</a>, &#34;Bill of What?&#34;</p>

<p> No, we&#39;re not talking about sharks, or Osama Bin Laden, we&#39;re talking about <a href="http://www.serversunderthesun.com/tin/">the tendencies of your coworkers</a>.</p>

<p> <a href="http://www.juancole.com/">Juan Cole</a> has a bunch of <a href="http://www.juancole.com/2004_06_01_juancole_archive.html#108671498109379564">Why did the chicken cross the road? jokes</a>, properly repurposed for Iraq.</p>

<p> So, of course, I was travelling last week, which means I wasn&#39;t really in a position to post on D-Day, or Reagan or Tenet, or any number of other things. Instead, I was taking advantage of the fact that you can now ship wine to North Carolina–good for people who come to dinner, bad for the American Express balance–and seeing friends in the Bay Area, some of whom I haven&#39;t seen since before I finished college.</p>

<p> Well, actually, I cost more than that, but that is the amount we pay to have me covered on Anne&#39;s health insurance.</p> <p> This is, I think, obviously ridiculous. I am healthy–in fact, I am almost certainly in better health now than I have ever been before, and although I do have asthma, through yoga and sensible diet and losing weight, I haven&#39;t had an acute attack in nearly a decade; in fact, over the last several months, I have scaled back my drug usage dramatically–I use Flonase at a very low dosage to keep my allergies in check, since they are really the only trigger for my asthma, and I have albuterol for those times I do experience any sort of reaction.</p>

<p> Read it in <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/30/magazine/30WALKEN.html?pagewanted=all&amp;amp;position=">the New York Times</a></p>

<p> They make the point that Donald Rumsfeld has condemned the very actions that Rush (and Ben Stein, and numerous others) have written off as nothing more than schoolboy pranks.</p> <p> Why, then, is the US Government continuing to broadcast his vile and pussilanimous message to our troops?</p> <p> <a href="http://www.petitiononline.com/mmfa2/petition.html">Go!</a> Sign the petition. I&#39;ll still be here when you get back.</p> <p> Oh, yeah, BTW, have you <a href="http://www.lex18.com/Global/story.asp?S=1891343&amp;amp;nav=EQlpNN9R?">heard about the US soldier who was beaten into medical retirement during a training exercise in Gitmo</a></p>

<p> You should be able to download it through <a href="/2004/05/27/Categories.pm">this link</a>.</p> <p> As with the <a href="/2004/05/ive-built-a-v3-archive-plugin.html">Archives</a> plugin, this is not very elaborate or configurable; feedback is appreciated, preferably to the Blosxom mailing list.</p>

<p> You should be able to download it through <a href="/2004/05/26/Archives.pm">this link</a>.</p>

<p> I would hate to have to use a passport to visit family. Thinking about it, I wouldn&#39;t want them to take South Carolina–it&#39;s on the way to Alabama for us–and I think Chet would be disappointed if they took Mississippi.</p> <p> Why not North Dakota?</p> <p> Oh, what am I talking about? <a href="http://www.christianexodus.org/">These nutjobs</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p>ChristianExodus.org offers the opportunity to try a strategy not yet employed by Bible-believing Christians. Rather than spend resources in continued efforts to redirect the entire nation, we will redeem States one at a time. Millions of Christian conservatives exist, but we are geographically spread out and diluted at the national level. Therefore, we must concentrate our numbers in a geographical region with a sovereign government we can control through the electoral process.</p>

<p> Wired News <a href="http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,63557,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_2">has a story</a> about right-wingers google-bombing the word &#34;waffles&#34; to point to Kerry&#39;s site.</p> <p> I guess around their neck of the woods that counts as reasoned debate.</p> <p> Yeah, I&#39;m probably just pissed that no one thought to do it to Bush first.</p>

<p> I&#39;m guessing that this is why there are people with enough time to do <a href="http://www-personal.umich.edu/~msittig/bento/">wild and silly things with Bento</a>.</p> <p> I wish I could read what I presume to be the ingredients used for each of the pieces.</p> <p> The scary part? Two words: Bento porn.</p>

<p> The North Carolina Republican Party has decided to <a href="http://www.365gay.com/newscon04/05/051904ncGOP.htm">deny the Log Cabin Republicans a table at the state convention</a>.</p> <p> Honestly, I&#39;m always baffled at the way various groups keep going back to the GOP even when, after the election, they don&#39;t even bother to leave $20 on the metaphorical dresser.</p>