<p> Who knows if this will ever go anywhere to speak of, but it&#39;s an interesting idea of how you might arrive at distributed social network.</p> <p> <a href="http://open.buddycloud.com/">Check out the spec</a>.</p>

<blockquote> <p>A foundation principle of creative thinking &amp; problem solving is this: <em>unless we are able to hold two contradictory positions simultaneously, solutions will escape us</em>.</p> </blockquote> <p> – <a href="http://www.dgmlive.com/diaries.htm?artist=&amp;show=&amp;member=3&amp;entry=18743">Robert Fripp</a></p>

<p> I still can&#39;t read this short bit of rumination without feeling shivers down my spine. I can&#39;t speak it aloud without a hitch in my voice. <a href="http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2009/06/wanderlustwarning-sign.html">Go read it all</a>, and think about how anything–<strong>anything</strong>!–can challenge you to dig deeper.</p> <blockquote> <p>Strip away pretension, propriety, insecurity, fear and the bills you have to pay.</p> </blockquote>

<p> Love, grief and money cannot be concealed.</p> <p> – Patrick O&#39;Brian, in <em>H.M.S. Surprise</em></p>

<blockquote> <p>Awareness is a more powerful tool than effort.</p> </blockquote> <p> – Hannah Byrum</p>

<p> but if you&#39;ve ever worked on contract <a href="http://www.dump.com/2010/12/13/the-vendor-client-relationship-in-real-world-situations-video/">this will resonate</a>. Whether you will want to laugh or cry will probably depend on whether you&#39;re still doing so.</p>

<blockquote> <p>Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn&#39;t go away.</p> </blockquote> <p> – Philip K. Dick (unverified)</p>

<p> I mean, seriously, <a href="http://julien.danjou.info/google-maps-el.html?">how could there not be</a></p>

<p> You&#39;ve probably seen <a href="http://www.hs.fi/thickbox/video/1135259206031?KeepThis=true">this video</a> already, but if not, check it out. The speed with which the beach goes from &#34;nice day&#34; to &#34;black as night&#34; is pretty intimidating.</p> <p> Incidentally, I already had a category for &#34;weather&#34;. WTF?</p>

<p> I went to re-read <em>Dune</em>, and ended up re-reading <em>Dune: Messiah</em> as well, and picked up a couple of quotes I wanted to hold onto:</p> <blockquote> <p>It was mostly sweet, and you were the sweetest of all.</p> </blockquote> <blockquote> <p>We&#39;re all in this beauty together!</p> </blockquote>

<p> If so, I give you, <a href="http://blog.nerdchic.net/archives/397/">Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock-Friends-Pie</a></p>

<p> I&#39;ve spent about the last three weeks converting much of the infrastructure code for AnteSpam to use AnyEvent.</p> <p> One of the small bits of fallout from using AnyEvent is that we now have a large number of anonymous code references as callbacks, and in our logging code, these all have the same name: <code class="verbatim">__ANON__</code>.</p> <p> This makes debugging output a little less useful.</p> <p> In browsing some code in AnyEvent::SMTP, I happened across the trick of locally setting the <code class="verbatim">__ANON__</code> typeglob to the name you want to use used in stacktraces and the like:</p>

<p> I vaguely remember being entranced with the show when I was very young. At some point, I guess I started to feel that it was stuff for &#34;little kids&#34;, and came to view it with something a little like contempt.</p> <p> I kind of wonder what I&#39;d make of it now, because <a href="http://www.pittsburghinwords.org/tom_junod.html">the person behind the show is someone I might have liked to meet</a>.</p>

<p> I don&#39;t think I&#39;ve watched any significant portion of Animal House in two decades or more. But I happened across a note in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cray">Wikipedia&#39;s page on Robert Cray</a> that notes that he was the bass player in the band performing &#34;Shout&#34; at the party.</p> <p> That, plus the always amusing scene of Donald Sutherland dissing John Milton seems worth a re-watch.</p>

<p> Part 1:<br> <div style="position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden;"> <iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" loading="eager" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/xUGRRUecBik?autoplay=0&amp;controls=1&amp;end=0&amp;loop=0&amp;mute=0&amp;start=0" style="position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; border:0;" title="YouTube video"></iframe> </div> </p> <p> Part 2:<br> <div style="position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden;"> <iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" loading="eager" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/IReDh9ec_rk?autoplay=0&amp;controls=1&amp;end=0&amp;loop=0&amp;mute=0&amp;start=0" style="position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; border:0;" title="YouTube video"></iframe> </div> </p> <p> Pretty darn cool.</p>

<p> Yeah, so I missed a day, but that&#39;s because by the time I got home last night, after a day pretty full of AcroYoga, it was late and I was exhausted.</p> <p> But I also got to fly, for real, yesterday and today. Video is forthcoming.</p> <p> Mind you, I am now contractually unable to make fun of any of my flyers if, say, they can&#39;t tell their right from their left when we&#39;re working together–when you do some of this stuff, it is impossible to tell which way is up, down, sideways, whatever.<br> It was <strong>amazing</strong>.</p>

<p> The New York Times Magazine has a profile of John Friend <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/magazine/25Yoga-t.html">up on the web</a> (and presumably soon in print). As an Anusara-Inspired yoga teacher, who has met and studied with John many times, I was interested to read it.</p> <p> Overall, I thought the piece was pretty good.</p> <p> Most of the things that Ms. Swartz writes about John–and yes, everyone in the Anusara community calls him John; it seems like name-dropping until you meet him, and then it seems pretty natural–ring true to me. But not all.</p>

<p> So, Jack White performed &#34;Mother Nature&#39;s Son&#34; at the White House. Not my favorite rendition of it ever–Jack&#39;s voice is great in other contexts, but doesn&#39;t quite work here for me–but still a particularly gutsy move, when you consider who&#39;s in the audience (look to the President&#39;s right at about 1:45):</p> <p> <div style="position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden;"> <iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" loading="eager" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/-BXV1_D5eXA?autoplay=0&amp;controls=1&amp;end=0&amp;loop=0&amp;mute=0&amp;start=0" style="position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; border:0;" title="YouTube video"></iframe> </div> </p>

<p> So Kanye West samples King Crimson&#39;s <em>21st Century Schizoid Man</em> for his new single power. But while I was watching a documentary about The Beatles today, it occured to me that what someone really needs to sample or borrow is the drum track to &#34;Tomorrow Never Knows.&#34; That would beat the famous samples from &#34;When the Levee Breaks&#34; easy.</p>

<p> I give you Atomic Robo&#39;s <a href="http://www.nuklearpower.com/2009/04/27/fcbd-09-page-1/">Free Comic Book Day 2009</a> comic.</p> <p> Having read the three collections so far, I can say that it&#39;s all great fun, though Dr. Dinosaur is definitely the villain that makes me laugh most.</p> <p> &#34;Shut up, I&#39;m a Time Travelling Genius!&#34;</p>

<p> I am now 90 days from being 40 years old.</p> <p> I think these decade birthdays always loom especially large because I&#39;m a decade baby.</p> <p> Over the last week I&#39;ve been considering what I&#39;m going dedicate myself to for the next 90 days, so that perhaps by the time I actually hit 40, they will feel more like habits and rituals and be easy to maintain.</p> <p> One that I&#39;ve actually already started on is blogging every day. It doesn&#39;t have to be significant or insightful or, I suppose, even coherent. Perhaps it will just be a picture of the latte I have in the afternoon, or whatever coding problem I solved (or didn&#39;t ;) that day.</p>

<p> I want a new cell phone. In fact, my Treo 700p, at a solid 3 years old, may be old enough that I could say I <strong>need</strong> a new cell phone.</p> <p> Apple isn&#39;t even an option–with their hostile attitude toward non-Apple software interfacing with the iPhone, I will never be able to work with it effectively in Linux. So no go.</p> <p> That leaves Android.</p> <p> Normally I wouldn&#39;t worry excessively about whether my phone was upgradeable, but the just-released Android 2.2 sees such a significant performance boost for so many applications, it becomes <em>even more</em> important on an older, slower phone.</p>

<p> I&#39;ve actually thought it for a while, but it took <a href="http://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/07/17/kodi-1997-2010/">a post</a> by <a href="http://whatever.scalzi.com">John Scalzi</a> to get me to write.</p> <p> What really matters on the Internet–blogs, twitter, Facebook, what-have-you–is that it acts as a place we can remember what really matters to us.</p> <p> I&#39;ve read memorials for people&#39;s pets–dogs, cats, what-have-you–parents, grandparents, unborn babies, friends I&#39;ve never met and will never have a chance to meet, and they&#39;ve all been worth all the spam and blink tags and chain letters combined.</p>

<p> As so often happens, we resist things we don&#39;t understand, in favor of those we do, but if we only take the time to learn…</p> <p> Geek-dom ahead, you have been warned.</p> <p> I do almost all of my programming in Perl these days–in fact, for the last decade and a half or so. I&#39;m not interested in getting into a langage war here–I know Perl&#39;s weaknesses as well as its strengths.</p>

<p> Despite growing up in the &#39;70s, I had no clear memory of the 10cc song &#34;I&#39;m Not in Love&#34;; my first encounter (as far as I knew) with the song was on Tori Amos&#39; <em>Strange Little Girls</em> (and I&#39;m going to try and ignore that this album is now 9 years old–where did the time go), where, frankly, it sounds like a musical rendition of a suicide note.</p> <p> When <a href="http://boingboing.net/">BoingBoing</a> linked to a documentary about the making of the song, I was intrigued enough to watch it.</p>

<p> <div style="position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden;"> <iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" loading="eager" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/V7yxA9vt2-c?autoplay=0&amp;controls=1&amp;end=0&amp;loop=0&amp;mute=0&amp;start=0" style="position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; border:0;" title="YouTube video"></iframe> </div> </p>

<p> Yeah, I know I&#39;m probably late to the party on this one. I haven&#39;t finished the book yet, and if I knew just a little less, I might find it very convincing. As it is, I am left with significant doubts.</p> <p> Simply put, there are basic factual errors and what I think are meant to be simplifications or glosses on complex topics that are so gross as to misrepresent things, in subjects about which I know a fair amount, which lead me to be suspicious of everything else in the book–because why would he just play fast-and-loose-and-ignorant with the stuff I happen to be familiar with.</p>

<p> What better evidence than &#34;<a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gmao3Tg9nvBQeAOMAVzmeZkrmAoAD9E4QD501">Patriot Act renewed</a>&#34;.</p> <p> Parenthetically, you want to know what&#39;s destroying our way of life? It&#39;s not Healthcare Reform, (which would save lives and money and infringe your freedoms not at all), and it&#39;s not the fiscal stimulus (which even Republican economists agree helped keep unemployment from growing and the economy from slowing even more than it has), it&#39;s the continuous encroachment of the <a href="http://epic.org/privacy/terrorism/hr3162.html">law-enforcement elements of our government on our civil liberties under the guise of making us safer</a>. It is the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/23/AR2007082302056.html">intelligence agencies conspiring with communication companies to relieve us of our right to privacy using warrantless surveillance</a> who are <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-9872969-38.html">then let off the hook for breaking the law</a>. It is our <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/118006/Slim-Majority-Wants-Bush-Era-Interrogations-Investigated.aspx">willingness to approve of immoral acts done in our name</a>.</p>

<p> More than two decades, in fact, though most of the earliest stuff was on borrowed accounts–I don&#39;t think I had my own email address until twenty years ago <em>next</em> year.</p> <p> The funny thing is that there are people I know from my very earliest ventures on the &#39;net with whom I still cross paths.</p> <p> In no particular order:</p> <p> <a href="http://www.facebook.com/sgrimm">Steven Grimm</a>, who is now a member of Facebook&#39;s infrastructure team working on memcached (which we use very extensively at Ironic Design) was <a href="http://groups.google.com/groups/profile?enc_user=UASgvBQAAACx55dwHhwEwRiGqT1dtGCz6ByVaTvQhk5i4n6ZEwWJug">very active in the Atari ST community</a> back when I was first getting on the net.</p>

<p> So, a friend on facebook posted this, and it pisses me off enough that I really need to vent:</p> <p> <div style="position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden;"> <iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" loading="eager" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/MrrlFGDJHBE?autoplay=0&amp;controls=1&amp;end=0&amp;loop=0&amp;mute=0&amp;start=0" style="position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; border:0;" title="YouTube video"></iframe> </div> </p> <p> I&#39;ve held my tongue about a lot of the anti-flu-vaccine talk that&#39;s been flying around because while I think it is pretty baseless, ehh, it&#39;s the flu, who cares–as long as you&#39;re pretty healthy going into it, you&#39;re going to endure a week of feeling like crap, and maybe if you&#39;re unlucky, a nice bout of pneumonia.</p>

<p> I think it&#39;s clear that their work is of a piece–wildly innovative, to the point of being totally incomprehensible–so it should come as no surprise that <a href="http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/herocomplex/2009/10/jack-kirby-and-frank-zappa-a-cosmic-friendship-.html">Frank Zappa and Jack Kirby not only knew each other, but apparently hung out a bit</a></p> <p> <a href="http://www.newsfromme.com/archives/2009_10_14.html#017871">Via</a></p>

<p> <a href="http://highclearing.com/">Jim Henley</a> has <a href="http://highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2009/09/07/9869">a post</a> that points to and condenses a couple of other posts that I think do a great job articulating the fundamental difference between health insurance and other types of insurance.</p> <p> I think that understanding that health insurance is a fundamentally different beast from, say, your car insurance is an important part of being able to have a rational conversation about what an appropriate place for the government might (or might not) be.</p>

<p> I was listening to Jeff Buckley&#39;s <em>Grace</em>, and was looking for lyrics to &#34;Mojo Pin&#34;, and my quick google search included a link to a youtube video of a live performance video:</p> <p> <div style="position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden;"> <iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" loading="eager" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/Bissf2iux-c?autoplay=0&amp;controls=1&amp;end=0&amp;loop=0&amp;mute=0&amp;start=0" style="position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; border:0;" title="YouTube video"></iframe> </div> </p> <p> From there, I followed a link to footage from the same performance of &#34;Last Goodbye&#34; because, you know, it&#39;s a lovely song:</p>

<figure> <img src="../grinder.jpg" alt="../grinder.jpg" title="../grinder.jpg" /><figcaption> An Ascaso i-1 in the cow print paint job. </figcaption> </figure> <p> The old grinder broke. It probably wasn&#39;t more than a year old, but what do you expect when the most abused part of the machine (the doser lever) is plastic? Just another reason I will never buy anything with the name Gaggia on it again (the espresso machine being the other).</p> <p> I did a quick check on the web, and no one would admit to having the parts I&#39;d need to repair it, so I did a little modification with a Dremel to make it usable for a while, until I could figure out what to replace it with. Of course, a friend who has the same model and had the same breakage later told me that he was able to get replacement parts. Oh, well.</p>

<p> Last week the last collected edition (#13) of <em>100 Bullets</em> arrived. So I started back at the beginning and read all the way through.</p> <p> This is not a shiny, happy story. To give you an idea, if you look at the Wikipedia page <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_characters_in_100_Bullets">listing the main characters</a>, there are only three who are not at least presumed deceased, and of the ones who are marked indeterminate, I, personally, would only consider one of those to be truly likely.</p>

<p> When someone undertakes something for fun, or out of passion or deep commitment, the end result is often, I think, more reflective of them personally.</p> <p> This is generally true of Free Software, and in the Free Software universe, I think this is sometimes even more true of documentation–you&#39;re not obligated to write it, no one&#39;s paying you, few people enjoy writing docs, so if you&#39;re doing it at all, it&#39;s because you <em>believe</em>.</p>

<p> that as my grandfather was dying, I was probably talking about him–my dad had mentioned that he stopped eating at the beginning of the week, so it wasn&#39;t like I didn&#39;t know it would be soon.</p> <p> Still, for class yesterday, I had had a notion to talk about something else, and gotten it all planned out in my head, and when I sat down that all pretty much went out the window, and I really ended up talking about my relationship with my grandfather.</p>

<p> So, over Memorial Day Weekend, instead of getting together with people (well, there was some of that) or cooking a bunch of food (though there was some of that, too), I organized my comics.</p> <p> I am embarassed how many I have–I have, somewhat unfortunately, gotten back into the habit of reading them, and damn if they don&#39;t pile up. But for the last couple of years, I have not been in the habit of keeping them organized. Things got shoved in boxes or stacked up on boxes or generally just hidden and neglected. Finding things was a non-starter unless I was feeling absurdly energetic.</p>

<p> The only tenet of which should be, &#34;Two people who love each other should be allowed to marry.&#34; Maybe two tenets, the other being, &#34;Be excellent to one another,&#34; which has its plusses, too.</p> <p> At which point, the opportunity to have same-sex marriages becomes one of religious freedom. To restrict such marriages becomes a first-amendment issue, which carries more weight than equal protection, apparently.</p> <p> Of course, I would hope that many heterosexual couples would also want to get married in the First Church of Fabulousness–it being fabulous, see–but, you know, they, too, could exercise their right to choice.</p>

<p> <a href="http://tendentious.org/2009/02/if-it-werent-for-the-drm.html">Just a little shy of two months ago</a>, I noted that I really, really liked the looks of the Kindle 2, etc., but that I simply could not in good faith allow someone else to hold my content hostage via DRM.</p> <p> No doubt people scoffed at the possibility. Two months later, <a href="http://consumerist.com/5213774/amazon-can-ban-you-from-your-kindle-account-whenever-it-likes">it happened to someone</a>.</p> <p> And I&#39;m sure as hell never buying one.</p> <p> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Talking-Points-Memo/~3/PAx7DLPBeGA/ive_been_saying_on_the.php">Via</a></p>

<p> but certainly not in recent memory.</p> <p> The news that it&#39;s ceasing print publication and trying to make it as a web-only publication really doesn&#39;t impact me at all. But <a href="http://newsfromme.com/">Mark Evanier</a> linked to <a href="http://leegoldberg.typepad.com/a_writers_life/2009/04/starlog-goes-under.html">a post from Lee Goldberg</a> about the magazine that includes an amusing anecdote about covering the premeire of &#34;The Living Daylights&#34; while writing for the magazine:</p> <p> bq.. All the journalists were invited by the studio to the premiere, which Prince Charles and Lady Diana were attending as well. We had to wear tuxedos and were driven to the event in limos. There were huge crowds being held back behind barracades in front of the Odeon Theatre as we pulled up. I got out of the limo just as a short young lady was emerging from the limo in front of me, so we walked in together. People were going nuts, taking pictures of us and waving. I leaned over and whispered to her: &#34;Makes you wish you were famous, doesn&#39;t it?&#34;</p>

<p> <a href="http://www.cocktailians.com/">Something new for the feed reader</a>.</p> <p> Complete with video of Rachel Maddow (yes, that one) <a href="http://www.cocktailians.com/2008/12/jack-rose.html">making a cocktail</a>.</p>

<p> Listening to <em>Blue Oyster Cult</em>&#39;s &#34;Cities on Flame&#34;, I realized that the reason all of these older albums I love have comparatively wimpy-sounding drum tracks is because the drummers are too good–to make a big goddamned noise, you have to hit so hard that you lose any notion of subtlety.</p> <p> John Bonham is arguably the prominent exception. Even when he&#39;s beating the crap out of his kit–on &#34;We&#39;re Gonna Groove&#34;, for instance (though listening back to it, its drum track is less in-your-face than I imagine it to be)–he&#39;s still got a very subtle way with timing.</p>

<p> I happened to catch Don Johnson&#39;s <em>Heartbeat</em> while surfing by VH1Classic&#39;s nostalgia programming. The only reason I stopped was because I had totally forgotten who played guitar on it:</p> <p> <div style="position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden;"> <iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" loading="eager" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/ULI5kolBpAk?autoplay=0&amp;controls=1&amp;end=0&amp;loop=0&amp;mute=0&amp;start=0" style="position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; border:0;" title="YouTube video"></iframe> </div> </p> <p> Warning, this might not be worth it to find out.</p>

<p> This is brilliantly bad. Right down to having Bubastis actually speak.</p> <p> <div style="position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden;"> <iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" loading="eager" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/YDDHHrt6l4w?autoplay=0&amp;controls=1&amp;end=0&amp;loop=0&amp;mute=0&amp;start=0" style="position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; border:0;" title="YouTube video"></iframe> </div> </p>

<p> Obviously, seeing the Beatles has been an impossibility for most of my lifetime. I saw the Stones on one of their last tours with Wyman, though, honestly, I fall on the Beatles side of the great divide.</p> <p> Why, then, have I not bothered to see the band for whom I have more affection than either of those?</p> <p> Yes, if the Kinks do a reunion tour, I will find a way to go.</p>

<p> A visitor to Japan put her camera into video record mode and sent it around the sushi conveyor belt. It&#39;s fun to watch.</p> <p> <div style="position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden;"> <iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" loading="eager" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/491A3Xecwxs?autoplay=0&amp;controls=1&amp;end=0&amp;loop=0&amp;mute=0&amp;start=0" style="position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; border:0;" title="YouTube video"></iframe> </div> </p> <p> The thing that always strikes me about videos like this is how few people seem to find amusement at this person&#39;s creative engagement with her world. To me, this seems delightful, but so many people either never notice, or don&#39;t fine amusement, it makes me a little sad.</p>

<p> …honestly, I&#39;d probably have already ordered a Kindle 2. It looks like it resolved all my aesthetic issues with the original Kindle, and watching Jeff Bezos sling one around on <em>The Daily Show</em>, it looks light and easy. Oh, to be able to easily search books. And all that jazz.</p> <p> But I&#39;ll be goddamned if I&#39;ll put myself in a position where someone can suddenly declare that I can&#39;t read the book I damned well paid for.</p>

<p> On the <em>Eagles of Death Metal</em>&#39;s new CD, <em>Heart On</em>, there&#39;s a track named &#34;Now I&#39;m a Fool&#34; whose vocal line is not without a resemblance to <em>Steely Dan</em>&#39;s &#34;Only a Fool Would Say That&#34;.</p> <p> The presence of &#34;Fool&#34; in both titles leads me to suspect this is intentional, not coincidental.</p>

<p> I actually rather liked <em>TV on the Radio</em> on SNL last night. The last musical guest who didn&#39;t annoy me into fast forwarding was, I kid you not, Duffy. Which kinda surprised me too.</p>