<p> I mean, if <a href="http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/nasty_attack_ad_hits_jewish_de.php">they&#39;re going to support candidates that indulge in race-baiting</a> I just don&#39;t think they need my money. And I&#39;m happy to make sure that people know what they&#39;re involved in.</p> <p> The funny thing is, I actually hold those with whom I have more in common to a higher standard than I do those with whom I disagree. It pisses me off a lot more when people that I am (generally) ideologically aligned with sell out than when people who I am in opposition to do. I guess it&#39;s a soft-bigotry-of-low-expectations thing.</p>

<p> How is it that I end up watching two things (Season 3, Pt 1 of <em>Entourage</em> and <em>Superbad</em>) inside a couple of weeks that have Ted Nugent&#39;s <em>Stranglehold</em> in the soundtracks?</p>

<p> All the ones that spring to mind are laden with too much irony for a link to <a href="http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=71144">Hal Lindsey proclaiming that Barack Obama is to the Anti-Christ what John the Baptist was to Christ</a>.</p> <p> Seriously, even for Pre-Millenial Dispensationalists nut-jobs, that seems to be putting a little too much weight on the fact that he made a speech in Berlin.</p>

<p> <em>Superbad</em> was, to my high-school experience, what <em>Dazed and Confused</em> was to Anne&#39;s.</p> <p> And 1.6 instances of the word &#34;Fuck&#34; per minute. Heh.</p> <p> &#34;Just McLovin. That&#39;s badass.&#34;</p>

<p> First, Helena Bonham Carter is on track to be the bad-guy <a href="http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?category=3&amp;id=58332">in the next Terminator movie</a>. Which is frigging bizarre and inexplicable. I mean, Christian Bale has been in enough stuff like that (<em>Reign of Fire</em> anyone?) that I didn&#39;t bat an eye–but other than <em>Planet of the Apes</em> (which I&#39;ve always assumed was the casting equivelent of a mercy-fuck for Tim Burton), HBC has generally steered clear of quite such popcorn-y movies.</p>

<p> The story is going around that <a href="http://consumerist.com/5032518/circuit-city-orders-all-stores-to-destroy-issue-of-mad-magazine-parodying-sucker-city">Circuit City has called upon all stores to destroy copies of Mad Magazine</a> containing a parody strip called &#34;Sucker City&#34;.</p> <p> Man, that&#39;s not the way to resolve the problem.</p>

<p> It was amusing, and just a little bit dangerous.</p> <p> I went back to <a href="http://tendentious.org/flickr/">the list</a> and checked out some of the results now.</p> <p> And ran across <a href="http://flickr.com/photos/ips/768872529/">this picture</a> under the tag &#34;wedding&#34; that amuses me to no end.</p> <p> One party looks uncertain, and the other party looks like they know it.</p>

<p> <a href="http://www.tinkeringschool.com/blog/">The Tinkering School</a> sounds like the appropriate antidote for over-protective parents. <strong>Every</strong> kid should get to have experiences like this. And yes, it might be risking life and limb, but, you know, life&#39;s tough, wear a helmet.</p>

<p> Perhaps I should say, two <strong>unobvious</strong> things I did while we were at the beach.</p> <p> I played <em>Super Mario Kart</em> on a <em>Wii</em>. I suck at <em>Super Mario Kart</em>. In fact, I think I just suck at most fast-twitch games, period. They just move too fast for me. In <em>SMK</em> this manifested as a tendency to run into walls and off the road. Oh, well. Just as in college, where I would happily drink beer and watch Patrick and Joe play <em>Sonic the Hedgehog</em>, I was perfectly content to watch and enjoy.</p>

<p> Three days of sun, surf and siblings and their children.</p> <p> I&#39;m not without a desire to be home, but it&#39;s fun nonetheless.</p>

<p> Thanks for the heads-up, Chet.</p>

<p> So, four years after the initial announcement, the first collection of Howard Chaykin&#39;s <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Flagg">American Flagg</a> is out.</p> <p> The first of Chaykin&#39;s work I ever read may have been the original Star Wars adaptation he did for Marvel. 30 years later it&#39;s hard to be sure, but I can actually remember, for instance, issues in the later series credited to Carmine Infantino.</p> <p> After that, the next thing I would have seen, strictly speaking, was <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_Metal_%28movie%29">Heavy Metal</a>, for which he did some design work, but I&#39;m not sure that counts.</p>

<p> …and there&#39;s no reason for me to believe that, after some short amount of time for processing, I won&#39;t be able to stick <a href="http://yogaalliance.com/">RYT</a> after my name.</p> <p> Amusingly–perhaps amazingly, considering the industry I work in and its obsession with credentials–the only other such thing I&#39;ve ever done is my college degree.</p>

<p> <img src="../yoga-room.jpg" alt="../yoga-room.jpg" title="../yoga-room.jpg" /></p> <p> So, nearly a year ago, I moved out of my office above the garage–our &#34;bonus room&#34;–and took over the bedroom that had previously been Anne&#39;s office. This fairly torturous process happenned because we were going to make the room over the garage a dedicated yoga space.</p> <p> Well, after much foot-dragging and slow-moving, it&#39;s done. Thanks to my parents, who (in April) got us over the initial hump of doing <strong>something</strong>–specifically, taking down the hideous wallpaper.</p>

<p> I saw <em>The Dark Knight</em>. It was well-written, generally well-directed, fairly well-acted (except for Heath Ledger, who was amazing), and I have no immediate desire to see it again.</p> <p> Let me back up a bit: I liked <em>Batman Begins</em> a lot. A <strong>lot</strong>. It was one of the finest super-hero movies ever. I think X2 may have been a <strong>little</strong> better, but I have more affection for the characters. Factor that out, it&#39;s a dead heat.</p>

<p> I don&#39;t know why I&#39;m surprised when Warren Ellis drags out his critical skills. I suppose it&#39;s because his default mode is so often dismissive.</p> <p> Still, while we do get the admission that &#34;Musical comedy makes [his] balls itch&#34;, he&#39;s more than willing <a href="http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=6206">to take on</a> <a href="http://drhorrible.com/">Dr. Horrible</a> on its own terms and makes an interesting point about how hubris often derails inexperienced creators: Everyone wants to write some epic-length piece with tons of Deeper Meaning, and forgets that–to take a recent successful example–the first <em>Harry Potter</em> book was short and self-contained.</p>

<p> At least, the links for articles on the site. There are still a bunch of image links that I probably need to go back and fix up.</p> <p> So far I&#39;m kinda liking Movable Type, though I still need to figure out how to setup fastcgi support for it–you don&#39;t notice it when you&#39;re just browsing the site (since it&#39;s published to static HTML) but using regular-old CGI for the interface can be a leetle bit poky.</p>

<p> You know: finding the images that need to be re-installed in the blog posts, removing ancient copies of the blog from its days running under Blosxom, so forth and so on–I ran across a .wmv of the song &#34;Shake Your Blood&#34; by Probot.</p> <p> And I thought to myself, &#34;Why am I keeping around a copy of this video–I know it must be up on YouTube.&#34;  And then I looked at the date, and realized that I had had it since before YouTube existed.</p>

<p> After years of running my own blogging software, I think I am finally done with that whole business. Too much work, too few features, etc., etc. I&#39;ve installed the Movable Type Open Source package in Debian, and whatever its flaws, it&#39;s going to be more featureful and useful than the various packages I&#39;ve used over the years.</p> <p> So, Chet, how about you?</p>

<p> I&#39;m feeling lazy, so I probably won&#39;t move all of my deathly-important archives over until this weekend at the earliest. Just so you know.</p>

<p> Yes, I know that Chet is the only one likely to get the joke. <a href="http://www.thealternativeguitarandamplifiercompany.com/DooDadSpecs.htm">Still</a>.</p>

<p> The movie amused me, especially Paul Reuben&#39;s death scene, but there&#39;s something about the TV show that never grabbed me. And although I liked <em>Serenity</em> I haven&#39;t yet actually gotten around to watching <em>Firefly</em>.</p> <p> I am a very, very bad consumer.</p> <p> Furthermore, I was not entirely pleased with the end of Joss&#39; run on <em>The Astonishing X-Men</em>. I want my superhero comics to be brainless, loud and immature, not glorious, beautiful and heart-rending. Besides, what is it with killing off the female characters? Someone should look into this.</p>

<p> The Weinstein Co. is developing a bunch of stage projects. Including <a href="http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?category=3&amp;amp;id=56491">a stage incarnation of Pink Floyd&#39;s album <em>The Wall</em></a>.</p> <p> I hate to break it to them, but it&#39;s been done. It was, in fact, the tour for the album.</p>

<p> From <em>The Incredible Hercules</em> #118:</p> <p> bq.. Snowbird: A fine pup. What&#39;s his name?</p> <p> Cho: Kirby. Short for Kerberos.</p> <p> Snowbird. Ah. The three headed guard dog of Hades.</p> <p> Cho: And the network authentication protocol.</p> <p> Ah, geekdom.</p>

<ol> <li>One police car had rear-ended another police car.</li> <li>What I thought might be a badger, but, upon looking at some pictures,</li> </ol> <p>was obviously too thin to be one. Anyway, crossing the road, whatever it was.</p>

<p> Supposedly–though you can find cites on the &#39;net, well, it&#39;s the &#39;net–Otto Von Bismark said, &#34;Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.&#34;</p> <p> I got to see a little bit of the lawmaking process firsthand, and I will agree with him that laws are like sausages, but I would suggest that, as a smart, ethical consumer, you should be very aware of how both of them are being made.</p>

<p> Baron Schwartz has <a href="http://www.xaprb.com/blog/2008/06/15/what-is-it-like-to-write-a-technical-book/">a long discussion of the genesis of <em>High Performance MySQL</em> 2nd Ed</a> that goes into some detail about what&#39;s involved in producing such a book.</p> <p> There&#39;s a reason Free Software often has dodgy or incomplete documentation–documentation is hard!</p>

<p> No, not Friday, the song by Big Star. I hadn&#39;t heard it in a long time, and it just showed up on the big shuffle.</p> <p> Oh, and while watching some footage of the Sex Pistols, I realized that my Father-in-law has an eerie resemblance to Johnny Rotten. And no, I&#39;m not making this up–Anne agreed.</p>

<p> if, as an expert being consulted on <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=5">Talk of the Nation</a> just suggested, it is impossible to abridge Habeas Corpus through any act committed overseas–since the Constitution only applies in US territory–is it then also impossible to commit treason when outside the US?</p> <p> Obviously I think it&#39;s ridiculous to say we, as citizens and/or part of our contituted government, can pretend Habeas Corpus doesn&#39;t exist when it&#39;s convenient. But it seems to me that the two issues are directly analagous, and if you admit to one, you must admit to the other.</p>

<p> Wherein I will describe how to set up a cyrus-imapd cluster in fairly straightforward, and mostly reliable terms. It will probably include lots of invective concerning cyrus-sasl (the scourge of my existence) and openldap (which is like a little kid that tends to get the pointy scissors and stab you over and over with a gleeful smile on its face).</p> <p> For the moment, I will just note that I have moved email for a couple of my secondary addresses to our little cluster. That represents a certain optimism on my part.</p>

<p> While we were in New York in January, we went to see a production of <em>The 39 Steps</em> on Broadway.</p> <p> It was a tour-de-force of clever stage technique, and quite funny in a sly, clever way–all the more so because it is exactly the same story as the Hitchcock film of the same name, but with everything slanted just enough to make you laugh.</p> <p> I just thought of that because on the link in the Sandman story just now, there was a pointer to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_League_of_Extraordinary_Gentlemen:_Black_Dossier">The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier</a> which incorporates elements of the same story.</p>

<p> The fourth, and final, volume of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DC_Comics_Absolute_Edition">Absolute Sandman</a> is released. I will take a few days and move slowly through the whole series, front to back.</p> <p> I really don&#39;t expect it to be easy–not because I expect it won&#39;t hold up, but rather the opposite; every time I go back and re-read, it pulls me in deeper.</p>

<p> You know, I like the novel <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_%28novel%29">Dune</a>, and I even have some affection for the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_%28film%29">1984 film version</a>, as horrifyingly flawed as it was, and thought the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Herbert%27s_Dune">Sci-FI Channel miniseries</a> was decent (the sequels covering <em>Dune Messiah</em> and <em>Children of Dune</em> were better, IMHO).</p> <p> But fook, those are all arguments <strong>against</strong> the world needing <a href="http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?category=3&amp;amp;id=55493">another film version of the novel</a>.</p>

<p> I wanted it for walking around, where the 80GB Classic I&#39;ve got is just too clunky and insufficiently solid-state.</p> <p> There was the requisite monkeying with LInux and its somewhat fractious relationship with iPods, and then I started putting stuff on it.</p> <p> I&#39;ve been so used to dealing with my music collection in its entirety, or at least in very, very large chunks-<del>I started ripping things en mass in mid</del>&#39;99–that it was sort of interesting to realize that I could get maybe 150 songs on the thing. I had to really think about what I wanted on there.</p>

<p> It amuses me to think that clusters of very fast machines are being used, in their idle time, <a href="http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08%2F06%2F05%2F2054249&amp;amp;from=rss">to produce universal solutions to Rubik&#39;s cubes</a></p>

<p> Which is why I&#39;ve pretty much only ever used stuff I&#39;ve ripped myself. I don&#39;t even like the way Nine Inch Nails has tagged their own stuff with the last couple of releases.</p> <p> Thus I was amused to find out about a form that <a href="http://last.fm/">last.fm</a> have <a href="http://playground.last.fm/aliases">to show you some of the wild-ass stuff that people&#39;s mp3s have tagged in them</a>.</p> <p> <a href="http://kernelslacker.livejournal.com/124701.html">Via</a></p>

<p> <a href="http://moogmusic.com/moogguitar/?section=product&amp;amp;product_id=21129">Moog Music is making a guitar</a>. As you might expect, it&#39;s all sorts of bizarre.</p>

<p> It was 52 weeks ago that I taught my first yoga class. I now find myself on the hook for <em>four</em>, at three different studios. I think I&#39;m going to be gradually cutting back just a bit, as that&#39;s at least one, perhaps two more than I really need to be teaching.</p>

<p> <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/">The Guardian</a> has a gallery of <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/gallery/2008/mar/31/lifebeforedeath">portraits of people immediately before and immediately after death</a>.</p> <p> The sense of repose in the after pictures is wonderful. The varied expressions of life in the before pictures are beautiful. It&#39;s 11 pairs of photos; it might be a lot to go through in one sitting, but you need to look.</p> <p> It makes me a little sad that in their statements accompanying so many of the people–all of whom, I believe, were suffering from terminal illnesses–felt cheated.</p>

<p> the copy of Microsoft Word 2.0 (with Bookshelf) that came with the Gateway 486dx2/66 that Anne and I bought in 1994.</p> <p> Yeah, there&#39;s a little bit of a packrat in me.</p> <p> Of course, I still have the CPU from the system, as well as a 166Mhz Alpha, sitting on my desk. Can&#39;t get rid of the <em>important</em> stuff.</p>

<p> Rang it in with good food, good company, and discovering that I actually <em>did</em> know the definition of the word <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howdah">howdah</a></p> <p> Spent most of yesterday and today cleaning up the house. Actually, that&#39;s understating it–it&#39;s been purge time here at Chez Klinefelter-Dorman. That said, right now my office is a wreck, but that&#39;s because we actually got a lot of stuff out of my old office and (assuming it&#39;s going to be kept) into my new one so that, before too long, we can finally rip up the carpet, rip off the wallpaper and turn it into a proper yoga studio.</p>

<p> The aftermath of having a vasectomy is like the moment 20 seconds after you&#39;ve been kicked in the crotch–the point where the really serious nausea-inducing pain has passed and it&#39;s starting to fade into a dull ache–except it goes on for hours and hours.</p> <p> At least, that&#39;s what I think it&#39;s like–I have to admit it&#39;s been a long time since I&#39;ve gotten kicked in the crotch.</p>

<p> Almost exactly three years ago–shortly after getting back from my stint in DC–I got a physical. I wrote about it at the time <a href="/2004/11/by-my-body-betrayed.html">because I found out I had a hernia</a>. As I said in that article, the doctor didn&#39;t think it was a big deal, and so as much as it freaked me out, I didn&#39;t worry about it much.</p> <p> A couple of months ago in a conversation, the subject of a friend&#39;s hernia came up, and I commented that I had one and it didn&#39;t seem to be that big a deal. A long discussion that made me feel more than a little green ensued, and I ended up convinced that I needed to get it fixed. But it&#39;s been a crazy couple of months, and I just haven&#39;t gotten around to it.</p>

<p> But label aside, I cannot help but be amused at the existence of a hot-sauce-that-is-too-hot-to-use (they go so far to say it&#39;s not a condiment, it&#39;s a &#34;food additive&#34;–or, apparently <a href="http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07%2F10%2F30%2F196215)">a decent anesthetic</a> that is named <a href="http://hotfoods.tijuanaflats.com/product_chets_gone_mad.htm">Chet&#39;s Gone Mad</a></p>

<p> The absolute high-point of the show for me was the rendition of <em>Blockhead</em>, which, with 10 Crafties and Robert Fripp to boot, was quite powerful. The most beautiful was easily the piece done entirely acoustically as the final encore. The most whimsical was the theme from &#34;Mission: Impossible&#34;.</p> <p> There were pieces, certainly, that didn&#39;t move me. But at the same time, watching an ensemble like this perform holds its own energy–to watch a group of players working in such synchronicity is amazing.</p>

<p> Specifically, is it weirder that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Albemuth">someone is making a movie of <em>Radio Free Albemuth</em></a> or that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alanis_Morisette">Alanis Morissette</a> has <a href="http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?category=3&amp;amp;id=45072?">just been announced as having joined the cast</a></p>

<p> And yet, my experience in having my T43p serviced last week–the fan had started being noisy, sometimes obtrusively so, several months ago, but sounded like it was truly dying on Sunday morning–was virtually identical to having my T22 serviced three years ago:</p> <ul> <li>I called, described the problem, they agreed there was a problem</li> <li>They sent a box, which arrived the next day</li> <li>I put the laptop and dropped off at a collection point</li> <li>The laptop arrived at the repair center the next day</li> <li>The laptop was repaired that same day</li> <li>The laptop was shipped back to me that same day</li> <li>The laptop arrived the next day, fixed</li> </ul> <p>Well, OK, this time I called on Sunday, so the box didn&#39;t get sent until Monday. And then I didn&#39;t have a chance to actually get the laptop boxed up and sent until Thursday. And I didn&#39;t hear the DHL guy ring the doorbell yesterday morning, so I ended up going to the DHL depot to pick it up.</p>

<p> I don&#39;t think this is the first time I&#39;ve quoted Rusty Russell:</p> <blockquote> <p>I think Willy did it because this is for printk. It makes more sense than<br> everyone opencoding an -ENOMEM handler, which will have to be replaced by<br> some mildly amusing string like &#34;I want to printk but I have no memory!&#34;.<br> Next think/sic/ you know 70% of the kernel will be bad limericks as everyone tries<br> to one-up each other.</p>

<p> Did I miss the 28th Amendment to the Constitution where anybody making a horror movie is obliged to quote the last two lines of Yeats&#39; <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Second_Coming_(poem)?"><em>The Second Coming</em></a> Because by the Father, the dead gay Son and the Holy Spigot, that is beginning to drive me around the fucking bend.</p> <p> I suspect Stephen King started it (for the horror genre, I mean, the Wikipedia page makes it obvious that everyone in the universe with an ounce of eruditory pretention has quoted this poem at some point) with <em>The Stand</em>–but you&#39;d think people would also have noticed that he also quoted <a href="http://blueoystercult.com/">Blue Oyster Cult</a> and taken it somewhat less seriously.</p>

<p> Most of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.P._Lovecraft">H.P. Lovecraft&#39;s</a> best works with something that is maybe a little odd, becomes decidedly strange, and then slowly descends into madness.</p> <p> That pretty much described my reaction to seeing that 1) there was a film supposed to be released this year called <em>Cthulu</em>, based on Lovecraft&#39;s &#34;The Shadow Over Innsmouth&#34; (though the screenwriter seems to be suggesting <a href="http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=23128">in this interview</a> that gay people are more aware of the horrors of small-town life than us straights, which seems somewhat myopic), 2) it had Tori Spelling in it.</p>