Maybe I’ve just been too caught up in moving, with all it entails, but I couldn’t stop laughing at this picture (grabbed from LOLcats):
This gave me a laugh
September 12th, 2008Remembrance
September 11th, 2008Bob Owens has a post that resonates with me. My memories of 9/11/2001 are mostly scattered images and impressions of emotion. I still feel very strongly about it, but apart from recounting the basic facts, I’m not certain how much of my memories I can trust to be both correct and accurate.
I would urge you, though, to follow this link and read about someone I learned of some time after 9/11. There are some men who are better than others. Rick Rescorla was such a man.
Disguised as a mild-mannered blogger …
September 11th, 2008For the past several years, I have had a moustache and goatee, but it’s my habit to go clean-shaven every five years. I tell people that it’s to verify that I still have a chin and an upper lip. Eventually, I grow something back, usually in a different style.
This year, I went clean-shaven a little over a week ago, on my birthday, and even warned people in advance. The last time, I did it on a more-or-less sudden whim, which caused Marion to do a double-take when she saw me. She let me know that it was a shock to her.
This time, reactions have varied:
Marion, who had been warned, asked, “Even the moustache?”
A co-worker said that I look a lot younger.
My daughter, who didn’t get any warning, said, “You don’t look evil anymore. Now I can date again.” (I was preventing that? I guess I’ll have to grow ’em back.)
At DUO practice the other night, one person told me that if I had curly hair, I’d look like Mickey Dolenz (although his hair doesn’t look curly anymore). Another told me that I looked good, and I should never grow a beard or moustache again. She also said I looked like George Reeves (thus the title).
It’s not the first time I’ve been told I looked like someone famous. New Year’s Eve, someone told me I reminded him of Dennis Miller. At a Blogger Bash a few years ago, Zombyboy told me that my driver’s license photo made me look like Saddam Hussein. When I was working at NBI in the early eighties, I had a boss who thought I looked like Dan Ayckroyd. And back in the mid-seventies, I spent an afternoon running around Naples with the wife of the American consul. One of the stops we made was at the studio of sculptor, who grabbed me, positioned me near a wall, and backed away to talk to her. I could hear them chattering away in Italian, and could sort of see their gesturing out of the corner of my eye, but every time I’d move, I’d be repositioned in the desired pose.Eventually, I found that my profile had been compared to that of a bust he’d done of JFK.
I’m sure my profile has changed since then, but I’ve never taken that many photos of myself, particularly from the side, and it’s not something I can normally see in a mirror. The only commonalities I see in the men whose looks mine have been compared to is that they are all men, and they’re all much more widely known than I am. Personally, I think I’m looking more and more like my father – just with more hair than he had.
I’ll start regrowing the facial foliage in a couple of months (about the time Marion stops doing double-takes, probably). We’re going on a trip at Christmas, and my driver’s license and passport both show me with the moustache and goatee.
And I’ll say to my chin and upper lip, “See you in five years.”
I’ll have to watch the news tonight
August 21st, 2008I was heading to my old house this evening after work (still getting the place ready to sell), and I almost had to divert elsewhere. The police were at the bottom of my block, and had the next block to the north and the one beside it to the east isolated: taped off, pairs of police cars in each intersection, and police officers with AR-15s patrolling each intersection and keeping everyone out.
The action (not that there was anything visible) appeared to be at the far end of the block to my north; there was a larger concentration of officers in the front yard of the house there, and when the police lines came down about an hour later, an ambulance showed up there.
According to one of my neighbors, the police had been there for probably three or four hours total. Be interesting to see what it was all about – radio news had nothing on it.
Not that anyone will notice
August 6th, 2008… or that the rate of posting is expected to change much, but I’ll be attending the WorldCon for the next few days. Probably not very heavily, though … I really want to get into my new house.
Yesterday, in old Fall River
August 5th, 2008More money than taste
July 10th, 2008Got passed by this guy on the way to work the other day. I thought of a number of appropriate post titles for this Austin Powers wannabe (“Your goolies aren’t that groovy, baby!”), but you can only use one. I guess this would probably fit over at Tacky Raccoons, where Bunk has an entire category devoted to cars apparently intended to attract women. This one certainly looks better, apart from the license plate.
As is usual, click for larger.
Father’s Day activities
June 15th, 2008So, my daughter took me out for dim sum this morning, and then to see the new Indiana Jones movie. Silly and stupid, but fun. I do have a slight problem with one of the actors – every time I see his name, I think of this guy. It’s only a resemblance in the sounds of their names, but …
I spent the rest of the day packing – I’ll be moving soon. Not leaving the Denver area, just buying a different house.
President Bush makes graduating (more) fun
June 6th, 2008Via The Line Is Here, we have photos of President Bush’s appearance as the graduation speaker at the U.S. Air Force Academy.
I wanted to go to the Air Force Academy when I was in high school. My father was career Air Force (enlisted), and I had the idea that I wanted to be a pilot. As things worked out, I went to Annapolis and eventually served on a submarine, but I got to stay in the dorm one weekend when I was part of the contingent that attended an away Navy-Air Force football game. That’s a somewhat-amusing story I haven’t thought of in years; maybe I’ll tell it sometime.
Graduation from a service academy is a pretty exciting occasion. Apart from throwing the hats in the air, which is common to all of the academies, I don’t know what traditions USAFA has concerning graduation. Navy has a number of them, one of them being to give a dollar to the first person who salutes you after you’re commissioned. I still remember Gary Bennett standing up in the middle of the seating area of the field and saluting John Theeuwen. John had selected the Marines as his service option, and the Marines were commissioned first during the ceremony.
Be that as it may, the Daily Mail staff reporter who wrote the article considers it to be “bizarre” behavior on the part of President Bush, but I think it’s great. These young people are celebrating a major accomplishment in their lives, and they’ll have the memories of the president “letting down his hair” and joining in their celebration for the rest of their lives. I’m certain GWB got a kick out of it, too.
The speaker at my graduation was Nelson Rockefeller, who was vice president at the time. I have no distinct memory of anything he said or did at graduation, although I do recall one of my classmates doing a back somersault off the front of the podium. My main memory of “Rocky” himself involve the stories about his death. What is it about New York politicians, anyway?
It’s those layers of editors and fact-checkers
June 2nd, 2008… that make the big media concerns more professional than bloggers. That’s why, in this ABC story, scramming a nuclear plant is referred to as “scrambling” it (that’s part of a direct quote, but I wonder which word Ballard actually used), they “hone in” on a debris field, rather than home in on it (gotta keep those debris fields sharp, I guess), and a link to a related article refers to the “Titantic,” as does the headline of that article:
Other than that, it’s an interesting article.