Archive for the ‘Why?’ Category

Miscellany 5

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009

Respect and courtesy can only be allowed to go in one direction.

Respect and courtesy don’t require knowledge or effort.

Hiding a relationship? Haven’t we heard that before?

Software for which to be thankful. I’ve used about a third of these applications. I use several of them daily.

I’ll have to try this when I get a little time … among other things, I’ve started my Christmas baking. I don’t do it every year, but I sometimes get a little out of hand: cookies, shortbread, rum balls, mincemeat tarts, and so on. I made mincemeat tarts and shortbread on Sunday … I’ll have to post a photo, because the cat walked on the shortbread while it was cooling. It’s a good thing I had plastic wrap covering it at the time.

Hello, I’m Capitalism …

Ummm … you know, this is not what I’d expect to see if someone meditated on me.

Pigeon: Impossible.

Some impressive card manipulations.

The first time I tried homebrewing beer, I used a recipe a friend had given me. It was a simple recipe that made about a gallon – gallon jugs from cider and such were simple to acquire and clean, and I didn’t have to worry about dealing with the quantities and equipment involved in making a “standard” five-gallon batch. It came out pretty potent, though … one bottle was sufficient to get me staggering a bit. I wonder how it would compare with this stuff.

I can remember, years ago, seeing a cat circus in a sad little building on West Colfax. Never saw a performance, just the building.

Ukulele videos (good pun in the name) and a songbook site.

This is a fun advertisement (found here):

I’ve never had a book do this for me while I was reading it:

But will she be faithful?

Friday, November 27th, 2009

Life imitates art.

I’m not sure I’d trust her

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

Yvette does bridal and formal wear. I hope her line of clothing is designed better than her website (Warning: bagpipe music at link).

Remember the Little Red Book?

Monday, July 27th, 2009

Also known as Quotations from Chairman Mao? Back in the 60s, it seemed as though you could hardly go anywhere without running into someone who had one, or hearing someone make a reference to it.

I have a copy that I picked up at a garage sale some years ago, still in quite good shape, actually. Well, for those of you who are nostalgic for that sort of thing, but don’t want to outsource your rhetoric, we now have the Little Blue Book, Daily Readings from the thoughts of Chairman, excuse me, from the speeches and writings of President Obama.

The publisher no longer lists it on their website, but it’s still listed at Amazon (which claims it’s in-stock at the time of this post), although the product description there does not include the following sentence, which apparently was in the publisher’s original listing, according to the site where I found out about it:

“It is an unofficial requirement for every citizen to own, to read, and to carry this book at all times.”

That sounds ominous. Will there be a test?

I wonder if it’s no longer available from the publisher because Obama’s popularity has gone down for some reason?

Obama popularity 9/27/09

I was surprised at how long it took before someone mentioned ‘Fremen’ in the comments.

Wednesday, April 29th, 2009

I’m more surprised that someone would actually get an eyeball tattoo. Pictures at the link are not necessarily for the squeamish.

I’ll have to dig out my books of Harlan Ellison short stories. If I remember correctly, he mentions in an introduction to one story that part of its inspiration was his horror of contact lenses, because he had the idea that corneas needed to breathe.

I wish I had a photo

Thursday, April 23rd, 2009

I usually have my camera with me, but last night, I didn’t. I carry the camera in a belt pouch at my left hip, and it wasn’t appropriate with the outfit I was wearing. I was driving at the time, anyway, so it would have been difficult to take a good photo, even if someone else had been the driver.

Imagine, if you will, your generic compact car, colored dark brown where the rust hadn’t eaten through the body, with a home-made, two-level wooden spoiler on the trunk lid.

I say “two-level,” rather than “two-airfoil,” because there was no airfoil cross-section to them; they were just flat pieces of 1×12. It didn’t look to me that the vehicle could go fast enough for them to provide any effect, either.

Cat 1, Dragon 0

Wednesday, February 18th, 2009

Cordwainer Smith wrote a well-known science fiction short story titled, “The Game of Rat and Dragon,” in which telepaths teamed with cats to protect spaceships from space-based predators.

The relationship between cats and dragons appears to have been taken from life.

I have a dragon skull that I had on display in my living room. It’s a cast resin sculpture that I picked up some years ago. It was on a high shelf on my entertainment center, where I figured it would be safe.

I was wrong.

Dragon skull

The missing small horn was with the skull; the missing large horn wasn’t. I believe that it’s under the entertainment center, which makes it pretty inaccessible. Guess I won’t be gluing that back anytime soon.

More money than taste

Thursday, July 10th, 2008

Got 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.

The Shaguar

Not good

Thursday, May 15th, 2008

I wanted to download an Apple Dashboard widget and watch one of their tutorials this evening, but every time I try to go to their website, I get redirected to the Washington Post website’s 404 page.

Someone has a messed up DNS entry somewhere.

This is wrong.

Friday, April 25th, 2008

Not merely wrong, but horribly wrong. It’s one of those “What made them think this is a good idea?” things.

Behold – Manterns.