February 2005 Archives

Look, it's happening! It's an essential first step to regain confidence in our political apparatus. Before ANYTHING else can be done, we have to fix this very issue. Read the bill, or at least the synopsis of it -- it's a good one. we have to do whatever we can to promote this and not let it die before it reaches the floor. Make lots of noise supporting this bill -- write your congressmen and senators. Make sure they hear you're interested in this. Hell, stage a demonstration. This is worthy. -------------------

Slashdot | Senators Clinton and Kerry Submit Open Voting Bill Senators Clinton and Kerry Submit Open Voting Bill Posted by Zonk on Sunday February 27, @04:15PM from the power-to-the-people dept. An anonymous reader writes 'DailyKos is reporting that a group of senators and representatives including Hillary Clinton, John Kerrry, and Tubbs Jones, have proposed an 'open-source' voting bill. This bill (The Count Every Vote Act of 2005) corrects many"

(Via .)

Okay, this rocks. ------------

Voodoo knife rack in shape of a person: "Cory Doctorow: This 'voodoo' knife rack, which depicts a human form pierced by your knife collection in many strategic locations, is the best kitchen thinggy I've ever seen. They should make custom head-shaped ones with the face of your choice, so you can start your day by stabbing your least favorite person in the world in the face repeatedly as you make breakfast. Link (via JWZ)
"

(Via Boing Boing.)

I finally saw The Village, and though I had been warned it was the least good of all of his movies, I still felt it was a really strong film and was less about the 'surprise ending' than it was about human relationships. It had a stellar cast of top-notch actors and a new face to the scene for the lead role who was fantastic. As with most of Night's films, I can't tell you much about it without ruining part of the experience, but I really advise viewing this one if you like movies that deal with inner strength in the face of adversity. After watching the movie, I'm really only left with one question...

What's Lucius' color?

I accidently wrote over the top of my message for this day, dammit. Anyhow, I was merely musing on how I am experiencing the ending of certain cycles in my life, and Friday was symbolic of that. My last day at CDL for a month, the last day in all probabiltiy that I'd work with King face-to-face. It's very nearly the end of my existence as a parent of only one child. I'm also trying to close down certain activities of mine that are depleting. I am no longer going to do web design as a side business, for example -- I will continue my hosting business, but I just don't have the energy to put sites together for people. Anyhow, most of the muse is gone on this one, but the experience lingers. I am sure I'll talk about it in more depth later.

Had a great time at a local fancy sushi restaurant in Sausalito with King and Eric. Excellent food, and good company. I know, it's a cop-out blog entry, but I need to fill the space, and I have no inspiration.

I just can't seem to finish off my albatross projects and push them out the door. I've been working on just doing a transfer of a web site from one server to another, and I'm finding ALL SORTS of formatting issues with it that I'm painstakingly fixing for my (future) client. Can't I just be done with it already?

I found out today that the key engineer on the project I've been working on for over a year now is going to be leaving the project in about a month and a half, meaning after this week, we'll probably not be working together much. I feel shocked and a little worried at his departure, but of course I wish the best for him. It seems that this project has been plagued with recent personnel cuts by one reason or another. So after I get back, it's pretty much D'Arcy and myself. Well, I guess we better learn what we can while we can from the maistro before he's gone.

Okay, this is an odd but strangely hilarious film that I finally saw (or am actually still seeing as we speak). It just never lets up. It reminds me of a John Waters film, with less polish and what feels like should be more angst, but is the characters are surprisingly unflappable. And it ends in a very John Hughes way. Geek gets the girl, geek wins the presidency, geek raps at his own wedding to a tall black woman.

This is brilliant, scooped off of Boing Boing: ------------

Intelligent Design's idiotic designer: "Cory Doctorow: A fantastic editorial in this weekend's NYT shreds the idea of 'Intelligent Design' (a pseudo-scientific, crypto-Christian-fundamentalist way of talking about Creationism without mentioning God) by taking apart the incompetence and foolishness of the supposedly intelligent designer.

In mammals, for instance, the recurrent laryngeal nerve does not go directly from the cranium to the larynx, the way any competent engineer would have arranged it. Instead, it extends down the neck to the chest, loops around a lung ligament and then runs back up the neck to the larynx. In a giraffe, that means a 20-foot length of nerve where 1 foot would have done. If this is evidence of design, it would seem to be of the unintelligent variety.

Such disregard for economy can be found throughout the natural order. Perhaps 99 percent of the species that have existed have died out. Darwinism has no problem with this, because random variation will inevitably produce both fit and unfit individuals. But what sort of designer would have fashioned creatures so out of sync with their environments that they were doomed to extinction?

The gravest imperfections in nature, though, are moral ones. Consider how humans and other animals are intermittently tortured by pain throughout their lives, especially near the end. Our pain mechanism may have been designed to serve as a warning signal to protect our bodies from damage, but in the majority of diseases -- cancer, for instance, or coronary thrombosis -- the signal comes too late to do much good, and the horrible suffering that ensues is completely useless.

And why should the human reproductive system be so shoddily designed? Fewer than one-third of conceptions culminate in live births. The rest end prematurely, either in early gestation or by miscarriage. Nature appears to be an avid abortionist...

Link (via Kottke)"

(Via Boing Boing.)

I know this is a few days late, but I just wanted to put my word in to how cool Eli's birthday party was. First off, we got Eli a Captain Hook costume which he absolutely loved. I dressed up in a bunch of ren faire garb and wore my rapier -- basically got all pirated out. We decorated the house in all sorts of cool pirate stuff, and invited over a dozen little 4-year-olds to celebrate Eli's birthday. We did a treasure hunt and had clues and party games, including limbo under the pirate sword and pin the treasure on the map (which all the kids save one cheated at, but that's the name of the game). At a certain point Eli came up to me and told me that 'this is a pretty fun birthday' -- unsolicited praise from the kid is all I need to know I've done my job right. The day ended in a feeding frenzy of gifts leaving Eli with enough pirate ships to be Commodore of his own flotilla.

I really meant to put in an entry on Friday, but I was just wiped. I spent the entire evening setting up for Eli's big birthday party (today, which I will blog about in a minute), and then I just crashed hard after trying to get some work done for a client. I was even too tired to watch my TV shows. I crashed and burned, and that's all there was to it.

Tonight Julie and I went to see Ani DiFranco in concert at the Luther Burbank Center in Santa Rosa - we haven't been to see her live since before Eli was born, and it seemed like a fun thing to do and god knows it'll probably be another 4 years before we drag our asses out to a concert again. It did take us about 2 hours to actually get to the concert, due to an accident on North 101 that had traffic backed up so bad that it was still bumper-to-bumper after 11pm on our way home. So we got to the concert late, and missed the opening act, and missed Ani's entrance, but from the moment we sat down to the moment the house lights came up, we loved every minute of it. It was a bit like seeing an old good friend you haven't seen in years, and realizing you still very much love them and like them. Ani was gracious and beautiful and emotionally present. Her music has matured with her, and just as she was a spokesperson for the 20-something alternative-set experience when she was in her 20's, she's now the spokesperson for the 30-something alternative-set experience in her 30's. As usual, her lyrics are eloquent and raw and amazing and touching and funny. 'I had to leave the house of self-importance when I doodled my first tatoo. When I realized that tatoos are only as permanent as I am.' The new album has some amazing gems on it, and I have to listen to it several times over just to let it all sink in. Her music has matured, and while it was just her and her guitar and a back-up bass player, it was complex and mature and beautiful and simple. She reorchestrated some old favorites in entirely new ways. And she was so exhausted and in pain and you could tell she just couldn't pull the 3 shows in 3 days like she could when she was younger, but she's doing it anyhow and even did a 2-song encore even in the midst of her need to go back to the trailer and collapse. But she loves her audience so much that she suffers through it for them. She's a true performer and artist. I love you Ani.

Tonight I hung out with Jason and Ian (and later Matt) and just drank wine and mixed vodka drinks and shot the shit and had absolutely no agenda. It was fantastic. We talked women and nostalgia and creative fantasy. It sounds crazy, but I never find the time to just 'hang out' with my friends anymore -- we always seem to have to need an agenda to justify spending time together. Tonight we threw the agenda out the window and just interacted on the level. I recall doing this a lot more in the old days. I seriously need to do this more often.

Tonight Eli fell asleep on the couch while listening to his pirate party music, and I couldn't resist from taking him gently into my arms and cradling him like a little baby. He's gonna be four on Thursday, and there aren't too many days left where I'm going to be able to hold my eldest son like a little baby. I love him so much it makes me ache, and I still remember bringing that little guy home and falling asleep with him on my chest. The effortless, guileless breathing. The soft eyes, the open mouth. Bits of drool and moisture and an essence of complete abandon. I'm sure I'll be sneaking in and watching him as a teenager, sleep in that quiet bliss. *sigh*.

Rare holographic Atari console on eBay

Okay -- this is pretty frickin' advanced.

Rare holographic Atari console on eBay: "Cory Doctorow:

In 1981, Atari built a handful of prototypes for a new game console called the Cosmos, which would display all its play elements on a holographic screen. They never went into production. Only two were built with electronics inside -- the other three were just shells. One of those shells is now up for sale on eBay, starting around £10,000 -- about $20,000 in devalued American pesos.

Link

(via Waxy)

"

(Via Boing Boing.)

Tonight for Valentine's day I took Julie out to see Teatro Zinzanni, in the city. We've been there before, but it's been over a couple of years, and she totally was unsuspecting. For those that have never been, I'm not going to spoil the fun with a description of what goes on inside the big top, but as we told the virgin viewers across the table from us -- assume nothing. We had a great time, but I think we both agree the first time we saw it, it was a better show. Still well worth it, and we'll probably go back again sometime, tho I would love to see some of the original cast again. It was good to get out and spend some time together, have some yummy food (and the food was yummy), and love one another. We may be old marrieds, but we still know how to have a good time every time and again. Happy Valentine's day, honey. I love you in all ways and all directions.

A charming detail about my father that I have become painfully aware of is that he doesn't bathe. He doesn't shower or brush his hair, or take his clothes off to sleep. Now my car vaguely smells like stale sweat of indeterminate age. Funky doesn't begin to describe it. However, I had a pretty good time on the trip, although the visit with my great-aunt Norma was brief. As it turns out, in true Archer fashion, my parents set up the visit a while ago and said the '11th and 12th', which was... Friday and Saturday. Friday night, my great-aunt had dinner set out on the table for us, waiting for our arrival... and of course we never came. Saturday she was prepared to make dinner for us, but called home and found my mother there, and discovered that my parents had said the wrong dates and times for our arrival. Because of the misunderstanding, Norma had scheduled all of her obligations for Sunday -- today, and thus had to skip church in order to visit with us for a few hours. She had breakfast with us at Bob's Big Boy, and did a lot of listening to me and my dad, and then talked a bit with me about a little family history. It turns out my great grandfather was in the calvary in Mexico during world war I, and she still has his horse blanket. My great-great grandfather was a 'pugilist', a minister, and fought in the Spanish-American war with Teddy Roosevelt. My great-great grandmother was related to Henry Ford, and loved to quilt. Oh, and my great-grandmother was a concert pianist. I'm sure there's more details I heard, but what is most important is that I met my oldest living relative on my father's side, and she's totally cool, and she's agreed to keep up a correspondence with me over email. I'll find out all the little bits and pieces over time. And some time after Isaac is old enough to travel and it seems rational, I'll take the family to visit her, maybe on a trip to Disneyland or something. Also, the trip home was gorgeous. The high desert in San Bernadino is totally beautiful and alien. There were all these Joshua trees, and there was snow on the mountains and desert just below, and tons and tons of abandoned properties. I'm not sure why anyone lives out there, but it's strangely alluring. Tons and tons of realtors, but who's gonna buy desert property? I'm not really sure. On the trip home I listened to 'Against All Enemies' again, but with my father. I think it opened his eyes a bit more to the lunacy which is the current administration. I'm now feeling totally exhausted from two days of driving, and an evening sleeping with my snoring father. I'm signing out for now, but I'll drop you more details as the days go on.

So it turns out that my sister pulled through for me and arranged for my mom to be picked up by my Aunt Debbie, and come visit my sister for the weekend. That means the father-son trip is on. I'm typing this in the motel room in Calamesa, California (roughly 12 miles outside of Banning, where my aunt lives). Today we started our drive from Fremont at about 11:30, and got into town at 7:30PM, so about a eight-hour trip to get here. It was too late to visit my great-aunt Norma. As it turns out, Norma is on a schedule tomorrow, so I'm likely to only get to spend a few hours with her before she's got to move on with her day, and we have to head home. But, this trip was not really much about Norma anyhow. I did learn some things about her, however, from my dad. She was in the air force, achieved the rank of Lt. Colonel, was offered a job at the pentagon and would have been promoted to General, but decided to decline because it required her to re-up for another ten years, and she originally went into the military to pay for school. She went to USC and graduated Summa Cum Laude in Cinematography. She produced many films for the military. I'm sure I'll find out more when we meet tomorrow for breakfast. What I have gotten from the trip, however, is a new appreciation for my dad. We talked for a long time on the way down about his work, and some of the stuff he's been doing for work. I always used to tune my dad out as he would talk about what he's doing for work, but really I do enjoy how he shares his work with me, and I love to hear how his mind works. My dad is an incredibly intelligent man who is just learning how to stand up for himself in his work. He's come up with so many processes and innovations for the companies he's worked for, and if he had patented them, he'd be a rich man today. I love the way he gets so into describing his job to me, and I realize that he's one of the reasons I've been so scientifically interested in my life. Also on the trip, I got some insight into his inner life, and I learned a lot about the eight years he spent in Los Angeles during his college and post-college years. I heard a lot about my Uncle Russ that died in '70, before I was even conceived. I got a view on how close they were, the time they spent together, and how that loss affected my dad as a young man in his mid-twenties, losing a brother-in-law, and a best friend. I learned about my dad's relationship to his father, and his father to his father's father. It turns out my great-grandfather died at 44 of a heart attack, and my grandfather disappeared from my dad's life in the late sixties. A long tradition of fathers not having fathers, I see my dad in a whole new perspective. He fought hard to form a stable household, and did his best to be as involved as he could, while providing for his family. I may have personal complaints about my father's emotional unavailability, but I think that he's done a lot with a limited amount of material. His brothers and sisters became drug addicts or codependent or religious fanatics, or sometimes all three. My dad kept a stable, rational, loving and nurturing home life the best he knew how. It may not have been perfect, and it's certainly not the model that I am emulating in my own family, but I thank him for doing what he could, and at a lot of times at a sacrifice to his own personal well-being. I think above all, I'm starting to really appreciate my father for who he is, and what are relationship is today, instead of focusing on what he could be and isn't, and what I feel he wasn't or isn't. Okay, sure, he's not perfect, but I am really proud of him and how far he's come. He's still got issues, and he's still got problems. But, I can still love and appreciate him for who he is today. For more news, tune in to part II

This is a back-date for Friday, since I've been gone all weekend. Friday was full of getting stuff done that needed to be done, and then spending an evening having a great time at a friend's birthday party. Nothing else to report.

Tomorrow (really today, but I'm back-dating), I will remember the blessing of the druid.

Well, yesterday I got a call from my mom informing me that she'll be coming along with us on the trip down to see my great-aunt Norma this weekend. I'm a bit bummed out, because I was really looking forward to having this time with my dad and me alone, but my mom is unapproachable on this. She's gotten so lonely and so insecure that she cannot stand to be alone, and no one else is around to take her off our hands. I mean, don't get me wrong -- I love my mom, and under normal circumstances, I wouldn't mind having her along, but for me, the whole point of going through this exercise so close to the birth of my second son is to get some time to connect and reflect with my dad on the trip, not just to go see my great aunt. So, I don't know what I should do. I would tell them, but I know it's just gonna make my mom sad, and I don't want to hurt her feelings. At the same time, I know I'm just going to get subjected to mom and dad fighting on the trip. Maybe I just need to let go of it, and see what comes of it. Who knows, maybe it'll be a great experience and it'll give us a chance to bond, or it will give me a chance to confront the both of them about past issues. I don't know. I do think I need to talk to my dad at least, and tell him I'm disappointed that we're not going just alone, and that he and I need to schedule some time together. Of course, with the new baby coming, that's gonna be a long ways off. Anyone feel like babysitting my mom for a weekend?

Last night I spend about 4 or 5 hours talking on the phone with an old friend from high school with whom I had lost contact since early college until roughly september of last year. We've had maybe about a half a dozen conversations on the phone, and every time it tends to run long. It's fascinating to realize just how much we didn't know about each other back then, and how much we missed in our interactions. It's also fascinating to realize all those memories of what I think I can finally call my 'childhood' are still in there, vivid and accessible. I'm in that middling age where my high school days are long enough ago that I truly feel like a different person, but close enough that I actually remember them. In any case, talking to my friend and reminiscing seems to give my current life context, and it weaves my psyche together with my former selves. In those moments, I can be both who I am today, and who I was back then. There is someone there to reflect that old me to me again, and that is comforting. I suppose one of the reasons I try to hold on to people and things from my past is to hold on to some of that person I used to be. There are some things I really am glad I've grown beyond, but there are definitely parts of me that I desperately miss from back then. Those parts of me never really went away -- they're still inside of me -- they just don't have the same avenues of expression that they once did. So here's to old friends.

I don't know why I can't just let go of this idea that I'll have a post a day for every day of the year. I've already blown it like five times, but still -- here I am backfilling the days. I suppose it's just so that I don't get lazy and let the whole project drop. It's easy to backfill a single day, but an entire week -- that's just not possible. The real challenge will be -- will I maintain the blog after Isaac is born? I give myself explicit permission right now to miss some time blogging during that crucial first period.

This is a new program I just downloaded that allows me to post from a client instead of on the web page. I am just testing it out, to see how it works.

So last night at around 9 pm, I had a total system crash. I fell asleep and didn't wake up until 7 am. I have been running on minimal fuel, averaging about 3 hours of sleep a night, for the last few weeks straight, and my body and mind finally gave out. I was supposed to go out to a midnight movie with friends last night, but I just slept right through the time I was supposed to leave (hopefully they'll forgive me :) ). And again, may I report that other than feeling sore from yesterday's prenatal yoga class I took with Julie, I feel rather great, both physically and mentally. I still don't wake up that easily, but that's just my nature. It is a lot easier than usual, that's for sure, and doesn't cause me physical pain to get out of bed. So, will I learn from this moral lesson and get enough sleep each night? Probably not. However, I will try to be more sensible than I've been for the last few weeks. I figure if I get 6 hours of sleep a night, that's like magic. That means being in bed by midnight. If I can acheive that, I think I'll be fine. What I have to avoid is going to bed at 2am and getting up at 6am, or even worse, going to bed at 3:30 am like I have for the last week. Why can't I just sleep in until noon like I used to when I was in college? Oh yeah, It's because I have a job and a kid and a life. Oh well. I guess I must always battle between my desires to deny the beast of sleep, and my need to listen to its siren call or suffer the consequences.

I'm here to fill up space, because I haven't quite come to the admission that I'll be missing days here and there. I just love to see every little spot filled on the calendar. I know it's stupid, but it's my own little trip going on, so just put up with me. At least you'll have something to read every day. :)

About a week ago, I did one of those 'I wonder what happened to her' searches on a girl I dated for a few weeks back in college -- I would call her a girlfriend, but that's not what she was about, and it never got quite that serious -- and I discovered that she became a professional singer, lives in Germany (or at least did a few years ago), and has been a guest singer for a group called 'Zoar'. The album she sung on, Brendan Perry also sang on, so I figured, it must be something I'd enjoy. I've only listened to a few songs on the album so far, but it's very dark and heavy, less like Dead Can Dance, and more gothy (did you know that was possible?) Anyhow, the second song is spoken word, from a book called 'Blood Orchid', by Charles Bowden. I've never heard of the book, but the lyrics are powerful:

We are an exceptional model of the human race. We no longer know how to produce food. We no longer can heal ourselves. We no longer raise our young. We have forgotten the names of the stars, fail to notice the phases of the moon. We do not know the plants and they no longer protect us. We tell ourselves we are the most powerful specimens of our kind who have ever lived, but when the lights are off we are helpless. We cannot move without traffic signals. We must attend classes in order to learn by rote numbered steps toward love or how to breast-feed our baby. We justify anything, anything at all by the need to maintain our way of life, and then we go to the doctor and tell the professionals we have no life. We have a simple test for making decisions: our way of life, which we cleverly call our standard of living, must not change except to grow yet more grand. We have a simple reality we live with each and every day: our way of life is killing us.

That's pretty powerful shit. I can't wait to listen to the rest of this album.

Addendum: Julie (her name is Julie Comparini) has a beautiful voice, and this album is haunting and beautiful.

I'm actually getting this blog entry in before the day rolls over. Maybe this is a trend! Who knows. Will I manage to get to sleep before midnight? Doubtful. I mean, here I am burning the candle at both ends -- why stop before I completely run out of wax, eh? Tonight I ran the last game for a while of a D&D adventure I'm DMing -- oh, how the social calendar starts to come to a wrap-up, as we prepare for the arrival of Isaac. But alas, I am not alert or witty enough at this moment to say anything of interest. Just wait for tomorrow.

It's a never ending cycle. I'm up at 2:30 AM writing this, when I should be sleeping. But there is soooo much unanswered email, unfinished work, open obligations that need to be filled. Ugh. Can't I just wipe it all away and start with a clean slate? Because seriously, I'm drowning in crap I have to get done, before Isaac is born. Okay, what I have to do right now is go to sleep. Good night.

I'm taking the way-back machine to fill in the slot. Yeah, so I'm a cheater. I don't care. I want to see all those spots filled! One a day is as good as once a day. Anyhow, yesterday Eli got sick with the vomit flu and I have been cranking to get the next issue of Nightmares and Fairy Tales lettered for Serena, so I've been a bit preoccupied. Hopefully I'll have more time to blog today, but tonight is RPG at Jason's (ROME!), so I am going to be stealing from Peter to pay Paul on the time thing. I'll be home watching Eli today, so I'll have a bit of time. For now, it's time to wash my hands and keep myself well and head into work for a half-day.