November 5th 2008
For what it’s worth, I spent my Election Night in Karazhan. We’ve been there a decent bit lately; with WotLK approaching, getting newbies into raiding seems more important than progression — although we’ve had a bit of that too. Anyway, it was a good distraction.
The beer also helped.
I turned on the TV in time to see Fox call Pennsylvania for Obama and after that there was very little to be done, really, except to see Shepard Smith staring cluelessly into the distance as Karl Rove talks.
It’s a bit like the Cubs’ postseason — after a great season, when it comes down to it, there we are, getting outplayed at every angle, and just like that it’s over; nothing to be done now but wait ’til next year and hope that Piniella has the wisdom to shore up our fundamentals into a World Series team.
The Republicans have to do the same thing — shore up a consistent, reliable opposition to the party that will control House, Senate & Presidency. Get away from folks like Bush and McCain who conservatives have to hold their nose and vote for and be the party it was meant to be. Act like a party that’s ready to lead, fer chrissakes.
Posted by firefly under Current Events | No Comments »
October 30th 2008
I’ve been listening to the Between the Covers podcasts at National Review Online, and there’s a lot of cool stuff there, like interviews with Christopher Buckley and George R.R. Martin (and, yes, Chuck Norris.)
… but! Imagine my surprise and delight when I find a podcast about T.S. Eliot, where the interview-ee is none other than… Benjamin Lockerd! Apparently, he has written a new introduction to a new edition of Russel Kirk’s Eliot and His Age.
Lockerd is a prof at GVSU, possibly the most awesome Brit-Lit-prof in the world, originator of the phrase “Were you beaten with roses as a child?” which I have shared with my father on numerous occasions as he and Dan continue the disagreement that existed between my ex-boyfriend Stefan and Dr. Lockerd about whether something can be described as intrinsically beautiful, or are only considered beautiful because our culture conditions us to believe they are. My father and Lockerd take the former position, leading Lockerd to say “If you see a rose, and you don’t think it’s beautiful, I think: what’s wrong with you? Were you beaten with roses as a child?”
Other great Lockerd moments:
Last time I talked with him, it was January, and I was wearing my coat with a World of Warcraft “druid” pin on it, and he jokingly replies. “Ah, good to see a follower of the old religions! Human sacrifice and all of that!” I laugh, explain its real meaning, and take the opportunity to find one person in the world who understands the origins of my warlock, Duessa’s, name.
Now I guess I really have to read Four Quartets…
Posted by firefly under Poetry & Reviews | 2 Comments »
October 23rd 2008
I’m so out of it with regard to music now, I only just found out that Ben Folds Five had a reunion concert in September. But! I found the whole video online when I logged into myspace for the first time in forever. The guys play the entirety of The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner live before an incredibly lucky audience — yes, even “Your Most Valuable Possessions,” which Ben’s dad comes out to nervously read from a cue card.
Reinhold Messner has gotta be one of my top five albums of all time, easily, and I know Ben Folds is awesome to watch live. I bought Sessions at West 54th DVD beforeI even owned a DVD player and bought it to my boyfriend’s house to watch, and we were all astounded by it. I bought the official score, borrowed my boyfriend’s keyboard, and almost learned to play “Narcolepsy” except for these chords that are made to played by someone with giant Ben Folds hands amd not freaky midget hands like mine.
So, being unable to really play Ben Folds Five songs, I did the next best thing and named my computer after one of them. Looking back, it wasn’t that great of a computer, so maybe that was unfair of me. At any rate, this got me reminiscing while I watched Ben Folds Five perform, about all my computers:
- Firefly, my graduation present, the K6-2, which eventually got cannibalized into other machines by Troy.
- Leo, my mom’s old computer, the other K6-2, that we loaded with an absurd amount of RAM and used to run Mandrake Linux after Jeff’s old iMac exploded.
- Jane, which I got from Wal-Mart and ran Linux.
- Una, which Josh Rowe built, and ran Windows XP so I could play FFXI. But it was NOT named for Yuna or anything like that, but after Una from Faerie Queene.
- Daenerys, the first computer I built. It was a learning experience, so I thought her epithet “Stormborn” was quite fitting. I sold it to my father, and he used it until it was stolen just recently.
- And finally… Mal. There have been a number of things that I can credit for keeping me almost-sane while working at the casino, and Joss Whedon’s Firefly and the joy that came from building this computer are two of them. When I switched it on and it worked, I went “Aha! I can really do this! I rule!”
Not even counting my family’s nameless computers, all the way back to the Kaypro and Commodore-64. Well, there’s two ways of navel-gazing into my past, right there.
Posted by firefly under Computers & Personal & Reviews | No Comments »
October 15th 2008
I heard tonight’s debate advertised as having a format of “the candidates sitting at a table with the moderator,” like all the great political minds in our country came together and said “Let’s have three debates!” “OK! What should differentiate these debates? Depth of responses? Degree of back-and-forth conversation? The important policy issues they cover” “…” “Let’s have one where they stand at podiums, another where they stand not at a podium, and another where… get this… they sit down!”
So I’ve been trying to think of other possible debate scenarios for the commission to use, like:
- Hanging from monkey bars
- Balancing atop a moving train
- Sitting Indian-style on top of towels, neatly marked with the candidates’ names
- Sitting around on bean-bags drinking organic refreshments
- White-water rafting
But I’m sure the American people would see right past that, being such experts on the candidates’ platforms.
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October 5th 2008
Well, apart from the whole “worrying about money and getting job” bit, I could handle being unemployed. Without the restrictions like “going to work,” I find all sorts of projects to throw myself into.
The first projects were web-related; redesigning Action Entertainment and the Grunts page to take advantage of some CSS tricks and get everything validated. But that was not enough, so Friday I decided it was time that I install Ubuntu.
I had already purchased a second hard drive for this purpose, so I’m now dual-booting Ubuntu 8.04 (”Hardy Heron”) and Windows Vista (which my bootloader likes to refer to by its production name of Longhorn, for some reason).
Continue Reading »
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September 29th 2008
- Jack Thompson is so disbarred, he’s not even allowed to approach the bench at a picnic table
- Jack Thompson is so disbarred he can’t even play contract bridge.
- Jack Thompson is so disbarred he can’t even practice the law of gravity.
- Jack Thompson is so disbarred, his porn magazines are just called “Barely.”
- Jack Thompson is so disbarred, he can’t even use legal tender.
- Jack Thompson is so disbarred he has to just swing on monkeys.
- Jack Thompson is so disbarred that his candy options are limited to M&Ms and Rolos.
- Two guys walk into a bar, but the third guy couldn’t because he was Jack Thompson, who is so disbarred.
- Jack Thompson is so disbarred, he’s only permitted to use pie charts.
- Jack Thompson is so disbarred he’s only allowed at bat mitzvahs
- Jack Thompson is so disbarred he has to measure ambient atmospheric pressure in SI compliant pascals
(twitter via lore; story here)
Posted by firefly under Games & Current Events | No Comments »
September 24th 2008
“The Devil Went Down to Georgia” should really end with the Devil laughing: “I have your soul anyway, for the mortal sin of Pride! Now take your shiny thing, stupid American!”
Posted by firefly under Reviews | No Comments »
September 21st 2008
When Sarah Palin was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, she (allegedly) attempted to get books she didn’t approve of out of the public library. This is scary. Are free speech organizations like the CBLDF and the First Amendment Project going to take this issue on?
No. They are too busy fighting actual cases of censorship from all the way across the political spectrum, to bother with partisan silliness. (Here’s the Snopes report on Palin’s non-existent Bookbanning.)
What you fight is specifics: bad laws, bad arrests and the like. People trying to ban books and comics and people trying to stop other people selling or publishing or creating comics and books and suchlike.You don’t fight “alleged attempts to get books out of a public library” ten years ago. To “take this issue on” I suspect would consist, Father Ted-like, of people walking around Sarah Palin with placards saying “Down with This sort of Thing” and “Careful Now”, which would probably not result in increased freedom of speech. Although it might be funny.
(link, scroll down towards the bottom)
About a week ago, we had CNN on in the break room and all day the hammering home “This is Sarah Palin’s first time on the national campaign trail all by herself! Can she handle it?”
First off, it’s one week after the convention where she was first announced. One week where she campaigned with the presidential candidate she was supporting (and, no doubt, gathering more enthusiasm than the top-billed McCain.
Second, isn’t this sort of thing incredibly sexist? Oooh, can the little girly go out on the road and take care of herself?
Sickening, but I still think it’ll all backfire incredibly, help McCain/Palin, and serve as the deathknell of traditional media.
Posted by firefly under Current Events | 5 Comments »
September 15th 2008
Yes, I did resign today. No, I didn’t run in there and go “ZOMG THIS PLACE IS EVIL” — I told them I was going back to school, which is true, I just had been planning to stay another couple months.
All my supervisors and coworkers have been thoroughly decent, which is why I gave two weeks noticeand spared them the lecture. I just couldn’t reasonably live with myself in that position.
Posted by firefly under Personal & Casinos | 1 Comment »
