Sad beyond belief.

Crazy Cat Lady sent me this.

She had the gall to make jokes, like “Guess it was bring-your-own (bbq) sauce event”.

When a semi truck overturns and becomes an inferno, burning alive 76,000 lbs of beef ribs, I call that a tragedy. It is just plain cold to make jokes about the fiery death of ribs.

Note in comments below… hilljohnny says he has reason to believe the load of ribs quoted might be a load of BS. I hope so, since this is a tragedy otherwise.

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Tonight is Obama’s State of the Union address.

I could watch it but I was thinking I would get out the random orbital sander and grind my eyes out, instead. It was a serious toss-up.

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Another tragedy today was the loss of one of the Sith’s most beloved… Her crock pot.

Be kind to her – the weather has dropped below freezing in Deepest Darkest Texas, and that makes the loss of a crock a terrible thing. I mock her on some things but rarely if ever about food. Food is serious stuff.

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Call me ignorant, but handing out free crack pipes to combat AIDS sounds a lot like running a lawn mower in the bed of your pickup to improve your truck’s fuel economy.

“It may seem counter-intuitive, but it’s a great program. Once you can get people into your program, make them feel respected, taken care of them, they’re more likely to want to come back and want to get on HIV meds,” Thomas said.

Yeah, nothing would make me feel more respected than being manipulated by my addiction.
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New evidence says that spanking kids may turn them intolawbreakers.

Older evidence says that not spanking kids results in an asshole.

I will take my chances.

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Nothing says avant garde quite like throwing a few vaginas into your artwork.

Ten dollars says Cruel Wife knows exactly the phrase going through my head (in disgust) and the expression on my face. It is the one I like to call “Withering Scorn”.

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Age of Diamonds

I read in Drudge today a link to an interesting article.

Smart PJs are storytelling pajamas, that use mobile technology, similar to a QR code, to display bedtime favorites on a smartphone or tablet.

Now, read the next section carefully.

The bedtime stories are contained in the polka dots on the child’s pajamas, which are available in pink or blue.

“You scan one of those dot patterns on the kid’s pajamas – there are 47 different ones – and each one of those dot patterns is a bedtime story,” says Murdoch.

To choose a story, parent or child launches the Smart PJs Stories app (free, in Apple Store for iOS, or Google Play for Android), and holds the device’s camera over the dot patterns.

“You take the picture, and it automatically launches the story,” Murdoch says.

Murdoch says most of the stories contained in the app are in the public domain.

“It’s all the classics,” Murdoch says. “Cinderella, The Gingerbread Man, Old Mother Hubbard, Humpty Dumpty.”

Murdoch hired voice actors and artists to record the stories and illustrate the slides that correspond with the story.

Catch that? Go read Neal Stephenson’s book The Diamond Age.

Ractors!

The story by Stephenson is about nanotechnology, where actors (re-actors) are hired to interact with people by acting out roles, and they have nanites embedded in their skin so their real faces can be captured digitally, and the customer can have whatever they want, provided the ractor is paid enough to do it. Actual live meatspace interaction need never happen.

A nano-designer is asked to create a bespoke device called “The Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer” and then destroy the design. It was to be made for a rich man’s grand-daughter or niece as one of a kind but is stolen and ends up with a poor neglected girl named Nell, who is essentially raised by a ractor who begins to care for her as if Nell were her own daughter.

But the overarching story is that with nanologic or a sufficiently advanced Turing machine, one could raise a child using one of these devices whether or not there was a ractor. Maybe. The question the book leaves is: Is it good enough or is it better than nothing if it is not as good as the real thing?

It is at once a heartwarming story, a breathtakingly sad story, and a cautionary story. And worth every penny.

The second and third possibilities (sad and cautionary) are totally do-able, and the first can only come from someone who loves the kid.

How can one do that, make a connection, by letting a device read a story to one’s kid?

Note: Full and honest disclosure requires me to state that I am a total fanboy of Stephenson’s, so my bias should be noted. “The Diamond Age” is a must-read, regardless. Then go read “Snow Crash”, “Zodiac”, and “Cryptonomicon”.

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Well, since it is a serious post anyway, I would bring this up – who knew that Hitchcock would have done a documentary on the Holocaust?

I will probably see it since I have made it a point to witness many of the real evil things that men do, not Hollywood (but not all, there are some lines I draw, where I am incapable of seeing, especially when it comes to children). I don’t do this out of morbid curiosity or fascination, but I feel that someone has to witness these horrible things. Someone has to be able to say “Yes, I have seen it, it is horrible, and even if you cannot bring yourself to see it, know that these things exist, they are real, and should never be buried or forgotten.”

Too many people have forgotten, I think.

Sorry for the serious turn tonight.

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Well, maybe something to take your mind off the other stuff…

Man takes dive in snow challenge.

Heard about this today from The Butcher of Lansing.

I may have done a global warming dance in the snow barefoot but the skin of my feet is a lot tougher than my mini-me’s skin.

Talk about a life-changing lapse of common sense.

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Good luck…

Good luck, Michael Schumacher.

Prayers for his family.

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Spaces in Between.

Be patient… there’s some formatting issues on this blog due to some wonky code somewhere that I need to fix cut cannot address until tomorrow.  It’s truly hosed but you should always be able to read the most recent post w/o hassle.

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We are solid in the middle of sorting through Cruel Wife’s mom’s stuff.

You might be able to imagine three very intelligent and opinionated sisters in a high-stress situation of sorting through their mother’s belongings after a very unexpected demise.  It has been… trying.  Not bad, not good – no judgment – but a situation requiring lots of latitude and patience.

The only thing we can figure is that she exhibited all the symptoms of heart problems, yet because the most commonly known symptoms of heart problems are the symptoms that apply to men.

Things like blue fingers and nose, one cold leg and one hot, tired for no reason… everyone thought she had the best health and ate healthier and exercised more than any of us.  But, sometimes this sort of thing doesn’t make any sense at all and a common theme here has been one of self-blame, and that is unfair to one but it is also understandable.

So three crazy-tense sisters and two of us husbands who could make it, and we’ve tried keeping kids sane or at the least out of their mothers’ hair.  It’s interesting.

On the way out here from the airport (about three hours of driving), we came across an interesting spot.

A single-wide trailer, its outhouse, and next to a truck car-wash.  Save your soul, empty your bladder, and drive away in a sparkling-clean truck.  Just down the road is the best part – a gas station that sells corndogs.  Since being back in the NW I have had five corndogs, which you don’t find in so many places in Michigan.  It has been a slice of heaven.  So not all about this vacation has been sad.  Hey, work with me here – it’s been a visit with many bittersweet moments as memories have been relived – but there have been chances for people to show strength, too.  Corndogs help.

More later…

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A Little Rain Must Fall.

The news just as I got up this morning wasn’t good.  Cruel Wife entered the hallway and said “Mom is dead.”

I shook my head and said “What?”

“Mom died last night”, she said, and lost it.

Apparently her mother had taken her regular scalding-hot we-can-peel-peaches-and-tomatoes-in-this-water bath and didn’t get out.  About all we can figure is that her heart may have given out.

And so, using blog nicknames as usual, here’s a nod of respect to Bat-Crap Crazy Food Nazi (BCCFN).  She drove me nuts while here at our house and about killed me with her preaching about the evils of salt while she was mentally measuring the amount I used with every shake, but it cannot be denied that she was at her core a kind and caring person.  I’m pretty darned sure that she didn’t suffer and that where BCCFN is right now is a wonderful place.

CW is doing well enough – it comes and goes in waves and as long as she keeps moving and focused on the details of small things she’s holding up.  I will keep the meals coming, the kitchen clean, and whatever is needed to keep things “normal” and let her and the kids deal with things as they wash over them.

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Mixup Sunday

Installment #2 of the short story will be put up tonight.  So sorry folks, life keeps getting in the way of my thought processes.

For those of you who have an iPad and are sick and tired of Apple’s vision of how to be total @$$h*le$ with regards to interfacing with the rest of the world, you can try out an online service called OnLive.  I could spend a crapload of time trying to explain it or I could just post a link here.

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The news article kind of focused on the wrong thing here.  A man was gored in Madrid.  That’s nice.  He was gored by a bull whose horns were intentionally loaded with wax and set on fire.  I am NOT a PETA freak.  I eat animals every single day and will never stop.  Even though I haven’t been in years I consider myself a hunter.  But focusing on the runner instead of the idiots who purposely gave a poor animal pure terror?  Come on, that’s criminal.

Torres said the bull charged the man, gored him and then stamped on his head, causing him “irreversible injuries.” He said he had offered his condolences to the man’s family, but would not cancel similar events scheduled for early Sunday.

“Although ours is a small town, many people from outside come to visit our feast dedicated to Saint Anton,” Torres said, adding that black bows had been tied to town hall flags as a mark of respect and mourning.

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Apparently no understanding is given to a mother who authorized her son to get a tattoo memorializing his dead olver brother.  Arrest and bonding make more sense.

“Unfortunately, the mother has elected not to cooperate with the police any further in this investigation,” Wilkie said. “The tragedy of this is that the child’s tattoos are some sort of memorial to a sibling who was lost in a car accident a few years ago. I understand from the investigators that there are several memorial to the deceased child in the apartment where they live. It may be that professional or religious counseling for their/her grief would be more  helpful than anything.”

Why should the mother co-operate with officials who arrested her for something like this?  I don’t normally feel this way about police but bitez mon crank.  Since when do citizens need their police officers to suggest what we need for our grief process.

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When is an owl swooping down to nab a rat-analogue news?  When the rat-analogue is saved by a real dog.

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Stringing Them Along

Our cat – Jack – has been whizzing all over the house, and I don’t mean “moving fast”.  It all started about the time he snuck outside and stayed there the whole day – shortly thereafter my dad came to visit for four days with his wife.

He’s whizzed four feet off the floor.  I can’t do that, so I have to wonder what kind of internal pressures cats are capable of.

At the vet’s office they looked at his urine test results, stuck a thermometer up his butt (at which point he lost his cool about the whole “let’s go to the vet” thing), palpated everything (hiss, phffffft), looked at his eyes and teeth (phffft, phfffft, growl), and checked his paws (double helpings on everything all around).

The vet concluded what I could have told him – that it was behavioral – and I knew this to 99-and-four-nines percent certainty.   Odds are that the black cat who keeps going through our yard is freaking him out and dad’s visit didn’t help matters.

What was the doc’s advice?  10 mg Amitriptyline once daily.  Great, my cat is on antipsychotics.

Of course we all knew that cats are psychotic furry little animal-world gangsters, anyway.  Or small irritable french women in cheap fur coats.

And at the pharmacy the gal asked if I was from Texas.

No, but I drove through northern Texas once.  No family there, either.

I found out that there is another me, by the same exact name, in Texas.  He has a Jack, too.  A dog though.  I told the gal that the odds weren’t high for that combination and she thought it strange, too.  Good thing the other me’s dog wasn’t a cat or I’d have gotten wiggy.

I got home and threw a pill down his gullet.  He’s been waaaaay sleepy ever since.  Kind of nice because he’s not picking on his sister.

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Cool science thing for today… using DNA to order quantum dots.

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Mmmm… Mobius bacon.  The plan was to put this over two eggs sunny-side up with a few IED’s next to it all and call it the “Grand Salaam Breakfast – Two Mobius Strips and Moons over IED’s.  But gosh-darn it, I’m tired and it was frankly starting to look like too much work.  So anyway, there’s some mobius bacon.  Wonder how it’d look on a tote or a t-shirt…

In related news, I gave up trying to do a Klein Pig.  Maybe later.  It was making my brain smoke.

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That’s funny… the guy has never been known for his sense of humor unless you thought he could walk on water, in which case you had to laugh at his jokes, or else be left behind after the Rapture.

“That’s why all his confirmation — all the answers at his confirmation hearings will be in a form of a question,” Obama said to silence.

“That’s a joke,” he reminded the audience.

– Obama’s lead souffle falling as he babbled about nominating Richard Cordray to run the consumer bureau

Thing is, Big O, if you have to tell someone it is a joke you might as well not draw attention to yourself with an even more awkward thing like saying “That’s a joke”.  Because then it’s like wrassling a girl – if you win, you beat a girl – if you lose, you got beaten by a girl.  If you have to say it was a joke then either yet again no one will find it funny – OR – they’ll do this little pity-chuckle which is even worse.   You lost, man – let it go.

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Hey, good news kid!  You get your cast off today!  And then you get a new one after the re-attachment surgeries to put your fingers back on.  Way to go, dad.

more later

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