Author: Aaron Weber

Hey You Kids Get Off My Lawn

RCB points me to SexLingo, which I am sorry to say is the most overengineered piece of trash I have ever seen. Let me count the ways that this noble concept could have avoided annoyance:
There’s only one tiny link in the page that launches the dictionary, and it’s not easy to find. It’s done in Shockwave 8.5, which is completely unnecessary for a dictionary. It uses XML and a database which is overkill for a dictionary of under ten or twenty thousand entries. It forces you to use a single lookup heirarchy (category, then alpha) when XML and a database could be used for multiple drill-down patterns and also a search engine. It uses cascading menus when it should probably be a flat list. You have to look up each word individually and can’t click “Next” or “Previous.” The definitions are not displayed along with their corresponding words, so if the definition doesn’t make immediate sense you aren’t sure that you haven’t clicked the wrong menu item (is that what “turkey” means? Or did I just click on “terabyte?” ). There are no links between words, even when you are directed “see steerer” or “see felching.” Between lookups you have to move the mouse off the menu launching point, then go back and click; this makes browsing a pain in the ass.

In other words, I’m a crotchety old man who’s pedantic about technology. And who has just discovered that this site renders poorly on the Danger Sidekick (aka T*Mobile HipTop). I think the stylesheets are broken for Internet Explorer on Windows, as well, but I don’t think any of my friends use that.

Which is yet more evidence that I live in a parallel universe of my own creation. I mean, really. I know only two or three people who voted for Dubya. Everyone I know thinks abortion should be safe and legal, and that gay people should be allowed to marry and adopt, and that drug laws in this country don’t make any sense. I can just tell that some day I’m going to buy a tiny little house with a tiny little lawn, and every afternoon at three thirty I’ll come out the door in a cardigan waving my fist and shouting at the goddamn kids to stay away from my tiny little house and off my tiny little lawn.

Hematoma

Oh, sure, I rant and shout about all the ranting and shouting. But lemme tellya, some people are getting the shorter end of the stick for their ranting and shouting. Like the random protestor who caught a a rubber bullet in the face this past weekend. (Via Yahoo News.)

Rubber bullets sound harmless, and they’re certainly less damaging than steel. But they’re not what you’d call safe either. Other info: Doctors urge rubber bullet ban (BBC UK) Beyond the Rubber Bullet (Time on nonlethal weapons), Future Nonlethal Weapons Arsenal (apc.org)

Correction

Ettore has convinced me that I was incorrect of me to state that “the average anti-war protestor is retarded.” I was actually quoting someone else at the time, and have edited the entry to make that clearer. However, it’s still an insult to people such as Ettore, who are really very intelligent anti-war protestors. Heck, it’s an insult to the developmentally challenged. What I meant, and what I assume i5 meant, was:

A very loud, highly visible minority of protestors are wicked queer, By which I mean they dress like soccer players.

A Price Above Oil

Fray Luis De Leon’s sixteenth-century pedagogical work La Perfecta Casada (The perfect wife) is a manual for household management in all aspects. Of course, it demands pretty severe submission and subjugation of women.

The group Ladies Against Feminism would love to bring it all back. They’re not alone– plenty of people out there are all about the modest swimwear and head coverings. Oh, sure, there’s plenty of Christians showing skin and even hip religious-themed clothing (Christians for Cannabis, anyone?), which is all well and good– none of this is mandatory.

Still, the religious right, via Ashcroft and his crew, are running the show in a lot of ways, and I’m wondering how much freedom I’ve already lost. I want to know how close we’re getting to The Handmaid’s Tale here. Even Margaret Atwood wants to know. It’s not just religious extremism I fear, although I know that non-Christians are more targeted by the current rash of extrajudicial detentions in the US. The jingoist hounds are baying that I’m a traitor because I think this is an unjust war, that Bush has the wrong motives at heart, that we’re bathing in blood and pumping it at the Shell station.

Everyone who’s studied World War II and the holocaust remembers this:

They came for the Communists, and I didn’t object – For I wasn’t a Communist;
They came for the Socialists, and I didn’t object – For I wasn’t a Socialist;
They came for the labor leaders, and I didn’t object – For I wasn’t a labor leader;
They came for the Jews, and I didn’t object – For I wasn’t a Jew;
Then they came for me – And there was no one left to object.
– Martin Niemoller, German Protestant Pastor, 1892-1984

Well, they have come to detain and register Arab men. They have come for the homosexuals in the middle of the night.

I mean, how much is too much to take? How late is too late to get out?

Sick?

You know how when you were sick as a child, you got to eat ice cream or whatever? I’ve been stuck in bed with a back injury for days and my diet today has consisted of m&m’s, bourbon, and french fries. It makes the pain go away.