Secretly Ironic

Won’t you come to comfort me?

With rocks in my dress
and smoke in my hair
I walked into the lake
to get some sleep down in there

-Sparklehorse

Two from Yankee Pot Roast

Open Letter to McSweeney’s, in which Yankee pretends to be McSweeney’s publishing an Open Letter to Itself….

Middle East Gawker, a parody of Gawker, also known as “the NYC gossip sheet from the makers of Gizmodo and FleshBot (NSFW)

Seems obvious to me, but children just seem like a luxury most people just shouldn’t indulge in. I mean, you can do quite well making not much money if you’re only supporting yourself. But feeding eight people on a minimum wage salary? Not bloody likely.

The solutions, of course, are difficult. If we “care about the children” we’ll increase aid to families with dependent children, but then the “personal responsibility” right complains about “welfare queens” and “abuse of the system,” and the childless cranks like me tend to get annoyed that all their money is going to support people too irresponsible to use a rubber.

Frankly, I don’t have kids and don’t plan to, but I still find the Child-Free Movement, like the QuirkyAlone movement, incredibly annoying. Being single and childless is not a “movement.” I have no problem paying my education taxes, or helping out when my co-workers have sick kids, because I know those kids will be paying for my retirement. That’s the intergenerational commitment that the childfree selfishly ignore. Still, I wish people would think twice before, as it were, pulling the trigger and bringing one more miserable squalling child into this world. It’s not like the kid will be grateful or anything.

SLC Punk

200 MB into the downloading of X11 and OpenOffice.Org for MacOS X, I’m definitely getting my money’s worth of bandwidth from the hotel net connection.

My back is killing me. I feel like an old man. Hell, I tried to go to bed at seven thirty tonight.

Need a new laptop. OS X was cute and all, but this hardware is way out of date and I need something I can work on, not just play. And that means SUSE 9.1, XD Unstable, OpenOffice 1.1, and most importantly Evolution 1.5. Mail.app blows chunks. I still haven’t figured out how to get it to display more than one folder.

Three Friday Oddities

Gruesome: Man attempts to recreate crucifixion, discovers that once his first hand is nailed to the cross, he can’t use it to nail the other one.

Political: Quiz on the origin of various political platitudes. Hint: RNC.

Criminal: Coverage of the Aryan Brotherhood, America’s favorite prison gang.

Bitter Litte Coda to an Illustrious Career

Avenue Victor Hugo Bookstore is closing after nearly 30 years in business, and posts an incredibly bitter little suicide note to everyone who failed the store as it was dying. I’d do the same. Screw being gracious and going down with the ship, especially when you’re more or less in a fleet and you’re watching one after another sink as the weather turns against you all. It’s mean, it’s self-serving, and it’s basically true, with the exception of the final prediction that the closure of bookstores leads inexorably to the end of culture and erudition.
Continue reading “Bitter Litte Coda to an Illustrious Career”

Southie is my home

Three hundred sixty five days ago, Sunday night, I went to a party. There were beer cans on the train on the way over. The station smelled like beer. The neighborhood smelled like beer. Needless to say, I woke up Monday morning in Southie.

Eurotrash recalls her Irish upbringing in London: “Usually I told people I was Canadian. No-one hates a Canadian. ”

Indeed.

Hours and Time

Within two weeks of arriving at Ximian, in April 2000, I had pulled my first 36-hour shift, discovered the wonderful condition called “keyboard-face,” and spent nearly 100 dollars on high-caffeine beverages and diGiorno pizzas delivered to my door by the late lamented Kozmo.com.

I have never felt the kind of stress that I do now. My entire spinal column hurts, my head throbs, I can feel my gut clenched all day while I sit at my desk, and half a dozen times a day I feel my heart beat rapidly in my chest and find it difficult to breathe. I think Brainshare might be to blame, but I can’t really tell. With any luck I’ll feel better by April.

Hidden Messages

Before my parents left for vacation, my dad hid my mother’s jewelry. When they got back, he couldn’t remember where he’d hidden it. At some point in his search, he took the bottom drawer out of the built-in cabinet in my old bedroom. Taped to the floor was a note, in my handwriting, saying “What are you looking for? What did you hide?”

I’d apparently written it and put it there when I was maybe 18 and then forgotten all about it.

Is this funny?

I think this is a joke news report, in which case it’s pretty funny. Actually, it might even be funny even if it did happen.

This one is a real news report about the possible damage to emotional interactions caused by psychopharmacology. If love is like addiction and obsession, you can more or less cure that with medication, right?

I have a feeling this could be a good excuse for people afraid to commit to relationships (“You’re wonderful and I would love you, but I’m medicated beyond the ability to love!”) That’s better than “it’s not me, it’s you” or “let’s be friends.” I guess.