PhiCycles

WTF Dept.

2007-10-16T18:19:00.000-04:00

Okay. I guess I need to know just what the hell is up with this: the Royal Chocolatier to Prince Charles etc. was caught on security cameras squishing and mauling a rival firm's truffles.

Here on Shikasta we're still muddling along

2007-10-11T17:16:00.000-04:00

Now here's a refreshing surprise. For the first time in my memory, this year's winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature is not only someone I've heard of, but someone I've actually read: Doris Lessing. Who, kind of like Ursula K. LeGuin, sometimes writes very accessible and insightful things, and sometimes writes like a hyperintelligent space alien reporting insightful observations back to home base. Fabulous when it isn't baffling.

Operation Dekruft

2007-10-09T23:34:00.000-04:00

Let that be a lesson: Don't send a bacterium to do a biped's job.

-- Alton Brown, "Pickles"

I'm always glad when I remember to watch Good Eats.

Speaking of single-celled organisms, much of my not-online time the last several days has been spent scrubbing algae and leaf stains and miscellaneous kruft from the bricks & cement of my porch and driveway. Before that, I was wielding the electric hedge trimmer for another good workout. More of a workout than I get sitting on my ass staring at the computer. Just another step in the larger project of de-krufting the house after a couple of years of Not Being Here while we had to live in the UK. At least the fleas seem to be gone now, thanks to much toil and vigilance on my part. Waving around a 10-lb weight at arm's length for a solid hour felt good (in that relativistic "healthy" sort of way), but tasks like these are not going to improve my chronic problem with bra straps and backpack/purse straps.

10 lbs of fertilizer in a 5 lb sack

2007-10-02T11:52:00.000-04:00

One happy note lately is that I've lost 6-8 unnecessary lbs in the past couple weeks or so, thanks to the Stop Eating So Damn Much diet. This will continue for a while, because I'm sick and @#%! tired of being able to cram my arse only into the most pathetic end of my wardrobe.

On a related note, I've been busy resurfacing my face.
(though there's only so much that can be done at this point)

DNA in (≥)4D

2007-10-01T13:27:00.000-04:00

I haven't watched a whole hell of a lot of recent movies in the past few years, thanks to a lack of long enough blocks of time, and am gradually increasing my rate of getting back into it. We've had the DVD of The Incredibles since it came out, but only just now got around to convincing the offspring to not be chicken about watching a movie. Glad we did. I especially liked the invulnerable unstoppable battle-bot goaded into ripping its own brain out of its poor head. The hilarious Edna Mode/Edith Head costume designer character ("I used to design for GODS!") was true Art.

Baby Jack-Jack reminded me of one of my favorite old-time sci-fi novels, Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke. (I assume I'm not the only person who was disturbed by the way the novel's cool opening sequence was totally ripped off and bastardized in that lame and dreadful TV series "V" 20 years ago.) So who's ready to evolve to the next octave? Besides the Singularitarians. I mean, I'm game. Hyperdimensionality is something we're all eventually going to be needing to get used to, for all sorts of reasons. Probably sooner than we think.

Got Caffeine?

2007-09-29T10:26:00.000-04:00

While my thoughts get themselves a bit more organized, I'll redeploy the odd useful morsel(s) as they occur to me....

Here's a fun rant from a few hundred years ago.

"Certainly our Countrymen's pallates are become as Fanatical as their Brains - how else is't possible they should Apostatize from the good old primitive way of ale-drinking, to run a Whoreing after such variety of destructive Foreign Liquors, to trifle away their time, scald their Chops, and spend their Money, all for a little base, black, thick, nasty bitter stinking, nauseous Puddle water Yet (as all Witches have their Charms) so this ugly Turkish Enchantress by certain Invisible Wyres attracts both Rich and Poor..."

-excerpt from the Women's Petition Against Coffee, 1674

-L.

Ex Cinere Ignis Exsuscitatur

2007-09-28T12:49:00.000-04:00

Greetings. Today is the first day of the rest of this blog. Eventually I will add photo galleries and links and all that, to partly make up for my poor senile (all right, vegetative) and languishing website. But, I also like having my own private domain space at spoobles.net, so hopefully that feeble beginning and this feeble resuscitation will help regenerate momentum and ultimately result in something better there, too.