twist of fait accomplis
April 2003
It's a few weeks late, so forgive me...
Isn't that the funniest headline? It makes me wonder "Did they like it?" (For what it's worth, I don't remember the subhead being part of the original article, but I could be wrong.)
A related entry has been posted to Soft Rains (for the first time since October!): "Adjusting misconceptions."
Have I mentioned that I hate mowing the lawn?
And this year, the grass seems to be growing entirely too quickly. In seven days, our tiny front lawn had gotten so long that it ate up most of my mower's battery charge. And the backyard is a jungle... I'm not looking forward to mowing that for the first time. My neighbor's borrowed the mower a few times recently while his gas mower's been in the shop... he's had similar problems with the battery dying thanks to the rain and unusually fast-growing grass. The problem's not the battery, though. The problem is God. He's making the grass grow too fast.
I'm pretty sure that I'll be mowing most of this week after work. If you need me, I'll be out back.
Current MWC students and alumni should consider signing the Save the Name Petition (almost 700 have signed already). Some of us are actually proud to have graduated from the only public college in the United States named after a woman.
On Sunday, America's oldest living person, Mary Christian, died at the age of 113. It's a pretty amazing story, but the reason I'm linking it up is the last paragraph:
The oldest living American is now Elana Slough, 113, of New Jersey, who was born 26 days after Christian, according to Stephen Coles, an instructor of gerontology at the UCLA School of Medicine who is part of the group that tracks the ultra-old.
Since when has "ultra-old" been the way to refer to someone very old? Is that a normal term that gerontologists use? At what point are you no longer just old, but "ultra-old?"
Run, Kim, Run!: On '24,' a Ludicrous but Alluring String of Perils
Kim is us. We are Kim. Every time your cell phone doesn't work, every time you get kidnapped, every time you lose your car keys or, say, can't get away from trained assassins, or every time you're stuck in traffic (or causing a jam, like the time you set that deputy's vehicle on fire, or the time the cops found your boss's dead wife in the trunk of the car, which, technically, you stole from him), every time your boyfriend loses his leg trying to help you thwart disaster, just think of Kim and know you're not alone.
Alyssa was scooting around the family room tonight and came across the DVDs. Check out which one she picked... that's my niece!:
VH-1's 50 Greatest Hip-Hop Artists
Does anyone else see what a joke this list is?
Just to give you an idea:
- L'il Kim is ranked ahead of Big Daddy Kane.
- P. Diddy is ranked 14th.
- Eve is ranked ahead of Kool Moe Dee. Moe Dee would have given Eve a terrible report card (bonus points if you get this reference.)
- Nelly is 11 spots ahead of Gang Starr.
It makes me ill.
Stace and the girls came in town on Wednesday. I've enjoyed having breakfast with Jules each morning, playing with Alyssa (who suffers from UCBS, Unbeliveably Cute Baby Syndrome), and chatting it up with my sister, who's doing a heck of a job with the two girls while Matt's overseas helping the war effort.
Moms and pops come in town Sunday for Easter Dinner, where we'll be foregoing the traditional ham for a family favorite spaghetti and spinach casserole.
I got my new studio mic in the mail yesterday... it looks so sweet. I need to buy a new mic stand, though, so I'm going to head over to a music store across the street from my work. Oddly, though I've worked within a few blocks of this store for nearly five years, I've never been inside.
Huyen and I have been slowly preparing for our upcoming trip to Chicago for a certain someone's wedding. We're really looking forward to the trip and seeing Paul and Jeani again. I was in Chicago briefly when I was in sixth grade, but don't remember much of it beyond Mrs. Levy's Deli and the Sears Tower. We've been planning out a series of great veggie restaurants to try, hipster art places to visit, and music stores to hit up. I've also convinced Huyen to go with me to see Magic Sam's grave. If that ain't fun, I don't know what is. We've been preparing a large archive of This American Life and other NPR features to listen to during the long drive. I also grabbed the full audio for the Fray Cafe. Good stuff.
That's all from this side of town. What's going on in your neck of the woods?
When I buy something on Amazon, I can't save myself any money by going through ebates, because Amazon doesn't participate. However, I would like to be able to send a few pennies from my order to a worthy affiliate.
When I set out to make a purchase, I'll often think about where I want money money to go and then head to a web site I frequent and go to Amazon through their affiliate link. For instance, if I want to support Erik over at Vegan.com, I'll click through his link. Or if there's a blogger I've been really enjoying as of late, I may visit through their link. One thing I think would be helpful is if there were an opt-in Amazon Affiliate directory. It could be sorted into three main categories: Charity / Commerical / Individual. Subcats could then be created under each category.
This is going out to the LazyWeb in case anyone wants to take the idea and run with it. I can't imagine it would be terribly difficult to set up, especially using some Yahoo/ODP-like open source software to handle submissions.
Man, fuck the Virginia Department of Taxation. Really and truly.
As you may remember, I recently incorporated my super small record label as an LLC. There are a number of steps you have to follow to fully set up your business/retail operation (since I sell CDs online as well as functioning as a record label). One of the last steps is to sign up to pay sales and use tax to the state for each sale that's made. When I signed up, I figured it was something that was paid yearly, or at most, quarterly. Turns out, it needs to be paid monthly and if you're late filing for a month (even if you don't owe a penny of tax), there's an automatic $10 penalty.
I signed up in late March, which put me $20 in the hole before I even started. And you know how much tax I actually owe for the first two months of the year? $1.79. They wouldn't waive the charge. Idiots.
Oh, and I should probably mention that there's bug in their code that doesn't allow me to register a new EFT account with them. Wonderful. How am I supposed to pay online when they have buggy code and poor error messages?
Kind of a weird weekend... caught up on sleep, prepared a bit for family coming in town this week, and had a nice dinner out on Friday night. The weird part? I liked a Tom Cruise movie and was unimpressed with Rob Zombie's new movie.
Something strange is going on.
Happy birthday to Grandpop, would would have been 90 today (or 91... he had two birth certificates).
And happy birthday tomorrow to Grandmom, who always acts surprised when I remember.
Love you both.
Foxtrot makes a funny!
(Actually Foxtrot makes a lot of funnies. Of the mainstream comics in most newspapers, it's one of the smartest of the bunch.)
The thought had been spinning around in the back of my head after the happy pictures of a liberated Baghdad flooded TV screens earlier this week. Mike articulated my thoughts perfectly on a recent entry and Meg has illustrated it graphically.
It's great that the people of Iraq are out from under the thumb of Saddam, but man oh man, there's a long way to go. A day of statue toppling and looting may be well-deserved, but now let's see if there's really any decent rebuilding plan in place.
And let's see if we ever find those WMDs.
Thanks to Patrick for passing along this news story: Benjamin Sifrit has been convicted for the murder of Martha Crutchley, but was cleared in the murder of her husband, Joshua Ford. He was also convicted as an accessory for the dismemberment of the two bodies afterwards.
For more on the Sifrit case, see the fredericksburg.com archives.
Some interesting new updates in the Sifrit case: apparently, Benjamin is now claiming he was asleep in his Jeep while Erika killed Martha Crutchley and Joshua Ford. Benjamin is currently only trial, while Erika will face a jury in June.
A Disgusting Practice Vanishes With the Token
As the New York Subway does away with tokens in favor of MetroCards, an interesting piece of crime history will disappear: token sucking.
The criminal carefully jams the token slot with a matchbook or a gum wrapper and waits for a would-be rider to plunk a token down. The token plunker bangs against the locked turnstile and walks away in frustration. Then from the shadows, the token sucker appears like a vampire, quickly sealing his lips over the token slot, inhaling powerfully and producing his prize: a $1.50 token, hard earned and obviously badly needed.
(via Biz Stone)
Meredith, who works as an ASL interpreter, has a recent entry about having to interpret news for a patient that he has cancer.
I imagine my face was a combination of my feelings about the news, my annoyance toward the doctor, the neutrality he was presenting, and the sympathy I'd been expecting him to show. I probably ended up jumbling everything and really confusing the patient.
Sometimes it's hard to remember that the interpreters you see signing are people and not machines translating words into hand gestures without emotion.
It's almost time to buy a new organizer, as my current one ends in June or July. I've been toying around with the idea of trying a PDA (yeah, I know, about five years behind the curve), but I don't need the extraneous crap. I pretty much just want an electronic datebook that syncs up with my PC.
I'm thinking the Sharp YO-290P might do the trick. And shoot, it's $26 shipped at Amazon. Can't beat that with a stickball bat. Anyone ever tried one of these?
I find it endlessly funny that today's Phonezilla is toilet-centric, and then one of the footer paragraphs ("A Technical Note") mentions "a squatter."
How old am I again?
The Washington Post looks at 100 underrated colleges worth looking at. #50: MWC...
Its strong academic reputation and low price tag as a state school have made Mary Washington a rising star. Natalie Root, a teacher at Washington-Lee High School in Arlington, Va., said, "Parents, former students, and other teachers I have spoken to about this school all have the same basic response, 'What a great place!'"
