Category: Miscellany

  • Can't anybody here play this game?

    First they laughed Fleischer out of the room, then this petty payback against Helen Thomas, and now the stilted, scripted case-for-war, sorta, press conference is under scrutiny, according to this Kuro5hin thread, Ari Fleischer admits Bush called from a prepared list of reporters thread. Insert “bush league” crack here.

  • Suddenly, I'm very busy

    My dance card is full now at least through May, and I’d like to spend a week or so in Greece in May or June this year, and with this flood of steady, varied, remunerative work I suddenly find myself more productive in other areas as well. I’m applying what I’ve learned and practiced over…

  • Vive La France

    A Chronicle article from January 24 circulating among my environmentalist brethren and sistren (Taking on ‘Rational Man’) discusses the politics of academic economics, and the animosity between neoclassical economists and dissidents. While professors in the U.S. are being marginalized in subsidiary theoretical programs, French grad students have taken the lead in the rebellion: The dissidents…

  • Sometimes I get a great notion

    T. C. Boyle (or as the old New Yorker cartoon had him, T. Whatsisname Boyle) was on Forum today on KQED and I called in to ask him a question. I wanted to mention how much I liked Sorry Fugu, which I think I read originally in a Best American Short Stories anthology in the…

  • Camfoolery

    Been geeking around on a PC again. Borrowed a Dell for an upcoming documentation project and been bidding on Thinkpad’s on ebay for another project. (Found out I’m going to be working with my old friend Molly on the project I can’t talk about yet, which is cool! Maybe I’ll even get onto her Famous…

  • I'll call you elphy junior

    Well, it turns out immersion in coffee is not good for digital camera. Our local camera shop (down on Lake Shore, and it’s cool we have one – the old typewriter repair shop on College in Elmwood closed recently), sent it back to Canon for a $20 estimate. Turns out they can fix it or…

  • Navigate by time

    Given the choice of half of Paul Ford‘s writing talent or half of his database squeegling skills, I’m not sure which I’d choose…. (Go on?)

  • Work more, blog less

    Seems like as I workload heats up and my deadlines start compounding, I am blogging less. Sometimes this is not the case. Often there are delicate webs of interdependent procrastinations at work. Then I can accomplish much while still feeling bad about something important I’m not doing. This feels more like a fast. A little…

  • Ken Layne looking for online column

    If there’s any blogger out there who deserves a decent-paying column gig, it’s Ken Layne. He’s got the writing chops, the journalism dues paid, and the blog cred. What more is required?

  • Not yet 40 and not a killer

    Noticed a bunch of visitors coming from an unfamiliar referrer. It turns out to be a message board for players of some online game. Apparently one of the participants is a French-speaking 15-year-old from Canada who goes by the online handle ‘xian’. The mother of one of the other teen participants in the game Google…

  • Ain't no thesis like a P-Funk thesis…

    Is the academic world ready for the awesome power of a fully operational mothership? Scot Hacker reports that an article he wrote on Parliament-Funkadelic for a book by Pagan Kennedy has inspired a master’s thesis on P-Funk and Transcendentalism. Now maybe Scot’s seminal writings on Liberace will finally get the attention they deserve in the…

  • Confidentiality Notice

    This message is intended exclusively for the individual or entity to which it is addressed. This communication may contain information that is proprietary, privileged, confidential or otherwise legally exempt from disclosure. If you are not the named addressee, you are not authorized to read, print, retain, copy or disseminate this message or any part of…

  • Throw me something, mister

    Happy Mardi Gras! The beadcam shows a pretty tame daytime scene at this moment, but it may get more interesting this evening. [via MZ] UPDATE: I fixed the bad link. Thanks, Rayne. The crowds are getting thicker already. (1:05 PM Pacific time)

  • Seed packet poetry

    Andrew Stafford, who helped us make sense of Duchamp and put Aspen magazine online, tells me he has now produced a version of Richard Brautigan’s Please Plant This Book, a collection of poems in the form of a collection of seed packets. Stafford’s tasteful minimal animation provides a comfortable interface for browsing these contemplative and…

  • Who is heathen.net?

    So I’m goofing around thumbing through the always entertaining Craigslist and I notice that they’ve added (or made more accessible) a system basically allowing people to flag items as inappropriate, misfiled, or especially good. In a way it’s like the modding up and down they do at Slashdot. Anyway, I go to check out the…

  • In-box heck

    There was a time when I had my in box(es) totally under control. Stuff got filtered. I either deleted messages, replied to them, or saved them if they really needed saving. Then blogging helped, because it provides a way to directly deal with any information that comes into my box and deserves immediate public comment…

  • A neighborly day in this beautywood

    At some point Fred Rogers’ death from stomach cancer is going to hit me, but so far mostly I think it’s kind of passed by me in a glaze. Somehow I’m associating Mr. Rogers with my maternal grandfather, an equally calming presence. An op-ed in the Times today nearly brought a tear to my eye,…

  • What does the PC stand for?

    Sometimes the only thing more entertaining than Craigslist personals is the CL job listings. Take this one, PCBootyCall.com Model Recruiter Wanted. Apparently, “PCBootyCall.com is a new promotional service for adult models in the USA.” They’re seeking “professional and responsible” female escorts, dancers, and “adult companions” (high quality only) to advertise presumably on their site. Apparently…

  • Thank heaven for Orcinus

    If Orcinus had a syndicated (RSS) feed, I’d put his headlines write on the main Mediajunkie page. By catching up with him today, I learned that someone actually is now transcribing Rush Limbaugh, got frightened by signs of the demonization of dissent, read about a Karl Rove lie on the record, got caught up on…

  • A day in the life.

    A day in the life. x: got some quotes of deductible vs. premium tradeoff at progressive. x: also getting a quote from gecko. b: i tried to call you earlier…D and I were discussing his coming over for dinner tonight & Buffy watching… b: then he got a call from S saying she and S…

  • Nothing to see here. Test

    Nothing to see here. Test category-based trackback ping functionality between this blog and metaxian, which really sohuld be and eventually probably will be just a category of this blog. Now move along.