Where I’m @

20011130

I love radical juxtaposition, whether intentional or not. Like the ear scene in Reservoir Dogs, despite the fact that I didn't keep my eyes open during it. Yes, of course, when it's badly done or over done (classical music during war scenes, for example). Current fave, possibly dead when you read this, is Ishbadiddle, where his top post is a thoughtful one about George Harrison's death, with a superimposed Geocities ad for Yahoo! movies featuring a lithe, tan, and scantily topped someone-or-other.

posted by Tk at 14:17 • • sealed in amber

Who knew that RuPaul had a blog? Thanks, “Blog of Note”! Anyway, more interesting than the blog (the usual self-gratifying drivel that you can get here without the attitude) is Ru’s bio. Whatta life! P.S. I’m not being facetious about liking the bio. We lived to “Supermodel” senior year of college.

posted by Tk at 13:43 • • sealed in amber

20011129

New definition of friendly fire via the AP.

posted by Tk at 09:40 • • sealed in amber

20011127

A friend asked me how I am. This is what I wrote and discarded:
Was in Medfield for Thanksgiving, and I feel good about helping out (it was just me and my parents; SO at her mom’s, sister and b.i.l. at their place in Arlington VA), but she’s not doing great, to the extent that she even told her parents as much in a letter and she got pretty freaked out at least once when a telephone paging button didn’t work. (We set her up with that so that she doesn't have to be watched every minute, which she doesn’t want and which would make it near impossible for my dad to be the only one in the house some times. She’ll have to have constant care soon enough.)
Understandable, especially considering that she was also pretty tired from a group of visitors the previous weekend. Every time I visit it’s something new, and this time it was that they’ve decided they can’t have more than two visitors at once, and preferably for not very long. (Children and their attachments excluded, naturelment.) I continue to believe (selfishly) I’d rather have as much time with her as possible before she dies, but we’re pretty close to the point where “having time with her” means “making her fear drowning on dry land for another day.” Maybe we’re already there, who knows.

posted by Tk at 11:28 • • sealed in amber

20011126

The Yes Men, a corporate satire organization responsible in the past for faux-WTO presentations at vrai conferences, have released software for easily making your own parody sites, with the aim of making it easier and more widespread to spoof internationalization of corporate logic and corporate rule. More links will equal higher placement on Google, too.
NB: This only works on UNIX servers at this point, and if you choose to use it, please look at the examples they give so as to do a better job than some of them. (Some are good, though.)

posted by Tk at 09:32 • • sealed in amber

20011121

This is also on the Blogger home page, but consider doing something on World AIDS Day like writing about how AIDS has affected you and linking to sites that deal with the scourge.

posted by Tk at 09:54 • • sealed in amber

20011120

Flotsam:
Discovered a blog via Blogger’s front page that I might just have to start keeping up with regularly, NoGagReflex.

Jetsam:
Spent way too much time this morning at EEggs.com, the site for Easter Eggs in various media. Like any site with low barriers to posting, there’s a lot of dross, and there’re many references to outdated software, but there's some pretty cool stuff too. Like the eggs themselves, it takes some work to find the good stuff.

posted by Tk at 12:39 • • sealed in amber

20011116

Man, what an amazing thing to be able to have your face uncovered in public for the first time in five years. Just about made me cry. (Via Jeffrey Zeldman.)
This is one of those things where I waive my usually firm cultural relativism. I mean, we’re all different, but is it really OK to require half of your people to conceal themselves, to deny their corporeality when in public, to therefore effectively create distributed homelands and diffused apartheid? Call me an imperialist, but I say no. Which makes it the more disappointing that a recent wedding we went to featured the “obey” clause in her vows but not his. The relationship equivalent of not having indoor plumbing.

posted by Tk at 08:52 • • sealed in amber

20011115

Ish (via Patrick) mentioned the other day a new robot from Honda, and said he thought it looked like a Transformer, but I'm feeling LEGO more than Transformer.

posted by Tk at 16:01 • • sealed in amber

Mom got her wheelchair recently, which sucks. Apparently, she’s not so keen on it either. How could you be? “Whee! I’ve got a pathetic imitation of the mobility I used to have! I still can’t eat for myself and I have to wear a contraption at night that helps me breathe, but I can do doughnuts in the living room!”

posted by Tk at 15:58 • • sealed in amber

20011112

And then there’s the fraulein with the world’s longest tongue.

posted by Tk at 16:45 • • sealed in amber

Unsettling, but in a different way than and unrelated to, terrorism: The S.O. and I went to a wedding this weekend and got a homemade CD as a lovely parting gift. Played it the next morning and found that a song on it, placed reasonably prominently toward the end, was the same song that the widow of a close acquaintance sang at the memorial service in New York. Both the newly-marrieds and the formerly-marrieds (how do you refer to a couple jointly if one is dead? The vows usually do say “until death you do part,” right?) are conservative Christians, fundamentalists some might argue. If I could remember the title of the song, I would link it somewhere, but I can’t; maybe tomorrow.

posted by Tk at 12:33 • • sealed in amber

Is this considered news? :: America shelters its share of terrorists.

When people tell those of us raising the issue of the United States’ share of blame in the Current Situation to shut up because we’re traitors, I wonder how they feel about the lack of high-level government outcry over things like this. Conservatives have fostered a climate in this country where terrorism against reproductive health and family planning clinics and, yes, abortion clinics is tacitly allowed. And then we’ve got the gall to say we're going to severely punish any country that harbors terrorists.

posted by Tk at 11:12 • • sealed in amber

Blogger must be getting slammed right now, since a plane crashed this morning in Queens. For those of you not in NYC, that means that a plane from JFK, bound for the Dominican Republic, crashed soon after takeoff. Bridges and tunnels have all been closed. Airports are closed. A woman in my office went downstairs to have a smoke and the cops told her to go back inside. Is this what we get for trying to get back to normal?

posted by Tk at 10:34 • • sealed in amber

20011107

Female Irish soccer fans to buy Farsi dictionaries en masse

The Iran soccer federation has decided that 300 female Irish fans will be allowed as spectators at the Iran–Ireland World Cup playoff next week. It’s the first time since 1979 that women will be allowed into the stadium during a match. Iranian women are banned from the matches so that they won’t be offended by the rude language and gestures, but Irish women won’t have that problem. Read the whole article.

posted by Tk at 13:32 • • sealed in amber

20011102

Sweet! Once the Daily News plastered its cover with the great Milton Glaser’s updated I-♥-NY logo, I've been dying to get myself a copy, and now I finally have. Found it at the AIGA discussion forum, which is, BTW, a great place to go to see some discussion about the relevance of design (and by implication, any indirect action) in the aftermath of the WTC terrorism.

posted by Tk at 13:20 • • sealed in amber