Something in my eye...

There are times that I am truly cynical. That I loose much of my faith in mankind. War, disease, hatred. It seems that there is a never ending supply of misery dispensed by my fellow howling monkeys.

Then I see something like this and I smile. And laugh. I remember that we sometimes aren't complete assholes. Sometimes we do nice things for people we don't even know.

Trying to do right

I am not what one would call a greener or an environmentalist. But I have a healthy respect for the planet. I do what small things I can. But when we moved to Wellington we learned that although recycling was available everywhere around us, WE did not have it.

If we wanted to recycle, we could take our aluminum cans and paper to the local recycling center on Thursday between 6-8pm and Saturday from 12 - 3 pm. That's it. We couldn't even drop it off after hours as the collection bins were locked up.

Awesome. Despite this severe annoyance we did start recycling. We flattened cans and stored up large garbage bags of them for infrequent drop offs. We also started collecting paper which we would drop off at collection points when we went to visit Rossanas father. No plastic or glass collection at all.

But yesterday Waste Management dropped off a shiny new green can and announced they are joining a program called recyclebank. Apparently they will now take paper, glass, plastic, and aluminium in the same can without any sorting. SWEET!

Even better, we get points for the amount we recycle which can be used for goods and/or services. The program looks legit and I am excited we can actually recycle more now without jumping through a bunch of ridiculous hoops.

Pioneers...

If you have a television you may have seen this Levi's commercial:

While I am not what one could call a devotee of poetry I knew this wasn't written by some agency hack. It's Walt Whitman and you can find it here. It's good stuff. Apparently Levi-Strauss has a kind of scavenger hunt associated with this add campaign. It led to $100,000. It would have been nice if they had told someone about this contest. Just throwing a website at us means little in this age of constant advertising bombardment.

But I'm okay with having gotten a great poem out of it.

Bonus- The other commercial in this series features the voice Walt Whitman reading his poem "America"from a wax cylinder. It's both sweet and haunting.

Catching up...

This short video gives an accurate (if oversimplified) history of what's been going on in Afghanistan since 2001. It's worth a watch. While the long term stability of Iraq is anyones guess they do have the advantage of having something to sell and some national infrastructure. Afghanistan on the other hand is simply brimming with misery, religious nuts on all sides and bumper crops of dope and opium.

Our military, while doing a fine job under very difficult circumstances, isn't the total answer. This place needs schools, moderate clerics and a secure border with Pakistan where the Taliban like to vacation before coming home and shooting shit up.

Tatoos

For the longest time I was a firm believer in the "Modifications may void the manufacturers warranty" school of thought. Piercings and tattoos were out for me. Time has certainly mellowed this view. I know some people with ink and they are pretty cool. I don't let it color my impressions of them. Piercing still make me flinch a little. But then again, I have seen a lot of piercings that are waaaaay past the earlobes or eyebrow. Then there's this guy:

The Enigma

Looks kinda....strange? But I met him a few years ago at a show and he was extremely well spoken, pleasant and polite. A bit of a nerd. Married too. Nice guy.

While ink has gained pretty widespread acceptance big piercings still get stares. So drilling a hole through my nose or shoving a spike through my ear isn't likely in my future.

But what about a tattoo? I sometimes wonder what I would get permanently inked onto my skin if I weren't descended from Yetti's. Picture? Text? Alchemical formula? The options are limitless. Because I wear no jewelry I once gave serious thought to getting a tattoo of my wedding ring on my ring finger. But in the end it really wasn't needed was it? I know I'm married and committed to my wife and I don't need a piece of jewelry to remind me of that.

I guess its unlikely I'll ever get any ink. Unless maybe... pirate map on my skull?? Hmmmm...

Simple pleasures

I was a sign maker for years, which is why watching protesters these days both amuses and horrifies me. Here is a fine collection. Enjoy.

I'm gonna a write me a letter...

Inspired by this story of a young and unknown David Bowie writing a personal letter to a fan.

Have you ever written a letter to a famous person and gotten a response?

God saves the day!

Or not..

A woman lets gets kids starve for 11 days, making no effort to get help because "God would help them".

God was apparently busy doing something else. Luckily none of the kids died. Look, if you you're going to believe in an invisible sky wizard (and you have every right to) Understand that he/she/it gave you a BRAIN. If you look at all recorded history God shows up in person very very infrequently. His creations are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves. He supposedly made us that way. So stop sponging off of God(tm)!

You learn something new every day..

Today I learned that the Roman vomitorium isn't what what I thought it was. Go check out wikipedia and then read this.

Pure Awesome...

I don't know who was responsible for this. But they are my hero. This isn't the product of some one being lazy. This took work and a lot of love. If you don't know the inspiration for this, you are likely under 30. And that's a shame.

What the hell???

Why the !@#$ have I just learned about this NOW???

http://blogs.laweekly.com/westcoastsound/synthful/post-apocalyptic-party-road-wa/index.php

http://www.laweekly.com/slideshow/view/28836900

I could have RULED Bartertown.

Goddammit.

Magnificent and stupid

You should view this amazing young man as he flourishes cards is ways that simply seem mystical.

The music for this piece way also quite pleasing to my ears and thanks to the Internets you can listen to the original piece here.

The modified version used in the video above is called Opéra from "Métropolitain" by DJ Emmanuel Santarromana.

The stupid part comes when you look up the music on iTunes. The full name of the piece is

"Vivaldi - Nisi Dominus - Cum dederit - Mingardo" but thanks to words being able to kill people the "Cum" is censored to "C*m".

Really?

Horaay for fixing

Hey, I like buying shiny new tools as much as (or more) than the next guy. So when the rechargeable air mattress inflater started pooping out halfway through the job of giving me a place to sleep this season I had to take action. I took a trip to Home Depot where I found a cool Ryobi inflater that would use my 18v cordless drill batteries. Sweet! But at thirty something bucks...

I decided I had nothing to loose so I cracked open the old unit and found a battery. If course, it wasn't any kind of normal battery. That would be too easy. Fierce googling ensued and eventually I found something as close as I could and trusted to fate.

The battery arrived today and damn if it wasn't a perfect fit. I even managed to find all the screws to put it back together again. Total cost? $19. There is indeed something deeply satisfying about fixing something yourself. It would have been easier to just buy the new inflater or a new computer system but this was I saved a few bucks and learned a little bit in the process.

It's okay to lie to us...

So it seems one of the secret C.IA. black sites was set up near Vilnius in Lithuania in what was once a fancy horseback riding academy. This is one of those places we were told didn't exist that did things we said we wouldn't do.

Remember, Lithuania isn't exactly the desolate back woods of Afghanistan. They are our ally. And they are understandably pissed. Imagine Lithuania used a shell company to rent the old Higbees department store building in Cleveland. Then they build a torture facility in it and lie to you and the world about it. You might be upset with Lithuania for doing something like that. After all, this is our country. If you want to hold and torture terrorism suspects, you should do it in your own goddamn country.

But for some reason we are scared shitless of these guys. It's like they have some kind of superpowers. Conservatives are shaking in their boots at the thought of bringing any of these suspects to the U.S. for trial. Whether they should be tried by the military or the civilian courts is a worthy debate. I feels the military option had been pretty much tainted at this point. After all, look how the military (with the Whitehouse's direct permission) handled capturing, holding and interrogating them.

Actions have consequences. We will be cleaning up GW's shit for years to come.

iphone > Droid

I went to the mall the other day (shiver) to put my meaty paws on the new Droid smartphone from Verizon. Like any iphone owner, I would gladly pay a hefty fine and/or take hit to the nuts if I could switch from AT&T's craptastic network to Verizon's land of milk and honey.

And with the coming of Droid I thought that I might have found a reason to undergo the painful process of migration. After all, the phone is getting rave reviews. It uses the Android OS from Google which is far more open that Apple's. New apps appearing every day, free GPS navigation using google maps. What's not to love?

Well, the Droid IS good, but it's not awesome, at least in my opinion based on limited hands on experience.

It is well made. Solid. Nice looking. The screen is very sharp. But what they put on it is not nearly as polished as the iphone. It's cluttered. I know it can be configured however you want it but using it wasn't the simple process I'd hoped it would be.

The biggest drawback is the physical keyboard. It just isn't isn't made for my fingers. Period. They sit on a flat plain and one has to depress the center to activate them. The Sidekick had a much better keyboard for us big folk. The on-screen keyboard was okay, but not great. I am sure with practice I could be proficient with it. People have said the camera, while 5 MP, isn't all that great.

But for me, the biggest stumbling black was tapping on some kind of news bubble app and having it crash. Then I launched another app, and it crashed. Two crashes? Really? The Droid can run several programs at once, unlike the iphone. But it's rare that I'm listening to Pandora while IM'ing and uploading pics to my facebook account. And if I do try to do several things at once, the delay in starting an iphone app up is about a second. (Games do tend to take longer to launch). I was impressed, I just wasn't wow'ed.

It is on the network I crave. And with a little polish I am sure the usability will improve. But for now I am still happy with my iphone. It does what I need it to do without any fiddling or crashing. That's my 2 cents. Anyone got one out there who cares to share their experience?