his word-hoard unlocked

Dropping Eleanor off at the YMCA. The kids in her group did a "flag activity" and there's little 8.5x11 crayon flags from Canada and Jamaica and the USA around the wall and door area of the room.

"Which one is yours honey?"

"It's over here."

drastically different "flag" from the others: small heads (which I recognize as robot heads in her drawing style) scattered around and stars, and some smiling faces, and a big kind of oval in the center.

"What's that a flag for sweetheart?"

(in an 'of course' tone)
"That's Connie's Space Lounge!"


I'm proud of course. Should I also be terrified? I didn't notice at first but it was generally in a green and purple palette
Perhaps not *I*, but certainly all of you.

Things are going to start happening very fast now. With the 3G iPhone and Android coming later... it's all going to be totally awesome very quickly.

If you have a new iPhone, go get Graffitio. It's so simple but stupefyingly interesting! It has SO much potential. I feel better about it in 48 hours of use than I have about months and months of twitter. Seriously.

**Edit: works on old iphones too!

Poll #1221566 help me with my new iphone 3g
This poll is closed.
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

white or black?

the mccain campaign is imploding so fast with news of internal shakeups and pundits saying it's "signs of what a disorganized mccain white house would look like" and the Obama lead increasing, and Maliki calling for a withdrawal, what if we were in for a convention floor upheaval? McCain is so weak as a candidate and his weaknesses are only growing as the GOP convention gets closer, and Obama continues to raise unbelievable amounts of money, and September is a long way off... perfect storm time, maybe? Do Rebloodlican power brokers cut a backroom deal to dump the old guy and launch a revolt among the delegates? Could they? Wouldn't that be sweet? Or would it be horrifying? Who cares, I predict the number 270 isn't the sweet spot this year. I propose Obama could clear 350 electoral votes in November. Check out real clear politics' map making tool. You can see their map at the link. THen build your own. I propose Obama pulls the following out of tossup status: FL, MO, CO, NM, NV, surprising VA, OH, MI, and yes, NH. I also propose he flips Montana. That gets us to 352. In my dreams I see flipping Arkansas, Kansas and pulling off a squeaker in North Carolina. That would get us to 379 but that's just dementia setting in.

I bought The Road for the plane last week. I loved The Road so much I was weeping over it on the bus, weeping openly as the end came crashing down. I loved it so much I've drawn three X's on the cover where I intend to drive nails into it; and I can't decide if I'm going to put it on my shelf or bury it like that, nailed shut forever. I figure either way, it'll get open again, somehow, and its words will come out and heal people or perform other miracles, like something out of the Gospel of Mark or something. Or it is the Gospel of Mark, as much the gospel as anything. There's even a holy trinity in it. I told Leann she's forbidden to read it but I don't really mean that. It's as big as anything ever written. It's Endo. We've all already raved about Faulkner; but this outfoxes Faulkner. It's Melville and Hawthorne together (with savage teeth). It's Shakespeare. It's Homer.

also this: viggo as the man in the movie? perfect. plus omar is in it. hell yes.

supreme court just upheld the right to keep and bear arms. I went off in another forum and you can ( read my pro-gun nuttery if you like )

I'm a raw milk enthusiast as many of you may know. The taste of raw milk is so much more complete than the taste of homogenized and pasteurized milk. I mean, it's whole, for one thing (you wouldn't want raw skim eww) which means there's cream. And for another... oh it's bliss! Bliss! It tastes like it came from a place you know? On my recent trip to CA where I bought a quart in a glass bottle (and drank it out of a paper sack in the park, no less) I tasted the following: sweet cream, grass, sunshine*, fog dissolving in the morning, honey, brown sugar, clean cedar wood, and right at the end...smoke. Sure, the naive and foolish among you might say "what about milk?" Well, it tastes like milk too, but it's a very complex flavor is all I'm saying! bryant park project has another unfortunate story about raw milk. Why's it unfortunate? Because the dadblamed thing is all about whether or not it's healthy. I don't care if it has miracle properties, it tastes better! Dang!

Also, the hype about it being dangerous is just nanny state bullshit—the only way to safely deliver raw milk is if the cows are pampered and raised organically on grass. Under those conditions, where they're not eating a lot of corn and swimming in their own shit, and being overmilked, you're simply not going to have the kind of low-immune-system, disease risking, blood in the udders kind of problems! But also in the sense that consenting adults should be allowed to eat and drink what they want especially with a product that was consumed that way for many many years before attempting to transport it to cities + industrialization made it so ruinously unsafe. (I am of a divided mind when it comes to feeding raw milk to my kids. let them make up their own minds later) I don't need anyone jacking me up about milk.

But this whole culture aching for miracle cures from our food, just makes me wheeze. It also makes me thirsty.


*sunshine also tastes a lot like edible flowers. there's this one daisy-like flower I've had as a dessert garnish which basically made me feel like I was eating sunshine. it was a bit of a synaesthetic experience. That same taste more or less made its way into this quart of milk I was having.

Continuing his slide to complete irrelevance, my former hero Ralph Nader (I campaigned for the fucker to get on the ballot in 2000) said Obama is trying to 'talk white'. Ignorant ass peckerwood.

no one is talking about how important peer-to-peer is anymore. why? knock knock, irrelevance is at the door.

Those Aren't Muskets are definitely among my new favorites! Here's a lovely number called Star Trek Rap. Forgive me if you've seen that one before. I also highly recommend games conference for true belly laffs.

So I've been watching Top Chef again—thoroughly addicted am I—and I found a great blog perspective over at skilletdoux. I left a rambling comment over there that I realize was substantial enough to stand in for a livejournal post over here, so I'm putting it below. Gawd it bugged me this season how everyone talked about how awesome Dale was. Meh, I say. Meh.
( Top Chef rant I posted in comments elsewhere )

Hey, if you think of it, maybe you could donate a little bit of money to Stephanie Herseth in South Dakota? She's a Democrat and she's pretty solid. It's a wonder that state still maintains a democratic majority in their legislative delegation. One of the wonders is Congresswoman Stephanie, who does have a legitimate and well-funded opponent this year.

stephanie for south dakota.

*Why should you care about South Dakota of all places?!? Because there are people there who are trapped by circumstances, or family, or love of the environment. Also, they're fellow Americans who get good and taken by Republicans in their state house year after year. The only hope they have is good representation in Congress. Also, with the hopes of further development of the Homestake Mine into a neutrino lab, do it for SCIENCE!

But I think we're in the Golden Age of webcomics and that quite possibly we are witnessing the prime of Randall Munroe's career. Like seeing someone pitch no hitter after no hitter. Like season 5 of The Simpsons. Like Y the Last Man. Like Newton before the 1690s. (too far?)

The latest one is no exception. Look, just go read it okay?

NY Times has an article about someone bringing Brawndo to life. Awesome. It's the guy who runs Omni Consumer Products which brings movie products to life. Double Awesome.

Some of The Brawndo ads* are done by Picnicface, whom you may remember from such hits as POWERTHIRST and Superbingo (deer shanked!). That's Triple Awesome.

"Become interested in crushing a human skull!" So great!

If you're not into Picnicface yet
IT'S TIME TO
REPRIOR
ITIZE


^*Some Brawndo ads also appear to have been made by fans in potentially crappy web 2.0 style. Be warned

USI Wireless is active in Minneapolis. I'm journaling this from my office using the relay right across from my window. So far so good. It's cheap enough with a month to month plan that I feel we can afford to test drive for 30 days before jumping ship. Now I know most of you think it's a no brainer to dump Qwest, and it kind of us. But they've been pretty good to Olsenfam the last several years. So this new service really does need to meet our needs well at home and on the roam before I just say "It's cheaper. Pull the trigger."

It is cheaper though. Quite a bit. 3Mbps down/1Mbps up for $29.95 is at least $10 less than our intro rate at pokey Qwest was, never mind what we're paying now. It's right about the same price as their "price for life" locked-into-a-contract figure, again that's for 1.5 or even 768. Now those of you PowerBoosters out there who don't mind shelling out for the big pipe from Comcast will scoff at these numbers. You guys can fuck right off, you're always going to be too posh for peasants like me...

I've combed over my friends list the last couple days, surely I just missed someone saying something about this. OTOH, nobody mentioned it at the last Concom:

City Pages Best Of 2008
Best Fan Convention: CONvergence

Kinda cool. Space Lounge got a name check.


I bet "Mary" Wolfman will think it's funny they think he's a chick.