So you wake up in the middle of the night and hear noises in the house. There’s an intruder (or it’s the cat. But for the sake of argument, assume it’s an intruder) – what do you do now? WHAT DO YOU DO NOW?

Call 911? Oh, sure, if you’re a big PANSY and expect, you know, the authorities to help you. Some of us, on the other hand, will choose this as an alternative. Because sometimes, you just need to turn your end table into a wooden club and buckler.

I just had one of those moments that made me happy for no good reason whatsoever. The phrase "I gotta have more cowbell" drifted through the recesses of my brain, and I thought, "Man, I’d love to see that SNL sketch again." Thirty seconds and one Google search later, I was here. After about a 15 second wait my trusty broadband connection was streaming all the Christopher Walken and Blue Oyster Cult goodness I could ever want.

There are times when I just love the world, is all I’m saying.

 I have a daughter and a wife who are both beautiful.  I worry about what they see as the ideal of beauty that is presented relentlessly in all forms of media.  This site gives a wonderful example of how all that glitters is not gold.  See the before and after retouching of a cover model photo step by step.

Photoshop retouching of model – Mark Frauenfelder: Interesting interactive Flash movie shows model retouching before and after.
Link

(Via Boing Boing)

"’There is no problem so big it can’t be run away from.’"

"Very Nice, Don. You were quoting Snoopy the Dog, I believe?"

"I’ll quote truth wherever I find it, thank you very much." 

        –Richard Bach, Illusions: The Aventures of a Reluctant Messiah

Often it seems that there are very few surprises to be found in the world. So many things are formulaic, aren’t they? Take the movie industry – or better yet, entertainment in general – as an example. It’s not even about giving people what they want, it’s about giving them what they expect. If a sitcom makes a serious point, it’s always in a “Very Special Episode™”. If there’s truth to be found in science fiction, it’s of the heavy-handed sort we associate with Star Trek or the newer installments in the Star Wars saga (side note – is there any room for the mercenary Han Solo in the universe that George Lucas has finally developed? It’s clear that HE doesn’t think so. Not only is there no similar character in the prequels, when the original movie was re-released, it was edited to show Greedo taking the first shot at Han, not the other way around.)

This isn’t to say that there isn’t an effort to make a serious point in these arenas – oftentimes there is. It seems, though, that such efforts are always telegraphed to such a degree that there may as well be big neon signs pointing out that This Is The Important Bit. There are exceptions, to be sure, but they seem increasingly rare to me.

All of which serves, I think, to make those unlooked-for bits of wisdom and truth all the more precious. So much so, that I’ve been thinking – someone should put together a list of such things. Or, better yet, an exploration of some of the choice ones; not just the moment itself and a “huh, that’s cool,” but a bit more detail, delving into the thought process that follows from the fragment itself. Wouldn’t that be cool?

Well, since it seems nobody else has been listening to my internal monologue, I’ve decided to tackle it myself. At the moment the plan is to update this section monthly with a new addition. With luck, inspiration and a bit of free time, it may happen more often. Regardless of the update frequency, I’m excited to see how it works out.

 They actually got video of the guy catching a woman’s baby thrown from three stories up.  One of those situations you absolutely pray you are never in.  Yikes. 

Read the whole story and catch the video as well. 

The catch of a lifetime (Reuters) – Reuters – A New York woman threw her one-month-old son from the third floor of a burning building and the baby was caught by an amateur baseball player standing outside, media reports said on Thursday.

(Via Yahoo! Oddly Enough)

 This disgusts me in a way that was both powerful and suprising.  Normally I try to keep a veneer of apathy around the news regarding the current administration but this one cuts a little deep.

Folks, the neo-cons view all of life as a business transaction and all of us as commodities to move around.  Just for flavor they wrap these beliefs in fanatical religious rhetoric and claim that those who oppose them are ‘unpatriotic’ or ‘immoral’ .

Let’s not hear anymore moralizing bullshit from the right if its all the same to you.  My life is not a business.  Its my life.  And if I or one of my relatives are killed in action you had better make damn good and sure that you treat them like a person and a patriot who died serving their country.  Its more than most neocons have done. 

Will you be checking that today? – "Dead heroes are supposed to come home with their coffins draped with the American flag — greeted by a color guard. But in reality, many are arriving as freight on commercial airliners — stuffed in the belly of a plane with suitcases and other cargo."

(Via Metafilter)

 R.I.P Richard.  While most of his socially relevant work was before my time, I am still amazed by how confrintational he was.  Today Dave Chapelle talks alot about the difference between black and white culture in America.  But decades ago Pryor was doing the same thing at a time when noone really wanted to hear it.

He was a powerful voice, a brilliant comedian and a survivor. 

Pathbreaking Comedian Richard Pryor Dies (AP) –

AP – Richard Pryor, the groundbreaking comedian whose profanely personal insights into race relations and modern life made him one of Hollywood’s biggest black stars, died of a heart attack Saturday. He was 65.

(Via Yahoo! Top Stories)

Warning: Every now and then I end up giving entirely too much attention to Stuart Davis lyrics. There are a few songs of his that just grab me on about half a dozen levels at once. During my 1.75 hour commute home last night, I listened to one of my favorite tunes a few times and started thinking about it (this is a potentially dangerous thing, but hey, I live on the edge). The song is called Disciple.

This goodness in my heart
this evil in my head
Do not exist in equal parts
for only one is fed
A growing dark veneer
A conscience in repose
tonight as I was sleeping here
both of them arose

Chorus:
   I saw a demon stare into my face
   and an angel touch my breast
   Each one softly calls my name
   and the demon scares me less
   the demon scares me less

Something gentle tries to guide
and occupies my soul
but I never let it override
the mind that I control
If I turn toward the light
its beauty cannot last
for I think that it must be destroyed
when I see how we contrast
This wickedness in my reflection
is familiar to my eyes
it’s the image of this love before me
that I do not recognize
Two opposing forces
are measuring in me
the distance of my spirit to
the disciple I will be

—–

In a word: Dude. I love love LOVE this song. It manages to describe my thoughts on human nature much more eloquently than I generally am able to. I don’t know what I believe about God or religion, at least not on a conscious level. Perhaps that’s because I spend a lot of time THINKING about those things and not as much time feeling them. Still, the intellect is the sharpest knife I have in my drawer, so to speak, so that’s the one that I use.

I do know that on some level, I believe in the Divine. I feel that belief even though I can’t articulate it, and I think that ‘Disciple’ grabs hold of how I feel about it. I believe that we are, all of us, capable of creation and destruction, good and evil, peace and war, love and indifference. We are not only capable of all of these things, but we express them all in some way. And here’s the thing that Davis’ lines really remind me of, difficult as it is to admit:

I am more comfortable with things I can understand than things I can’t. I can understand the side of the demon more than the side of the angel, and thus I am more comfortable with it. Creation, and love, and what my ‘angelic’ side urges me to pursue, require surrender, and that scares the rational side of me. It’s a hell of a lot easier for me to keep my ‘bad’ impusles under control through my reason and decisions than it is to really embrace being guided by a higher principle, whether you label it god, or karma, or fate, or ‘stuff’. As I think about this, I wonder how much that limits me.

Ah, yes. It is obvious that we’re entering December – winter months are always an introspective time for me.

I don’t talk about The Chronicles of George very often so today I shall provide a snip from the forums.  The War Stories fourm always keeps me wide eyed to the fun (and exasperating) aspects of woriking in IT.

 Ruff_ilb wrote:
Many years ago I was acting as the system administrator for a test system in a large publicly held company. Periodically I would receive a call from someone who had not accessed the system recently, forgot their password and locked themselves out trying to logon. I would look up their password and unlock the system for them and they would go on their merry way.

One day I received a call from a young lady who was in just such a predicament. I looked up her password and informed her that it was ‘DOME’ and, just to be playful, told her the price for me being gracious enough to unlock her sign-on was an explanation of the meaning of her password. She became very embarrassed over the phone and pleaded that she could never reveal her secret. I of course replied that I would not give her system access until she did. After negotiating for several minutes she finally acquiesced but made me promise to never reveal her password meaning to any of her colleagues to which I gladly agreed.

"Well, what does it mean?", I asked.

She hesitated and then replied, "It’s two words."

There was pregnant pause. I unlocked her system and simply said, "Have a nice day".

 Great interview on the silliness of Intelligent Design.  Don Wise, professor of geosciences at UMass discusses the imperfections in our own biology.

Would God flunk a first year engineering course? – Incompetent Design is yet another entry in the battle regarding the origin of humans.

(Via Metafilter)