LongTom

Environments - Psychologically Ultimate Seashore Just the sound of the surf. Mayhap you could mix that with some nautical instrumentals on your computer and burn your own mixdown.

^ Both my maternal and paternal grandfathers are named "Lester Ernest" (different last names. no family tree jokes, if you please.) My dad and his brother were born on the same day, one year apart. Okay, that's more like ancestral coincidences. < Got no ancestors in the vicinity (at least no dead ones). We (Pa, Ma, and us kids) are the pioneer generation who moved out West. (only took us to the 1970's to do it.) V Passing the question on.

I've seen racist attitudes even from relatives of mine from Northern states. Ruddy isolated provincials... At least it's not institutionalized there.

I wore my tricorn (the one in the avatar) to work for Talk Like a Pirate Day last year. For some reason I thought TLAPD would be a bigger thing in Silicon Valley (quirky, non-establishment events and nerds, y'know) but no; not a single soul but what needed explanations. I didn't exactly relish passing the CEO in the hall on the way to lunch, and explaining myself to him, either. Oh, well. Can't say I wasn't warned; even www.talklikeapirate.com says "it's Talk Like a Pirate Day, not DRESS Like a Pirate Day." Phooey.

Showers used to make more sense. It was a way to get the new couple or the new parents started off with all the essentials ("Here, you're gonna need this...") for their previously non-existent household. Nowadays, it is common for a couple to come to a relationship with two entire established households' worth of goods. No idea where the goofy party games came in, though. The person responsible for that should be quarantined and made to play the damned things for eternity. "Okay, am I animal, vegetable, or mineral?"

ROFL! I'm sure that message, sig picture included, was not quite what you intended, but very nice, nonetheless! Oh, er... nice tailoring too, in the link.

Oh. I brought up the Constitution first, and he asked how his point was unconstitutional, so I thought he was responding to me, not the other way around; but never mind. Your point about piling on is spot on. It is interesting to see various elected officials try to deal with the fact that they voted for this fiasco. Some are simply claiming they were misled, others are still squirming over rationalizing the outcomes, and a few are still spinning the same lies (Al qaeda again, Mr. Cheney?). But to my mind the run-up to the war and subsequent months was a classic example of what ought to be called the Hermann Goering Principle, after the famous quotation: "Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. ...Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." Is that not exactly what happened?

Whoa, John! You take good care of yourself. I took the family to Disneyland this week, and gained 2 or 3 pounds back, but I was expecting as much. Back on the regimen, come Monday. Hopefully the rib sprain I got last week will not get in the way of the weight workout too much.

Hmmm. In size order, ascending: -- jaw harp -- sopranino recorder -- bones -- penny whistle -- soprano recorder -- alto recorder -- tenor recorder -- doumbek -- Baritone -- Tuba Anybody need a tuba aboard ship? Makes a hell of a fog horn...

To respond to Sir Eric: the affronts to the Constitution that I had in mind were things like warrantless wiretapping, extraordinary rendition, and the ability of the Executive to strip you of all legal protection merely by denouncing you as an 'enemy combatant." Trust us, we're the government. We would never abuse these powers. What? Oh, that? That was just a clerical error. Trust us.

Awright, awright, added meself, then. Livin' in the land of London -- Jack London, that is, port o' Oakland. Sorry, William, doesn't do a cursed thing about your Logan UT situation. Then again, considering it's me, maybe that's a good thing.

Jules Verne

^ Does being a nerd count? < Halfway to being a car-hating Critical Mass bicycle freak. Ow, my ribcage hurts. Would it kill people to use their damned turn signals once in a while? V What cultural phenomenon or habit really irks you?

Why are we there? Simple. Look at: -- the stated aims of the cabinet: calling for US hegemony in the Middle East years before they were even elected (google "PNAC") -- the actions taken by the Administration: utter falsehoods and shifting stories on practically every particular of the war, from WMDs to the cost to the duration -- the outcome of those actions: perpetual war -- who benefits from those outcomes: defense contractors, with perpetual orders to fill (google "Carlyle Group"); Halliburton as logistics provider in Iraq; oil companies manipulating the high price per barrel into record profits; Bush's Executive Branch, with excuses for emergency powers that offend the Constitution to its core How can you come to any conclusion other than that the current disaster is exactly what Bush and Company wanted all along? Not wanting to get into a fight about Hillary, but what could she possibly do to top Bush's crimes?

Grrf. Didn't walk away quite as cleanly as I thought. Looks like the fall off of the bike (or is that the fall onto the bike?) did something to one rib. Hopefully just a muscle spasm, but it's still complaining five days later. Dang, it hurts to sneeze! Didn't tighten up till hours later, naturally. And me, like an idjit, didn't get the name of the auto driver, because I felt basically fine at the time. Oh well. High time that blasted expensive health insurance earns its keep.

Nothing a Band-Aid and a little laundry detergent won't fix. (rackin' frackin' stupid greasy bike chain...) M.A.d'Dogge and Matusalem "We had to get up in the morning, at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before we went to bed... eat a lump of dry poison ... work twenty-nine hours down-mill, and when we got home our Dad would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing 'Hallelujah!'"

^ Nope. Thick hair. Thick skull, thick middle, thick everything. < Almost got scraped all over a bus stop by a white Mustang this morning. V Accident-prone?

^ ...everyone. I get that all the time, at introduction time. "You remind me of someone I once knew..." I'm about ready to start replying, "Yes, Central Casting sent me. I'm his replacement." < Would like to look like Gerard Butler in 300 (yeah, right, like that's gonna happen) V Who would you like to look like?

Bonnie Prince Charlie

A meeting of minds? Don't bump your head.

Me, I got hit by a car while biking to the train station. (okay, more like "lightly nudged" by a car. What actually hit me was bike pedals and pavement.) You?

I don't think I would call it needing to test himself constantly (in the sense that I seem to find in your wording) for a master to daily take up his tools, which doubtless carry some risk, and use them. On the other hand, he probably learns, in the course of extending his craft, to be capable of feats with those tools that would be exceedingly dangerous in the hands of someone less experienced. Sam Maloof does some things with freehand bandsaw cutting that are a marvel to behold. He says in his videos, "Don't try this. It is horrible technique, and appallingly dangerous. Just don't." Fair enough. I thought you were saying that love was by definition a fool's errand, rather than that you find yourself unsuited to it. Perhaps I misunderstood. (Me? Misunderstand? Imagine that! ) Explain this. Michelangelo chiseled his hunk 'David' out of a hunk of marble using his teeth? I know he's a whiz with kiln-dried pine and Delta power tools, but is he conversant with wet, spongy, tropical tree trunks and a stone hand-adze? Probably more than me, that's for sure. But enough to call himself a Master in that situation? Again: Michelangelo as a beaver in the Petrified Forest. Mastery of a craft involves mastery of the tools: striving to do more with them, not striving to do without them. I think one of the secrets to achieving a lasting love is to strip away the misconceptions as to what it is supposed to look like. When people realize that into every life a little rain must fall, but that doesn't mean everything is going to melt, things get more manageable. You mop up the mess and continue on. By the way, you know that 50% divorce rate? Apparently 80% of first marriages are permanent. 20% of the people are causing 50% of the marriages (and all of the divorces). I forget where I read that. I'll have to go find it again. Just checking. You seem quite confident my glasses are rose-colored. Fair enough; guilty as charged. However, from my perspective, your goggles appear rather jaundiced. Having worn a pair of that approximate shade myself for a good part of my life, I dare to imagine I recognize a kindred pair. (In some ways, I wear the rosy ones on top of the others.)

Thank'ee kindly. I'm looking forward to seeing what you put together. Having said all that about technology, I forgot to mention that there are so-called consumer level HDTV camcorders. You trade away the high-quality lenses (some of these things are pocket sized, amazingly) and probably some of the manual control, but you get real HD resolution. Something worth looking into.

3-CCD (light sensor) models give better color than single sensor. Semi-rare on consumer-grade, but not unheard-of. The bigger the CCD chip, the better the image and the less video noise in the image. Better lenses, better image. Interchangeable lenses best of all. (rare on pro-sumer level). Most important is a good storyboard and a competent camera operator. The best camera in the world will take highly accurate, high resolution, highly boring footage, if not used creatively.

If you avoid something because it might hurt you, you are not the master of it. I don't entirely follow your use of the word "reliant". The master relies on his tools. A master woodcarver does not, by dint of his sheer mastery of woodcarving, produce masterpieces with his bare hands. He cannot produce without them, and yet he is still a master. Addicted, I follow. However, loving and being addicted to love are not synonymous. I think that perhaps much of what makes love fail is external to love itself: personal or societal baggage of various sorts. I remain unpersuaded that you have seen its true nature. Have you checked the color of your own glasses recently?