Blog Fu: Clan of the White Lotus
Let's start off with a little of the comic brilliance of The Bloggess, shall we? She has another fun phone call with her saint-like husband Victor ...
* In "It's either us or them" news, a pack of raccoons mauled a 74-year-old Florida woman. Seems like the posse of mammalian miscreants were loitering on her lawn. She tries to shoo 'em off and all of a sudden it's a bad horror movie from the 90s. "We're not talking about a lot of little bites here," Sheriff Grady Judd said. "She was filleted." Dayum!
Fun fact: said pack of rampant raccoons is still on the loose, being hunted by animal control and even fire crews. I know I'm wrong for finding this funny, but I did.
* Despite my sadism, there's a lot about pain that isn't funny. Like what? Like this: "Chronic pain shrinks brains." For real. People with chronic backaches have brains as much as 11 percent smaller than those of non-sufferers, scientists reported in 2004. They don't know why. So freeing yourself from pain is a freakin' survival imperative, so you don't diminish your own capacity. It also means that direct sadism, purposely making people feel pain, is even more cruel. Which, sadly, some will enjoy.
* In "this is really unrelated to the old lady mauled by raccoons" news, studies show women getting less happy as years go by. I have anecdotal evidence supporting and refuting this information, but I personally feel I lack the estrogen to comment cogently on this finding. I just noted it and kept moving.
* This one I can handle: Prisoners getting drunk on swine flu gel. Prison officials in England tried to protect the criminals under their charge from the alleged global pandemic, and in response, said convicts decided, "this stuff's like booze, let's get drunk!"
Being in prison is hard. Few would deny that. But to be so desperate for a buzz, some kind of release, that you'd drink soap? Man, don't get the book thrown at you in the UK, apparently. Wow. Moreover, how much did the guy have to down to find visibly drunk people? Nobody noticed this? Scary.
* I've talked a lot about why I'm in love with the new Nokia N900, despite the fact I've never even gotten my hands on one. There are so many reasons why, but the coolest? Hooking it up to your TV and playing Super Nintendo games. Koopa Troopas from my phone? Hooked up to my TV? Connected to the internet at 3G speeds? While talking on Skype because I cancelled my minutes because making a VoIP call is just as easy as a regular call? While listening to Big Boy on Power 106 on the built in FM radio, before switching to some of the 16GB worth of music I can store on the mini SD card? Then changing over to watch Hulu because it can see even the most current versions of Flash? Or maybe watch AVIs, MP4s and WMVs? Did I mention the onboard image editor? The 5MP camera with a Carl Zeiss LED flash that also records 25 FPS video in 848x480 resolution? The fact I can probably install Open Office the day I get it, and edit M$ Office documents without giving Massa Gates a cent?
HOLY CRAP!
I'm not even mad at the price anymore. A phone that can do all that deserves to cost almost seven hundred dollars. Done deal. No problem. Wow.
* Here's what I want, though: a robust community developing stuff for my phone, like the iPhone has. Like a projector, play music or software to process credit cards or even for my bank to let me cash checks with my phone.
Admittedly, I don't want the phone to be hackable by text message but I don't expect much of that on a Linux machine. Yes, I'll be installing a firewall. I get down like that.
* This is just funny to me:
* While we're in post-racial land, this Newsweek article notes that all of the cheery liberal white attitudes towards racial tolerance are failing like Sidekicks after Micro$oft bought Danger (couldn't pass that up, since my T-Mobile service works fine). Kids learn to discriminate far earlier than we think, and mostly (the research shows) happens with white kids.
* One of my continual disappointments with what we're laughingly calling the future is the limpness of high speed connections for the internet. Did you know all of Africa is connected to the internet by what amounts to one long extension cord? How bad is that? We can convincingly recreate the Shroud of Turin and pigeons are faster than broadband messages!!!!!!
Prices are also ridiculously exorbitant, which is totally not cool. This might be starting to change with even internet buses traipsing around central Africa and giving away access. But this is not the shiny jetpack future I feel the species deserves. The nineteenth century still holds sway over much of the globe, and the hurdles to get them even into the 20th century is overwhelming. Aluta continua and all that.
* At least Ghana can have a female king. Now that's progress!
* To be fair, it's not so much better for much of the "civilized world." A new survey showed that the broadband in the UK is "not fit for the future," and of the top 10 countries listed, none of them speaks English as the main language. None of them. That means no US either. You can get all of Culver City to have wi-fi, but that doesn't help most of Montana or Murfeesboro, Tennessee or swaths of Rhode Island. The future wants us to come on board, but we're only doing it in slivers, like cowards.
* At least the Saudis are fighting that fear, even a little bit. They realized that their religious dogmaticism wasn't helping them stay in the game, so their massive new science university not only allows female students but gives them some freedoms (while on campus) that they cannot enjoy anywhere else. Talk about an incentive to study! "Noor, get your homework done, and one day you can walk in public without your veil, feel sunlight on your face, and not be worried about getting stoned to death!" You can't limit who plays and expect anything new to happen, kids. Remember that.
* At my job, I had twelve brand-new, unopened blueberry mini-muffins in one of the common fridges. Somebody stole them, while also stealing a co-worker's lunch, his fork, an empty tupperware and his lunchbox. I ended up posting this IRL but it has yet to become true. I now keep my muffins in my car. I'm slightly sad about this.
* This next link is not safe for work, but Sh** My Dad Says is the new Texts From Last Night in terms of being funny. I laughed so hard at this when I found it. It's like Red Forman has a Twitter feed and no network censors. Stuff like this so remind me of the tough love roughness of my great uncle that I was laughing and nostalgic, all at the same time. I am so grateful for stuff like this.
* My only complaint here? Why'd he have to be Black? Come on, dude ... I just hope the accusers were all female. Let's just move on ...
* There's so much wonderful new stuff in this story about water being found on the moon that it's almost more than I can stand. First of all, one of the researchers from the University of Maryland-College Park is named Jessica Sunshine. How awesome is it that a woman named Jessica Sunshine is working on data about the moon? That's just hilarious to me. Second, the idea that there's something wholly new happening there. "It's not liquid water, it's not frozen water and it's not gaseous water, OK? It's none of those things," Sunshine says. "It's not your grandmother's water on the moon. It's a completely different mindset. You sort of have to throw out everything you think of by that phrase."
A whole new state of matter. How freakin' cool is that? You lived long enough to see a whole new damned well state of matter discovered, and it's close enough to see, almost with your naked eye. Nothing has changed but your perception of things. How freaking cool is that, dude? I love it.
It's even weirder than how much water is there (Sunshine estimates that scraping off all the water molecules from a part of the lunar surface the size of a football field would yield less than a quart of water. "And it could be a lot less. I think our understanding is not great," she says), and given the discovery of more water on Mars and even new thinking about how Mars became red, the universe is much different than our parents could have ever believed. That's a wonderful thing to see, even with muffins getting stolen.
* Finally, two comic book-related things. First of all, Chuck Xavier would be proud to know something I always suspected: all humans are mutants and there is no baseline. Which would probably make super hero social networking much more normal. Weirdest to me? Why would Victor von Doom accept a friend request from Reed Richards? You know he wouldn't have sent one! That's weird!
Anyway, that'll hold you for a while.
Playing (Music): "Chopped and Screwed" by T-Pain feat. Ludacris
Victor: Hello?The two of them and their phone conversations alone are enough reason to read her blog, a centralized hub for her work. From the innocent G-rated wonder of her motherly columns about her daughter to the raunchy sex column she writes, she's a masterpiece of madness in text, delivered for free. She's complicated and hilarious and probably terrible to know as a person. But with the wonderful distance of the web, she's a dream to enjoy.
Jenny the Bloggess: Good news! The snow cone machine works.
Victor: Oh yeah?
Jenny the Bloggess: Yeah. Turns out all the outlets in the kitchen stopped working.
Victor: Huh. That's ...not really good news.
Jenny the Bloggess: I know, right? I have to take the snow cone machine into the bedroom to make snow cones. It's like we're living in the f***ing wilderness.
Victor: No, dumb-a**. I mean, it's not good news that none of the outlets in the kitchen work. Is the refrigerator running?
Jenny the Bloggess: I'm not falling for that.
Victor: It's not a f***ing joke. The fridge is in the kitchen with the outlets that don't work, right? Is it still working?
Jenny the Bloggess: Oh. Yeah. That's where I'm getting the ice for the snow cones. But none of the other plugs work. But you know, actually? It's kind of nice having a snow cone machine in the bedroom. We should probably get two. One for the kitchen and one for the bedroom. We'll be like rap stars. Except instead of stripper poles we have snow cone machines.
Victor: Don't call me anymore.
* In "It's either us or them" news, a pack of raccoons mauled a 74-year-old Florida woman. Seems like the posse of mammalian miscreants were loitering on her lawn. She tries to shoo 'em off and all of a sudden it's a bad horror movie from the 90s. "We're not talking about a lot of little bites here," Sheriff Grady Judd said. "She was filleted." Dayum!
Fun fact: said pack of rampant raccoons is still on the loose, being hunted by animal control and even fire crews. I know I'm wrong for finding this funny, but I did.
* Despite my sadism, there's a lot about pain that isn't funny. Like what? Like this: "Chronic pain shrinks brains." For real. People with chronic backaches have brains as much as 11 percent smaller than those of non-sufferers, scientists reported in 2004. They don't know why. So freeing yourself from pain is a freakin' survival imperative, so you don't diminish your own capacity. It also means that direct sadism, purposely making people feel pain, is even more cruel. Which, sadly, some will enjoy.
* In "this is really unrelated to the old lady mauled by raccoons" news, studies show women getting less happy as years go by. I have anecdotal evidence supporting and refuting this information, but I personally feel I lack the estrogen to comment cogently on this finding. I just noted it and kept moving.
* This one I can handle: Prisoners getting drunk on swine flu gel. Prison officials in England tried to protect the criminals under their charge from the alleged global pandemic, and in response, said convicts decided, "this stuff's like booze, let's get drunk!"
Being in prison is hard. Few would deny that. But to be so desperate for a buzz, some kind of release, that you'd drink soap? Man, don't get the book thrown at you in the UK, apparently. Wow. Moreover, how much did the guy have to down to find visibly drunk people? Nobody noticed this? Scary.
* I've talked a lot about why I'm in love with the new Nokia N900, despite the fact I've never even gotten my hands on one. There are so many reasons why, but the coolest? Hooking it up to your TV and playing Super Nintendo games. Koopa Troopas from my phone? Hooked up to my TV? Connected to the internet at 3G speeds? While talking on Skype because I cancelled my minutes because making a VoIP call is just as easy as a regular call? While listening to Big Boy on Power 106 on the built in FM radio, before switching to some of the 16GB worth of music I can store on the mini SD card? Then changing over to watch Hulu because it can see even the most current versions of Flash? Or maybe watch AVIs, MP4s and WMVs? Did I mention the onboard image editor? The 5MP camera with a Carl Zeiss LED flash that also records 25 FPS video in 848x480 resolution? The fact I can probably install Open Office the day I get it, and edit M$ Office documents without giving Massa Gates a cent?
HOLY CRAP!
I'm not even mad at the price anymore. A phone that can do all that deserves to cost almost seven hundred dollars. Done deal. No problem. Wow.
* Here's what I want, though: a robust community developing stuff for my phone, like the iPhone has. Like a projector, play music or software to process credit cards or even for my bank to let me cash checks with my phone.
Admittedly, I don't want the phone to be hackable by text message but I don't expect much of that on a Linux machine. Yes, I'll be installing a firewall. I get down like that.
* This is just funny to me:
* While we're in post-racial land, this Newsweek article notes that all of the cheery liberal white attitudes towards racial tolerance are failing like Sidekicks after Micro$oft bought Danger (couldn't pass that up, since my T-Mobile service works fine). Kids learn to discriminate far earlier than we think, and mostly (the research shows) happens with white kids.
* One of my continual disappointments with what we're laughingly calling the future is the limpness of high speed connections for the internet. Did you know all of Africa is connected to the internet by what amounts to one long extension cord? How bad is that? We can convincingly recreate the Shroud of Turin and pigeons are faster than broadband messages!!!!!!
Prices are also ridiculously exorbitant, which is totally not cool. This might be starting to change with even internet buses traipsing around central Africa and giving away access. But this is not the shiny jetpack future I feel the species deserves. The nineteenth century still holds sway over much of the globe, and the hurdles to get them even into the 20th century is overwhelming. Aluta continua and all that.
* At least Ghana can have a female king. Now that's progress!
* To be fair, it's not so much better for much of the "civilized world." A new survey showed that the broadband in the UK is "not fit for the future," and of the top 10 countries listed, none of them speaks English as the main language. None of them. That means no US either. You can get all of Culver City to have wi-fi, but that doesn't help most of Montana or Murfeesboro, Tennessee or swaths of Rhode Island. The future wants us to come on board, but we're only doing it in slivers, like cowards.
* At least the Saudis are fighting that fear, even a little bit. They realized that their religious dogmaticism wasn't helping them stay in the game, so their massive new science university not only allows female students but gives them some freedoms (while on campus) that they cannot enjoy anywhere else. Talk about an incentive to study! "Noor, get your homework done, and one day you can walk in public without your veil, feel sunlight on your face, and not be worried about getting stoned to death!" You can't limit who plays and expect anything new to happen, kids. Remember that.
* At my job, I had twelve brand-new, unopened blueberry mini-muffins in one of the common fridges. Somebody stole them, while also stealing a co-worker's lunch, his fork, an empty tupperware and his lunchbox. I ended up posting this IRL but it has yet to become true. I now keep my muffins in my car. I'm slightly sad about this.
* This next link is not safe for work, but Sh** My Dad Says is the new Texts From Last Night in terms of being funny. I laughed so hard at this when I found it. It's like Red Forman has a Twitter feed and no network censors. Stuff like this so remind me of the tough love roughness of my great uncle that I was laughing and nostalgic, all at the same time. I am so grateful for stuff like this.
* My only complaint here? Why'd he have to be Black? Come on, dude ... I just hope the accusers were all female. Let's just move on ...
* There's so much wonderful new stuff in this story about water being found on the moon that it's almost more than I can stand. First of all, one of the researchers from the University of Maryland-College Park is named Jessica Sunshine. How awesome is it that a woman named Jessica Sunshine is working on data about the moon? That's just hilarious to me. Second, the idea that there's something wholly new happening there. "It's not liquid water, it's not frozen water and it's not gaseous water, OK? It's none of those things," Sunshine says. "It's not your grandmother's water on the moon. It's a completely different mindset. You sort of have to throw out everything you think of by that phrase."
A whole new state of matter. How freakin' cool is that? You lived long enough to see a whole new damned well state of matter discovered, and it's close enough to see, almost with your naked eye. Nothing has changed but your perception of things. How freaking cool is that, dude? I love it.
It's even weirder than how much water is there (Sunshine estimates that scraping off all the water molecules from a part of the lunar surface the size of a football field would yield less than a quart of water. "And it could be a lot less. I think our understanding is not great," she says), and given the discovery of more water on Mars and even new thinking about how Mars became red, the universe is much different than our parents could have ever believed. That's a wonderful thing to see, even with muffins getting stolen.
* Finally, two comic book-related things. First of all, Chuck Xavier would be proud to know something I always suspected: all humans are mutants and there is no baseline. Which would probably make super hero social networking much more normal. Weirdest to me? Why would Victor von Doom accept a friend request from Reed Richards? You know he wouldn't have sent one! That's weird!
Anyway, that'll hold you for a while.
Playing (Music): "Chopped and Screwed" by T-Pain feat. Ludacris
posted by Hannibal Tabu, The Operative at
4:31 PM
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