nobody asked…

As accustomed as I am to seeing my murmurings here in this remote corner of the blogosphere, it is strangely rewarding to see my work chosen for publication elsewhere. The current issue of the online magazine Muscadine Lines: A Southern Jounal features my story Journey to Fear published here on January 25 this year. Regular readers may remember this as the story of my teenage ride on the hood of a bigass Packard. Scroll down the main page of Muscadine Lines to the first entry under NonFiction. And after you’re done oohing and aahing over my story, take time to read some of the other fine writing showcased on Muscadine Lines.

So, have I been discovered? More like unearthed — like a grub wriggling and writhing in a freshly plowed field. Seems a good idea to keep my day-job for a while. But I’ll enjoy this 15 minutes while it lasts. If you have a horn, blow it…

13 comments

Meanwhile, over at the ZDNet ranch, Dan Farber reflects about the first decade of blogging , with prominent mention of pioneers Dave Winer and Doc Searls. There are now about 70 million of us (but who’s counting?). While the noise-to-signal ratio in the blogosphere has gotten all out of whack, we have now entered the mainstream as blogging has become a democratizing force.

Farber also gives a brief review of a new book he calls very engaging, and quite controversial and provocative. Andrew Keen’s book has the formidable title: The Cult of the Amateur: how the democratization of the digital world is assaulting our economy, our culture, and our values (available June 5).

Keen’s book sounds like a worthwhile read, though from Farber’s review it sounds as if we ordinary, everyday bloggers need to maintain a thick skin and guard against becoming pissed off in the face of some of Keen’s observations.

3 comments

The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do. — B. F. Skinner

4 comments

According to the local weather czars this promised to be a nice, sunny, temperate day. They are almost always wrong, but a glance outside at 7 AM was met by blue skies and sunshine. The Indoor/Outdoor thermometer reported it was already in the 50s. So I decided to wear one of my most comfortable pair of shoes. Comfortable means old and slick soled. How slick are they, you ask? So slick that if there is any threat of the briefest mist, I do not wear them since I have already slipped and gone down more than once, introducing my arse to the pavement in a most undignified way. But this seemed like a good day to take a chance.

Forty-five minutes later, walking out to the car, I paused to greet the sunny day. Turning to get into the car, my right big toe started screaming in pain. It was different from the numb pain in the foot caused by sciatica, which I have experienced a time or two. Did I make a wrong move and twist it enough to break the toe bone? Daddy had gout — was this the onset of that strange crippling ailment? Maybe the shoe soles were worn so thin that some tiny stone from the aggregate driveway had insulted the toe that stepped on it. Whatever, I limped back into the house to check it out and change shoes.

Roomie launched into her usual over-reaction and announced with a great deal of authority that it was my lower spine, the sciatica again. She was ready to call the chiropractor for an emergency appointment. I took the shoe off and shook it out, expecting a large boulder to fall to the floor. Not to be. What did fall out was a toothpick — a common round wooden toothpick, intact, sharpened both ends… WTF!

The walk-in closet has two tiers of those white coated wire shelves that also serve to hold hanging clothes. Under one section I have a three-tier shoe rack for my three pairs of shoes. How in hell a toothpick wound up in a shoe is an unsolved mystery. Need to call in CSI to check it out. The shoes felt good and the toe felt fine all day after removal of the pick.

If you’re into masochistic weirdness, I highly recommend toothpicks in the shoes. Otherwise, consider keeping the toothpicks in a small container near the kitchen sink, use them as needed for removing roast beef remnants from between your teeth, and dispose of properly in a government approved trash receptacle.

8 comments

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. — Albert Einstein

1 comment

CMP/Network Computing has a new online article by Pete Payne on Rich Internet Applications, the basis for enabling the internet of the future. He outlines the three major but different approaches to RIA being developed by Adobe, the Dojo Foundation, and Google. While it is neither a comprehensive treatment nor a cookbook effort, the article is nonetheless interesting, informative, and thought provoking. At least for code-challenged individuals like me.

I record this here as a bookmark for reference, for myself and for anyone else who might be interested.

2 comments

UPDATE: February 20, 2007, 5:05 PM CST

Fiona’s question in her comment got me to thinking. Just what the hell is a butt as used in the context of the truck-side advertising? I still don’t know, but I think it is a particular cut of meat. I’ve heard of butt roasts, not to be confused with someone’s butt getting roasted. A quick search turned up the web presence of Pig & Pie, which is an eatery located at Bellevue Center Mall in West Nashville. Reading their history, I was delighted to find that it is owned and operated by members of the Hamilton family that owned and operated The Hut in Jackson, TN, for many years. As a kid growing up in rural West Tennessee, the highlight of many of our family’s shopping trips to Jackson was eating at The Hut before heading back home. Gotta give this one a try soon! Maybe someone there can explain to me what a butt really is… WR

==============Walking through the Franklin town square for the Dickens of a Christmas Street Fair in December, this truck caught my eye … for obvious reasons. Being the Dirty Old Man that I am, I was disappointed when my investigation revealed, not a butt to make my mouth water, but a butt to make my mouth water… Know what I mean, Vern?

Having already consumed my allotment of calories for the week (fresh roasted almonds and chestnuts, warm cider, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, Starbucks latte, assorted junk food) I declined to sample a real butt. Butt if they are back for the next street fair, gotta give it a go, mate…

3 comments

Back in 1914, Baltimore pharmacist George Bunting marketed a concoction he labeled Dr. Bunting’s Sunburn Remedy. One day a customer reported that the cream “sure knocked out my eczema.” On hearing that, Dr. Bunting thought, hmmmm… knocks eczema, and promptly renamed his product Noxzema. The name and the product are still in use today, almost 100 years later, and are the property of Proctor & Gamble.

5 comments

2 comments

More power than any good man should want, and more power than any other kind of man ought to have. — Daniel O. Hastings

Hastings was US Senator from Delaware, 1928 - 1936. He was a Republican. He was also quite obviously clairvoyant in so accurately describing the other kind of man who now occupies the White House, holds his own country and the world hostage, and exhibits all the characteristics of megalomania.

4 comments

Yeah, I know, you’ve probably done a doubletake or three. Yes, you’re in Winston’s digs called nobodyasked… Went nuts this morning at about 6:00. Must’ve stuttered when I counted out the scoops of coffee last night. On a whim, I did a quick backup, logged into my DreamHost Control Panel, ran their one-click install of the WordPress 2.1 Upgrade, and switched themes. I have not been that productive in that short of a time span since … the last time, really.

I like the look and feel of this theme, known as fSpring, one of the f-ing series of WP themes from Fredrik Fahlstad. It has the clean, simple lines that I prefer, a lack of clutter and distraction, and colors that are near and dear to my soul. It probably really isn’t, but it is close enough to UT Orange to make me feel at home. It also solved a problem that has plagued my site for a while — the four people left on the planet that are still using Internet Explorer never saw my sidebar unless they scrolled all the way to the bottom, down to the lowest depths, beneath the last post. Then voila — there was the right-hand sidebar perfectly lined up on the left. Go figure… Better yet, go get Firefox…

One itsy-bitsy problem left to resolve. My Links, my precious BlogRoll which is my roadmap to all you dudes and dudettes — all gone. Actually, they’re there if I go into the WordPress Admin panel. And they show correctly if I use any other theme. But not with this one. Always something… I have a Bookmark Folder that has most of my blog links, so at least I have a way to get around until this is resolved. Or I can always temporarily switch to a different theme whilst I’m sneaking around your places. Or maybe I will just take a short, well deserved vacation from lurking.

In any event, please be patient with me as I fight these css and php demons. Your comments on the new look and feel will be appreciated. And anyone that has a clue leading to a fix of the missing BlogRoll in the sidebar, please step forward. You will be handsomely rewarded…

14 comments

If the whole world is insane, then where does one go?
.

Another penetrating question on the meaning, essence, and condition of life on our little spinning blue orb from friend Peter (the other).

7 comments

This will probably come as a shock to all of our friends. It definitely came like a bolt of lightning to Roomie and me. It looks like we will be getting a divorce … not yet, but soon. Let me explain…

It seems voters in the State of Washington are considering a proposal called the DEFENSE OF MARRIAGE INITIATIVE, which if enacted into law will require any marriage of three years duration without successful procreation be annulled. You read that right. Get married and don’t make a baby in 36 months, you’re back on the market, dude.

According to WA-DOMA organizer Gregory Gadow:

For many years, social conservatives have claimed that marriage exists solely for the purpose of procreation. The Washington Supreme Court echoed that claim in their lead ruling on Andersen v. King County. The time has come for these conservatives to be dosed with their own medicine. If same-sex couples should be barred from marriage because they can not have children together, it follows that all couples who can not or will not have children together should equally be barred from marriage. And this is what the Defense of Marriage Initiative will do.

If this should by chance pass in Washington state, can’t you just see the leaders of the Christian Republican party stumbling all over themselves to get it enacted in other states? And sitting here in the buckle of the bible belt, surrounded on all sides by bible-thumping Bush supporters (yes, can you believe it — they still believe Herr Bush is der savior come again!) Tennessee would be among the next group of states to tumble.

Since Roomie and I have had a barren marriage for 12 years (Praise the Lord and pass the prophylactics ammunition!), we would most certainly be among the first and worst sinners to be dealt with.  Applications (women only, thank you) for the position of my next victim intérêt d’amour will be accepted starting the day after the law is enacted in Tennessee.

I commend the WA-DOMA group and Mr. Gadow for their creativity and for having the courage to take a brave and brazen stand. I suspect they  know their initiative in Washgton has no chance of passage. They did this to make a point. Point well made and noted. I hope like hell you also win the battle, whether through this particular initiative or through ongoing efforts to get the blind to open their eyes and their hearts. Same sex marriage does not threaten me in any way. Nor you, or you, or you… The only ones likely to ever be hurt by it are the two willing participants, same as in heterosexual unions.

This initiative is the first of three that WA-DOMA has planned for upcoming years. The other two would prohibit divorce or separation when a married couple has children together, and make having a child together the equivalent of marriage.

While I admire their blatent tongue-in-cheek effrontery, I believe these left coasters either have a superb sense of humor, a serious lack of ability to separate reality from fantasy, or they are sippin’ a better grade of juice than we are back in Tennessee.

12 comments

Hearing deficiencies have their advantages. For instance, you’ve always got a built-in excuse for avoiding doing something distasteful (I’m sorry dear, I just  didn’t hear you ask me to take the garbage out.), loud painful sounds don’t bother you (What chainsaw?), and you always have a plausible excuse for screwing up (You wanted lamb and not ham?).

But as one with a hearing deficit, I can assure you there are more drawbacks than advantages. My specific loss is in the high frequency range, and is quite severe in parts of the frequency range at and above about 4,000 Hertz. I have many theories about what caused this, and will be glad to expound on same for hours on end as long as you are buying the wine. The range is from genetic predisposition, to too much rock-n-roll back in the day, to an evil plot by Bush to permanently handicap all who did not vote for him. Or maybe just too much cheap wine.

About six years ago  I got these, a pair of in-the-ear analog aids with some sophisticated circuitry. Cost was about $3,000 for the pair. They helped tremendously, though I came to understand what the audiologist meant when she said they could not restore my hearing to factory fresh condition. Over time my hearing curves shifted a bit, making the aids less effective, and finally, the left one just upped and died, making it nothing more than a cork in my ear. That’s when I learned that these damned expensive little jewels cannot be repaired, only replaced.

 Meet my new state-of-the-art BTE (behind the ear) digital aids with three programmed modes for different circumstances. I’ve had them less than a week and am still going through the learning process while taking shock therapy to help me overcome the effects of the $4,000 price tag. My god, that is almost one-third of what I paid for my first house, and more than twice the price of my first new car, a 1963 Corvair 500 Coupe (damn Ralph Nader!). But hey, they are  color matched to my dark brown hair so they blend right in and don’t call attention to the fact that an old phart is approaching.

Are they worth it, you ask? Jury is still out, but first canvass says Yes. In the few days since getting them, I have not only heard, but also understood, a few people whose words have eluded me for years. I have heard sounds that I had forgotten about. Getting out of my car a couple of days ago, a song from out of the past hit my ears. I recognized it immediately — the cawing of crows. I stood there transfixed, looking up to see them sitting on a nearby overhead phone line while conducting their own test of my new ears. Since then I have heard the chirping of smaller birds, the rustling of leaves being blown by the cold wind, and previously unheard harmonics from the 8-speaker surround sound system in my Subaru Outback.

Unfortunately, they also conspire against me. I had no ready excuse this evening when Roomie asked me to cook dinner. Hearing has its advantages — and its tariffs…

10 comments