Memorial Day: Guy Gabaldon

May 25th, 2009

As I like to do every Memorial day, I would like to talk about past soldiers who did great things by not getting people killed.

In 1944, Private Guy Gabaldon, a skinny 5′4″ kid from East LA set out every night during the brutal three-week battle for Saipan, armed with intermediate Japanese-language skills (and a rifle, he wasn’t stupid) to do what the rest of his 2nd Marine Division couldn’t accomplish with larger artillery: convince a hefty portion of the occupying Japanese forces to surrender. Reports vary from 1000 and 1500, but his successes were far from trivial. It also sounds like he was one of the lucky ones who wasn’t just sort of lost after the war; he ran a successful seafood business (which included, appropriately, a branch in Saipan), and married twice.
A compilation of interviews with Gabaldon from the War Times Journal
2006 obit from the New York Times
A Friendship Like No Other (from the Pacific Citizen)

The current financial crisis explained in the form of the ritual dismemberment of virtual goats

May 23rd, 2009

The great Hargeisa goat bubble, also to be listenable as a radio-play at the BBC’s site, here

No, Russell, say it ain’t so

May 22nd, 2009

Russell T. Davies, reporting live from the TARDIS on his last day of filming

Cat + Box, as you’ve never seen them before.

May 1st, 2009

Enough of content, now back to links of cute things:

cat and box

Socially acceptable debt

April 26th, 2009

I’m going to go out on a limb and guesstimate that I have more debt than any of my friends. Even the kids in grad school, unless they got their student loans from the bank of Vinny-behind-the-pool-hall, will probably come out of it owing half to two thirds what I do now.

But, I’m getting a house out of it. Even now, with all the superfun imploding bubble economy crap, I’m still doing okay, in the long run. But getting back to the kids with the student loans…

Increasingly, it’s looking like a lot of people are going to be highly in debt for education which won’t get them into jobs which can even begin to pay for how much they’re in debt. If you can’t pay your student loans, in many cases even bankruptcy won’t get you out from under from student loan debt. If you can’t make house payments, you can just walk away, leaving the house and its attendant debt behind, and increasingly, home ownership is seen as such a goddamn precious and inalienable right that if you can’t make payments, even that might not be enough to really lose it.

Where am I going with this? It just seems interesting that the system seems almost rigged to be going feudal again, with homeowners tied firmly to land that they don’t really have title to (hello, banks), and only a feckless few making it to higher education (rich or determined or both).

I may be reading too much into this, of course…

cheese

April 26th, 2009

Bootleg cheese confiscated

There’s a post I keep meaning to track down from gordonzola, about the cheese foundry whose workers used some of the big cheesemaking vats as hot tubs after hours. I think listeria would be the least of your worries after one of those…

In other news

April 23rd, 2009

Owen and I finally poured that all-important new step for the front stairs. Now that it’s all done (setting overnight, if all goes well), I am reflecting on the fact that we shifted 400 pounds of concrete, and it doesn’t add up to much volume at all. I wonder how many tons the foundation of my house is?

On forgetfulness

April 23rd, 2009

I have this pathological tendency to think of intelligent things to post here, content not consisting entirely of links. I think of these things in the shower, or on the way to work. They’re so vivid that I don’t bother to write them down, since how could I forget?

I had a good one this morning. Gone for good, I think.

Etymology

April 19th, 2009

MILF versus cougar.

I have given some thought to the matter. I think on the whole, despite the inherent passivity of MILF (the name itself is objectification), it is less offensive than cougar which (to my ear at least) implies a negative kind of predatorship. How many people get mauled by MILFs when they go hiking up in the mountains?

I rest my case.

rapture of the wonks: the obaman singularity

January 24th, 2009

Yes We Will. Barack Obama + the end of days.

But don’t be afraid: after all, as President Obama himself said, “…if there were…anything to be afraid of, don’t you think I would’ve worn pants?”

New music for you thankless people

January 21st, 2009

Alles Neu by Peter Fox. In German, but it shouldn’t hurt you. With monkeys, drums, and batter.
via filthy internet jesus

Many Moons by Janelle Monae. Android funk. via little. yellow. different.

Going on by Gnarls Barkley. Interdimensionally Jamaican, signed version courtesy of a cease-and-desist by Warner, apparently. Thanks, corporate!

As you can see, without the joy of internet, I would probably still be living under a rock listening to Barry Manilow, apparently.

January 19th, 2009

Hardy Drew and the Nancy Boys: There’s no one as Irish as Barack O’Bama
Note: allegedly they’re to play on the Irish American Democrats’ float during the inaugural parade this weekend. Maybe we’ll see them on the telly?

VIVA OBAMA: the norteño version (courtesy of Los Dorados del Norte), and the original mariachi version (Mariachi Aguilas de Mexico)
(Note: the reggaeton version is not actually a cover of the above and, like all reggaeton, something of an acquired taste; I haven’t been able to find out who performed it)

Paint the White House Black: George Clinton and his entourage.

Okay, enough of that. I’m going to bed.

January 15th, 2009

Wasn’t software supposed to make our lives easier, somehow?

cephalopod perversion

January 15th, 2009

The curious rise of tentacle sex in manga

Well, and this one took me the better part of two hours to post. Thanks a ton for getting all corrupty, website. Hope I remember all the new passwords I set up…

not dead, just lazy

November 15th, 2008

how many months has it been since I updated? too long, apparently. Also, everything seems to be beginning with 2005, which is just VERY encouraging, codewise. I’ll hopefully get that fixed soon.

In the meantime, hardcore nudity:
zooborns, a collection of adorable pictures of little baby aminals from around the world, in zoos and parks and such. There’s apparently an entire exhibit in the Budapest Zoo like that, but I got onto the grounds late, and I never saw that part. Alas.

I aten’t dead

August 17th, 2008

Life has been too busy, and I have been too lazy. Since a substantial-for-me amount of time has been spent in the garden, I should really get my camera up-and-running.

Update: apparently batteries help with that. Go figure.

Excellent news for the world

July 13th, 2008

I proudly announce the creation of the Publican Party, just in time for the November elections.

Unlike other, lesser political parties, the Publican Party has a single issue: alcohol.

Behold, our platform, and despair:

  • The lowering of the federal legal drinking age to 18 (a year younger than most of Canada! finally, drunken teens with cash will flood to OUR side of the border!)
  • The raising of the legal driving age to 19 (they’re drinking anyway; why not give them a year to figure out what they’re doing, before we arm them with large blunt objects?)
  • more draconian enforcement of Blood Alcohol Content (why should we let Saudi Arabia have all the fun?)
  • and, on a local level, the instantaneous and irrevocable dissolution of the OLCC and WSLCB, and their replacement by some sort of sane regulatory body.

Thank you, and goodnight. Don’t forget to tip your bar staff.

The simple-minded ethnic joke: a response

June 15th, 2008

Courtesy of R Stevens, the final Polack joke of all time:

“How many Polocks does it take to put on an opera?”

“One to construct the stages, one to direct it, one to sell tickets, fifty to be the orchestra, eight to sing and a thousand to appreciate the sublime beauty of the high arts.”

Now, if only the forces of bigotry would leave the robots alone…

Eurovision 2008

May 21st, 2008

Optimistic about:
Malta: Vodka
Cyprus: Femme Fatale. Gets a nice Greek rockabilly feel around the chorus.
Bosnia: PokuÅ¡aj. I’m a little rusty, but it sounds almost like Arcade Fire, but Slavic.
Latvia: Wolves of the Sea seems to be a deliberate reference to 2006’s We are the Winners (of the Eurovision Song Contest)
Likewise, Finland is going for metal again: Missä miehet ratsastaa. Hey, at least it’s in Finnish this time, but it’s no Lordi
UK: Even If. Finally, the British have decided to stop ruining Eurovision for the rest of us. I am not even going to bother linking to Scooch.

I think that I am tired of work

March 20th, 2008

and yet somehow emotionally involved in it anyway. It seems very dysfunctional, and I fear for my sanity in the long term, let alone my tendons.