I'm ready for my foil hat, Mr. DeMille

Can you feel it?  The Internet is stalking us.

This is nothing new, it's been stalking me for some time now.  Sidebar ads.  Recommendations when I search for something on the great and powerful Google.  Recipes for delicious Spam primavera when I go to my spam folder in email. 

The most recent disturbing message came when I Twittered about our office coffee and it's lack of quality.  Mere moments later, I got an email from WebMD asking me if I didn't think, perhaps, my caffeine intake was a tad high.

This is uncalled for.  If good things happened with this whole Internet spying thing, I wouldn't mind.  If, for example, it triggered shipments of free bacon to my home any time I mentioned #bacon on Twitter, or if someone mysteriously showed up at the office with a four-shot of espresso when I disparage office coffee, we'd be golden.

But really, Internet?  Questioning my caffeine intake?  Spam-kebabs?  Who are you to judge, oh great Judgie McJudgerson?  Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, that Zuckerberg kid from Facebook, whoever invented Google, and even Al Gore, I'm looking at you.  Stop stalking me, just let me live my life in peace.  Am I going insane, here?  Are we in danger of the Internet ruling our lives until we run, screaming, to a tiny shack in the middle of Montana to write our manifestoes on manual typewriters, far from the prying eye of the Worldwide Web?  I think so!

But then again, that could be the caffeine talking, I suppose.

Carry on.

Random Acts of Thursday - The Last Ride

I don't want to be morbid, but I am a practical man.  You kids will recall that Lori and I have spent far too much time moving from place to place in our married life.  I believe the last count was five homes and three states in the last six years.

When we moved four times ago, into the home where we planned to spend the rest of our days, I was so adamant about never moving again that I fully intended to pass away the night before trash day, so Lori could just throw me in a Hefty Tear-Pruf Heavy Duty trash bag and drag me to the curb.

The more I think about it, though, I'd like to go with style.

What prompted this?

We saw this on our weekend drive.

Far be it for me to judge (a lie: I always judge.  Call me Judgey McJudgerson.), but I am not a soccer mom.  I don't want to be a soccer mom.  I don't want my last ride in a wheeled conveyance to include stow-and-go seating.  I don't want anyone to be picking Cheerios and gummi bears from out of my coffin, and I don't want it covered in sticky handprints and Sponge Bob paraphernalia.

(Are the kids still watching Sponge Bob?  I'm so out of touch.) 

I like the Cadillac in life, and to me, that's the classic way to go.

Or, there's always this:

And for the Harold and Maude fans out there, I could settle for this:

...and really, who couldn't?  Your last car should always be nicer than your first, right?

And because I ride, and there's just as much a chance that I'll go that way as any other rider, I'd take this, too.

Because just because I'm not cool in life doesn't mean my last act above ground has to be equally nerdy.

Blast from the Past - Eine Kleine Organmusik

January was a busy time around here at CDS Enterprises (A wholly-owned division of NFG Worldwide, Ltd.) and February isn't shaping up to be much quieter.  As such, I don't always have the time to rant anew - at least not in print.  Being as we are four three months from my cresting (and subsequently being 'over') the hill, it seems only appropriate that I share with you some crotchety posts from the past.

I'm not editing these, except where I may have spelled something incorrectly in my angry fervor.

 

I've never really given much thought to organ donation before, but last week (Correction: November 2006) as I sat in a drive-thru waiting less-than-patiently for my soda, I couldn't help but notice the car in front of me, with the 'ORGN DNR' license plates, and the 'Liver Transplant Recipient' license plate frame.  The combo made me wonder:

1)  Can someone donate an organ they've received as a transplant?

2)  Would this be considered re-gifting?

3)  Do you get an OrganFax report, certifying that your new kidney/liver/whatnot has never been in an accident, isn't flood-damaged, that you're the second owner and nobody has an outstanding lien against your received organ?

I've always been on the fence about organ donation, due in part, I'm sure, to the 'Live Organ Donation' segment of Monty Python's Meaning of Life.

Part of me still honestly, truly believes that the little orange sticker on my driver's license gives the paramedics a sign that they don't need to try as hard.  Logically, I know that probably isn't true, but one can never be too careful, now, can one?

A footnote:  I broke down and signed the organ donation release the same day I passed my test for my motorcycle certification in late 2007.  I figured, even if I'm wearing my helmet, that's hardly enough to let me win a fight with a Peterbilt.  And if you're my mom and reading this, I ALWAYS wear my helmet.

Random Acts of Thursday - To Be or Not To Be

Wait, what was the question?

Growing up in Milwaukee as I did, there were certain 'regionalisms' that I knew early on would have people looking sideways at me, should I say them outside of the metro area.  'Bubbler', for example, instead of 'drinking fountain'.  I knew that anyone outside of my geographic circle was probably going to use the term 'pop' instead of 'soda', and when I went to school in Texas, the correct term was 'coke' (much like 'kleenex' instead of 'facial tissue', I'm sure.)  My family lived on the city's northwest side, so we didn't pick up any of the Ya dere hey's, y'know's and ain'a's more prevalent in the sout' sider's vocabulary.

When we moved to Florida, I didn't catch too much of this. Since so many of my co-workers were from other places as well (including other countries, not just other states), it was hard to pick up any patterns.

However, now that we're Clevelanders, I've noticed a recurring theme that I can only assume is regional: dropping 'to be' from sentences.  Instead of 'That tree needs to be chopped down', I hear 'That tree needs chopped down.'  I've noticed it very specifically following (or not following) the word 'needs', and don't know if they're actually missing 'to be' or just having tense issues with their subsequent verb. 

This bothers me grammatically more than people who use 'seen' instead of 'saw' (though the day someone says 'I SEED [insert what they saw here]' my head will explode), more than people who say 'fixin ta', and despite my personal mastery of the profane arts in the privacy of my own car, this almost bothers me more than people who work profanity into sentences where it has no right to be.

It even bothers me more than ending a sentence in a preposition.

What colloquialisms, slang terms, or mannerisms are part and parcel of your little slice of geography?

God didn't buy me a satellite

Not that I expected Him to, nor did I ask.  Certainly, there are far larger things going on in the world than my having to listen to broadcast radio.

All the same, having spent the last three months nearly commercial-free, almost always finding music to suit my mood, whatever mood that may be, suddenly being faced with static, lost stations, non-stop ads, unwitty 'witty morning banter' and country music (actually, it's both kinds: country and western) is like torture.

(And not the good kind, with spankings...)

It was something, driving to lunch with typical early-80's new wave in the background, only to get back in the car after some great tacos to nothing.  Well, an XM advertisement looping non-stop, but not early-80's new wave, to be sure.

I can't say they didn't warn me.  I ignored the mail, the phone calls at inopportune times, even the emails.  Because part of me cringes at the idea of paying for radio.  However, that part is the one with no short-term memory, the holier-than-thou part of my brain that forgets we hate commercials, unwitty 'witty morning banter' and country music.  It's also the same part of my brain that hates buying bottled water or paying for cable, but those are completely different subjects.

I'm just going to have to break down and pay the XM piper, aren't I?

On an unrelated note, have you noticed the trusty sidebar here at CDS Enterprises?  There's a nifty little PayPal button over there, where you can achieve great esteem in the eyes of this site's author by donating to the XM cause.  


No?  Then at least click the email link and ask the nerdy fat guy an interesting question.  It's the least you could do.

Fun Fact Friday - Well, well, well.

Melissa and I were watching an episode of 'Holmes on Homes' the other day, and if you're not familiar, it's the kind of show that will make you second-guess ever hiring a contractor again.  Especially if you live in Canada, apparently.

They were replacing the entire septic system on the house in this episode, and the contractor was using dowsing rods to find the pipes.  Walk over the pipe, the rods cross.  Oooh, dowsing, it's some cool, magical stuff, lemmie tells ya.

I was all set to post about the science of dowsing, a form of divining (like throwing chicken bones to predict crop yields, and such.)  Sounds science-y to me. 

Turns out it's all just hooey.  Dowsers with rods or bendy sticks have the same success rate as anyone with dumb luck.  In some cases, it's even less accurate than dumb luck.  This is just compounded by people using the same method of dowsing or 'witching' to find just about anything.  Looking for gold?  Try dowsing.  Rubies?  Dowsing.  Water?  Dowsing.  They probably even use the same stick for all of it.

However, there is some science involved in the process.  In our brainy subconscious, we can cause things to happen just by thinking them.  Like the Ouija board pushes to 'No' every time you ask your dead grandma if she loved you best.  For experienced dowsers, knowing the lay of the land and where water typically appears, minute muscle twitches can cause the branch to turn, a slight twist of the wrist can make rods cross when your brain is convinced this is where water should be.  

And even then, you could be wrong.

When I was in college, I had a bit part in a play called 'The Diviners'.  It was about a young boy with 'the gift' of divination, using a rod to find water so critical in depression-era Indiana.  And of course, there are skeptics.  We were all small-town rubes in the play, especially me, my role called for it.  But it calls to mind the following movie quote.  Since we didn't have a Monday quote this week, I'll let you guess on this one instead.

"You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons."


It shouldn't be difficult. 

Fun Fact Friday - Welcome to the Valley

A warning, before you go any further. There are things you can't un-see, and this may not be for the faint of heart or the weak of stomach. Okay, so I may be living under a rock, but it's cool here, and the ground is nice and moist. An occasional grub to munch upon. I understand that what I'm sharing here today is by no means new, and may have been part of pop culture for some time. I've understood 'The Uncanny Valley' in theory, I just never knew it had a name.
Dogimo brought up the concept of The Uncanny Valley the other day, in reaction to Bev's post regarding, in part, Courtney Love. I had to look it up, and it makes sense.Dr. Masahiro Mori originally coined the phrase in relation to his work in the field of robotics. It stipulates, basically, that our innate attraction to an object, living or inanimate, will increase gradually, but at a certain point in design, attraction rapidly turns to revulsion. Only when the object or being obtains a greater humanness does the curve again rise. To quote Dave Bryant's take on this phenomenon:
"This chasm—the uncanny valley of Doctor Mori’s thesis—represents the point at which a person observing the creature or object in question sees something that is nearly human, but just enough off-kilter to seem eerie or disquieting. The first peak, moreover, is where that same individual would see something that is human enough to arouse some empathy, yet at the same time is clearly enough not human to avoid the sense of wrongness. The slope leading up to this first peak is a province of relative emotional detachment—affection, perhaps, but rarely more than that."Dr. Mori brings this up in his effort to keep man from designing robots that too closely mimic human appearance and behavior, because a slight mistake (the 'Joan Rivers' model, for example) could cast the object into the valley.This valley is subjective, certainly. Things that bother Lori (Charles Schwab ads, folk art) are not the same pseudo-human things that wig me out (mannequins, Yul Brynner in 'West World', grotesque deformities).Strangely, I'm drawn to folk art, especially animated, talking folk art, and Lori can't turn away from every possible television show centered on deformities. Go figure.The valley's not all bad, mind you. Zombies live there. Awww, look at the cute little zombie!

Fun Fact Friday the 13th - Good luck with that

How lucky could anything that follows 'Rock-a-Hula Baby' be? Since Elvis Presley's 'Good Luck Charm' reached number one back in 1962, I'd say pretty lucky. But, really. 'Rock-a-Hula Baby' sounds like something that should be in the juke box at my local Waffle House, next to 'Waffle House Hashbrowns, I Love You'. Really, that one's in there, along with 'There are raisins in my toast', 'Waffle Do Wop' and about 20 other WH-themed songs. I do love that the 'b' side is 'Anything that's part of you'. As if this was an answer when asked just what part is the good luck charm. Can't you just see Elvis sawing up bodies, perhaps humming 'Love Me Tender' as he carefully separates the joints? Or is that just me?It bothers me that airplanes don't have a 13th row, and that my last hotel glaringly went from floor 12 to 14. This is irrational. Generally speaking, I don't have a fear of the number 13, I don't carry good luck charms or amulets or tokens, though as a kid I had a weird, bony yellow rabbit's foot. I could do extensive research on why they're considered lucky in this day and age of modern science and technology, but ultimately that bores me. The fact that I can still buy them in a myriad of colors does not.

If you really need to get your nerd on today, click here to find out why 13 is unlucky. I can never hope to top the Straight Dope and would never deign to paraphrase.

I suppose this is Fun Fact Lite, so here are a few things that amuse me, maybe in the process you'll forget that today's post was mostly content-free.

Happy Friday.

Sick days aren't all they're cracked up to be

At least when you're actually sick.

(no, not THAT kind of fever)

I'm in a fog, a malaise, a brain-cloud of sorts. At least the stabbing, doubled-over-in-abdominal-pain thing is gone, so there's that, but the fever is overrated as a symptom. Sure, it makes watching any television a surreal experience. However, the fever also means that every fleeting thought I have is gone before I can remember to write it down. Again, not a bad thing, since it's likely they're psychadelic, creepy and altogether incoherent thoughts.

So I guess this means you win today!

Or so you'd think, but this means my brain does random things and I try too hard.

For example, there's this video. It runs the line between cool and dangerous, and I really REALLY want one of these things.

Prometheus device

Then there's these little gems. The first one is courtesy of That Kind of Girl. Samsmama, the second one is just. For. You.

Paper Towels

The WTF Blanket

Sorry, I'll do better tomorrow to dazzle and amaze you. Meanwhile, you can go back and try your hand at the Random Acts of Thursday quiz from a few weeks ago.

Have to go now though, I just spilled soy sauce all over the carpet.

One miserable, murky Monday

Because cloudy is the weather. Both out there, and in my brain. I leave for Ohio shortly, and even though I've known about this trip for a month or more, I just booked my hotel this morning. I can only hope I get the scenic overlook of Lake Erie the city boasts.

However, the weekend was bliss. We had clear sunny days, cool crisp evenings, and a lot of fun. Thursday we started the Florida Wildlife Watch after picking up Bob and Diane at the airport and heading to dinner overlooking (and overhanging) Tampa Bay. The restaurant lights the water, and since I'm sure plenty of people feed the fish off the patio, it attracts swarms. Huge catfish and a little manta ray.

Friday started off a little slow, because the Dammit had to go to the vet for scratching a hole in the side of his head. Like he needs another one of those. "It stops the scratching of its skin, or else it gets the cone again!" We now have a cone for regular use, and he's also on antibiotics and got a cortizone shot. Dammit the high-maintenance doggy, and the reason we can't have nice things, apparently.

Saturday we wandered about Busch Gardens, and since Lori and I hadn't been there since 2008, there were lots of new things to see and do. I don't do roller coasters, since if given the choice, I don't even do elevators, but Lori and Bob got to ride them all to their hearts content. And I got to do the Land Rover Safari, though the river segment was 'closed'. I have always taken this to mean 'non-existent but it sounds cool', since the ride has been closed every time we've gone. Still fun, since I could almost pet the zebras we were so close. Even got to grill out, big juicy burgers and fresh sweet corn. It was just like summer!

Yesterday we spent the whole day driving along and shelling at the beaches along the Gulf. Growing up swimming in Lake Michigan, I'm still in awe that I can set foot in the ocean in mid-October and not lose a toe to frostbite. We were late, so all the retirees had hit the beaches and snapped up the best picks already, but everyone still found a few gems. We also got to watch the little baby clams feed along the shore and then bury themselves in the sand as the waves came in. Oooh, nature. Sweet, delicious nature.

It was great to have friends visit, especially since it seems we won't be in the Sunshine State much longer (and that's a good thing, it really is). It was nice to take advantage of it from an outsider's viewpoint again, because of course, being a tourist is the best part of Florida, and we could actually enjoy it for a change.

Fun Fact Friday - That aught a do it!

Imagine if you will, a time in human history where there was no zero. That's right, somehow because of that, you couldn't have ten of anything. You could have five twice, and nine plus one, but nine plus one didn't equal anything. BECAUSE THERE WAS NO ZERO. No aught, no nil, no zilch, zip or nada. Of course, there was a period that there were no negative numbers, too, which is nice because you can't overdraw your checking account. (But since you can't have more than $9 in the account at any time, does it matter?)

About 5,000 years ago, the Sumerians started inserting a placeholder into large numbers to signify the existence of this important nothing. (Like writing '5000', for example.) This placeholder looked a little more like an italic equals sign than an elipse. According to Robert Kaplan, author of The Nothing That Is: A Natural History of Zero, the symbol changed over time as positional notation (for which zero was crucial), made its way to the Babylonian empire and from there to India, via the Greeks (in whose own culture zero made a late and only occasional appearance; the Romans had no trace of it at all). Arab merchants brought the zero they found in India to the West.

The zero gives us power. We accomplish so much just by its existence. To quote Charles Seife in his book Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea, "Dividing by zero...allows you to prove, mathematically, anything in the universe. You can prove that 1+1=42, and from there you can prove that J. Edgar Hoover is a space alien, that William Shakespeare came from Uzbekistan, or even that the sky is polka-dotted. (See appendix A for a proof that Winston Churchill was a carrot.)"

I don't know about you, but it makes me want to read Appendix A.

Of course, as these things always go, I set out to learn more about one thing, and end up learning about something else entirely.

In this case, I got to learn about the Erdős-Bacon number.

Yes, that Bacon.

A person's Erdős–Bacon number is a concept which reflects the small world phenomenon in academia and entertainment. It is the sum of one's Erdős number—which measures the "collaborative distance" in authoring mathematical papers between that person and Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős...(yes, that Paul Erdős)—and one's Bacon number—which represents the number of links, through roles in films, by which the individual is separated from American actor Kevin Bacon. The lower the number, the closer a person is to Erdős and Bacon.

For example, Carl Sagan has an Erdős-Bacon number of six. So does Danica McKellar.

Stephen Hawking has an Erdős-Bacon number of seven.

While Natalie Portman's number is six.Oh, and did I mention Danica McKellar's number is a six, too?

I may have.

By extrapolation, this means that two-thirds of all Erdős-Bacon number "six" holders are the hawtness.

Hey, with zero, anything is possible.

I'm an international sensation

Either that, or there’s some sort of multi-cultural whiskey-related internet scavenger hunt going on. Thanks to The Bev’s page, I have aquired some tools to see who’s reading my site. As such, now I know that in the past week, I’ve been tagged again and again by a few dozen Google searchers from Latvia, Norway, Taiwan, Argentina, South Africa, New Zealand, Belgium and Brazil, among many others.

And they’re all getting to my site based on one picture, and one picture only.

Except for one weirdo with a zombie fetish.
Freak.

And as for this week’s contests, there’s still a movie quote to be named, and a movie role to be identified. A hint on the latter, my favorite author has a brief non-speaking cameo in the film in question.
He’s the man. I've no intention of taking up smoking, but I will smoke Pall Malls in tribute to him if I do.
Since we're talking whisk(e)y, a few of his choice quotes on the subject of drinking:

“I have this disease late at night sometimes, involving alcohol and the telephone.” (Our friend Julie has fallen prey to my drunken calls, but she loves it. Want her cell number?)

“I have this theory about why men kill each other and break things. ... Never mind. It's a dumb theory. I was going to say it was all sexual ... but everything is sexual ... but alcohol.”
And while this was not intended to be a tome dedicated to a man I miss horribly though I never met him, thoughts of him make me wistful but happier, saner at the same time.

“Oh, she says, well, you’re not a poor man. You know, why don’t you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I’m going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don’t know. The moral of the story is, is we’re here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don’t realize, or they don’t care, is we’re dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we’re not supposed to dance at all anymore.”
— on telling his wife he’s going out to buy an envelope

And to me, the best, simplest quote of all, the one that makes my meat cry out ‘O, happy meat!’, that makes my soul cry out ‘O, happy soul’, is even better when perched between the slick hot shoulder blades of a beautiful woman: