Category: Uncategorized

Hoist the distress signal; pass it on.


The flag should never be displayed with the union down,
except as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property.
—THE FLAG CODE, Title 36, U.S.C., Chapter 10, § 176 (a).
As amended by P.L. 344, 94th Congress, approved July 7, 1976.
I am posting this on my weblog in opposition to The Patriot Act, which represents an extreme danger to the life, property and liberty of all persons living in the United States.

deanocturne, thank you. Original post is here with html to clip. Via gynocide.

A good addition might be the marine signal for “Not under power, not under control, not under command”, which is also known by the slang term “Panamanian Running Lights”. It’s used as a warning to other vessels to keep clear, since this ship cannot maneuver and is not being properly steered.

panamanian running lights

Dear Portland Emigrés

vegemitelover just revealed to me that he’s becoming accustomed to breastfeeding in public.

I am nonplussed. I had no idea he was even pregnant, much less that there was a child. As supportive as I am of breastfeeding in the early years, it’s hard to see how he could get enough milk from himself to get any benefit. Has he read up on this? I wonder if he may be trying to fake it with a hidden bottle of some kind. I don’t want to pry, or to appear too critical of alternative lifestyles, but one has to consider the health of the infant, here.

There’s also some business about him doing this with bearded ladies at a computer fair. Is a circus involved? I really don’t understand Portland life.

Hugs,

Conrad

Pure unvarnished linkery without shame

You can hear an underwater recording of the big Indonesian earthquake; amazing.

The Japanese, kings of weird news, have got their banks doing things people probably should not be tempted into doing.

The Plantronics telephone headset people are giving away a trip to space. Really.

There’s a whole ecosystem we didn’t know about under the recently collapsed Antarctic ice shelf.

The current economic situation is best explained with a cartoon.

Watertown, WI has a tire fire going so big that you can see it from space.

How to deal with bad clients: 10 tips.

nattering pettifoggery and raw linksmanship

Every Musician’s Nightmare: a year lost to tendinitis. Also, MSNBC can’t spell “tendinitis”. Oh, I guess that’s an alternate spelling. NOT WHEN I WAS DOING MEDICAL EDITING, IT WASN’T!

Honda made a business jet and claim it’s 40% more efficient than others in its class.

Could you be a hobosexual? Or maybe you’re just bum/curious? Think about it.

David Lynch is a cool filmmaker but I don’t want Transcendental Meditation™ in the schools, okay? I didn’t know anyone had even done TM™ since about 1980.

dirty and gritty

I spent the day sweating. Partly this was because it was over 80 F and unusually humid, although I have no right to complain; just about the rest of the nation had Suicide Weather.

I’m a sweaty guy to start with (helllooo, ladies!), and the happy helmet pills make it worse. When I was on Paxil it was almost humorous, and the current regimen is a lot less perspiratory. But wow, today. My alarm for “too sweaty” is when the waistband of my jeans is damp, and that hit about 1 pm.

I saw actual people I know tonight, which was nice. It was also really nice to get the hell out of the house and be somewhere with a breeze after making spaghetti & meatballs for 4, eating it, and then cleaning up the kitchen for a meal for 4. It’s nice to see my brother & nephew, but I forget each time what it’s like to be the cook for more than one or two people. My meatball-fu improved this time, though.

I just finished paying my Apple loan late (oops), on MBNA’s website. I was annoyed by two things. First, the online payments are delayed a few days, so that even though I had it in time it won’t be in time. It should be instantaneous, come on guys. Second, the slogan for the bank, which is the title of their webpage, is: If You’re Into It, We’re Into It. What. The. Hey? First Bank of Easy Rider?

80s flashback earworm blog party

One of the weblog directories that Ping-O-Matic pings for me is We Blog A Lot, or weblogalot.com. Whenever I see it I get the Faith No More song stuck in my head with some variant like

We blog a lot about technology and politics and food
We blog a lot about our Asperger’s and science fiction shows
We blog a lot about the war and who we just met at the mall
We blog a lot about you people ’cause we’re out to save the world!

So I thought I’d do that to you too. It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to blog it.