Octopodial Chrome

Now here’s an excellent idea for young men wanting to serve their communities: start a pallbearer society. The idea is to carry the caskets of those without friends or relatives to do the task. I should talk to my old Scoutmaster—this would be a good thing for my old troop to do.

H/t to John Derbyshire

I wouldn’t ever wear this shirt, but it sure does have a point:

Of course, Che Guevara was a minor, petty thug—he doesn’t really rank with such monsters as Hitler, Stalin, Mao or Pol Pot. Still, it never ceases to amaze me that leftists wear the image of a man who gleefully executed scores of gay men with his own hand and stated for the record the he’d have fired the Cuban missiles at the US if he’d been allowed.

The Daily Mail suggests that oral contraceptives have changed women’s taste in men. It seems plausible enough to me: long-term use of hormones–particularly sex- and pregnancy-related hormones—might reasonably have interesting mental side effects.

But the current fad for baby-faced pseudo-men might also just be another one of those swings of fashion. The French ancien regime was about as poncy as it’s possible to be, without the involvement of a single hormone supplement.

I got forwarded this by a buddy of mine, so…

Three names I go by

Bob

Mr. Uhl

Ensign Uhl

Three jobs I have had

Chicken spitter

Dish washer

Deskside support

Three places I have lived

Newport, Rhode Island & Providence Plantations

Monterey, California

Virginia Beach, Virginia

Three favourite drinks

Microbrew

Coffee

Kombucha

Three TV shows I watch (N.B.: I watch on Hulu, not on cable)

Burn Notice

Royal Pains

Psyche

Three places I have been

Berlin, Germany

London, England

Langemarck, Flanders

Three people that text me regularly

None, because all my friends wish to remain my friends

Three of my favourite foods

Blue cheeses

Sausages

Anything Oriental

Three friends or family members I think will respond

Beats me

Three places I would rather be

Europe

Pacific Northwest

In the mountains

Three thing I am looking forward to

My uncle’s visit

The Great American Beer Festival

My kid brother’s return

Three favourite things to wear

Coat and tie

Uniform

Vibram FiveFingers

There you have it.

Using only song names from one artist, cleverly answer these questions. Pass it on to 15 people and include me. You can’t use the band I used. Try not to repeat a song title. It’s a lot harder than you think! Repost as My life according to <band name>.

Pick your artist

Pulp

Are you a male or female

I’m a Man

Describe yourself

Master of the Universe

Describe where you currently live

Nights of Suburbia

If you could go anywhere, where would you go?

The Trees (in a punning way…)

Your favourite form of transportation

Boats & Trains

Your best friend

Looking for Life

You and your best friends are

Party Hard

What’s the weather like?

Blue Glow

Favourite time of day

Goodnight

If your life were a TV show, what would it be called?

Glory Days

What is life to you?

I Love Life

Your last relationship

Have You Seen Her Lately?

Your fear

The Fear

What is the best advice you have to give?

Life Must Be So Wonderful

Thought for the day

Help for the Aged

How you would like to die

Sickly Grin

My soul’s present condition

The Professional

Your motto

Death Goes to the Disco

And y’know, I was trying to be serious…were I going for comedic effect, there are much, much better song titles to use…

I just read the beginning of this chapter and now I wonder how often I was explaining Star Trek source code…

This list has been circulating for years, but it’s true by all accounts.

1. Buy a dumpster, paint it grey and live in it for six months.
2. Run all of the piping and wires inside your house, on the outside of the walls and label all the piping so you can identify what you just hit your head on.
3. Pump 10 inches of nasty crappy water into your basement, then pump it out, clean it up and paint the basement Terracotta.
4. Every couple of weeks dress up in your best clohtes and go to the scummiest part of town, find the most run down, trashy bar you can, pay $20 per beer until you’re hammered, then walk home in the freezing cold.
5. Perform a weekly disassembly and inspection of your lawn mower.
6. Raise your bed within six inches of your ceiling.
7. Have your neighbor come over at 5am and blow a whistle so loud the Helen Keller would hear, and shout Reveille, reveille,all hands heave out and trice up.
8. Have your mother in law write down everything she wants you to do that day, then you must stand in the backyard at 6am and have her read it to you.
9. Sit in your car and let it run for 4 hours before going anywhere, this is to ensure that your engine is properly lit off.
10. Repaint your house once a month.
11. Have your neighbor collect your mail for a month, randomly losing every 5th item.
12. Spend $20,000 on a satellite system for your TV, only to watch CNN and the Weather Channel.
13. Have your 5 year old cousin give you a haircut with goat shears.
14. Sew back pockets to the front of your pants.
15. Periodically, shut off power at the main circuit breaker and run around shouting Fire, fire, fire! and restore power.
16. Purchase 50 cases of toilet paper, locl up all but two rolls, ensure one of these two rolls is wet at all times.
17. Sleep on a shelf in the closet, replace the door with a curtain, have your wife whip open the curtain about 3 hours after you gp to sleep. She should then shine a bright flashlight directly into your eyes and then mumble Sorry, wrong rack.
18. Safety wire the lug nuts on your car.
19. Drive to the gas station, get permission from the service attendant to refuel your car, don rubber gloves, apron, and face shield, start pumping, then tell wife and kids in the car,We’ve commenced refueling.
20. Move in with all the guys you wouldn’t get caught dead hanging out with from high school for 6 months.
21. Set your alarm clock to go off at random during the night. Jump and get dressed as fast as you can, making sure you button the top button on your shirt and your pants tucked in your socks, run outside and uncoil the garden hose.
22. Install a small florescent lamp under the coffee table, get under it and read books and/or sleep.
23. Raise the thresholds and lower the top seals of your doors so that you either trip or bang your head every time you pass through them.
24. When baking a cake, prop up one side of the pan whlie it is in the oven, spread icing on real thick to level it off, serve at every meal.
25. Every so often throw the cat in the pool and shout man overboard, starboard side, then run into the kitchen and sweep all the pans and dishes off the counter, yell at the wife and kids for not securing for sea!
26. Put on the headphones from your stereo, hang a paper cup around your neck with a string. Go stand in front of the stove and say stove manned and ready. Stay there for 3-4 hours and say stove secured, going offline. Roll up your headphones and paper cup and place them in a box mounted on the wall.
27. Have your little sister yell We are in a training environment then have your dad frantically wave a red and black rag at you yelling Black smoke and fire while you wave an uncharged garden hose at him.
28. Stand in the doorway of your house and every time the dog comes through the doggie door, ring the doorbell twice and announce Peleliu arriving, then when he leaves, ring the bell twice and announce Peleliu departing.
29. Lock yourself in your home for six months, consuming only Snickers and Pepsi/Mountain Dew. At the end of the six months go to the high school track and try to run a mile and a half in 9 minutes and when you can’t, you must stand at attention whle your wife yells at you for not being Within Standards.
30. Go outside at midnight, open the fire hydrant full force, then try to hammer a piece of firewood in the hole.
31. Every hour for 4 hours walk about your house, checking the water level in the toilets and the refrigerator tempt, go over to the neighbors house. Ring the doorbell, when he answers, salute him and say All Secure.
32. Stand at the end of your walkway behind a podium with a stick, when your little sisters friends come over, ask to see their drivers licenses, those who can’t produce a valid ID, you must harass them about it but let them by anyway.
33. Have your mom sew your name on the back of all your pants.
34. At midnight, write on a legal pad which neighbors are home, what sinks, showers and ceiling fans are online, and whether or not your wife is at home.
35. Tag out all the power to your livingroom to change a lightbulb in an endtable lamp
36. Call your youngest kid Crank and make him do the dishes for 90 days.
37. Draw and test a daily lube oil sample from your car.
38. Yell Attention on Deck every time your wife enters the room you are in.
39. Paint a glow in the dark ring around every doorway leading outside your house. Then paint a glow in the dark box on every wall in the house. In the box write the name of the room and give it a useless nubmer and call that box a Bull’s Eye.
40. Put red lights in every light fixture leading outside the house and install a switch that turns this light off anyways when the door is opened.
41. Get the same phones used on stove watch, go the the backyard and say Aft Lookout Online and stay there all day.
42. Yell at your kids for wearing white socks.
43. Flip your kids’ mattress on the floor because the seam of their bedsheet was running the wrong way.
44. Install a 2 by 2 foot shower and try to wash your feet. (GOOD LUCK)
45. After a rainstorm, get a mop and get up all standing water from the porch and sidwalk, so the wife wont’ bitch, and don’t forget to sweep away all the standing water into the street.
46. Install a wooden box with a small slot in the top and a hole in the bottom that leads directly to the trashcan, and on the box in bold letters writte Suggestion Box.
47. Pay for the kids to go to small engine school. When the lawn moswer breaks call SEARS to come and fix it.
48. Serve dinner at 4pm. Give your fat son a generous serving because he looks hungry, and be sure to starve the skinny one who is actually very hungry, and secure dinner before everyone eats.

I sometimes think our old man might have been using some of these on us.

So I think we all know that bottled water is horrendously expensive and bad for the environment (which is in large part why it’s so horrendously expensive: you’re paying for all the energy wasted in getting that bottle of water to you). A company named uscanteen has updated the old M-1910 canteen and offers it with stylish purse-like carriers for women. Pretty sweet idea, and at $90 for a canteen and carrier together it pays for itself fairly after a month or two.

James Bach recently had a disturbing experience: the human being he chatted with over a computer seemed to be a robot due to an inflexible script. This serves as a reminder to me about the importance of flexibility in our processes. In this case the human beings used to communicate with customers are held to such a strong script that they might as well be computers. Why use humans then?

I recently had a similar experience with a state-funded, university-run telephone survey. They were asking questions about smoking but the questions fundamentally didn’t apply. I was asked if I’d smoke in the last 30 days. As it happened, I had not. Then I was asked if I’d tried to quit in the last 30 days. Ummm, I hadn’t smoked. But when I pointed this out, the questioner just asked the question again. That telephone survey was extremely poorly done in other ways (biased and slanted questions, making false conclusions from faulty assumptions and so forth), but that’s something I’d meant to blog about earlier. In this case, the problem could have been avoided by simply allowing the woman on the other end of the phone to use the brain God gave her.

If you’re going to use human beings, let them use their judgement; if you don’t want judgement, use computers. A man should never do what a computer can do; a computer should never do what a man must do.

You may have heard that the American military is an all-volunteer force. Well, that’s not strictly true: Command Sergeant Major Jeffrey Mellinger was drafted in 1972 and is still serving. Granted, he’s voluntarily re-enlisted repeatedly over the past 37 years. Still, it’s pretty cool that he’s a relic of a previous age.

An Australian study has found that open-plan offices sicken workers and harm productivity. I knew it!

This comic is right on the money.

Way, way too cool. Now, just figure out a way to set the chainsaw on fire in flight, and I think one will have developed the all-time ultimate weapon.

Jim Adams, RIP.

It turns out that since Corning sold the rights to use the Pyrex name, Pyrex dishes have been exploding left and right, maiming people and generally being untrustworthy.

Bushman’s Hole in South Africa is the deepest underwater cave in the world. Read the true story of an attempt to rescue the body of a diver who had died there. One of the best pieces I’ve read in a long, long time.

Today marks eight years since Black Sunday, that sad day when I donned cap and gown and was cast headlong into the working world. I’ve since spent twice as many years out of school as I did in it.

When I look at what I wrote on the fourth anniversary of my graduation, I don’t see that I’m much further along at 29 than I was at 25: making a little more; still ensconced in my condo; still single; still driving the same car; still with very few local friends. But there’s hope: I’m working on a shift in my career to something I find more interesting; I’m renovating my condo; I’ve actually been on some dates. I’m actually pretty happy with my car, though. It’s nice driving an auto that will be old enough to vote next year. And I’ve added a few friends, which is progress. Finally, I’m working on a pretty big change—one which I’ll announce here if everything works out as planned.

So things are looking up. But, today just as four years ago and as eight years ago, I miss school. I miss being surrounded by my friends, guys with interests the same as mine. I miss being surrounded by the highest concentration of attractive women I’ll ever experience. I miss being able to pull three all-nighters in a row. I miss employing some of the best minds in the world to educate me. I miss not having bills to pay every month. I miss getting three months of vacation every year. I miss being young and foolish and unconcerned with the real world.

On the other hand, I quite like having money. I quite like being able to afford the things I ant to own. I like owning my own place, and setting my own rules. I rather enjoy not being a complete and utter git (well, by comparison with by 18- or 19-year-old self anyway).

Still, I miss sharing an apartment with Phil and Darren, brewing beer in the dorm kitchen, sneaking girls in past visitation hours, going to parties, hanging out at the library, cutting class to go golfing, going shooting in Oklahoma on the weekends, walking to class with a pipe clenched in my teeth, wearing a tweed coat every day and otherwise just plain having fun.

Today, as four years ago, as eight years ago, I miss school.

It appears that American soldiers overseas have rediscovered the utility of washboards. America’s last surviving washboard company makes a portable kit consisting of a small washboard (originally designed for travelling salesman), a tin bucket, lye soap, clothesline, clothespins and foot powder. They’re $25 and thousands have been sent to the troops.

I’m thinking of buying a set for myself…

A list of some skills you’ll need if you wish to live off-the-grid:

• Gardening/farming
• Building
• Hunting/fishing
• Canning/smoking/drying
• Sewing/tanning/weaving

I’d add that you definitely need cooking/baking (fairly obviously) and soapmaking (if you want to be clean). Brewing too would not go amiss—after all, man does not live by bread alone.

Granted, a life of subsistence farming wouldn’t be terribly exciting or fun. Well, except for the excitement of droughts and crop failures.

Ramit Sethi writes about the planning fallacy—the problem that people can’t estimate how long a project will take. Basically, no matter how carefully folks plan and how much they try to pessimistic, they assume that things will go better than they will. It turns out there’s one good way to estimate project length; read the article for what it is.

Homo faciens is Latin for man the maker (and it’s pronounced with a hard k, not an s); it occurs to me that the term perfectly describes me. Today—while simultaneously performing a very difficult job—I am doing the following:

• Grinding wheat into flour
• Baking shortbread from that flour
• Making coffee from freshly-ground beans
• Baking pumpernickel bread with that coffee
• Making leek, potato and carrot soup
• Grinding barley
• Brewing porter from that barley
• Juicing bananas
• Making banana leather

And yes, I’m performing that rather complex and troublesome job as well (believe it or not, each of the above tasks only takes a few minutes at a time and can easily be squeezed into my breaks).

This weekend a buddy of mine threw an Ides of March party which encouraged one to wear a toga (in green for St. Patrick’s Day). In the space of six hours I researched and recreated a Roman tunic and toga—including going to the fabric store and finding linen. Yes, that’s right: in under one quarter of a single day I managed to entirely reconstruct an ancient pair of garments about which I had no previous knowledge (in fact, until I did the research I did not realise that a toga is really just a sort of stole-like thing worn around a tunic).

I’m so incredibly, unutterably, ineffably cool.

The Art of Manliness suggests bringing back men’s hats. Not a bad idea if you ask me.

Hat-tip to Maj. D.

…a few years make: this guy is the same as this guy. I guess that means I might be a senator someday…

Although, unlike Norm Coleman I didn’t spend my college years smoking dope; also unlike him, I oppose throwing people into jail for smoking dope.

Many folks don’t realise that in England one must purchase a license to own a television; this is what finances the BBC. Here are an amusing set of letters sent to a former licensee who got rid of his TV. The BBC apparently can’t fathom a person not watching TV and assumes that if you have ever had a TV then you will always have one.