if you want to say hello (or something less pleasant) get thee to the messageboard.

C: As soon as I moved it, I saw that the power cord was free. I wonder if it was loose enough to lose contact through the motion of the house.

me: the motion of the house?

C: You know, the way stepping on the wrong place in the floor can unplug the TV?* Just the way all the components of the house's construction are connected to each other, so motion in one area can be transmitted to another.

me: sigh.

C: And, well, the chicken legs, of course. I took it around briefly after you left this morning. Just for exercise, you understand.




*yes, that really happens.

think about it.

there's this episode of The Simpsons, where Homer goes to college and believes that the environment is defined by Animal House and Caddyshack - that The Man is trying to keep Homer & Co down because The Man is Against Fun. if The Man is Against Fun is a loose sub-genre of film, then that's where Pirate Radio falls.

it feels like an exuberant 1980s movie about the 1960s. (all you really need to know about the way The Man is handled is that one of them is named Mr. Twatt.) as such, it's very fun. while it's based on real events, it's in no way historically accurate.

this is a recut of a film released in the spring in the UK as The Boat That Rocked. Pirate Radio is twenty minutes shorter than the UK version, and supposedly the original cut of the film was three hours. what we have now is a breezy series of vignettes that doesn't demand much of us. sometimes it's really nice to watch a film that doesn't ask much of you.

i laughed a lot. the soundtrack is pretty great. you could do a lot worse on a rainy day.

someone decided to draw cheesecake Disney princes. (NSFW if cartoon assless chaps are NSFW.)

still giggling about Prince Wossname from The Little Mermaid's "Fish Fetish" tattoo.

the superhero project.

i've been trying to be constructive, and find outlets for complaint that don't bring me down further or give my friends and family compassion fatigue.

to that end, here is the Shit-talk Composter. type the bad stuff in the box with the compost pile, do the captcha, click "dump it in".

it brings you a picture.

(and posts the talk/picture combo on a blog - so don't be telling your secrets, yo).

five questions from buhrger. if you didn't ask these of me, ask and you shall receive five from me, whereupon you post your answers with these instructions and perpetuate ad infinitem.


( answers )

i have a five questions meme to answer. one of the questions has a link in it (without which the question makes less sense), so i used view source on the page to copy the html.

did you know that lj lists the variables for all possible userpic choices (by keyword) with your published comment? since i have 104 icons, there appear to be 70+ lines of code for a one-sentence comment.

i don't have enough skills to know for sure that there's a better way, but damn, there must be a better way.

the unfortunate side effect of getting the 360 back is C watching bad (but not so-bad-they're-good) fantasy movies.

i would like to un-experience every glimpse i have had of The Scorpion King: Rise of a Warrior.

the Kuki Linux project is seeking designers and programmers based in the UK.

since e_bourne was successful, i decided to try the nytimes no-knead bread which apparently is something people have been doing for years (recipe is 2006) but between various diets and general hate of the fuss involved in yeast bread i haven't been paying attention.

works beautifully. while it requires pre-planning, the actual time involved in dealing with the bread is minor. it produced a nicely browned boule loaf with a firm crust that shattered nicely. C wants to do it again soon.

the only thing i want to change is to use a smaller pot; the recipe calls for a 6-8qt container and i used our 12qt dutch oven. i'm guessing the smaller container would make for a rounder loaf.

in looking up the link to the recipe i discovered a couple other versions.

also this soup mimerki suggested to use up a can of coconut milk is not really Thai, but it is quite tasty and filling when you add a couple handfuls of shrimp and much more chili paste. (i used dairy milk instead of rice milk, left out the salt -added to taste at table- and increased to 1.5t of chili paste. i'm guessing 2.5t or more would have made me happier. the 1.5 was savory but not spicy.)

tonight's soccer match was satisfying; a closer as joyful and electric as the opener.* those tickets were the best present i ever bought.

now, on to the playoffs.






*yes we won, it was fan appreciation night with a lot of joyful appreciating by the team, and C finally snapped and shouted down the guy behind us who yells at the ref every time we get carded (even when we deserve it). the guy shut up for the rest of the match. aaaaah.

today, UPS left the standard passive-aggressive sticky note and no package.

but hey, if you contact them by seven, you can drive yourself to their warehouse in SODO between the railroad tracks, and then stand around and wait through most of the one-hour window they give you until the package is produced.

and lo, M$ gave us a new 360 with a warranty instead of repairing our busted old one, and a month of Live for our troubles.

they did not, however, send along a power block or a/v cord.




*headdesk*




if you call the service number on the website, you go through a series of recordings that never lead you to a human. if you exhaust the automated menu, it actually says "then i can't help you".

i used their email form. they make you choose a problem from a drop-down menu. "Console will not power on" it is.

(Sounders FC clinched a playoff spot tonight, but that is not what i'm here for.)

i found out tonight that there is a cute pop song about Kasey Keller. i went looking for it and found it on youtube, playing over video of the victory it chronicles.

but i wanted a better recording. and that's how i stumbled upon a photo slideshow of him at his old Bundesliga side, Borussia Mönchengladbach, set to a catchy tune - Cologne, Cologne, die scheiße vom Dom. *snicker*

the coda to the video is a clip of him leading the stadium in singing it. (Cologne is a rival, and yes, Keller speaks fluent German.)

sometimes i love the internet so much.

Microsoft support tracking is very well-designed. they know that console gamers are needy. they have happy little icons and package up the UPS tracking info in a way that makes it look like progress is happening.

and it is.

our 360 is slowly crawling across the country. since there hasn't been another scan since Wednesday, i took the UPS tracking number off the M$ site and visited UPS where i confirmed the worst. the UPS delivery date is on their site. as you may know, UPS never brings you the thing early, even if it is sitting in the local warehouse.

now i know that it will arrive next week, on a day that both of us work. SIGNATURE REQUIRED.



i tell people to never send us UPS because they won't leave us packages, even if we sign the "we missed you" slip or otherwise beg and swear that we will bear the risk of the package being left on our porch-that-is-invisible-from-the-street. package delivery is not convenient if i have to stay home from work, drive to SODO, or add several days having them reroute to my office (which we are not supposed to do anyway).

i suspect one of us will stay home from work to sign for it. hate.

via a locked post, a cool brain science article combined with a comparison of football and dogfighting cultures: football, brain trauma, and being "game". (includes vivid description of dogfighting.)

key bit for the teal deer crowd: repeated knocks to the head cause the same kind of brain damage as second-stage Alzheimer's. the only way to see it is by dissecting the brain; the damage is already present at 18, and NFL vets have visible scar tissue. research is just starting, but this is also bad news for soldiers.

ugh. both of my brothers were linemen in high school and then went on to a couple decades of employment that involved getting knocked around. not in any way equivalent, but bad news when there's also family history of dementia.

what if the people who were such thugs in the land of my youth were suffering from brain damage, and had grown up with a brain-damaged parent (football/military/heavy machinery)? what extra frosting of awful does this add to physical abuse?

i thought i would look into renting a 360 for a day or two while we wait for repairs.

Blockbuster doesn't do it anymore.

Rent-A-Center is just creepy. first, there are no prices or terms anywhere on their website. second, the store finder is like a map of low-income neighborhoods and military bases in the region. (not-that-there's-anything-wrong-with-that, but predatory much?)

we've had our Approve 71 sign in the planting strip out front for almost a week now. it's baby's first yard sign and i'm pleased to be able to host it where it's visible in an area with lots of foot traffic. (and we are near the parking lot for the splitters.)

the signs come from cafe press and they're kind of cool - a printed vinyl pocket with a three-part wire frame. the whole thing ships in a tube but makes a nice flat and sturdy sign in short order.

after a day or two it had been knocked around a little. i shrugged it off, since there are always cars parked there or dogs being walked, etc. every morning on the way to work i would straighten it. later this week when i came home from work, the top of the wire frame was gone and the sign pocket was turned 90 degrees so that it was an indistinguishable shape and unreadable.

uh oh.

when i came home from an engagement last night, around 10:30pm, i found an Approve 71 sign on the ground down the block from my house. it had been split at both seams, like someone tore it as much as the tough vinyl would allow. i picked it up, and indeed, it was our sign. looked like whoever grabbed it scooped it up as quickly as they could and left the frame behind. i took the wire uprights inside and put the whole thing back together with an internal cardboard reinforcement and white duct tape. and put it back outside before going to bed.

WTF, Ballard, WTF. C and i think from the way the ground is torn up that passerby have both pulled it down and put it back several times.

is a mess. i finished it last night, and the details are evaporating from my memory, leaving nothing but a sense of dissatisfaction.
the only thing to recommend it is that it is set in the same world as the delightful Shadow of the Wind. (and i have just stolen from you the moment of joy that comes from recognition. if i thought it outweighed the mediocrity of the rest of the experience i would be more careful.)

went down about as mysteriously as it swelled.

ate, took benadryl, went to sleep. woke up late in the afternoon and the swelling was almost entirely gone. today when i look in the mirror i can almost see that one eyelid might be thicker than the other but it's so subtle that i'm not even sure it's there.

um, okay.