100 PERCENT PURE LIQUID COOL.
RETIRED BULLETIN ENTRIES
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|  | 15.07: I Don't Know Whether to Laugh or Cry
NIDA: Who watches the watchman?
Hmm. Is this thing working? Test one...two...three. Ok, there was supposed to be a link on the word "Who", which would have been mightily clever and cunning of me but is now just lame. My web skillz seem to be failing me today. Or are totally non-existent. You make the call.
Ha! In your face, HTML! The link is now working. If you didn't happen to read this in the ten minutes I was trying to work out what I did wrong and the subsequent editions of this post with growing commentary, this may be confusing. We apologize.
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| | 13.11: O that Tricksy Fourth Dimension!
NIDA: It's Friday. Yup, Friday. I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but there it is. Friday. Flashing in front of the collective hive eye like an obnoxious fire alarm (the flashy strobe kind) at four in the morning. Which is good if you're taking off and hitting the pool or the beach but bad if you're a poor schlub stuck in the office trying to get in touch with all of you out there who have already taken off. Or if you just realized that the week has just melted away in the wind and the majority of your deadlines have not. Or if you realized that you should have written down the absolutely brilliant idea you wanted to enter into the weblog on Friday. Maybe I just dreamt that I had a brilliant idea for this weblog entry...this week is very fuzzy. For instance, I had intended to point you, the interwebbing cybertribes, to this on Wednesday the first - which felt like yesterday or even earlier this morning. I obviously did no such thing. Maybe I dreamt I did.
Until I wrangle my circadian rhythms back into shape, I urge you to ponder this little gem. Frankly, you may have to ponder this and this too. I can totally understand not voting for Billy, but the voters of Tennessee did the rest of us a major disservice by not electing Harold Ford, Jr to the Senate. Have you seen the kid?! How many Hottie McHot Congressmen can you name off the top of your head? I bet this is why C-Span's ratings suck so much. That and maybe the dry political discourse.
Well, if I ever remember what I meant to write, I'll write it.
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| | 17.10: Good News, Everyone!
NIDA: It's a gray sweaty day out there - I'm assuming, of course, since I am locked firmly away in our central-air climate-controlled cave. And on gray sweaty days, the best thing to do is find a good video and wait things out. If you're wondering about our next Week in Preview, our crystal ball is out at the shop for not predicting the Death Week that was the last 7 days. Of course, the fortunetelling capabilties of our crystal ball may be somewhat hampered by the fact that our crystal ball is am empty Crystal Springs water bottle. Hey, we do what we can with what we have - it meets most of our needs in an adequate fashion.
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| | 10.29: And Today's Rusty Spoon Goes to....
NIDA: Misconception. Preconceived notions. Call it what you will, it still makes us want to shove a rusty spoon (dull, not the grapefruit kind which are in turn themselves evil - spoons should not have all those jagged teeth - and deserving of a rusty spoon) straight through the hive temple and scoop out our brains. This has been stewing around in my head for awhile now on numerous fronts, but we'll go with this one: The American Civil War was fought because of slavery.
Was I the only one paying attention in history class? Maybe, since I usually had history at the end of the day or right before lunch, and the majority of the Social Studies department in my school district were not usually the most captivating presenters. If you are a Social Studies teacher from my former school district and want to know how to liven things up, one word for you: Costumes. One of the best teachers I had was my history teacher two years running, and she ran her classroom on sheer terror. It was awesome. I'm sure she's a perfectly nice woman, but had she been less blonde and blue-eyed, she would have earned the sobriquet of "Dragon Lady". (I'm gonna pull a Zack Morris and call a Time Out - why are Asian women always nicknamed Dragon Lady or the Black Widow? (see Jeannette Lee and Sonya Thomas) What, we can't be America's Sweethearts? Wow, a double parenthetical aside...To grammatical infinity and beyond!)
Back to history. I've heard a few times in the past few weeks? months? about the Civil War being fought over slavery. I can't recall where but I do know I was irked by hearing it because I specifically remember being specifically told that the Civil War was not fought for slavery. It was one of the many causes, but it was down the list as far as why the North and South started firing guns at each other. I'm a big enough girl that I know that being specifically told a thing does not necessarily mean that thing is true, no matter how hard you try to make it true. So I will concede the notion that Mrs. Kline, Mr. Umbenhauer, Mr. Luy, and several textbook writers and publishers may have lied to me. But as far as I know, the Civil War was fought over interstate commerce. An industrial society versus an agrarian one and which direction the country as a whole should go in. Whether power lay with the States or with the centralized Federal government and whether that Federal government was or was not controlled by the industrial Northern states' industrialist interests. The age old debate between the city and the country. Whether a state could choose to bail from the Union or whether it needed the permission of the Union to bail.
We can tell ourselves that the Civil War was fought over the inhumanity and immorality of slavery instead of commercial interests or property rights, but that's not the whole picture. Morality as a motive always pops up later because we don't want to face up to why we really do things. If slavery was the hot button, why did Lincoln issue the Emancipation Proclamation in the third year of the war and only over the disputed area of the country, the South, which no longer recognized his authority to govern them? And if it was all about morality, why did it take another century for the Civil Rights movement? No one really goes to war over religion or morality or on general principle - that's just what we tell ourselves we go to war for to make ourselves feel better. This is religious fanaticism and principle in action.
The lesson in all this? Setting yourself on fire takes some massive non-flammable balls.
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| | 09.52: This is Why I Went to School in the South (and the Weather)
NIDA: Wow. Courtesy of the BoingBoing.
Seriously, you guys. Wow.
13.48: "Got the key commands down and my fingers is my tools. Never use Command 'Z' 'cuz I don't make mistakes, fool."
NICK: This made me smile for the second time today. Forget you Kyle T. Webster! Your YouTubery and your illustrations have made me unwillingly bear my gums!
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| | 10.28: Breakin' an Eye-Poppin' Move like the Centipede
NIDA: Check this out. Who knew the WSJ was up on the uber-geek?
And remember how I was saying that Alfonso Ribeiro was so much cooler before he got his man body? I'm convinced that his subsequent transition into this is a ploy by Coca Cola to keep us from drinking Pepsi. Or it's Old White America's conspiracy to keep us from Bedazzling our gloves. Hard to tell.
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| | 10.37: That Crazy Oswald Montecristo!
NIDA: He's done it again! He's brought us another bit of Extreme Awesomeness to the Max from the World of Extreme Awesome. Four words for you: Celebrity. Bull. Riding. Challenge.
I'm not normally a fan of reality television (unless the subtitle reads "The Search for America's Most Gorgeous Male Model" - maybe all reality shows should be based on Ben Stiller movies). Apparently, neither is most of America. Or at the very least, we Americans are not big fans of carbon copies of pale imitations of doppelgangers of clones of that show that is exactly like that other show but is slightly different. I'm not sure if celebrity competitions should qualify as reality television but if it brings the bestest American Gladiator of all time, Dan "Nitro" Clark, back into my life, well who can snark on that?
P.S. Interesting Nitro Fact #3: He once played Ellen DeGeneres's love interest in an Ellen (the sitcom)/American Gladiators crossover, proving that he's got quite a range as an actor.
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| | 12.22: What the What?! That Pointy-Eared Bastard Screws with Us Again!
NIDA: One of the many, many benefits of having a fiendishly long last name. This just goes to show that not only should you not believe what you read over the interwebs, you should probably avoid reading altogether.
16.07: PS. I Don't Think You Can Rub Dirt on That
NIDA: That might leave a mark. The Unit at GO wishes Chasity Melvin a speedy recovery.
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| | 16.40: "No, I'm a Barber, But a Lot of People Make That Mistake."
NIDA: Hello interwebs and cyberpeoples! After 96 hours of staring at the end of my nose, I am taking a break and eating a Hot Pocket I found in the freezer. I'm not sure who decided it would be a good thing to take subpar dough, wrap it around subpar meat and cheese, and make it all nuke-able, but I'm sure it wasn't Martha. I wish we had one of these in the office. Mmmm...kosher knish. It's just like Nida's Universal Truth Number 897: Always request the kosher meal when flying.
Anyway, my brain is bit fried.
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| | 16.49: "I Cut to the Front of the Pack, Slammed in My Cash and Blasted Through the Game in a Near-Psychotic Frenzy of Maraca-Shaking Glee."
NIDA: If you're wondering where the quote above came from, it's lifted from this old Salon article. Which has nothing to do with anything, except the image of FOTB (Friend of the the Blog) Colin Williamson, a strapping 6' 3" Ginger Kid, shaking his maracas before a crowd of awed Japanese is enough to keep you going on a drippy, drab Tuesday. Tuesdays have never been good days for me. I think it's because I'm a Monday's child, and after all the excitement and trauma of the whole birthing thing, my first Tuesday was a bit of a letdown and that's the way it's been ever since.
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| | 17.37: Boxy But Good
NIDA: Plus, the Box is Cute. And I really am tired of sweating on cool days. Decompression takes all forms...I just didn't know Dudley Moore was one of them. Arthur 2 just left such a taint...Anyways, check out Coudal Partners if you need some inspiration and Dudley if you need some decompression.
At some point, I may grow enough brain cells to do more than point you to mildly interesting links....oh wait - most of those things don't grow back? Oh blurg.
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| | 11.04: Attracted to the Zag
NIDA: Yo. I was totally going to fill this post with some nonsensical, half-fleshed rant about my earlier post on the Civil War and the North versus South and the settled cities versus the wild frontier and how it all ties into religion and the current piteous state of our public education system, but forget that.* Halcyon days are upon us once more! I thought that seeing my boy Nitro back on the telly, even if surrounded by the likes of Vanilla Ice, Stephen Baldwin, and, who really knows why, Jewel (Greatest. Reality. Cast. Ever.), would be all I could ever hope for, but no. It gets better. Life is good, my friends, and the NBC programming gods are great. And since I didn't hit the Powerball jackpot last night, it looks like you'll have to put up with my nonsensical half-cocked theories for yet another week.
*If you do not want to forget that, read Richard Hofstadter's Anti-intellectualism in America. Not to be confused with Douglas Hofstadter, whose book makes me feel smarter just by being on my shelf. I swear, I'll finish reading it someday.
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| | 10.47: blah
NIDA: "Quiet Girl" - Langston Hughes
I would liken you
To a night without stars
Were it not for your eyes.
I would liken you
To a sleep without dreams
Were it not for your songs.
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| | 12.35: Pow! In Your Eye!
NIDA: Hah! Once more, the ineffable effability of all that is good and great has shown that I am stock full of the truthiness. Specifically, the Truthification of the Universe, Number 19, as seen in my July 26 weblog entry (sorry, you'll have to scroll down) entitled, "Drop It Like It's Hot". Because it is and I am En Fuego! For those of you lazy gits who did not click on the link and are still with me, I will elucidate: Universal Truth Number 19 states you can judge a book by its cover. And now, Tyler Cowen and his Inner Economist agree with me. His book is great. I may even read it the whole way through. Or not. I felt the same way about Al Gore's latest opus and look what happened with that.
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