I have absolutely no idea what the words she is singing are, but the result is hauntingly beautiful.]]> jackdied@jackdied.com http://jackdied.com/article/1061 07 Mar 2010 09:55 EST http://jackdied.com/ http://jackdied.com/article/1060 explains how he gets rid of stuff he doesn't need.

Herself: The TV doesn’t work.
Myself: I unplugged it.
Her: When?
Me: About six months ago.

I am not the target market for this book, because, apparently, the target market for this book is newborn dads who need to be told that fucking the babysitter is inappropriate. “Oh,” I’m supposed to exclaim, “you mean I pick them up, pay them, and don’t fuck them? Oooooh, now I get it.”

Money does matter - that "some initial confusion" could be massively destructive - but when you are thinking about "stuff" and straight barter things become clearer. For instance you can't just say "occupation X should make more money" because what you really mean is "one apple should be worth two bananas." Which means you think there should either be a law fixing the price or you are writing an appeal to convince everyone else that apples are really awesome and/or bananas are icky.

To say everyone should make more money is to say everyone should make more stuff. To say some people should make more money is to say that other people should get less stuff. ]]> jackdied@jackdied.com http://jackdied.com/article/1059 01 Mar 2010 19:45 EST http://jackdied.com/ http://jackdied.com/article/1058 Audrey 144, 130, 127 (23 over)
jackdied 165, 180, 154 (16 over)
Kerry 147, 174, 223 (47 over)
Bob K 189, 166, 209 (51 over)

So next week we should be somewhat higher in the rankings than our current miserable 15th place.]]> jackdied@jackdied.com http://jackdied.com/article/1058 28 Feb 2010 20:45 EST http://jackdied.com/ http://jackdied.com/article/1057 bought by 7-11 and the stores are being redone to be 7-11s, which means no more deli. The Ball Square location will probably be shuttered because there is an existing 7-11 just a few blocks away.

The Chinese takeout joint that closed six months back has a sign announcing it is re-opening soonish as an Indian restaurant. This makes me very happy because while the Boston area has many good Indian restaurants they tend to cluster and I have to take the T to get to any of them.

Update: Somerville City Hall wants to start a city book club, or something. In March everyone is invited to read "The Things They Carried." Thank goodness the local government is stepping up to create a book club; presumably this signals that all the important stuff has been taken care of.]]> jackdied@jackdied.com http://jackdied.com/article/1057 28 Feb 2010 20:59 EST http://jackdied.com/ http://jackdied.com/article/1056 Chicagoboyz has the scoop

Duncan: “We’ve got naught to amuse our persons with save a frozen pond, some smooth river boulders and our wimmen’s brooms.”

Angus: “Oh, aye, and we’re drunk.”

Duncan: “And we’re drunk.”

More posts soonish and returned phonecalls sooner.]]> jackdied@jackdied.com http://jackdied.com/article/1055 25 Feb 2010 00:08 EST http://jackdied.com/ http://jackdied.com/article/1054 promoting the 21 hour workweek as opposed to the standard-ish 40. The listed benefits include full employment and a bag of lifestyle benefits. To the first: if full employment were that easy the French cap of 35 hours would have achieved it already. To the second: the advice that you would be happier if you worked less and spent more time with your family belongs in a self-help book, not as suggested legislation. To be fair the article mentions that a "think tank" has released a "study" and not new legislation but we all know what is shorthand for what; otherwise the piece would have appeared in the style section and would have been titled "less stress, more love!"

An economic problem with cutting the workweek by half is that people will make half as much stuff - which means you will have half as much stuff. Good luck selling that to the voters.

The "report" comes from the New Economics Foundation which has published such hard science briefs as: the happy planet index and five ways to well-being. These people wouldn't be as frightening if they didn't have the ear of the BBC and write apocalyptic stuff like Economic growth no longer possible. Seriously?

It has been faddish for centuries to declare that human progress was at an end and what we really need is to just rearrange what we have (under enlightened leadership, of course). This is just more of that. ]]> jackdied@jackdied.com http://jackdied.com/article/1054 15 Feb 2010 15:07 EST http://jackdied.com/ http://jackdied.com/article/1053 movie Kingpin where "to pull a Munson" becomes a derogatory phrase attached to a person? Well the Lehigh Valley has a version of that. To be a "cudderman" is to be dirty, stupid, do a half assed job, or all of the above. The agreed etymology is that the Cutterman family was always held in disrepute (here is a longer exposition of the story that also implicates the Labars and Halsteads).

I find the whole thing intriguing mainly because the idea of families that are notable or notorious seems foreign and archaic. Well, not completely foreign: I have more cousins in the Lehigh Valley than I can count (reunions are a multi-keg affair); and upon learning that my Cambridge, MA bowling captain was from the LV we determined that I have been to some of his cousin's weddings (He's a Keener, and they are so populous that his father decided to change the spelling just to differentiate himself).]]> jackdied@jackdied.com http://jackdied.com/article/1053 10 Feb 2010 21:21 EST http://jackdied.com/ http://jackdied.com/article/1052

Schluss mit den Grundrechten [German]

[jackdied]

Feb 06 2010, 10:33 EST

It is a strange thing that we call daytime dramas "soap operas" for the lone reason that they were originally sponsored by soap companies. It is an even stranger thing that Germans call reality TV shows "reality soaps" and we don't.

Nic Cage as Everyone

[bobsalive]

Feb 05 2010, 22:06 EST

Strangely compelling.

Fark.com's 5 millionth thread

[jackdied]

Feb 05 2010, 11:48 EST

Fark is the go to place if you want your news strange and bite-sized. For instance the 4,999,999th thread was "Drunk driver hits liquor truck outside wine store."

Milky Way Transit Authority

[bobsalive]

Feb 03 2010, 16:57 EST

We're on the red line.

Bacon Bourbon Caramel Corn

[bobsalive]

Jan 16 2010, 16:42 EST

Three of my favorite flavors. And popcorn.

Two Gentlemen of Lebowski

[bobsalive]

Jan 08 2010, 11:15 EST

What if William Shakespeare wrote The Big Lebowski?

I love my parents, Queen Elizabeth, and God.

I love my parents, Queen Elizabeth and God.

I'm sure it is a coincidence but it was the first coincidence I thought of when the water vapor story hit the news.]]> jackdied@jackdied.com http://jackdied.com/article/1050 02 Feb 2010 14:54 EST http://jackdied.com/ http://jackdied.com/article/1049 The second half of the season is big. We have gone from 8 teams to a full house at 20 teams. That is so many teams that we won't even play each team once.

Tonight (three weeks into the season) we played unnamed team #17. Tough night. Audrey, our lowest average player, put up a good night at 45 over her average (140 per game). Kerry, Bob, and I (avg 165+ per) threw a suck fest and averaged out at 30 under each (equivalent to each and all of us being absent). Shit happens.

It was PA Night. Bob is from Bethlehem, Audrey is from Erie, Steve (other team) is from North Philly, Sandy (other team) is from Wilkse-Bare, and I'm from Wayne, PA. Steve had a modern opinion of Wayne (sushi bars and coffee houses) that I was only partially able to dissuade him of. In my youth it was pizza parlors and video arcades; My message was blunted by the fact that I was telling it while wearing a brooks brothers shirt.

The second half of the season is a big opportunity for team "Final Warning" [named by Kerry after Adam Sandler's band in "the Wedding Singer"]. Team points are back to zero, but our averages are all but fixed by the weight of past games so if we start bowling above our averages we can take points without actually changing our averages. So far this has not been the case, but a boy can hope.

* I am amazed at the reputation change of Wayne. Unlike other towns on the R5 (the "main line" train) into Philly there was never any old money there. Wayne boomed in the 80s (and since) because there was undeveloped land and there was no city wage tax; if you live or work in Philly you have to pay an extra 1-3% to the city. It is no wonder that the closest town with the most available land grew new residences and office parks. (for extra fun the town has a lower population than all of Iceland by about a third, but the county it is in has a population larger by about double. Unlike Iceland I didn't grow up in a town that has its own currency or central bank.)

[added a few weeks later] My mother writes in: How many masions did you pass on your way to school? Private schools? How many Victorian "cottages" are there in downtwon Wayne?
Answer to all of the above is NONE. Err, well, the http://jackdied.com/article/1049 16 Feb 2010 00:45 EST http://jackdied.com/ http://jackdied.com/article/1048 in 2004 (I didn't write down my 2008 number). I voted at 1pm both times, give or take 15 minutes so that's anecdotal evidence for a low turnout race. I didn't take a picture so here is a recycled one.

There were no yard signs on my 2 block walk to the polling place and there are no signs or boosters at the nearest major intersection. As much as I'd like to hang my Gadsden flag it would be rude to announce my politics to my neighbors. Family is fair game however, and if you're reading this your're probably family. My earliest memory of politics was when a matronly cousin told me I would die in a hail of nuclear fire because Reagan had been elected. I responded "lady, that's a fucked up thing to say to a six year old." I might not have used those precise words, but that was the gist of my response.

[added] Here is some French coverage of the election. My high school French is a little rusty but I think they got it right [emphasis mine]:

.. le Sénateur Ted Kennedy, est une belle illustration de la démocratie américaine, dans toute sa grandeur et sa perversion.