Best of CL, another gem

Here is a brief rundown of my encounters with the other lonely people. You can’t keep this stuff bottled up. It’ll kill ya.

#1.
Wow. You are surprisingly beautiful. From Pakistan, you say? How exotic.
No, I’ve never been, but I do support terrorism. Okay, that was a joke. Why are you shaking? Yeah, I’m a bit nervous too. First time and all. After hours of blithering about ourselves you are still nervous? I guess you are just a nervous person. Hey, is that your tongue in my mouth? Yep, it sure is. You’re a great kisser. Oh, you really just see us having more of a friendship, eh? Then, may I ask, why are you moaning and licking the roof of my mouth? I know that I just had a Mento and they are deliciously minty. But really, I’m happy to give you your own.

#2.
What lofty position do you have at Alias Wavefront that you have access to the kind of computing power necessary to make your picture look so much less hideous than you actually are? Oh, you’re from Liverpool. No, no, I find accents…sexy. Are we even speaking the same language? We should never have ordered food because now I have to watch you shovel that sushi pizza into your Homunculous face. Maybe you should find a floor grate to eat that over. Jesus Christ. Should I see if I can find a hose? Yes, the little folder that the guy just dropped on our table does contain the bill. Try not to look at it. I don’t mind wasting my time and I love to waste my money but if I have to do both, for you, right now I’m going fucking kill everybody in this place and take the bloodletting out onto the street. It’s okay, I’ll tell you what you owe.

#3.
I’m okay. You’re okay. The city is okay. I like spring too. Cats can be nice. The weather has been alright. My noodles are a bit soggy too. But not bad. No, not bad at all because nothing is truly bad nor is anything really that good. Beer is fine. Any one will do. Coffee or tea? I have no preference either. Should I hail a cab for you? We could just walk. Why don’t we just stroll out into traffic together. Alive, dead. What’s the difference, really?

#4.
We are obviously attracted to each other. You are a bit of a pot-head but I can live with that. You’re voice is like sandpaper on my inner ear. Again, I can live with that, for now. You often repeat yourself and I’m not sure I can live with it but I’m doing my best. You didn’t need to tell me how many guys you’ve banged but it is interesting nonetheless. You have a knack for spotting guys who just want to fuck a redhead, eh? I had no idea that was any kind of fetish. Funny. No need to worry, though, it’s familiar territory. Hey, right on, we are fooling around on my couch. I am really horny. Oh my god, I’ve somehow killed you! Oh, its okay. You are in fact alive. What’s wrong? You are just really quiet? You are sure that you are into this? Because I think that you may have just had a mild stroke. I wish I was one of those depraved redhead hunters because your lack of passion is inversly proportional to the hardness of my dick. Hmmm, I’m getting bored. Let’s just smoke some more weed and I’ll crack some more jokes.

#5.
You are cute in a Katie Holmes-ish, down syndromey kind of way. This bar is really loud so I miss a lot of what you say but it doesn’t seem to effect our lopsided conversation one bit. You talk a lot but you only tell me stories about your friends. All I’ve gleaned about you is that you are an only child and are addicted to some reality show I’ve thankfully never heard of. Will you excuse me? I’m going to steal a car, drive to Malvern and see if I can get some high school kids to shoot me in the head. We settle up with the waitress and you didn’t bring any money. How regal of you. No, I’ll get it, no problem. At about 2:30 I ask, “Wanna get outta here?” You reply with, “I have to go home. Alone.” I’m not sure how hot or interesting you think you are but what I meant was, “Can I please get the hell outta here?”

#6.
Your profile is amazing. We have all the same interests. You have an easy laugh. You’re calm, independant, active, adventurous. You included a picture of your back tattoo eluding to some greater sensuality and the back that carried it was lithe, blemishless and sexy. We exchanged a few notes. The back and forth of electrons was full of wit and charm. We set up a date. I get there a few minutes early. You’re late. More time goes by. I have another drink and then you’re really late. After about 30 minutes I think to myself, “Thank God… whoever that is.” You never show up and I just want you to know how happy I am. You never got the chance to befoul the perfect image I have of you. You will always be lithe, sexy, funny, happy, laid back and down to earth. And I will always be that snappily dressed, sarcastic, confident, mysterious hot guy without ever having the few minutes it would take to fuck it all up. I consider this my most successful connection to date. Um, to date.

#7.
By now I’ve seen enough. You sound sweet and you are attractive but I’m really just waiting to find out exactly why you and I will never stand on common ground and share a moment where the world makes sense from the perspective of being wrapped in each other’s arms. I don’t put much effort into getting ready for you. I don’t even shave. I actually put on cologne that I don’t like and I struggle with the psychological implications of this as I force myself out the door. When I see you its like looking in a mirror. No, you don’t look like an unshaven dude. But you are just as jaded the one you are half heartedly listening too. We would pretend to be interested in each other but we aren’t even pretending to be that interested in ourselves. You and I should probably go into counselling. And I don’t mean together.

#8.
Now I’m really fucked up. When I was younger and dated a variety of women I always knew who the one with the problems was and it was always you. Now I’m not so sure. I’ve been really repulsed by some of these morons but it dawns on me that some of them probably found me silly. Maybe dorky. Maybe even stupid. The common denominator here is me. Oh, this is really bad. I got into this whole thing to meet women, have some fun and feel good about myself and now I’m starting to think that maybe I’m the idiot. So I sit here waiting for you at this noisy little cafe and I have no confidence at all. I’m a complete fucking tool! My mind is all frazzled. Maybe I can get out of here before you show up. Oh, shit. That’s you isn’t it? Short, brunette, glasses. Built like a shit brickhouse. You throw your hips as you stride over to me. My mind is completely corrupted. Complete system failure and there is no time to reboot. I start with the bad jokes right away. And worse yet, I’m laughing at them myself. You aren’t. I feel like a drunk clown trying to entertain a cranky two year old. I stop recording before the pie hits me in the face. I don’t want to remember this shit.

#9.
I’ve taken a few weeks off and my synapses are firing properly again. I’m a wonderful person. People like me. I wear that cologne that makes me smell like candy. We take our interweb conversations to a patio for some reality. Pretty standard stuff. You turn out to be a hot cougar. At least your body has stayed hot. No kids, I guess. The cigarette lighter suddenly illuminates the gauntness of your face. “Just What I Needed” comes over the speakers and I’m waiting for you to reveal that you are in fact Ric Okasek. Your voice has been soaked in gin and its kind of like being gurgled at by those vulture-things from The Dark Crystal. We decide to order some snacks. You pull your eyeball out of your head and hold it high in your hand, twisting it around like a periscope in an effort to spot the waitress. She doesn’t see you at first but your barking gets her attention. You screech out your order with all the eloquence of a bandsaw cutting a piece of slate. You never look at the waitress and, in fact, treat her like shit. I enjoy my calamari despite the saliva, earwigs and bits of dust that I’m sure have found their way in there. I sit back in my chair and with one sip of wine my whole body relaxes. I smile as you prattle on. I’m so glad the problem is you and not me.

this is in or around Toronto

Another Sailor Lost

This makes me proud to be a sailor. God bless this man.

Captain lost after charter fishing boat capsizes
Captain had an apparent heart attack while helping passenger

Friday, May 19, 2006; Posted: 4:21 p.m. EDT (20:21 GMT)

GEORGETOWN, South Carolina (AP) — The 75-year-old captain of a capsized charter boat stayed in the water with a struggling passenger for hours before suffering an apparent heart attack and disappearing underwater, authorities said.

That passenger and all five others who had been aboard the 26-foot catamaran were rescued Thursday by a Coast Guard helicopter 15 miles off the South Carolina coast, Coast Guard Capt. John Cameron said.

The search for the captain, Robert Clarke, was suspended hours later.

“We saturated the area with our search. If he was alive, we would have found him,” Coast Guard Petty Officer Donnie Brzuska said Friday.

Clark and his mate were taking their five passengers on a fishing expedition when the 26-foot catamaran Super Suds II capsized Wednesday about 15 miles off Murrells Inlet, authorities said.

The men clamored up on the hull, Cameron said. Then, “some half-hour later, another wave washed them off,” he said.

Five men got back to the craft, but passenger Mike Robinson was having trouble swimming, Cameron said.

Clarke “yelled back to his mate to take care of the (others) on the boat and that he would stay with Mr. Robinson,” Cameron said.

The two got separated from the others. Robinson told officials that at some point in the night, Clarke had “some sort of cardiac event,” Cameron said.

Robinson tried to administer CPR and hold onto Clarke but lost his grip as hypothermia set in, and he saw Clarke go underwater, Cameron said.

The others were rescued after spending 17 1/2 hours in the 70 degree water. Robinson was found holding onto a life jacket. The other five were clinging to the overturned boat.

Some were being treated for hypothermia, Cameron said.

Clarke, of Murrells Inlet, had saved lives before, including jumping into the water to rescue a man years ago, son Vaughn Clarke said.

“He was a captain,” he said. “A captain takes care of his people. Just like in the military, you take care of the people you are responsible for.”

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

So spake Charles Barkley

From espn.com:

“I understand that’s a lot of money, but it is my money. Nobody has the right to tell me what to do with my money.”

-Charles Barkley

So Sir Charles makes a good point. I was listening to the alt.npr podcast “On Gambling” with Mike Pesca, and he played some of the audio from the interview where this came out. Hot on the tail end of the news of Daly’s “$50 million” in losses, which probably wasn’t quite that, Barkley admitted to losing around $10 million over the years. As Pesca said, that’s not much for someone with his bankroll, but still doesn’t it make you feel bad that that $10 million could have gone to charity? I say, do what you want. No pro athlete is obligated to donate money or to do anything with their money that they don’t want to. There is an element of responsibility for being in the public eye and acting as a role model, and I’m not sure of where I am in that regard. To use a distant example, if Paris Hilton whores herself out and gets caught doing drugs, that sucks because there’s some girl out there who want to be like Paris. At the same time, the majority of the population (I hope) realizes that she’s just a public spectacle and her notoriety relies on her body, her sluttiness and her arrogance. Pesca busted out the DSM-IV (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychological Association) and tried an amateur diagnosis to see if Barkley was a gambling addict. For the criteria that Pesca knew from the interview, Barkley only fit one or two, and the requirement was four or more. Still, Barkley called it “our addiction”, referring to himself and Daly. What siginificance does it have when someone who makes millions of dollars drops $100,000 in a weekend? Probably not much. Yet, if someone who was making a fraction of that and gambled off the same fraction, it could be bad. Say you made $35,000/year and you dropped $3500. That could have covered your ass in a lot of things, and if you’re supporting a family, you’ve got a major problem.

Jsut my thoughts. Now, on to that English paper…

So spake Wikipedia:

Most definitely recommended, as per my experiences: www.alessonislearned.com

Something else. Note the last line:

Solipsism (from the Latin ipse = “self” and solus = “alone”) is an extreme form of skepticism, saying that nothing exists beyond oneself and one’s immediate experiences. More generally, it is the epistemological belief that one’s self is the only thing that can be known with certainty and verified (sometimes called egoism). Solipsism is also commonly understood to encompass the metaphysical belief that only one’s self exists, and that “existence” just means being a part of one’s own mental states — all objects, people, etc, that one experiences are merely parts of one’s own mind. Solipsism is first recorded with the presocratic sophist Gorgias (c. 483–375 BC) who is quoted by Sextus Empiricus as having stated:

1. Nothing exists
2. Even if something exists, nothing can be known about it, and
3. Even if something could be known about it, knowledge about it can’t be communicated to others

Solipsism is generally identified with statements 2 and 3 from Gorgias.

But, in introducing methodological doubt (via Cogito ergo sum) into philosophy, Descartes created the backdrop against which modern interpretations of solipsism subsequently developed and were made to seem, if not plausible, at least irrefutable.

Solipsism is logically coherent, but not falsifiable, so it is not testable by current modes of the scientific method.

Skeletor!

Oh, and while I’m at it, this looks to be the most kickass flop of the summer. An ingenious idea.

Snakes + Plane =

Here’s the preview.

How to French Kiss – Ze Style

More Ze Frank: Just follow the link! – He rips on Cream Ale, too. Hah.

And dirty space news.

Network Neutrality – You Should Care!

Why you should care about network neutrality by Tim Wu of Slate.com

(an excerpt analogy to make you care)

“… In trying to figure out who’s right, let’s forget about the Internet and look at KFC. The fast-food chain discriminates. It has an exclusive deal with Pepsi, and that seems fine to pretty much everyone. Now, let’s think about the nation’s highways. How would you feel if I-95 announced an exclusive deal with General Motors to provide a special “rush-hour” lane for GM cars only? That seems intuitively wrong. But what, if anything, is the difference between KFC and I-95? And which is a better model for the Internet?

Two obvious differences are market power and the availability of substitutes. KFC is a small fry, relatively, locked in competition with the likes of McDonald’s and Popeye’s. KFC sells Pepsi? So what? McDonald’s sells Coke.

It’s a lot harder to substitute for an interstate. And if highways really did choose favorite brands, you might buy a Pontiac instead of a Toyota to get the rush-hour lane, not because the Pontiac is actually a good car. As a result, the nature of competition among car-makers would change. Rather than try to make the best product, they would battle to make deals with highways.

That’s what would happen if discrimination reigned on the Internet: a transformation from a market where innovation rules to one where deal-making rules. Or, a market where firms rush to make exclusive agreements with AT&T and Verizon instead of trying to improve their products. There’s a deeper point here: When who you know matters more than anything, the market is no longer meritocratic and consequently becomes less efficient. At the extreme, a market where centralized actors pick favorites isn’t a market at all, but a planned economy. …”

I think it matters, anyways. We can’t let major networks get a monopoly-like hold on the internet, otherwise we’re going to have large networks holding large chunks of the internet, and the “best deals” will be going through a mass-media-controlled server. Fuck that.

Sick

Only FOX news, upon a search for “popular blogs” would have a story on the “Green House Myth“.

One of the first grafs of the story:

Greenhouses work by physically blocking heat transfer (by convection) from inside to outside – the same effect that heats the inside of your car when it’s parked in the sun on a hot day. Opening the doors and windows allows air currents to flow and the heat to dissipate.

But neither the atmosphere nor “greenhouse gases” block convection, so there is no literal atmospheric “greenhouse effect.

That’s this guy’s working arguement? Sick. The author is Steven Milloy, author of the book “Junk Science Judo”. You must have heard of him! His site is www.junkscience.com. Though the prefix “Doctor” does not appear before his name, Steven Milloy seems to pose as an expert on various issues.

His philosophy on Junk Science:

Junk science?

“Junk science” is faulty scientific data and analysis used to advance special and, often, hidden agendas. The junk science “mob” includes:

• The MEDIA may use junk science for sensational headlines and programming. Some members of the media use junk science to advance their and their employers’ social and political agendas.

• PERSONAL INJURY LAWYERS may use junk science to bamboozle juries into awarding huge verdicts. Large verdicts may then be used to extort even greater sums from deep-pocket businesses fearful of future jury verdicts.

• SOCIAL ACTIVISTS, such as the “food police,” environmental extremists, and gun-control advocates, may use junk science to achieve social and political change.

• GOVERNMENT REGULATORS may use junk science to expand their authority and to increase their budgets.

• BUSINESSES may use junk science to bad-mouth competitors’ products or to make bogus claims about their own products.

• POLITICIANS may use junk science to curry favor with special interest groups or to be “politically correct.”

• INDIVIDUAL SCIENTISTS may use junk science to achieve fame and fortune.

• INDIVIDUALS who are ill (real or imagined) may use junk science to blame others for causing their illness.

It sounds to me like he’s actually a lobbyist, or at least he’s paid to tell people what they want to hear and back it up with absolutely no peer-reviewed research (the foundation of scholarly science), just data and graphs he has compiled himself. He used no researchers to speak of as sources in his story.

Upon further inspection of his website, I found this:

Mr. Milloy holds a B.A. in Natural Sciences from the Johns Hopkins University, a Master of Health Sciences in Biostatistics from the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health, a Juris Doctorate from the University of Baltimore, and a Master of Laws from the Georgetown University Law Center.

Mr. Milloy is a frequent advocate for free enterprise/free market principles and policies in conjunction with the Free Enterprise Education Institute. FEEI is supported by individuals, foundations and businesses, including ExxonMobil.

Mr. Milloy is president of Steven J. Milloy, Inc., which provides news and consulting services on environment- and health-related public policy issues to food, beverage, and other consumer product businesses and organizations.

So he’s no idiot, but he has a neocon agenda, and he’s trying to discredit genuine science.

Boo-urns.

Birthday

Birthday thoughts from Ze Frank: http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/archives/2006/03/post_1.html

So well put.