Overheard in the quad: "Oh, c'mon, I'm not that white. I'm French!"

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If anybody's wondering, the evil overlords of the Metroblogging network rolled out a new upgrade for Metroblogging Seattle over the weekend. If you can't see the site at the moment, well, most of us can't either. The DNS servers still haven't caught up. Have patience; it'll be back.

When the site does come back up, feel free to complain about the tiny, almost unreadable font. (Check out the LA site to see what I mean.)

I know a few of you are comics collectors. Hell, one or two of you write books about comics. Has anyone actually seen a copy of Alan Moore's semi-mythical Miracleman run? Especially #15?

I realize that until the rights issues get sorted out Miracleman hasn't a snowball's chance in hell of getting reprinted, but I'm becoming convinced that Miracleman #15 is the World's Most Influential Comic No One Has Ever Actually Read.

Ganked from the comments in here.

Tomorrow: actual content. Maybe. Also, typewriters.

I've managed to acquire some kind of viral yuck involving a sore throat, fever, clogged sinuses, chills, and a lot of whining. I am the worst sick person ever. My wife doesn't get paid enough to put up with me.

My major accomplishment of the day was figuring out how to sit upright and stay awake for more than ten minutes at a time, so Guitar Hero III was about the limit of my intellectual capacity. Some thoughts:

- theferrett was absolutely right about Vernon Reid's solo in "Cult of Personality". I can only assume Reid had read this XKCD cartoon.

- High school flashback: the game includes one of my all-time favorite songs, Eric Johnson's "Cliffs of Dover," a brightly cheerful guitar instrumental I used to listen to over and over and over again on the tape deck in my parents' car.

- High school flashback part II: Slayer's "Raining Blood" and Metallica's "One"? Suddenly I feel compelled to wear a black t-shirt, black jeans, and lace up boots.

- I like Tom Morello. "I like Guitar Hero," he says, "because it keeps me humble. 11 year old kids can beat me on songs that I wrote."

Tomorrow: work. I hope.

Now and then, as I've mentioned before, I go through short periods where I keep encountering reality errors. Here we go again:

While driving on the freeway earlier today I caught a glimpse of a young girl, all in white, being tossed through the slipstream like a ragdoll. Two eyeblinks later the toddler turned into a linked pair of plastic bags, bouncing around in the breeze.

I met Miles Vorkosigan's real-life counterpart this morning. (Now let's see who gets that reference.) My new acquaintance is about three feet tall and has one working arm, three working fingers, and enough personality and brainpower to fill a room about five times over. His dissertation defense is going to be worth the price of admission.

Right at the moment I'm sitting in a coffee shop with my headphones on, and a damn good thing too, because the people at the neighboring table were giving me a headache. Not only were they excited and all talking over each other, they were switching from Russian to French to English to Russian again within the space of a single sentence. Apparently they all had Babel Fish in their ears and had forgotten to give me one. Pick a language and stick with it, people.

There's a steep hill near my house with a long, public staircase nested in the trees. I climb up and down it every day to get to school. Last night I was about halfway down the stairs when I encountered a calm man of indeterminate age, with a neatly trimmed grey beard, dressed in the same colors as the trees. He stood absolutely still for long minutes, not even blinking, looking out over the small valley of my neighborhood with the same satisfaction and pride in ownership you'd have after cleaning your living room, paying me no attention at all. I wasn't aware the local Old Man Of The Forest had upgraded to a modern beard trimmer and Columbia fleece gear, but that's Seattle for you.

LIfe: weird.

From a dream last night:

ben0691: Hey, you remember that low-budget movie strahd72 did, Broken Bow?[1]

Me: Sure. Why?

ben0691: Remember how he was all happy because David Fincher ordered a copy?

Me: Yes...

ben0691: Turns out, Fincher has spent the last two days watching the movie just to ogle the girls in the background.

Me: *starts laughing*

VOICE FROM THE OTHER ROOM: If you two are quite done being tools of the patriarchy, can we get on with this?

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I was laughing so hard that I woke myself up.

[1] Strahd has never touched a movie camera in his life, as far as I know.

You can always tell, in the middle of a blowout baseball game, when the director and the camera guys get bored. They start giving you random crowd shots of people who look especially glum, happy, bored, weird, whatever.

Towards the end of the Red Sox/Angels game (the Sox won 9-1) the camera guy found Wil Wheaton in the crowd. Heads-down, bent over a Sidekick, thumb-typing with the speed of a hitchhiking marsupial on amphetamines.

The director loved it. During the last two innings, the camera kept cutting back to Wil, thumb-typing away.

None of the play-by-play guys made any comment. Perhaps they didn't recognize Wil. Their geek cred is weak.

(Edited to add: Was it really Wil? Sure looked like him, but there are doubters. Read the comments.)

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My favorite sentence in Warren Ellis' novel Crooked Little Vein has nothing to do with the astonishingly weird deviance and entertaining filth of American culture that he covers. Nope. It's in the acknowledgements, when he thanks his agent, who badgered Ellis into writing the novel. "Any factual errors in this book should be blamed on her," he says, "not because they're her fault, but because it pleases me to do so."

I think I'm going to use that in my dissertation.

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My step-mother's new horse spooked over the weekend, forcing her to bail off while the horse was running at speed. She's a black belt a few times over and knows how to fall properly, so I've no idea what happened, but she ended up in the hospital with something between four and ten cracked ribs and a collapsed lung.

She'll heal, the doctors tell us, but she's going to hurt like holy hell in the meantime.

If you count Cherry's leg injury, that's the second major medical screwup my family has had in the last week. I dunno who or what we pissed off. Note to self: look both ways before crossing the street.

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I've been offline for a few days. If you said anything profound over the weekend, let me know.

I can think of a couple people on my Friends list who might get a kick out of these icons. God alone knows who created them.

Herodotus tells us that it was the habit of the ancient Persians to reconsider while drunk any decision that they had made while sober, and vice versa.

Pity I don't have any major life decisions to review at the moment. I'm well qualified.

::gets up to find refill::

Seriously, you've never read The Histories by Herodotus? You must. Must. Most entertaining ancient storytelling you'll ever read. Death, wars, treachery, oracles, sex, high-level gossip, madness, and the mood and feel of an age long gone.

If I grade one more paper without a break, I will go stark raving mad.

MAD! MAD, I TELL YOU! MAD!

I have a 4-sided AND a 10 sided die and I'm not afraid to use them!

Please donate entertainment and distraction in comments. The students in this class thank you in advance.

Attn: This week
Subj: Your performance

It's come to my attention that many people I know are having an incredibly bad week. Relationships, work, elderly relatives, you name it: everything, and I mean everything, is going south this week for people I love and care about.

I do not believe I need to list every example. The facts are clear enough, well documented and understood.

This shoddy performance is completely unacceptable. Failure to show immediate and measurable improvement will result in prompt termination. This memo serves as your final notice.

OK, this is just cool. Ladies and gentlemen, please meet the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam.



thanks to jwz

"Good news for you, sir," said the guy handing me the pamphlet. It read: WHERE WILL YOU BE FIVE MINUTES AFTER YOU DIE?

Um.

( Well, it may not be your answer, but it is the literal answer, after all )

The subtlety of this threat is still dawning on me:

You know I've sunk pretty low when I spend my lunch hour working on decoding a character's speech in a comic strip.

For those of you who don't follow The Order of the Stick, a comic about a group of characters in an AD&D game, here's the background: There's a character, Haley, who for reasons of plot has lost the ability to speak. Instead, she speaks in cryptograms. So, for instance, while yelling at a paladin she doesn't like in #285, she says:

Rst azq'e tqmgowezqm kg, ws hge kg xtwe wzr efze rst'og z couyum lueaf zqd rsto efuyfw hssp cze uq efze zokso.

or, more simply,

You can't understand me, so let me just say that you're a frigid bitch and your thighs look fat in that armor.

I can't believe I just spent 30 minutes of my life working that out.

From the frequently-entertaining white board near the common area on my office hallway:

THE CYLONS ARE COMING

                              they are here!

Dang.

                    It's OK, they've left.

From http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/005109.html:

Girl #1: Oh my god! I just heard that Katie Holmes had her baby! Katie Holmes had her baby, everyone!
Girl #2: Xenu commands you to shut the fuck up while I'm on the phone with my dealer.

--6th Avenue & West 4th Street


Overheard by: Robin M.

(with a shout-out to clauclauclaudia)

These days, if you're buying a house in one of Seattle's older neighborhoods, it's customary to get a sewer scope inspection. That's where they tie a camera and a flashlight to the end of a plumber's snake and send it down into the sewer. At the end you get a videotaped record of just where and how your old sewer pipes are busted.

The extremely competent guy who did the work at our new house put his equipment away, washed his hands, and handed over his written report and the videotape. "Hang on a second," he said, rummaging through his van. "I have a gift for you."

And he handed me a bag of microwave popcorn.

With an ad for a sewer inspection company on it.

I have photos to prove it.





In my next box of microwave popcorn, I fully expect to see a coupon for a drain cleanout. It seems only fair.

I knew it was going to be an odd day when a song bird landed near my window and began chirping a Rimsky-Korsakov melody.

I listened to a conference call with my co-workers, and it was all nasal whining and gutteral moans, like a chorus of whale calls.

The sky was chiming gently, a series of tiny bells blowing in the wind.

My orange juice tasted of blue, with just a hint of purple for spice.

Somewhere, a child laughed. It might have been in my head.

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It's the second annual rabbit hole day. Look around. See the unexpected...