Demosthenes

"Copy this sentence into your livejournal if you're in a heterosexual marriage, and you don't want it "protected" by the bigots who think that gay marriage hurts it somehow."

I've decided to set up a photo gallery where people can buy my photos. I mostly want to see if any of them get popular, and what sorts of my photographs are appealing. I'm using Imagekind, which will do pretty much everything for me. For the next couple of weeks, I'm setting the markup to next to nothing just to see what moves. Please let me know if you like anything in particular.

You can read American Gods online through March. This is probably my favorite Neil Gaiman book, and was the first one I read by him short of Good Omens.

If you're like me, you liked Garfield when you were a kid. Nowadays, though, it just doesn't seem very edgy or entertaining. Fortunately, Jim Davis has been embedding a meta-narrative in his comic that has been difficult to see, until now. I give you Garfield Minus Garfield:

Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life?
Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against lonliness and methamphetamine addiction in a quiet American suburb.

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This was an incredible experience. The Obama campaign was hoping to get 10,000 people and got a full house. The seating holds 16,500 people, and the floor probably held what seemed like at least another 3,000-4,000. Here are some highlights. Click on any of the photos to jump to the full album.


Barack Obama. Of course we're starting with him. But there were other people there...

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Never forget the man on his day.

Looking at the sun can trigger sneezes in about 1/3 of the population. Those of you who have met me know that I am in that group, and it's strong enough with me that even glancing outside just now at the cloudy but bright sky brings a tingle to my nose. For the doubters and haters, here's proof:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=looking-at-the-sun-can-trigger-a-sneeze

For the illustrious Mr. F Bean, Esq.:

These are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users as of 9/30/07. As usual, bold what you have read, italicize what you started but couldn't finish, and strike through what you couldn't stand.

( Lots of books, read and unread )

State Trooper Attacked by Kitten:

http://www.courant.com/news/local/hcu-cop-cat,0,2801884.story?coll=hc_home_util

http://www.rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=2764

Video games that contain high levels of action, such as Unreal Tournament, can actually improve your vision.

Researchers at the University of Rochester have shown that people who played action video games for a few hours a day over the course of a month improved by about 20 percent in their ability to identify letters presented in clutter—a visual acuity test similar to ones used in regular ophthalmology clinics.

In essence, playing video game improves your bottom line on a standard eye chart.

Not bad for an atheist...

Just saw this:

Hey, I'm doing well at a week and a half. Here's the pictures, behind a cut for those of you screen real estate or bandwidth challenged.

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I was supposed to meet fellow candidates today at 10:30 this morning to do door-to-door campaigning. I was bringing the address lists of people who voted the last municipal election. I was kind of the instigator. Then our basement flooded. 1-2 inches. Nothing was really messed up (almost everything was either up on a shelf or in rubbermaid containers), but hell.

So the fire department came. They said that they couldn't get 2 inches off the ground, we'll have to use our sump. As in the sump I had turned on last night. It was pumping into a second sump hole, which didn't have a pump in it. Originally, there were 2 pumps, 2 holes, and a pipe out the basement that would take care of things. Of course, this was blocked off for who knows why, and was capped off with a bleach bottle cap(!) that was solvent-welded on. I'll get to how I found that out in a second. So sump pump #1 was pumping into sump hole 2, creating a nice little pretend river channel across the basement. In one, up, through the pipes, then out the other, and so on.

I went to Home Depot and got fittings to fit a 1 1/4" PVC pipe onto a garden hose, and a 150' garden hose. I fitted everything together and unrolled the hose to the street. I turned the sump back on. I heard, in this order, whirr.......POP...SPASH SPLASH SPLASH. That would be the afformentioned bleach bottle cap popping off of the sump pipe because it wasn't properly fitted, and I had stepped down the pipe, creating too much pressure. I didn't need this. Realizing that in order to fix this whole jury rig I would need to take it all down anyway, I cut the pipe off before the T joint, and attach the hose fitting there. Turn it back on, watch nervously at the rest of the apparatus for about five minutes, go outside, check that the water is, in fact, running into the storm drain, then come back in and wash up. My walking mate shows up at 11:30, and I'm out only 1 hour late. I'm glad I actually got up early, or I'd still be fiddling around down there.

Downside, it's taking its sweet time to pump out lets see... Oh. about 1500 gallons of water. Ouch. That can fill a swimming pool. Okay, time to go out and get some pool hose. This has to speed up, dammit.

Grab the nearest book.

Open the book to page 123.

Find the fifth sentence.

Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.

Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.

( Book Meme )

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Deviled eggs with horseradish and paprika ROCK.

Oh, and so does rice pudding with cardamom.

That's all.

( Commonly Confused Words )

I found this interesting photo today:

Now I'm sure you're thinking, Jim, why would a church put a sign like that up? Are they really that cool? Well, the answer is here.

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