Mom, I don’t know what I would do without you. Thanks for letting me get it out with you so it doesn’t come out someplace it shouldn’t. You’re a good egg and I’m a lucky kid.
Don’t be jealous, but this is what I get in the mail occasionally. Not sure if you can see it but the bottom one is entitled “Rocket Ship.” Brilliant.
PERSONAL VENT. I’D ADVISE SKIPPING TO THE NEXT GROUPING OF THOUGHTS: Okay before getting into other things, I have a rhetorical question that I don’t really want an answer to (because it’s rhetorical): How can people who tell you that your biggest problem is that you don’t stand up for yourself be the same people who get all pouty and mad when you finally do? On a related note, how come people can be — accounting, of course, for the fact that people really only show you images that make it appear their life is all hunky-damn-dory — very good to some folks but treat others so very badly? Mom says it’s all about usefulness, i.e. for some folks, there’s a direct relationship between what you offer and how you get treated. I suppose that’s true. And maybe I’m naive but shouldn’t you treat people well simply because it’s a better way to live in the world, both for you and everyone else? I mean, you’re still going to be getting what you got anyway from the useful with something to give. But you may end up with other good things, too, since not everyone wears what they have on their sleeve. Isn’t it just a numbers game? Also, please trust my judgment. If I finally have a word with someone, trust it’s not a knee-jerk reaction but a final addressing of something that had been building. I go out of my way not to be a jerk without cause. And you should know that by now. My friend Austen, when I posed this to him, just smiled wryly and said, “Life’s a bitch, man.” Dammit, that’s really the answer isn’t it? Gah.
Okay then, let’s talk NSA stuff, yeah? So, the ballsy thing — chatting with a reporter about something that freaks you out when it’s on the scale of a massive data mine of metadata on American citizens — remains impressive. This kid Snowden must have known the risk he was taking. Does it undermine national security? That remains unclear, but I’m not uncomfortable with them detaining him and questioning him. That’s part of the risk you assume when you do something like this. All that said, there are some rather weird components to his story — the 200K/year, in Hawaii, for an analyst position, for which he qualified, apparently, not at all. I think Allah P’s asking the right questions here. And I share most of his concerns. Also, this data was being pushed — PUSHED — out by PRISM from what I understand. So PRISM was allowed to operate within those server environments and collect data, which they then sent out to government systems for allocation to, presumably, databases. So all that talk of Silicon Valley being complicit in giving the government your data looks true. And they don’t really have the national security excuse. I don’t know about y’all, but I’m reserving my annoyance for them. Anyway, this is our brave new world, folks. And, for the record, blaming Bush is a very weak argument because this is a kind of expansion of intent that bears little resemblance to tracking terrorist activity following the death of 3000 people. But it’s really not all that surprising.
Okay, other things.
Interesting discussion the other day about this and whether or not you can count the zombie/vampire heroine in all this…
I very much look forward to Whedon’s version, but this one is going to be pretty hard to beat…
Maybe someday someone will like me enough to get this for me. Oh, wait, will find me useful enough to get this for me…
It is pretty cool that the old placeholder was a pretty late player in the game…
Whipped up some tacos last night using this handy little recipe. I did put a little flour in to thicken the beef filling. Delish.
Maybe I should get a pair of Tretorns again. I’m always curious if it’s possible to resurrect a fad…
Oh for goodness sake, yes.
A friend sent me this job listing today. Not sure if I should be horrified or totally flattered.
This one I would do, but only if someone filmed it and dubbed some crazy, incorrect “facts” and running play-by-play, and ran it in syndication in Japan.
Best prom photo ever?
I say yes.
I come back to this song a lot…
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