Stolen from Irish Geisha…>

If I could be a scientist…
I would study mental illness. Or the basis of the physical universe as rooted in numbers. Either way, I would fuck something up, cause I don’t have the patience ot run experiements right.

If I could be a musician…
Oh, would that I could be a musician.

If I could be a doctor…
Back to mental illness. Or some sort of criminal psychology. Degree optional… Oh, wait!

If I could be a Painter…
Abstract expressionism. Jackson Pollack all the way, baby. I love the Dali surrealism, but I just don’t have that thinking mechanism in my head, and I’d end up hacking from others. Much like my writing.

If I could be an Innkeeper…
Can I be the guy who tells Joseph and Mary that there’s no room, so the pregnant woman has to go sleep in the filthy barn, endangering her life and that of her unborn baby? I have little patience for the general masses, and I think getting away with that (and even being made famous in the best-selling book ever) would be fun.

Random notes from the edge:

• Why doesn’t President Bush give TV important speeches when I don’t care about what’s on network TV? Is there anything really so important going on that I have to supercede my usual CSI watching to hear about it, instead of ignoring it later on CNN.com?
• Penn and Teller are back with season three of BULLSHIT. First episode: circumcision. Painfully brilliant.
• Missed out on the Birmingham Blog dinner get together thing last night. Seems that I missed out on some surly and pentrating wit.

  Or discussions of fanfic. Which is not so interesting.

• I suddenly find myself too conscious of the fact that this blog is being read. By tonight, I plan on getting over this, but I can not stand feeling the need to self-edit. And yet I am. Feeling that need. That is. And. Putting. Shatneresque. Periods in… EVERYWHERE!
• “Tad, I believe your bag is ringing.”

  Context.

• Everyone needs a vestigial organ. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

DotNetNuke > FAQ ( DNN 2.1.2 ): 2) The ‘Samurai Night Fever’ Line:

DISCLAIMER: This is the shiznit. It flat-out works. Just about the only folks it won’t work for (for reasons that will become obvious momentarily): Men with toupees, comb-overs, dyed/ bleached/ highlighted hair, or non-Dental cosmetic surgery. Men with elevators in their shoes. It WILL work for short bald guys. Like a Goddamned charm. Shave your head and lose the goofy ‘hidden platform’ loafers. Ya don’t need them anymore, My Brother. This is the Ark of the Covenant for consequence-free weekend hook-ups. Indiana Jones took it from the Nazis during the late 30’s.

PREPARATION: 1) The two drink minimum rule. Unlike line 1, these drinks could (and, in fact, should) have been bought by other men who’ve tried and failed to chat her up. 2) Mild to moderate anger (if she doesn’t fit into the categories described for pick-up line 1 above, you can pretty much assume this one, though getting auditory and visual confirmation is key to keeping your self-confidence up for the delivery.) 3) Cosmetic enhancement: the only safe choice for this is hair color. I’m a slave to hot redheads, so I’ll use it for my example. Slaves to Goth-Girl black or Barbie blondes, you’re in luck here, too.

DELIVERY: you’re not trying to win her over, so don’t even let a MOLECULE of smarm into your voice or demeanor. She’s angry, and like the jiu-jitsu used by Japanese warriors, you’re going to use the force of her anger against her. You’re gonna want to deliver the line like you’re talking to someone at work who just jammed up the copier that only you can fix. Again. If you’ve ever had a relationship with a woman where she annoyed the hell out of you but was so great in the sack that you had weeks or months of hot ‘angry’ sex with her, then this tone of voice will come VERY naturally to you.

THE LINE: ‘Why would a good-looking redhead like you dye her eyebrows dark brown?’

DANGERS: If you’ve shown fear, she’ll flat out fucking kill you. She’ll break the stem off her Cosmopolitan glass and drive it right into your temple. Without warning, so at least it’s quick. When the line works, she’ll either throw her drink on you or slap the shit out of you. Some women punch. Keep your legs together, or you might catch a knee. When she says, “What the fuck did you mean by that?” or “Ha ha, asshole.” You’re past the violent point and in. Seriously. Any response to her question that isn’t a “nice guy” back down will work. “You mean those aren’t your eyebrows?” is THE killer follow-up. Why the hell am I sharing this stuff with you? I don’t like ANYONE this much. It must be the prescription pain killers I swiped from my Grandma talking.

THE PAYOFF: The same kind of sex listed in pickup line 1 above. She hates you and has something to prove to you about who’s real and who isn’t. Better than number 1 above, she won’t want to have anything to do with you afterwards. She’ll probably take you to her place just so she can throw your bum ass out afterwards.

I’d warn you to use this awesome power only for good, but I think I know you better than that.

Call it zonkey or a deebra? – Science – MSNBC.com: “George, however, suffered a long illness, and Allison became friendly with a donkey.”

Context is your friend.

Kids, blogs and too much information – Consumer Security – MSNBC.com: “‘And their pictures are very provocative,’ Marcy said. ‘There’s shots with their butt in the air, with their thongs sticking out of it. They squeeze their elbows together to make their boobs look bigger.'”

I can pull the ha-ha from even the most straightlaced article. Context, people. CONTEXT.

So this is really not about identity theft (my name is John Smith, SSN 999-13-4582, DOB 6.13.64, if you’re bored and need a new life), but safety. And parents, of course, SUCK:

Handy said parents who discover blogs should try not to overreact and immediately shut off Internet access or community sites; there is a safe way to blog, she said.

“That is the first reaction parents have, to cut them off” she said. “But the kids know that, and they don’t want to lose the Internet, so they don’t tell their parents what they are doing. And you don’t want that. You want the lines of communication open.”

She said parents need to be much more involved with their kids’ computer use than they are. Many just turn on the Internet access and walk away.

“If they are going to have a computer in the house, they need to be trained,” she said. “You don’t give a kid a car without proper training. This is just hazardous.”

And yet, many parents DO give a kid a car without proper training. They also give them guns, money, and access to the liquor cabinet. Whee!

Once again, I’ll walk out on the fascist ledge and say that parenting is a responsiblity, not a priviledge. It’s a job rather than a hobby. Yes, I’m sure that there are plenty of rewards you can get from having your little human block of clay to mold and shape in your image, passing on your interests and genes and narrow-minded prejudices and religious intolerance. But you know, you can’t just put the kid on a shelf and wait for it to grow. You have to take an active role in the upbringing, and do everything you can to teach them what’s right and wrong and what’s life. Because otherwise, you end up with Columbines and Memphis Threes and Paris Hiltons.

I think there should be a license for parents, and if you have a kid without a license, it gets taken away from you and put into the impound until you produce proof of license.

Hey, it would at least keep population growth under control. And think about how much more fun police auctions would be!

Online gamer killed over cybertheft – Games – MSNBC.com: “A Shanghai online game player stabbed to death a competitor who sold his cyber-sword…”

There’s more to the article, but it kind of steals from the ha-ha of the first line.

Seriously. GET A LIFE.

Off to play Tiger Woods Golf…

Exploding toads puzzle German scientists: “…The toads at a pond in the upscale neighborhood of Altona have been blowing up since the beginning of the month, filling up like balloons until their stomachs suddenly burst…”

Except when it doesn’t. Isn’t that just the way of life?

Just found out a few hours ago that one of my cover ideas will finally be seeing print — the next issue of mental_floss, I believe. Woot! I didn’t actually lay out the art or anything — just my idea. And hats off to Mangesh and Neely and the other fine folk at MF for actually crediting and compensating creative property; too many people think it’s the work that is worth all the money, but the idea behind a lot of things is just as valuable as the creation.

And I feel like some of the fog of the past few weeks is lifting, and perhaps a creative spell of some sort might be coming on. At the very least, I now feel like it’s not over for good.

Side note: cats have cold noses.

Not entirely sure where this will lead — it’s more a light ahead than any detail in the surroundings — but it feels good to feel the pull of creation again.

And utterly unrelated, at that.

On the one hand, I just installed a metric shitload of Firefox extensions. Anyone that still thinks that IE is the browser of choice hasn’t looked through the huge list of extensions available for Firefox (which runs beautifully on both PC and Mac, by the way). I stopped using IE because of the constant security patching that was necessary, and while Firefox is not without it’s problems (as is true of most computer apps, especially those which allow you to communicate with others), it’s far superior to IE (and way way way superior to Netscape — nuff said there).

Now I just have to relearn my toolbar.

What I find myself having to learn less and less is computer programming languages. All that C++ is finally falling into place, and it’s mostly because of the near constant PHP practice I’m getting over the past months. And while I’ve known that languages are, by and large, languages, and all you need to do is master the syntax and semantics (after that, it’s easy enough to use online manuals to tweak the language-specific terms and functions and structures), I’m finally feeling it all click into place.

Yay.

I mean, YAY! Now I can write more Java, and Perl, and whatever else they throw at me.

Or …

Maybe I’ll jsut stick to installing extensions.

CNN.com – Girls are abusing steroids, too – Apr 25, 2005: “An alarming number of American girls, some as young as 9, are using bodybuilding steroids — not necessarily to get an edge on the playing field, but to get the toned, sculpted look of models and movie stars, experts say.”

Ah, America… Land of the free, home of the ludicrously narcissistic.

Me, I love my Buddha belly. And for the record, in my eyes, a woman without curves is either too young or a fracture waiting to happen.

Or both.