it is not Tuesday, April 26, 2005.

[forty-something years till retirement]

after it sits latent twenty-seven minutes in my fake plastic bottle, after the average size of a condensation drop without shrinks to precisely the size of a growing air bubble within, the drinking fountain water arrives at the ideal temperature for gulping: refreshingly cold but not bitingly so. by stealth, the condensation creeps into a ring on my desk invisible until oblivious I splap important papers in it; I sputter curses and fling paper, ink, water to the ground and swear I've lived this moment already.

yesterday my task was to track down fifteen hundred dollars; I did so in ten minutes that defined efficiency. today a very clever ten dollars evaded me for well nigh three hours, and I'm not yet convinced of the accuracy of my solution (which is bad no matter what your day has been like).

[aside: let me get this straight. an alcoholic is someone addicted to alcohol. a workaholic is someone addicted to workahol? a chocoholic addicted to chocohol? would a car running on gas/ethanol be a gasoholic? words simultaneously illuminate and confusticate, to the great cromulentification of all.]

my snail-mailbox is abuzz with activity, in and out, to the benefit of all. ... er, some.



it is not Thursday, April 21, 2005.

[a.d.d. flare-up]

because there's not much else to talk about, here's a look at what I've been obsessively alt-tabbing between. I am not a link farm.

1. an interesting (that's (5, interesting)) look, on the order of doctoral dissertation, at slashdot's effects on the interweb (warning! pdf-infested link).

2. the beautiful use of light, color, and composition.

3. an office clone that's open-source and better than office. did I mention it's open? information wants to be free anthropomorphized.

4. a slightly autistic personality who has some intriguing insights but difficulty carrying on a conversation with a mirror. thereabouts.

5. dandy.


Chelsey gave blood this afternoon, then slept all evening. lucky. gosh.



it is not Monday, April 18, 2005.

[logical fallacies and late come-backs]

I got a haircut. she said I need to use some expensive goop to style my hair to make it look messy. so I said she needs to wear expensive clothes to make her look naked.



it is not Saturday, April 16, 2005.

[to revisit the past and other diversions]

I'd like to do that thing I did a while back. that thing where I told you to ask me to post pictures of certain things, and then I did it. that thing.

it was a thing I really enjoyed. so, selfishly, let's do it again, shall we?


now then.

I might be going to a superhero party tomorrow; the difficult part of the whole thing is, obviously, I am not actually a superhero. so I'll have to make something up. it can be anything, and once again I must appeal to my fellow inter-netters for help in identifying any possible latent powers. can I be Captain Obvious, who says things like 'you are wearing a shirt' and 'my glass is made of glass' and 'oh dear I just walked in on you in the toilet'? or can I make super-use of another of my traits and qualities? I could be the supervillain Calculatinator, who can predict to within eight significant digits the weaknesses of his enemies. dressing up for that one would be hard, though. good heavens this could be fun.

I'm not really putting the onus on you though. you don't know me as well as I do. or maybe so.

[much self-censoring]

I have this theory that a person becomes the last thought a person thinks before s/he dies. and when each possible thought is someone's final thought, the universe will attain sentience, and then we're done for. but I don't fret because there are several degrees of infinities of possible thoughts, and no significant portion of them have been final thoughts yet.

[aside: it is possible I'm in a 'mood.' I hate 'moods.']


I have another theory that I have moles on my back (not a theory) and I theorize that they are the manifestation of a code latent in my dna and in order to decrypt it, I of course require huge amounts of bids on my iPod.

my wife has been watching huge amounts of alias and perhaps this has something to do with something.


it occurs to me that bodies are beautiful. this isn't a sexual thing at all, either; it's just so amazing that every atom that constitutes me was once a star, and now a bit cooler and more stable, the chemicals I am have risen to consciousness and can look in and see meaning and can look out and see beauty.

I need not look far. I have the love of the woman I love, who is at this moment asleep with one arm around my waist and is dreaming, eyes and arms and toes all aflutter. in the morning she won't remember but I will. someone I know recently had a dream contrasting me against lenny kravitz. the differences are vast and incisive; after all, who needs to be lenny, when I am me, here, now, stardust with her?



it is not Thursday, April 14, 2005.

[metaphor]

life is hard, but life is harder when

1. you have a dream about a girl named morgan with whom you were once quite taken but have not spoken to in six years and she says to you 'hi, katrina' and you say to her 'hi, steve.'

2. you wake up sitting on the floor downstairs at 4 in the morning without knowing where you are or how you got there.



it is not Tuesday, April 12, 2005.

[shameless self-promotion]

you will buy my iPod.
you will buy my iPod.
you will buy my iPod.
you will buy my iPod.
you will buy my iPod.

hey, I'm a nice guy. I mean, you trust me, right? come on baby. you do, right?



it is not Monday, April 11, 2005.

[copycatting]

I have joined the skype bandwagon.

I fear this will open doors I ought not to pass through but will anyway; I'm shortsighted like that.

you can likely guess my username. if you can't, you don't deserve to hear my voice. if you can, just know that I'm stumbly and awkward on the phone, and you'd better think long and hard about just how much our friendship means and how much hinges on our ability to carry on a one-on-one conversation in real time. you know, should you choose to ring me. should you CHOOOOOOOOOOOSE TO RIIIIIIING MEEEEEEEE.



it is not Sunday, April 10, 2005.

[ruminations on radiometric dating]

today I will question authority.

1. I've thought about it long enough and I can't arrive at an answer with logic alone.

say the world is six billion years old. a big number with a large error value to be sure, but it's a starting point for sake of argument.

a vast, vast majority of all the carbon-14 (the isotope used in radiometric dating) now on the planet has been here since near the beginning. no current natural processes produce it in any substantial quantities. given that its half-life is 5730 years, there have been over a million of them since creation; therefore, of the original amount (call it A) of carbon-14 on the planet there now remains A*(2^-1000000), which is by any account as close to zero as makes no difference.

my first question is: since there is certainly more than zero carbon-14 lying around, where did it come from? solar wind? asteroids? (furthermore, did we get a lump-sum at one point, or like the intelligent lottery winner, did we spread our winnings out? how does this variable accumulation affect dating methods?)


2. a few years ago an object was found touted to be 'the oldest known piece of Earth.' fine, that's no problem.

here's a problem. imagine a roman blacksmith, 5 a.d., making a sword out of iron. the sword will be new at the time of forging, but the iron (specifically the carbon-14 in the iron) is as old as the earth. does that mean when we date the sword in the present day we will find it is 2000 years old, or like the crystal above, many billions of years old?

my second question: things are new, ingredients are not. since radiometric dating looks only at ingredients, how can it tell how old the thing itself is?



on an unrelated note, it occurs to me that we have not completed our tax return. my attention span has a half-life of OOOH we should go on a bike ride!



it is not Friday, April 08, 2005.

[WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE INTERNET]

here's something creepy. do a google image search for gang-sines (the popular drew drawing), and the first result you will see is nothing unexpected.

that is, until you examine the url or click the link. it is this site, and I don't know why. not at all.

so to repeat the sentiments expressed so loudly in the title of this post, WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE INTERNET? I'm serious here. this is creeping me out. google is supposed to be flawless and infallible, and they're not. in a really strange way.

(speaking of really strange: this is)


DREW only your wisdom can shine through these dark times, we require that you tell us just what in the hell is going on.



it is not Thursday, April 07, 2005.

[the units of happiness]

I was so busy yesterday that it should count for two days.

ONE ha ha
TWO ha ha


the reason I was so busy gets approximately 55 magical miles per gallon and came with about four hours of paperwork. but it is ours and it valiantly protects both the environment and our checkbook from the evil oil companies. what a hero I am.

cheers, tree-huggers. and all the rest.



(this week, saturday arrived on a monday. how disorienting.)



it is not Sunday, April 03, 2005.

[well, I'm back]

I'm messed up, and will be for days. what a difference an hour makes. I'm firmly of the opinion that if you want more daylight in your day, you should simply get up earlier. wouldn't that have been easier than making the rest of us shift our system of measurement twice a year?

fascists.


sin city is visually stunning. it's just a shame I've never read the original(s)--as it was, the necessity of the continual violence was lost on me. but if you can stomach some intense CGI'd blood (now white, now red, now yellow), and if you like the eye candy as I do, it's a good flick. at least rent it. some day, people smarter in these matters than I am will probably say it was an 'important' film.


consumption of ben & jerry's dublin mudslide is my new favorite way of contributing to the heat death of the universe. oh sweet beautiful best of all possible worlds; I defy you to say it is not so whilst your mouth is full of this pure joy.


you sense the presence of monsters! you unstack your rod. ... I know, just simply know, that if I download this my life will certainly fall apart. I'm already reading the book (see the list somewhere to your right) and it's taking all I can give to put it down once in a while to do things like speak to my wife. WIFE you saved me from a rush of blood from the head but can you save me from the radiant beauty of the silmarils?