Category: Out there

Like most babies, Miles loves to pull sunglasses off your face, lick them, wave them around, and eventually flip them absently out of reach. The last time I saw my sunglasses was about three weeks ago. We had returned to our old Raymond St. house one more time to dig up a plant (of ours) from the front yard. By the time we got home, they were just missing. Scoured the car high and low, but no joy. Could only conclude that the little stinker had flung them out the window. But yesterday when I got home from work, Amy had this photo up on my desktop. She had just gotten around to transplanting the bush, and in the process found my glasses tucked amidst its branches. Miles and the bush had shared the back seat on the way home.

At least he hasn’t yet flushed our keys down the toilet — a trick I apparently pulled twice on my parents at his age.

Graffiti scrawled on the back of a sign, underneath the BART tracks along the Ohlone Greenway, just outside El Cerrito station:

Time is real. Your life has meaning.

Good question posed by warmbrain:

Why do mirrors reflect left-to-right, but not up-and-down? I mean, they’re mirrors right? How do they know?

Hmmm…. is it due to the horizontal orientation of our eyes? If our eyeballs were stacked top-to-bottom on our faces rather than left-right, would mirrors reverse the up and down?

This Indian fellow is driving along when a truck full of rebar stops in front of him. Iron bars pierce his windshield and … his neck. His head is nearly severed, the spinal column alone keeps it attached to his body. He stays conscious, realizes no one is coming to help him, and ties his own head back on with a piece of cloth, then drives 30 kilometers to get help. Beyond surreal.

Just got a msg from MacWorld Creative Pro Conference and Expo confirming that I would be doing my “set up OS X as PHP/MySQL development rig” dog and pony show in NY City on Tuesday 15. Whaaaa???!!! First I’ve heard. But they’ve even set up a web page describing my presentation. Seems they’ve simply mirrored the lineup from MacWorld SF from last January. Hmmm…. I wouldn’t mind a trip to NY, especially if they’ll pay travel and lodging, and I definitely wouldn’t mind doing another MacWorld. But I doubt they’ll pay anything — perqs most likely limited to a free conf pass.

Blows my mind that the first I hear of this is two weeks prior to the event, and that they set up the whole thing without even inviting me. Sure, I’ll drop job, house and home, let Amy take care of Miles alone, and spend money we don’t have on travel and board just for the ego stroke. Happy to help!

Walking with Miles in the stroller last night, came across a box of free LPs on the sidewalk, one of which was The Celibate Rifles’ “The Turgid Miasma of Existence” — one of the great album titles of all time. Turntable is packed so haven’t yet listened, but sure came in handy for swooping a hornet out of the house this morning.

The best car commercial ever made has no computer generated graphics … The top 100 hoaxes of all time … Is there a secret city under Tokyo? … TinyURL.com transforms hella long URLs into wee teensy ones for use in email etc, for free … Know your philosophical fallacies … She’s a flight risk (read older posts before more recent ones to grok what’s going on) … Things my girlfriend and I argue about (no, Amy and I don’t argue like this) … Take a deep breath, they’re only forklift extensions … Mad props to Apple for taking up the mantle with indie labels, and for keeping the playing field level … Wing gives The Shaggs a run for their money … Know a migraine sufferer? These headache tips are indispensable … Turn boring old hot dogs into octodogs … Six-Toed One-Eyed Battery Operated Laser Sloths.

Is Hans the cat or the boy? Which of them is the silly?

After the recent mugging in front of our house, I was talking to our Renaissance Faire (“renfaire” ?) geek neighbor about what we could do as a neighborhood. His response:

“We have ways of dealing with this. We’ll just get nine guys in full leathers and broadswords to do some rehearsing in broad daylight. That’ll scare ’em off.”

This was a grown man talking. I kid you not.

The finest in cat costumery, these Japanese feline threads are guaranteed to impress the most discriminating haberdashers. Nice Engrish, too!

It is made from the two-tone felt cloth of yellow and orange, and even if it takes, it is finished to the pop impression. Please observe the feather of the chicken currently attached to the both sides of a hat.

—

For the first time since the image went up in 1994, I have been asked how to obtain permission to republish the big boot. Answer: It’s clip-art. Go to town.