Buy Nothing Day(s)

For the first time in a few years, I've actually gotten thru a Buy Nothing Day without buying anything. Well, there was a tasty Indian meal, but I can't count that. If you weren't up to it on Friday, you can still do it on Saturday as it's now a 2-day affair. Just for fun, here are some shopping and consumption facts from their press release:

-Per capita consumption in the U.S. has risen 45 per cent in the last 20 years.

-Although people today are, on average, four-and-a-half times richer than our great-grandparents were at the turn of the century, Americans report feeling "significantly less well off" than in 1958.

-A recent article in New Scientist featured research suggesting that the more consumer goods you have the more you think you need to make you happy. Happiness through consumption is always out of reach (New Scientist, 4th October 2003, Vol.180, Issue 2415, p44. Available online after registering at www.newscientist.co.uk).

Free music - A Thanksgiving Prayer

A favorite of mine during this time of year, enjoy A Thanksgiving Prayer from the mind of William S. Burroughs, as heard on Dead City Radio. (2.2 MB mp3).

12/14 Update: file has been taken down. Maybe you can find it elsewhere.

Goat report, 11/19/06

One of the downsides to living in the High Desert is the lack of any Trader Joe's nearby. Trader Joe's has been an important part of my life for many years; the presence of a TJs in New Jersey was a factor in my decision to go to Rutgers.

While we don't have a TJs, we did recently get a World Market, which has a few of the products one will find at TJs. They also have a fine wine selection which includes some of the delicious wines on the Goats Do Roam label. I stopped by the other day to find a new wine there, Goat Door, which will soon join our shelves of goat-bottles. It's also amusing to see that some people don't appreciate the pun of the label.

Bunnies can be useful

Most of the bunny videos Ms Goat has found on YouTube are just moments of cuteness and weirdness, but now there's one that showcases their potential usefulness. It makes us feel like we have the two more boring bunnies ever. Via Cute Overload.

Purity Balls

Several months ago I heard about these father-daughter Purity Balls where girls pledge to their dads to stay pure in a promlike dance party. Last week some video surfaced and it's damn creepy. I'm not sure if it's as creepy as the sickest kids book ever but it's right up there.

iPod update

We've had it less than 2 weeks and have already loaded on 12,000 songs, which comes out to 31 days worth of music. I got in the habit of surprising people with the size of my music collection when I worked at the music store and owned 600 CDs back when such a feat was more remarkable. We haven't finished loading music on although Ms Goat says that she's had some fun party mixes so far. Most of the music on there is hers; for some reason she'd rather I didn't load it up with Rush and ELP.

Free video: Know Your Limits

This reminds me of many conversations I've had in the company of philosophers: Know Your Limits from the Harry Enfield Show.

Another new addition

We added a new member to the family this week, one that we've been talking about adding for a while. Yes, Ms. Goat got the 80 gig iPod. I get the feeling that some of those reading this will be more excited by this than when we added Baby Goat. Let the accessory collection begin!

PS - by the order of Apple, I cannot say that it is sexy.

Happy Guy Fawkes Day

Remember, remember the fifth of November
The Gunpowder, Treason and Plot,
I know of no reason why the gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.

Despite being a raving liberal, I am strongly in support of the right to bear arms because of the powerful sound of truth I hear in these words, from the US Declaration of Independence:

That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Remember, remember. And read V for Vendetta.

Year two begins

Happy birthday to this blog. 300 posts in a year.

Google Reader

One of the fun things about getting a steady job a while back was being able to jump into the world of RSS feeds, which I'd been hearing about for a while but didn't have the chance to take advantage of. I got myself going with Thunderbird, which has an RSS reader built in, and found it to be a great way to keep track of lots of things (blogs, new Onion articles, sports scores, etc) without having to keep checking bookmarks every so often. But Thunderbird's been running sluggishly lately so I gave Google Reader a spin this past week.

It has truly surpassed my expectations as it works great, is easy to use and doesn't require any more hard-drive space as it's just a Java-based website. It works just as well on the Win98 machine I have to use at work as it does on XP here at Casa de Cabra. On the downside, it doesn't automatically save feed items (such as blog posts) to your hard drive. I'm not finding this to be a huge downside as I was keeping way too much crap in Thunderbird and Google saves everything, anyway...

Lost Girls

In a very convienent turn of events, shortly before Baby Goat arrived I got an early birthday present from Ms Goat, which was Lost Girls, another great bit of work by Alan Moore, with some incredible artwork by Melinda Gebbie. It made for great storybook reading for the new little daughter, tho I'm sure she'll appreciate it more when she's familiar with Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz and Peter Pan.

After absorbing this truly deep book, I dove into a number of interviews on it that the creators did. I found myself very open to some of Moore's comments (which were echoed by Bill Maher in an unrelated interview) about the sexual repression of American culture compared with European culture. I'm tempted to leave porn around the house so Baby Goat doesn't become similarly repressed; donations will be accepted!

How fast are you?

Test your reaction time. I average about 0.25 seconds. Via Dodger Thoughts