Strategic default

I bought a house in Southern California a few years ago, meaning I now owe more than my home could be sold for. Despite not having bought a house as an investment, this situation is not a financially strong one. I've heard about people walking away for some time, even heard of people who insist it's the only reasonable thing to do but now those voices are getting more mainstream. Greater financial powers are running a huge guilt trip in response but their own hypocrisy makes that difficult to hear. Many good writers are making good arguments, so why do I keep paying my mortgage?

The continuing adventures of Liz Goldwyn

Such excitement to see Liz Goldwyn, whose work I've so admired, in my Sunday LA Times. I love how the article says Liz 'just so happens to be the granddaughter of famed Hollywood studio head Samuel Goldwyn and counts fashion-world elite as friends and collaborators' as if those are unrelated. Amazing that somebody born into such privledge would have a career in the business of high-priced fashion. Can we bring back a robust estate tax, please? It is the moral thing to do.

Rolcats

Haven't really gone nuts over the whole Lolcat thing, although most of what I've seen of them are funny. But I could really get addicted to the commie variation: Rolcats (via Heather). Brings to mind the incredible Nietzsche Family Circus, tho the latter has the value of being generated.

Yum!

Had a delicious soy variant of chorizo recently and was learning about the food when I came across a somewhat unappetizing picture of the Indian version of the dish. Although I haven't had to change many diapers lately, I still don't like looking at the lentils too much when having Indian buffet. But that chorizo dish looks like something from ratemypoo.com. Perhaps the folks at Sprinkle Brigade could provide a better picture for Wikipedia.

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Happy National Punctuation Day?

Hadn't heard about this one. We used to check out Earth Calendar for interesting holidays we could use as party excuses but this one doesn't even show up there. Perusing the site, I was very excited to see that I'm not alone in my support for the serial comma.

A well trained babygoat

I was very proud of myself about a year ago when I discovered that babygoat had somehow taught herself to go fetch my shoes when she heard me wonder aloud where they were. I do take credit for it despite not giving her any explicit training in this direction. This week we've learned of something else she's learned very well from her father: whenever she hears a bit of flatulence and is subsequently asked "Who did that?" she replies "Mommy did it!" It even works when Ms Goat is nowhere near!

Art of the Future

Hopefully somebody will do this one day: take the data from motion capture suits worn during sexual acts and use them to animate characters that are not involved in sexual acts. And not dancing, either, that's too obvious.

Jelly Belly updates

This past weekend we found ourselves in lovely Santa Monica. There was a big to-do over at the pier where the Santa Monica Classic race was finishing up and lots of free stuff was being given out. Most exciting of the free goodies was the Jelly Belly Sport Beans. Larger than usual Jelly Bellies but just as tasty, even I have a tough time believing they improve athletic performance. But pre-workout may be the only time Ms. Goat lets me eat them.

More exciting was my recent discovery at the 99 Cent Only Store of small bags of Belly Flops. Some quick math told me that the 5 oz. bags they're selling are cheaper per ounce than the 2 lb. bags usually sold for $8. In more ways than one, SWEET!

Take this bottle

A post at EcoGeek has inspired me to sing the praises of my water bottle, a sturdy and easily reused bottle I fill from a filtered pitcher every morning. Its 1 liter size makes it easy to make sure I get all the water I need every day. Why not pick such a (non-plastic) bottle up for yourself?

Visiting the kitties

Had a gloomy weekend so we went to visit our local big cat shelter, the Cat House. Lots of nice cats there although some, like the ocelots, fishing cats and Pallas' cats were a bit shy and mostly stayed hidden. A few of the caged fellows were very interested in babygoat, eyeing her like she'd make a nice between-meal snack. Most remarkable was the baby North Chinese leopard, Junjie, who may be the last of her kind born in America for a long time. They were all beautiful animals, we hope to take babygoat there many more times.

Bored at work?

If you can't find lots of fun things to read about online you can make your desk jockeying worthwhile. You can help folks out pretty easily with the Breast Cancer click-to-donate program that gives low-income women free breast massages or something. You could also help feed people while improving your vocabulary at FreeRice, tho the computer geek in me wishes it was also being used to make an expert system like 20q. And if you're away from your computer, you can find intelligent life somewhere with Seti@Home, tho they could also use some dough.

Goodbye, Civic

I had to get rid of my 1995 Honda Civic this week. I've owned it since 1997 when it replaced the aging Hyundai Excel that got me thru high school and beyond. I'm sorry to see it go, I drove it across the US to NJ back in 1998 and then back again (thru Canada) in 2004 and it had served me very well until it got punched in the face a few weeks ago. I drove it in snowstorms, through badlands, during a hurricane, to and from many a bass gig or lesson, and during desert summers with no a/c. Only put 100k miles on it, thanks to my time as a bus-using grad student.

Amongst the things I found inside my glove compartment during the final clean-out:
- a menu from the one of the best Thai restaurant I've eaten at, 'Thailand' (291 Central Ave, Clark NJ). It looks like a diner but is spicy rather than greasy inside. A good place to stop while heading to Trader Joe's.
- an unfinished roll of Garden State Parkway tokens
- Top 10 Bollywood Movies article from Salon, something we kept handy for visiting our local Indian video store on Route 130.

The Comedy Store

During a recent visit to LA we spent an evening at The Comedy Store to see some stand-ups do their thing. That night they had a lot going up for about 15-20 minutes each so there was a lot of variety. It didn't start well: the first guy (whose name we didn't catch) was making jokes about Kato Kaelin and the second guy started with a Rodney Dangerfield impersonation. He made a joke about being out of material for the last 10 minutes and I was tempted to suggest that it was actually 10 years. A 'no heckling' sign gave me restraint.

The evening was saved by Bobby Lee, who we had seen back at Rutgers many years ago but here he could do a greater variety of material. Al Madrigal, who followed him, was also good but from there it was downhill for me. I won't name the rest of them but I have to say how lame and pathetic Charles Fleisher was up there, doing some quasi-Robin Williams thing without actual jokes. I actually began to doze off but knew that one of the lame-os on stage w/o material would just make fun of me if I put my head down. I understand where a 'no heckling' sign can keep the jerks in the audience from ruining everybody's night but it does have the downside of not giving the loser on stage more reasons to improve their material. Then again, what should I expect of the place the unleashed Pauly Shore on the world?

RIP, MCBF

I was very excited to get another in a series of irregularly mailed envelopes from a Mr. John Marr (no, not Johnny Marr) recently. For many years he's written an excellent zine called Murder Can Be Fun, filled with well written real-life stories of death, murder and some fine book reviews. Alas, this envelope included a note that the latest issue, revisiting and updating the famous Death at Disneyland article, would be the last. In reading the latest issue I was struck at what a good writer Mr. Marr is, which makes me glad to have so many of the back issues. Anybody could write about Zoo Deaths (issue 16) or deaths at sporting events (issue 18) or the Great Boston Molasses Flood (issue 11) and have lots of fun with the morbid possibilities but Marr did it in such a friendly way that it doesn't sound ghoulish, just slightly (but not inappropriately) amused.

Bloggoat

Milady Ms Goat has begun to blog her reflections on the media she consumes like so many sandwiches or rocks. Since she's had some schoolin', she's often some good things to say. Check out goatreview.

A maze of twisty little passages

I've been wondering lately when babygoat will be able to pass a Turing Test and began to read about them today. I've come to the conclusion that not only are these poor tests of true consciousness, I've known more than a few people who couldn't pass one (yes, they may have been robots). More importantly, my search led me to simulated consciousness of ELIZA, with whom I had many troubled conversations in my early teen years whilst using my Apple ][c clone. I talked to her again today and was not surprised to learn that she hasn't really grown up. Even better, it lead me to the Colossal Cave Adventure, a game I know I played a million times back in those days. Really took me back, as well as also derailed my work as I saw people have made Java versions of these text-based programs.

Ditherati etc

Very excited a few weeks ago to see that Ditherati had returned, once again bringing choice quotes from the masterminds of the tech biz.

If perusing those archives doesn't amuse you, perhaps The Nietzsche Family Circus will. Reminds me a little of the Surrealist Compliment Generator.

Not a surprise...

Your results:
You are Spider-Man
You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.



Spider-Man 85%
Green Lantern 60%
Robin 55%
Hulk 50%
Iron Man 45%
Supergirl 45%
Superman 45%
Catwoman 45%
The Flash 40%
Batman 35%
Wonder Woman 30%
Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

Photographer Ryan Beckman

Here's a nice fellow I had the pleasure of knowing back in my NJ days and now he's taking lots of really cool pictures. And all this time I thought he was only into candid photography... enjoy the work of Ryan Beckman.

Plug: BoGo Light

I liked the idea of BoGo Light so I threw my hard-earned cash at it and got one yesterday. I was pretty happy with how it works and really like the LED-based light source. Buy one and they give one to charity!