Hit the Fan! The object is to propel a mound of fecal matter with your ping-pong paddle so that it connects with the rotary air circulation device. Once you get some practice, try springing one off the stapler or landing it in the coffee cup. Even better yet, go for a “Mac attack” and ricochet one off the iMac screen into the blades. They did a fairly good job of creating a sound effect for the moment when the caca hits the old ventilator too – so how can you lose?

PSA, and then on to my entry – Microsoft announced a really nasty bug in their Data Access Components (MDAC) yesterday. Microsoft Security Bulletin MS02-065 has the details Go get the patch here, if you’ve not updated your system recently.

Ok, now on to regular Scotto…

Friday-Friday!

Sappho and Riker are making a pilgrimage to FAO Schwarz this weekend…. I’ve got an urge to go there, too. Maybe I’ll add it to the hubbub over thanksgiving weekend sometime. Anyone want to get me a personal hovercraft for Christmas? I think i might actually get the Lego Hagrid’s hut, if I can find it at ebay for under $20.

Cool as all get out classic children’s audio books. Gerald Mcboing Boing and Little Black Sambo.

I can hear the Goodyear blimp overhead… it really pleases me that it travels this far south.

History Wired – sort of a random wandering through the Smithsonian National Museum of American history. (Strange to me is that they have a display about Life in ancient Greece Reflected in the Coinage of Corinth “American history”? Not that I mind.. it’s a neat)

yum… I took a side route home today, and came across an empanada stand.

Any Guesses as to what I’m having for supper? Zucchini, portabella mushrooms, onions, green olives and spinach in a pastry shell, with spicy olive oil and who-knows what dip. numma-num

man, it’s good. I’m certainly going to return there. I also grabbed a beer, which was also a spur of the moment decision.

Dexter and Bailey were by today, but I’m too lazy right now to transfer and resize piccies. Maybe tomorrow night.

The Hut is at 809 members. Vagpagina has a 1117, and they ask for monetary support via paypal, cafe press-based clothing, postcards and such. I wonder how much money they make? I think it’s sort of shabby asking for money, unless they donate it to a valid charity of some sort… there’s really *no* effort needed at all to maintain the hut’s community at all. Maybe I’m spoiled by just having had very few problems with folks? Vagpag Started 9/19/2001. The Hut was created 2/23/2001, and I remember thinking that they were a copycat community at the time, but I know now that they have a much stronger feminist bent, rather than the hut’s biological and general support feel.

If I walked a mile in most folks’ shoes, I’d be hurting.. I wear size 15 American. I do need to pick up a new pair of shoes… maybe two. Perhaps I’ll swing by the birk store when I get Mayah’s birthday prezzie.

I abstained from the office’s secret Santa again this year.

I’ve learned a lot about GIMP art program (Linux) and GIMP for Windows the last few days… I’m amazed at how powerful an image editor it is, and I’m finally getting the knack of layer-based image fiddling.

Dopey Action/Adventure movie script point – When someone in the film says “This isn’t a movie, it’s real life!”

Audio books for free.

Chewy Chips ahoy are weak Soft-batch cookie imitations. (Soft batch is far superior, as far as I’m concerned). Don’t buy ’em, unless that’s what you’re looking for. I mistakenly eyeballed over the “chewy” definition. I like homemade cookies soft, cookies in a bag to be crunchy. I discovered this right before bed last night. I blame them for my non-memory of last night’s dreams.

Cool hubcap monsters (I’m spreading the link that’s been spread all over already bifurcated/mefi/boingboing and others)

Lovely precipitation last night and this morning… Hard to beat being curled up in bed while it’s raining. I also attribute my dream-memory loss to that, as I didn’t want to get up and commit the dream to memory.

I’m enjoying the fact that I have a straight-edge to shave with again… keeps those parts of my face that I prefer to be hairless baby-butt smooth.

Jim Sherman’s Hu’s on First.

Two cute kittens at work today. Gossamer and Gollum. One black with brown highlights, and one a tuxedo with little white feet. Both wholly adorable. So adorable, in fact, that Kev’s keeping them for himself, rather than letting anyone else adopt them.

kitty piccies

Wishing I could wave a magic wand and cure all the blues I see. (And some of the ones I can’t.)

If not cure them all, at least brighten their day a bit. I like to think that I do a little, already. I take pleasure in that they know they’re loved, and can come to me any time if they want advice, a shoulder to cry on or an ear to bend. I can beam love, regardless, and keep thinking positive.

Gardening for bats. awww….I wouldn’t mind a bat roost nearby.

I’d really like to wear something like this to work. But with the pointy shoes.

ACCexpo this weekend. I forgot that the fossil/rocks and minerals show was last weekend…whoops. Having second thoughts about the tourney… I may just take photos of the cosplayers and hit the dealer room instead. We’ll see how it goes.

A white guy tried to use a bathhouse in Japan but was turned away. The bathhouse had a sign that read “Japanese only.” The guy became a Japanese citizen a year later and tried again, but was turned away again. He sued the bathhouse and won about $25,000.

Wow, that seems a little extreme to me. Must be one heck of a bathhouse.

Which eye is the evil eye? The one where I can do the Mr. Spock / Lee Majors arch, or the more muted, subtle other eye?

Figuring out what’s the deal for thanksgiving this year. I want my bro to go with, if he’s into it. Hippies? Pasta at home? Mom’s place? Chinese? Heck, I dunno. I just don’t want to do dishes.

Beautiful moon out last night. Just the right temperature at 73F…I stayed up late and just sort of moon-basked.

Val Kilmer’s “Simply cool” ad for Nikon… looks kind of creepy. He must’ve dropped his lucky “I’m a hunk” good luck charm or something. Or Perhaps it’s the freaky haircut.

They’re trotting out Christmas Specials earlier every year… here’s my take on it. You don’t need any specials other than a very few.

Animated ones: Charlie Brown Christmas &The Grinch. Everything else cartoon-wise is fluff… Though stop motion Rudolph / Santa ones are groovy nostalgia.

Live Action – A Christmas Story. (It’s a Wonderful Life is cool, but somehow, it’s aired 23,423,234 times between November and December..and I always catch the *same* 10 minute range of film.] National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. (Miracle on 34th street?… It falls into the “Wonderful Life” Dilemma. I’d love ’em more if I could land on them at the beginning and ride them to the end.)

I don’t think I’m forgetting any. Earnest Saves Christmas? Santa Clause, or Santa Claus, The Movie? I don’t think those have as much universal Holiday appeal. Plus, I don’t like folks offing Santa, and swapping him out. Scrooged? Eh.

Oh! I forgot Muppety-things! A Muppet Christmas Carol, the John Denver Holiday Special, and Emmet Otter’s Jug-band Christmas. Those are good.

Best Holiday spirit? Charlie Brown. The Monolog Linus makes is about as good as it gets.

Want to read it?

Pretty solid day of just chewing on catch-up work… I have a new project on my plate, now, too… always good to see. I get to generate a program that can create assorted sample/ test data on the fly, within an assortment of parameters. The hitch? The requesting folk don’t know for sure what the parameters will be… so I get to leave the architecture very open, for hanging other aspect on as I go. It should be pretty simple…though I know enough about the way things work to expect a few curveballs before the job is over with.

It seems that while I was away, Pam decided to put in her 2 weeks… it looks like she’s headed back to Ohio… in *December*… Brr… quite the way to jump in with both feet. I imagine that Sappho and Riker will miss her the most… They’re the last three Tampa-imports left, I think. Accounting will be much more dull, that’s for sure. Santie has some help selling now, too. A few departments have assistants now… Mail shop, sales, and Chupa. Perhaps (wishful thinking on my part) this means raises might come along sometime soon. Unlikely, but anything’s possible in this wacky world of ours.

Kev’s sis won free tickets to the new 007 flick… so he took the opportunity to blow out of there at a reasonable hour today. Good for him! I hope it’s a halfway decent movie.

PSA-feel free to pass it along.

It’s that time of year. Go get shot. The Flu shot, that is.

Two reasons: First, of course, you don’t want to get sick. Especially, you don’t want to get miserably, incoherently, Stephen-King-The-Stand-everybody-dies sick.

Second and less obvious: If you don’t get sick, you can’t pass the bug to someone else. And even if you are strong and healthy, and shake it off in a week, the person YOU give it to, or the person THEY give it to, may be more vulnerable. The flu kills kids, and old people, and invalids. You don’t want to be part of that chain.

So get vaccinated… and if you get the bug anyway, stay home. Don’t share. With enough immune people, and with enough common sense among those who do catch it, flu season won’t turn into an epidemic, and people will live who otherwise would have died.

Robert Culp is a great actor… highly underrated. I’ve been watching old “Outer Limits” episodes on the Sci-Fi channel, and he seems to act in about every third or fourth episode… and he does a great job in them all. I’d like to see nickelodeon or TV Land bring back I Spy… I used to *really* dig that show. Probably one of Bill Cosby’s better roles (clever, but not a goofball comic), too. I don’t think that the Eddy Murphy / Owen Wilson Movie could possibly hold a candle to the old show.

The evil mind controlling rocks episode this morning is great, even though what I just wrote makes it sound goofy as all get out. The title is Corpus Earthling. (#9 on the list) Really… it’s a great episode, I swear.

My back feels great…. comfortable bending, and such. (I’m taking it gently, but it looks pretty darn good so far.)

Sabrina Lloyd gets a job on Ed. I’m glad to see that all of the old Sports Night folks are getting gigs — Jeremy’s been on West Wing, Casey is obviously on Six Feet Under. I think Felicity Huffman had a baby recently, so she hasn’t been working as much (although she also guest starred on West Wing a while back). I don’t know what Josh Charles is up to though.

Dark shadows just started… my cue to change Newt’s litter, hop in the shower, and afterwards shave off my week’s worth of facial scrub grown since a week ago Monday.

Until later, Dear Journal.

Awww. Do I have to be a freemason to get the fun costumes?

I always wondered how much they spent on Fezzes... Though, I’ve not really noticed the shoes until now.

Fun slogans returned –

“Newton Really Satisfies.” a reload also gave – “Think Newton” and then “I Liked The Newton So Much, I Bought The Company!”

“I’m Not Gonna Pay A Lot For This Scotto” and “I Feel Like Scotto Tonight.” and you know what? I do feel like Scotto tonight!

Ok. Back to the icepack.

The pill they gave me for right before the epi was 1mg alprazolam (xanax). one hour before the procedure. I’d never heard of it used for nervous tension before. No wonder he told me to hold off on the other meds for a day before taking it.

it went well.. strangely enough, the present to myself from the toy store next door had a spine sucker in it. there’s a fun little bit of coincidence.

Newt’s fawning all over me, so I think it’s treats for him, and then a icepack in bed for me.

Thanks for the good vibes, dear journal!

Bless ol’ Kazaa for downloads of old episodes of MST3k. some of them have a weirdly bad audio synch, though.

Thoughts of being snuggled with my sweetheart under the covers, watching the tube and making silly goof-talk to one another…or maybe just holding her as she sleeps in my arms.

I’m in a quiet, calm mood… having a last meal of cookies and tea before my enforced fast at midnight. I have to remember to set my wake-up call for tomorrow. (I’d hate to sleep through it!) I take my pill at 9:45.

I want to get a new flannel nightshirt, in case it gets cooler earlier.. though sweats and piles of covers are plenty nice.

wish me luck and mending thoughts for tomorrow, dear journal.

The brains of three members of the Baader-Meinhoff gang have gone missing after several years in a lab somewhere. Of course, it all fits into a pattern: One of the Kray twins (notorious British gangsters) had his brain removed from his body at autopsy and stored by the MRC behavioral neuroscience unit a few years ago. They wanted to study it to find out whether it had any abnormalities predisposing it to criminal behavior (ironically, they didn’t have permission from next of kin… which technically makes it a brain theft!). Eventually it was reinterred next to the rest of his body.

No eating after midnight tonight, and no meds today at all. That should be ok. I’m not planning on any acrobatics or muscle lifting. I’ll be back at work on Tuesday, and hopefully the shot will go pleasantly. It’ll be good to get back on track.

More about the leonids

Augustine is one of the biggies… a master of rhetoric, and a brilliant author. I read a lot of his stuff when I went through my “apocryphal philosophy” phase a few years back. I’m not in great agreement with much of what he’s written, but he’s a fantastic thinker and analyst. I’d like to see who the other answers returned..

Aliens was on AMC last night… It features an orange cat named Jones, a little girl named Newt, and probably the first reasonable use of human form mechs as forklifts…Not to mention it being a sequel that was totally different from the movie that spawned it, but was still good. (from lurking horror to action/terror) The first two movies are the only ones that exist to my mind… the others are just crapola.

Hmm… 20 minutes of previews before the movie? That doesn’t bother me, as long as they keep the lights at dim, rather than dark. I’d prefer to be able to navigate into my seat later.

Keith Parkinson Online a capable fantasy artist… he’s’ done good work on Book covers, Everquest, TSR stuff and Magic the gathering cards. He started out looking like Larry Elmore (who I’m not fond of) but developed a style that’s well suited for the genre, now.

Lots of wonderful rain and cool wind this weekend. A delight… makes it all the more worthwhile to stay in, read and rest, though my sleep schedule is a little out of whack now. I’m only stepping out long enough to pick up my scrip. today.

NASA scientists have just released new predictions for the 2002 Leonid meteor storm. The 2002 Leonid meteor shower peaks at 0400 UT and 1030 UT on Nov. 19th… Looks like 4am my local time is the best for me to view.

Cool words I rarely have the opportunity to use when speaking and really like.

• rhombus and its derivatives – rhomboid, rhomboidal and rhombic
• helipad
• frigate
• philtrum
• quagga (about the only thing of value I got from playing Rogue)
• oneiric

Those are just the ones that come to mind just now…many more come to mind here and there during the course of the day.

What am I? Heck, it depends on who you ask, and when. I’ve been considered all sorts of stuff from a misshapen gopher-thing to an iridescent insect man to a mass of seething twine to a yeti with buzz saws for hands to a bouquet of water lilies and toast.

Latest weirdness my news spiders have brought back – Honestly sounds like the aftermath of a ritual of some sort to me, especially considering the poor guy’s profession.

One of the best pages for fonts ever.

We have a tornado watch!

The poem in the Chevrolet Tahoe commercial is called “Nobody Knows It But Me” written by Patrick O’Leary with the voice-over by James Garner. The words of the poem are as follows:

There’s a place that I travel
When I want to roam
And nobody knows it but me.

The roads don’t go there
And the signs stay home
And nobody knows it but me.

It’s far far away
And way way afar
It’s over the moon and the sea
And whenever you’re going
that’s wherever you are
And nobody knows it but me.

That’s beautiful. More commercials should be an introduction to poetry. It reminds me a bit of a fragment of a poem (the rest of which is lost to the dust of memory) called Green Banana Moon. I don’t remember the dream portions, but instead only the refrain sticks in my noggin. Perhaps later I’ll be able to pry the rest free later.

every night we see a moon
it never looks the same
there’s one that’s full
and one that’s sliced
and one that has a name.

searching with its moonbeam
its glow will find us soon
and once it does
we’re sure to dream
beneath the green banana moon.

I’d like to take hold of my beloved and dream with her right now under the green banana moon. Happy dreams. pleasant waves of bliss and cheer.