“I like playing with ideas that invite people to think. I also like old-fashioned, upbeat themes and happy endings. Although life doesn’t always seem that way, I believe that in the long term things get better. I don’t think we’re about to overpopulate the planet, blow ourselves into oblivion, poison ourselves into extinction, degenerate into Nazis, or disappear under our own garbage. For ten thousand years the power of human reason and creativity has continued to build better tomorrows, and nothing says it has to change now.”— James Patrick Hogan, writer
Category Archives: stories
what I learned today
I have often enjoyed a Web site called Odd Todd, which is the name of its creator as well. His humor on the subject of getting Laid Off was really endearing, up to a point; specifically, December 2002. But that’s another story. Todd posts a daily fact that he learns from the TV. That’s fun, and I thought of it as I digested a fact I learned from my computer.
I’m new to the realm of coffeehouse w-fi net surfing and such. I have wi-fi here in the penthouse, and lately I’ve been venturing forth among the java geeks. It’s cool. Today, between working, working out, long summer walks and swimming, I was sitting in my favorite hot spot, enjoying a cup of Organic Peru. I logged on to get my e-mail, and learned this:
Internet providers such as Cox Communications require that you specify settings in your e-mail program (outlook, express, whatever) that send all outgoing e-mails through their server, while you are connected to their service through your modem. You can’t specify that your outgoing mail server is Yahoo or Hotmail while you’re connected to Cox. This is to make it harder to send tons of spam through their server, I suppose. So my cox e-mails go out through Cox, and my yahoo emails come in from yahoo but go out through Cox. But down at the coffeehouse, I wasn’t connected to Cox, so e-mail wouldn’t go. I had to use Web mail instead of Outlook.
Next time I go down there, I’m going to try setting up a separate account in Outlook, that bypasses Cox and goes out through Yahoo, and see if that works. I think it might. Ain’t this $hi+ interesting? Aren’t you glad you visited Metaphor today? Whew!
By the way, apropos of exercise, I’ve been at it for nine months or so, and I’ve lost 80 pounds. Yay!
happy birthday, dad!
My Dad was born in Texas in 1932, but did most of his growing up in the San Joaquin Valley, in California. I guess it was a good place to grow up. He’s a good guy.
Some men are just good at taking care of things, and family, and small animals. Dad can fix anything but a broken heart and the crack of dawn.
These are not good quality pictures, I guess. I have better ones, but these seem somehow right for the day.
Happy Birthday, Dad! You’re the best. Here’s a paragraph from the book I’m writing, just for the helluvit.
It never rains in Cortina in June. That’s what everybody was saying in the Peterbuilt Cafe, the morning after it did just that. It rained half the night, sometimes hard and almost fierce. A massive cutoff low stretched half way to Hawaii, and brought the dark and heavy clouds in long bands from Watsonville to Point Arguello. They rode up and over the Santa Lucia mountains, watered the crops in the Salinas Valley, crested the Diablo Range without hesitation, and fell on Cortina tired but hardly spent. The town and the hundred farms around it got good and wet, but the storm never saw the Sierras. It was no match for the pressure of impending summer in the San Joaquin.
blogger freed in eqypt
hmm?
Be thankful we’re not getting all the government we’re paying for.— Will Rogers
religious?
It’s hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.–Calvin & Hobbes
truth & consequences
WASHINGTON, June 23 — Vice President Dick Cheney on Friday vigorously defended a secret program that examines banking records of Americans and others in a vast international database, and harshly criticized the news media for disclosing an operation he said was legal and “absolutely essential” to fighting terrorism.
“What I find most disturbing about these stories is the fact that some of the news media take it upon themselves to disclose vital national security programs, thereby making it more difficult for us to prevent future attacks against the American people,” Mr. Cheney said, in impromptu remarks at a fund-raising luncheon for a Republican Congressional candidate in Chicago. “That offends me.”
Wait just a minute. Hold the phone. The Press isn’t the leaker here; they’re the leakee. It is, and always has been, their job to disclose what Power is up to. The Press is in the private sector, not a functionary of the government. (Mostly, though that’s rapidly changing.) They’re not the origin of news, they are the consequence. Actually, the ultimate consequence is that Cheney doesn’t get elected to public office again. Right?
And this is yet still again another criminal violation of the US Constitution – 4th Amendment, Right to be Secure in Persons, Papers and Effects – on the the part of the nefarious cabal of thugs that has taken power in Washington. Didn’t these guys take some sort of oath concerning the Constitution? Thought I saw that on TV.
IMPEACH!
animal farm
If any kid ever realized what was involved in factory farming they would
never touch meat again. I was so moved by the intelligence, sense of fun
and personalities of the animals I worked with on ‘Babe’ that by the end of
the film I was a vegetarian.
-James Cromwell, actor (1940- )
a moral imperative
I was going through the Wayback Machine, a site which archives old versions of Web sites. Seems that back in 2002, a friend suggested that in order to achieve the purpose of a quick and painless merciful death of a pet, it’s morally defensible to commit an act of violence. In other words, It’s OK to shoot your own pet. That’s the issue, and here’s what I wrote. Just thought I’d share it, because since then I’ve been down the road I described.
There is a right way to do such a thing, in which a person stands up to the cold wind and rain of grief and gives the final kindness and mercy that are his burden alone to bear and dispense. It’s about loyalty, courage and dignity.
When an old dog or cat gets sick and arthritic and can’t go for walks or jump into the truck or even get on the couch; when she gets sick and can’t keep down her food and looses sight of her toys and looses her bladder in the living room, she looses her dignity. When she’s at the end beyond help and hope and ready to go on, then her family makes the appointment, takes her up in her blanket and takes off her leash and collar for the last time.
Euthanasia is an act of mercy, a gift of love and a redemption of that lost dignity. To do it by any means less than the most gentle, humane and even contrite is an act of shallow and vulgar cowardice, in profound ignorance of the gifts of love and humanity that pets bring to our lives.
To say that such an act of love and such a gift of peace can be morally performed with a weapon, in an act of violence and with an arcing spray of blood, is tragic thinking. With the exception of a situation where to wait for a veterinarian would cause the pet useless suffering. The gun has its functions and none of them apply here.
Let’s keep violence and peace clearly before us. If we allow our sight to dim and they become confused, God help us.
Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of proportion a child’s loss of a doll and a king’s loss of a crown are events of the same size.
-Mark Twain
false memories
The difference between false memories and true ones is the same as for jewels: it is always the false ones that look the most real, the most brilliant.
-Salvador Dali, painter (1904-1989)
super aubrey!
I think it’s great to know there are still superheroes among us.
heard on the radio
I’ve been listening to the radio a lot up here. It’s keeping me company, in a sense, along with the cats. They have good radio in these parts: KVMR, which you can listen to online. Obscure and eclectic music, interesting local talk, news, and Democracy Now. I haven’t been listening to the radio much back home, because it’s all either Classic Rock, which is so repetitive, or Air America. There’s classical out of LA, but I’m not always that relaxed. Air America simply bites, but that’s a topic for another post.
Metaphor 