I had another one of those dreams where the impossible seems perfectly logical, reasonable and normal. I dreamed that when we got Dax we also got two other kittens at the same time. One was a black and white male who was a delightfully mischievous little scamp and he could talk. This wasn’t surprising at all. It seemed perfectly normal that he could talk. The others couldn’t talk yet and I thought how clever he was that he learned to talk sooner than the other two kittens but it didn’t seem the least bit strange. (until I woke up)

The two kittens I just dreamed up didn’t have names yet. I was thinking about what to name them and the clever little talking kitten asked me something about his name and I asked him what he would like to be named and he said, very enthusiastically, “I want my name to be Diesel.” Now where the heck did that come from? I have never thought of that as a cat name. That’s as weird as talking cats.

Photoshop beauty tutorials. This post has links to Photoshop tutorials and, for those of us who don’t necessarily want to learn how to do it ourselves, lots of photos showing what can be done. Be sure to show this to any teenage girls you know. Never believe magazine photos.

Shock! Horrors! Princess Anne recently showed up at a wedding wearing the same dress she wore to another wedding in 1981. So what? Maybe she likes the dress. I’ve always felt a teensy bit sorry for rich women. You spend hundreds, maybe thousands, of dollars (or pounds) on a beautiful new dress and only get to wear it once? How silly! How wasteful! How sad. I say good for Anne. And you know, it’s a pretty dress. I’d wear it again too.

Via Dustbury

Medieval Help Desk - very funny (via The Mumpsimus)

Haha - I guess we’re supposed to groan when we read something like that but I just smiled and felt special because I get it too.

Cake Wrecks - bad, strange or amusingly decorated cakes (thanks, Scott)

Ooooo, shiny!

How It All Began - Warning: Pun Alert! (via Bifurcated Rivets)

Scientists’ wordclouds

Star Wars classics - a Photoshop contest. These are great! (via Dark Roasted Blend. Many more great links in that post.)

It’s a… uh… it’s a… I have no idea what it is but it’s cute and steampunkish

Russian aerial photography - awesome

Penguin vs. Ostrich

I guess I’m not really as nice a person as you probably think I am. I mean, I strongly believe in niceness. I sincerely believe that the world would work so much more smoothly if everyone was nice and I do try but sometimes it’s so difficult. To practice niceness is not too difficult but to think nice thoughts is nearly impossible sometimes.

Being nice is never more difficult than it is when I encounter unbelievably stupid people. I actually do feel sort of bad about feeling this way. If people honestly can’t help being… let’s say “intellectually challenged” then getting angry or impatient with them is the same as getting angry or impatient with a person who is slow and walks with a limp. Such a person is not as handicapped as a person in a wheel chair but they still have no choice in the matter. But stupid people - not people who are truly mentally challenged but people who function more or less normally in society but who are shockingly ignorant about certain things - are so much harder to deal with.

I have two general examples that are getting under my skin right now. First example: computer stupidity. Those stories are hilarious but also sad. The guy from Roswell who turns his monitor to the wall every night so the government can’t spy on him is my favorite but I suspect that one was made up. It’s just a little too outrageous. Some of the others though, I’ve met people exactly like that - people who are terrified of computers and especially the Internet and fear all sorts of ridiculously impossible bad stuff that they are sure will happen.

These people have completely misinterpreted warnings about things that could happen if one is not careful online and now have fixed in their minds the notion of the Internet as a vast mysterious realm of terror with evil lurking, ready to destroy them and everything they hold dear at the next click of the mouse. How do you get through to people like that? How do you convince people to take reasonable precautions - like not sending your bank account numbers to those nice folks from Nigeria - without having them thinking that computers are some sort of black magic, evil force device?

Of course, computer stupidity is not just limited to the fearful. Many people merrily surf the Internet every day without having the slightest clue what it is or how it works:

Customer: “Can you copy the Internet for me on this diskette?”

* * *

“You really should get some English literature on your Internet. All I can find is computer-related stuff. The computers at the University have all sorts of information on their Internet. Maybe you should ask them for a copy?”

* * *

Student: “I’m not on a web site. I’m on www.ask.com.”

* * *

I used to work at the IT Support Desk for a university. A librarian at one of our libraries was surfing the web one day and came across a site that said it was best viewed using the Internet Explorer browser. So she called me and said she needed a “browser” to view this site, and could we install a browser onto her system?

I told her that if she was viewing the site already, she was already using a browser, but, unsatisfied with that answer, she went over my head to the Directory of Libraries and said that we were being uncooperative about providing her with a browser.

* * *

Boss: (brandishing a newspaper ad) “Sign us up for this Earthlink thing!”
Me: “We don’t need that. It’s just another ISP. We have AOL.”
Boss: (blank stare)
Me: “A…O…L. That’s our ISP.”
Boss: “But I want to send email to (his friend), and HE’s on EARTHLINK! We can’t send email to him on Earthlink while we’re using that AOL thing!”
Me: “Sure we can. We can send email to anywhere we like.”
Boss: “No, that’s impossible. I’ve looked into it…we have to be on Earthlink, too. And that Netmeeting and Microsoftnet…we’re just going to have to join them all. Will I need a different e-dress for every one, do you know?”

Ah, bosses. You gotta love ‘em. But that guy is not so different from a lot of other people. Everyone thinks they know. They’ve “looked into it” or they learned it from someone who “knows what they’re doing.” Grrrr…. Sometimes I want to… to… well, to not be so darn nice anymore. Lots more stories here. I couldn’t be a tech support person. Before the end of my first week, if they didn’t fire me for bluntly telling someone how stupid they are they’d have to haul me away to the loony bin for the effects of having to hold it in.

The second general example of stupidity that is bugging me right now is stupid rumors about Barack Obama. This is quite a bit more important than computer stupidity. I don’t even know what to say about this. She said it better than I could. Much more fair-minded than I am. I just want to start slapping people around.

A life-long annoyance for me is people who don’t understand satire. (not to mention metaphor) You can explain it to some people and they will seem to get it but the next time they see satire they take it literally just like always. Their brains just aren’t wired right I guess, but you would think that anyone who is smart enough to dress themselves every morning would be smart enough to realize that such a thing as satire exists and that they have a problem recognizing it so maybe they should be careful about taking things literally.

I don’t consider myself to be a genius or even unusually smart, just average. That’s why the title of this is “It’s Hard Being Normal” - because I consider myself normal. But that would mean that there are an awful lot of people out there who are way below normal. Half the people? Because I’m right in the middle? I don’t know. It seems like most people are smart enough but afraid to use their brains. And don’t give me that nonsense about age. There are people who are a lot younger than me who don’t get computers and who believe all the ridiculous Obama rumors. It’s probably a good thing I don’t get out much. If I met more people sooner or later I might slap someone.

A Drama In One Act

dramatis personae
KES: a nine year old calico
ME: her disobedient servant

~ ~ ~

KES: Let me in; I have a mouse.

ME: No. You’re not bringing that thing in here.

KES: I demand that you let me in.

ME: Demand all you want but I am not going to open the door as long as you have that mouse.

KES: Pleeease let me in.

ME: No. I didn’t let you in the last time you brought a mouse to the back door, nor the time before that nor the time before that. What makes you think I will let you in this time?

KES: But you don’t understand. This is extremely important. I must bring this mouse inside.

ME: No. It is extremely important that you DO NOT bring that mouse inside.

KES: But… but… it’s fresh.

ME: Ewwww. Go away.

KES: But I brought it for you. See? It’s a gift.

ME: Humans don’t like mice. Haven’t you figured that out yet?

KES: What!? I don’t believe you! How can you not like mice? You’re just being cruel, rejecting my gift to you.

ME: Believe it. I am not being cruel. I really do not like mice.

KES: Okay, look. I lied. The truth is it’s a gift for the kitten.

ME: Oh please! You don’t even like the kitten.

KES: But I’m trying. I thought maybe we could bond over this nice, tasty snack.

ME: That’s not necessary. She likes you already; all you have to do is stop running away from her. No mouse and that’s final.

KES: F*ck you!

Horse/Water - images, (photos, posters, signs, album covers, etc.) videos and links

BillieBlog - cooking, gardening, life in Mexico; very nice

The Arab Aquarius - lots of images; design, pop culture, etc.

The Hungover Gourmet - food, drink and travel

Mixed Meters - Have I mentioned this one before? I should have. Music and more.

Confessions of a Half Breed Prince - movies, TV, science fiction, etc. Lots of quotes.

Confessions of a Cardamon Addict - mmmmm, cardamon. Actually, the only place I’ve ever seen cardamon is in tea. As you might guess, this is a food blog - an excellent food blog; well-written, fun, lots of recipes and tips.

The Devil’s Kitchen - a newsy UK blog. Very good but I confess, I mainly wanted to point out the cool page design.

Not the Eternal Tao - general life-blogging; nice but intermittent. I was attracted to the cat posts

Quiddity - That title sounds familiar but I can’t remember if I’ve seen this one before or not. Various very interesting stuff, such as 7 Hamburgers of the Apocalypse. (Why do I keep finding so much food today?)

Pink Wallpaper - an interior designer’s blog

…plus one I’m not sure about and one I included in the list just because.

Abyss & Apex - a speculative fiction magazine

Fantastic Metropolis - a fiction magazine; (fantasy? sci-fi? not sure, haven’t really looked yet) hasn’t been updated in over two years but there might be some good reading there

Ideomancer - more speculative fiction (I need to sleep less so I can read more.)

The Internet Review of Science Fiction

Museum of Conceptual Art - miscellaneous stuff: essays, letters, short stories, politics, humor, even a little bit of art

Two adorable felines and an awesome quilt. I love those colors! The photo is at the top of a nice little post about learning and progress.

I finished reading The Skinner by Neal Asher. What kind of sick mind does it take to come up with stuff like that? What kind of sick mind does it take to read and enjoy it? Well, a mind like mine I guess. This is a very weird, violent and often gross story but also very entertaining. It’s a sea adventure like no other.

Aside from the story itself, the most fascinating thing about it is the bizarre ecosystem. There are giant leeches that carry an immortality virus. This is how they maintain their food supply. Humans infected with the virus become more and more invulnerable the longer they live but if they do not get enough Earth-type food they will turn into something not human. The story centers around the search for one such individual who is centuries old, nearly invincible and a very, very bad dude.

There are lots of other weird and fascinating creatures, mostly very large and hungry. There is one intelligent flying species who volunteer to serve as ships’ sails apparently just because they find humans so fascinating.

The Skinner is packed with adventure and humor but also occasional bits of wisdom like the following almost poetic passage:

“In the end, you find a calm centre and you just keep on living. You live for friendship and a bright sunrise, for a cool breeze on your face or a peppered worm-steak. You take as much pleasure in the taste of sea-spray as in the discovery of the hyperlight drive or the saving of a human life. Because you can live forever you take pleasure in the now. You don’t have to rush about living on account of having only a finite span. That’s trite but true”

The character who spoke those words was talking about how to deal with being immortal but, except for a couple of details, (worm-steak? ewwww!) it sounds like a pretty good philosophy of life for anyone.

I suppose The Skinner is not for everyone but if you enjoy a good, humorous sci-fi adventure and if you can stand the gory details of the eat-and-be-eaten ecosystem then do give it a try.

Ooooo…. These are great! A collection of cool, odd, fun gotta-love-the-Internet kind of links. (I might come back to some of them later if I think of something to say other than, “Wow… cool,” or “What the…?”)

Interval Signals - air checks, identification announcements, etc. from radio stations around the world (via Bifurcated Rivets)

Retro future travel posters - very cool, awesome, far out and of course, shiny!

Architecture of Antoni Gaudi - beautiful and amazing

Brocken spectre - more

Hmmmm…. - Okay, so maybe I’m a little weird but I’d actually like to try that.

This was mentioned in the comments to this post that I’ve already linked and I had to go look it up. Dave Barry hates lobsters. That makes me quite happy in that annoyingly smug sort of way. As the saying goes, great minds think alike.

Imagine the horrendous act of fermentation I was about to unleash among an airplane full of innocent lactose-intolerant passengers had it not been for an alert Transportation Security Administration official who would not let anything so dangerous as a cup full of Lactobacillus acidophilus pass the security check. — here

I’d sure like to see more lefties open up to the right, and more righties open up to the left. But that would mean getting the whole politics thing in perspective, and the Primarily Political crowd would rather die than let the rest of us do that. — there

You hate us because we’re nice. Die! — here

Their strange, cocoon-like wall light sculpture tickles the place deep inside me that wants nothing more than to live out my days on a sentient, insectoid space-ship. — there

I love discovering new-to-me words but I find this especially interesting, not to mention amusing. I have discovered a word that I always knew but assumed was not a real word is in fact a real word. When I was a kid I occasionally heard older people (my grandparents’ generation) use the word “tetchy”, meaning overly sensitive or easily annoyed. I always assumed that they were mispronouncing “touchy” and, being a smart-alec know-it-all kid, I considered this mispronunciation an affectation. Of course, in those days kids did not accuse their elders of being ignorant and pretentious so I kept this opinion to myself. After I grew up and experienced other regions of the country I discovered that Texans just talk funny, particularly old Texans.

Now imagine my surprise when, reading The Skinner by Neal Asher,* I come across the word “tetchiness”. A few chapters later I found “tetchy”. Here’s that quote:

“This is not yet over,” spat Sniper, who always started to get a little tetchy when he didn’t have anything convenient to blow up.

Still hardly believing my eyes, I had to go look it up in the dictionary. Yep, there it is. It is a real word. And, interestingly, Firefox’s spellchecker recognizes it, even though it frequently fails to recognize more common words.

I guess this is one way that perfectly good words get lost - people thinking that they’re actually hearing a different but similar word. I want to try to remember to use “tetchy” once in awhile. But only online. I wouldn’t want some know-it-all kid hearing me and assuming I’m ignorant and pretentious.

*More about the book later when I’ve finished reading it.

Bacon Salt - because “everything should taste like bacon.” Well, maybe not everything but I want some.

Vaffancola - cola with coconut flavor. There’s also a licorice flavored cola.

SweatnSpice - Not odd, unless you consider hot sauce odd, but some of the product names are creative, for example. And then there’s this.

List of weird food and drink - Some are more than just slightly odd.

51 Art References in the Simpsons. (via Look At This)

Great post!

Of course you ought to try everything in this best of all possible worlds, but, even if you do, you will eventually come up with a list of Not Worth My Time (and a slightly longer list of Not Worth My Money) food and drink.

You’re not a child, you’re an adult. You should be allowed to eat what you want, without having to storm away from the table or produce the results of a recent urinalysis to avoid having to eat what you don’t want.

On the other hand…

Just because you have taken a lifelong vow to never eat a certain food–whether your vow stems from taste, health, or philosophical reasons–does not mean that you have the right to interfere with other people’s enjoyment of said food.

If you do, you are being worse than a child. You are being a teenager, for which there is no excuse in the world short of actually being between 13 and 19 years of age.

Go read the whole lecture then be sure to pass it on to someone who really needs it. I have no problem with what other people choose to eat (though I admit I experience a lot of frustration when I have to cook for very picky eaters) but what I cannot stand is when people get all holier than thou about their own food choices and act as if it’s their sacred duty to try to stop everyone else from eating anything they themselves choose not to eat and act as if they can’t possibly eat at the same table with people whose food choices are different from their own. Fortunately I almost never run into people like that but even when I observe them from afar (i.e. over the Internet) I get an irresistible urge to tell them to just grow up already.

A friend sent me some amazing photos. I wanted to find them on a website so I could link to them. The first link that came up on Google was at Snopes. I wasn’t expecting that. I guess it’s a good idea to be suspicious of anything incredible that you receive in one of those million-times-forwarded emails but Snopes confirms that these photos of The Devil’s Swimming Pool are real.

When the water level is low it is possible to swim at the top of Victoria Falls without being carried over the edge. Here are the same photos slightly larger. There are also a couple of videos.

A visit to Kosovo - long article with photos. (via AMCGLTD)

Made in Ukraine - I like the clothing in the first photo.

Merged Books - funny stuff (via Bifurcated Rivets)

Poe’s poem, To Science - I don’t like the musical rendering in the video at all; I would prefer to hear it spoken. Otherwise it’s sort of an interesting little video.

Small World - awesome photography. I love the needle eye with the drop of water. (via Dark Roasted Blend)

A short poem - very nice

10,000 Page Coloring Book - Ooooo! I must get out my crayons.

Attack of the Giant Leeches - a vintage movie trailer. Coincidentally, I’m reading a novel in which there are giant leeches.

By the way, it’s sort of hard to type when you’ve got a kitten in your lap attacking your hands.

Something for Fillyjonk: odd knitting and odd old books

Toc Fetch - amazing drawings. At first glance I thought they were photographs. (via Jaf Project)

A new Simon’s Cat video - hilarious because it’s so true

Fun kitchen accessory - to go with the knife guy, maybe