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what’s in a name?

in several nearly unrelated phenomena this past week the power of a name has been revealed to me.

1. say this out loud: HD DVD
now way this out loud: Blu-Ray

with not much functional difference, which would you put your money on to succeed in the market? Perhaps germane, the terms BetaMax and VHS.

2. Religionism - the last great ism. now that sexism, racism, classism, and the unremembered others are becoming unfashionable, it’s high time that religionism receives the scrutiny it deserves. christians do it, hindus do it, muslims do it, and everybody smiles and says that’s their right you know, separation of church and state and all. think about it. they get a fucking exemption from having to obey the law? enshrined in the constitution? destroy the separation of church and state and look at religion for what it really is, discrimination on the basis of a belief in the supernatural. makes racism look really smart, doncha think?

3. Foleygate- all inherent irony aside, the term has a real ring. now, comingle the references and imagine richard nixon covering up a penchant for young men… what’s really on the missing tapes?

long form haiku

time passes.

the universe shrinks.

the sun cools.

a sort of limbo reigns.

as on a fast moving train.

lots of rest.

cleaning up.

relax.

automatic translation… or how wars happen.

アカウント紛失につき変更しました。 ブランクあけていた間は、多忙に付き、何も手につきませんでした。 またたまによらせていただきます。

i won’t bore you with how i came to wonder what this said, but suffice it to say i was curious. google translation thought it was japanese and offered this english:

“It modified concerning account loss. Blank while opening, it was attached busily, nothing was attached to the hand. In addition you depend sometimes.”

Although it makes some sense, even i depend sometimes, it’s not very juicy, and juice is what i was after so i had it translated from chinese, on the basis of the fact i can barely tell them apart:

Binging papers stolen there was another stratum guided missile escort boat formation conducted offensive focus more Shika mada Shika 変 enterprises. Army’s stock of long-guided missile escort boat formation conducted offensive Xiaochun imports between wa, how busy pay enterprises, Dr Mo Worse there was hand-sized distortion of た mada’s ambassador. Mada mada Binging article is long-Word victory enterprises mada protecting the public hearings.

Bada Bing! Much more exciting and martial! Long-word victory enterprises. Certainly sounds chinese. Could easily be the Beijing Scrabble Clubs motto.
One way to discover weak points, or as it turned out in this case, strengths, with automatic translation is to translate, for instance, english into chinese, into back into english. Here is what resulted from the first go round:

Another drug documents stolen missile fleet layer attacks more Xiayou Madagascar Xiayou enterprises. Army missile fleet stock long term attack on the import regulation Xiaochun payment arrangements enterprises busy, he MO poor, Enterprise Application distorted Madagascar. Madagascar victory drug enterprises protect Madagascar characters long hearing.

How did drugs come into the picture? lets run it through again - it seems we are gaining conciseness and clarity:

Another missile attack on multi-level documents stolen drugs Xiayou Madagascar team enterprises. Army missile attack teams to pay long-term stock enterprises busy import control measures, Zhou Xiaochuan, MO poor, distorted organizations enterprise applications. Madagascar Madagascar characters victory in protecting the long-term drug trial.

Now it’s starting to make sense… once more:

The missile strike with multilayer enterprise Xiayou of the medicine, documents the Madagascar team which is stolen. As for the missile of the troop application of the group whose management measurement and Zhou Xiaochuan of import, heavy long-term storage enterprise were twisted is bad was paid. Victory of the Madagascar of long medicine test quality.

From stolen papers and hand-sized distortion - to missile strikes. this, in a nutshell, is probably how wars happen.

the lost gospels of judas

this has been in the news of late, and the finest thing to arise from the whole foofaraw in my humble opinion is this here - tell me it isn’t so ;) - i dare you.

Auditions…

Last night was the first time i’ve ever been sitting on the easy side of actors auditions. in fact i have never been on the “hard” side either… i recently picked up a job as stage manager for a small company here in town, that providentially was just offered the chance to run four shows in a brand new restored classic theater. we will get lots of exposure. anyways, so i sat next to the director and tried to keep my mouth shut, said the occasional “thank you” when the actors seemed to put their all into it, and fetched stuff. but what a treat to have 30 people of wildly varying levels of talent sing and monologue directly at me. For your enjoyment, and for me to savor the second time around, here is a partial list of what i heard:

  • vagina monologues
  • mariah carey
  • natalie cole
  • vagina monologues again
  • prince
  • the piano lession
  • this little light of mine…
  • the vagina monologues again
  • the rapture - this was a self written monologue by a gorgeous starry eyed woman who didn’t seem to be able to hold a single thought in her head besides how much she loved jesus.
  • somewhere over the rainbow
  • maya angelou
  • several pieces in a row from Gods Trombone - i think they were all members of the same family..
  • the single white guy in the auditions singing happy birthday to himself
  • whenever you call
  • how high the moon
  • more gods trombone - how many militant christian monologues can we do in one evening?
  • a wonderful trombone piece with a real trombone this time
  • and finally: an immense, truly pear-shaped guy singing, believe it or not, we are family.

fine writing skills

quoted from an article in Playfuls.com: “Privacy breaches like the one in “Second Life” are unfortunately gaining proportions and are becoming more frequent. Not sooner than last month AOL fired at least three of its employees for a huge and potentially dangerous (for the company) mistake: the release of private information about 658,000 of its customers, which almost totally compromised their privacy.” full text here.

gaining proportions?

No sooner than last month?

almost totally?

thank you Dan Nicolae Alexa for our three minutes of entertainment ;)

another recipe

this is for a lamb curry that i made two weeks ago for wednesday night dinner - (pix coming). the first thing i noticed about the whole experience was just how difficult it was to get a truly hot curry going. is cayenne getting wimpier? are jalapenos just not what they used to be?

i’m afraid you are going to have to wait for a day or two for the details, as it has just been pointed out to me that i am overdue to get out of the house and downtown to esca.

soon ;)

bay view, ac, nice kitchen, 102 yrs old

that pretty well sums up the house i’m in. of course there is some subtext and some history in there as well. 102 years should accumulate some history. of course i’m only cognizant of the last 25 yrs and only knowledgeable of the last 4. no hurricanes to report since 1926. that one came up the west coast of florida about 50 miles offshore with winds of 150 mph. in late september.

lurve rears it’s ugly head..

way back in 2000, when I had just broken up with my girlfriend/love of my life type person, i was devastated - for months i listened to sad music at 3am, couldn’t sleep, cried a ridiculous amount, drove away all my clients with my bizarre behavior… but gradually, as time went by, i adjusted to the occasional crushing loneliness. and usually, somewhere in the back of my head was the comforting thought that, soon, in months, or at most a year or maybe even two, i would be in love again.

youtubing

so late at night, having tucked in a guest just arrived from the west coast via scooter- somehow i stumble, through the auguries of the bowels of the new york times, onto this (note: The creators identified themselves as Miles Beckett, 28, of Woodland Hills, Calif.; Mesh Flinders, 26, of Petaluma, Calif., and Greg Goodfried, 27, of Los Angeles) and this - certainly two of the most wonderful bits of cultural density i’ve seen lately… so tell me, did you foresee this happening? 7 million views of a vanishingly humble korean playing bach, and a thousand video responses to “i really shouldn’t post this, but….”

yikes… this is going to be a wild ride…