Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the BCS trophy

Sooners! (Or possibly Cowboys of OK State or some such.) Perhaps I was the last to know.

Thor did indeed rebuild Asgard, in Oklahoma, and he embarked on a quest to liberate his fellow Asgardians who were trapped in mortal shells.

And here I thought a guy named Thor Odinson be up with his people among the fans of the Golden Gophers (though admittedly, the Marvel canon has been relatively silent on the latter). Stereotypes are so ugly and destructive, and do not ultimately account for the power of the great nemeses such as the Crimson Tide.

Entropy - it doesn't just happen

originally uploaded by theimpulsivebuy.

What fools we were in the 1970s when we did not know that we needed a product like this to ensure that our hair looked messy, trusting instead to literal winds of chance, inadvertent bed-head (before that was a scientific term), and desperate self-barbering upon occasion. For if science has taught us anything, it's that one cannot trust nature to revert to disorder when one's (fashion) life might depend on it. I imagine that the Axe people have incorporated nanomachinery into their product to make sure that no two strands parallel one another over a significant distance, and perhaps a dab of adaptive optics to befuddle the hapless viewer's eye to see more of a fractal Medusa's nest than is practically possible to engineer in reality. Back in those days the mathematics of strange attractors was regrettably unavailable to describe the chaotic hair dynamics that is now understood to be essential to sustain modern standards of presentability.

Weeping because of all the attention

Perhaps we gents ought to give them a little room, if these two headlines from the Telegraph are to be understood in conjunction.

I also wonder how many months a man spends staring at women crying.

More action saints

The venerable Cracked magazine's website has a post up about six saints who had astounding physical prowess. This fits in nicely with my previous video game proposal, on which I have heard exactly zero reaction from the hierarchy. An opportunity is being missed, one which could feature St. Olaf swinging a great big two-handed broadsword in 3D, and it is a pity. As far as I know, the only video game saints one can play with today are the ones based in New Orleans.

Odd that there's no mention of St. George drilling a dragon. It's just that ugly "legend" label keeping that boy down.

10 tips for those let go from finance

With the number of high finance executives being downsized from Shearson Loeb Rhodes Pierce Fenner and Smith Mae Mac and the like, it is time to think of ways in which the affected workers can make a positive step forward in their lives. Here's the list I came up with:

1. If you were an experience in Structured Investment Vehicles, get yourself to Detroit and see whether they might be able to use you in a new line of concept cars of the same name.
2. Employers are probably completely swamped with resumes from your colleagues right now, trying to figure out whether all the acronyms are real or made up. Hire yourself out as a resume reader to help filter the good ones from the bad.
3. Contribute a foreword to a new published edition of Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.
4. Take your skills offshore to bring the home of universal homeownership to the common Chinese citizen. Learn Mandarin first.
5. Don't you know there's a crisis in the health care industry in this country?! Get a set of scrubs on, pull on some surgical gloves, and learn to do something useful, anything!
6. If you are still occupying space in an office, open up an account at Etsy and sell the crafts you make from leftover office supplies.
7. Form a monastic order with your coworkers, roam midtown Manhattan begging for alms and doing good works. Call yourselves the Mad Mendicants.
8. Get yourself to the State of Alaska, where all citizens are granted an annual stipend from the state, making it the ideal socialist paradise. And IT folks: while you're up there in the frigid north, you could make a living running computer datacenters with natural rack cooling provided by the Arctic air, and piping the warm air to heat dwellings. Ample diesel supplies to power the backup generators are available as well.
9. Entrepreneurship may be a good option. See the picture for one concept.
10. Appear as a contestant on a new reality show for mortgage insurance specialists forced to live by their wits and set in the jungles of Papua New Guinea. One challenge could involve defrauding the local denizens of their swine and roots. Attire: formal business wear.

Regular expressions of marriage

marriage?,
originally uploaded by Rootytootoot.

Opponents of gay marriage favor the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman, forming the basis of a traditional family. Using the language of regular expressions, we can formalize the allowed configurations of families under different assumptions.

Let us represent a family grouping by a character string including various numbers of children, men, and women in that order (alphabetical).

Extended monogamy

^(child)*(man(man|woman)?|woman(woman)?)$

Traditional monogamy

^(child)*(man(woman)?|woman)$

Childfree

^(man(man|woman)?|woman(woman)?)$

Polygyny

^(child)*(man(woman)*)$

Polyandry

^(child)*((man)*woman)$

Polygamy

^(child)*((man)+(woman)*|(man)*(woman)+)$

Anti-spinster

^(child)*(man(woman)?)$

Anti-bachelor

^(child)*((man)?woman)$

Nuclear family

^(man|woman|(child)*manwoman)$

I wrote a little Ruby program to test a number of configurations against these regular expressions to give you an idea of what is allowed and what is not under those models.

Family grouping	Allowed?
Anti-spinster (hetero, no single women, single fathers okay)
man	true
woman	false
manwoman	true
manman	false
womanwoman	false
manmanwoman	false
childman	true
childwoman	false
childmanwoman	true
childwomanwoman	false
childchildmanman	false
childmanmanman	false
manmanwoman	false
child	false
Childfree (extended monogamy without children)
man	true
woman	true
manwoman	true
manman	true
womanwoman	true
manmanwoman	false
childman	false
childwoman	false
childmanwoman	false
childwomanwoman	false
childchildmanman	false
childmanmanman	false
manmanwoman	false
child	false
Open family (any configuration allowed)
man	true
woman	true
manwoman	true
manman	true
womanwoman	true
manmanwoman	true
childman	true
childwoman	true
childmanwoman	true
childwomanwoman	true
childchildmanman	true
childmanmanman	true
manmanwoman	true
child	true
Nuclear family (hetero, no single parents)
man	true
woman	true
manwoman	true
manman	false
womanwoman	false
manmanwoman	false
childman	false
childwoman	false
childmanwoman	true
childwomanwoman	false
childchildmanman	false
childmanmanman	false
manmanwoman	false
child	false
Anti-bachelor (hetero, no single men, single mothers okay)
man	false
woman	true
manwoman	true
manman	false
womanwoman	false
manmanwoman	false
childman	false
childwoman	true
childmanwoman	true
childwomanwoman	false
childchildmanman	false
childmanmanman	false
manmanwoman	false
child	false
Polygyny (1 man + n women)
man	true
woman	false
manwoman	true
manman	false
womanwoman	false
manmanwoman	false
childman	true
childwoman	false
childmanwoman	true
childwomanwoman	false
childchildmanman	false
childmanmanman	false
manmanwoman	false
child	false
Traditional monogamy (1+1 of opposite sexes, single parents okay)
man	true
woman	true
manwoman	true
manman	false
womanwoman	false
manmanwoman	false
childman	true
childwoman	true
childmanwoman	true
childwomanwoman	false
childchildmanman	false
childmanmanman	false
manmanwoman	false
child	false
Polyandry (n men + 1 woman)
man	false
woman	true
manwoman	true
manman	false
womanwoman	false
manmanwoman	true
childman	false
childwoman	true
childmanwoman	true
childwomanwoman	false
childchildmanman	false
childmanmanman	false
manmanwoman	true
child	false
Extended monogamy (1+1 of either sex, single parents okay)
man	true
woman	true
manwoman	true
manman	true
womanwoman	true
manmanwoman	false
childman	true
childwoman	true
childmanwoman	true
childwomanwoman	true
childchildmanman	true
childmanmanman	false
manmanwoman	false
child	false
Polygamy (n men + n women)
man	true
woman	true
manwoman	true
manman	true
womanwoman	true
manmanwoman	true
childman	true
childwoman	true
childmanwoman	true
childwomanwoman	true
childchildmanman	true
childmanmanman	true
manmanwoman	true
child	false

A few minutes' inspection of the results reveals how the regular expression in this model encodes the assumptions as to who is allowed to mate and who is allowed to raise children in a powerful and concise manner. Specifically, each of the regexs is short enough to fit on the front of a T-shirt, with room to spare, so that no geekish onlooker would need to wonder what your family philosophy consisted of.

First person vocation processing

Saint Francis of Assisi and his Stigmata,
originally uploaded by Leo Cloma.

If the United States Army can devise a video game for recruiting, couldn't the Catholic Church with her priest shortage do something similar?

I picture a first-person preacher where you travel through Assisi and environs and experience both cruel oppression and sublime ecstasy, with your spiritual score updated based on your actions. I think the Stigmata scene would have to be unlocked only after you have progressed to a pretty high level so that it would be especially meaningful.

That might serve well to boost interest in the OFM, but how about the rank and file diocesan clergy ranks? I think in this case one could rework the classic book by Georges Bernanos Diary of a Country Priest struggling with the day-to-day challenges of leading his flock, only giving it a little bit of action and flash, to appeal to the younger set. Perhaps you could choose a setting which isn't provincial France of the 1930s and instead pick an inner city parish where the parishioners (and the unchurched) would have a somewhat different outlook on life.

To incorporate more exotic locales, one could turn to the lives of the missionaries. But one would have to have a certain degree of cross-cultural sensitivity to avoid offense.

Clean house in style

Time to tidy up around the homestead but not sure whether some unexpected company might be stopping by? How about doing it in a $300, dry-clean only, apron?

And a pair of bejewelled rubber gloves to protect your manicure?

(Scary, methinks.) Add a rhinestone do-rag and a four-figure pair of shoes and you should be good to go. Just be careful when you're unclogging that drain.

Locker room talk

Lockers,
originally uploaded by milkfish.

(Composed while locked out of Blogger by the nefarious spam-prevention robots.)

I have been spying on conversations in the men's locker room over the last few months and present these excerpts as close to verbatim as I have been able to record them.

• 6/5/07 Man those f*cking ridiculous people with their f*cking ellipticals (lipids?)


• 5/22/07 One man owns a restaurant and works 10am to close 3-4 days a week. Another has a friend with a restaurant, works 12noon to 2am six days a week, no AC in the kitchen with hot ovens.


• 5/19/07 Incoming phone call regarding an appointment, nature unspecified. “No, it wasn’t for this Saturday…next Friday is okay…do you want us to call?...no, it’s okay, it’s all part of what we do.” Pause to pull on shorts. “Okay, next Friday. Congratulations on the new baby.”


• 5/15/07 An account of an accident while stopped at a light, a “lady” rear-ended him while he was taking his kid to school. Now has to go to the auto body shop.


• 4/14/07 A fellow talking about one Christmas Eve years ago, when he was called in during a storm which had dropped 8” of snow to operate on a fellow who’d been out riding his bike. Said he’d needed some wine for dinner, and knew he was too drunk to drive to the liquor store. Claimed he wasn’t stupid, spoke six languages. Just before putting him under, told the patient that if he really knew all the languages he claimed, to talk to the Chinese anesthesiologist. A conversation in fluent Mandarin ensued.


• 4/10/07 A discussion of the old days when the Atlantic City casinos were something special.


• 4/8/07 With a Tenafly bike-riding club during the warm-weather, which has organized a trip to New Mexico this year as incentive


• 3/20/07 Bragging that his resting heart rate is 66 “after 20 ounces of Starbucks.”

Tag your furniture

I heard Ruth Brown on the radio yesterday singing If I Can't Sell It, I'll Keep Sittin' On It and my thoughts naturally turned toward furniture. You can buy fabric spray paint to use on upholstery (thus putting a new twist on the term sofa painting), and it seems to me that with the proper tagging skills, one could produce some interesting art furniture.

Sit back and think of Mick.
What would you spray on your sofa?

I saw this edgy biohazard-themed laundry bag at Realm Dekor and thought that while this was cool (along with their shower curtain and bath towels, they really should have pushed it a smidge further and put the crab-symbol thingy on other household items.

Barware:



Tableware:



Major appliances:



(I thought the bright red would be a nice touch as well.) You could either intend it ironically, or as an actual service to your houseguests. One also might want to accessorize and expand on the theme with a nice set of

Saturday, December 16, 2006

A new record

I was down in the basement going through some old papers when I came across one which I came across one describing the original property tax assessment when we first moved here. It had the date of sale (our closing date) on it: 12-11-1996 - exactly ten years ago this last Monday! Today or tomorrow would be the anniversary of our actually moving in (it was a snowy day, as I recall). Perhaps there should be some kind of celebration when one reaches this kind of milestone, the sort of thing one has a round-number birthday or wedding anniversary?

I know I've got a picture of the place somewhere, maybe I'll post it here if I can locate it.

Ten years is the longest I've ever lived in one place, equaling the length of time I was in the house my parents still live in now. The place needs a fair amount of work - a new garage, back door, bathroom floors and tub enclosures, windows upstairs, some landscaping - all things we would like to do before selling out. Neither of us envisions staying here permanently, really, although circumstances currently do not suggest a good exit strategy.

Tearjerkers for guys

Women often report enjoying going to the movies to have a good cry, so maybe men (and I'm talking about conventionally straight men) could benefit from similar stories with them in mind. Unfortunately, it is surprisingly difficult to come up with much in the way of ideas of film stories which have a high likelihood of making your average guy really weepy, rather than enraged or just quietly humiliated. But maybe if the special effects are really good, a big Hollywood studio could clear that obstacle.
Droplets (broken link),
originally uploaded by whyizit.

Fashion decrepitude

The New York Times had an article about fashion hearing aids yesterday, which led me to remark about why it took so long for somebody to come up with this idea. Eyeglasses (and reading glasses) have received the jewelry treatment for a long time now, so why not the aural analogue? One explanation is that now is the time when we self-absorbed Baby Boomers are catching up with mortality finally, so as we go gently into that good night it now starts to collide with the desire to look good while doing so.

So, with this in mind, allow me to propose a few more products that might find an eager market out there:

• Herman Miller streamlined Aeron walkers


• Hummer H-0.2 wheelchairs


• iPod white pill cases


• Hugo Boss orthopedic oxfords


• Motorola RAZR blood glucose monitors