• Scrubbed sulfurous pit of bathroom before it became a conduit to hell from which demons sprang to engulf Chicago.


• Scrubbed godless warren of kitchen.


• Cleaned rest of home — less dust means better sleep; uncluttered means I get more accomplished; cleaning = procrastination device.


• Did not figure out weird form validation problem in ColdFusion. The markup is simple. The form validates onServer but not onSubmit. Weird javascript error. So I omit onSubmit and went with onServer. Sent it to client. It's a huge form, very complicated. It's a pretty form the masses will flock to.


• Read some way into Conversations with Nelson Algren.


• Re-taught myself the bowline, the sheet bend, and the double half hitch. In case I need them. Uh oh. Have tied myself to chair. HALP!


• Web project management stuff.


• Neti potted twice. Shave / shower, in four minutes.


• Software updates and disk defrags for various computers in my home.


• Laundry. That same brassiere is still down there lying on the table where it was three weeks ago. Refrained from running it up flagpole.


• Endured ignominy of realtor leading potential buyers through my apartment. My landlord is selling the building. Time to pick up stakes? Hope not, as I like this place.


• Grocery shopping.


• Arranged salsa dancing next week w/ J and other friends.


• Noted that, since I turned 40 this month, my monthly fee for health insurance increased by $40. I love my country.


• Dinner with sister, her bf, and niece and nephew. I brought shrimp that we peeled and steamed for Shrimp Caesar Salad. Played games with kids. Nephew had a challenging evening. I love him a ton and my sis is wonder-mom but, holy mackerel, that was a challenging evening. He is age 4, extremely smart, intrepid, and froward. Sis's patience continues to astound.


• Called my Pop.


• LJ stuff.

Comics

1. Re: new Iron Man comic book series (volume V!), released just in time to cash in on Iron Man movie:
   
   to editors at Marvel Inc.
   Gentlemen,
   
   In Invincible Iron Man v. 5, # 1, by Fraction and Larroca, page 1, panel 2, some text confuses me.
   
   "She and her friends have all chipped in on minutes they'll use to call family in London or New York, or boys in towns that they like."
   
   Did the girls, before they expired, choose their boyfriends based on the towns in which the boys resided?
   
   I'm unable to continue reading the comic book until you clear this up for me.
   
   Sincerely,
   
   Eric Bourland
   
   (The girls were killed in a terrorist attack, seemingly electrical / industrial in nature. I won't get a reply. Is it wrong of me to expect craft in stories I read? If you don't have the craft, I'm not going to read your writing, not even your comic book.)
   


2. I liked it better when Catwoman was evil and a genuine foil to Batman and his catamite bat-a-mite, Robin. Now she is Cleaning Up the Gotham Night. We desperately need our heroes don't we?


3. That's it today. Early to bed.


4. Who da man? You da man. Or da woman.

Sheet bend. Source: www1.br.cc.va.us/murray/Arboriculture/tree_climbing/knots/

It's no good trying to keep up old friendships. It's painful for both sides. The fact is, one grows out of people, and the only thing is to face it. -- W. Somerset Maugham

The earthquake in China is quite bad. This story in particular, about a girl who will lose her legs to be rescued, is disturbing.

Girl will lose her legs to gain freedom

Aside from the horror of the subject, the journalism is bad to the point of disrespect. What's with the sensational headline?

"Freedom is a breakfastfood" (via aquarian_azalea's compelling and readable blog) wrote a sardonic e. e. cummings.

And this:

"Rescuers took a photojournalist to where Yang was trapped, before rushing his photos, along with Yang's mother, to the local hospital, where surgeons studied them in preparation."

Why are surgeons studying Yang's mother to prepare for surgery?

In any case my sympathies go out to the girl.

Indulge a proud uncle. Niece, age 8, first communion, Old St Pat's Church Chicago 3 May 2008.

1. finished setting up BlogCFC on my server; now to set up different blogs for different sites including libidinouswino.org

2. made progress with libidinouswino.org (nexus of smut and grammar) (and cash cow) (well, cash rabbit) (cash cicada?)

3. fixed long and complex update form for client

4. unsuccessfully tried to talk her into connecting that form directly to the database

5. wrote long, polite letter to another client explaining difficulties of editing a complex navigation menu in a WYSIWYG editor

6. patched a couple of holes in my CMS

7. read further on DKIM and DomainKeys and decided to not implement them on my server since they are resource intensive and my server does not have a ton of resources to spare

8. sent timeline and budget to another, new client

9. fixed feedback problem with some colleagues on experts-exchange.com; was called a gentleman

10. grocery shopping

11. made big batch of shrimp and cous cous that will last for three dinners

12. puttered

13. napped

14. read LJ

15. letter to EF written and posted

16. revised poem about dancing policemen in Granada

17. now the computer is going to beat me in chess, a little more at-risk each time

Playboy is 97% dumb (it does deploy the subjunctive properly), and plastic postliterate women are as sexy as [extremely unsexy things]. I happened across this item, below, don't ask me how. Playboy Advisor has for decades dispensed wisdom to men and (some times) women. Even if the rest of the magazine is weird crap that panders to pleasurebot fetishists, Playboy Advisor is worth reading. The following wisdom applies aptly to me (except for the spread my seed part. not interested in spreading seed). I read it and thought, Well grow up you little punk. Then I thought: Oh. That's I, the serial dater. Yeah fool.


Yeah fool.

I own a copy of Playboy. It's from May 1968, the month I was born. A buddy got it for me for my birthday some years back. The picture on the front shows a woman who looks like somebody's mom. Like she could be baking cookies. Playboy Advisor then had much the same savoir faire as it has today. Maybe slightly more refined then. Some of the text is touching, like the advice for a young man whose best friend slept with the woman he (the young man) loved. Another fellow, a junior in college, asks whether he should wear a corsage to a formal or a semiformal, and should he send his girl a complimentary note a few days after the date? Incredibly sweet. Can you imagine a frat boy doing so much? There's a letter from a woman, a divorced mother of two (scandalous in '68), who asks advice about dating without subjecting her young children to the idea that she is anything other than a sexless and devoted mom. Playboy Advisor recognizes -- encourages -- both her sexual freedom and the considerate care of her children.

In a heartbreaking letter a woman asks -- asks Playboy Magazine! -- advice about what to do when she has already had two stillbirths, is pregnant again but the doctors predict the baby will die or have defects, and her husband is threatening to leave her to find a woman who can bear healthy children. Playboy Advisor returns a thoughtful and wise answer and finishes with, "If your husband is determined to abandon you in spite of everything, there is only the small consolation that if his love for you is so limited, you are better off without him."

There's a fascinating interview with Masters and Johnson in that issue. It's a good issue.

When last was Playboy sexy? When they had natural women. Ample, thin, firm, droopy, no matter, but real. Some of those women used to be readers too. Centerfold data included Favorite Book. I can't think when that was. They don't make that kind of Playboy anymore.

Notes:

1. When I was five, maybe six, we lived in Memphis on Avalon St and I found in a closet a big stack of my father's Playboys and smuggled all of them in five year old armloads (yippee!) to my room and hid them under the tent I had made from bed sheets till mom found them days later. Where did you find these? she asked me shocked. In the closet I said. I don't know what happened after that.

2. In kindergarten I had a pretty teacher who wore long skirts and one day we were all playing, all of we kids rambunctious in the classroom with the colors and shapes and words and pet snapping turtle in the clear glass bowl, and she strode among us to settle some rowdiness or dispute and I in the midst of that commotion took that moment to actually dive underneath her long orange skirt actually between her sandaled feet. I was small & impetuous. In a riotous moment. Instantly I was scared when I realized I had just dived under the teacher's skirt. She gasped and stepped back above me revealing me in my small impish opprobrium and laughed, embarrassed, and I was embarrassed too in my young way.

No, I won't be running for president, why do you ask? Lordy it's late. Night now.


Tennesee mom, 1935.

Too much, too little sleep tied to ill health in CDC study
I think we should avoid CDC studies. Thank you, MIKE STOBBE, AP Medical Writer.

B vitamins fail to cut heart risk in study
Whatever study that was I am glad I was not in it. Thank you Reuters.

Scientists find something good about a big bottom
Bicycle race!

And now the Bennett sisters, 1910.

Annoyed by fiasco in bed. emergency is available
This one vaulted past my spam filter today.

Hi!.
Annoyed by fiasco in bed? Cheer up now! Leave this dull experience behind! emergency is available! Awesome bedtime is just minutes away!

I want a t-shirt that reads Awesome bedtime is just minutes away! I would wear it on first dates. Or put the text on a banner to hang on my bedroom door. Every babe lair should have one.

I like the little touches like the extra period after the exclamation point and the line space after that. These modern ED remedy adverts are art. Intentionally so? Like the writer were trying to draw a chuckle?

It could easily be an advert for a somnifacient is one beauty.

Cloverfield
Lazy day, I'm waiting for a consultant to get back to me, so I am watching it again. The movie received a lot of criticism for its disjointed and amateur camerawork but I think it's well done. I would have been proud to have made this movie. It's funny and sweet and clever. It's not gratuitous. It's menacing in the right measure.

I'm usually one to cry foul at hollywood schlock. But this movie managed to take the lurching camerawork of the hamhanded character Hud and turn it into a good story.

Hud's inept courtship of Marlena is quite funny. Who of we has not initiated such a goonlike pursuit? OK, well, maybe only I. Hud is the linchpin of the film. He's a coward and a fool. I like him very much.

Schlock and country
Hollywood schlock — America's gift to the world.

World: Hey America thanks for the hollywood schlock. We can really use that.

America: I got more where that came from.

I love my country. That's why I'm critical of it. If I disdained it then I'd just disregard it or take it for granted (as many Americans do) or drive nowhere and endlessly in thick traffic blaring my horn and tailgating the wretch in front of me and cursing my little life.


Marlena whacks parasite with found implement. Go Marlena.

Every week Comcast bombs my apartment complex with a new bundle of marketing mailings. That's twenty of these Comcast Special Offers each month, without end. We are also bombed with the weekly grocery coupon mailings, and piles of offers from banks and credit card companies. It's very wasteful.


It's hard to tell in this photo but white sacrificed a queen then cagily checkmated black using a bishop and two knights, just as the mid-game was beginning. Slick!

Darlin wherever you went you take care of yourself and I'll see you someday.

Tasks done today:

• Scolded delinquent business accountant via email with enough severity to elicit useful reply. Making progress toward incorporating my business as ebwebwork.com.


• Figured out a popular blog platform written in ColdFusion -- BlogCFC by Ray Camden. Once I get this running on my server, probably this week, it is another service I can offer to clients.


• Sent out invoices to clients.


• Conducted a photoshoot at Star Lounge. Shrank, then uploaded photos so they can download and use at will.


• Worked on web site template for my buddy Dan in Amsterdam.


• Internet / web work for clients.


• Scrubbed the sad abhorrence of my bathroom. Now fit for human beings rather than base animals.


• Worked on awkward poem about fucking.


• Worked on other shaky poems making a couple of them a little more solid.


• Re-read Faulkner's story The Brooch to see if I got it all the first time. I didn't.


• Re-read Two Soldiers because I happened by it. One of the most moving stories I ever read. Faulkner.


• Worked on funny sad poem about Multiple Girl, a fake comic book heroine, based loosely on Multi-Kate from Invincible. This one is not gonna fly. No one takes comic book poems seriously. Maybe I can get the editor drunk and sneak it into the manuscript.


• Gym. 60 min on elliptical at high resistance = 770 calories burned up.


• Biked to gym and biked back, going several blocks hands free, sitting upright with good posture, steering with my hips, without endangering life, limb, or property.

Not bad for an old man. Ya'll have a really good night.


1915 ship rescue apparatus / photographer unknown

Temple offers Olympic blessing
Shi Yan Ju, a Buddhist monk, called the Games a platform for athletic competition and sportsmanship, and he echoed Mayor Richard Daley in saying that politics should not play into the Olympics.

Anybody else find this funny?

Star Lounge gangsta rap
Sunday night is music night at Star Lounge. I've been there several Sunday evenings and the music has been rap music. The performers troop in with speakers, turntable, crate of vinyl records. While they set up they play recorded rap music as prelude to the live rap music. It's very loud and makes me wince at my table and I'm known for liking loud music. I'm not able to get any work done. They play gangsta rap with gangsta rap lyrics.

People come in to Star Lounge to hear the rap. A couple on a date. A man and woman with their little girl. Family night with gangsta rap. The little girl toddles around, she is maybe age 3. The blasting noise is bad for my adult ears and I wonder what it's doing to her little ears. Her parents encourage her to dance and she does. I can't actually hear them but see them a few paces from me miming before her uplifted eyes the motions of dancing and guiding her arms and body and so she begins to dance. She runs around the place. Twin puffs of afro hair pulled back on her head. Eyes two bright buttons. Bumbles toward my table in toddler greeting then her mama swoops her back into the abusing music.

Nobody in the place objects to the depravity of the vocal content as if the depravity were part of the natural order of the world.

Poems about black life: Phyllis Wheatley, Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Yusef Komunyakaa, Thylias Moss, Safiya Henderson-Holmes.

Not to disparage Star Lounge which is the best coffee shop I have found in a long time.

oh honey.

erratum
In a previous post I said "since they leavened Vista of so many of its promised features" and that was wrong. I've emended to "since they curtailed in Vista so many of its promised features."

More self-conscious than accurate in this blog. This points up my ongoing solipsism: like anybody noticed my misuse of leaven.

You have surged to the vanguard of goonery
I feel like crap these past couple of days. No energy though I am sleeping long hours. Faint nausea. The bald cowboy has stopped circling me maybe sensing my scorn. Another large man walks up and down the place declaiming something I can't tell what. He looks me up and down each time he passes by. What the hell. I am sitting here minding my own. I believe if I were a large goony man then people would fuck with me less. Instead of size and goonery I got meanness. Pure meanness. But that comes out only after you mess with me for a while and the altercation has begun already.

As usual at Star Lounge the rambling cast of characters is distracting and instead of working on poems I'm spamming LJ.

markup
There should be markup tags <strange></strange> along with the regular, not deprecated markup like <strong></strong>. I'm gonna tell the W3C.

Record $500,000 paid for 27 bottles of red wine

If I were a billionaire I might do this too, because one lives only one time, despite what they tell you on the mountain.

From the article:

"It is the highest price that has ever been achieved for a single lot," Managing Director Stephen Williams of the London- based Antique Wine Company told Reuters on Saturday.

"I don't think he has bought this as an investment -- he has bought it to drink," he added. "The fine wine industry is completely immune from the global credit crunch."

* Too bad your usage is not immune.

Williams believes the Romanee Conti sale marks a significant change in Chinese wine buying habits.

"In the past, the Chinese have been drawn to the magnificent but simplistic qualities of the wines from the great chateaux of Bordeaux.

"Now, our leap in sales of Domaine de la Romanee Conti to mainland China this year in particular is indicating a broadening of their fine wine education and appreciation to the more complex wines of Burgundy."

* Condescend much? Pompous goon. On reconsideration even if I were a billionaire I would not put up with this. I'll stick to my degenerate $3.99 swill I get at the drugstore. The depressed cashier Pat, age 63, sells it to me and offers me a bottle opener and straw to go with it.

In the Star Lounge a bald guy with goatee, pressed black jeans, feathered cowboy shirt, and heavy cowboy boots circles my table predatorily, clonk, clonk, clonk, smirk, smirk, smirk. Go away. I'm reading my goddamn book and drinking my goddamn tea.

In addition to Paris Review 183 I can also recommended heartily the blood music of Zombina and the Skeletones, which deadsoulmate (very aptly) turned me on to. They are from Liverpool and their CDs are a little hard to come by since they disdain the soulsucking big music labels.

In fact I can recommend both at once, Paris Review 183 and the groovy and gruesome rock n roll stylings of Zombina and the Skeletones, along with a little wine on this clear spring day with sun leaping through the window like somebody's rambunctious child.

Each year I build a new computer. It's mostly a tax write-off, and also a lot of fun, so why not. I think this year I am going to go for a water-cooling solution. No more loud, spinning fans or dust bunnies collecting in my chassis.

Of course with a water-cooled computer there are two risks:

1. leaks

2. freezing (in a Chicago winter this is a slight but significant risk if the indoor temperature drops below freezing, which normally I don't allow to happen, though I do let it get pretty chilly in here b/c I like to conserve)

On the various computer modding sites I have been reading up on water-cooling solutions. There are many more options today than there were a few years ago.

No, I am not going to go for the chassis window and LED lights and glowing fans and trippy-hippy wires and what-not. I need a stable, fast, workhorse computer. My business depends on it.

I'm also going to get an eSATA kit and stack up a few 1T SATA drives on a shelf beside the chassis. I need a lot of storage space. Currently my Lian-Li chassis has five hard drives and one optical drive stacked inside it. They generate a lot of heat. My computer is much hotter than I would like. My graphics card is an oven. My computer is very stable, even after a year of use without reinstalling Windows XP, and that indicates my configuration at least keeps all of my components within spec. But I would like a silent cold computer. I think I can budget an upgrade this summer for around $1,500.

Should I go for MS Vista and get the DX10 graphics platform that comes with it? In my mind that's the only reason to switch to Vista since they curtailed in Vista so many of its promised features. I was especially looking forward to that new file system, damn them.

"WinFS natively recognizes different types of data, such as picture, e-mail, document, audio, video, calendar, contact, among others; rather than just bytestreams as with file systems." -- from Wiki. See, that would be cool. And I like the idea of a file system that's based on a relational database. I like relational databases. They make me feel comforted.