King Mullethead

All right, you bunch of posers. Look upon the king of all bad mullets. What do I win?


In my defense, this was around '93. I had spent a good deal of the late '80s working for a company that had a very strict dress code, and I grew the hair when I changed jobs just because I could.

It's out of my system.

P.S.

Amazing. All I have to do is post a picture of myself looking goofy, and everyone comes out of the woodwork. From the number and nature of some of your comments I get the feeling that further explanation is required.

Bret probably hit the nail on the head when he suggested this 'do was a result of my love for the prog-rock band Kansas. I don't think I was consciously trying to emulate anyone specifically (has Phil Eheart had hair plugs, do you think?), but I've always loved music. Rock music. A lot of it Progressive Rock like that produced by bands like ELP, Yes, Marillion, and Kansas.

Of course it's reasonably painful to look back at the '80s and see the clothes and the hair styles we wore, but that's what was cool back then. Unfortunately, as I said, my employer at that time wouldn't have any of it so I may have been just a bit late for the party when I started growing my hair in 1990.

I played a lot of air guitar/air microphone, back in the day when I had my own apartment and no one except the neighbors to object if I gave my Klipsch KG-4s a workout. The long hair was something I always identified with rockers, so it was probably natural for a nerd with insufficient vocal range and no aptitude for the guitar to try a shortcut to coolness.

I wore an earring, too. Left ear, for those who keep up with such things.

Anne notes that I looked proud of the mullet in the picture above. Maybe, but I'd never heard it described as a mullet at that time, much less in a derogatory tone. My expression was intended as one of seriousness and cool, not pride of coiffure. I had just started dating a woman (pre-Sweetie) who wanted a photograph of me, so I set up the camera on a tripod and did this self portrait.

She dug the hair, by the way, which may go part of the way toward explaining why that relationship was a bad idea. I firmly believe that having to live through that one was God's way of preparing me so that I'd recognize that Sweetie was The One, when she came along.

But that's a whole 'nother story.

I used to wear my hair in a ponytail a lot of the time, but did I ever braid it? Yes, once. When I decided I was tired of fooling with all that hair and that all the gray in it went counter to the bad boy image I was trying to achieve, I went to my stylist and asked her to cut it off. She had always liked my hair, because of all the natural wave, and decided she had to braid it before chopping it off.

Nearly 10 years later, I'm still trying to find a use for the thing. Maybe a chain pull for a ceiling fan.

The fruits of productivity

Well, they ain't blog entries. That's for sure.

I got volunteered for some volunteer work on a web site for a loose confederation with no money and even less notion of How Those Darned Web Thingies Work. The official webmaster fades in and out of the picture at his own discretion, leaving me to find back doors into the database so that I can help these folks get the content up to date for this year's event.

So, basically, I've spent nearly every free minute of the past three days knocking together code to do the same thing I could have done in half an hour, if only the webführer could be induced to provide me with the information I need to log in to the site's database.

But I digress.

I stumbled into the bee's knees' blog and tried but failed to resist my OCD compulsion to answer her meme. She asked, "What kind of foo [not me; this one] would you be?"

• Car: '60 Ford Falcon. Old, cheap, dependable, and a little on the small side. Oh, and my brakes squeal.
• Book: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
• Movie: Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels.
• Weather: Partly cloudy with scattered frog showers.
• Drink: Shiner Bock
• Ice Cream Flavor: Something with nuts. Butter pecan, let's say. (It has been posited that the nuts are a reference to my mental state. The reasoning is somewhat more organic, however.)
  
• Song or Genre of Music: Insurgent country (i.e., "a little bit country; a little bit rock 'n' roll").
• Shoe: Sneaker. Or maybe a one of those slippers that looks like Godzilla.
• Website: Oxford English Dictionary
• Food: Chicken biscuit.

Yes, yes... I realize that passing this off as new material is cheating. But look at it this way: it was either this or another rant about working in a prairie dog colony.

Now playing: Soundgarden, Badmotorfinger. (I'm feelin' outshined)

Restless

About 2:30 this morning, I found myself standing alone in the middle of a street in the suburbs. The eerie silence was broken only by the occasional sound of a semi howling down a distant road and, except for the one I'd just left, all the clean, new, plain-as-shirt-cardboard homes on the street were dark and still, just beyond the glow of scattered street lights.

It was chilly and damp, so I shoved my hands into my jacket pockets and began walking briskly in the general direction of where I hoped to find my car. How difficult could it be? All I had to do was find the one that wasn't an SUV or a minivan.

I spotted my aging Honda almost immediately and jogged toward it, my footfalls echoing loudly in the stillness. My keys jangled harshly as I unlocked the door and climbed into the driver's seat. I turned the key in the ignition and was assaulted by a blast of rock music.

Damned radio gremlins.

Before I knew it, I was sitting across a table from Sweetie at a place called Pothaito having breakfast. As we shoveled stir fry and scalloped potatoes into our mouths, we entertained ourselves by taking in the decor, which was an eclectic mix of '40s greasy spoon and Asian bordello. Weary, work-booted truck drivers sat on padded stools, looking on as the cooks banged pots and pans and jabbered at one another in some unintelligible argot.

I speared half a dozen potato slices with a chopstick and was about to comment on all this when Sweetie reached across the table, grabbed me by the shoulders, and started shaking me.

"Quick! Get him into the bathroom!" she was saying.

"What?"

"Get him off the bed! He's throwing up."

The sickly fluorescents of the Pothaito gave way to the darkness of my own bedroom, my own wife, and one of the furry dependents in the throes of some serious reverse peristalsis.


Blasted hairballs...

Heritage collage: New House

Since my earlier casual attempt at making a digital collage was met with some interest, I thought I'd post up this slightly more ambitious effort.

Its primary thematic element is the scan of a photocopy of the plat of a home my great-grandparents bought in 1928. I gave it a blue tint in the attempt to get back to what I thought the original blueprint might have looked like.

The photograph shows my great-grandparents with my grandfather and two of his siblings. Based on their apparent ages, I'm estimating that the photo was actually taken around 1925, but that was close enough for my purposes.

The folding ruler is one of Sweetie's scrapbooking stickers that I scanned, and the envelope that the journaling is "written" on is just something I had lying around and scanned.

I'm most pleased with the way the watch came out. Several years ago, during a visit with my parents, I got my dad to trot out the box of family treasures that have come into his care over the years. One of these items is my great-grandfather's pocket watch, which he habitually wore on a chain hooked through a button hole of his vest. If you look, you can see it in the photograph.

One by one, I laid the items out on a piece of white cardboard and photographed them as best I could. Some came out better than others, but the lighting wasn't ideal. The short of it is that cleaning up the photo of this watch forced me to reach deep into my bag of photo editing tricks and learn some new ones.

Good dog

Let me regale you with tales of this evening's ride.

It's that or the thumb screw. Your choice.

Yeah... I thought you'd see it my way.

So anyway, I was on my way back from a doctor's appointment this afternoon, moonroof open, sweating in my flannel shirt when it occurred to me that it just wasn't natural to be having such beautiful weather on the 24th day of January. So unnatural was it that I naturally decided I had to have myself a ride after work, and Nabumetone be damned.

The sun was already setting by the time I got under way, so I rode with my blinky going and my headlight on. Apparently, being able to see me infuriated one Escalade driver, who proceeded to get right on my wheel and follow me through the ritzy neighborhood. I kept trying to wave her around, but no luck. Finally, after she'd gotten herself worked up enough, she waited until there was a car coming the opposite direction and laid on the horn. I sort of guessed it was coming and managed not to swerve in front of the oncoming car.

I nearly soiled myself, but finally the jerkweedette had got her post-commute kick-the-dog therapy out of her system and went around.

Silver lining: the adrenaline jolt I got from the encounter with Ms. Bling served me well when I had to evade an ambush by a couple kids who'd gotten bored of shooting at one another with their paintball guns.

But all that is pretty common stuff and not the point of this entry.

Dogs: the cyclist's arch nemesis.

Okay, maybe not the arch nemesis, because they're only doing what comes naturally, unlike aggressive drivers (who are also doing what comes naturally, though not as any consequence of evolution). And pavement cracks, which one might argue are a joint act of God and cities that grant construction contracts to the lowest bidder.

I chose this evening's route to include a bunch of protracted grades and one big hill, which meant that I had to pass along a stretch that I know to be the home turf of a couple vocal but not particularly aggressive dogs. They more or less know me by now and have either figured out that I'm too tough to eat, not worth the effort it would take to run me down (in light of my being too tough to eat), or that I'm really not planning to slip into the house to steal their giant, slobbery rawhide bones. Whatever the reason, we have an understanding.

Tonight, though, there were a couple new pooches on the block: a little one that looked to be somewhere between the size of a chihuahua (chi-hoo-ah-hoo-ah) and a Jack Russell terrier, and a larger one that appeared to have more than a little chow in it. They were chasing one another around the street, then chasing the minivan that nearly chased me off the shoulder trying to avoid them.

Yap, yap, yap... woof, woof, woof. Oh look! Something new to chase!

And then it was on. Within seconds, I felt my heart rate jump into the high 190s as I summoned the torque to try and outrun them. I had Stumpy up to around 20mph, and they were still on my heels like wolves on a sick, elderly buffalo. Daaaaang...

But wait. There's more.

I was rapidly (for me, at least) approaching the corner where my usual dogs live, and I could see them coming out so see what was going on. Then one of them took off toward me like a rocket.

Crap. Caught in a crossfire.

Or so I thought.

Just as I thought I was about to find out if all the things I'd heard about rabies shots were true, the oncoming dog shot past me. I sneaked a look back in my helmet mirror and saw—to my stark, breathless amazement—that it had intercepted the Cujo wanna-bes and stood them down.

Good dog.

The long arm of the law

Driving to work, a gentleman had to swerve to avoid a box that fell out of a truck in front of him.

Seconds later, a policeman pulled him over for reckless driving. Fortunately, another officer had seen the carton in the road. The policemen stopped traffic and recovered the box. It was found to contain large upholstery tacks.

"I'm sorry, sir," the first trooper told the driver, "but I am still going to have to cite you."

Amazed, the driver asked for what.

"Tacks evasion."


(Don't blame me. This one came from my buddy Jimmy, in Ireland.)

Could Pixar be bought out by Disney?

With Disney's distribution deal with Pixar expiring this year, it's a possibility. Why?

Disney is seen to have fallen behind other animators, and its latest cinema releases have failed to set the box office alight

"Disney is perhaps revealing a slight lack of confidence," said Anant Sundaram of Dartmouth College's Tuck School of Business.

"If that assessment is true, then it is a somewhat unfortunate admission from a once-great company that fundamentally created and defined this space," the professor said.

Amen.

Full story

Now playing: Catherine Wheel, Ferment.

What's that smell?

As I made my way from the parking structure to my office building this morning, my nose was filled with a pungent aroma. Not floral, not petrochemical. Possibly animal, but also a bit like burning tires. I couldn't quite identify it, but I had the vague notion that in some culture it might be considered food.

Hrm, I thought. I wonder what boiled goat colon smells like.

That set the stage for my next RSM, which had to do with a conversation I had with one of our friends a couple weeks ago.

We'd been having an enjoyable after after-church dinner visit* when the converstion turned suddenly political. Or maybe not suddenly, but I generally make a point not to become involved in such discussions so it probably seemed that way to me, when I finally did.

My friend—we'll call him "Jim" to disguise the fact that his name is actually Bob—had just announced that he was thinking of voting for Carole Keeton Strayhorn, on account of how the current Texas governor, Rick Perry, was divisive, dishonest, and about as useful as dugs on a boar javelina. Strayhorn had promised to lower property taxes and improved Texas schools, which Jim feels are good things.

“We can fix our schools, cut property taxes, reign** in government spending, and crack down on criminals who abuse our children.”

-Carole Keeton Strayhorn

I agreed in principle but noted that I'd recently heard an interview with Strayhorn on a local talk radio station and that I came away rather underwhelmed. Sure, the things she promises to do are things that I'd like to see done, but when the host pressed her for details about how she intends to accomplish them, she fell back on impassioned rhetoric about how strongly she believes in all that's good for Texas and what a low-down skunk Gov. Perry is.

The arguable validity of this opinion aside, it doesn't tell me anything about how Strayhorn intends to make up the difference in school funding if she succeeds in lowering property taxes. And that's what I told Jim.

"Well, Perry isn't doing anything, so what choice is there? It's time to give someone else a chance," he said, the frustration showing in his voice. "I have to vote for Strayhorn."

I understood where he was coming from, of course. No one likes to feel like his vote is going to waste, so it's natural to feel like the choice comes down to the lesser of two or three evils. Jim's not alone in feeling this way.

"So you're just going to roll the dice, even though you may be electing a governor who's even less effectual than the current one?"

"Yes," he admitted.

"Fair enough."

I guess I'm just ornery this way, but if I don't like any of the candidates who actually have a chance of being elected, I go ahead and vote for the one I do like, if there is one. But that's neither here nor there, because I haven't even taken the time to learn if there's anyone besides Strayhorn and Perry running.

I'll tell you one thing, though. I think that there ought to be some sort of consequences to be faced by a politician who bases his/her campaign on promises to do or undo specific things. I was discussing this with Sweetie the other evening, and I think I have the answer.

If a candidate elected into office goes back on his/her campaign promises without making some sort of good faith effort, he/she ought to be compelled to appear as a contestant on Fear Factor.

Let 'em eat boiled goat colon, I say.


* You read that right. It's a three-course evening: dinner after church, and then onward to someone's house for a visit after the dinner. Or "after ((after church) dinner) visit", for my fellow code trolls and math weenies.

** A Freudian slip I find revealing. Maybe she meant rein—but maybe she didn't.


Now playing: Georg Philipp Telemann, Dinner Music Vol. I

The value of time

Now playing: BT, BT_ESCM

What kind of American English do you speak?

One of my many eccentricities is a love for words and dialects of the English language.

I know that's just wrong.

I can't help it.

When I was a little kid, I once found myself stranded on the throne when I took a dictionary in with me, lost track of time, and found my legs had fallen asleep. As an adult, during a slow period at work, I spent endless hours reading the alt.usage.english newsgroup. Somewhere in the midst of all the biting sarcasm and chest thumping on the part of brainy but insecure academians, I learned a bunch of fascinating but essentially useless things.

The following test was the topic of some discussion in the newsgroup, but since I stumbled across this blog version while "next blogging" I thought I'd share my results. Take a whack at it and see how close you think the test comes to identifying your dialect.

Your Linguistic Profile:

65% General American English

20% Dixie

15% Yankee

0% Midwestern

0% Upper Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

Sweetie and I were surprised that my results didn't show me to be less Dixie and more Midwest, but I suppose that's a result of my having lived in the South for more than thirty years. It doesn't mean ah sayound lahk eeyit, but I expect the words I use have changed.

For instance, when I was a kid we always called soft drinks pop. When we moved to the South, everyone called everything Coke.

"Would you like a Coke?" a friend would ask after we'd been out ramping around the neighborhood all afternoon.

"Sure."

"What kind?" he'd ask.

Bear in mind that this scene took place in the early '70s, when there was no Diet Coke, Cherry Coke, Classic Coke, Ultra Coke, Golden Age Coke, Asparagus Coke...

There was Coca-Cola. The one, the original. The only difference between one icy cold Coke and another was whether it came in one of those little 10oz. bottles—reputed to be stronger—or not.

But I digress. I was just being offered a Coke.

"Sure," I'd say.

"What kind?"

"What do you mean, 'What kind?'"

"Well," my friend would say, taking a deep breath, "we've got Orange Crush, Dr. Pepper, Sprite..."

Sprite was pronounced "spraaaht".

"...and Coke"

"Oh. Well, I'll just have a Coke, thanks."

"What kind?"

[seethe]

So, in an effort to prevent at least one part of my life from turning into a pale imitation of an Abbott & Costello sketch, I compromised and started referring to soft drinks as sodas. This saved me from being ridiculed by the Southerners for saying pop, while at the same time avoiding the unacceptable level of ambiguity that was a consequence of referring to everything as Coke.

I still say "you guys", though. Just to get under Southerners' skin.

The Dandy Warhols, Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia

Pardon my drool

I've been an amateur web page tinkerer almost from the moment I got my first ISP account running in 1995. Along the way, I've picked up a few 'photoshopping' skills (even though I use PaintShop Pro) and have a basic knowledge of CSS2, JavaScript, and PHP gubbins.

This morning, while Googling for some esoteric bit of web tech, I stumbled across the site of Matija Turčin.

I can't read much of the site, because I don't speak Czech or Hungarian or whatever this is. I don't even know whether Matija's male or female (one or the other, probably). What I do know is that the design of his/her site is one of the coolest I've seen in recent memory.

Anyone who's visited my blog within the past month probably groks that I'm a total sucker for old-timey things. I like old books, old pictures, and the sort of distressed, earthy style I see in Sweetie's scrapbooking magazines.

Sadly, my artistic ability doesn't extend much beyond "I know what I like when I see it", so all I can do is look at a design like this and salivate.

Why didn't I think of that?

Every once in a while, my web travels lead me to a truly useful product.

I happened upon this one while Googling in the wake of a posting Bill (a.k.a., "The Grackle Whisperer", "Dances With Grackles", and "Billard") made about his enthusiastic (some would say 'unnatural') rapport with grackles.

Star Wars to become new TV series

Two Star Wars TV series will follow the latest movie in the hit film franchise, director George Lucas has said.

Full story

Now playing: Jerry Lee Lewis: 18 Original Greatest Hits

Honky Tonk Badonkadonk

A new single off Trace Adkins' album Songs About Me goes, in part, like this:

We don't care bout the drinkin'
Barely listen to the band
Our hands, they start a shakin'
When she gets the urge to dance
Drivin' everybody crazy
You think you fell in love
Boys, you better keep your distance
You can look but you can't touch
That honkey tonk badonkadonk
Keepin' perfect rhythm
Make ya wanna swing along
Got it goin' on
Like Donkey Kong
And whoo-wee
Shut my mouth, slap your grandma
There outta be a law
Get the Sheriff on the phone
Lord have mercy, how's she even get them britches on
That honky tonk badonkadonk

Full lyrics

In the interest of full disclosure I have to admit that I find this song amusing. It's fun, and I like a badonkadonk as much as the next red-blooded, not-quite-dead-yet male.

But what an odd meeting of cultures.

According to the first entry at Urban Dictionary, badonkadonk means

An ‘ebonic’ expression for an extremely curvaceous female behind. Women who possess this feature usually have a small waist that violently explodes into a round and juicy posterior (e.g., 34c, 24, 38). Other characteristics would be moderately wide hips and a large amount of booty cleavage...

"Her badonkadonk made a brotha pop mad wheelies."

Hank Williams must be spinning in his grave. Sure, there's a bar and, ostensibly, drinking involved. But where's the pickup truck? Where's the faithful canine and the farm being taken by the bank?

It seems the Big & Rich bandwagon jumping has commenced.

My new theme song

Five O'Clock World
The Vogues

Up every mornin' just to keep a job
I gotta fight my way through the hustlin' mob
Sounds of the city poundin' in my brain
While another day goes down the drain

But it's a five o'clock world when the whistle blows
No one owns a piece of my time
And there's a five o'clock me inside my clothes
Thinkin' that the world looks fine, yeah
Holiday, yeah...

Tradin' my time for the pay I get
Livin' on money that I ain't made yet
Gotta keep goin', gotta make my way
While I live for the end of the day

'Cause it's a five o'clock world when the whistle blows
No one owns a piece of my time
And there's a long-haired girl who waits, I know
To ease my troubled mind, yeah
Holiday, yeah...

In the shelter of her arms everything's okay
She talks and the world goes slippin' away
And I know the reason I can still go on
When every other reason is gone

In my five o'clock world she waits for me
Nothin' else matters at all
'Cause everytime my baby smiles at me
I know that it's all worthwhile, yeah
Holiday, yeah...

Sweetie's not long-haired, but other than that... yeah.

Blockbusted

For some time now, Sweetie and I have been watching with interest the decline of an institution. I didn't make note of precisely when it was that Blockbuster started adjusting their return deadlines so that renters had only about a day and a half in which to watch a three-day rental. Even after they largely stopped supporting the VHS and offered many new released only in DVD format, it took us a while to get really irritated.

Finally, we did; and when we did, we switched to Hollywood Video. Hollywood Video had at least as many titles—most available in both VHS and DVD—and their rental periods hearkened back to Blockbuster's good old days.

And then we moved to Allen, a town with no Hollywood Video. Worse still, the local Blockbuster was small, so when the 'no late fees' business came around it meant that we usually had to wait for a couple months after a movie was released in order to find a copy in stock.

After several months of Sweetie's prompting, I signed up for Netflix. After a few weeks of almost having at least one movie waiting to be viewed, Sweetie and I agreed that Blockbuster's business model was in big, big trouble.

Apparently, Edward Jay Epstein agrees. In his interesting analysis at Slate, he expands on what Sweetie and I were sensing:

The other shoe dropped with the emergence of Netflix as a major online competitor for what remained of the rental market. (Blockbuster turned down the opportunity to buy Netflix for a mere $50 million, instead entering a disastrous home-delivery deal with Enron.) Netflix signed up over 3 million subscribers by 2005 by offering DVDs that could be kept as long as renters liked for a monthly fee. To compete, Blockbuster had to do away with its single biggest profit-earner: charging late fees to customers who kept videos past the due date. It also had to invest millions of dollars in a copycat online plan.

Thanks to the way Blockbuster gave VHS the bum's rush, we now have DVD capability in both rooms where we watch movies. Netflix' DVD-only format is no longer any sort of barrier and, as Epstein points out, Blockbuster will not be missed.

And speaking of movies...

...we just watched Star Wars, Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith earlier this week.

George Lucas has taken a lot of flak over the dumbing down of the three prequel movies, and I think a lot of that is justified. Fortunately, I'm able to mostly suspend my disbelief and just wallow in the rich CGI world he has created.

You won't hear me ranting about Jar-Jar Binks (not much more offensive than the bloody Ewoks, really) or the fact that when a spacecraft is shot down and starts listing, people and droids wouldn't really start sliding all over the decks (it's artificial gravity). I won't even rail against the criminally bad dialogue.

Well, not much.

There was one thing that struck me during the movie—okay, two things, if you count the errant piece of popcorn. After his encounter with Master Windu, Palpatine's appearance left me feeling like I'd seen him somewhere before. Finally, I figured out where:


Simon Bar Sinister lives!

Now playing: Cry of Love, Brother

Foo's 2nd Law of Pro Bono Web Development

"The only thing that can delay the progress of a web site maintenance project more than the original designer who refuses to turn over the code is the original designer who agrees to do so but never quite does."

Now playing: Sunny Day Real Estate, The Rising Tide

Toys in the attic

While digging into the history of photography for the masses, it occurred to me that I hadn't seen that old folding camera of Grandpa's since moving into the new house. In a fit of obsessive compulsiveness, down came the ladder to the attic space above the garage and up I went.

I didn't find it right away, of course. If I'd known which box it was in, I probably wouldn't have felt the need to go thumping about like some sort of overgrown roof rat. And it's not as if the effort was wasted. Opening the wrong boxes gave me a mental catalogue of what's in them, which may save me having to go on a tear the next time I think of something I haven't seen in a while.

But I did find it: the Kodak Jiffy V.P. [1935-1942] camera that my grandparents had used to take most of the few photos I have of my mother when she was very young.

A glimpse of the past

I found this old postcard on some web site a while back. I was so intrigued by it that I couldn't resist spending the couple dollars it took to have it delivered to my mailbox.

It's not that the scene is remarkable in and of itself—the photo could have been taken in any of hundreds of small American towns—but it's significant to me because of the many times I rode my bike along this very street when I was a kid. It's significant because, despite its familiarity, this scene with its unpaved street, its new sidewalks, and its young trees seems subtly different than the one I knew.

By the time I was riding along this street, the trees were quite tall, the sidewalks were cracked and uneven, and the street was paved with asphalt.

This card was apparently the last of page of a letter, and the cards were probably stuffed in an envelope and mailed that way. As a result, there's no postage stamp and therefore no postmark to give a clue as to the time period. I spent a bit of time with Andrew J. Morris' Postcard Dating Guide, but the about all I learned is that this postcard was likely from somewhere in the 1907-1930 time period.

The author's use of "Kodak" for camera sounds quaint and makes me think of a time before everyone had one. I wonder what she—I think the signature is an abbreviation of Laura—would have thought about today's digital cameras.

Postscripts:

Bringing forward some of the discussion from visitor comments...

• According to a representative the Glasgow Electric Plant Board, Glasgow had electricity by 1910; however, he points out that the wires in the postcard image are telephone and telegraph wires, not power lines.
• Postcards from the "divided back era" were produced 1907-1915. These are distinguished from earlier cards with divided backs by the printed words "Post Card" and instructions that specified which half was to be used for correspondence and which was for the recipient's address. There's a nice illustrated discussion of the eras here. The North Race postcard is similar in appearance (if not quality) to some of the ones here.
• The stamp box says "domestic one cent; foreign two cent", which at first seems like a helpful bit of information. But not really. According to Andrew Morris, the cost to mail a post card was one cent from 19 May 1898 - 1 Jan 1952, except for two periods—2 Nov 1917 - 1 Jul 1919 and 15 April 1925 - 30 Jun 1928—when it was temporarily raised to two cents.
  
• George Eastman introduced his flexible film "Kodak" camera in 1888. Kodak began producing the popular Brownie cameras around 1900.
  
• Susie made the observation that the postcard's author appears to have been using a dip pen and wondered when the ballpoint pen was invented. According to an article on Wikipedia, the answer is "Laszlo Biro, 1938". Fountain pens began being mass produced in the 1880s. (I actually prefer writing with a good fountain pen over a ballpoint.)

Police Say Cat Called 911

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- Police aren't sure how else to explain it. But when an officer walked into an apartment Thursday night to answer a 911 call, an orange-and-tan striped cat was lying by a telephone on the living room floor.

The cat's owner, Gary Rosheisen, was on the ground near his bed having fallen out of his wheelchair.

Rosheisen said his cat, Tommy, must have hit the right buttons to call 911.

Full Story

And you thought that all cats do is sleep.

Now that I know what they're capable of, I wonder if I can train the furry dependents to call out for Chinese food.

Sputter... fizz...

Well, that certainly didn't take long.

I got up this morning, gingerly stepped over and around a meandering cat on my way to the bathroom, showered, and dressed. Sweetie's autopilot kicked in, and she dragged herself out of bed to help me make coffee and pack my lunch.

After kissing my wife goodbye and wishing her a nice day, I turned the car toward Dallas.

"Nice," I thought. "Traffic's pretty light this morning. A lot of people must've taken an extra day off from work."

There was a little voice way in the back of my brain trying to get my attention, but I couldn't hear it over the radio.

I made it to the office and parked in my usual spot. The fact that mine was the only car on my level of the parking structure didn't trouble me in the least. There's rarely more than a couple cars when I arrive in the morning, and because of today's light traffic (there's that little voice again, a little louder but perhaps speaking with its mouth full of breakfast) I'd arrived about ten minutes earlier than usual.

On the ground level, I noted the presence of a black Mercedes convertible that's always there, parked across three spaces, when I arrive. I muttered something appropriately inappropriate under my breath, like I always do.

The voice receded.

In the front door with my pass card (normal), up the elevator, into the still-dark maze of cubicles (also normal), and to my desk I went. No one around. My favorite time of the morning. While my workstation was booting, I used the time to visit the men's.

"Don't you think it's a little odd that we didn't really get a New Year's holiday?"

It was the voice.

"What?"

"New Year's Day. It was yesterday. A Sunday?"

"Yeah?"

The voice sighed.

"Look, I know we haven't had our second cup of coffee yet, but work with me. When a holiday falls on the weekend, don't we usually observe it on the following Monday?"

"Um..." I said to the restroom walls. "Oh. Crap."

My first brain fart of the new year.

At least the traffic was light for my drive back to the house.

The Monkey of Darkness

El Mono Diabólico

A few years ago, Sweetie and I took a few extra vacation days around the Thanksgiving holiday to do some sightseeing and visit with friends in San Antonio. This was before The New House, when we were still flush with cash, so we did some price shopping and booked a room at the fairly swank, very historic Wyndham St. Anthony hotel.

Aside from the intriguing sense of age about the place, the thing I remember most about the St. Anthony is the Monkey of Darkness.

When we first arrived at the hotel, we parked the car and then trudged with our bags down the long, ornately-decorated Peacock Alley promenade toward the front desk. Just before the transition between Peacock Alley and the reception area, to the right of the doorway, sits the 5'5" tall Monkey.

Carved from wood and stained a dark reddish brown, the Monkey slouches insouciantly atop an old tree stump. In his right hand, he holds a platter extended toward the visitor as if to offer an hors d'oeuvre or perhaps a wafer-thin mint; but with his left, high above his head, he struggles to maintain his grip on a hungry carrion bird. Open-mouthed and white-eyed, his face is framed by wild hair and a broad brimmed hat.

Why are the Monkey's eyes white? Did the bird snatch them? I doubt it. Monkey looks just a little too relaxed for someone who's just had his eyes plucked out.

Are they rolled back in his head like those of some frothing, demonic psychopath? Is he some kind of undead Monkey? In the movies, undead frequently have cloudy white eyes.

Whatever his story, my pulse and my pace quickened a bit each time I had to walk past the Monkey.

Much lower on the malevolence scale—but no more explicable—were these bug suits we spotted while strolling around downtown San Antonio. The sign says the display has something to do with the world of William Joyce (an author of children's books, according to Google).

I suppose the bug suits must be used to liven things up during readings of Joyce's books. At least, I hope so. The only other explanation I can come up with is that these are accessories for transpestites.

Either way, if this is what the fashionable reader is wearing for story hour, today's kids must be mentally tougher than when I was going to story hour down at the library. These things would have given me nightmares for sure.

Of course, if I'd been able to get my hands on that roach get-up the Hallowe'en I dressed as a nun, I wouldn't have those blasphemy charges on my permanent record.

Happy New Year!

We're not big partyers at the Foo house, so just for my own amusement I'm making this first posting of the year by riding in on one of my neighbors' unsecured wireless access point. Broadcasting the factory default SSID, WEP disabled, no MAC ID filtering.

Yikes.

If there's any good news, it's that he/she doesn't seem to know how to share directories.

I've decided that one of my resolutions for 2006 will be to figure out whose it is and educate him/her before some reprobate does Bad Things to him/her. It's the neighborly thing to do.

Woo hoo!