Yes

As near as I can tell, this is why the Internet exists:

http://www.slashonline.com/sweetmagic.htm

Please introduce yourself

Just as a matter of courtesy, I wish people would at least acknowledge the person at the desk before they walk into the server room and start pulling at switches.

More of same

Mad props to Wallace Wallechinsky, though I edit his punctuation:

Do good? I? No! Evil, anon, I deliver! I maim nine more hero-men in Saginaw, sanitary sword a-tuck. Carol, I, lo, rack cut a drowsy rat in Aswan, I gas nine more hero-men in Miami. Reviled, I, Nona, live on. I do, O God! --1977 Wallechinsky, Wallace

Incredible. "Sword a-tuck." I must remember that one, especially when I'm imitating the old Sega Master System game Kenseiden. It even has Old English style kennings. Hell, it kinda reads like the Kalevala.

I would also be remiss if I talked about palindromes and didn't mention the Riders in the Sky, who frequently do skits featuring Palindrome Man. Comical, singing cowboys? Yes, each one. Graduate degrees in physics? Yes, most of them. Odd. And if it's Christmas time, they do a really nice version of "Por que tu llores, Maria?" I don't know why that's subjunctive. Woody Paul, King of the Cowboy Fiddlers, is also related to my old roommate Drew, who seems to have no viable web presence, but works at Sudekum Planetarium. It's funny to watch Drew and a man in a garish cowboy outfit discuss astrophysics.

Rate ye gibbon.

I happened upon a list of palindromes today and remembered my initial random Internet claim to fame: in high school, my friend Dave Oranchak and I would sit around making up palindromes and anagrams. Somehow, a list of these made onto the Web years later. I have no idea how. Chances are good, though, that to this day if you Google (or whatever engine you prefer)"palindrome" some of our stuff will be listed and our names credited.

Which is surprising, because they suck.

I was looking at this list that I'd come across and found a gem:

A relic, Odin! I'm a mini, docile Ra!

I thought seriously that I must have written this one. After all, it has Odin and Ra, and makes little sense. And it has a goofy, broken cadence to it, as mine did.

Little did I know. I All-the-Webbed "Dave Oranchak" and palindrome (his were better), and shortly found some we had done here. In retrospect, I did not quite reach the heights of the previous example. Among my contributions to English literature:

- I am Al Leg Dew! Wedge llama, I!

- Nob big eye tarot, to rate ye gibbon!

- I draw Otto, not Alps! Plato not toward I!

- Sage Moral: Let's ban scrotum smut; Orcs nab stellar omegas!

- No, I tan or fan it, Al: LATIN AFRO NATION (Al turns up a lot, as do elves, orcs, ogres, Ghandi, nipples, colons -- the punctuation mark and the organ -- and livers)

- I'd nah go, am, ta ham: Mahatma O'Ghandi! (?)

And my personal favorite:

- Set, set trap! Gel trap! Part leg, part testes?

I can't help but grimace. I seemed to prefer colons and exlamation points to making a bit of damn sense. "I'd nah go, am, ta ham." What the hell does that mean? And I was proud of this stuff.

Hee hee hee hee hee hee hee hee

Silly harlots, receive your come-uppance.

I'm not just limey on pirate day

My new favorite (that may be a strong word) band is Skip Henderson and the Starboard Watch. You have to love an old biker pirate band. We really don't get enough 18th century sea shanties in our culture.

They remind me of The Pogues at times, another group fond of shanties and old tunes. A blend of Irish folk and punk, and much more, they were seriously like the best band ever. With the possible exception of a few others...

FU RIAA

I've been meaning to put down my thoughts on the mp3 thing down in some lucid form, but my old buddy James just let me know that writer Orson Scott Card has already spoken my thoughts for me:


http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2003-09-07-1.html

He pretty much nails it. When the record industry says they're protecting artists, it's a hideous lie that no one should believe. When artists say the industry is looking out for them, they're being fooled. I don't see how anyone working in the record industry could not realize that it's the record companies that are hurting them by forcing them to sign up for indentured service or not play the game.

If you get a chance to catch Tech TV's forum on music sharing, Chuck D pretty much owned the ass of everyone there.

Politico

It's hard to blog when your laptop is dead. But I need a break from databases, so here's a story:

I don't really like to talk politics, or listen to anyone else do it, so I'm taken a wee bit aback lately when I run into my friend Barry.

Barry is one of the nicest people you will ever meet. He's a tiny Turkish immigrant (I think) who always has a smile on his face. He's a really good-hearted guy who helps everyone and usually leaves you feeling like the world is an ok place.

Until recently. Apparently I've known Barry long enough for him to start talking politics with me. One day we pass each other on the quad and instead of the usual pleasantries he starts telling me an honestly woeful, desconsolate tale about all the red-tape he has had to deal with since 9/11. "I fill out this form and they say I have to have a US citizen vouch for me, and I wonder 'Who can do this?' and I have to think..."

The normally jovial and docile man's eyes light up maniacally as he recounts his revelation, "I know! Jiorge Boosh!!! A ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!"

Now, Barry's a wonderful guy and I feel for him, but at this point he seems maybe a hair saner than Cobra Commander. Gotta go. Gotta go. And so I wrapped up our conversation and scuttered off.

If you know Barry, don't mention our story. He's too nice a man.

"At this point in our nation's history"

I think I'm going to start amending that to a few sentences every day. Kind of like that old email joke that suggested doing the same with "in accordance with scripture." Maybe I'll sprinkle that one in, too.

Last night after a little shopping I was walking out into the vast mall parking lot and it was a little nipply. So I said to myself, "I think it's okay to pull my sleeves down at this point in our nation's history."

Then I looked up and noticed that the initial S is still burnt out in one of the large SEARS signs. I sincerely hope they never fix it.

On a frustrating note, my laptop is dead again. Seems to be the same power issue as before. So, friends, the best way to get in touch with me for the next week or two is probably by phone. In accordance with scripture.

The Man in Black

Johnny Cash has left this world.

What kind of eulogy can you give a man like that?

I always loved the way he introduced himself, "Hi, I'm Johnny Cash." As if he wasn't one the most instantly recognizable people in the Western world.

I guess he's with June, now.

Found the shortcuts

for thorn (þ) and ash (æ). Must not hyperventilate.

Hwæt we Gar-Dena in gear-dagum
þeod-cyninga þrym gefrunon,
hu þa æþelingas ellen fremedon.

It is on.

Lamo responsible for illiteracy, Norman conquest, SW Xmas Special, "...viruses and so forth"

Free Adrian Lamo.

If what he did, namely tried to get people to protect data they keep on others, is against the law then it's time to rework a few laws.

I saw Lon Cheney walking with the Queen

And a "waes thu hal" goes out today to Warren Zevon. The singer-songwriter has passed away from lung cancer, as reported here by the BBC. I didn't even know until today that he wrote the song Carmelita, which I knew from a cover by Dwight Yoakam and Flaco Jimenez.

Cheers to Warren Zevon.

I hear mariachi static on my radio
From tubes that glow in the dark
I'm there with you in Ensenada
And I'm here at Echo Park

Carmelita, hold me tighter
I believe I'm sinking down
And I'm all strung out on heroine
On the outskirts of town

I'm sitting here playing solitaire
With my pearl handled deck
The county won't give me no more methadone
And they cut off your welfare check

Well, I pawned my Smith and Wesson
And went down to meet my man
He hangs out down on Alvarado Street
By the Pioneer Chicken Stand

Carmelita, hold me tighter
I believe I'm sinking down
And I'm all strung out on heroine
On the outskirts of town.

Thaet waes god blog

Corrections: Helfen is German. I remembered that eventually. So I thought helpan must be Swedish or something. But in Swedish it's hjälpan. Turns out helpan is Old English. I knew it was something. Good thing, too, because I was going to invoke the Frisians before I admitted I'd just made up a word in one of these languages I don't actually speak. I'm not sure any of them should be used as a gerund, anyway, which was what I intended. "The people need helping."

Frisian is an interesting side note. Old Frisian was a child of Low West Germanic (Ingaevonic), like Old English and Old Low German, but Frisian today has moved close enough to Dutch that some only consider it a dialect of Dutch. See, Dutch comes from Low Franconian, itself a child of Low German, Frisian's sister tongue. It seems incestuous, and temporally problematic.

The Frisians and the Jutes, furthermore, may be the same people. Would that make Early West Saxon a pidgin of Old Frisian and Old English? I don't know. Famke Janssen is hot. I think that was my point.

Oddly enough, I've just discovered in my Tolkien language book that the language of Rohan in LotR is largely derivative of Old English. Get ready for the psychic mojo: I ended yesterday's post with "Waes thu hal" or "be you well." Last night we watched The Two Towers, in which Gandalf says the exact same thing over the grave of Rohirrim prince Theoden.

I am, like, so Gandalf. Boo ya.

Back to the drudgery

I just read an article about Bernoulli, Poisson, Bayes and LaPlace. The probability that it made any sense to me (P[?]) quickly approaches 0.

Sunday is officially the day before Monday. I mean it's like Monday minus one. I don't want to sit here reading crap like probability theory and writing blurbs about databases.

Databases can wait until tonight.

I think I'll do something else.

Happy today

I'm happy today. There is a slight chill in the air, relative to summer, anyway. Fall is coming, you can feel it. You can smell it. The sky is beginning to flatten.

You ever notice that? The summer sun is high in the sky. It makes the sky look like a tall, round dome. The lower winter sun makes the sky look wider and flatter.

I am reminded that the earth and the people who live on it, in higher lattitudes, are preparing to sublimate. Dig in. Purge. Reinvent. It's very pagan.

I can't help thinking of the Peanuts gang. The Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas specials are burned onto my lower brain as blueprints of the coming seasons. If there's a "It's the 4th of July, Charlie Brown!" then I don't remember it. But, Linus with his Great Pumpkin and Snoopy as the Hero with a Thousand Faces... it's all so, well, pagan. Schultz caught the mood of the seasons as well as he did the archetypes of the characters. How many of my ideas about what is pagan and alchemical come from Charlie Brown and company?

Dig in. Sublimate.

Soon, I'll go see Jen, who likes to be mentioned on other people's blogs, and enjoy a fine meal at The Fox and Hound.

Cheers. Waes thu hal.

Das Volk brauchen helpan, or The Call of Valinor

My German is crap. Anyway, it's still raining a little bit when I'm trying to get on the bus this afternoon and the idiot in front of me decides he wants a Darwin award. The little wuss opens his umbrella to walk from the shelter to the bus. About a second and a half. He opens his umbrella nearly in my face and holds up the line behind him to keep 1.5 seconds of drizzle off him. I couldn't help but offer my appraisal. "Dipshit." I can't hold it in anymore. I used to be so contemplative. I was still thinking misanthropic thoughts, just grinning benignly as I did.

I noted some people who were interesting in a good way a few nights ago. I was sitting in the Armadillo, where I go a wee bit too often these days, and a couple walked in the back door. Both were middle-aged. He looked like an upper middle-class biker, and she was an attractive 50 year old with enormous breasts. She was wearing a Playboy shirt and a bright orange jacket. Suede, I think. Their entrance was immediately palpable, to me anyway. A few other people seemed to notice, too. They weren't Chapel Hill/Carrboro people. They weren't North Carolina people.

"Probably left coasters, or Southwesterners," I thought. I imagined their story. He was probably a moderately successful small businessman. Maybe he sold leather sidebags to bikers, or Nalgene bottles to extreme sports posers or something. She may really have been a former Playmate (they couldn't have been real, but I'm not judging).

They got their food and went to sit outside. It wasn't on my way, but I had to go out the back door and get another glimpse of them before I went home. Maybe they rode in on a vintage Indian. Oh, yeah. I feel that mid-life crisis coming early.

But where will I put the dog?

Some of us like a patina

Thanks to Christopher Lee, Paul Smith and everyone on SFI for the interesting discussion on patina (rust) and piss. Thanks especially to bladesmith Howard Clark for this, forgive me, nugget:

The nicest patina for steel is brown, IMO. The best way to apply that look is to deliberately rust the tsuba, the with a stiff brush or steel wool take all the "loose" rust off and rust it again, repeat the process until you are happy with the color. Then if you want it to turn black instead of brown, boil it for a few minutes in clean water. Urine works fine as a rusting agent. If you have a cat, you could bury it in the litter box. Cat urine will make it black very quickly (don't ask me how I know this). Most any slightly acidic liquid (water based) will induce rust. For best results you need a "damp box" (closed container to promote high humidity and warmth). Good luck.

Thank Odin for the internet. Every single day.

Or thank Thoth. Or Oghma. Or somebody.