And so it begins

The dog ate my breakfast and I'm starting a massive upgrade at work. More news as events unfold.

Also, if you're here in Texas, get out there and vote in the primaries.

A Brief Observation On The Subject Of Life's Little Pleasures

Of all life's pleasures -- good food, good drink, good company after being alone, solitude after too much company, a puzzle solved, the warm glow of exercise -- sleep is best.

I love sleep.

I was gonna write a thing for today

I was gonna write a thing for today
I really was
Truly

But then things happened
And some other things
And I slept

And I did not write the thing
Nor anything else

I just slept
And came to work

And now it is lunch, and so you get this.

Passwords and Social Engineering

I have an issue with passwords. I tend to create/update my passwords -- especially my network password at work -- based on my current mood and outlook. My passwords, in other words, are expressive and sometimes even clever. And this is a problem.

This is a problem because while it makes them amazingly easy to remember, it also makes me want to tell other people about them.

Which would be fine for absolutely any other form of self-expression.

Just, y'know, not passwords.

::sigh::

Parenting: Crickets

Things I never thought I'd hear myself say before becoming a parent, part 7,654: "I need to remember to pick up some more crickets on the way home."

Just so you know...

I once drove a frozen, severed goat's head wrapped in newspapers from Stephenville, TX to Dallas, TX. It's about a two hour drive, and I spent the entire time in absolute terror of getting pulled over and having to explain.

Human Nature

I'm beginning to think that a surprisingly large number of problems in our society actually boil down to the fact that a large percentage of the population can't tell the difference between Decisive Leadership and Basic Assholery.

Just going to hide under the covers...

...until the midterms are over.

Parenting

What does parenting mean to me? A long string of lovely, fulfilling moments broken by the occasional urge to start screaming and never stop.

Secondborn Dances On My Last Nerve

I swear, that child has given me a whole new benchmark for the concept of "exasperation". If he were a soda pop, he'd be exasparailla.

Short Fiction: Sick Note

"It's not that we don't believe you," said the boss, "it's just that if you're out again you'll need to bring in a doctor's note."

Four hours later, Bob was roaming the street with blood in his mouth and a doctor's note in his hand. A pack of his fellow infected, his few remaining co-workers among them, hunted with him. As he caught the scent of their next victim, Bob had a brief moment of clarity: he remembered a time before he needed to hunt and feed with his packmates, and he wondered if HR regretted that idiotic sick-note policy.

Disproving Your Own Point

Radio: "You're advertising-free with Scotty and Brett on 93.3!"

Me: "And yet, here you are advertising the fact."

Is there a word for when the act of saying something actively disproves the thing you were trying to say?

Whence comes the question?

Guess what? Our words "question", "query", "inquiry", and "quest" all go back to the same root, the Latin word "quaerere" (meaning, unsurprisingly, to ask or to seek).

I mean, you really don't need to know that, but I thought it was cool.

Oh, and also?

"Etymology" goes all the way back through Latin to Greek, and is composed of "étymon" (the essential meaning or origin) + "lógos" (word, reason, or study of). So now you know the etymology of "etymology".

I have topics, but no brain...

I have blog topics that I could probably knock off pretty quickly if I had any kind of brain for doing brain-things. Topics would include:

1. We took the kids to a ropes course last Saturday. I have pictures, and even video, and plenty of commentary. What I do not have is the ability to make the words go into the sentences.

2. Firstborn's project from last week's coding camp. This was fairly simple, but also pretty neat, and again I have video but no ability to focus.

3. Firstborn is spending this week in Teen Camp. (He's been twelve for like six weeks now, so he only just barely qualifies.) Apparently they took the Teens by the mall as one of their early activities. Firstborn has comments about touring a mall with a pair of teenage girls and a guy who doesn't care enough to argue against going into clothing stores.

4. We got the basketball net set up beside the driveway, which means I have achieved a personal goal, and it didn't even leave me dribbling. I'm not sure this one merits an actual blog post, but any opportunity for puns is a slam-dunk.

5. Oh! And Secondborn zinged his brother a good one on the way down to the ropes course.


...So I'm just going to leave these here, in the hopes that maybe I'll come back and flesh them out when I have a brain.

Gritty Reboots

I feel like not enough people realize that Twelve Monkeys was basically the darker, grittier reboot of Time Bandits.

That said, if you're looking for the grand high king of darker, grittier movie reboots, I can't think of anything more powerful than the change in artistic vision that carried us from 28 Days to 28 Days Later.

A thought, and an addendum

First, a thought which I've increasingly come to endorse:
Character is destiny.

But I think there's a very important addendum:
Our character is not static.

Writing Advice: Find Your Own Dark Place In The Woods

My personal writing advice for aspiring authors: "Find your own dark place in the woods. Get lost in it. Bring the sacrifice for every full moon. Writhe, howl, and gibber before the glory of the muse. Then go home and put in the work to get your story in print."

On Brevity

There comes a point in any writing project, no matter its purpose or subject, and regardless of its length or importance, where it seems that, despite all need for brevity and all desire for concision, the twin, driving needs of eloquence and comprehensibility uproot all good intentions and tear down any attempt at pithiness, leaving the author adrift in a sea of his or her own words, helpless on the tides of explanation, until at last they reach the shore of their thought and are cast loose onto a single sand-grain of punctuation; that sand-grain being, of course, the period that marks the end of the sentence.

I don't wanna be a grownup!

I don't want to get out of bed. I don't want to do all the things. I just don't!

This is somewhat ironic, in that yesterday I really did want to get out of bed and Do All The Things, but I wasn't doing to well. Today, I don't want to at all... but I'm doing much better.

It is what it is

"It is what it is." Ye gods, I hate that phrase. I have never ever, ever heard it used in the stoic/zen/philosophical sense that it's supposed to represent. I only ever hear it used to describe situations which are:
A) Stupid
B) Untenable
C) Wholly beyond the ability/authority of the speaker to fix

"It is what it is." Yeah. And what it is, is unpleasant, unnecessary, and unavoidable.