February 13th thru the 19th, 2005Previous Week | Archive Index | Current Blog | Next Week A Cleaner House Its better, I have found, when I have no intention of cleaning the whole house. Instead, I put on the MP3 player, decide to empty the dishwasher, and then other things follow. Folding laundry, emptying the closets of old clothes and making up donation bags, washing out the trash can and recycle bin, getting rid of underplayed videogames, opening all the windows for an airwash, photographing the new ducks... when I write it down, it doesn't seem like much, but I was at all of it for about 3 hours. I didn't vaccuum or dust or clean the bathrooms or scour the sink-- that's for a BIG cleaning day, which I can plan on doing, and probably will soon. At any rate, I feel good about getting some things done today. I still need to buy some groceries and drop off some mail, but I'm taking a little break, bloggy-style. Yankee Wanker Gift Swap  The Yankee Wanker gift swap is usually done around Christmas, Dirty Santa style, with a white-elephant vibe. ut our hostess was out of country this Christmas, and what with one thing an another, we ended up all ebibg free today, and decided it would be anti-Valentine's day. I brought Ducks With Attitude. I ended up with a big wooden Twinings tea truck. The one pictured is green; the one I have is brown. After that some folks needed some things from Target so I went too to get Dead Like Me on DVD; Target did not have it, so I went downstairs to try Best Buy. Nope. I am now forlorn. I miss Georgia and Rupe and Roxy and Mason. I miss Betty too, but she left the show, so that's tough nuts. Maybe I can find it at Silver Platters tomorrow. In the meantime, I'll just curl up with The Name of the Rose. Two monks are dead so far!
Monday February 14th, 2005: Valentine's Day Fake Geneography (1)My mom is a tech writer, but earlier in her life she was a journalist; indeed, she possesses two degrees in journalism. Her mother, my grandma, it seems, worked for the telephone department in the 60s as an operator. From the standpoint of technology-advancement, this seems backwards to me. So, I did some diging into my family history, to see what my great grandma did for a living. Turns out she was a systems administrator for an inter-office memo distribution network. No foolin'! Her job was to make sure that memoists had a proper desk address, that memos were handled with efficiency and alacrity, and that memos where properly archived. She retired eventually, but she kept a boxes and boxes of the things, and some of them were quite amusing.
 (1) I know the correct word is "geneology." Students of etymology will figure out why I used "geneography."
Busier Than a Tissue Salesman at An Onion Factory
I Bowled Like Carter's Got Pills Gleek  You ever yawn so hard you accidentally squirt water from underneath your tongue, right into the face of a Bengalese pit fighter? Whoo boy! They get mad when you do that! They will kick your ass, again! I should know, I'm barely living proof! Man! And don't try to apologize by saying something "witty" like, aw, come on Kumar, you're mom didn't get this mad. I'll tell you what. When a man head-butts you so hard your ribs crack, you stay head-butted, my friend.
Your Momma's So Petrarchan, She Calls Your Daddy Pulchritudinous
Gawd I'm lame.
Necrophilia, with Bongos.
Coffe Bits. Wednesday is Spelled Funny Why is it spelled like that? Let's look it up. The short version-- The use of names of Germanic gods equivalent to the Roman gods after whom the days were named meant Woden was used for the fourth day, he being the quick eloquent one like Mercury. So I guess Woden'sday became W'd'n'sday and at some point E's where added when spelling became important. And if you try to pronounce the /d/ before the /n/ like its spelled, and say it enough, it sort of sounds the same as /Wendsday/. (source: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=wednesday)
The Nelly Offer I've decided to call this idea the "Nelly Offer." This occurs when a person, in jest, makes some sort of suggestion, one that is not necessarily supposed to be taken seriously, but one that does not come from a disingenuous place. A friend of mine, who shall not be named, sent me an e-mail yesterday, which said, "How about if you show me their pictures now (preferably naked) and I will make a decision. Just kidding (unless you are willing to forward those pictures)."
How CAN one make an NO and not be lame? I think by using several extra-extra layers, say NO-6, or 8. (The even number reflects that the last layer is a genuine plea). Throw enough meta-contextualization into an exchange and then it becomes less about the subject and more about the act of communication itself.
The Office Later I hanged out with Poensplee and we watched the DVDs that came with my Doug Stanhope and Dane Cook CDs. Excellent. The Stanhope was filmed at the Comedy Underground and is exactly the same as the CD. But cool. The Cook is a few Comedy Central specials; the clip that was the first time I had ever seen Dane Cook was included. Hilarious. I am sore from laughing all day. Why is Viagra Funny?  When my dad started his stand-up comedy career, I used to help him with his jokes. More or less I started doing my own stand-up since he couldn't really use the stuff I was writing. Not all of it. But even back then I was writing viagra jokes, and so was he, and I'm still writing them. Why is a man's hard-on, or lack there-of, such a rich subject for humour? I don't mean to be in he least crude or insensitive, but the "lubracative capabilities" of a woman's "apperatus" is not very funny-- the only way you can joke about it is to be very misogynistic. So what's the damn deal? Is it really nothing more than our patriarchical Freudian fascination with the phallus? How dull. But I'll still tell the jokes, cause as they say: you don't have to be funny. You just have to make them laugh.P.S. Be careful if you do a image search on Google with "safe search" off using the word "Viagra." You'll get a bunch of cartoons, many of them in non-English languages. Sort of shows ya what I'm talking about.)
Thursday is Trash Day
All Your Base Are Belong to Google Updating the Blog today, I was doing a Google search for "Dilletante's Seattle" in order to get the hyperlink. And look who's 12th on the results page? That's right, me, baby, me. I apparently mentioned Dilletante's on January 24th last year. And again on March 13th. And once more on April 21st. I have been officially awarded the Geek ribbon before; I guess I'm just maintaining my membership by finding this cool. Sue me, but not for much: litigation makes my stomach go all bliggy-bliggy.
Nothing Much Else
Wait, Now I Remember BIG THANKS to all of the people who gave me their input on the logo. IN the end I went with the "plain" one, as it had the most votes and lots of good reasons given. But I'll save the others for another time. The 2005 Microsoft Puzzlehunt  I was asked to participate once again in the Puzzlehunt, a sllighty-more-than-yearly event on the MS campus in Redmond. 50+ teams of 12 people get together to solve complicated puzzles which gives answers used to solve more puzzles which have answers used for still more puzzles. This year's puzzles were themed around Las Vegas, complete with a huge visitor's brochure itself coated with puzzles. Pretty cool.The team I was on, The Dirty Smackmasters, convened in a few rooms in some building that ended being called The Monte Carlo. We arrived with our scrabble sets, chess sets, pens, stacks of scratch paper, notebooks, exacto knives, tape, glue... anything we might need to figure out theese puzzles. The first round, "The Travel Agent" was pretty easy-- we did 6 of the seven puzzles, which spelled a message to call a number, where we got an invent to vist Mr. Big. Turns out he wanted us to talk with (solve puzzles from) The Bellhop, The Showgirl, and The Dealer so we could get the insider info needed to knock over one of the big casinos. We did pretty good that first day. I myself was able to solve about 3 puzzles (last year I didn't solve any by myself). I had help on all of them, of course. But here's one of 'em;
I helped on most of the others, too. I had forgotten my watch, and the battery on my cell phone was dead, so I didn't bother looking at a clock most of the time... we stared at 10 AM, I happened to glance at the clock at 3 PM and was shocked so much time had passed, again at about 10 PM, and again at 3AM when people were sleeping on the floor. I napped for about 30 minutes in my chair. Previous Week | Archive Index | Current Blog | Next Week |
Remember when I used to enthusiastically keep track of my bowling average? And I would faithfully report my scors every Monday? Yeah well whatever. Don't get me wrong, I still loves the bowling. Its a good time. Its more or less then only time I get to see 
I have heard of, but never heard the Nelly Song "Hot In Herre" [sic]. But I have heard the Weird Al
parody of the song, "Trash Day" many many times. IN Weird Al's version, there's a line that goes:
"Some Lysol, some Comet/ I got a mop and it's got your name on it/ [woman's voice] (What?) [Al] I'm
just kiddin', doggone it/ [woman] (Oh) [Al] Unless you gonna do it." A quick search for the original
Nelly lyrics shows the same section goes like this: "Stop placin, time wastin/ I gotta a friend with
a pole in the basement [woman's voice] (What?) [Nelly] I'm just kiddin like Jason/ [woman]
(Oh)[Nelly] Unless you gon' do it."
What are the philosophical or maybe merely psychological implications of the Nelly Offer? I think it
involves two-layered contextual structures, sort of contexts-within-contexts. The inner context is an ironical construct, wherein everyone KNOWS the offer or suggestion is supposed to be humorous. But rather than be an irony based on impossibility, it's based on possibility and improbability. Then
the next layer juxtaposes an increased probability, so that the onus of concentration on the original suggestions shifts from improbability to audacity, which reflects back to the outer layer, shifting IT from probability to hope... so I guess, finally, it's not ironic at all. Establishing a third outer layer of contextualization so that one understands the second layer, too, is made in jest, does justify the whole thing. But if the second layer is a genuine "hope," (and the third layer doesn't exist) then the Nelly Offer is merely desperate. Weird Al and my friend where being funny (using the third layer, we'll call that NO-3). I think most of the time, though, plain NO is not unlike panhandling.
Insignificant but true. "The truth is always insignificant." Let's Google that... Nothing! I am the first person in the history of time and space to utter such a phrase! Let's see if I can justify it... Um... To make reference to the past is always tautological because the past is unchangeable and undeniable, the will frozen forever. To make reference to the future is impossible because the future is infinite in possibility, the will at war with the improbable. The present is too fleeting for any reference to be relevant. Therefore the IS of existence, the truth, is always insignificant. Heh. Makes sense, really, when you remember that this is Trash day.