February 20th thru the 26th, 2005Previous Week | Archive Index | Current Blog | Next Week Puzzlehunt Continued Like I said, I napped in my chair for a bit. Then I went back to the puzzle I had been working on. It was simpy a blocks of questions with six letter answers, followed by a series with seven letter answers. I figured out that the splitting the six letter words and rejoining those pieces with each other yielded the seven letter words, which gave new blocks of words, and then reading the letters down the centers of these block yielded another. And then I sort of tidied up the room until enough people woke up that we could start working again (since I am not an MS employee I don't have access to the websites where the puzzles were). We were all pretty tired, but we forged ahead. I went back and finished that puzzle out of the first seven that we had skipped. It involved drawing lines between map points to spell a message. We ended up finishing about 24th or so. Not terrible, but not as good as last year. I think the puzzles were easier this time, and so more people got more done than before. We certainly answered a far higher percentage of the puzzles this time. Altogether it was exhausting and fattening but very very fun and I can't wait till next year! After that I drove home, dropping by McDonald's for some "real" food and watched the final few episodes of Dead Like Me and the last one one of the Arrested Development discks from Netflix. Then I slept. Monday February 21st, 2005: President's Day 'Sup peepsWhat are we doing today? Buying sheets and towels? That is an excellent idea. I think I shall buy some sheets and towels. I have guests coming soon; They may want to sleep on crisp white sheets and dry their faces with warm thirsty towels.
We Honor Presidents By Selling Things
PS congratulations on the new job, Suzanne! Now you're evil. Me, I am off to the gym.
I'm Plum Pudding
Bowling Celebrity News  Hunter S. Thompson killed himself Sunday. I've
never read anything by him, and I tend to eschew the sorts of lifestyle choices he championed. Also,
I once knew a guy who rubbed me the wrong way who more or less worshipped the man. The both seemed to
have a judegemental-arrogance, which just turned me off (and yes, I too am arrogant, but I hope I
don't across as judging people as a result. Except right now, of course.) So, the dude is dead.
Sad.
Viva Oberto
Tuesday Night Coffee Went to coffee. Not a huge turn-out, since some folks are out of town and others are busy or tired. One new face. Nice person. We al chit-chatted about this that and the other. Typical. I left at nine, grabbed a burger on the way home. I started to watch the rest of the Arrested Development DVDs, but Hermosa dropped by with a pizza and some books she wanted to show me. Then she left, I watched the AD, and took a shower??? I never shower at night. Guess I need to dream clean. Morning Head Got morning head. Bed head. Sleep hair. Whatever. Good thing I work at home! Con call for 90 minutes. Paid some bills. Did the laundry. Got to clean some bathrooms, kitchen, vaccuum, dust. Got to go to the gym, got to see Constantine. Got to do some reading, at some beef jerky. Drink some C2. Got to re-write an executive summary. Got to find and download some good people-pictures for a comic strip I am trying to revive. Busy day, ish. More later, hopefully. In the meantime, a Mitch Hedberg style joke:
Not Much More Nutshelling Woke up, worked a lot. A lot. Friend in town, so we hanged out. That included Dilletante's, a drivr around, and my house for Romio's, Dane Cook, Sifl & Olly, and Angel. She's as big a Buffy/Angel fan as I am, so there. She's in town for some sorta Starbuck's manager's conference. When we where at Dilletante's we had a nice discussion about the nature of music fandom. I said that Britney's Spears legions where exactly the same as Morissey's fanbois, its just a matter of different sheets on the same bed. She said maybe, but that's true for any band that has ever been printed on a t-shirt. I said no, that this kind of fandom was not about the music but about everything else-- if there is  an
appreciation of any kind outside of the notes being played, its "BS" fandom. She claimed t-shirts
where such outside-the-notesness. Whatever! I am only telling you this because this is MY blog and I
can talk about anything I want and I just wanted to say the waitress was very cute and founf our
conversation interesting (we where the only people there). VERY cute.
Rhinophilia? Far Sweeping Over-Generalizations (an Ironic Header) 
Three cheers for Les Schwab!
I Am So Old Its Becoming Perverted
Angels in My Boudoirs One of them, Pleasance, was supposed to arrive at 3:30, but was flying standby and got bumped every three hours until the poor thing finally arrived after midnight! While waiting for her, I watched The Office Season 2. The other two, Onesty and Courage, arrived at 10:30. There was much hugging. I have to be careful with my words, since any one of the or all three might read this eventually, but, friends, you have rarely seen three such beautiful women in your life. And all where born well before 1987. Pointedly Nonchallant About Excitement Yeah, man. We got up. It happens, what-ev. 3 people jogged a bit. I am so damn out of shape I want to curl up in a cubby little ball and cry my fat piggy eyes out. Screw this, man, I'm gettig an i-Pod and hitting the gym daily. I'm going to eat tuna fish and peanut butter, and nothing else. I'll put cans of water and energy drinks in my soda machine. Did I already say "What-ev"? That again.
Eventually we got home, ordered some take-out Indian, and I fetched it with Courage. We ate and caruosed. Then me and Courage had a big old long discussion about life, the universe, and everything, and went to sleep. Previous Week | Archive Index | Current Blog | Next Week |
But first, shaving. I look a real fright from the
Puzzlehunt. And because pictures leave white space, a shaving haiku:
Like spring's grass through frost
I try to convince people about the importance of
recognizing contexts, but I don't think I do a very good job of it. Either that, or I am just
unapologetically geeky. Sorry 'bout that. Well here I go trying again. Maybe the most important
context to recognize is the context of shared vocabularies. Words have a core meaning, but their use
of impact are different with every person you know. "Sheets" in San Francisco are something the hotel
provides you; in New York they're large works of art by some Frenchman; and in Seattle they're a
gesture of welcome and love. So, depending on to whom you are speaking "Thanks for the sheets" means
1 of 3 different things. Simplistic, yes. But imagine purposefully using one word to more than one
person at the same time. With a bit of meditation on your shared vocabularies, you could deliver what
amounts to a secret message to someone in front of a whole slough of people. Of course, knowing me,
my message would be nothing more than "Hey! I am sending you a secret message!" Still. Its cool how
language works.
Paris Hilton's phone got hacked and the net was
flooded with her personal pictures and her address book, with the numbers of several celebrities. So
of course they got lots of calls. Personally, I don't see the point of calling someone you don't
know. How can it be at all thrilling to call Avril Lavigne, hear her say Hello? and then hang up in
the middle of your rant? I imagine the only reason to do it is to tell your friends.
Speaking of friends and phone calls, a friend called
me last night, and during our conversation said that she was very upset that the 
It's too weird to call myself a "nose" man. I don't
find noses erotic in and of themselves. But a cute nose can really make a face. Please, someone help
me with this one. I need better nomenclature than this. I like pretty eyes, too, and I've already 
I cleaned the house in preperation for the arrival of
C-3PO. Now, why would I call them that. Let us say you were to make a list of absolutely everyone in
the world, and ordered that list according to how interesting each person was. Famous people would
most naturally be at the top... and wouldn't the person who was at the very bottom be, ipso facto,
sort of interesting? The list implodes. So you sort of have to approach it from a meta-listual
angle. The actual most boring person would be floating somewhere in the bottom third. Okay, so let's
say you were to make a list of every possible metaphor for my three visitors, and ordered them from
most to list aprapos. Wouldn't there be a sort of ironic appropriateness to using the least
appropriate metaphor? So the actually least appropriate would float somewhere in the middle. And if I
am to disguise people on this blog so as to avoid their being stalked, trust me, C-3PO is an
excellent code name for them.