I’m getting deluged with comment-spam today, having already deleted about 30 comments left by a loan-ad spambot, so I have to shut down the comment areas until it stops or I figure out how to block it. Grr.

Health, 1975 – 2005

Social Life, 2005 – 2005

I’ve spent the entire Memorial Day weekend thus far sequestered in my apartment, trying to get over this cold/flu/infection/whatever the fuck it is. The extra day off should help. I’m feeling somewhat better now, although (as both Vern and Laurel can each attest) I still can’t talk for very long before my voice gives out.

So I’ve played some Burnout, done a lot of reading — I’m already 200 pages into James Wolcott’s Attack Poodles, since it’s an extremely light read — and I put together a wooden bed frame with cherry finish that I purchased (with Laurel’s help) last weekend and had delivered yesterday. No more floor-mattress for me!

Whatever the over/under is on the length of time until I painfully stub my toe on a bed frame that wasn’t there yesterday, take the under.

I also — finally! — met a Ballard resident with a Scandinavian accent, as immortalized by Red Hook’s India Pale Ale. I hauled the empty bed frame boxes to a recycle-dumpster in a neighbor’s driveway. While I broke down the boxes, I looked up and saw a greying middle-aged guy staring down at me from the second-story balcony, a large black dog at his side.

I thought maybe he was the building’s owner and was wondering what the hell I was doing in his driveway but was too Seattle-Nice to say anything, so I explained:

“Hi, I’m from a couple of doors down.”
“Ya sure.”
“The landlady says if we have anything too large for our recycle bins, we can take it here.”
“Ya sure.”
“Okay.”

I go back to breaking down boxes. He continued:

“Sometimes that gets pretty full, ya hafta bring stuff here early in the week.”
“Really.”
“Ya betcha.”

He waved and bid me “Take it easy” when I finished. Ya sure.

They say everyone has one book in them; The Gun Seller must be Hugh Laurie’s, because apparently he hasn’t written anything since. Most Americans now know him as the anti-social, pill-popping doctor on Fox’s House, a massive departure from his enthusiastically goofy roles on Blackadder and Jeeves & Wooster.

The latter series, adapted from P.G. Wodehouse’s series of stories, undoubtedly influenced The Gun Seller. I’ve never read Wodehouse’s work (although after reading glowing praise for it from Laurie and Douglas Adams, I may have to start), but as I understand, if Wodehouse wrote a James Bond novel, this would be it. Laurie’s protagonist, Thomas Lang, keeps a continuous sarcastic commentary on the action, often genuinely witty.

Unfortunately, the book isn’t that great. The first 75 pages took me three weeks to get through, for some reason. The plot can be hard to follow, and the big twist in the end is painfully obvious. Lang’s constant snarking is both the book’s greatest asset and its greatest liability; it kept me motivated to finish it but always at arm’s length from the story.

Spoilers follow, so swipe with your mouse to read this: [The villainous plot, as revealed about a third of the way through, involves arms dealers manufacturing a fake terrorist threat in order to keep weapon sales up, post-Cold War. The Gun Seller was published in 1996. How creepy it is to read it now, drawing parallels with events since then...]

I’ve felt like crap since Monday morning, and worse enough today to take off work and visit a walk-in medical facility. I was absolutely certain I had strep throat, although now I don’t know where that certainty originated.

The health insurance from my new job doesn’t kick in for another month, so I paid $119 to find out I have a cold and I should get plenty of rest and fluids.

I may have to recant that whole “I’m smarter than you” thing below. (Although you all knew that was sarcasm… right?)

From New Scientist, via Warren Ellis:

Understanding sarcasm is a complex business

Different parts of the brain must work together to understand sarcasm, new research suggests. The prefrontal cortex – a small area in the front of the brain – seems to play the biggest role and may integrate the literal meaning of a phrase with the speaker’s emotional intent. The findings on the anatomy of sarcasm could have implications for understanding personality changes in people with brain injury or disease.

“Decision making, emotional processing, empathy, and theory of mind all appear to be involved in understanding sarcasm,” says lead researcher Simone Shamay-Tsoory, a neuropsychologist at the Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, Israel.

F.W. Murnau’s classic 1922 silent film Nosferatu, long in the public domain, is now freely available for download. I downloaded the 881MB version. The picture quality isn’t great, and the music is less atmospheric than other versions I’ve seen, but those aren’t public domain, naturally.

Via BoingBoing:

Kabbalist Blesses Jones: Now´s the Time to Find Holy Lost Ark

An unnamed Kabbalist has granted blessing to famed archeologist Dr. Vendyl Jones to uncover the Holy Ark of the Covenant. Jones plans to excavate the Lost Ark by the Tisha B’Av Fast this summer.

The famed archaeologist, the inspiration for the “Indiana Jones” movie series, has spent most of his life searching for the Ark of the Covenant. The ark was the resting place of the Ten Commandments, given to the Jewish people at Mount Sinai, and was hidden just before the destruction of the First Temple.

The Talmud says the Ark is hidden in a secret passage under the Temple Mount. Jones says that the tunnel actually continues 18 miles southward, and that the Ark was brought through the tunnel to its current resting place in the Judean Desert.

BoingBoing’s John Pescovitz says Vendyl Jones isn’t actually the inspiration for Indiana Jones, but the resemblance is uncanny. I’ll be disappointed if the Ark’s resting place isn’t filled with snakes and Vendyl’s face doesn’t melt off if/when he opens it.

Unfortunately, something feels fishy about this story. Archaeology is a science, as the fictional Dr. Jones would tell you, not reliant on Jewish mysticism and numerology. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was all some kind of publicity stunt.

I just got back from taking Laurel to King St. Station, where she boarded an Amtrak train to Portland to visit her cousin before returning to Tucson. We had all kinds of tenative plans prior to her visit here, like driving to Whistler, BC, or her cousin’s vacation home on the Washington coast. But aside from a little sightseeing in downtown Seattle on Thursday, we spent most of our time holed up in my apartment with my DVD collection, a bottle of Glen Garioch whiskey, and a box of condoms.

Not that I’m complaining. There are much, much worse ways to spend three and a half days.

Now back to the usual routine…

Warren Ellis posted this link and I forgot to blog it myself, for some reason. It’s Lester Dent’s formula for writing a 6,000-word pulp story.

“It has worked on adventure, detective, western and war-air. It tells exactly where to put everything. It shows definitely just what must happen in each successive thousand words.

“No yarn of mine written to the formula has yet failed to sell.”

Might come in handy someday.

Over at YouAreDumb.net, Bryan Lambert took my suggestion to go after W. David Hagel — Bush appointee to the FDA, Bible-tumping wingnut, gynecologist, and ass bandit. Today’s column pairs him up with anti-abortion activist and mule-fucking advocate Neal Horsley. Go and read.