Last Call

Outdoor party with co-workers.

Night-time bocce ball, a large dog wearing a hoodie, warming cookies by the Costco propane heater...

...and a cucumber.

Ask Mr. Know-It-All

Q: The character of Dill in To Kill a Mockingbird was based on whom?

A: Truman Capote (Harper Lee's childhood friend)

Mister Ellison is NOT amused

Leave to Gabe and Tycho to take on the rudest writer in the world and just skewer him.

Last Call

I don't rightly remember too too much from the last three nights, aside from the sober trip to a pre-screening of Serenity.

However, from what I can cull together, I can attest that:

1. I am a rockstar.
2. I am not an ass.
3. I am apparently now related to Dagmar.
4. I am a fixture.
5. I am very, very tired.

Ask Mr. Know-It-All

Q: What's the difference between a violin and a fiddle?

A: There is no difference, a violin is a fiddle and a fiddle is a violin. The difference comes in playing styles, fiddlers will often flatten the bridge in order to more easily bow two strings at once.

(This is the last of the fiddling posts, I'm just overly excited)

More Fiddling Around

Well, I guess Nathan and I will be learning together after all, Amazon has a blowout sale on full-sized violins, so I picked up one for myself on impulse.

Serendipity baby, as that doofus that screams commentary for college basketball games would say. What the hell is his name?

Fiddling Around

Nathan has begun violin lessons at school, which I find exciting inasmuch that I myself have wanted to learn to play for quite some time, I expect I'll tag along with his learning.

Picking up the instrument and actually playing it was a bit fascinating, I have no clue how to place my left hand around the neck but I managed to not have it squeak and wail at me. I fear I may be uncoordinated enough to not be able to play well, but then again I can touch type and play Quake.

We shall see.

Last Call

Just because you're the drummer in a well-known industrial band doesn't mean you don't get to be clumsy.

Andy spilt two beers on Duncan throughout the course of the night. Duncan. Ha ha, get it?

They start their tour tomorrow, go see them if you can.

Last Call

Far too drunk last night.

Last Call

Tourist night, or as I like to say, a "Seattle's Best Places" night, where all sorts of folks who I have never seen before pile into the tavern. At one point, I am the only regular there, which is very rare (not me being there, but being the sole familiar face).

When it becomes a tourist night, what you get is a complete and total sense of non-community, which is no fun for anyone really. Might as well have stayed home (and that applies to all parties involved).

Scene: Two chuckleheads shooting pool. I call them chuckleheads as it sounds like knuckleheads but is a tad less sharp-edged. The banter between said two chuckleheads involves supposition of eventually playing pool for money juxtaposed against what is obviously a lack of talent. Admittance of a very short career in 8-ball is made, and I observe it all.

Enter stage right: Dave, who has beaten the piss out of me at 8-ball on many an occasion. His name is scrawled atop the chalkboard and the waiting commences.

Enter stage left: Margaret, another pool shooter and long time regular, who is to say the least vociferous when it comes to the social graces of billiard playing in bars.

Our intrepid chuckleheads are playing bank-eight, meaning of course that they wind up chasing the eight ball around the table for quite some time. Margaret suggests (in her own inimitable fashion) that bank-eight should be foregone as people are waiting. Slightly harsh words and accusations of pool-playing ability are traded, and thankfully chucklehead #1 scratches on the eight.

Dave begins to rack up the next game, and the rules are set by chucklehead #2, fancying himself a pro -- Vegas rules, bank-eight. Dave plays dumb and the longest and most pedantic explanation of the rules of 8-ball ensue. I am trying so hard to not giggle.

Rule numero uno when it comes to playing pool for money: You have to learn how to miss shots.

Rule nummert zwei: If someone sits and watches you play pool for a game or two, and then offers to play for money, just give him the cash and be done with it.

Long story short, our man Dave wins the day, ten bucks richer for his efforts. Chuckleheads #1 and #2 beeline to the door and leave, which is sad as I was up soon and had hoped to take them for a beer or two.

So, had the regulars not started to arrive like the cavalry, I would have had to put up with listening to these two profess their prowess to each other in a mutual self-admiration pact, as I simply hadn't the stomach to deal with them myself. Nauseating, it was.

The most entertainment I've had there in some time.

Big Day

OmniGraffle 4 launched today, I am very tired from answering emails and putting out licensing fires, but shall file another Last Call as last night's billiards story refuses to not be told.

Clever Use of Historical Political Assassination

I found this post at MetaFilter to be wonderfully sublime.

Last Call

The thing about my tavern is quite simply put, this:

- If you are a young man, you can get drunk.
- If you are an old man, you can chat up lovely young women.
- If you are a middle aged man, you can get drunk and chat up lovely young women.

Nothing spectacularly great, goony, or goofy occurred last night, so I've not much more to talk about other than the above realization, which did indeed dawn on me yesterday whilst there. Too bad, perhaps drunken tomfoolery shall ensue tonight.

The Reason Why

I've just discovered why I found myself playing World of Warcraft which such zeal and aplomb until recently. I sought escape, and found it there, however currently I no longer desire escape nor do I necessarily need it.

Which is too bad, as I really enjoy playing WoW. I'll have to manage.

Ask Mr. Know-It-All

Q: What was Gilligan's first name?

A: He didn't have one, but both Bob Denver and Sherwood Schwartz agreed that if he had one, it would be WIlly.

Katrina and the Waves

As time cleaves its way between the then and the now and my own synapses settle into their pleasant routine, what I notice most is a gap or disparity between the expectations of the two Americas concerning the response to Katrina.

I am not referring to red vs. blue, although in many instances that template may apply; but instead to the expectation of the America believed in by its constituents and the America thought of by its leadership, sadly the powers that be.

I suppose it doesn't matter if the existent reality of America is one or the other, or whether whichever one has been true all along: The individual idealistic vista that the top level of leadership can and will respond in timely and impartial fashion to times of crisis; or the viewpoint that the federal government is there to merely shepherd and manage the efforts of many smaller organizations down to the citizenry from on high, the forty thousand foot panorama, so to speak. What does matter however, is that there is a grand misperception on both sides currently which is unfortunately aggravating the situation, a mote of sand in the craw of the nation that is so large, it rivals the elephant in the drawing room.

By my own reckoning, the current administration's response has been more than lacking in both timing and resources given to those truly in need in the Gulf Coast region. What aid has already been set in motion as well as its overall handling by the federal government has been badly mismanaged and predicated in the worst way possible.

I am fairly certain that I am not alone in this opinion.

Nor is the opposing view without its public champions, however callous I may find their disregard or mindless parroting of misinformation in an attempt to shore up confidence in a "job well done". What exactly the preceding quote is in reference to remains unknown to many, as it would appear from all accounts that the only thing that is seemingly finished up at the present time is the wrath of Katrina itself, and I know for a fact that hurricanes aren't card-carrying politicos of any affiliation.

It is the the sheer distance between these mindsets that I find to be the most troubling. That those who would govern would show indifference to their duty when they absolutely must -- The city of New Orleans, the state of Louisiana, Gulfport Mississippi, and the other communities and local governments of the Gulf Coast are incapable of meeting the crisis inasmuch that the necessary infrastructure has all but been eliminated. Yet the governing on the federal level did not occur in any sort of timely manner, and continues down a muddy path without clear destination. Troubling, as I take my stance to be correct and the administration considers its even more-so.

How it is that such reconciliation has become intangible between a "government by the people" and its persons is a question for history to answer, I myself do not profess to divine reason for it -- I only note that in a day and age where information is disseminated and events observed in an immediate fashion can so easily be construed or misconstrued with such bipolarity to be damned perplexing, and well beyond my ken.

Compounding this of course, is the Bush administration's lack of responsibility in the matter. An interesting multiple entendre there: I do not believe that the President has a weather machine in order to create category 5 hurricanes in which to smash his enemies, so there is obviously no responsibility in the event itself; Shoring up the levees may or may not have saved the day, no one can tell if funding cut is directly responsible for the flooding; The reorganization of disaster relief has been bureaucratized to the point of being bottom-up, so initial response lay with the cities, parishes, counties and states; And lastly the uppermost echelon of our government has eschewed leadership based upon so-called secondhand information or outright ignoring reports from the same media that they seek to control in New Orleans right now.

A rather tidy package, one might say. While the President and his personal appointees in charge of managing this disaster (ah, another double entendre) feel that they can continue to gaze through the upper lenses of the bifocals as the pages of the media reports are pressed beneath their noses and avoid the responsibility for the nation that they are sworn to, there is another word that comes to mind that history I'm sure will appoint to this proceeding.

That word is accountability.