Millennium hand and shrimp! Buggerit.Posts RSS Comments RSS
So true. So disturbingly true. My favorites:
#12 - Law of Phlogistatic Emission
Nearly all things emit light from fatal wounds.
#29 - Law of Melee Luminescence
(from Tom Williams)Any being displaying extremely high levels of martial arts prowess and/or violent emotions emits light in the form of a glowing aura. This aura is usually blue for ‘good guys’ and red for ‘bad guys’. This is attributed to Good being higher in the electromagnetic spectrum than Evil.
Last Saturday (the 10th) we held our Women Build Keypassing ceremony to officially hand over the house to the homeowner. There’s still a little bit of work to be done (flooring and whatnot) and the homeowner hasn’t actually closed on the mortgage yet, but for all intents and purposes, the 2008 Women Build is over.
I held off blogging about it until I had pictures to share. They’re up now, so check them out if you’re interested.
Here’s my favorite: the WB Leadership Committee, the homeowner and the mayor celebrating the event.
I’m the one in the brown pants to the right of the sign, the mayor’s in white next to me and the homeowner is third from the right in dark jeans.
In furtherance of the previous post by this name, Elizabeth Bear notes that “Same-sex couples make pronouns complicated.” As ever, the comments are where the fun is.
Two things you should know. One, I’m quite drunk (or, rather, drunk for me, which is to say on my third tumbler of Merlot on a full tummy of rice and bean burritos over the course of an hour or so. So, not that drunk. More like nicely toasted). Yay, drunk blogging!
Two, there’s a reason I’m drunk. I’m simultaneously celebrating and running away. Why? Because it’s that time again kiddies. What time is that, you say? Time for your intrepid author to take yet another running jump off a blind cliff, that’s what time.
For those who don’t know, I tend to bounce from one project to another rather than trace out anything approaching a linear (or even tangentially connected) career path. In fact, my career movement is almost Brownian in it’s agitation and directional effervescence (hee…Merlot = big words).
See, I don’t have a career so much as I have a carpet bag of tricks, skills, talents, attitudes, interests, ambitions and ideas that lend themselves to being wielded as a sort of backstage pass to any number of cool jobs and projects. And my friends (who all seem to get this, god bless them every one) have a wondrous habit of calling me up out of the blue to invite me to join them in their various professional adventures where in I can use said carpetbag o’whizbangery.
It’s like synergy, only scarier, because while I always have all or most of the requisite component skills for whatever project I’m invited to play in, I almost never have any actual experience putting those skills together in that specific configuration (wow, more big words…I should write drunk more often). So each time I say yes (and I usually do) it’s the equivalent of jumping off a blind cliff and hoping that selfsame carpetbag inflates to a parachute before I wind up decorating the landscape with meat shrapnel. More often than not, this also involves some sort of new skill learning curve in addition to reapplying old skills in new ways, so even more fun.
Each time I do this, it’s a bigger and bigger leap, with more and more at stake. This time, it’s a job offer that could double my income (and at least double my workload if not triple it, which isn’t actually saying all that much since I’m not all that busy right now), comes with actual benefits like health insurance, a 401k and maybe even stock options, and involves (as always) using several of my skills in new and exciting configurations and learning a few new ones.
The details of job description and renumeration are still in the “don’t hold us to that” back of the envelope stage, so I won’t go into them here. The official offer will be made next week some time. But if it’s even remotely reasonable, I think I’m going to take it.
And that’s equally exciting and terrifying. It’s enough responsibility and scope to terrify me (I’d be almost solely responsible for creating a company’s core IP, and managing a virtual team to boot O_o), familiar enough to reassure me (it’s almost entirely writing with a bit of coaching, both of which I have done for years, mixed with some team management, which isn’t as familiar but not entirely outside my range of experience) and interesting enough to excite me (it’s a cool-idea startup with actual funding and the potential to make it really big).
Concerns I’m grappling with include making sure I can follow through on previous commitments I’ve already made to other people (including at least two big projects this year), wrestling with the whole “doing my own thing my own way” vs “working for the man” thing and dealing with my own insecurities. Truth is, as a discussion with Cory pointed up, I think I’m more afraid of succeeding than failing. Because that will mean putting on my big girl panties, buckling down and getting some discipline, work-wise, instead of my regular habit of pretending to be scouting for article ideas while I scan PopUrls for weird news, random geekery and teh interweeb funnays.
[Which, if anyone related to this offer is reading, is NOT (I repeat NOT) a problem. In fact, I’ve got so much excess RAM right now it’s killing me, which is a large part of the problem. A few years of actual creative nose grinding will do me no end of good. The prospect of actually having something challenging to do every day is part of what’s so damned exciting.]
Weirdly enough, and related to the immediately previous thought, I was bouncing off the walls yesterday bitching to the cat about being bored and needing another project when the initial feel-you-out email pinged in my inbox. Gotta love that Karmic Room Service. Speedy little fuckers.
As one of those crunchy organic types, I’ve been looking at various earth-friendly options for handling my final remains. I’m just not down with the standard method of pumping my body full of toxic poisons and pollutants and then slathering me with more makeup and other cosmetic enhancements than I likely wore in my entire vital years put together, just so family and friends can stuff me into a hideous dress I would have never worn in real life, stare at me like I’m going to jump up and bite them (if only I could…) and lie to each other about how lifelike I look. And then, after suffering all of those indignities, being hauled off to a manicured-lawn cemetery (kept lush through the regular application of chemical enhancements as toxic as anything visited on the dead) and buried in an expensive, resource-heavy, airtight/watertight/rot-resistant box. Because I’m loaded up with toxic pollutants and poisons, you see. Wouldn’t want that stuff getting into the watershed, now, would we? And besides, all that returning-to-the-earth stuff is just so icky! Chemical mummification is so much more palatable. Right?
Uh, no. I’ll pass.
Options I’ve so far considered include buying a biodegradable coffin made of cardboard or wicker, having a memorial service instead of a visitation so I can be buried without all the witches brewhaha, and maybe opting for one of those memorial-garden-like organic cemeteries that don’t accept pickled corpses. Alternatives on my radar include being cremated and having my dust compressed into a jewel (meh), and donating my body to a body farm (very CSI cool).
However, I just stumbled on something really cool that I’m seriously considering - the Neptune Memorial Reef. This is seriously cool. When you die, you get cremated and then this company mixes your ashes with a special marine concrete, molds into into a bit of statuary and adds your mortal remains to an artificial reef/sunken dive attraction a la the lost city of Atlantis, which not coincidentally provides both a hauntingly beautiful tourist attraction for divers and a living, growing habitat for marine life.
To top it off, it’s cheap for a burial - from one to six grand, depending on your sculptural preferences.
This is soooo going to the top of my list. No muss, no fuss. Just me and the fishes and the deep blue sea, for all eternity. Sweet.
As you know, Bob, I am a vegetarian and have been for years. And yet, I am only marginally insane and have never, ever threatened to douse my tablemates with red paint in symbolic protest of their dinners - and neither have most of my herbivorous brethren and sistren. And yet, as Taylor Clark explains in this hilarious and spot-on essay in Slate, many meat eaters are still distinctly uncomfortable around vegetarians, as if expecting us to burst into tears at the sight of a double-double animal style or start humming revolutionary anthems while the rest of the table is ordering their veal shanks.
Every single word of this article is dead on the mark, especially the part about bacon. My God I miss bacon.1
Seriously, folks, just like that really articulate and surprisingly bright guy in IT who just happens to be black, some of us vegetarians are normal, reasonable people who just happen to not eat meat. So relax, chill out and enjoy that mucho macho steak…I insist. Might as well. The way you’re eating, you won’t be around long, anyway.
In less-than-unpredictable news, a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner has carried out a suicide attack in Iraq. Note that the man, Abdallah Salih al-Ajmi, was acquitted of whatever “crimes” he was supposed to have committed in order to get sent to that hellhole. So, at least we know he wasn’t a terrorist before he went to Gitmo.
My favorite quote?
U.S. Navy Cmdr. Scott Rye says authorities don’t know the motive for the attack…
*taps finger on lips in deep ponderation*
Hmmm…I wonder what could possibly have happened in this man’s life to make him so angry and volatile and ready to kill…
In honor of Mothers’ Day, the National Marrow Donor Program is waiving the tissue-typing fees for the next 46,000 people who sign up, including the first 10,000 who apply online, as an incentive to get 46,000 new potential donors into the registry.
During our Thanks Mom awareness and recruitment campaign, May 5 to May 19, 2008, join the marrow donor Registry and give hope to patients. What better way to say “Thanks, Mom” for giving you life than to share that gift with another person.
When you become a marrow donor, you join the global movement of more than 11 million donors who stand ready to give someone a future.
You could be the one a patient needs.
Thanks Mom Goal: 46,000 people who want to save a life
Until we reach our goal during Thanks Mom, our generous partners and contributors are covering the costs to add members to the Registry.
Being the lazy sot I am, I’ve been putting off joining the registry and using the fee as a convenient excuse. Now, thanks to this Mothers’ Day donor push, I no longer have any excuse. So I signed up and my free cheek swab kit is on it’s way as I type.
For skittish types, keep in mind that those tales of horrific donations are no longer true (if they ever were). You can learn more about that on the Myths and Facts page. If you are chosen, you can back out right up to the donation stage (at that point, they kill off the marrow transplantee’s immune system, so that’s the point of no return). And you never have to pay for the procedure. That all gets billed to the other guy.
So like me, unless you have some sort of serious medical issue or an illegal drug problem, you no longer have any excuses. Go sign up. (And if you do have a good excuse, you can always donate.)
Go to the National Marrow Donor Program site. Or, drop your zip code into the widget below to find a donor drive near you.
Heee! Remember that romance cover ’shop I did a while back featuring everybody’s favorite gamer?
I got tagged for a second-place tie with another beverage-snorting bit of work. Pop on over and see the winners for yourself (click the More, More More! link, and scroll down). But swallow that beverage first, just for safety’s sake.
