10 by Breakfast

This is great.

Another post about my cat

I was laying in bed on Saturday morning. It was probably around 7:15. I was awake but in one of those states where it was more comfortable laying there looking out the window rather than getting up or going back to sleep. I knew I was about to get up but found comfort in looking out the window near the bed.

Our back yard has an abundance of wildlife. Mice, moles, rabbits, birds of all kinds, deer, owls, opossums, raccoons and hawks have all presented themselves on our property at one time or another. So it is not unusual for us to find dead animals around the yard. Our cat is a very adept hunter. He is an orange tabby. He has his claws and is probably around 15 - 20 pounds. His physique would be akin to a finely sculpted linebacker ready to pummel another player. Hardly any fat, and burley. I pity the fool mouse who reckons with this cat.

While looking out the window, I saw our cat race from out of my line of sight toward a tree. He was a blur. He jumped 3 feet up the tree and quickly scurried up the tree using his front paws to grip, and his back claws to push. He climbed 15 feet in the air and turned midway up the tree to the other side of the tree. He wasn't visible anymore. I soon saw him climb down a little bit and jump to the ground with a large brown thing in his mouth. It was the most amazing display of skills I have ever seen from a domesticated cat. He was so fast I doubt the prey had any clue what was happening.

Later I found the dead brown thrasher on the patio.

Inside the Decline of Urgh

Three great rock documentation are the Decline of Western Civilization, Urgh, a Music War, and Athens, GA Inside/Out. Several years ago it was impossible to get copies of these movies but now you can get them on the net. If you are fan of punk or "alternative" music these movies will give you some insight into a time when the music was truly revolutionary.

The Decline of Western Civilization documents the LA punk rock scene in the late 70's/early 8o's. If you read anything about this film, invariably the writer references Darby Crash. The volatile lead singer of the Germs. In short, the Germs sucked. Big time. The only allure of Darby was to see whether or not the guy would vomit on stage or something. Imagine Sid Viscous but American, uglier and a lead singer. You get the picture. Not surprisingly Darby died of a heroin overdose at an early age.Probably the coolest part is seeing X and Fear live. Lee Ving the lead singer from Fear has been in a few movies. Pat Smear, now in the Foo Fighters, was also in Fear. I could never tell if he meant for his name to sound like Pap Smear.

Urgh, A Music War is equally good, but has more concert footage and a wider array of bands. The Police, Wall of Voodoo, Devo, Oingo Boingo, XTC, Pere Ubu, the Dead Kennedys, the Fleshtones, and X all were featured. The Police were originally a semi-punk ska type band. Wall of Voodoo was known for "Mexican Radio" and Devo for "Whip It". Oingo Boingo never did much but did craft the theme song to the movie Weird Science. XTC has been successful over 20 years. Probably their best album is Skylarking. They also had a side project called The Dukes of Stratosphear that was pretty good in the 80's. Pere Ubu always has sucked but Rolling Stone and Spin writers and critics think they are good. It doesn't sound like Yoko Ono but sucks just the same. The Dead Kennedys were cut from a pure obnoxious punk cloth. Holiday in Cambodia and California Uber Alles are essential American punk recordings. The Fleshtones have survived as a bar band but at one time had a series of albums. Peter Zaremba the lead singer actually was the host of 120 minutes on MTV for a period of time. The Fleshtones' Album: Speed Connection II, Live from Paris, is one of the greatest live albums ever made. X had a couple of good albums before John Doe decided to have a fairly successful acting career.

Athens,Ga Inside/Out was a movie with a totally different pedigree. It was filmed during an very active time in the "alternative" music scene. It was after the beginnings of REM and the B-52's and before the success of Widespread Panic. During this time in the mid-80's Athens had an incredibly vibrant music scene. The documentary set out to showcase a few of the key artists. These included: The B-52's, Pylon, Bar-B-Que Killers, Time Toy, Flat Duo Jets, Dreams So Real, Love Tractor, Kilkenny Cats, and the Squalls. Except for Dream So Real, who sucked bigtime, and the B-52's, I have seen all of these bands live at one time or another. The Flat Duo Jets flat out rocked. Love Tractor was ok at first and then just seemed too....wimpy. Tom Cheek and the Kilkenny Cats rocked as well. Unfortunately, it is close to impossible to find their music anywhere.

Odd

This is odd:

"A group of psychics led by colourful 'SilverJade', based in Johannesburg South Africa, have predicted that a series of earthquakes and other natural disasters will strike the western coast of the United States on or around the 23rd of February 2005. The prediction is based on the interpretation of a series of dreams by SilverJade, and the technical analysis of earthquake patterns occuring worldwide throughout the month of January 2005. As of 11th of February 2005, they have successfully predicted a significant event, a 5.5 magnitude earthquake in south eastern Alaska, as being a first step in a series of smaller events leading up to the big bang. The next step of the prediction is set to occur at some time on or around the 13th and 15th of the month."

Cool Game

This is a cool game. I got up t0 361 generations.

Photos

There are some great photos here.

Ironing

Proverbs 27:17

As iron sharpens iron,
so one man sharpens another.

Stupid Vanities

I wore the same pants four days in a row this week. So what. They weren't dirty and they didn't smell. They weren't wrinkled. I wonder if anyone in the office noticed? Perhaps, but who cares. Its perfectly fine to were the same belt, shoes, and jacket every day. But if you wear the same shirt or pants every day you're a weirdo. Gym clothes are another example. Provided they don't smell, it is perfectly acceptable to wear the exact same thing every time you work out.

Albert Einstein wasn't fond of clothing. In fact, he never wore socks. Some surmised that he only wore the same thing so as to not complicate his life any more. Stephen Malkmus memorilized Yul Brynner's perspective on the ultimate in simplification: shave your head. He used this quote to open one of his songs:

"....And in a funny way, the shaving of my, uh, head has been a liberation from, uh, a lot of, uh, stupid vanities really. uh, it has simplified everything for me, it has opened a lot of doors..."

If my experience is any litmus test, try wearing the same thing every day one week. At the very least, you can see if anyone notices.

Human Nature

What is human nature? How is it defined?

One web site looks at it from a more scientific approach. It is interesting but seems to view humans as animals to be observed like rats or mice in a maze. I believe a more important resource for evaluating human nature is the Bible. The Bible is filled with stories about the essence of human nature, it's failings, and the reasons why we can't look inward for resolutions for our dissatisfaction with this mortal coil.

Routine

It starts out the same every night. I uncurl from my comfortable cocoon and for whatever reason, I decide to get up. It's 2:30 am. I do this every night. I land on the floor with a soft thud. The warm friendly confines of the bed are now in the recent past as the cool hardwood floor now touches the pads of my feet. I stop and look around slowly. After surveying the area I determine that I need to move. Either to go to the bathroom, eat, or get a drink of water. All three can be found by heading toward the kitchen. I pad down the hall slow and steady. No hurry but not slumbering either. Deliberate and relaxed. I am the master of the domain and I am alone and it is quiet. Not a stir in the house. Perhaps a mouse is near but he certainly isn't showing himself now. I would make quick work of him. No matter, by now I decide to stop and soak in my surroundings. I head back to the bedroom. A little more purpose in my step now. Instead of heading back to bed I turn and start to paw at the other closed bedroom door down the hall. It makes scraping noises. It looks like I'm confused, like I don't know what I'm doing. I mean, really, I'm pawing a closed door. Perhaps it looks like I want to paw my way into the room. Well, that is not the case. I know exactly what I'm doing. I am making noise so that my owner will wake up and let me out. He does and I do. Mission accomplished. See, I am the family cat and this is what I do every night.

Murphy's Law

Or rather, "things go wrong". Who was Murphy?

Here is Wikipedia had to say:

Murphy's law is a popular adage in Western culture, which broadly states that things will go wrong in any given situation. It is most commonly formulated as "if anything can go wrong, it will." The law was named after Edward A. Murphy, Jr., a development engineer working for a brief time on rocket sled experiments done by the United States Air Force in 1949.
The law is also known, sometimes with a slight variation, as Finagle's law or Sod's law, with the latter being the more common name in the UK.

This law comes to mind as I am now typing on my one week old hotshot laptop from Dell. The same Dell that now says upon boot up on a blank black screen that I have "decreasing memory". The only thing I can surmise is that one of my DIMMS is loose and now needs to be replaced. After the message, I can hit F1 to continue or F2 to go to Set Up. The regular boot routine never happens now. This is after shelling out major dollars of the a nice laptop. Within ONE WEEK this maching is having problems. Actually, the fact that many computers actually funtion correctly is a miracle considering how complex they are.

I think this is a particularly interesting perspective:

"whenever a buttered slice of bread falls on the floor, people tend to remember more vividly the times that it fell buttered-side-down, since a buttered-side-up landing is of lesser consequence. Hence, one gets the impression that the bread always falls buttered-side-down, regardless of the actual probability of either happening. Laws such as Murphy's are a direct expression of such seeming perversities in the order of the universe.
Additional mutations of the law and its corollaries have developed, many of them meta-laws in some way, either through some form of self-reference or referral to other laws or analogies. For instance, the buttered-bread analogy could be further extended: "The chance of a dropped slice of bread landing buttered-side down on a new carpet is proportional to the price of the carpet." (If the buttered side falls facing up, then obviously the wrong side is buttered.) A further example is Murphy's Ultimate Corollary: "If it could have gone wrong earlier and it didn't, it ultimately would have been beneficial for it to have." John Gall's systemantics offers further expansion of Murphy's law.

Harpers Index

I have always found the Harpers Index as being a very interesting read. Here is a sampling from Jan 2005:

Number of American five-year-olds named Lexus : 353 [Cleveland Evans, Bellevue University (Bellevue, Nebr.) ]

Estimated value of a diamond-and-sapphire jewelry set given to Laura Bush in 2003 by the Saudi crown prince : $95,500 [U.S. Department of State ]

Year by which the third and final phase of the 2003 "road map" to a Palestinian state was to have been reached : 2005 [United Nations (N.Y.C.) ]

Estimated number of the twenty-five provisions in the first phase that have yet to be completed : 17 [Harper's research ]

Number of House members in 1979 who voted against making Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday a national holiday : 133 [Legislative Research Center, U.S. House of Representatives/Harper's research ]

Number who are still in the House : 9 [Legislative Research Center, U.S. House of Representatives/Harper's research ]

Number who are Vice President : 1 [Legislative Research Center, U.S. House of Representatives/Harper's research ]

Percentage of South African farmland owned by whites in 1994 and today, respectively : 87, 84 [International Crisis Group (Washington) ]

Ratio of the number of people in Haiti to the number of permanent full-time jobs there : 80:1 [Haiti Support Group (London) ]

Rank of Wal-Mart among Mexico's largest private employers : 1 [Wal-Mart (Teotihuacan, Mexico) ]

Number of states, provinces, or territories of the United States, Canada, and Mexico that lack a McDonald's : 1 [McDonald's (Oak Brook, Ill.)/McDonald's Canada (Toronto) ]

Good Proverbs

These are good for their uniqueness:

Proverbs 23 - NRSV HEBREW BIBLE

6 Do not eat the bread of the stingy; do not desire their delicacies;7 for like a hair in the throat, so are they. "Eat and drink!" they say to you; but they do not mean it.8 You will vomit up the little you have eaten, and you will waste your pleasant words.

Also:
Proverbs 11:22 (New International Version)
22 Like a gold ring in a pig's snout
is a beautiful woman who shows no discretion