Kablammo!

Here’s a partial list of key shots in games played by New Zealand’s men’s Olympic curling team in Torino:

• vs Sweden:
  Facing two opposing stones New Zealand Skip BECKER S misses an open Take-out, failing to remove any stones and sets up a Draw for three points for Sweden and a commanding lead in a game that had so far been very close.
• vs Great Britain:
  New Zealand Skip BECKER S, missed a critical Hit and Roll allowing Great Britain to steal four and take control of the game.
• vs United States:
  United States was counting two behind Guards and had forced New Zealand to attempt to navigate a very tight path to promote one of their own stones. New Zealand Skip BECKER S was light and the stone over-curled, touching a Guard. USA seemed to gain momentum from this point in the game and was encouraged by the enthusiastic crowd.
• vs Switzerland:
  Swiss Skip STOECKLI R played a perfect Draw to guard his shot stone and force New Zealand skip BECKER S to attempt a difficult Draw. New Zealand missed and Switzerland stole 3 to take command of the game.
• vs Italy:
  The Italian Skip RETORNAZ J made a cross house Double Take-out to lie two stones and turn the end around in Italy’s favour. The difficulty of this shot was increased by having to avoid jamming the New Zealand shot on one of Italy’s own stones lying in the back of the house. New Zealand Skip BECKER S was forced to make a Take-out to lie shot which RETORNAZ J removed to score two shots and take a lead into the fifth end break.
• vs Norway:
  In an attempt to limit Norway to one point by pushing back a Norway stone, New Zealand Skip BECKER S added a touch more weight than necessary and tapped his own second shot back enough to allow Norway an easy last stone draw for three points to take control of the game.

Better luck next time, Skip.

Happy independence day.

Yeah, you wish you had this many sound cards in your computer.

Song of the Moment: «It’s Easy» — The Ladies and Gentlemen

In the past week, I’ve more-or-less randomly bumped into a few friends acquaintances, including two whom I’ve known since elementary school (kindergarten, in one case). Apparently I’ve changed a lot in the five-and-a-half years since I’ve seen them, or so they told me. Though they told me that outright, there was really no need since it was quite explicit in the total lack of recognition in their eyes before I told them my name and gave them a few moments to process it.

I guess most people don’t grow another two or three inches after high school. What this might mean is that if I keep my fool mouth shut, I can walk around my hometown completely incognito.

Sadly there’s other recent news involving people I’ve known since kindergarten, in this case the kid I sat next to in Mrs West’s art class. Britton was one of the nicest people I ever met, and for what it’s worth he recognized me immediately, different though I may look, when I ran into him just before Christmas.

I’m glad that at least I ended up seeing him one last time, though it’s certainly terribly depressing that he apparently won’t end up finishing pharmacy school after all.

I thought I was too young for this, but then I thought he was too young for his part in this too. Rest in peace.

The best part is definitely the muted orange glow that envelops the world in its snug embrace.

And the worst, without a doubt, is the local news coverage. As always.

Song of the Moment: «One of These Days» — Doves

Reuters: Cheney authorized aid (sic) to leak in CIA case - report

OK, it’s another article claiming (or at least insinuating) that high-level Administration officialdom is, or has been known to be, up to no good. With an Administration like the present one, that’s no big shocker.

Know what else isn’t a shocker? This, but also the following:

White House spokesman Scott McClellan declined to comment.

“Our policy is we’re not going to discuss this while there’s an ongoing legal proceeding,” McClellan told reporters.

I’m sure the staff writers at Reuters (or any other wire service or newspaper that ever discusses American politics) have the above-quoted passage saved as a keyboard macro.
Every one of Scott McClellan’s graceless and sweaty attempts to stonewall just makes me nostalgic for the good old days, when Ari Fleischer brought some dignity and artistry to the position of spokesweasel. Fleischer and his grab-bag of Aes-Sedai-style not-actually-lying tricks were always entertaining to see in action.

McClellan, on the other hand, is only worth watching if you enjoy trainwrecks, and seems even unhappier than the host of Supermarket Sweep.

Frank Herbert’s Dune is one of those famous books that every good nerd is supposed to read. (Just look at those 926 glowing Amazon reviews, for Chrissakes.) So when I saw it on the shelf of the library’s self-service Book Swap, I decided to pick it up and leave my similarly-serendipitously obtained (and recently read) copy of John Le Carré’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy in its place.

After all, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed other such nerd-staple series as Foundation, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and The Lord of the Rings. Hell, I’ve even slogged through over 10,000 pages’ worth of The Wheel of Time and I’m still looking forward to reading Book 11 for some reason.

When I started reading Dune, then, I was expecting to enjoy it because I’m a faceless drone who usually enjoys whatever nerds enjoy, even if I don’t come right out and admit it. But I was a bit put off by all the bullshit two-word phrases and made-up jargon like “Bene Gesserit”, “Padishah Emperor”, “suspensor lamp”, and “Kwisatz Haderach”: the kind of terminology that’s completely fucking pandemic in sci-fi and fantasy, and is also responsible for the giant glossary (complete with pronunciation guide) in the back of each volume of WoT. After reading all of the above-quoted phrases on page 1 of Dune, I decided to keep reading. How much worse could it get?

Proceeding to page 2 I came across this doozy of a paragraph:

Thufir Hawat, his father’s Master of Assassins, had explained it: their mortal enemies, the Harkonnens, had been on Arrakis eighty years, holding the planet in quasi-fief under a CHOAM Company contract to mine the geriatric spice, melange. Now the Harkonnens were leaving to be replaced by the House of Atreides in fief-complete—an apparent victory for the Duke Leto. Yet, Hawat had said, this appearance contained the deadliest peril, for the Duke Leto was popular among the Great Houses of the Landsraad.

At this point, I tossed the book irritably aside, since so far it had been doing nothing but drowning me in a morass of gibberish, and even the recognizable English words in between everything else weren’t particularly engaging. I took a little break and came back later and started reading against my better judgment.

But nobody talks like this, not even fictional characters.

A chuckle sounded beside the globe. A basso voice rumbled out of the chuckle: “There it is, Piter—the biggest mantrap in all history. And the Duke’s headed into its jaws. Is it not a magnificent thing that I, the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, do?”

I think I’m not going to bother reading the rest of this book.

I can’t believe it took me this long to finally realize/notice that Jack Feeny and Mark Prindle are not, in fact, the same person.

So a week after I spend all that time and vitriol complaining about an automatic-transmission van, a squirrel decided to gnaw through random wires that connected the battery to such inconsequential things as the ignition. Getting a car towed to the garage and having your mother give you a ride to school is, as it turns out, much more bothersome than having to drive a car you don’t like driving.

Which will teach me to be ungrateful, I suppose.

It’s funny: the last time I was in Carnegie Hall, I was one of the performers.

How the mighty have fallen.

People I know:

• Bruce Greenspan
• Butterflynn
• Critical
• EstonianPunkCat
• Fire_Hazard
• Hille
• Manganese
• PBones
• Scarlett1304
• Spine Porridge
• Supachump
• SushiDeJaneiro
• Tomahagne
• Vaarikaisand
• WordToKyle
• Zepsub
• Zot

Things I read:

• badscience
• BillMon
• CommonDreams
• DailyKos
• Dan’s Data
• ebalogaalne
• Hullabaloo
• I, Cringely
• In These Times
• Ironic Sans
• Language Log
• Literal-Minded
• MediaMatters
• Paul Graham
• Salon
• Slacktivist
• The Economist
• The Gadflyer
• The Grauniad
• The Nation
• The Onion
• The Register
• The Superest
• Unclaimed Territory
• Wikipedia