An imaginary place in a reactionary time
Yucky Dog passed away this morning. He was old when Kenneth found him. He was old when Renae took him in. So his official age is old.
Yucky, Dog of the stooped shoulders.
Scourge of mop dogs and Chihuahuas.
Lover of snow.
Piner for the fjords.
Blood brother to Marvin, the paranoid android.
Sniffer of feet.
Door stop.
Possessor of the side long glance and dogish sigh.
Defender of Renae.
Right here, with transcript.
On this day we celebrate the man who almost single handedly created Szechuan cuisine, Tabasco sauce, Paprika & Paprikash, stuffed peppers, and so much more of the worlds great food. Of course he did a lot of shitty things too: destroying african nutrition with corn, enslaving everyone he met. And he was sent home in chains from his last job. But think of the megalomaniac next time you bite into Szechuan Asparagus or saturate your Buffalo Wings with Tabasco.
UPDATED: With even more patchy goodness!
I’m not big into patches or other forms of nonfunctional adornment. Not for me. BUT…
The last Shuttle Mission patch is an exception. I want to wear that. And cry.
Get it here. $5.99
(the other one I’d wear: The infamous “tastes like chicken” faux 509th bomber group patch. OK, I’d wear this, this, this and pretty much anything listed here. But then I grew up in the Cold War and ingested way too many spy novels and movies, so wearing a patch that announces to the world your a secret squirrel just makes me giggle. Plus the ones for the support services kick ass.)
It would seem it’s my birthday.
And it’s unexpectedly turned out to be a really good one. Wow. Thanks to Ben, Richie, Anson, Joanne, Dean, Mary, Jeff, Natalie, Margerat, Dick, Jane, Robin, Cameron, Nick, the dual wielding dwarf with the dead ThinkPad and Heidi. And Tim, Renae, Scot, and Misha.
UPDATED: More info and links and a belated happy birthday…
In a lot of ways I’m the John Dvorak of social media. If I think a website is a bad idea, it invariably ends up being useful and/or a huge success. One case in point is YouTube. I really couldn’t see how a website devoted to short snippets of tv shows I never watched and bootleg music videos I never wanted to see in the first place was useful. Then I started randomly looking for things that interested me, Like F.M. Or like these 30-40 year old TV performances of Tom Lehrer (even then I had to trip over a link on Mark Evanier’s site to even think about looking for TL on YouTube- Thanks Mark!).
I got it from Agnes (1980, Michael Parkinson show in England-this song was an update of an old party song he did “I got it from Sally” included in the musical review TOMFOOLERY-he didn’t record it until the Rhino boxed set in 2000)
Poisoning Pidgeons in the Park.
Tom Lehrer’s work was featured on the American version of That Was The Week That Was, broadcast in the mid 60′s, and which I’m still searching for clips of. Bonus Autralian interview from 2003. Yes, he’s still alive, his 80th birthday was April 9th. No, he doesn’t perform anymore. Search you tube for even more Tom Lehrer.
(In response to all the email, here’s the performance he did for Irving Kaplansky’s 80th birthday celebration 11 years ago (all math songs, what do you expect from a mathematician’s birthday). The Onion AV Club interview, the SF Weekly interview and the Paul D. Lehrman interview.)
And you can still buy Tom on Amazon…
“It was twenty years ago today…”
On Leap Day 1988 I spent a small fortune for the time on an “outpatient procedure” which left me able to walk and relatively pain free. Anyone who has suffered with backpain and underwent surgery knows what i went through. Despite the increase in pain post op, the ability to feel my legs and move was amazing. Even with the stiffness and added pain from surgery. I’m told that the laparoscopic procedure I underwent isn’t even performed anymore. I don’t care. I can walk, and the level of pain I live with now is almost nothing compared to the pain preceding the surgery. I was heading for a serious psychotic episode, I was homicidally angry every waking moment. Pain makes you do stupid things. So happy anniversary…
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Yes, for the second time this year it’s Dean and Ben’s Birthday! Those guys are so awesome they get two birthdays apiece! Hell, they’ve putting up with me longer then anyone who didn’t have a hand in my birth, so they deserve a few extra birthdays in payment!
(Yes, I know it’s really only Ben’s birthday, but what with Nathan doing that incredibly happy one year old thing (no joke, that is one happy toddler, he even makes me smile) and all I hardly think he’ll notice he has a birthday…HAPPY BIRTHDAY BEN!)
News for Nerds, Stuff that matters. Our uptime is your downtime. The pioneering tech/poly/sci news site, pride of Michigan, and ongoing social software experiment is ten. Happy Birthday! Here’s an interview with Rob Malda, the founder.
