Ten Tentacles - So many arms, so little time.

So, I noticed quite a few folks this month tried to meet the goal for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). I’ll admit that this year I didn’t even try. Way to much RL going on. I also have two major problems when it comes to writing. One, I hate re-writes; my words are my babies. Two, I can’t help telling the stories orally, I’m a talker, and once it’s told I have no oomph to write it. Neil Gaiman provides some words of wisdom for solving problem number one. I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do about two.

I gotta say, the man makes sense. Thanks, Keith, for pointing it out.

Ok, see? This is just creepy. Only those closest to me know how much I’ve been wanting to get into welding and metal fabrication. This meme makes me feel funny in my pants.

Every once in a while I get a wild hair to go off and try something I haven’t done before. About two weeks ago I got it into my head that I wanted to make a bullroarer. I did a little research on the net and overall the project seemed pretty simple. Most of the pages concering making one recommend a hard, heavy wood.

Since my dad has been spending his retired time knocking down trees (it’s a long story), I called him and asked if he had any hardwoods laying around that were well seasoned. Turned out he had a nice hunk of hickory. Perfect.

The piece he had was pretty big so I had him cut me a two foot section and I went and picked it up yesterday.

I broke my machette trying to use it as a sort of adz, which turned out not to be the best option. Hickory is very hard. I got my axe and it worked fine. I then took it to the table saw to square it up a little better and rip some planks.

After a turn at the jigsaw, to cut the basic shape, I went to work with my little block plane. A mountain of hickory shavings (which should smell and taste real nice in the smoker) later and there you go. Bullroarer!

I drilled a hole in one end, tied an eight-foot string to it, and took it for a test spin. Hee, scared the hell out of the dog. It worked perfect the first time. I still have some tiny bits of shaping to do, and sanding, and then I’m going to paint it (after I do some research into aboriginal pictograms, or maybe some Apache ones). It was a lot of fun and now, of course, the boy wants me to make him one. Hee!

Aww, look at the little mouse I got for Squishy. It’s so tiny. That’s my car alarm remote keychain next to it. All hail the mini mousey mouse!

Ganked from VASpider.

“Democrats, you better get yourselves a magic shield, because in Congress, Bush has plus three to hit.”

Great article.

Well, there it is. May 19th, 2005. The teaser looks tempting. Let’s hope Lucas redeems himself.

In other news, I am about to embark on my first serious development project for a desktop platform. I’m in the early-early planning stages, still deciding what language to go with. More on that as I begin work.

Life is good, though there just isn’t enough cheese in it.

Ganked from uncacreamy.

I’m worth $2,123,152.94! How much are you worth?

Around here we have a lot of churches. And I’m not exaggerating or using the words a lot lightly. In a town that boasts just under one-thousand people we have, of the ones I’ve seen, no less than five churches. And I know there are more.

They all have these marquees outside, used mostly to offer some presumably inspirational words to the masses who drive by them. A few days ago I noticed the following: “Do unto others as if those others were you.” It’s quite the bastardization of the popular “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” And it struck me that their version speaks loudly of the typical sentiment of the fundamentalist right wing.

See, even the common phrasing we all know, found in Matthew 7:120, is really just a rewording of the Talmudic text given below:

“Once a heathen came before Rabbi Shamai and said to him, Make me a proselyte [convert] to Judaism on condition that you teach me the whole Torah while I stand on one foot. He repulsed him with a builder’s tool he was holding in his hand. When he [the heathen] came before Hillel, he said to him, What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor: that is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary; now go and learn.”

No surprise. Christ was a Jew. In any case, the changes in phrasing change the meaning. The original Talmudic text says, what I believe to be the true sentiment, very clearly. To paraphrase, “If it would hurt you, don’t do it to someone else.”. Christ’s rephrasing of it keeps most of the original meaning, but it begins to blur here. There’s more of a sense of molding other people to your likes. The phrasing I saw on the marquee blurs the meaning completely. It seems to say, “Make others like you.” And paraphrased or not it is still called, by this church, “the word of G-d” when in fact it was not even G-d who said it. It was a Rabbi’s interpretation of Torah later paraphrased by Christ.

This is, in my view, the agenda of the fundamentalist right wing; the agenda of the folks who turn a political candidate into the “Christian Choice”. “Make them all like you.” Proclaimed, right there, for all the world to see if only they’d look closely, and called the word of G-d.

Frightening.

For those that had not yet figured it out (despite comments in previous posts), a picture of Squishy. Ain’t he cute?!

Live, from SQUISHY, it’s Mario!

Squishy arrived safe and sound and is already playing nicely with all the other hardware in the house. Squishy even jumped on the network without a single complaint. If it hadn’t been for the weather knocking out my satellite connection, Squishy would already be done with all his updates. Oh, well. At least he’s home safe and sound and helping me post already! I’ll finish the updates tomorrow. Wee!

Welcome home, Squishy!

Squishy is here!! Or rather there, at my house. I will love him and pet him and call him my own in only a matter of minutes. Also note the ‘I Voted’ sticker on my hat as proof of my good citizenship and civic duty completed. Wee!