Fun(ky) Friday

Via Lifehacker, I discovered photo-effects site Be Funky, and it’s been the savior of my every second of downtime today. Here’s my favorite baby picture of me with my mom, put through one of their cartoon effects:

Aw...

Dear Santa…

I know I said I wanted a Fossil bag, but if you could use a fossil to make an actual mammoth, that would be even better.

I’ve been waiting for years for science to do something like this–before Jurassic Park was even a gleam in Crichton’s eye, when I was a little kid reading about attempts to crossbredd back to the aurochs. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, just once, we used the march of progress for something other than endangering animals?

But Is It Art?

Our newly built art museum opens today, and (if I remembered my membership card…aha! I’m good) there’s a member preview until six. Which means I have an excuse, albeit a lame one, to book out of work when my eight hours is up.

I’m amazed, if anything, that I remembered to join the museum this year. One thing I’ve actually been very good about in the wake of The World Turned Upside Down ‘08 is keeping up with things like that. I pay bills on time. I feed the cats (er, generally…and I must say that if the cable company sent someone to stare accusingly at me the way my cat does, my internet bill would be paid even faster). Right after it happened, I went without making my bed for eight days, the longest time in my adult life–and even this bothered me. I guess I’m anal retentive to my soul….which is probably why I’m fretting that our new art museum resembles a giant glass ark.

UPDATE: The ark is very pretty from the inside, but, unless I missed something (which is entirely possible), there doesn’t seem to be much more exhibit space than they had before–odd in the wake of so many articles about building the new facility because they could only show a small percentage of their collection in the old one.

It’s light. It’s airy. The steps of the stairs are actually lit from within; I choked up there for a moment, because I know someone who would have totally danced on them.

The current exhibits include a modern photography exhibit which in one case puts the viewer inside a holographic-print forest and a collection of 17th-century Florentine art that includes a painting of St. Sebastian having his darts removed. It’s about time .

Coping Strategies 101, Including Dinkage

It’s my third day back at work after losing the best guy in the world. We worked at the same place: they’re taking everything out of his office today.

Things are pretty stable, and also they are warmed-over hell.

And to cope with this, I’ve been discovering a range of strange(r than usual) behaviors:

• DVD box sets. For life’s ordinary tragedies, I’ve always mainlined comedy. Obviously that’s of limited use here, but I’ve almost watched two seasons of How I Met Your Mother, which has served as background noise for a fair few nights when I can’t sleep without background sound.
• The unhealthy ones. My sleep schedule is shot to hell. My appetite is inconsistent about everything except Pringles. I occasionally become obsessive about trying to do a good job at faking normalcy for the rest of my life, but for that you need energy, and that too is on a weird cycle. I also spent a couple of days mentally rating well-wishers on how fast I’d trade them in to have him back, which is probably vile.
• The anal-retentive one. My new personal favorite: an obsessive need to dink with technology. I bought a Nabaztag/tag, hoping that it would take a while to configure, but it hooked up immediately. I’m evaluating my massive blog structure and may even fold this site into my horror-review site and oldest blog, Dracula’s Godchild, before all is said and done. I’m looking at new blog templates, preparing to pay the fee to import my old e-mail account into Gmail, and poring over Firefox skins. I even updated the Netvibes page I rarely use, adding a bunch of feeds and changing its name to “Embrace the Dorkness.”
• The inadvertent. In preparation for helping out a friend, I stumbled across this interesting site, Virgin Money. It sounds like porn, but is actually mogul Richard Branson’s idea for managing loans among friends and family. For a fee they’ll do the paperwork, let you set interest rates, and so on. It’s not really useful for my purposes–this is for bigger loans, like car down payments or seed money for small businesses– but I thought it was interesting all the same.

Very Interesting

From a link on When Fangirls Attack,  Lynda Carter talks about Sarah Palin.

More From The Shallow End

I was trying to space the frivolous posts apart, but the fact that this election year has sucked all my political will dry does make it harder: that, and the shopping trip I took yesterday which led me to a new conspiracy theory. (Dan Brown, feel free to steal this one.)

All major clothing manufacturers have fallen victim to the fine-honed brainwashing techniques of an evil European nobleman, Graf Splotch von Ruffel. Having been born with no innate fashion sense, von Ruffel in his early years traded polka-dot socks and striped pants for the lab coat of mad science. At set intervals, he drags his machinery from place to place (aided by his sidekick Ruche Shirson) and beams into designers’ heads ideas for clothes that are hideously overornamented, 1970s throwbacks much better left in the Three’s Company reruns, physically impractical if you don’t exist in two dimensions*, or all of these things.

It’s the only explanation I can think of why an otherwise snazzy pinstripe shirt would be decorated with the kind of pseudo-prairie ruffles Marcia Brady used to wear, or why those damned gathered-yoke shirts that make everyone look like they’re wearing their childhood nightgowns from the hips up are now in their second year of popularity.

If I were scripting this movie, von Ruffel would be soundly defeated in a climactic fight with the ghost of Audrey Hepburn, which he would lose because the gathered yoke of his lab coat got in the way of his arm movements.

*I reluctantly abandoned a top in a nice print that would have rendered me the star of a movie called Afternoon of the Boob Monster.

Long-Overdue Cat Blogging

Bathtub gin Incubus, anyone?

I'm a high-contrast kind of guy

Random Not-Very-Political Observation

… “Obama-Sebelius” sounds like something Harry Potter would intone to get his socks out of the dresser drawer without leaving his bed.

Which is awesome.

And Via Shakesville, As A Matter Of Fact…

End of the world may be nigh. I still haven’t gotten over the things Rupert Everett said in an interview after his shot at the great role.

(Note: I can’t now find the one in which Everett’s so cavalier about the part; the PBS interview is actually pretty good.)

Reluctant Political Blogging

I don’t know if I’m going to vote this year.

That seems strange, doesn’t it, during what I’ll admit was one of the more exciting political contests on the Democratic side (and frankly, I didn’t figure McCain was going to get anywhere, either, until suddenly he did)? I never really favored Obama or Clinton: I do think, as far as triumph-of-marginalized-sector-of-society goes, having either of them as President would be kind of neat. At the very least, it would have shaken up stereotypes abroad about what we as Americans do politically, and that wouldn’t hurt.

But holy crap, the nastiness. One thing this campaign has done is cut back on a lot of my time reading political blogs. Before the campaign, I found Shakesville slightly radical; now I find myself running over there, because at least they’re radical about a lot of different viewpoints. And I think my main problem with the Democratic campaign has been that I’m too old to rationalize anymore. To say that this is just “what politicians do.” To assume that as I get older, some sense of this stuff will kick in. I am older, and it hasn’t.

Put it this way…You are a middle manager at a big company that does business with a number of diverse clients. There’s an opening, say in HR. Instead of doing things the traditional way, you and a few of your peers in the company decide to invite two candidates in for an interview at the same time. They show up, looking great, but–just like in the cartoons–there are these little devils [campaign staff, advisors] sitting on their shoulders.

So first there’s Barry. And he’s upbeat and motivational. He’s noticed that your business doesn’t participate in the community quite as much as it used to, and a bidding war has further depressed employee morale. He wants to help you build your workers’ enthusiasm back up and raise your profile. It should be good for everybody, right?

Except for how those devils on his shoulder want him to treat the other job applicant. When she speaks, he kind of rolls his eyes. He seems to work the word “witch” into his conversation more than is strictly necessary. When she laughs, he winces visibly. Next to you, your female colleague is staring at him as if she can’t quite believe it, and so are you. Doesn’t he know how much you do business with female clients? How many women work for you?

Then there’s Hillary. She also has some great ideas for the job: she’s looked over the benefits you offer and thinks she can get a better deal. She has a lot of contacts with local insurance firms. She’s established in the area. Maybe not as flashy as Barry, but still good.

Unfortunately, she has the devils too. When introduced to Barry, she says something like “Wow. Obama? How…exotic.” She makes fleeting references to things she was doing in HR before Barry was out of short pants. And she observes, apropos of nothing, that one of the offices you show on the tour has a window that faces Mecca. You’re a little horrified about that too. You’ve just opened up an office in Brazil–what if she decides to ask your new customers about voodoo in the middle of a meeting?

So, yeah, that’s how I feel about it. These two people, whom I’m now convinced I wouldn’t hire for that hypothetical HR position, are running to represent the interests of my entire country. And I don’t get to do any more interviews for four years.

I may panic and vote in the November election, but I damn sure won’t enjoy it.