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Category: Personal

Selfish pig

Don Park’s philosophy of life is admirable, and not that far from mine. He calls it the Selfish Pig. Smart guy. I wish I was as capable of detaching appropriately as he is; life’s not really all that complex.

Also: hi, John! I am sorry I was a flake last year; it was a bad year for me, but that’s no excuse.

Walking man

I now own two walking sticks. They have sharp metal spikes at the bottom, and nice curved handles. One of them — the one my great-grandfather used as he hiked across Germany — has “Interlochen” carved into the shaft. I don’t know if he did that, during sunsets and sunrises, or if it came that way when he purchased it.

Both of them, both my great-grandfather’s walking stick and my grandmother’s walking stick, have little metal badges attached to the shaft every inch or so. He apparently hiked more places than my grandmother, because he has more badges. Each badge is a new town, or a new sight on the horizon. If I took the time, which I will, I could trace their paths from the top of the stick to the bottom through the mountains of Europe.

As my parents age, I receive more and more of such memorabilia — the diaper pins, Jarvis Wood’s yearly Special Delivery, and so on. I have a lot of objects in my life, but I’ve had very few that I felt protective of until now. Now I own objects that I couldn’t just let go of if need be. Not a bad feeling. But different.

Ouch

Dented Volvo rear

That was kind of an exciting Mother’s Day. My brother, my sister-in-law, and I had a nice trip down to the Cape to visit Mom, dined on fish and chips, and headed back up north. Right before the Sagamore Bridge, some guy in a Dodge Ram rearended us at around 40 MPH. Dodge Ram 2500s are huge — I’m six feet tall and the hood of this thing was up to my chin. My brother’s Volvo is probably totalled; the Ram has a big dent in the bumper and that’s it. Impressive.

We’re all OK, the Dodge Ram guy is OK, and his young daughter didn’t even notice the impact. Did I mention how impressive the Ram was? Bloody tank, I’ll tell you.

But the whole thing left me a little shaken up.

Patio furniture

The Neighborhood Diner has opened up their patio and, apparently, closed their inside dining area. Or something, but anyhow they wouldn’t let me in, so I had the patio experience under somewhat more breezy conditions than I was prepared for. Less wordily: it was a little chilly and I had no sweater. But the food was good as always and it’s nice to be outside. Next time I’ll bring my laptop down and check for wireless.

Meanwhile, for those of you who’ve wondered what an airplane full of naked people would look like, now you can find out. Real naked people, not naked porn stars sprawled out on top of each other or anything. Life’s surreal.

Gathering of the tribes

For the first time in years and years, I’ve registered for Gen Con. That’d be the Indianapolis version, not the London one, although if anyone wants to pick up my plane ticket I’ll certainly hit the latter. In a surprising display of competence, I even preregistered for events. Woot!

Give till it wounds

My dear friend Kit is biking for clean air, which benefits the American Lung Association. I gotta recommend sponsoring her, even if she’s pretending to be some kind of a wacky Alaskan hobbit in the first chunk of that entry. Um, wacky Alaskan mutant hobbit pursued by Sentinels, I think. Don’t ask me.

And now that I’ve highlighted a good cause, I’ll highlight a selfish one: I’m gonna go ahead and get that Stratfor subscription cause hey, why not? I have six bucks in the donation fund right now (someone else sent me five bucks), and I am not in any way dependent on donations to get the subscription, but if you wanna kick in some cash then go right ahead.

More literary spam

I got another bit of spam today, entitled “bryant, mountain view lender with 4.5% low interest rates”. The body of the spam was this:

Envy, spit thy gall;
Plot, work, contrive; create new fallacies,
Teem from thy Womb each minute a black Traitor,
Whose blood and thoughts have twins conception:
Study to act deeds yet unchronicled,
Cast native Monsters in the molds of Men,

This is an excerpt from A most pleasant comedy of Mucedorus the King’s son of Valentia, and Amadine, the King’s daughter or Arragon, Act V Scene II. It is attributed to Shakespeare, but this is apocryphal. I must say, my spammers choose interesting texts.

The mystery was solved when I checked the message for additional parts. There turned out to be an HTML page embedded within; my mail reader doesn’t show those unless there’s no text alternative. The HTML page speaks glowingly of low interest rates. I’m thinking that this is from the same people who sent me that other odd one, although I didn’t save the other one to check. Clever attempt to get through my spam filters, but alas, my spam filters check HTML documents and it was thus filed in my spam folder where I plucked it out for my own amusement.

Whoever is choosing the masking texts for these spams has a great sense of humor.

Well it’s all right now

I’m in Harvard Square, near the Pit, listening to a not bad band pound out the Rolling Stones at full electrified volume. I walked through the Yard just now, and looked up at the third floor of Weld, and realized I wanted to record it. It’s odd; I remember Weld so distinctly, but that was onlu Harvard Summer School, and freshman year in the Yard has faded. I blame Jeanie and Fern. How else?

There’s a protest sign lying discarded by the side of Mass Ave, and the band is playing Hendrix.

It happens here

The other day, I was debating the legality of entering my apartment without prior notice with my landlord when my neighbor got home. My neighbor is French; I don’t know the first thing about him other than that. He’s quiet. My landlord gave up on our conversation, and started haranguing my neighbor about speaking French. “Don’t go speaking French around here! I don’t like what France has been doing!”

I wimped out; I didn’t tell him that my neighbor had every right to speak French if he wanted.

I live about a mile and a half from Harvard; about the same from Tufts, and maybe three miles from MIT. It doesn’t get much more liberal college town than this. Still, my landlord was yelling at my neighbor, because he is French.