triv.org

A few questions on my mind that no one seems to be asking:

1. Why hadn't Libby resigned long ago? It is not at all unusual for a second term white house to have a scandal or two. What is usual is for high level white house staffers to be indicted while still in office; they almost always resign long before.
2. What happened to Katrina, levees, and poor people? This was supposed to be the great flashlight, shinning onto the crippling poverty problems in this country. If a city underwater won't do it, what will?
3. Does anyone else think in strange that we're up to Hurricane Beta? We went thru the entire alphabet. When hurricanes start sounding like rush week something has gone horribly, horribly wrong.
4. Did they ever find The Scream? It's not like it's something you can sell. You're not fencing a stolen bracelet here, it's a priceless iconic work.
5. Where do republicans get off calling a grand jury inditement for perjury and obstruction of justice "a minor technicality" and "the criminalization of politics?" Clinton lied about a blowjob. There isn't a man or woman alive today that hasn't lied about oral sex. Libby lied about outing an undercover CIA operative for political revenge. This is within the context of fabricating a fictions cause for war. If the right gets to go crazy about a hummer with an intern, then everyone else gets to go crazy about high crimes and treason in the white house. Ok?
6. Why would setting a timetable for troop withdraws in Iraq embolden the insurgency? Every time someone asks the white house about a timetable, they say that a timetable would make things worse. Why? If I was fighting to get a foreign army out of my country, and they announced that they were leaving in six months, this would make me happier - not angrier. I want to understand Mr President. Please. Please break out of speaking points and give a reason or two. I beg of you.
7. Did you know that for every US troop that dies in Iraq, 12 Iraqis die? And that's using the official numbers. The real number is probably higher.

At my very first institute of higher learning, there was a lounge between my dorm and the cafeteria. It was shaped like a wedge, and given that this was a school of engineers and scientists, we called it The Wedge. In the wedge there were a group of people whom seemed to be there all the time. You would walk by and hear conversations about nethack and foam sword construction. Someone would be making chain mail. You know the sort of people I'm talking about - think Comic Book Guy meets Conan The Barbarian.

There were the wedgerats. Rattus Arcus.

My roommate was a wedgerat. In a strange way, wedgerats were really the soul of WPI's culture. People who were damn smart and didn't care in the least if that made them "different." So, you can imagine my surprise when, while searching for my partner for a project, I went to the math lounge on the fifth floor of Pray-Harrold.

There were a bunch of couches and a couple computers. Three guys where discussing the damage a sword created. Minus ten or minus eight? Eventually they had to go the blackboard to figure it out. I had found Justin by then, but at that moment I was transported back to my freshman year. At that moment I was back in the wedge. I was back at WPI.

I thought of deka, and crappy pizza bought at the end of A term so that the money in your meal plan didn't go to waste. I thought of Calc 4 and differential equations. I thought of the fountain in the middle of campus. I thought of friends, now all lost.

Those days at WPI where better than I gave them credit for at the time. They were probably better than I give them credit for today. Everytime I'm back at that campus I think about what might have been if I had stayed. I think I will always be a WPI engineer - not a MSU Spartan, or a Eastern Eagle. WPI will always be my school, even if I only went there for year. It was the only school I ever went to that fit me, and I will always carry a bit of that culture where ever I go. And if I'm feeling that it's slipping away, you'll find me up on the fifth floor of Pray-Harrold... talking about a foam sword.

Some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up does rejoice. Still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty that they're gone.

Well, it seems that Toby has just taken the long, lonely walk. I can't say I'm surprised that it happened, as it was rather telegraphed in the episode prior. I agree with The Fat Charlie in that this episode was much better than others from this season. I too thought the moment with Babish and Toby outside the Oval Office was pointed and powerful. Yet another moment when we saw a bit of the west wing die.

My favorite moment was not Toby and Babish though. No, my favorite scene was CJ and Will. Will has been returned to us. Will isn't a jackass anymore. At least - that's what it looks like. While the rest of Toby's story is certainly quite blury to us now, it looks to me that Will's is a bit more in focus. Now if we can just let Josh and Donna get it on. Really... is anyone watching the show for any other reason than that?

It could be said that Toby is Rove, and Rove is Toby. I don't think this is absolutely true. Rove is pure evil; a man that lives on the blood of kittens and has no reflection. Toby is just cranky. Rove outed a CIA operative as political payback against her husband. Toby tried to save lives by telling the world that the US is bringing the bomb into space. Rove's boss is an idiot. Toby's boss has a once in a generation mind.

That being said, it is awfully cute that this story is going on while a grand jury investigates the White House on charges of leaking national security information. I know that they try to keep the topics of the show relevant to current events, but can we have a little subtlety? Is that too much to ask for?

The B story sucked. Yes, I get that they wanted to show that Josh was no longer just Bartlett's son. That as Bartlett has to let go of a trusted aid, so must Josh (acting for Santos). It's a nice little bit of symmetry. The B story still sucked though. Some guy we didn't know, let alone care about, got fired. You know what they forgot to do? They forgot to bring the drama.

Yesterday I got rid of the first piece of furniture I ever owned, the futon. It was never going to survive the redecorating of the living room (or to be more accurate: the decorating of the living room), but it still is a bit of a shock to not see it around. I've had that futon for the better part of five years, it feels like another bit of the past let go.

In the same vane, I've unsubscribed from the perl5 porters mailing list. I realized last night, after Schwern announced his departure that I had no reason to be on the list, no reason at all. All I was getting was a mailbox full of mail I didn't read. It was at best vanity and at worst stupid. So I've unsubscribed, and I feel good about it. Cathartic is perhaps the word to use.

I recently received a free Shick Quattro razor with my purchase at the student book store. More and more I find the commercialization of college campuses to be disturbing. It's obvious that the Shick corporation isn't giving away razors in order to help a poor and rather ungroomed population be clean shaven models of nuclear family mortality. No, they want people to buy blades at three bucks a pop.

Everywhere you go on a campus today, large companies are giving away free shit. That is, usually they are giving away free shit with a catch. I suppose that this is really nothing more than a symptom of a greater trend in American culture, but the fact remains that the Shick company could have done any number of things to help education in this country. They could have created scholarships. They could have donated to underfunded colleges and universities. They could have helped inner-city kids. Instead they gave away razors at Eastern's book store, with the hope that you'll buy some of the blades.

I for one will not drink the Kool-aid - I'm holding out for a ten blade razor.

I had been aware for sometime of a hack that lets you use transparent PNGs with IE on windows. I had hoped to implement this hack for this site, as I use the alpha channel in PNGs a fair bit. Turns out that most of those hacks work on literal <img> tags, which make the hack useless to me.

And my hate grows a bit inside me.

It's not that I want to hate IE. I'm not objecting to it on moral or philosophical grounds, it just doesn't do its job very well. For how many years have people been asking for PNG support, and only recently did MS give in and annouce that such support is on the way. IE 7 is still a ways away, and until that day come windows users will either have to use Firefox or not see the fully pretty.

TNT is showing a beautiful HD transfer of The American President as I type this. The DVD transfer of The American President is just horrible, probably the worst transfer in my DVD collection. Someone needs to take the HD transfer, scale it to 480p, slap it onto a DVD, and ship it to me. Seriously, where's a special edition DVD when you need it.

I just watched Ala Maison Blanc. It's becoming very clear that the budget for that show has been reduced. Fewer and fewer people are seen in each show. We haven't seen Donna in the last three episodes. Abbey Bartlett is nowhere to be seen. Nancy Macnally. They killed Fitz. Ron Butterfield. Ginger. Bonny. Nancy. Larry. Ed. Danny. Carol. Anyone know what happened to Ansley Hayes? I sure don't. Sam. Will. Both vice presidents. Jordan Kendall. Zoey. And now? Looks like Toby is on the ropes.

Makes me nutty.

My one hope is that they're saving their money in order to do big things later in the season. I have to say that right now I am not impressed. The show is as bad right now as it was in the middle of season 5. It feels on life support; dead and weighty. Claustrophobic is the word that comes to mind. They should have never ever ever fired Aaron Sorkin. It's like trading Babe Ruth. Your show will be doomed to mediocrity for eighty years.

Nicole and I headed out to South Bend, and picked up her rodents. South Bend would be a good day drip if there was actually anything to do in South Bend. It's the perfect distance to drive. Long enough that you feel like you've done something of weight, but not so long that you get sick of being in the car. The roads in Indiana are great as well. This begs the question: Why can't the roads in Michigan be that good?

As you go down the turnpike in Indiana, you see cow sensors. Every thousand yards or so there's a steel poll with two focused radar guns and a solar panel. Every few of those signs has a sign and a warning light. I really want to go down there with a big sheet of sheet metal and some spare time. I bet I could get traffic to grind to a halt.

I've done a bit more tweaking on the new layout for the site. As I was talking to Jon about one of the pages, I realized that for the first time in a long time, I can easily debug a site on windows. I'll just swing by the lab on the fifth floor of Pray-Harrold, log into one of the PCs, and get to it. If I bring my laptop I can look at eight browsers on two operating systems all at the same time.

At the end of the evening, I watched Sin City. That movie is great - nuclear powered film noir high on ether and mescaline. I thought Elijah Wood was incredible as Kevin. He never uttered a word, but I found him disturbing and frightful. Between Sin City and the Hitchhikers Guide to The Universe, I have my next two DVD purchases figured out.

The new version is up. Check it out. There is still some work to do, such as getting a new home for my blogroll and the categories. I also have to fix up search, but it is such a hack at the moment that a ground up rewrite might be needed first. I'm off to bed. I have to transport rodents over state lines tomorrow.

There had been, for a short while, a bit of tension in my little clique of friends. Kyle, who typically has impeccable taste in such things, compared the movie version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy to The Phantom Menace. Jon meanwhile, declared that he found the movie quite enjoyable and found Kyle's position to be puzzling. I, feeling the need to add my voice to the fray, moved the movie to the top of my netflix queue and watched the DVD as soon as it arrived.

I really liked it. I'm not going to claim that it is some sort of seminal moment in cinema. It isn't Citizen Kane, or The Godfather, or Lawrence of Arabia. It is wonderfully amusing, well acted, well written, and visually stunning. I had forgotten just how compatible my sense of humor is with the Guide. I lost my big blue book a long time ago, but I think I shall replace it soon.

Saturday I am to help Nicole transport some rodents. Her and I are going to drive to South Bend, pick up some Chinchillas, and then drive back. I'm not completely sure why South Bend is the place to do this sort of thing, but I'm told it is. We're even going to meet up in a parking lot, as though we're doing something covert and subversive. I should bring along a large amount of cash in small bills and a dead hooker. No. Wait. What am I talking about? There's no way I could get a dead hooker by Saturday.

I do have a goodly list of things I want to discus with Nicole during the trip. I thought we might start with the Goths and the fall of the Roman Empire, then to dialectical materialism, Keynesian economics, Medieval Judaism (specifically the Jewish Oaths), postmodern literature, quantum electrodynamics, functional programming, the works of Kant, season four of M*A*S*H, the symbology of The Big Lebowski, Alan Turning, Mahler's 5th Symphony, and the River River syndrome. That should cover the first 15 minutes at least.

By the by, there won't be a party on the 22nd. Turned out that somewhere between one and two people could make it. This would have been a very dull party indeed. I'll throw one sometime in November, after I talk to everyone and figure out when the best day is.

Is it just me, or does it seem quite odd that Louis Freeh is taking this moment to write a book and hit the talk shows. Yes, I suppose that he might be doing this right now because right now is when he finished the book. Yes, I suppose that his motivations may be as pure as simply disliking Clinton. I don't think so though. I think someone is wagging the dog.

Right now, the Bush administration would like nothing better to change the subject. They thought that the nomination of Harriet Miers would flip the channel. Turns out that no one likes a person who calls President Bush "the most brilliant man I have ever met." So now, with serendipitous timing, Freeh has released a new book. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a return the right's most favorite past time: Clinton bashing. What we also have is a case of Wag The Dog. The question becomes, who is waging the dog and why is Freeh playing along.

Recently, I saw the Godfather for the first time. For all my life, I had heard about how great that movie was. Turns out, everyone was right. The Godfather is unbelievably good, a masterpiece that we may never see the likes of again. I am reminded of a wonderful Brando line from the Godfather:

Someday - and that day may never come - I'll call upon you to do a service for me. But until that day, accept this justice as gift on my daughter's wedding day.

Freeh left the FBI in June of 2001. He was not criticized for the first World Trade Center bombing, Oklahoma City, the USS Cole, or Columbine. In fact, he was not even criticized after 9/11. The 9/11 Commission report says that "Freeh recognized terrorism as a major threat." He departure is not questioned in the 9/11 report.

So Freeh, after messing up a few times, leaving the FBI a mess, and developing a Moby-Dick complex with Clinton; didn't kiss and tell. He was a good little boy. We all forgot about him. We ate chicken wings and watched sports games. We went to the beach. Then, one day, after cronyism, incompetence and plain stupidity had driven the President into a very deep hole, Freeh suddenly has a book ready to go and a good stream of anti-Clinton rhetoric to boot. And remember that Clinton is code of "democrats."

Do you know how naive you sound, Michael? Presidents and senators don't have men killed.

Oh. Who's being naive, Kay?

So. It's been far, far too long since a party took place at my house. I would like to hold one. It needs to be a few weeks in advance, so that people can make it, and it can't conflict with anything else going on.

This has proven harder than expected.

There will be a party, and as soon as I know when, you'll know. The problem is that right now the ideal party time frame is right in the middle of Halloween, and people have already filled that weekend up with goings on. Would people be interested in a party on the 22nd? Let me know.

I was invited to go to a programming competition for eastern. Turns out, I'm too old, with too many credits, to compete. My concerns regarding my programming class continue. On the plus side, it's nice to have a class where you just have to type.

My wireless network in my house has suddenly stopped working. At first I thought my wap might have died. I've had more than one wap die on me. Nope. Then I thought that perhaps there was some new interference. Nope. Right now, my laptop has 30% packet loss sitting next to the wap.

This led me to get my desktop hardwired to my home's network. Running the cable wasn't hard, but I had to open up the duct space my office is over and that didn't go so well. Tomorrow I'll get new wood and some stain. It will be good as new.

Hockey has returned, and it was wonderful to come home to a game already recorded on the tivo. The Wing are undefeated and all is right with the world. My heart goes out to Red Sox fans. We've been there.

So I just recently watched the latest episode of the West Wing. It was really bad. Yes, there was so good jokes in the show. I truely enjoyed the bit about the bed not being steel reenforced, but a funny joke does not a great episode make.

More than anything, I felt that the show was empty. I watched for my 42 minutes, but I don't feel that anything happened in that span of time. There was a lot of fast talking, and there was a lot jokes going left and right; but did anything important actually happen? No. We know nothing that we didn't know 42 minutes ago.

This seems to be the real problem in the post-Sorkin phase. We've lost all constancy. We've lost all pacing of story arcs. We've lost all sense of character development. Still, I keep watching. I love the show and the characters too much at this point to give up. The West Wing will be canceled soon, and I intend to ride this thing out until the end.

So I've had a night to sleep on it. I've had a few beers. I've talked to people about it. I've given it a great deal of thought.

Wash is dead, and dammit, I am not ok with that.

I realize that it's Joss Weadon, and if there is one thing that he loves it is killing off beloved characters. It makes all fuzzy inside I bet. Wash's death though, is just not something I can accept. It's as though in the middle of a West Wing episode they killed Charlie. It's Mrs. Landingham all over again, only this time it seems even more senseless.

Also, what was with the body count in Serenity? Seriously. People were dying all over the place in that movie. The body count in two hours of movie was at least ten times that of thirteen hours of TV show. Crazy.

All and all, I think it was ok. I think the television show was better. Not in tangible ways, but in things like tone, pacing, and focus. I imagine I'll go see it again, and I certainly will buy the DVD; but Serenity is not as dear to me as the television shows. It is, however, much more dear to me than any of the Star Wars prequels. Take that George.