“Night fell like Rome: slowly, and with elephants.”
Holly should write for the Bulwer-Lytton awards. (As for the quiz, let’s just say I am not “Nine well read” and leave it at that.)
Category: People
Seth David Schoen’s latest entry features a mention of the EFF and the CBLDF in the same section. It’s Seth David Schoen: Brendan’s Pet Issues Edition!
Seth also writes a great little story-essay about confabulation, the practice of making up reasonable, untrue explanations for events and then completely believing them. Some people believe “that confabulation is actually our normal method of thinking,” he says. This is not too far off the mark for me–I constantly catch myself coming up with perfectly sensible stories for actions (being in the theater building late at night, say, or buying snack cakes) for which ordinary reasons already exist. It’s a bad habit, but when you have a memory as bad as mine, it comes in kind of handy. There is, after all, the distinct possibility that the explanation I just made up (to apply to an action for which I’ve forgotten my original reasoning) is actually the real one.
It’s also good for explaining bizarre trivia. I have a good stock of facts in that category, but precious little background on them when challenged. If you ever ask me something you really need to know, and I give you a strange answer, you should probably call me out on it. (I’m usually right, but even so.)
Actually, the reason I started my running commentary on this vitanuova entry is because of the first section. It describes his brilliant exploit of the Southwest LAX-OAK commuter flight system, which is like something you’d see pop up in BlogNomic. Seth and I actually discussed LAX-OAK commuter flights on the day I got to hang out at the EFF offices, since Maria and I (and maybe Monica) will be taking advantage of them this summer.
Do you read vitanuova? You really should. Not only will it make you smarter, it will also free Dmitry! Vitanuova: Freeing Dmitry since March 2001.
Last night Ian, Caitlan and I hopped in Ian’s car amidst pouring rain and drove down to Planet Thai in Lexington, where (as per Mom’s instructions) we surprised Joe at his birthday dinner. I’m not actually sure how old Joe is. My guess would be “bearded years old.”
In addition to Joe’s Eddie Bauer gift certificate, I got to give out the last of my California souvenirs–Joe got a t-shirt, Mom got a bar of Lily soap from the European-goods store in Lawrence, and Caitlan got a green Robin Hood hat from a vintage store in Berkeley (Ian had already received his copy of All Flesh Must Be Eaten). It was fun, especially since I had wrap-bagged the presents in the car, while sitting right in front of Caitlan.
Planet Thai was, by Mom and Joe’s well-honed Thai standards, a bit mediocre. Ian didn’t much like his pad thai, but I ate a whole lot of my crab fried rice. It was pretty subtle, though. It could have used about eight or ten more pounds of crab.
Ian and I left everybody else behind to continue on yet to Richmond, where we met the famous Katie and went bowling. Ian and Katie called each other names, and I bowled a two. This is harder than you’d think, especially with the gutter bumpers in.
Richmond doesn’t look strange yet, or maybe it doesn’t look strange anymore; I mentally moved out of there sometime during my senior year of high school. Not much has changed, except for the increase in liquor stores, which is rapidly approaching parity with the population.
It was a long night of driving, and I’m glad Ian was courteous enough to be my ride, especially with the roads as awful as they were at first. I fell asleep for a while on the way back (Mom and Dad drove me around when I was a baby to get me to sleep, so I pretty much always do this), and I think at one point I woke myself up by snoring. My neck hasn’t been quite right since, but on the other hand, I’m not dead in a car crash either. Ten points.
Oh, sure, Leonard may have 81 pictures of the trip, and sure, I have like, ten. But does he have himself in the plastic mullet? Well, he probably could. Pretty easily.
Maria’s state map is… I don’t know, she has to be cheating. Apparently the absence of West Virginia is a subject of much debate in her family.
Post Road Trip Day Something
I cleaned a lot of plates in Berkeley, pumped a lot of pain in the EFF offices. But I never saw the good side of the city… until I played Illuminati with Leonard, Seth and Zack while Sumana danced to songs about shell accounts.
Actually I saw several very neat sides of the city, including BART (which beats the tar out of TARC, I’m afraid, leaving it with one measly C) and Salon Central. I missed out on the party at City Hall, but I sure heard a lot about it. The weather was gorgeous, and I made new friends (Jacob from Alaska is three, and he and I played hide-and-seek from O’Hare to Louisville).
Recent excursions into Powellian hyperbole notwithstanding, I had a freaking great time in California, thanks entirely to my kind and generous hosts. Even though I’ve been up for about 30 hours trying to grab the tail end of all the work I missed, I don’t regret a thing, and I can’t wait to go back. Maria and I spent a good chunk of yesterday (when I should have been, um, grabbing the aforementioned work-tail) making the first real arrangements for this summer’s Calicomicon journey. The Five Lords of the Texas Eagle will sow terror and reap, um, comic books!
Road Trip Day 6
Picked up one of Leonard’s dozens of backup clone-bodies in Sin City, so the parity of Leonard:Brendan was restored to full efficiency. We attempted to employ a magnet-gun scheme to make millions at the roulette table, but were defeated when they wouldn’t accept our bets in Berendes Bucks.
We thoroughly rocked Bakersfield, as assisted by Leonard’s mom Frances Whitney, Three-Time Champion of the World. Yesterday, we limped at last into San Fran, Destination City, where I had dinner with a conspiracy of interwebbian luminaries whose URLs I don’t have time to look up right now. Fortunately, I managed to pick the hay out of my teeth before my beef ‘n’ rice ‘n’ plantains arrived.
Today, maybe Berkeley, certainly Salon, then dinner and who knows what.
So I’m gonna have to jump!
Road Trip Day 3
Still alive. Typing slowly after losing three fingers to frostbite. Have taken shelter with kind Susanna and John in Provo, Utah.
Stayed a night at Days Inn, Sidney, Nebraska. Crossed the border at 0900. Wyoming was very bad. Windy. Snow in the pass. Got desperate. Ate Leonard. Still feel cold, so deep in bones. The cold. The wind.
Tomorrow: Vegas.
Road Trip Day 1
We have reached Lawrence, Kansas, and have been fed a delicious and restorative meal by Alyson and Dave themselves. This has soothed our battered spirits, aggravated by a day spent mostly slap-fighting over the XM radio. Leonard has some advantage, in that he can attempt to swipe other cars on the passenger side to jar my grip. I, meanwhile, have two free hands and thus twice the slap potential. It’s a very close match; tomorrow, I plan to fill my pockets with sand to throw in his eyes. I’ve seen him eyeing the PASNGR EJCT button, and there’s no way I’m getting rocketed out into Kansas before we reach Cheyenne.