Work in Progress

the thin blue line

Over the past few weeks, I've become a fan of The Walking Dead, an excellent sci-fi show depicting a post-apocalyptic world dominated by zombies.

Following the main characters as they attempt to navigate a horrific world overrun by the living dead has been fascinating because you realize how quickly our society could fall apart with the subtraction of one key, but often overlooked, ingredient: electricity.

These 21st century folks have all the weapons they could need (show is set in the Georgia so everyone was presumably armed to the tits before the zombies even took over), have decent access to food and water, gasoline is readily available via siphoning yet "the world", by almost any definition, has ended. Why? No juice. The electrical grid has collapsed so the production of everything has ceased and the survivors merely consume what's left over from before zombies took over. 

It's amazing how little importance we place on the grid in our everyday lives. No electricity means cooking is back to open flame, hot showers become a bittersweet memory, communications revert to pre-Industrial Revolution mode. Internet? We're talking smoke signals, folks. We marvel at what we have while overlooking what makes it run to a surprising degree.

We marvel at so many modern advancements today, it's funny how easily we overlook the one invention which makes them all possible.

carry that weight

 

In my humble opinion, the B side medley on The Beatles' Abbey Road is the epitome of popular music.

I never get tired of listening to it and Phil Collins did a very nice job on producer George Martin's Tribute project about 14 years ago.

Enjoy.

(PS: If you're confused by the "B side" reference, ask your parents.)

read this, please

The following is fantastic.

I’ve been thinking of a way to explain to straight white men how life works for them, without invoking the dreaded word “privilege,” to which they react like vampires being fed a garlic tart at high noon. It’s not that the word “privilege” is incorrect, it’s that it’s not their word. When confronted with “privilege,” they fiddle with the word itself, and haul out the dictionaries and find every possible way to talk about the word but not any of the things the word signifies.

So, the challenge: how to get across the ideas bound up in the word “privilege,” in a way that your average straight white man will get, without freaking out about it?

Being a white guy who likes women, here’s how I would do it:

Dudes. Imagine life here in the US — or indeed, pretty much anywhere in the Western world — is a massive role playing game, like World of Warcraft except appallingly mundane, where most quests involve the acquisition of money, cell phones and donuts, although not always at the same time. Let’s call it The Real World. You have installed The Real World on your computer and are about to start playing, but first you go to the settings tab to bind your keys, fiddle with your defaults, and choose the difficulty setting for the game. Got it?

Okay: In the role playing game known as The Real World, “Straight White Male” is the lowest difficulty setting there is.

This is just a taste.

Read the rest here.

If your kids are old enough, make them read it.

This is a work of genius.

h/t to Ian for the link.

Ned Stark cake pops

Genius.

Only complaint is they're not for sale, but the recipe is here.

elephant tales

First, watch this.

 

Now, read this.

We should either be a positive part of the life on this planet, or we should just GTFO.

Touché.

45 year-old, in passenger seat: So, let me get this straight, tonight I get to watch one kid play soccer in the rain and tomorrow afternoon I have to watch the other kid play soccer, in the rain??

9 year-old, playing video game: Well, you don't do stuff in the rain that anyone could watch.

12 year-old, looking out the window: Yeah Dad, it's not like you do insurance policies outside.

 

 

please pay no attention to the man behind the keyboard

In a pissy mood yesterday, I said I was quitting the blog.

Having gotten a good night's sleep and come to my senses, I have resolved to continue the blog and discontinue the pissy moods. As you were.

closing time

I've been wrestling with what to do with the blog for a while, I'd actually settled on resuming writing as late as Friday, but I've decided to shut it down.

Not feeding it has become a bit of a distraction and I'm quite content to express myself in 140 character spurts when the mood arises so, until we meet again, thank you for reading.

 

 

The eternal question: Gandalf vs. Dumbledore

 

Then again, there are still got 3,000 pages to go in Game of Thrones so who knows.

best cardboard arcade ever been made

Just watch. I'll meet you there.

You may think this is a story about the power of the internet but it's not. It's about the human spirit, perseverance and ingenuity. And it's lovely.

Enjoy.