Unrelated interlude

Hi! Here's a passage from Breton's Surrealist Manifesto:

If in a cluster of grapes there are no two alike, why do you want me to describe this grape by the other, by all the others . . . ? Our brains are dulled by the incurable mania of wanting to make the unknown known, classifiable . . . It is pointless to add that experience itself has found itself increasingly circumscribed. It paces back and forth in a cage from which it is more and more difficult to make it emerge . . . Forbidden is any kind of search for truth that is not in conformance with accepted practices . . .

Groovy. Here's Rilke's "The Panther"

His gaze is so wearied from the bars 

Passing by, that it can hold no more. 

It’s as if a thousand bars were given him: 

And behind the thousand bars, no world.

The soft pace of his powerful, supple stride, 

That draws him round in tightened circles, 

Is like the dance of force about a centre, 

In which a greater will stands paralysed.

Only, at times, the curtain of his pupils 

Silently rises – Then an image enters, 

Rushes through his tense, arrested limbs, 

And echoing, inside his heart, is gone.

Yesterday evening, I wasted a lot of time reading many, many translations of that poem. Most were bad.

img credit

Mysophobia watch: Swine Flu edition

It probably doesn't rise to the level of a clinical phobia, but my phobia of mysos has been kicked up a notch by swine flu plus fatherhood. And all of a sudden I find myself dwelling on this:

I mean, everybody's reaching in there to pull out a stir-stick. And there is no way to grab one without getting one's grubby fingers all over the others. And if there's a convention for doing this--like grab on the left, stir with the right--I'm not aware of it.

Everyone's working for the weekend

Bachelor living

I think I learned how to make a new sound this morning.

Normal posting to resume shortly

What I've been up to.

How not to gain weight over the holidays

Stomach flu.

Posts concerning important issues will resume before too long

Unless it's already been too long. Anyway, in the mean time, WTF?

A true and harrowing tale of Windows

A little while ago I set out to reserve a zipcar for tomorrow morning. I went to the website, plugged in the date information, and got nothing but an error message. "Pickup time is in the past," it said. In red. I double checked. It looked right. I clicked on the calendar gizmo. It only showed dates from September. I confirmed with a co-worker that the present month is, in fact, August. I frowned.

Because I didn't just fall off the turnip truck it occurred to me that the problem might be with my computer rather than with Zipcar's website. So it was off to the Date & Time control panel for me. Just as I thought, my computer had the date wrong. Easy enough to fix manually, but as I like to have everything as accurate as possible I decided to use an internet time server. I clicked on the appropriate button and my computer checked things out with Microsoft's internet time server.

There was only one problem. The time server -- time.windows.com -- had the date wrong. No worries. Microsoft thoughtfully gives you the option of using the time server run by the naval observatory. So I clicked on the appropriate button and waited. And waited. And waited. "An error occurred," Windows helpfully informed me.

Annals of strange behavior

While walking around this afternoon I came across a man standing on a street corner taking pictures. His camera was a lot like my dad's old Pentax, so naturally I looked at it pretty closely while waiting for the light to change. It had what looked like, at first glance, a long telephoto lens. But it wasn't! I guess you could call it a periscope lens. The glass at the end was fake. Or, rather, it was real glass but it wasn't a lens. Instead, there was an opening near the end with an angled mirror peeking through it. He was pretending to take pictures of something across the street, but was actually taking pictures of the people who stood next to him while waiting for the light to change. Odd.

News from the grad labor movement

Partner benefit criteria revised

Travel advisory

Hey, I'm contemplating heading down to Texas for a week or so in July or August. Would any weekend in particular be a good time to be in Austin?

The thing about cliches...

...is that sometimes they are true. For example: Strike while the iron is hot.

Update: A stitch in time saves nine.

When doom comes calling, don't pick up

Wash your hands, computer geeks! by Wade Rockett.

I didn't see the debate last night, so it's a slow-post day from Austin. Consider this an open thread to discuss anything we should be blogging about. In the meantime:

Mobile Phone Virus Scare Jumps from Pakistan to Afghanistan

Rumours last week were spread around Pakistan that a deadly virus was being sent through mobile phones, and that anyone answering phone calls from some certain numbers would contract a fatal illness. The rumours claimed that "as soon as you answer your phone blood comes out of your mouth, nose and ears and you die"

The cellular operators moved to calm down subscribers and said in a joint statement "These rumors are completely baseless. They do not make any sense in technological terms." Farah Hussain, a spokeswoman for Warid Telecom, told Reuters that their customer service centers had been inundated with panicky subscribers inquiring about the so-called virus. | link

Okay, so that's not too interesting. But consider that the only other thing I had to post was Maternacord.

Truly, we are as brothers unto one another

So there's this guy working in my building who lacks, shall we say, a sunny disposition. Gary, the carpenter I used to work with back when I was a garage door repairman, would have said, "That cocksucker's a mean old cuss."

Anyway, over the last eighteen months or so my interactions with this guy basically consisted of me passing him in the hallway, maybe saying good morning, and him glowering and maybe asking a pointed question along the lines of, "Do you know why that fucking couch is in the goddamn hallway?"

But then last week he came upon me while I was cussing at the newly repaired water fountain (which water fountain now produces chilled water, but directs it back away from its operator, meaning that you'd better bring a glass if you want a drink, or be willing to stand behind rather than in front of the water fountain, which would be a good trick if you could pull it off). Apparently we are now great friends. Now whenever I encounter him instead of giving me the hairy eyeball he lets me know who or what has pissed him off at the moment.

For the record, today it's the homeless guys who hang out in the alley behind the building.

I ain't tryin to round up drama

Here at the big bad grad union we've just finished up a semester long effort to modify the constitution (yawn) and raise dues (yikes!). In the end, we collected votes from 620 members and, naturally, they decided by an overwhelming margin to approve both changes. I don't think this news will mean much to anybody who isn't involved in the day to day affairs of a grad union, but let's just say that I'm extremely pleased and very tired.

We've also been working on this.