older log newer log reply about archive search home words site news talking place XML (RSS) Confirmation Number:	Thursday, June 12, 2003   Well, here I am again! All sorts of busyness, perhaps not much wisdom. Family arrived on Tuesday for a visit, and on Wednesday M and I had a very nice fancy lunch to celebrate our advanced state of matrimony, as well as hanging out by various romantic lakes and bookstores (family being very useful to look after the kids while one is doing such things). Various readers assure me that You really, really, *really* want an ipod. And I'm beginning to think that that's true. Opening iTunes to my entire library and hitting "Shuffle" is a great way to fill the house with randomness, but it seems like rather a waste of a whole computer. And if I want to listen with earphones while walking around the house, the iBook is an akward fit in the pocket. One reader even goes so far as to offer Gee, I'll buy you an iPod. I love the log. And for the inscription? "BAZOO You Dog! We love YOU!" We are inexpressibly grateful for the thought! But M would probably think it odd (to stop without a farmhouse near, between the words and snowy lake, the darkest evening of the year) if people started buying me stuff. Although I could put up a little Paypal "help buy me an iPod!" button -- no, no, no, no, very silly. The "BAZOO You Dog" phrase is noteworthy for not appearing in Google (yet), as (oddly enough) is "Quest for Spinach", which is the title of a song. I'll have to get the lyrics and post them around here somewhere. A reader with a marvelous sense of humor writes, in email with subject "curious question here": you know anything about a yahoo webcam hack? Hee hee hee hee hee! Thanks for keeping us high on the Google list for that phrase, though. This is Daniel's brain. Any questions? Nice to see that even in the depths of the Blogoverse, the spirit of Usenet lives on. Here are a couple of Tao Te Ching links I've had lying around for a bit: [link] [link] "Should we not classify web browsing as a form of dreaming?"
	Monday, June 9, 2003   Wow, almost forgot entirely about this here "weblog" thing again. So what's going on? The little daughter has her braces (she looks incredibly cute, but I probably shouldn't say that because she might read this and get mad at me). The meetings that were two hours away last week are right close by this week, but I'll only be going to them a little because of Other Commitments. Wednesday is [M and I]'s twentieth wedding anniversary; yipes! I took the winter cover off of the Big Tub of Water this evening (I kept meaning to do it on weekends, but it kept raining); maybe tomorrow if it doesn't rain I'll get the pumps and filters and all going. The thermometer says that the water temperature is already up in the mid 50's; nice and brisk! *8) I'm thinking of telling M (did I already say this?) not to get me anything for Father's Day or our anniversary or maybe even my birthday this year, and getting an iPod. Do I actually want an iPod? (Oh, yeah, I did already say this; I remember one reader saying it was a Good Thing.) If I did get an iPod, what should I have engraved on the back? Two lines, twenty-odd characters each. Too tempting! I could always, of course, fall back on "My Nose is on Fire". On our Great Truth experiment the other day, a reader points out that a key passage from the Diamond Sutra: "Form is emptiness; emptiness also is form. Emptiness is no other than form; form is no other than emptiness." is already self-inverse under a similar transform. It's tempting to apply a somewhat more mischevious operation, yielding something like "Form is not emptiness; emptiness also is not form. Emptiness is other than form; form is other than emptiness." The result comes out sort of... different. Maybe the opposite, on a certain possibly-important scale, of the Lao Tzu, or the Diamond Sutra, is something like a Tidy-Bowl jingle, or a Britney Spears lyric. Or maybe they're all all the same too. "Wisdom is foolishness; foolishness also is wisdom. Foolishness is no other than wisdom; wisdom is no other than foolishness." But is Britney Spears merely foolish? Are we tending here toward Nietzche's Ass? What hidden wisdom is it to wear long ears, and only to say Yea and never Nay! Hath he not created the world in his own image, namely, as stupid as possible? The ass, however, here brayed YE-A. A reader gives a lucid explanation of that odd spam the other day: printf("...82% of your...").... Indeed! I should have thought of that. And another coins us a new aphorism: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good [folks] do nothing." One person's evil is another person's homeland security. Speaking of which, those idiots are at it again. I really don't understand it; what sort of upbringing must someone have had to think that you can defend something good by controlling what people can do to a symbol of it? That's so weird...
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