Just finished reading Starship Troopers...I don't know why I never picked it up before.  I liked the movie quite a bit for its cleverness as a tongue-in-cheek propaganda film, but after reading the book I see the film now as almost a mockery of the values that Heinlein extols, values that often lie very close to my own.

So my question is this:  How ( Read more... )

Hey, does this remind anyone else of the elevators-full-of-blood shot from The Shining?

Pretend my hand is a cell phone.  This:

( Read more... )

Well, off to the field for a week...Area Quebec-Quebec, to be precise.  Let's put this wireless Interbuttz access to the test.

Cut and pasted from a drunken rant on www.akpcep.com:

I remember the predictions of doom for May 5, 2000, when several planets lined up.  I looked forward to it:  no more gray areas!  Good and Evil would make themselves evident amid the catastrophes!  Gravity!  Imbalance!  Chaos!  Tsunamis!  Death!  Destruction!

Last I checked, there was enough of ( Read more... )

Well, seven of the most action-packed and fun-filled weeks in The Life and Times of Duncan-O recently came to their inevitable and happy conclusion.  First, and most profoundly, I got really fucking sick.  For someone who hasn't missed a day of work (at least to actual sickness) in seven years, it was quite a shock.  Fever-induced (no, not the fun ( Read more... )

I'm back at work after two weeks on convalescent leave.  And since my dead-man physical profile doesn't let me do anything that might rupture my poor tender mono-stricken spleen until March 31st, my unit has decided to send me to Office Bitch School to learn how to handle the unit's paperwork.

I really have mixed feelings about this.  It is a ( Read more... )

In his essay "Politics and the English language," George Orwell provides six simple rules for all writers of English:

• Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
• Never use a long word where a short one will do.
• If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
• Never use the passive voice where ( Read more... )

1) When you are paying for a nice meal, do you automatically expect more from your server ( Read more... )

Mono is the coolest thing ever.  I love having it.  It's going to provide me with all kinds of opportunities to catch up with all the things I love to do but never get to--like staring blankly at the wall, hovering in that feverish nightmare state between sleep and miserable wakefulness, and gently hocking up disgustingly vast quantities of phlegm ( Read more... )