massdestruction

The Suicide Penalty

Does anyone else but me find it really odd that L.A. might seek the death penalty for the guy who derailed the train in an attempted suicide?

The idea of "finishing the job" doesn't seem to appear in the reporting, but these lovely thoughts do:

Because this man was distressed, 11 people are dead from his selfishness...

-- Steve Cooley, L.A. District Attorney

He chickened out, he killed innocent people but not himself.

-- Sheriff Lee Baca of L.A. County

Hey, I'm sad that eleven people lost their lives too and maybe I'm just a bleeding heart liberal but damn, cut the dude a break! This guy lost his wife and house and tried to kill himself, doesn't anyone think he might need some help? I understand the need to prosecute but I don't understand the need for the death penalty nor do I understand having to say such cold and heartless things about the guy.

Ernie Barnes

My roommate in college was a painter. His studio in the art school was shared by a guy who looked like the character "Waingro" in the movie Heat. I used to silently laugh at this guy's paintings because they reminded me of the paintings Jimmy "J.J." "Kid Dynomite" Walker's character "J.J." painted on the show Good Times. This evening I saw a Geico commercial where a guy asks his girlfriend about his cool blacksploitation painting and it got me thinking about J.J.'s paintings.

Enter Google.

It turns out that the paintings were real and painted by a guy named Ernie Barnes who was born down the road in Durham, N.C. He played football in the 60s for a few NFL teams and then retired to focus on his art. His style will be quite familiar to devotees of Good Times. I really dig them.

Ladies and Jellyfish, I present to you Ernie Barnes.

Catcher in the Rye

When I was eleven years old John Lennon was murdered. I was a big John Lennon fan even then. Today I learned who really killed John Lennon and I have to admit that the information doesn't make it any easier.

Moving van

My picture for my PAW this week was taken while I was stuck in that amazing traffic jam. It is simply a van passing under an overpass on the side of the highway that was actually moving.

Demoflat

You can give the BBC somewhat of a pass considering this is not their country, but "Democrats defiant over Bush term" might be true for party members like me, but certainly not for the leadership. If anything its been roll-over time for the actual Democrat politicians.

Excedrin is not a good name

After yesterday's massive traffic jam, I have waken from slumber with an enormous headache. Luckily for me, Ian has an amazingly funny blog post this morning. Laughter is indeed the best medicine.

Taffic Jam-a-saurus

Our dog is currently a patient at VetHab to help him start using his bum leg again. The problem with this is that it is in Raleigh and he has to stay there from about 8am to 4pm. Raleigh is a twenty minute drive from our house... normally.

Today some freakin' history was made. We had a light dusting of snow - seriously, a dusting. Despite the small amount all the schools freaked out and closed. This meant that all the parents hit the road to grab the kiddies. Now we have an historic traffic jam on our hands. At 2:30pm I saw it forming and decided to hit the road thinking it would take an hour and half or two hours to retrieve my dog.

Four and a half hours later... I am home. I do not have my dog. I simply could not get to him. Luckily they are a boarding kennel too. Kill me now.

Half naked

My picture for my PAW this week is one that came late in the week. I was downtown with a friend picking up a pizza to eat during the UNC basketball game and this gaggle of people came running around the corner singing. I don't know if they had anything to say, I can't explain them... but here they are. Enjoy.

NOOOOOOO!!!!

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!!!!!!

Seymour Hersh has very rarely been wrong in his reporting - I hate that my country does these things damnit!!

Pigs in space

Not too long ago the Daily Show had Richard Branson as a guest. After he pushed his stupid reality show and his Virgin space ship plans, Jon Stewart wondered why guys with the drive and money like Branson couldn'y do something useful like tackling hunger in Africa. Branson had absolutely nothing to say - he was stuck - he turned red. I imagine that the encounter changed nothing.

Today we have another billionaire publically wanking with his money. Hooray.

Also rhymes with dicker

Hey squishy, I completely agree with you about Flickr. I was skeptical about it until I started using it. There are some real quality photogs on there and loads of very, very bad ones. However, this is the best photo I have seen so far on Flickr.

Wrangle that text

I was reading in between all the Mac freaks drooling over the new iPod that Bare Bones Software released Text Wrangler for free recently. I know that BBEdit users are a bit religious over their app but not as much as Emacs users. I could never imagine paying that much money for something that does about half as much as Emacs but is still basically the same. However, TW is basically an even more cripled Emacs as it is a featureless BBEdit from the same folks. I decided to download TW to see if, like BBEdit, it had Emacs keystrokes enabled. It does.

So, if you are an Emacs freak like me and you want something fairly light, fast, and native to run on your Mac, check it out

Hey buddy, I'll ping ya

When I was working at Red Hat I was keeping a running list of the extremely lame business-speak catch phrases and words. I did this first as a source of humor and second because I couldn't believe how lame things had gotten around the building with that kind of crap moving in. The problem I had with it was that often these things were used when the person had absolutely no idea what to say, what to do, or how to admit either of those facts. Things like "maximize the pipeline throughput" made me sick. Things like "let's huddle on that" made me laugh.

Since I have been out of the corporate environment (oh thankyou, thankyou, thankyou!!) I have not been able to add to the list. In fact, I don't even know if I have a copy around. This morning however, as I sit eating breakfast at our local food co-op and hit the free Carrboro wireless I am forced to sit beside two folks talking business. I now have a new phrase.

"We need somebody to honcho this thing."

Brilliant.

Update: Since I have been here I have heard these two business associates plan 8 seperate meetings. Eight! If we Americans worked as much as we meet we'd be number one in every industry.

Earthquake weather

The barrista at the coffee shop I frequent made the claim today that the Sumatra earthquake that spawned the tsunamis was the catalyst for our unusually warm weather (we are stuck in a 70°F January). While I can't make a logical connection from the earthquake to our weather that fast, I do wonder if an earthquake of that magnitude could make measurable weather changes? However, IANAS. So if you are a scientist and have such information (cough cough, jfleck) I would love to know.

I don't think I will go into the coffee shop and correct the woman making the aforementioned claims, but it is something I'd like to know.

PAW 2005

I am starting a new PAW (Photo a Week) for 2005 (I skipped 2004). This is my first image, its Ruben who serves me coffee.

I will serve 'em up by Sunday every week at http://www.dmason.net/PAW/

Jay

You be careful. Jay kick your butt.

Michael Schumaker

Before sponsorships, Michael Schumacher (the best known athelete most Americans don't know) makes $33 million a year. After sponsorships there is no telling.

Today Michael Shumacher personally pledged $10 million to the tsunami victims.

That's just $5 million less than Bush initially pledged - good for you Mr. Shumacher, good for you. Maybe one of our insanely rich American atheletes will read the story and donate something similar. Maybe they already have - if so, good for them too.

Mmmmmm, feet

Sometimes Cate is luckier than I am and gets a good foot-bath from Zola. She says she doesn't like it but I'm not sure.

Scrabble© Brand Crossword Game

Tonight was a rare night as I beat Cate in the Scrabble© Brand Crossword Game by Milton Bradley. This is a very rare thing indeed. The move that put me over the top was using all my letters, on a triple word score space, with the word SQUEEZE. The z was a blank tile but that was 106 points in one freakin' go.

I will probably not win again in 2005.