www.leefur.com

[Snapfish link]

 

Ah, Halloween - when people get to hide behind masks and do what they otherwise wouldn't. Unless you're in Pacific Beach, in which case people probably would have anyway, but now they can with masks on.

This weekend's Halloween party (thanks Amanda/Kate/Bart/Tyler) was quite a hoot, let me tell you.

First off, that's me up there on the left. Damn sexy, as usual. Can you guess the concept? Took me almost a minute to put it together, too. "Lazy Pothead" ... genius.

Anyway, was there a lot of gayness at your Halloween bashes? What is it about a man dressing up femme that makes another man that's dressed up kinda femme get all femme all over the first femme man? I mean, these two were photographically inseparable!

 

 

 

 

 

Fortunately, there were plenty of stunning actual , female-equipped, real-life womens there as well. Who could be unhappy at a place with all this...

Anyway, here's another link to the photo album. LINK

Enjoy, and please leave your reactions in the comments box (link below).

I'm waiting for Snapfish to wake up and send me a link to the photos from this weekend's sinful bash (if drinking is a sin). Check back every minute from now until whenever that finally happens. Ready ... go!

Refresh. Click. Refresh...

So it's taken me forever to finish a book, mostly because I started too many at once (Machievelli's "The Prince, Darwin's "Origin of Species", Dylan's "Chronicles", a couple books on Zen, and a couple lighter "bathroom reads"). Eventually I focused on just this one, Robert Pirsig's signature work.

"Zen" tells the story of a man (our narrator) on a month-long motorcycle journey with his son, Chris, across the northwestern United States. Motorcycle maintenance becomes a vehicle for explaining the differences between a 'rational', machinistic approach (which would lead to a narrow view of a problem, and significant periods of "stuckness") and more of a creative, artisan approach (which is focused on fully deconstructing the problem to its roots and allows for nonstandard solutions). As their trip continues, our narrator tells the story of Phaedrus, an intellectual from a few decades back with radical ideas on a philosophical approach to ... well, everything ... with whom the narrator seems to have some connection.

Phaedrus is codifying a new take on our world, not based on the rigid subject-object duality on which we have based our Western advancement, but rather centered around Quality. The particulars here can get daunting, and I'll spare those here in favor of letting you read the book. But the concept of Quality is the central piece in this new philosophy.

The philosophy stuff was fantastically interesting, managing to bring together religion, science, philosophy, sociology and more into a single cohesive concept. Bravo for that - simply amazing. But the book at times reads more like a philosophy text than a novel, leaving the more story-based interludes (driving through the hills, etc) as welcome repreaves. I should have invested in the study guide I'm about to purchase to read along with the book, rather than after.

But you could always take a more leisurely approach to reading this. The philosophy in here can make you feel pensive and at ease with the world around you, and the story, though perhaps a bit understated, has a nice arc to it. On the whole, this is an excellent read if youhave an interest in philosophy and question the nature of how we judge ourselves, beauty, success, etc. "Zen" itself is a bit player at the most. As a letter grade, I'll give this one an A-.

On Amazon: the book, the studyguide

A couple weeks back, I mentioned my selection in a battle of wits. My six word novel was chosen as one of three to be designed by legend Cey Adams onto a shirt that would be sold to benefit the Red Cross. Anyway, the shirts are available. Here's the link.

When I woke up this morning, it was pleasantly cool in my apartment, with a cool ocean breeze bringing the temperature in my place to the low 60s. The kind of air that makes you wanna curl up under the blanket. Deeeee-lightful.

But I had to get out of the blanket, because the office is not inside there. Stupid office. Anyway, so I got up and started getting dress and as I considered my wardrobe options, I looked forward to a motorcycle ride taking this cool air at 80 miles per hour. Naturally, I put on a sweater to help me carry that snuggled-under-the-blanket feeling with me.

The ride in was also delightful. I was nice and warm.

Then I got to work, and all day I've gotten comments on the sweater. Mostly playful ridicule, which is completely welcome. Mind you, we're not talking one of those my-gramma-knitted-this sweaters, but rather a Club Monaco, thin wool type.

Anyway, just thought I'd share that Californians seem to react to The Sweater with confusion, fear, and ridicule, the way the rest of us may react to the Okapi.

Have you ever noticed that "penis" is lodged in the tail end of "happiness"?

It is my duty as a cynical, marginally intelligent American to question our leaders, to expect more of them than I do of myself, and to make fun of them. Lots of fun. Poke, poke. If I wasn't such a damn lazy American, I would put together this site, DubyaSpeak.com. To whet your whistle, the top 10 Dubyisms:

TOP 10 AS SELECTED BY DUBYASPEAK VIEWERS

10. At this Thursday, ticket counters and airplanes will fly outta Ronald Reagan Airport.
9. Laura and I will thank them from the bottom of my heart.
8. When you have your own money, it means you've got more money to spend.
7. The benefits of helping somebody is beneficial.
6. We're in for a long struggle, and I think Texans understand that. And so do Americans.
5. Sometimes when I sleep at night I think of "Hop on Pop".
4. I promise you I will listen to what has been said here, even though I wasn't here.
3. And one of the things we've got to make sure that we do is anything.
2. We're making the right decisions to bring the solution to an end.
1. Border relations between Canada and Mexico have never been better.

TOP 10 AS SELECTED BY THE EDITOR (from the remainder of the collection)

10. I've been to war. I've raised twins. If I had a choice, I'd rather go to war.
9. I am mindful not only of preserving executive powers for myself, but for predecessors as well.
8. You teach a child to read and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test.
7. No, I know all the war rhetoric, but it's all aimed at achieving peace.
6. My mom often used to say, "The trouble with W" -- although she didn't put that to words.
5. In 1994, there were 67 schools in Texas that were rated "exemplorary" according to our own tests.
4. I know what I believe. I will continue to articulate what I believe and what I believe -- I believe what I believe is right.
3. Africa is a nation that suffers from incredible disease.
2. I understand small business growth. I was one.
1. Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream.

Go play with the site a bit. They have tons of audioclips of Bushy flubbing his lines, and even some video clips. Like one of him flippin the bird to the camera that I'm not allowed to link to (go find it - Dubya Incidents, "Fratboy Statesman"). God help us.

Again, the link.

(I found this through a link on Graffiti)

 

 

(lifted in full from BoingBoing)

This piece from last August's New Yorker documents the fascinating hunt for the fake word inserted into the New Oxford American Dictionary. These fake words are inserted by dictionary editors as a kind of watermark to catch competitors who copy their dictionaries wholesale. The process of figuring out which of the words in the NOAD was the fake was quite involved, with six candidates sent around to a panel of distinguished language-scholars who had a vigorous debate about whether each word was a fake:

The six words and their definitions were e-mailed to nine lexicographical authorities. Anne Soukhanov, the U.S. General Editor of Encarta Webster's, was the first to weigh in. "Ess-kwa-val-ee-ohnce--I want to pronounce it in the French manner--is your culprit," she said. Six other experts also fingered "esquivalience," citing various rationales. "It's just trying a little too hard," said Wendalyn Nichols, the editor-in-chief of the newsletter "Copy Editor" and a onetime editorial director of Random House Reference. "If it's derived from esquiver, it wouldn't have that ending. Nothing linguistically would give rise to the 'l.' " The Times' crossword-puzzle editor, Will Shortz, explained, "I simply can't believe such a thing goes back to the nineteenth century." Steve Kleinedler, a senior editor of the American Heritage Dictionary, said, "The stress pattern is strange." The most personal of the rationales belonged to Eli Horowitz, an editor of the literary anthology "The Future Dictionary of America," who complained, "I had to read it a few times, and I resent that."

 

If you're reading this, you probably did some growing up in the 80s. As such, you may enjoy this archive of television commercials from that culturally depressed era. See spots for Pitfall, Castle Grayskull, Speak'n'Spell, The California Raisins, and that Britannica punk pictured above. Link