My mom made a ham today. It's yummy. She also made a really good soup. She's going to make another soup once I finish the ham. That soup is also good.

@conradjohansen said:

My mom made a ham today. It's yummy. She also made a really good soup. She's going to make another soup once I finish the ham. That soup is also good.

Sounds like a Hemingway book^.

In other news.... I scored a new shotgun

@Peterfordthebrave said:

Dance your cares away. XX Worry's for another day. Let the music play. XX Down at Fraggle Rock...

I had a friend who thought the chorus in DWD sounds like the Fraggle Rock theme song.

@Peterfordthebrave said:

Dance your cares away. XX Worry's for another day. Let the music play. XX Down at Fraggle Rock...

Reminds me of this. Every time. (Wait for the chorus if you dont know the song ~1:20) I like the freestyle better.

Since some of you enjoyed his observations on breakfast cereal in the Thread of Randomness II, I offer you some more Neal Stephnson:

"...You probably learned in elementary school that Athena wears a helmet, carries a shield called Aegis, and is the goddess of war and of wisdom, as well as crafts - such as the aforementioned weaving. Kind of an odd combination, to say the least! Especially since Ares was supposed to be the god of war, and Hestia the goddess of home economics - why the redundancy? But a lot's been screwed up in translation. See, the kind of wisdom that we associate with old farts like yours truly, and which I'm trying to impart to you here, Randy Waterhouse, was called dike by the Greeks. That's not what Athena was the goddess of! She was the goddess of metis, which means cunning or craftiness, and which you'll recall was the name of her mother in one version of the story. Interestingly, Metis (the personage, not the attribute) provided young Zeus with the potion that caused Cronus to vomit up all of the baby gods he'd swallowed, setting the stage for the whole Titanomachia. So now the connection to crafts becomes obvious - crafts are just the practical application of metis."

"I associate the word 'crafts' with making crappy belts and ashtrays in summer camp," Randy says. "I mean, who wants to be the fucking goddess of macrame?"

"It's all bad translation. The word we use today, to mean the same thing, is really technology"

"Okay. Now we're getting somewhere."

Instead of calling Athena the goddess of war, wisdom, and macrame, then, we should say war and technology. And here again we have the problem of an overlap with the jurisdiction of Ares, who's supposed to be the god of war. And let's just say that Ares is a complete asshole. His personal aides are Fear and Terror and sometimes Strife. He is constantly at odds with Athena even though--maybe because--they are nominally the god and goddess of the same thing--war. Heracles, who is one of Athena's human proteges, physically wounds Ares on two occasions, and even strips him of his weapons at one point! You see the fascinating thing about Ares is that he's completely incompetent. He's chained up by a couple of giants and imprisoned in a bronze vessel for thirteen months. He's wounded by one of Odysseus's drinking buddies during the Iliad. Athena knocks him out with a rock at one point. When he's not making a complete idiot of himself in battle, he's screwing every human female he can get his hands on, and--get this--his sons are all what we would today call serial killers. And so it seems very clear to me that Ares really was a god of war as such an entity would be recognized by people who were involved in wars all the time, and had a really clear idea of just how stupid and ugly wars are.

Whereas Athena is famous for being the backer of Odysseus, who, let's not forget, is the guy who comes up with the idea for the Trojan Horse. Athena guides both Odysseus and Heracles through their struggles, and although both of these guys are excellent fighters, they win most of their battles through cunning or (less pejoratively) metis. And although both of them engage in violence pretty freely (Odysseus likes to call himself 'sacker of cities') it's clear that they are being held up in opposition to the kind of mindless, raging violence associated with Ares and his offspring--Heracles even personally rids the world of a few of Ares's psychopathic sons. I mean, the records aren't totally clear--it's not like you can go to the Thebes County Courthouse and look up the death certificates on these guys--but it appears that Heracles, backed up by Athena all the way, personally murders at least half of the Hannibal Lecterish offspring of Ares.

So insofar as Athena is a goddess of war, what really do we mean by that? Note that her most famous weapon is not her sword but her shield Aegis, and Aegis has a gorgon's head on it, so that anyone who attacks her is in serious danger of being turned to stone. She's always described as being calm and majestic, neither of which adjectives anyone ever applied to Ares....

Skipping ahead in the dialogue.......

"I don't know, Enoch. Defensive versus offensive war, maybe?"

"The distinction is overrated. Remember when I said that Athena got leg-fucked by Hephaestus?"

"It generated a clear internal representation in my mind."

"As a myth should! Athena/Hephaestus is sort of an interesting coupling in that the is another technology god. Metals, metallurgy, and fire were his specialties - the old-fashioned Rust Belt stuff. So, no wonder Athena gave him a hard-on! After he ejaculated on Athena's thigh, she's all eeeeeyew! and she wipes it off and throws the rag on the ground, where it somehow combines with the earth and generates Ericthonius. You know who he was?"

"No."

"One of the first kings of Athens. You know what he was famous for?"

"Tell me."

"Invented the chariot - and introduced the use of silver as a currency."

"Oh, Jesus!" Randy clamps his head between his hands and makes moaning noises, but only for a little while.

"Now in many other mythologies you can find gods that have parallels with Athena. The Sumerians had Enki, the Norse had Loki. Loki was an inventor-god, but psychologically he had more in common with Ares; he was not only the god of technology but the god of evil too, the closest thing they had to the Devil. Native Americans had tricksters - creatures full of cunning - like Coyote and Raven in their mythologies, but they didn't have technology yet, and so they hadn't coupled the Trickster with Crafts to generate this hybrid Technologist-god."

"Okay," Randy says, "so obviously where you're going with this is that there must be some universal pattern of events that when filtered through the sensory apparatus and the neural rigs of primitive, superstitious people always gives rise to internal mental representations that they identify as gods, heroes, etc."

"Yes. And these can be recognized across cultures, in the same way that two persons with Root representations in their mind might 'recognize' me by comparing notes."

"So, Enoch, you want me to believe that these gods - which aren't really gods, but it's a nice concise word - all share certain things in common precisely because the external reality that generated them is consistent and universal across cultures."

"That is right. And in the case of Trickster gods the pattern is that cunning people tend to attain power that un-cunning people don't. And all cultures are fascinated by this. Some of them, like many Native Americans, basically admire it, but never couple it with technological development. Others, like the Norse, hate it and identify it with the Devil."

"Hence the strange love-hate relationship that American have with hackers."

"That's right."

"Hackers are always complaining that journalists cast them as bad guys. But you think that this ambivalence is deeper-seated."

"In some cultures. The Vikings - to judge from their mythology - would instinctively hate hackers. But something different happened with the Greeks. The Greeks liked their geeks. That's how we get Athena."

Let's face it, Randy, we've all known guys like Ares. The pattern of human behavior that caused the internal mental representation known as Ares to appear in the minds of the ancient Greeks is very much with us today, in the form of terrorists, serial killers, riots, pogroms, and agressive tinhorn dictators who turn out to be military incompetents. And yet for all their stupidity and incompetence, people like that can conquer and control large chunks of the world if they are not resisted....

Who is going to fight them off, Randy?

Sometimes it might be other Ares-worshippers, as when Iran and Iraq went to war and no one cared who won. But if Ares-worshippers aren't going to end up running the whole world, someone needs to do violence to them. This isn't very nice, but it's a fact: civilization requires an Aegis. And the only way to fight the bastards off in the end is through intelligence. Cunning. Metis.

On my right foot, the toe next to my big toe is longer than the toe next to that toe....

I can't figure it out.

The label on my Aquafina water bottle is blue, and it is seriously freaking me out right now. Someone come to my house and get it away from me.

These threads remind me of Bing commercials.

Only accidentally - it was the default browser on my work computers.
It does suck. Its horrible.

Do you know what you like Kittens, but you also like tacos. But, What you really like is kitten tacos.

"Does Barry Mainlow know you raided his wardobe?"

"flight of the no-chords, zero stars"

college ruled paper just sliced my nipple. sunday bloody sunday

@JTodd said:

Since some of you enjoyed his observations on breakfast cereal in the Thread of Randomness II, I offer you some more Neal Stephnson: "...You probably learned in elementary school that Athena wears a helmet, carries a shield called Aegis, and is the goddess of war and of wisdom, as well as crafts - such as the aforementioned weaving. Kind of an odd combination, to say the least! Especially since Ares was supposed to be the god of war, and Hestia the goddess of home economics - why the redundancy? But a lot's been screwed up in translation. See, the kind of wisdom that we associate with old farts like yours truly, and which I'm trying to impart to you here, Randy Waterhouse, was called dike by the Greeks. That's not what Athena was the goddess of! She was the goddess of metis, which means cunning or craftiness, and which you'll recall was the name of her mother in one version of the story. Interestingly, Metis (the personage, not the attribute) provided young Zeus with the potion that caused Cronus to vomit up all of the baby gods he'd swallowed, setting the stage for the whole Titanomachia. So now the connection to crafts becomes obvious - crafts are just the practical application of metis." "I associate the word 'crafts' with making crappy belts and ashtrays in summer camp," Randy says. "I mean, who wants to be the fucking goddess of macrame?" "It's all bad translation. The word we use today, to mean the same thing, is really technology" "Okay. Now we're getting somewhere." Instead of calling Athena the goddess of war, wisdom, and macrame, then, we should say war and technology. And here again we have the problem of an overlap with the jurisdiction of Ares, who's supposed to be the god of war. And let's just say that Ares is a complete asshole. His personal aides are Fear and Terror and sometimes Strife. He is constantly at odds with Athena even though--maybe because--they are nominally the god and goddess of the same thing--war. Heracles, who is one of Athena's human proteges, physically wounds Ares on two occasions, and even strips him of his weapons at one point! You see the fascinating thing about Ares is that he's completely incompetent. He's chained up by a couple of giants and imprisoned in a bronze vessel for thirteen months. He's wounded by one of Odysseus's drinking buddies during the Iliad. Athena knocks him out with a rock at one point. When he's not making a complete idiot of himself in battle, he's screwing every human female he can get his hands on, and--get this--his sons are all what we would today call serial killers. And so it seems very clear to me that Ares really was a god of war as such an entity would be recognized by people who were involved in wars all the time, and had a really clear idea of just how stupid and ugly wars are. Whereas Athena is famous for being the backer of Odysseus, who, let's not forget, is the guy who comes up with the idea for the Trojan Horse. Athena guides both Odysseus and Heracles through their struggles, and although both of these guys are excellent fighters, they win most of their battles through cunning or (less pejoratively) metis. And although both of them engage in violence pretty freely (Odysseus likes to call himself 'sacker of cities') it's clear that they are being held up in opposition to the kind of mindless, raging violence associated with Ares and his offspring--Heracles even personally rids the world of a few of Ares's psychopathic sons. I mean, the records aren't totally clear--it's not like you can go to the Thebes County Courthouse and look up the death certificates on these guys--but it appears that Heracles, backed up by Athena all the way, personally murders at least half of the Hannibal Lecterish offspring of Ares. So insofar as Athena is a goddess of war, what really do we mean by that? Note that her most famous weapon is not her sword but her shield Aegis, and Aegis has a gorgon's head on it, so that anyone who attacks her is in serious danger of being turned to stone. She's always described as being calm and majestic, neither of which adjectives anyone ever applied to Ares.... Skipping ahead in the dialogue....... "I don't know, Enoch. Defensive versus offensive war, maybe?" "The distinction is overrated. Remember when I said that Athena got leg-fucked by Hephaestus?" "It generated a clear internal representation in my mind." "As a myth should! Athena/Hephaestus is sort of an interesting coupling in that the is another technology god. Metals, metallurgy, and fire were his specialties - the old-fashioned Rust Belt stuff. So, no wonder Athena gave him a hard-on! After he ejaculated on Athena's thigh, she's all eeeeeyew! and she wipes it off and throws the rag on the ground, where it somehow combines with the earth and generates Ericthonius. You know who he was?" "No." "One of the first kings of Athens. You know what he was famous for?" "Tell me." "Invented the chariot - and introduced the use of silver as a currency." "Oh, Jesus!" Randy clamps his head between his hands and makes moaning noises, but only for a little while. "Now in many other mythologies you can find gods that have parallels with Athena. The Sumerians had Enki, the Norse had Loki. Loki was an inventor-god, but psychologically he had more in common with Ares; he was not only the god of technology but the god of evil too, the closest thing they had to the Devil. Native Americans had tricksters - creatures full of cunning - like Coyote and Raven in their mythologies, but they didn't have technology yet, and so they hadn't coupled the Trickster with Crafts to generate this hybrid Technologist-god." "Okay," Randy says, "so obviously where you're going with this is that there must be some universal pattern of events that when filtered through the sensory apparatus and the neural rigs of primitive, superstitious people always gives rise to internal mental representations that they identify as gods, heroes, etc." "Yes. And these can be recognized across cultures, in the same way that two persons with Root representations in their mind might 'recognize' me by comparing notes." "So, Enoch, you want me to believe that these gods - which aren't really gods, but it's a nice concise word - all share certain things in common precisely because the external reality that generated them is consistent and universal across cultures." "That is right. And in the case of Trickster gods the pattern is that cunning people tend to attain power that un-cunning people don't. And all cultures are fascinated by this. Some of them, like many Native Americans, basically admire it, but never couple it with technological development. Others, like the Norse, hate it and identify it with the Devil." "Hence the strange love-hate relationship that American have with hackers." "That's right." "Hackers are always complaining that journalists cast them as bad guys. But you think that this ambivalence is deeper-seated." "In some cultures. The Vikings - to judge from their mythology - would instinctively hate hackers. But something different happened with the Greeks. The Greeks liked their geeks. That's how we get Athena." Let's face it, Randy, we've all known guys like Ares. The pattern of human behavior that caused the internal mental representation known as Ares to appear in the minds of the ancient Greeks is very much with us today, in the form of terrorists, serial killers, riots, pogroms, and agressive tinhorn dictators who turn out to be military incompetents. And yet for all their stupidity and incompetence, people like that can conquer and control large chunks of the world if they are not resisted.... Who is going to fight them off, Randy? Sometimes it might be other Ares-worshippers, as when Iran and Iraq went to war and no one cared who won. But if Ares-worshippers aren't going to end up running the whole world, someone needs to do violence to them. This isn't very nice, but it's a fact: civilization requires an Aegis. And the only way to fight the bastards off in the end is through intelligence. Cunning. Metis.

You like Neal! *Snow Crash* has to be one of the greatest books ever!!

Majot brownie points for MikeD

::book-dorque spasm::

"let's look for the purple banana, til they put us in the truck"

the gums where my wisdom teeth used to be sometimes hurt. the dentists say there's nothing there. maybe it's a ghost.

@JTodd said:

Since some of you enjoyed his observations on breakfast cereal in the Thread of Randomness II, I offer you some more Neal Stephnson:

You like Neal! *Snow Crash* has to be one of the greatest books ever!!

Majot brownie points for MikeD

::book-dorque spasm::

Anyone read Cryptonomicon or The Diamond Age? I :heart: Neal Stephenson!

I got a new job today.

@mmetch said:

I got a new job today.

Cool, Mary! Congrats! What'll you be doing?

thanks guys! i'm moving from budget to human resources.

PTer~Whats this crap? Phish.net, no bitching?!?

My arm pits are extra sweaty today

Edit: But my balls are not. It's usually the other way around.

bread* dont forget the oregano and italian seasoning. best sandwich ever!

@bostonron said:

@johnnyd said:

I love a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich. And I love swiss cheese. But ya know what? Swiss is not a great choice for that combo.

I agree. I won't one now. Thanks Johnnyd.

FRAK man me too. I have no bacon...



and my button is broken.

I love my daughter!

for @conrad & all you other star wars peeps. my friend posted this on fb, made me laugh!