This town is >< small.

A friendly dose of surrealism for your day.

This morning, after a dental visit where I got the bad news ("You're gonna need a crown on 13, and probably 14 too"), I was walking toward the ${DAYJOB}. I stopped at a crosswalk to wait for the light, and next to me stood a man in his mid to late 20's carrying a hardcover copy of Artificial Intelligence for... and I couldn't see the rest.

"What are you reading there?"

He moved his arm and I could read, Artificial Intelligence for Video Game Programmers, a serious textbook, not one of those how-tos you get at Barnes & Noble. "Oh," I said. "Looks hardcore."

He said, "It is."

"Hey, do you know shaterri?"

"Yeah, I know him," he said. "I'll probably see him sometime today."

"Can you give this to him? I've only been carrying it forever." I handed him a Yuletime card I picked up last Christmas season and bounced when I tried to mail it to Shaterri, twice, with "no such person at the address" marked.

"Yeah, that'll be a long trip, from my office to his."

"Thanks."

Black and White, DAMMIT. BLACK AND WHITE!

Jonah Goldberg today on Bill Ayers: "It seems to me the liberal left needs to decide, was Ayers a horrible figure to be ashamed of, or a hero? If you don't like this choice, why?"

Because it's a black-and-white choice, Jonah. Ayers seems to have been, and still be, a jerk. He was a wanted criminal, and he got off on a technicality. In America, this is known as being "not guilty," a state of law; in spirit, Ayers acknowledged being "guilty as Hell." Nonetheless, in America, Ayers is free to continue to be whatever the Hell he wants to be, so long as he continues to live within the letter of the law. If he thrives, it's because other people perceive his continued contributions to be of value to them.

How about you and I stop giving him publicity and stop helping him sell more copies of his self-serving book?

It seems to me that the whole notion of shades-of-grey, of living in a society people you may not necessarily agree with 100% of the time, of nuance and acceptance (rather than "tolerance") and all the things that made America great, have been forgotten.

My apologies…

The Pendorwright site appear to be the subject of a rather annoying denial of service attack.  I’m not sure what’s going on, but I’m working on tracking it down and blocking out the problem addresses even further.  There may be some performance problems with the changes, but let’s hope they’re unnoticeable.

This entry was automatically cross-posted from Elf's writing journal, Pendorwright.com. Feel free to comment on either LiveJournal or Pendorwright.

I think I need to get out more.

I was flipping through one of those hentai mangas that I find on ocassion, extruded fantasy product with a mix of consensual and non-consensual scenes. My first reaction upon opening to a rather extraordinary scene of debauchery was, "Wow, this guy's color work is amazing. The textures on hair are perfect, and the way he manages to get the vibrancy of flat work with a real sense of depth reminds me of early David Palladini."

I think I need to get out more.