Michael Hanscom for Governor of Washington

This has long since stopped being entertaining in the least, and is now just ridiculous and exasperating: Washington state Republicans are still desperately trying to force a re-vote in our Gubernatorial race.

The state Republican Party said in court papers filed yesterday that it has found 300 illegal votes and more than 400 that can’t be verified in the governor’s election.

With Christine Gregoire winning the governor’s race by 129 votes, Republican Party Chairman Chris Vance says he now has found far more than enough evidence to persuade a judge to nullify the election and call for a rematch between Gregoire and Republican Dino Rossi.

Lawyers and Republican staffers are continuing to look county by county for votes cast by felons, in the name of dead people or by people who voted more than once, casting second votes either in other counties or other states.

Therefore, I make this declaration here and now:

If these idiots actually force us into a re-vote, I’ll mount a write-in candidacy drive.

Michael Hanscom for Governor of Washington. Sounds good to me.

I figure I’ve got no chance of winning (I’ve never been involved in politics, nobody knows who I am [well, outside of that little thing about a picture and a computer company], and I’ve got an advertising budget of…well, nothing). But hey — if I do win (snicker) it could be pretty entertaining and a definite learning experience (not to mention a raise), and if I don’t win, I WON’T CARE.

Hell, just running on a platform of “no re-votes if I lose” should get me a sizeable chunk of the vote.

Maybe Jacqueline could help me run my campaign?

iTunesLove and Devotion” by M and M from the album DJ Mix 99 (1998, 5:40).

A pronounced deficiency in IQ | Metafilter

Something interesting (sorry if I’m repeating someone above): ‘nuclear’ is the adjectival form of ‘nucleus’, which comes from the Latin ‘nuculeus’, from ‘nucula’ the diminutive of ‘nux’, meaning ‘nut’. So the at some point the ‘u’ between the ‘c’ and ‘l’ was dropped (and at that point would have probably been considered a mispronunciation).

My theory – it’s Bush’s comprehensive knowledge of and fluency in Latin that leads to his pronunciation.

adamdegen

iTunesAl-Salooq” by Ozric Tentacles from the album Arborescence (1994, 5:02).

I hate it when I’m stupid

A few months back, after having been a happy user of Six Apart‘s TypePad service for about a year and a half, I decided that I wanted to go back to having the finer level of control and options that Movable Type would offer, and moved my weblog back onto my own server. I made sure to make the move a couple months before my TypePad subscription ended, so that I would have time to move all my files over and off of their servers before I got locked out of my account.

Today I got a comment notification from my TypePad site. This was a bit surprising, as my account should have died in December. When I bounced over to the TypePad site, though, I was able to log in without a problem. Starting to wonder if I’d been stupid, I checked the Account status page.

Oh, dammit.

Sure enough, I’d made sure to save my credit card information and turn on auto-renewal at some point, and TypePad had very obligingly signed me up for another year of service in December. Me being my usual brilliant self with finances had never noticed this (in itself actually not a bad thing, though — I’m still far below where I’d like to be, but if I can take a $120 hit to my bank account without it causing major issues, things are definitely improving). I checked the TypePad FAQ, and sure enough, no refunds if you’ve paid in advance. Ah, well, that was what I expected anyway.

So now I’ve got a TypePad account that I’m not using that’s all paid up and useable until next December. What in the world do I do with that? I’ve discovered over time that I don’t do well trying to keep up with posting on multiple weblogs, so starting a second weblog just doesn’t seem like a realistic option. I don’t want to move back to TypePad — not only would that be a fairly major pain, but I don’t want to lose some of the extras I have with Movable Type that TypePad doesn’t offer. I use [Flickr][5] for my photos now, so a photoblog isn’t really necessary.

[5]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/djwudi/ Flickr: Photos from djwudi”

Prairie suggested I try selling it on Ebay, but there’s hassles with that. While I could probably delete most of my personal information, the URL for the site is djwudi.typepad.com, and I don’t want to hand the ‘djwudi’ name off to someone else — until I actually started using my full name regularly, ‘djwudi’ was my normal online ID, and I still use it in [quite a few places][7].

[7]: http://www.google.com/search?q=djwudi&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 Google for ‘djwudi'”

I guess I’ll just keep it around in case something really strikes my fancy and seems like a realistic project. No point in canceling it, as long as it’s paid up through the year, at least.

Consequences of an Overactive Imagination

I don’t think I’ll ever cease to be amazed at how strongly the mind can react to things — and which things it chooses to react to.

I’ve always had an extremely active imagination, a quality which has both good and bad points. Growing up, I often retreated into my own little fantasy worlds instead of dealing with the real world around me, and that’s something that has never entirely ceased. While I’ve long since ceased hiding within myself as an escape from things I didn’t want to deal with or as a defense mechanism, I can’t say — and really, I wouldn’t want to — that I’ve ever ceased letting my imagination run away with me from time to time.

Walking down a hallway, someone might notice a small twitch of my hands from time to time, though it’s most likely they wouldn’t. Just a small gesture, perhaps just stretching my wrists a bit, nothing really worth paying attention to. Of course, that’s only because they can’t see the blast of power I just released careening down the hall, rushing past them, sweeping papers and debris in its wake as it crashes into the locked gate at the end, bursting it open with a horrendous shriek of tearing metal as the hinges shatter and fall to pieces.

People passing me on the streets at night never know of the creatures stalking them. Wingless batlike creatures the size of large dogs, walking on their forelegs, hind legs slung up and over their shoulders and terminating in wicked-looking claws. Needle-sharp teeth beneath an eyeless face, the cries of their sonar echoing from building to building as the pack converges on another unlucky derelict passed out in an alleyway. Curious how few rats this section of the city has.

Okay, perhaps it’s a little juvenile. Silly daydreams built on many years of fantasy and science-fiction novels. That doesn’t make these worlds any less fun to play in from time to time, however.

When I was younger, my fertile imagination would often get the better of me. Certain television shows would keep me up for nights. The Incredible Hulk — or the “crumbly hawk”, as I deemed him — was an especially potent terror for a time. I didn’t see Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller‘ video until long after it was released when I was only nine years old, and even into my early teen years, horror movies were a rarity.

I once tried to watch the sci-fi horror movie Lifeforce during one of HBO’s promotional free weekends after our family got cable, because of the naked lady at the beginning — but all puberty-driven fantasies were driven violently out of my head when she sucked the very life out of some poor hapless man, turning him into a horrible desiccated corpse before my very eyes, and I don’t think I slept well for a month afterwards.

Even the trailer for Gremlins was enough to give me nightmares when I saw it, and I never saw the movie in the theaters. I read the novelization to try to get an idea of how the movie was, and oh what a mistake that was. At one point in the story, the gremlin Stripe escapes from being studied by a teacher in the school’s science lab. While in the movie Stripe simply jabs the teacher with a single hypodermic needle, the book described seven or eight needles, maybe more, being stuck into the teacher’s face. It was literally years before I got the nerve to watch the movie (and then was somewhat chagrined to see how tame it was compared to the images I’d had seared into my brain when I read the book).

As I grew and began to be better able to separate the fantastical worlds inside my head from the real world around me, I started to develop a fondness for some of the more disturbing images that I hadn’t been able to cope with as a child. I started watching all the horror movies I’d heard about for years, but never been able to watch. Dean Koontz, Stephen King, Clive Barker, and other similar authors started appearing on my bookshelves. The Alien movies introduced me to the artwork of H.R. Giger. Discovering David Cronenberg‘s films led me to Naked Lunch, and then to the literary work of William S. Burroughs. My musical tastes, while never having been particularly mainstream, started skewing more towards the gothic and industrial genres. Black soon became the dominant color in my wardrobe.

Finally being able to explore and embrace this darker imagery helped me a lot through my teen years, and still does today. While I wasn’t always the happiest teenager around — I had more than my fair share of whiny, angsty moments — I never ended up succumbing to the depression that so many other people seem to. I’ve never been suicidal (in fact, quite the opposite, as I’m somewhat frightened of death, and have never found myself in a situation where suicide seemed like an even remotely good idea), and while there were certainly some stumbling blocks over the years, I think I’ve ended up becoming a fairly well-rounded and well-grounded adult (oh, lord, did I just admit that I’m an adult?).

I have my ups and downs, same as anyone else, of course, but on the whole, I’m a fairly chipper and easygoing guy (chipper…who talks like this?). That “dark side” is still there, of course, manifesting itself primarily through my tastes in music, movies, and an often bitterly bleak sense of humor, but rather than dominating my personality, it’s just another aspect — and, importantly, one not incompatible with a love of childlike (and sometimes childish) silliness (a double feature of Hellraiser and The Muppet Movie isn’t something I’d find particularly unusual, for instance).

For all that, though, there are times when my imagination can still play games with me. What it latches onto now, though, aren’t the fantastical elements of horror movies. I can watch Freddy suck Johnny Depp down into his bed in a geyser of blood, watch Pinhead flay the flesh off of Frank’s recently resurrected body, or watch Jason skewer horny teenager after horny teenager without batting an eye — heck, I enjoy ever last little blood-soaked minute of it, and sleep soundly as soon as the movie is finished.

What gets me now are the real possibilities — and, more specifically, the really realistic situations, as redundant as that might sound. Kill Bill, for all the hype it got over its extreme amounts of blood and gore, didn’t bug me simply because it was so ridiculously over the top (in a good way) that I didn’t feel real. It may have been live action with real flesh and blood actors, but it felt like a comic book, and so my brain quite happily filed it away with all the rest of the blood and gore from all those silly horror movies.

It’s when it’s something that could conceivably really happen that I get the willies.

Pulp Fiction is a great film, and The Rock, while certainly not great, is a lot of fun. Those two films have one very important element in common, though: an adrenaline shot straight to the heart. I can’t watch either movie without cringing and turning away as the needle plunges into the character’s chest and into their heart — heck, I can’t even write this paragraph out without rubbing my own chest due to the sympathy pain I feel.

Last week Prairie and I watched Deliverance, which I’d never seen before. Just after the disastrous run through the rapids as the boats break apart and the men go tumbling over rocks and down the river, Burt Reynolds pulls himself up and out of the water onto a rock, revealing the compound fracture sending his legbone tearing through skin and muscle and jutting out the side. “Oh, God,” I said — if it was even formed into actual words — and immediately curled into a ball on my side, rubbing my calf as my oh-so-eager-to-oblige imagination sent spasms from my own suddenly shattered body up my leg.

Tonight — because I’m apparently a glutton for punishment — Misery was the movie of choice. Okay, I knew the hobbling was coming. Even without having read the book or seen the movie before (that I can remember, at least), that scene is so much a part of pop culture that it would be nearly impossible to really be taken by surprise when it comes up. That certainly didn’t make it any easier to watch, however. The sickening crunch of splintering bone as the sledgehammer pulverizes his ankle, and at thirty-one years of age, I’m curled in a ball on my bed.

Honestly, in some ways it’s as funny as it is exasperating. I can laugh at the absurdity of having such a strong reaction to these things even as I’m still trying to drive the residual twinges out of my ankles. I wouldn’t trade my imagination away for anything…but I’ll freely admit that there are times when I wish I could just turn it down a few notches.

Happy Birthday Macintosh!

I’m a bit late to the party on this one, unfortunately, but the Macintosh turned 21 years old today.

Even better, there’s one heck of a birthday present to the Mac community out on the ‘net now: the long-lost video of the original introduction of the Mac by Steve Jobs.

21 years ago today, on January 24th 1984, Apple introduced the Macintosh. And we’ve seen that 1984 wasn’t like 1984.

What we’ve never seen indeed, was the big day itself. Lots of historic stuff has been preserved – images, texts, even sounds, and the saga has been told on and on. However only very few people have actually seen how Steve Jobs pulls the first Mac out of this bag, how the Mac introduces itself to the public, Steves biggest grin ever, and how he is obviously overwhelmed by this moment in the Cupertino Flint Center.

Fear not, faithful Mac believers. We have found it. We have found what seems to be the only copy of a public TV broadcast on that very day. It was recorded and preserved by Scott Knaster, the “legendary Mac hacker”, as Amazon puts it. Scott kept the tape (a NTSC Betamax III longplay) for 21 years since he keeps everything. Andy Hertzfeld saw it when he wrote the story ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’‘ on folklore.org. From there we followed the hints, and that’s how we found it.

We worked with Scott to convert it from NTSC to PAL, we’ve polished it, cleaned it, huged it and digitzed it. Here it is. It goes back to the people who’ve made the Macintosh, and to the world. The complete material of about 2 hours is returned to Scott, Andy and the folklore.org people, and this weblog will report the story of the “missing 1984 video” in detail. We’ll release other clips in the coming days, so bookmark and check back.

But now, Ladies and Gentlemen: please welcome – the 1984 Macintosh introduction video. A travel back in time…

(via MeFi)

iTunesGimme Shelter” by Sisters of Mercy, The from the album Some Girls Wander By Mistake (1983, 5:58).

Note: Contains Nudity

This is one of the funniest things I’ve seen today: Netflix’ summary for a movie titled ‘Sexmission‘ (emphasis mine)…

Director Juliusz Machulski’s bawdy comedy envisions a world where the only men left are Albert (Olgierd Lukaszewicz) and Maks (Jerzy Stuhr), two pals spared destruction because they were frozen as part of an experiment. When they awaken, the League of Women’s Lib runs the planet, and their archeologists believe Albert and Maks are a species predating the female human race. Can the men repopulate the globe with their gender? Note: Contains nudity.

I’m so glad they warned me about the nudity. I might not have guessed otherwise, and Lord knows I wouldn’t want to watch anything with any nekkid people in it.

That’s just disgusting.

 

Bunch ‘a preverts.

iTunesI Sit on Acid ’95” by Lords of Acid from the album Do What You Wanna Do (1995, 4:31).

Stop!

The Windows Error Message Generator allowed me to recreate (to the best of my ability) the single funniest and most exasperating error messages I’ve ever seen on a Windows machine. I don’t remember what I was doing, but I ran across this dialog box while on one of the Windows boxes at my old job at Kinko’s in Anchorage:

Stop

Not only did it give no indication of just what had gone wrong, but it told you to stop whatever it was you were doing without providing a ‘Cancel’ button. Just ‘Stop’ — ‘Okay’. A definite funny-because-it’s-stupid moment.

(via Boing Boing)

iTunesI Love You…I’ll Kill You” by Enigma from the album Cross of Changes, The (1993, 8:50).

Requested: Favorite Pike Place Market Store

Requested by Robert:

Okay, you’ve lived in Seattle for a few years yet, so why not tell us what your favorite store at The Pike is and giving us a description of it?

This was actually relatively tough. While I do live close to the Pike Place Market and go wandering through it fairly frequently, I don’t do a whole lot of shopping there, nor do I really spend a ton of time there. Generally when I head down that way I’m just on a general people-watching and/or photography jaunt, so the stores get less attention than the crowds wandering through.

There are a few places that I’m more likely to stop by while I’m in the area, though, so this afternoon I grabbed my camera and headed down to the market to try to figure out just what my favorite spots were. Here’s what I came up with

Lark in the Morning, Pike Place Market, Seattle, WA

Lark in the Morning is a musical instrument shop unlike any other I’ve been in. They’ve got an absolutely incredible selection of instruments for sale, from all over the world and of all eras. Most of their instruments are able to be played too, as long as you’re careful. While it wasn’t there this weekend, they do occasionally have a hurdy gurdy up on one of the walls, and one of these days I may get up the nerve to ask if I can take a closer look at it.

The Great Windup, Pike Place Market, Seattle, WA

The Great Windup specializes in silly little toys and knickknacks, especially any type of wind-up toy. They’ve got all sorts, from more modern plastic toys to old turn-of-the-century style tin soldiers. Right in the center of the store is a large table with a good selection of toys set out, ready and waiting to be picked up, wound up, and sent walking, skittering, or rolling across the table. Always good for a few minutes of fun.

Pike Place Market, Seattle, WA

Much of the market I enjoy simply because it’s such a wonderful place to go people-watching. Lots of locals stop by to check out the produce or the locally made goods, and of course there’s almost always a good number of tourists wandering through. Next to Broadway up in Capitol Hill, the market is one of my favorite spots to go and spend time just watching people pass by.

Magic Shop, Pike Place Market, Seattle, WADown in the Market’s Underground section is the Magic Shop. Card tricks, magic rings, even gag gifts like whoopee cushions and hand buzzers are likely to be found in the bins here. Outside the front entrance is an old fortune telling vending machine, ready and waiting to give her next prediction for a mere fifty cents.

Golden Age Collectables, Pike Place Market, Seattle, WAYears ago, I’m not exactly sure when — possibly right after my freshman or sophomore years in high school — I went to Missoula, Montana as part of my church’s delegation to that year’s Episcopal Youth Event. To get there, we flew down to Seattle and then drove over to Montana, and while in Seattle, we spent some time at the Pike Place Market. The only part of that expedition I remember was going through this comic store, because at the time we went through, they had a real Star Trek prop phaser! It even still “worked” — that is, the trigger activated the little light in the tip so that the special effects artists knew when to draw the phaser beams! They don’t have the phaser anymore, but it’s still full of all sorts of fun little goodies.

Women's Hall of Fame, Pike Place Market, Seattle, WAThis one’s a favorite of both Prairie and I: The Women’s Hall of Fame. Lots of pro-women’s rights/lib/feminism memorabilia and goodies. There are two bags hanging on the ceiling with wonderful quotes: “Well-behaved women seldom make history. — Laurel Thatcher Ulrich” and “I have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat. — Rebecca West, 1913”.

Cinnamon Works, Pike Place Market, Seattle, WAOutside the main market and in the vendor stalls is Cinnamon Works. Prairie and I make a point of stopping by here nearly every time we hit the market, for one simple reason: they have cookies as big as your HEAD! Really good cookies, too.

And that’s what I came up with. There’s a few more photos in the Flickr photoset that goes with this entry, too. Hopefully this was close enough to the original request!

iTunesMask” by Bauhaus from the album 1979-1983 (1986, 4:34).

Requested: The Meaning of Life

Requested by Tim Who?:

What is the meaning of life?

It’s a movie by the British comedy group Monty Python.

Why are we here? What’s life all about?
Is God really real, or is there some doubt?
Well, tonight, we’re going to sort it all out,
For, tonight, it’s ‘The Meaning of Life’.

What’s the point of all this hoax?
Is it the chicken and the egg time? Are we just yolks?
Or, perhaps, we’re just one of God’s little jokes.
Well, ça c’est le ‘Meaning of Life’.

Is life just a game where we make up the rules
While we’re searching for something to say,
Or are we just simply spiralling coils
Of self-replicating DNA. Nay, nay, nay, nay, nay, nay.

In this ‘life’, what is our fate?
Is there Heaven and Hell? Do we reincarnate?
Is mankind evolving, or is it too late?
Well, tonight, here’s ‘The Meaning of Life’.

For millions, this ‘life’ is a sad vale of tears,
Sitting ’round with rien nothing to say
While the scientists say we’re just simply spiralling coils
Of self-replicating DNA. Nay, nay, nay, nay, nay, nay.

So, just why– why are we here,
And just what– what– what– what do we fear?
Well, ce soir, for a change, it will all be made clear,
For this is ‘The Meaning of Life’. C’est le sens de la vie.
This is ‘The Meaning of Life’.

Either that, or simply ‘42‘. Your choice.

iTunesAnimal…Come Back Animal” by Williams, Paul from the album Muppet Movie, The (1979, 1:30).