OOPPPS

Went to the wrong church.  Church is at the Gathering Place today.  Since I was already late for church if it was in Sapperton, I wasn’t going to drive to Coquitlam to be late there as well.  Sigh.  I suppose this is a sign from God that I should clean the kitchen.

Oh, well

I would have been a lot happier if Katie had deigned to show up for Christmas dinner, but I am reminded of the comment regarding 50 dollars and Kid Shelleen, so I’ll just leave it at that.  He that hath ears, let him hear.  At some point I should deliver her housemates’ presents.

We’re having a bit of an Aaron Sorkin fest and working our way through Sports Night.  We also re-watched Bon Cop Bad Cop, this time with Keith, who loved it (and why not, it’s a simply adorable action flick that dances with enthusiasm with every single buddy cop movie trope). After they were playing Borderlands in co-op mode. The soundtrack for that game ROCKS, I want to download it.

My new beau is hanging with his kids so I am free to go to the housefilk @ Cindy’s this afternoon and stay late.  So, church in the morning and filk in the afternoon.  It should be a musical day. Now to sweet talk Jeff into letting me borrow the car.

There is garlic/basil/scallion bread in the breadmaker right now; it will be ready in a couple of hours.

Paul’s visiting Lois and Bob.

Jeff wandered around the house yesterday continuing to seal leaky windows and doors.  It’s been quite cold, even for December; every morning there is a skin of frost on everything.  I heard foghorns on the river at 3 this morning; that and my back woke me up.

Happy Christmas and a peaceful and prosperous New Year to you!

Brunch with Granny was delightful, and we even managed to suck up the fact that the heat wasn’t working in the restaurant, keeping our coats on while we ate eggs bennie and other breakfast comestibles and chocolate apricot ganache for dessert. All of her descendents, less Jeff, were present; he will go after Christmas. Much thanks to Garry and Loki for subsidizing the event.

I also got to meet the new granddog, Charlie; my cousin Greg has acquired a pug.  There was a picture of Charlie in a Christmas outfit, which given that Charlie is less than six months old is pretty funny.

The smell of sausage stuffing cooking is filling the whole house, borne on the aromatics of browning onions….

I took one biscotti loaf to Victoria to cook once we arrived; again, a Christmas message carried via the brain by the nose, as the gorgeous smell of baking fills the house.

Watched the intro to a new game, Borderlands, last night, and enjoyed it thoroughly.

Margot’s introduction to the grandprimates was a success.  However she only ate two teaspoons of food and drank maybe four tablespoons of water while she was there, so she was pretty upset.  She also figured out who the boss primate in that household was PDQ and thus serenaded pappa for about half an hour at dawn yesterday from the other side of the bedroom door.  She was lucky she didn’t get punted down the stairs.  She was certainly more vocal than I’ve seen her in quite a while.  She was an angel on the trip home and when I put her in the driveway trotted straight to the stairs to be let in.  The boys ignored her absence and pretty much ignored her arrival.  She went straight to her water dish and tanked up.

I have to get back to encouraging ingredients into the shape of a meal.  Everybody play safe and don’t slip on those frost covered steps.

I know nothing about modern music

Jeff and I recently listened to Pet Sounds.  There were a lot of things I didn’t know about the album (I had previously heard it at 15 in my girlfriend Liz’s bedroom) but I sure as hell knew nothing at all of the existence of this bassist. This one’s for you, Peggy.

Thus the title of the post.  I can’t believe I never heard of this woman; her list of credits is so long and so impressive that it’s just painful.

Jeff, Paul and I watched Glory. Matthew Broderick is magnificent as Shaw.  The supporting cast is superlative.  And it’s another one of the MANY movies Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman are in (Washington won a best supporting actor for his role).

The eternal question

The eternal question can be compressed into three words.  Is it crap?

I force myself to ask this when I read paragraphs like this.

About halfway through I think, could Zittrain’s Thought Experiment (ZeeTeeEee(=) be a good band name?  I think, anh, it’s too arty even for me.  A little after that I think, well, hasn’t human intelligence always been a commodity?

Makes you wonder who the first man was who got paid to be smart, and what he got paid in, and what the hell he was paid to do.  If it was a woman, I hope she was a midwife and they rubbed her feet.

With no further excuses, herewith the paragraph.

Crowdsourcing’s power to compartmentalise and abstract away the true meaning of tasks turns human intelligence into a commodity. Zittrain’s thought experiment shows how it could potentially entice people into participating in a project that they otherwise wouldn’t support.

Can you find anything wrong with the foregoing?  I mean, this paragraph ignores that the commoditization of human intelligence is a frequent occurrence; has been for millennia as best I can make out. The scale it’s happening on is something new.  The article this paragraph was culled from is here.

Uh, no thanks

The other day my new beau said something in plain English.  It had absolutely no curse words. It was just about the funniest thing I have heard in ages, funny in that “OOO, ya got me sonny”, kind of way.  And I can’t post it.  Grr.  Believe me, it was good.

The other thing he says is “Blog it!” whenever something particularly outrageous, funny or bizarre happens.  And I have to respond, “If I can figure out how to do that without sounding like too much of a cheesewit, I’ll get right on it.”

One two three

Jeff’s car is at the Krankenhaus for rotors; Margot is quacking like a duck because that is actually an inhalation noise vibrating against her soft palate and she is otherwise ludicrously healthy; I have finished putting “Written in Water” into sheet music format; I am now off to Richmond to chill with my new friend.  Xenon is being played in the basement as I type.

Ever since Gilgamesh (happy Solstice) (caution, language)

Now this is not your ordinary movie review.  I am not going to address the plot holes in Avatar, two of which you could fly a phalanx of Bell choppers through.  I am not going to praise or damn the movie, as I have previously made it obvious that I liked it.  What I am going to do is re-vision this work in the context of a bilious question that was posed on io9.

When are guilty white people going to stop making movies like Avatar?

Continue reading Ever since Gilgamesh (happy Solstice) (caution, language)