I finished Shopgirl tonight. It’s a nice little book by Steve Martin.

My wife, Annette, read it first. She doesn’t read a whole lot. In fact, it’s probably the first novel that she’s read in several years.

It’s not at all because she’s unintelligent. She just doesn’t read.

Her parents didn’t often take her to bookstores or libraries except when she needed a book for a book report. She spent her school life in a religious school where academics were subordinate to religious teaching. As one might imagine, when a book was needed for school, there were two options: a “classic” (apparently sexual or violent themes in books over 100 years old are rendered benign by their age) or a contemporary piece of Christian literature. Not the best material for helping a young person develop an interest in the written word.

One day, after we had talked about this and were out looking for something to do, she decided she wanted to go to a bookstore. There she bought Shopgirl.

A few days later, she’d finished it and had already bought another book, this one picked out by herself.

It’s easy to be cultured and learned when one has grown up in an environment that encourages these things. If, on the other hand, one hasn’t, then they have to work at it; they have to try. And most don’t.

I’m exceedingly proud of her.

Lots of entries tonight. Wheeee!

How does one discourage people from disturbing a nuclear waste site for the next 10,000 years?

Something about that document struck me in an extraordinarily visceral way. I suppose that, since the imagery and wording are designed to convey powerful emotion (with specificity) to a potentially technologically and culturally primitive people, their effect on the psyche occurs in a similarly specific and primitive place.

I changed the Thomas Kinkade link from a few days ago; thanks, Laura.

Somehow I didn’t even think about Thom’s own site being the best example of the smarmy pablum I was trying to make a point about.

God bless.

I’m in the process of cleaning up wordparts and am messing with the styles a little bit. So far I’ve just added a new style for quoted material that I think looks a little better. Also, I became aware of a small rendering bug in (at least) Windows IE 5.5… there shouldn’t be an abnormally large amount of margin above the date headers. I’ll try to pinpoint the problem and get it fixed soon.

Anyway, drop me an e-mail and tell me what you think.

Mac OS X 10.2 (“Jaguar”) will become available this Friday.

If you’re a Mac user, this is it. This is the system software that you’ve been waiting for: the stability, power, and flexibility of UNIX combined with the most powerful user interface on the planet, now refined and capable enough to be called “mature”.

A big round of applause for Apple engineers — those folks have been doing some absolutely incredible work the last few years. I never thought I’d get to use a system this powerful and pleasant to use that was based entirely around open standards.

Thank you, Apple.

My wife is my hero… she appended “God bless!” to an eBay auction of ours selling some Precious Moments stuff.

“I’m like Thomas Kinkade.”

She is chicken soup for my soul.

The Internet. Guaranteed to bring out the jackass in you.

You get sick.

Someone prays for you. Or you participate in some form of alternative medicine.

You get better.

How astounded are you by that occurrence?

How astounded would you have been if you’d have gotten better without the “help”?

In China, even if you’re one in a million, there are a thousand just like you.

Check out this hilarious short video. (QuickTime required.)

Ham ‘n Cheese Snackers

Top TRISCUIT Crackers with OSCAR MAYER Ham and CRACKER BARREL Natural Cheese.

Mexican Cheese Spread

1 pkg. (8 oz.) KRAFT Taco Cheese Mexican Style Shredded Cheese

1/3 cup KRAFT Mayo Real Mayonnaise

1 jar (4 oz.) diced pimientos, drained

TRISCUIT Crackers

TRISCUIT Tuna Melt

Top TRISCUIT Crackers with tuna salad and KRAFT Natural Sharp Shredded Cheese.

— the back of a box of NABISCO TRISCUIT Baked Whole Wheat Crackers

Can someone please tell me what BRAND of tuna salad to use???

If you take the game of life seriously, if you take your nervous system seriously, if you take your sense organs seriously, if you take the energy process seriously, you must turn on, tune in and drop out.

— Timothy Leary

Potential name for a discount used car store:

Grand Thrift Auto.

Okay, a lot of really long entries lately. Don’t worry, though, as soon as I get the chance I’m going to do a little cleanup of the site… make the Archives link actually go somewhere, add some permanent place for links to other interesting sites, and maybe add one of those cool “Read More…” things that a lot of sites have. So stay tuned.

If you have suggestions, think it ought to stay just like it is today with long entries on the front page, or anything, drop me an e-mail.

I ate shrimp today. From Captain D’s. It was really delicious.

If you know me, you’re probably shocked (shocked!) right now; what, with me being Mr. Vegetarian Guy and all.

Well, it’s a bit more complex than that. I did not decide to cease eating meat/wearing leather/etc. because of an emotional inability to cope with the killing of one of my Friends, the Animals. [ed: consider inserting here a clip of me running naked through the fields, frolicking with Mr. Pig and Ms. Cow.]

I’m not what most would think of as an “animal lover” — I’m neither a dog person nor a cat person.

I’m very interested in biology, though. And philosophy of mind.

It was these things that made me become a vegetarian. After rejecting the idea that what makes me special as a human being is some mystical non-physical soulstuff that non-human animals have somehow not been blessed with, I was left with a perspective on the world that most easily sees nature and life as a continuity.

I’m a city boy who wouldn’t (now) feel comfortable killing an intelligent animal like a pig so that I could enjoy her meat for breakfast. I can’t be consistent and pay someone else to do it for me.

So, I chose to live in a vegetarian way; also, I eat very little dairy or eggs. Unlike many vegans, though, I’ve never had a problem with eating honey. You’ve got to draw a line somewhere, and most animal rights folks have no problem with the senseless murder of bacteria. Presumably because they’re sufficiently unintelligent and “unvaluable” that they are not worth our concern. Killing them causes more perceived benefit to us than the perceived (by us and them!) harm it causes to them.

I don’t know of any evidence of a valuable mental capability (I don’t just mean intelligence, I mean emotion and ability to feel pain and terror and happiness, etc.) in insects to justify considerable concern over anything but perhaps wanton abuse of them.

All arthropods seem to have about this same mental capacity — they, as Descartes wrongly believed was true of all animals, are essentially machines without conscious thought.

Thus, the most guilt-causing part of my meal was the tartar sauce.

(I think I’ll print this out and keep it in my wallet to hand to inquisitive people rather than trying to explain my eating habits to them.)