Happy Holiday Wishes to one and all!

iSeasons iGreetings

May you reject and be kept safe from the heresies spawned by the Father of All Lies in Redmond, and accept the loving iEmbrace of Sts. Jobs and Woz.

In the Name of The Hardware, The OS and The Holy iPod.

ThinkDifferent!

Ultimate Apefighting

Eventually we're going to see something like this on pay per view TV.

Man vs. Chimpanzee.

Tyson vs A Bigass Monkey is coming. Mark my words!

You can't make this stuff up.

This is not a scene from a movie.



This is a scene from real life.

A street market in Thailand that shares its space with a set of working train tracks and the occasional train.

We live in an absurdly and wonderfully random world.

(Via the ever entertaining Telstar Logistics weblog.)

And how was YOUR Thanksgiving?

Mine was spent recuperating from some minor surgery on my back.

The 21st, I had an abscessed lipoma removed from my back.

I was in at 9 AM and out by 4:30 PM. The worst aspect was the hurry up and wait. The actual moving to the O.R. didn't occur until noon, I was done by 1 PM or so, and then the next three hours or so were just waiting. First in the recovery room, then in the post recovery room.

Since I had a tiny bit of sedation, I HAD to get a ride back to the apartment. Once I was back here, I used the bathroom and then was right out again to get an antibiotic prescription filled.

Apparently, once I walk in the front door of the apartment, any liability that the hospital might have is ended and I'm on my own.

It would have been so much easier and faster had I been allowed to walk out the front door of the hospital on my own, stop at the pharmacy to drop off the prescription.

So it goes.

So as promised elsewhere, before

and

after images of the tumor and surgery.

As Warren Ellis frequently warns readers on his weblog:

"DON'T LOOK!"

Seriously. Do. Not. Look.

The images are BIG and GRAPHIC.

Good News, Everyone!

It's on pre-order from Amazon, but when it all but fell into my lap on USENET, well, instant gratification IS my birthright as an American!

And after watching the movie, it'll be worth every penny!

What's really sad is when Futurama can do a much more convoluted time travel plot and story than Star Trek, and do it better, and resolve the multiple paradoxes without all that handwaving that Trek does.

Altar

St. Angela's Church in Mattapan, on a hot summer evening.

I like the contrast between the dark, almost monochromatic street and the brightly lit altar in the church, seen through the opened doors.

It's Official! No jury service for me!

I called the jury commissioner's office this past Monday and it was confirmed that I'm not eligible until sometime in November of 2009.

And the other day, the mailed notification arrived that I'm exempt from service.

I wouldn't greatly mind serving, except that the jury pool rooms I've been in are just damned uncomfortable. Too warm, too stuffy and the chairs are just painful.

With a little luck and financial discipline, I should have a video iPod by the time I get jury duty again. At least I can have some movies and music to distract me from the chair jabbing me in the kidney and de-articulating my vertebrae.