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This news just crushes me. He was the MOST magnificent of all bastards. Half the funny stuff I've ever said in my life was a direct stylistic and topical ripoff of Carlin's material. [*][**] Dude was funny. Even when he was an angry old man spouting agitprop at an unsuspecting audience for 2 hours, I laughed.

I'd try to make up a memorial haiku using the 7 words, but once you write 'em out you've only got 4 syllables to work with :)


[*] and consciously or not, I bet 5% of that half is a direct quote.
[**] the other 50% is Groucho, natch.
dwenius: (Default)
A moment of silence for the sad passing of a tortoise who may have been older than the United States.

When we hear the phrase "British East India Company", we're thinking musty old colonial history lessons from high school. Meanwhile, Addwaita the tortoise was thinking, "Right, those dapper gentlemen who gave me a new home when I was middle-aged...I wonder what ever happened to them?"
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"If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace."

-- John Lennon, 1940 - 1980

May his memory live long.
dwenius: (Default)
This is a repost of someone on my FL that at least half of my readership does not know, and therefore would have missed, but I knew you'd like it. Yanked from [livejournal.com profile] megasus4 reposting some guy going by [livejournal.com profile] geoff_chaucer (and discovered by [livejournal.com profile] brannen):

Wha be tha blake prevy lawe
That bene wantoun too alle tha feres?
SHAFT!
Ya damne righte!

Wha be tha carl tha riske is hals wolt
Fro is allye leve?
SHAFT!
Konne ye?

Wha be tha carl wha wolden flee
Whan peril bene all aboughte?
SHAFT!
Verray!

Alle clepe tha carl ane badde mooder-swyver
SOFTE!
Speken of Shaft bene I.
THAN KONNE ALLES WE!

He be a man konne unnethes
Namo save is mayde konnes im.
JOHN SHAFT!

Memorial

Oct. 12th, 2005 12:42 pm
dwenius: (Default)
Mathew Shepard was killed 7 years ago today.

His murderers both copped pleas, and are serving consecutive life sentences in an undisclosed prison.

Later that year, the Wyoming legislature refused to enact a hate-crimes bill that was introduced in response to the killing. Federal efforts for a similar bill also failed within the year, thanks in no small part to the intervention of Trent Lott, who was all for a hate crimes bill when it was only protecting women and jews and even blacks, but throw in the queers and you get nowhere.

As a final, minor, ignorable-except-for-its-crass-fuck-knobbery point, Fred Phelps, Supreme Wingnut and Founder of the Westboro Baptist church, led a contingent of protesters to wave signs and shout slogans at Matthew's funeral.
dwenius: (Default)
R.I.P. Vassar Clements

By a significant margin, Vassar was the finest fiddle player I ever saw perform. His touch with the double stops would raise the hairs on your knuckles, and then he'd let rip with seemingly endless, lyrical runs. Then, in between songs, he'd huff on a pipe and let huge clouds unfurl into the rafters of the Warfield. I saw him with a reconstituted Old and In The Way, with Grisman and Rowan, in March of '96 and several times afterwards. He looked about 80 and played with the energy of a man 1/4 that old. Hard to argue that, at 77, he was taken too young, but...but.
dwenius: (Default)
100 years ago today, a little known Swiss patent clerk had his third of three papers published by Annalen der Physik. The first explained the photoelectric effect, and won the author a Nobel prize for its proof of the existence of light quanta. The second explained Brownian motion, redefining kinetic theory and explaining an observed behavior that had long puzzled scientists. The third paper, On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, had less immediate practical impact, but can perhaps be forgiven this weakness, as it merely redefined our entire notion of space and time, completely, via an analysis so simple it can be explained in full to your average high schooler.

I'm raising a glass today to celebrate Special Relativity. And you should too.

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