I'm a sucker for sappy films.

I don't often watch them, but when I get sucked in, it's all over.

So: "The Holiday", 2006, Cameron Diaz, Kate Winslet, Jude Law, Jack Black.

Nothing Here, Move Along. Immortality Ahead Through Door #1B.

Death terrifies me. I mean terrifies me.

As an atheist and agnostic (see other sources for definitions; they're worth differentiating), I believe, for lack of additional evidence, in this life and no other.

Frankly, I'm rather attached to this life. And My greatest, truest, most honest desire is this: to witness history. To see what we become, or do not become. To witness the future on grand time scales so large as to make me dizzy while sitting down.

Not only us: I want to watch rock worn away, uplifted, continents drift, the Sun and stars evolve, the galaxies waltz, the vast and minute, the great footwork of the great Astaire and Rogers of time's arrow.

And I know that I will witness no such thing any more than a grain of sand on a beach witnesses and comprehends the greatest of human achievements. Less, to be sure.

And yet I wish it. Beyond all else.  From whence do legends of immortals come? From these feverish dreams of time within control. From within our desire -- born of evolutionary intelligence -- to surpass evolution itself.

My cat knows nothing of time, really. Food, rest, play, pleasure, fear, comfort...and, I like to think, Love. But immortality? Is she to be envied? Some, who might be called wise, would say yes. But that Zen-vectored view isn't one I can share anymore. I seek more. I seek the impossible, the forever cat, endless catnip.

Material: Subect/Verb Agreement

I have some cameras. I have some tripods. I have all of the 'stuff'. There are lights, wires, filters, lenses.

I have amazing microphones and preamps. I have ridiculously capable audio software. I have dead cats (+ 5 for non-incorrect inferrence) and good sealed cans (no, I am not canning animals for winter).

I have five different keyboards, at least three good word processors, and almost 40 years worth of material.

{ commercial break }

I have nobody in front of my cameras. I have no voice reaching into my microphone, pleading and demanding audience with the world. I have no words striving for freedom, aside from these silly exercises in construction. 

Confusion: what target? Shoot to kill? To capture? To enhance, or represent? I feel befuddled and non-understood swahili in my own intent, no subject for whatever verb I might arrive at.

Light Rail Coyote and More

Volume at 11 (+1 points if you get the reference), post-grunge girl-punk rock on the AKG's (another +1 for that reference).

Tied directly to my living, changing mirror-image doppleganger reflection of 9/11 because of a particular song. Not a mother, meself. But horrific imagery, beautiful tragedy blended on high in a Cuisinart with memories of that morning (walking to Calculus III class, talking to M on the phone: "They're gone." "What do you mean?" "The whole things. Gone.")

"Why can't I get along with you?" (2 points for double reference).

Modern Day Commies

OK, so politically, I'm not a fan of coomunism. Or any of its bastard children. But this is an interesting link, and on a much, much smaller scale that traditional view of communism: Brithdir Mawr Community

Rain

Rain in Colorado east of the Rockies is always something remarkable. This is due to what is called a "rain shadow" - the mountains to the west, facing the prevailing wind, the jet stream. The clouds drop their rain and snow as the wind pushes them higher in altitude, and as they lower on the lee side of the mountains and face the endess, flat plains of the American heartland, they stop giving up moisture, most of the year. This is why there is desert to the east of the Sierra Nevada, and is why the Colorado, Wyoming and Montana flatlands are drier than one might expect. It's also why, when it DOES rain here on the front range, we sometimes become entranced by water falling from the sky, manna, sitting on the front steps, simply listening to the drops falling.

Barack

From an email I sent earlier: I'm so enthusiastic about Barack Obama's candidacy that I've started to habitually check myself, asking myself if I'm becoming overzealous, or am being 'taken in' by appealing rhetoric. Just to be safe, you know? But the conclusion I keep arriving at is that this really is the turning point it appears to be; that he really is what he looks like. I'm a cynic at heart. Deep down. For me to feel as strong as this about a f***ing politician, of all things, is seemingly unlikely...and yet, he has captured my attention in a way that I can scarcely explain. As I read somewhere recently, I think I might have an inkling of what conservatives felt when Reagan came along. Suddenly, a person comes out of nowhere, embodying my ideals and my ideas, and does so with integrity, focus, honesty and energy. If I were a religious man, I would thank God for Barack Obama. As it is, I'll just thank Barack. And vote.

Walking in to a Border's bookstore the other day to purchase an electronics magazine, I found myself needing a restroom. I proceeded to the upstairs facilities, and while in the stall found two books that had clearly been taken from store shelves and left in the restroom. Curious, I glanced at the titles, and thumbed quickly through one of them.

As I left the store, I approached the young woman at the service desk and informed her that she might want to ask a male employee to fetch the books in question from the restroom. As I walked away, I said "Whoever left them there, the titles chosen were...amusing."

The titles in question? How to Get Hot Women Into Bed: Ultimate Seduction Techniques for Real Guys and
Boink: College Sex by the People Having It (this is the one with the dirty pictures in it) The amused look on the young woman's face was priceless.

Beginnings....?

It's been a long time since I looked at the contents of this blog, much less posted to it or published it.

My personal site remains chrismaytag,net, but I've chosen to resume using my now more-than-a-decade-old domain 'tangled.org' to publish things to

For now, all of the old entries are here. I don't know yet about the comments, which is a shame, because much of my favorite stuff that happened in the old blog took place in the comments. I had regular readers who were actively commenting on my posts, and with whom I had great conversations, both through comments and email.

I'll see what I can do about making sure that old comments are restored...or I will remove all posts prior to this one and treat this as a new blog entirely, as its purpose, my life, and my reason for writing again have all changed since the blog's inception.

Suffice to say that entries will be sporadic, and that I have no specific agenda in resuming my writing other than to have a place to write.

For my photographs, please visit Flickr , and keep in mind that I recently lost several gigabytes of my best photographic work due to a rare, rather dramatic and seemingly permanent RAID 0+1 array failure. What's on Flickr is what's left, and it's not my best work.

I am also moving from windows to all Macs - laptops and desktop, everything. I'm tired of Windows.

We'll see what happens here. It may fizzle again...which would be fine. But in the early days of blogging, when tangled.org had its greatest readership, there were thousands of individual readers per day, which, at the time, was pretty impressive for a non tecno-illuminati blog.

But for now, it makes sense to make things easy for me to have a place to write.

I can contain nothing Tears burst forth Like the dying breath Of a dying man rescued Left helpless By a single falling leaf I cry out Laughing.

{red|green|blue} Mars

SF novelist Cory Doctorow has posted what he calls a "Red Mars: a very belated appreciation". He says "Because now I've finally read Red Mars, and I am agog at what may be the finest sf novel I've ever read...Robinson doesn't just shine here: he glows."

I agree, Cory, and welcome to the fold.

Robinson's trilogy is that peculiar and particular variety of SF: fun for the lasers-and-rockets hounds, while still being rewarding - deeply and richly rewarding - for social theorists, political thinkers, even revolutionaries.

It's good to see a writer for whom I have a great deal of respect appreciated and honored by another writer for whom I have a great deal of respect.

Magnetic Poetry (From My Fridge)

The tiny ogre was repulsive,
But tasted like a peach

and

Awful meaty bones
a sad vision of
bloody pink

Reasons

Every now and then, something happens that reminds me of why I decided to teach. A friend ran a public show about quasars in the planetarium this evening, and a group from a local community college came to see the show. This "astronomy 101" class was of all ages, eager to learn, and seemed to be having a good time.

Later, my friend and I were scheduled to use the big scope for an observing project. I stopped by the smaller scopes, where we hold a public telescope viewing session every Friday evening, to find this same group eager for a look at Saturn or Jupiter. With the clouds rolling in, it was clear that they, and I, weren't going to be able to observe this evening. At the request of the instructor who had invited them to visit us, I held an impromptu tour & talk with this group about telescope, taking them upstairs to show them the big scope. I talked a bit about telescopes and quizzed them about some things. One kid, there with his mother, knew all the answers. "What kind of telescope is this?" "catadioptric, or cassegrain", he said. "And how about this one?" "refractor", was his quick reply. He was so eager, so interested, all of us - the adults - laughed, glad to see a kid excited like that.

It seems to me that we are born curious -- and then become incurious unless we are lucky. I hope his mom keeps bringing him to the observatory, because he's well on his way to being one of the lucky ones. After I locked up and left the observatory, I saw them leaving and said "thanks for coming tonight!" His mom said "don't worry...we'll be back."

Good enough.

Fighting Fair(er)

Now this is beautiful! Folks on the right - especially the "business right" - are all about the free market. And on this, I agree with them: let the market decide...as long as the playing field is fair.

And so, here, it is. By buying up "pollution credits" (and letting them expire, unused), the Acid Rain Retirement Fund manages to use the polluters' favorite weapon - the free market - against them. How's that for economic Jujitsu?

Nabokov Smiles?

In a discussion about the origin of the (in)famous 'smiley face' [ i.e., ":)" ], I found the following. It appears to be a Nabokov quote, although it is uncorroborated [ ed: now it has been ]:

Q: How do you rank yourself among writers (living) and of the immediate past? Nabokov: I often think there should exist a special typographical sign for a smile – some sort of concave mark, a supine round bracket, which I would now like to trace in reply to your question.