Uhm, sorry, cheerio and all

Uhm, sorry, cheerio and all that. The previous entries were the evil Mattfrom episode 3102. This is the real me. I’m fine. Just got back from the funeral. Out of all the relatives there two have email addresses. Out of the two, one realizes the Internet is more than a toy. On an unrelated note they all live in Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama. As I was walking about the funeral home I noticed a hutch with books on shelves behind the glass doors. I perused the titles out of curiosity as to what goes into a funeral home book collection. They had The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The 54th Session of the Congress of Tennessee and a number of other apparently disconnected books. What really surprise me is that on two different shelves someone had turned all the books upside down. The other shelves were all right side up. Every other detail about the funeral appears to be meticulously attended to, I wonder what purpose this one might serve?

Re-reading the entry about my

Re-reading the entry about my grandfather reminded me of the distance I had put between my grandmother and I. My grandmother thought the world of me. She never missed a holiday to send me some kind of gift. She didn’t get the love she deserved from me. I’ve always been distant, even as a little kid. I couldn’t fathom what I had done to earn her love and failing to understand it I stayed away.

9:52pm - I get a

9:52pm - I get a call from someone I don’t know in Memphis asking me if I’m the grandson of Sadie Elizabeth Barber. She’s upset and having a hard time forming sentences. My grandmother is very sick and refuses to go to the hospital and they need my help getting in touch with my mother or my aunt. I run through the who, what, when, where and why of the situation and formulate a plan.

Computer error in your favor save $10 and get a new license

I’ve been jumping through legal hoops since about June taking care of traffic tickets. Today I turned in my Alabama driver’s license to get a Texas one so that I would be eligible for defensive driving school on any new speeding tickets. To my surprise, and the Texas DOT worker, I didn’t have to pay for a new Texas driver’s license. Also I now have the added benefit of having a motorcycle license in addition to my regular car license without having to take the motorcycle test. In July I turned in my Texas driver’s license and got an Alabama one. They canceled my Texas one at this point. In late October I needed to give the Tolltag folks a new credit card number. This inadvertently resulted in the computer activating my Texas driver’s license again. I continued using my Alabama driver’s license until today when I got my Texas driver’s license. It turns out since my Texas driver’s license was reactivated by the Tolltag folks it still had it’s 2006 expiration date. That meant the computer wouldn’t let them charge me for a new driver’s license since it’s a renewal. Now I did pay a $15 fee for a new motorcycle license because my Alabama driver’s license had that class on it as well. However, that’s a steal as I didn’t have to pay to take the motorcycle test. I guess computers just like me.

The West Wing creator Aaron

The West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin has excoriated NBC for its telecast of The Bush White House: Inside the Real West Wing, which aired prior to Sorkin’s drama on January 23. In an interview with The New Yorker, Sorkin said that it was right that the country has been “laying off the bubblehead jokes” about Bush, but, he added: “The White House pumped up the President’s schedule to show him being much busier and more engaged than he is, and Tom Brokaw let it happen – the show was a valentine to Bush. That illusion may be what we need right now, but the truth is we’re simply pretending to believe that Bush exhibited unspeakable courage. … The media is waving pompoms, and the entire country is being polite.” I got that from Studio Briefing, an excellent resource for Film and TV news. As they don’t have the archive link up you can also read a more complete version of the story in Chicago Tribune. Aaron Sorkin’s comments come from a New Yorker interview (thanks josh).

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Maybe the trick to finding

Maybe the trick to finding happiness in life is setting a goal for how much you want? If you’re always chasing after something better you never finish. You never enjoy the booty. But then again, maybe it’s the journey that matters in the end.

I found out that my

I found out that my grandfather died in his sleep yesterday. We weren’t very close. I’ve never been close to any family outside of my mother, sister and daughter. Like my father he seemed to have given up on life years ago. Unlike my father he didn’t take matters into his own hands and just waited for his body to shut down. I can remember staying with my grandparents when I was young and looking through his huge collection of SciFi paperbacks. In particular, he read just about anything that Isaac Asimov published. He was also a great chess player. I remember thinking here’s a smart guy I wonder what he’s done with his life.

Most embarrassing moment ever

There are some things from my past that make me cringe when I just think about them. Four or five years ago when I was living in an apartment in Birmingham, Alabama I was struggling with my physique. I had this loathing for the male figure. I hated having a penis. I felt like if I was androgynous I would be free from Western notions of sex and gender. I thought I’d be free to write my own page. After a while I realized the science to be whatever I want just isn’t here yet, so I needed to be happy with my body the way it is. I decided that this meant walking around my empty apartment naked. I thought this would force me to accept my body, or give me the energy and willpower to follow through with a regimen of diet and exercise to change it. Well one night I was watching TV sans clothing and I heard people noises outside my apartment. I ignored them for a second and then I thought “What if they can see me through the blinds even though they are closed? It’s dark outside, it’s light in here.” Then I heard laughter and I decided better safe than sorry and I ambled awkwardly for the light switch and turned it off. They were in the parking lot outside my window laughing even more. I sat there in the dark and felt more ashamed of my body than before. In the long term though it’s been oddly liberating. It’s brought us closer, my body and I. It’s funny, but writing this out has really made me appreciate that for the first time.

If you ever wanted to

If you ever wanted to update all your posts in Blogger to make some sweeping change, like oh say converting to XHTML which means you need to convert
tags to
. You might try the following:

1. Change your template to:

Boy can I gloss over details. At any rate, when I’m not so tired I’ll put together a perl script which does just this. This was inspired by Jako’s postJako’s post and the fact that at one point I converted by hand all Dave’s entries to XMLall Dave’s entries to XML.

As I stood in Leia's

As I stood in Leia’s empty apartment I felt dislodged from the world around me. All the memories of time I’d spent there drifted in and out of my thoughts and I could find no anchor. It got me to wondering about what Leia had done in her apartment. You invest so much energy into making a space yours, and then in a day you’ve pulled yourself out of it. Your distinct claim to that apartment, house, or room is gone and it’s like that space is craving to be claimed again. Whenever I help someone move out and I wander through their empty rooms and I feel the vacuum that has been created by their departure. It always gets to me. It’s not pleasant or unpleasant, it’s powerful in a way I don’t know how to describe.