random incoherence and infantile meanderings

The following quote from Jay Lake’s Link salad is going to drive its daddy to drinkin’ gave me a wicked shiver when I read it.

John McCain has a lot to answer for, and I predict his place in political history will be to remembered as John the Baptist to Palin’s twisted conservative Jesus.

I need happy thoughts now. Somebody share some happy thoughts. A LOLcat maybe? Please?

U.S. Approves Targeted Killing of American Cleric.

You should be.

Samsung has no sense of humor. And the news article reporting on that has some really interesting sentences. My favorite is

After Samsung complained, the paper ran two clarifications, one of which Breen says he was told by editors was written by Samsung.

Take heed. One sentence paragraphs are better than two sentence paragraphs. No matter how confusing the single sentence may be. And if you are going to Korea, remember that you can be sued for damaging someone’s reputation, even if what you’ve said is the purest truth. Just pretend you are an actor talking about your coworkers on a film. Everyone is the best, the greatest, the most awesome.

—

A new article on MIT’s Technology Review talks about how “Metamaterials allow the creation of adjacent spaces with their own laws of physics, just like the multiverse.” I have no idea what the heck that means, but it sounds bloody awesome. (Yes, I read the rest of the article. No, I have no idea what the heck it means.)

In symmetries of these spaces depend on the dimensions and the way they are compactified and this in turn determines the laws of physics in these regions.

Compactified! How cool is that?

—

Nathan Bransford writes cogently about author’s voice. And I’ve cemented in my superstitious mind that talking about voice is as useful as the dark matter nonsense. I don’t even care if it fits all the evidence. It’s all a bunch of yammering that gets nothing done.

—

Yes, I am having a bad pain day. Why do you ask? Oh, because I’m being a didactic idiot again? Ahhhh. You may have a good point. Perhaps I should just shut up when I feel like this.

A quote from my lovely wife:

so when I dropped Rom off at school today, he realized his apple had escaped his backpack. He was almost in tears…he never zips the small compartment. I felt bad and offered him my cup of pears. He declined and proceeded to get out of the car. I said ” I love you, don’t let this ruin your day”, he sarcastically smiled and gave me a thumbs up. We’ve done a great job teaching him sarcasm…

And she’s right. We have done a great job. He’s going to be a great guy when he finishes growing up.

My lovely Friday has pretty much been completely wasted in trying to renew the registration on my car. I had a feeling that the renewal was coming up, but I didn’t worry about and didn’t check on it until last night. When I got down on my knees and saw that the plate said APR, I was only mildly surprised. At least I still had a day and hadn’t completely forgotten like the last time this came up.

So this morning I collected my paperwork and went down to City Hall to pay off my overdue excise tax. Because I hadn’t paid it on time I had received a notice from the 17th stating that I had a warrant that would prevent me from renewing my license or registration. Over all, the fines for being late were less than I expected and I walked right and walked right back out.

I had high hopes for the rest of the day.

I arrived at the RMV (Registry of Motor Vehicles) as they opened. There were no parking spots left, so I circled around the town (well, half the town) and re-arrived ten minutes later. The first few people had been serviced and were leaving, so I snagged a parking spot and sauntered in.

Yeah, that’s when I started having problems. While I tried to figure out which paperwork I needed to fill out for the registration renewal, three more people came in… for registration renewals. I peeked at one’s hand and he had a prefilled form. I guess he’d recieved it in the mail. Maybe I hadn’t because of the hold. I decided to just take a ticket and hope that the original registration was paperwork enough.

An hour later I finally got to find out that I was correct. Everything they needed was on the registration. Sadly they weren’t able to take my money because I still had a hold.  The lady was very nice and suggested I just call them to get it cleared up.

Have I mentioned that I am irrationally afraid of telephones? Yeah… it’s stupid and ridiculous and miserable.

I have a solution though. An enabler.

I picked up my wife from work and got her to call for me. The tax collector was confused. There was no hold on my name. She had to call her supervisor. Turns out that the unpaid excise tax was from 2008, back when I had a Scion xA and a totally different last name. The last name change is why nothing new was showing up. And I lost the xA in a car crash, right about the time the excise tax was due. It’s no good excuse, but I completely forgot that I owed anything. I blocked it right out of my head.

We drove to the bank and I took out the money that had been intended for paying cell phone bills. Then we paid the nice tax collector and she said it would take 20 minutes for the hold to clear. By now it was past noon and, in a shocking twist of fate, the RMV was more than twice as crowded as when I had left at 10am. There were cars parked in the street, over the curb, around the back, all over the place.

I came home and renewed the registration online. That was painless.

The lesson to be learned here is take care of business when you have to. Even better, take care of it before you absolutely have to. And I’ll bet you $5 that I won’t follow my own advice.