I had intended to go to bed early tonight, but I can't -- not until I share with all of you this thing that I just learned.
I would hope that the majority (or at least a plurality) of the readers of this blog would know "Fish Heads," by Barnes & Barnes, the video of which is as guilty as anything of warping my early teenage mentality, back when MTV used to play it a lot, in the early '80s. (Let's all take a moment and wistfully remember a time when something as unapologetically bizarre as "Fish Heads" could appear -- frequently -- on MTV.)
I've known for a while that one of the Barnses is Bill Mumy, who played Will Robinson on "Lost In Space." But what I did not know until this very night is that the star and director of that video is none other than the immortal Bill "Game Over, Man!" Paxton.
Why can't I be a former child star who's living off of residuals from a hit TV show and making bizarre, fun music and videos with my friends in LA in the late '70s?
Anyway, from now on, when you get Bill Paxton and Bill Pullman mixed up -- as we all do -- now you'll know the difference: Paxton's the one who was in "Fish Heads."
Remember: Roly poly fish heads are never seen drinking cappuccino in Italian restaurants with Oriental women.
A year ago today, on February 16 in the year of our Lord two thousand and seven, the European Commission voted on the Bolkestein Directive; Hamas chose a new Palestinian Prime Minister; 4-time ECW Tag Team Champion Johnny Grunge died -- and a plucky little Web log known as "Rough Draft" came to life, fueled by dreams of glory and a surly attitude. It went on to suffer a name change (to "Idiom Savant") and several long periods of neglect by its author.
Twelve months later, I'm still not sure what pushed me over the edge into the blogging abyss, besides my usual fuel of narcissism and self-loathing. And I'm still not sure what I'm trying to accomplish with all this. If nothing else, it's a good excuse to help proliferate amusing pictures of dogs wearing party hats throughout the Internet.
One inarguable benefit has been the manyawesomefellowbloggers I have met or re-establishedconnectionswith. Intelligent, funny, perceptive, sexy people, the lot of you. As is everybody who is reading this right now, except maybe a couple of you (you know who you are).
So (to repeat what I said six months ago), thanks for visiting, thanks for reading, and thanks for leaving such nice, funny and thoughtful comments. Even though I pretty much ran out of stuff to write about back in April 2006, I'll continue to try keep the laffs at my expense coming. I think that's the way Johnny Grunge would want it.
I have never, to the best of my recollection, had an actual valentine on Valentine's Day. (A "Valentine" meaning in this case a person -- in the "will you be my Valentine" sense -- and not a card, which I have gotten plenty of in the past. You all probably figured that, but this blog is dedicated to clarity in all things, even [or perhaps especially] to excess.) I offer this (the fact that I've never had an actual valentine on Valentine's day -- remember that? from the beginning up there?) as a simple statement of fact, not a bid for sympathy. The truth is, I've gotten to the point -- and I think it's a healthy place -- where I just honestly don't care at all about the day. I can't be bothered to be angst-ridden or bitter about February the 14th; I just don't have the energy to muster up any more than my normal, everyday levels of angst and bitterness.
To tell you the truth, I'm almost as bored with the anti-Valentine's movement as I am with the actual holiday itself. Marianne, as usual, has the right idea: The elementary school version, in which everybody gets a Valentine from everybody else (and also candy), is far preferable to the grownup version. A few years ago, I got all of my colleagues at the wacky Internet startup I was working at to make "mailboxes" out of paper plates and decorate them, and bring in Valentines for each other, preferably the kind that come in a box of 20 (if I recall correctly, mine had military helicopters on them). I decorated my Valentine's mailbox with a picture of Spanish superstar María del Rosario Pilar Martínez Molina Baeza de Rasten, which I still have. It was fun, and it served to distract us momentarily from the grim realities of that workplace, in which we were being paid mostly with worthless stock options.
Anyway. Even though, like I said, I'm now almost as cynical about cynicism about Valentine's Day as I am about Valentine's Day itself, cynicism does, in general, produce funnier stuff to look at on the Internet. Viz:
That's all I can find right now; feel free to comment with your own links or sentiments, pro- or anti-VD. And Charo (or, for that matter, the mighty cute author of that MSNBC.com article), if you're not up to anything on 02/14/07, give me a holler. I'll always have room in my handmade Valentine's mailbox for you.
PS: Of course, the most exciting upcoming holiday will be the 16th, when a certain blog* turns one year old.
So, apparently, they're making computers in colors other than beige these days.
I only discovered this because the time had come to effect some big changes here at Idiom Savant World HQ. It was time to say goodbye to the days of 128MB RAM, a nearly-overflowing hard drive, an intermittently-working CD burner, and a tower that constantly emitted a loud whine that worked its way into my subconscious, giving me, in my dreams, a terrifying image of the slender, ever-fraying thread that held all of my precious data out of the pit of oblivion. It was time to say hello to a sleek, silver-and-black tower with a power button that glows with the neon blue found under only the finest Trans-Ams on Franklin Street. It was time to say hello to the most expensive cheap computer I could afford with my tax refund.
And, although it wasn't part of my plan, it was time for Vista, the latest candy-coated OS from our friends at Microsoft. I didn't necessarily want Vista; it was more or less thrust upon me by virtue of having bought a computer after Vista's launch. (I don't think you can even get a new eMachines PC without Vista now. I considered getting a Mac Mini instead, but I ended up paying less for the PC and getting more memory and storage, plus a DVD/CD burner.) I'm still not sure how I feel about it. I was just getting used to XP, which in fact seemed unduly extravagant when I first used it, and now here's Vista, which makes everything seem... laminated and translucent -- fast and slick and shiny, like Flo Jo in a tuxedo. When you minimize a window, it sort of half fades out before it shrinks. If you have a window open in front of another window, the border takes on a frosted effect, so you can sort of see through it to the window behind. The user experience makes me think of trying to juggle soap bubbles. It's pretty obviously an attempt to look more like the Mac OS. It's all cool, I guess... but is it necessary? Could those bits of RAM currently devoted to translucency and embossing be used towards a more useful end, such as protecting us from the threat of global Communism?
That aside, man, is this thing sweet, especially based on my pathetically low standards. I haven't even really begun to plumb the depths of all the stuff I can do with it. Compared to some of my hard-core computer using friends, I'm still pretty much a piker. I don't play many games (which this particular computer apparently isn't any good for, anyway). Right now, I'm happy to have Quicken open up in less than a full minute after I click on the icon.
The new machine does whine, ever so slightly. But that's normal, right? It's nothing like Mr. Beige was. And, hey, check out all that sexy free hard drive space (pictured above).
I really can't justify the expense (except that it was funded by my tax refund, which is like free money from Jesus), but then I couldn't justify the expense of my old computer, which was even more expensive at the time (but it came with a scanner and a printer, both now broken, and a monitor).
I mean, I'm glad I bought this thing, I guess. I just have buyer's remorse. Especially because it's not likely that I'll use my new, powerful, horribly expensive computer for anything other than farting around on the Internet. Hey... like I'm doing right now!
PS: McAfee Security Center (which comes free with your lavish eMachines T5224 purchase, for which you will surely be punished in Hell as a profligate soul, who could have used his money much, much more wisely) is a piece of shit.
PPS: This is pretty much true, but it hasn't bothered me yet, so thoroughly have I apparently drunk of the Microsoft Kool-Aid:
I had intended to go to bed early tonight, but I can't -- not until I share with all of you this thing that I just learned.
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