Anyone else following the "sewer monster" story? Oh, stop eating before you check the link out.

It does look like worms to me. A really gross couple clumps of 'em.

The guy was a music and dance legend. But please keep, in the backs of your minds, the following: video of him dangling a baby, he wanted to be Disney's animated Peter Pan, and the whole possible (dare I say probable?) pedophile situation. Disagree with the Peter Pan idea? Compare their noses. And both owned "Neverland" for a while. Sort of.

Does this stuff overshadow Michael's towering accomplishments in music and dance? No. Does it make his death a laughing matter? No. I do think this dams a potential flood of "What the ... !?" news that might have continued as he aged. Maybe he was on the cusp of something amazing, but that possibility has been cut off at the relatively-young-now age of 50. Bummer.

Michael Jackson's death shouldn't be almost totally overshadowing Farrah Fawcett's like it is, though. People wanted Michael's iconic dance moves and jackets. Farrah had an iconic red swimsuit poster, a hairstyle named after her, and did some decent acting. No other weird stuff as far as I know. She didn't top Michael for talent, but she was incredibly well known, another representation of America in her spotlight time. She had stars of every gender copying her hairstyle. But she didn't have world tours or controversy like the King of Pop.

Fly free, Farrah. Sorry you had to go, too.

Anna-Nicole's media blast of an end story was incredibly sad. Who knows what media insanity will surround Britney's passing when it happens? Sometimes entertainment news isn't very entertaining, becoming a catalyst for sharing grief and shock with others than about enjoyment. "OMG, did you hear... ?" "I can't believe..." As long as people need entertainment, e-news is here to stay, breeding and feeding information communities based on similar likes and dislikes.

Moving on, sort of, Death in the classic Rider-Waite Tarot, and every other one I've seen, is about transformation, not physical death. My metaphysical side had to toss that in the stew.

Spinal Tap's also got a new album out called "Back from the Dead". The opening line of the title track is "Give me reincarnation, or give me death." They're baaaaack. Oh yeah. I couldn't help it, I had to levitate (v.: to bring levity).

Finally, this is too funny to wait for another post even though it's not death-ish. Evidently Michael Bay has finally made an art movie. I may have to see it just to get my limbic system maladjusted. At a cheap matinee if at all possible.

Where were you when Michael Jackson died?

I remember trying to moonwalk, I remember seeing the Thriller video for the first time, and I remember thinking he was quite a wack. But I was at work when I heard the news.

Adios, dude. Keep dancin', and I'm totally trying to avoid making any jokes at your expense. I'm sure there are going to be way WAY way more than enough coming soon to a Web near us all. Brace for impact.

I had a burst of stuff here, and lost it. Bad Brant.

In short, cancer in two people I care about, heart failure also in one of those, one more probable cancer, not definite, still very worrisome.

Josie's incredible as far as how fast she's growing and watching her paying more attention to her surroundings and looking like she's starting to try to maybe communicate. And almost walking. She's almost ten months old where the HECK did the time go?

This is for Marie. Possibly sacrilegious.

This is for Mav and maybe Karen.

Here's something for Brian.

And this is for Chuck.

For the rest of you, claymation zombies. Definitely not kid-safe, almost definitely not work-safe.

YEEEEEAAAAAH!

Maybe I'm even more stoked about this because of the recent closure of 3D Realms, developers of the perennial vaporware known as Duke Nukem Forever. I get a very strong feeling that we're going to see at least some of DNF, just not sure what form it's going to take. Here's to hopin'.

And now your thoughts on data privacy are what, Mr. Scalia?

MC Frontalot melds roleplaying and stopping smoking.

Food-based cutting torches. I never would have thought that bacon or cucumbers would be used in a device that could burn through steel. Hilarious.

This place's network wiring has gone to shit.

Hi, how are you all? Good, good. I'm well, thanks. My wife and bio-daughter are in Illinois right now visiting relatives and attending a wedding. That leaves me and dogs and cats and chickens and fish in the house. And whatever bugs and things that I don't want to think about freeloading in the structure and on the premises. It's odd. You'd think I'd be happy to be able to spend a couple hours playing games or something, but I haven't really been doing that much. I mean, yeah, I've played a bit of Guild Wars and really should have installed and started playing Pirates or playing Left 4 Dead or one of the other games I bought like two or three years ago that I haven't installed yet because I hadn't had time. But mostly I've just been piddling around doing not much. Probably decompressing. Decanting, so to speak. I'll do some L4D tonight and tomorrow morning. Still have to try out Survival mode.

While flipping through channels the other day, I saw Attack of the Show commenting on an awful "Swinebusters" video from YouTube. Yes, a filk of the "Ghostbusters" song. It was bad. Not quite Vogon poetry, but pretty bad. The crowning blow for me was "I ain't afraid of no swine". "SwineBUSTERS!" should be followed up with "I ain't afraid of no PIGS". Or "I ain't afraid of no pork". The repetitive redundancy grates on my delicate sensibilities.

This is tangentially more relevant to me than most because my wife and I are going on a cruise in a few weeks from San Diego to other locations, including Mexico. But of course with the H1N1 flu thing going on, the cruise isn't going to Mexico, so we'll have an extra day on the briny instead. Honestly, that's not a problem for us. Why a cruise? Two years of mawwiage at the end of May! Thank you, you're very kind. Josie? She'll be spending a few nights at her grammy's house, sort of a vacation for her as well. Should be fun for all of us.

Speaking of fun, Josie's top two front teeth are just starting to poke out and Josie seems to love grinding her upper and lower teeth together. Ay yay yay. And she's going to start cruising any moment. She can stand up on her own for a couple of seconds at a time. She's absolutely unbelievable. She's a climber too. We're going to have to move everything breakable in the house to the garage somehow. NOTHING IS SAFE!

I've mentioned reconnecting with a lot of old friends on Facebook. I'd forgotten how many of those old friends have late April and early-to-mid May birthdays. It's absolutely insane how many of my friends' parents were gettin' down in the summer (do the math: 40 weeks gestation time for humans... yeah). Shoutouts and props to alla you birthday people!

Finally, for now, the US Postal Service seems to be kind of mental when it comes to international shipments. I'll leave it at that for now.

Word to your mutha.

I'm 41 today. Two-score and one years old.

I'm getting my finances in order, actually saving for retirement and such. My health is getting much-needed attention. I have a biological daughter to add to my stepdaughters as one of  "my kids". I've gotten back in touch with my father, uncle, cousins, stepbrother and stepsister... In short my family connections have exploded in the last year. I'm still getting used to them, so I hope they forgive my missteps there. I've come to terms with losing one of my stepdaughters, though I still and always will be grieving in some parts. I have a wonderful wife. My sort of sister's back in touch and sounding like she's doing ok. I've reconnected through Facebook with a whole lot of people I thought I'd never hear from again, and it hasn't been terribly embarrassing. At least not yet.

I saw someone post online recently that they didn't care what anyone thought of them. I thought to myself that they might consider the opinion of whomever they get their income from later in life. I grinned then, considering when I had The Angst. That person will probably head a multi-billion-dollar company later.

So I'm officially a year older today than I was yesterday, but I'm much more together than I was, heck, years ago. I may not be phresh and in yer phace, but I'm doing well. Fuck yeah.

Josie is crawling now, and can pull herself up to standing while supporting herself with both hands. She loves to chase the cats in her slow lumbering crawly way, and shoelaces no longer stay tied when she's around. She's astonishing, wonderful, and other fine adjectives. And whoever is making money off of the furniture childproofing kits at Babies R Us made a crapload of dough off my wife the other day. I'm considering alternatives to the kits built with items from Home Depot that could literally save us hundreds of dollars. I'll be checking teh IntarWebz shortly on that.

My surgery incision's pretty much healed up now, but smacking it, for example a small foot booting it, still causes more ouch than it normally would. I'm very happy I got the surgery done. I don't have to hold my guts in when sneezing or coughing, for example. I'm still perturbed that I was waiting for 9 months after they said yeah, let's get that scheduled, but the results have been ver' nice.

I'm working on dropping my caffeine intake again, but haven't gotten enough of a morning exercise rhythm to completely do the deed. Still, I'm down to the equivalent of a cup or two of coffee a day and dropping sodas off the list of approved beverages, so yay.

I keep thinking of more things to talk to Josie about as she grows up, resulting from thinking about my past more and more. For example, astrology is a back burner item, as is most of the related New Age-y stuff I know about minerals, numerology, much of the philosophy, and the like, but there's a draw to get her to know a bit about Tarot. I dunno why. I haven't been really working with my deck in some time now. But the draw is there. Go figger. I'll be rediscovering the outdoors with her, I'm pretty sure. I have some nature knowledge and a ton of experience with walking, camping, and the like. Her mom is going to teach her about horses, and I know she'll get animal-wise from begin around her mom and the menagerie here. Music is going to be an interesting topic because I love it, and while her mom doesn't dislike it, she doesn't have the same love of music that I have. Reading, PCs or at least computers in general... the list is long, and I'm sure much of it will get tossed out when we start finding out what she likes and dislikes. But It's interesting to think about the partial library sections Josie's mom and I can represent for a growing person. I did some of that for my stepdaughters, but not as much as I would have liked to. I really should have done more in that area.

Meanwhile, here's a grab bag of links: 

How to survive falling through ice.

The touching and timeless Stumpy the Duck by the insurmountable Ze Frank.

Childhood vs. Adulthood: Foods.

New Star Wars Disney figurines. I'm surprised these two marketing juggernauts didn't put this kind of crap together previously. Ugh.

Sailing the great Pacific garbage patch. "This is our legacy."

Strip Generator.

Procrastination Killer 1.0.

How to do some bar tricks. I love magic tricks and that kind of thing, so this appeals to me, however unlikely it might be that I'll do any.

"To me, all creativity is magic. Ideas start out in the empty void of your head – and they end up as a material thing, like a book you can hold in your hand. That is the magical process. It's an alchemical thing. Yes, we do get the gold out of it but that's not the most important thing. It's the work itself. That's the reward. That's better than money." -- Alan Moore

Healing from the hernia repair is proceeding well. I'm already able to carry Josie around in certain positions for short periods of time despite the post-surgery instructions telling me not to pick up anything heavy for a few weeks after the surgery. The pain meds definitely help. Mostly there's some intermittent stinging if I leave the incision alone, and the itching goes away on the meds. The site's still pretty tender but getting better every day. I'll be back to work in a little less than a week.

Since I'm off work healing up, I decided, with much urging from my wife, to reorganize my pathetic semi-filing system to get various bits of paperwork in some semblance of order. I've kept entirely too much old paperwork, including some very important things I thought I'd lost that I still actually have. Surprise! Ahem. It's coming along well.

I've also been finding and sorting through a bunch of old computer parts. At some point I'm going to be selling some stuff. Right now I'm shocked (shocked!) at how much I have that's no longer usable in any semi-modern system or that went with some proprietary device or whatnot that I didn't have even five years ago. I guess I've been a packrat for computer bits.

I've also been slowly boxing up my audio CDs because I've totally digitized my music library. My car doesn't need to use regular audio CDs anymore, I play digital music on my computer now, and I don't even have a regular standalone CD player now though my DVD player can do the job. I did get a Squeezebox Boom and am absolutely loving it. It works well with my new file server, since the new file server is acting as a server for the Boom. Details are a bit technical, but I have the Boom now able to play my Pandora stations, music from Rhapsody, local radio stations, Shoutcast, live365.com, and I just started fiddling with last.fm. In short, I have WAY too much music now at my fingertips. YES!

Back to Josie. She's eating mushy cereals now, and doing it quite well. Still not quite crawling yet, but she has very little to go on that front. We're occasionally getting some babbling from her as she "chats" with her wubbie (a horsey plush handkerchief-sized almost blanket kind of... well, it's a toy she likes a lot). Two teeth are crowning in her lower gum, but she's not real concerned. There's a lot of drooling and just about everything in reach goes into her mouth, but we aren't really experiencing the baby angst that we've heard about with teething. She'll occasionally wave to me and seems somewhat interested in the hand signs I'm showing her, though she isn't doing them yet. I need to learn some more signs, too.

In other news, Clan POM, my old PC gaming buddy group is kind of back alive again after reuniting on Facebook. We've played a bit of Left 4 Dead together and think it's fan-frickin'-tastic, much better with people in co-op than single player.

No links today, I'll dig some more up for next entry. CIAO!