So Big And So Very, Very Small

Peer hard. It's the space shuttle on its way up as photographed from the space station. See, once you've spotted it, the tininess of that little ship? Warren Ellis received several of photos like this from a friend—the man has amazing friends!—and you can see them on this page. (Ignore yucky blog title, I think he's trying to channel George Carlin and doesn't need to. Or, what the hell, maybe he likes yucky. I was about to say, It's a free country, but that's a discussion for another day.) (Makes it a little harder for me to wax poetic about that which these photographs bestir.)

Something about how very dear we all are, tiny, vulnerable, and straining, always trying very hard, with our toys, to excel beyond our reach—in the immeasurably vast and indifferent beauty of all that space.

Button Button Who's Got The

That arbiter of all things web, Technorati, has clearly if silently declared it: microscopic is in.

No, really. Someone—someone who could have been spending his or her time on any one of the numerous bugs in the Technorati index that Improbulous so patiently blogs, month after bloody fuckin' month (year?)—has instead wasted god knows how much human energy designing, if that's not too overstating the fact, the ultimate in blog badges: you cannot read it, it has no style, why, the damn thing almost isn't there.*

It would be one thing, were this some earnest little startup—and it is quite another on the part of an outfit that has as if set out to annoy, overlook and otherwise alienate their free bread and butter, as has our dear Technorati. The name has always been genius, you've got to give them that.

Which has so many up and comings nipping at its heels ... and there really was hardly ever any there there in the first place ... but shh, don't say anything. It will be too fun to see this all play out.


*

Wow! Yet Another Free Clue!

bloggasm posts: Reader feedback on my ‘Your chances of getting laid through craigslist’ article: ‘Finally, in general, I will also tell many men to use the best methodology ever invented by man; it is the one that has worked for me for years (although on rare occasions I have had success without it, specific cases being 3 women from earlier this year on CL). You know what that's called? PAYING FOR IT!!!

Yes, as my brother (who operates a very successful website out in CA) and I know all too well, this is THE method that is best, avoids endless bullshit, and gets you RESULTS! And I am not even talking about all the stuff in the erotic section (which you also ignored and which would falsify your claims even more), but of making sweet, younger, new girls that have not done this before into your own private whores.’

(Emphasis mine.)

Then, I suppose in some small way to his credit, bloggasm writes:

There were times when I really felt ashamed to be a straight male. I mean, I can understand the allure of the whole thing, but there's nothing like staring at 200 emails from horny men that allows you to understand how dismal the male gender really is.

I would propose that taking pride or delight or whatever ghastly thing at the idea of turning sweet young girls into “your own private whores” is clinically indicative of a pathological disturbance of—or primitive and ill-formed—object relations, wherein the child perceives others as less than human, unlike himself, but as objects which he is free to manipulate for his own gratification. Absent, of course, any awareness of the abnormality.

Hell For The Dictionary

You know what, fuck the word dysfunctional. It splatters the pages of Amazon reviews like so many deer turds, stripped of its meaning by vast and shallow overuse, primarily by people whose most loving descriptions are of themselves, deployed via the hidden (yeah, right) mechanics of projection.

Jesus. And the mind delivers itself of another little thought-packet of rage slash humor slash truth slash hell, something bigger than I ever knew. In fact, a whole lot of the sentences that languish in Blogger Drafts forever, going back, what, three, four years now—so shoot me, I cannot subtract in my head, there must be bigger human flaws but none that immediately come to mind ...

Well, revenge is sweet. Living well is the best revenge—that and skewering fools like so many chunks of flank steak per kebab. Never pointless. Never empty calories. This is the good stuff, the stuff by which we live in this stinking sea of crassness, atop which float so many islands of beauty and grace ... Floating islands, made of vegetation, of land and sea all richly matted together yet rooted nowhere, their own little worlds. And so is the soul is, if it is to live.

And the animal life, upon those islands, and the fish that swim beneath them, and all manner of good things ... Isn't that the most painful truth of all?

Well, which is it? Are you going to be among those who trash this life, in the face of its fragility—one stingray barb, two inches, three minutes away from death—or are you going to be a stand-up kind of guy?

Well? Are you?


Rest in Peace, Steve Irwin.

What Are We Looking At Here?

Lawyer David Roth told reporters in Florida that Foley was intoxicated when he sent lewd electronic messages to former House pages but was always sober when conducting official business during his 12 years in Congress. Roth said he could not explain new reports of an exchange in which Foley appeared to be having Internet sex with a youth while participating in a House roll-call vote.

Blind terror? Plain stupidity? The least imaginative lying-filth lawyer in Washington?

All of the above?

Seldom does a story come out so devoid of the credible yet so churning of the stomach—what the hell am I saying, anyone who plays that fast and loose with his Congressional responsibilities fairly begs to be dismissed. Getting off on the internet while a vote is being taken. What a statesman. What a guy.

Walk On The Water

Apple's shares slipped less than 1 per cent in after-market trading on Wednesday, suggesting that investors did not believe that Mr Jobs' admission would weaken his position at the company.

Clearly, there is some confusion out there, In what I call PC-Land, what you probably call, the world.

Steve is the company, the company is Steve.

Look at it this way: Once, in partnership (ha) with my then- (ha) husband (ha) (where am I) I owned a lovely Mercedes that also went like a son of a bitch. Which is to say, beautifully, smoothly, extremely fast. What a tool for getting from here to there. And we had our little joke, because we had more money than seemed possible, then. It went, Why isn't everybody smart enough to drive a Mercedes. Some joke.

When you finish laughing ... and whapping your PC on the top from yet another blue screen of you-know-what, or from opening another little window only to find there is another little window behind it and so on ... I'm tellin' you, you don't have to live that way, the web is pretty damn nice on a Mac ...

You know, you really can't imagine the crap that is thrown at you as a PC user, you see a stream of cheap and funky shit that you prolly think is the internet. Shit they don't even bother to throw at me ... 'cuz I am not going to push that stupid-ass button, Clean My Registry, Please! no matter what.

I am not going to click on, Click On Me! Free, The Taj Mahal!

Free Dell PC! (Shipping and Handling, $895.)

Okay, Steve. Honk your magic honker. Distort that reality field. Start any time now.