C Is For Calcium, D Is For Dummy

After we were convinced to take 6000 units a day of Vitamin D, the newest report says in essence, "Are you crazy? That stuff is dangerous."

You Know What I Don't Like?

Forget it, we don't have time for that, but you know one thing I don't like? When you ask where something is in a store, and they can't just tell you they don't know, but have to act like somebody from Flight Plan, as if it isn't that they don't know where it is, but that product never existed in the first place and you're crazy and probably dangerous.

Hey, I'm Not Proud Of This

It was very icy here today. If I had taken any pictures, I could have a slide show.

Joe Miller Is Tall and Thin, But Except For That....

In the Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis describes Napoleon in the afterlife walking and talking:

"It was Soult's fault. It was Ney's fault. It was Josephines fault. It was the fault of the Russians. It was the fault of the English." Like that all the time, never stopped for a moment.  A little fat man and he looked kind of tired. But he didn't seem able to stop it.

Murkowski spokesman Kevin Sweeney:

“Throughout this election, Miller has blamed everybody else. It was the media’s fault. It was his advisor’s fault. Then it was the Division of Elections staff's fault, the lieutenant governor's fault, and now he is blaming his own volunteers -- people who took nearly a week of their own to travel to Juneau and work on his behalf," Sweeney said. "I was there. I watched his volunteers. I though they did a great job in doing what they were asked to do. They challenged every single ballot they could find a fault with. At some point he has to accept responsibility and that he lost and that he’s to blame.”

Is Joe Miller Aragorn's Brother?

Some people, have said that the Mouth of Sauron, also known as the Messenger of Mordor,  is Aragorn's brother. Unfortunately,  the reference I intended to cite for this has vanished as if it put on a ring of power. But here's a little bit from the scene outside of the Black Gate between him and Gandalf:

Then the Messenger of Mordor laughed no more. His face was twisted with amazement and anger to the likeness of some wild beast that, as it crouches on its prey, is smitten on the muzzle with a stinging rod. Rage filled him and his mouth slavered, and shapeless sounds of fury came strangling from his throat.

Joe Miller just doesn't seem to be able to accept that he lost the election.

"Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child"

But today it was so cold and windy, with blowing snow, that I felt like my own steppe brother.
Yesterday, a blogger writing for  The Hill (another blogger altogether, you know I only write for you) suggested our failed senate candidate, Joe Miller, for president.
Please, if you ever have a chance to vote for or against Joe Miller keep these things in mind: he's a liar and a cheat.
Here's Joe in his own words,  I lied about accessing all of the computers. I then admitted about accessing the computers, but lied about what I was doing. Finally, I admitted what I did."
Which reminds me, we conservatives are always saying that character matters, but why do we keep running candidates that don't have any?

Out Of The Inky Darkness

E-inky darkness, that is. Hot on the heels of my abortive attempt to upgrade Quicken, was an attempt to download books from Barnes and Noble. But, the B&N e-reader, that venerable exemplar of good design has been discontinued, and as an example of bad manners; discontinued with no notice. To continue to buy e-books from them I will have to "upgrade" to the Nook for iPhone app which has none of the features that made the old reader so good. Get that? They're taking away my incentive to give them money. 

Do you remember a couple of years ago when we were lavishly rewarding the various companies that had almost destroyed the economy? And some people said that there was a moral hazard when good things happened to bad companies?  Well, here we are. The masks are coming off. I'm sure that pretty soon somebody will write a book about it. You'll have to let me know if that happens.

Quicken and Red Ink

My relationship with Quicken is long, and fraught.  I once had a letter criticizing it published in MacWorld, or maybe it was MacUser; it was a long time ago. Yesterday my 5 year old version of Quicken wouldn't connect to my bank's computer, and on a whim, I bought, downloaded and installed the newest version.
Years ago, when I used to edit a little newsletter, I  said about the new fad, word processors, that it would be easier  and less painful to use a quill, a quill dipped in my own blood. Intuit has raised the bar on user unfriendliness. The balance was wrong, and it wouldn't reconcile, or uninstall. I finally dragged it file by file to the trash, and went back to the old version, which, by the by, connects fine, now that the bank's computer is back online.
And with name like Intuit, you'd think they'd be a little more self-aware than George Costanza:

GEORGE: See, it didn't bother Susan either. That's why I'm different. I can sense
the slightest human suffering.
JERRY: Are you sensing anything right now?

You'll Notice That The Only Racist Line In This Post Was Said By Someone Else

The other day a guy at work said, "This place is like a Chinese fire drill."

"Or," as I told him, "What Chinese fire marshals call a post office."

 And, oh, oh, didn't I tell you? We stopped saving daylight and suddenly the city is covered in snow and ice. I knew we couldn't afford to waste it. 

Today, I listened to a lecture about the French Revolution. In the run up to the chaos and bloodshed, the rich land owners convinced the landless poor to agitate to protect the rich from having to pay taxes. Sort of a Partie de Thé. 

Sent from my iPhone

Me And King Arthur Are Like This

 From a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court:
Do what one may, there is no getting an air of variety into a court circular, I acknowledge that. There is a profound monotonousness about its facts that baffles and defeats one's sincerest efforts to make them sparkle and enthuse. The best way to manage -- in fact, the only sensible way -- is to disguise repetitiousness of fact under variety of form: skin your fact each time and lay on a new cuticle of words. It deceives the eye; you think it is a new fact; it gives you the idea that the court is carrying on like everything; this excites you, and you drain the whole column, with a good appetite, and perhaps never notice that it's a barrel of soup made out of a single bean. Clarence's way was good, it was simple, it was dignified, it was direct and business-like; all I say is, it was not the best way:
COURT CIRCULAR. 
On Monday, the king rode in the park.
" " Tuesday,  
" " Wednesday " " 
" " Thursday " " 
" " Friday, " "
" " Saturday " "
" " Sunday, " "
So yeah, we're home, I'm back at work, I gained more weight than I thought I did. Sort of like every post after every vacation. Life seems a little duller this time I guess, because this last vacation was so much better than most.
We should be on tenterhooks, I suppose, while we wait to find out which politician won our Senate race: the dissatisfying representative of the status quo, or the terrifying candidate  of lying self-aggrandizement. Maybe I'm feeling a little blah since today,  just when we're starting to really need it, we've stopped saving daylight and we're just squandering it. It's dark an hour earlier today than yesterday. I suppose it shouldn't be that big of a deal since we would have lost that much in twelve more days anyway, but wait, we're still going to lose another hour in the next twelve days and then again, and again  and again.  Like I told one of my new customers that had just moved up from California and was worried about the cold, "Don't be silly, it's the darkness that's going to make you kill yourself."

"Hearts Afire Grow Cold"

I never would have believed that I could have been so passionate about keeping the status quo quoing, but I was more politically active in the last few weeks; calling, texting, buttonholing, and e-mailing people to keep Lisa Murkowski in office, than I have been in decades.
They say to follow your dreams, not your fears, but Joe Miller was really scary.
So, yay, nothing happened.


"It's all been done before, it's all been written in the book.
But when it's too much of nothin', nobody should look. "