http://www.metafilter.com/87040/Its-real-You-can-touch-it

Packing bags again for a short trip to Singapore tomorrow

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/11/29/18630761.php

Phones recovered. thanks ANA!

Make strong and right your mind, and people will take you seriously.

Think three times before saying anything, and people will listen to you.

Study, reflect and put into practice the wisdom of wise folk -- is that not a great pleasure?

If others do not see your virtue and you do not care, are you not a superior person?

Daniel Suarez just said he'd send me a galley of the sequel to Daemon. Can't wait.

Drat. Forgot my Blackberry and iPhone on the plane.

So how was everybody's Turkey Day? Have we made a full recovery or are we still in the grips of a tryptophan coma? Or did you snap out of it and indulge your masochistic side by getting out into the Black Friday crush?

Turkey Day here was really, really nice. The sister-unit, her boyfriend and I got started early and put together a nice little spread while watching the football games. Turkey, stuffin', (I made a special batch of stuffin' because the sister-unit freakishly enjoys apples and raisins in her stuffin'), green bean casserole, brandy sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, gravy and rolls... it was all good. Except for the fact that we somehow managed to forget to make the deviled eggs. Bummer. I love deviled eggs. For dessert, the sister-unit put together a tasty gingerbread and pumpkin treat. So it was the sister-unit, her boyfriend, his daughter, the niece-unit, our uncle and I for Turkey Day dinner... lots of laughs and a really good time. After we'd finished dinner and got the clean-up out of the way, the 6 of us played a game of Scattergories which brought on even more laughter and fun. All in all, it was a fantastic evening.

The one bummer (aside from the no deviled eggs thing) was that as we sat down to eat, the parentals called the sister-unit. Because they go up to the step-father's family's house every year, she assumed that they were just calling to say Happy Turkey Day and said that she'd call them back after dinner. Apparently though, pops got sick and at the last minute, they decided to stay home instead of heading up north. We felt absolutely awful that they spent the holiday alone. And that awful feeling was only compounded when we cruised over to their house the next day and found out that they'd enjoyed a Turkey Day "feast" which included canned yams and Stove Top stuffing. We seriously felt terrible that their Turkey Day dinner was spent alone and included such craptacular food. We of course brought over a ton of the leftovers so they could at least have some proper Turkey Day fare, even if a day late. It would have been nice to have had them there with us though.

Well... Here's hoping everybody had a wonderful Turkey Day... and if you were out in that Black Friday madness, here's hoping that you're alive and intact.

So... on with your Gluttonyfest 2009 Edition of the Weird News....

From the "Oh, You Shouldn't Have" files... Wondering what to get that special somebody for the holidays? Well look no further than the Miller Park Zoo in Bloomington, Illinois where they are offering shiny, sparkly jewelry made from... reindeer dung. Yes, surprise your loved one with the "Magical Reindeer Gem" necklaces. I mean, who doesn't like wearing dried crap around their necks?

From the "House of 1,000 Corpses" files... A real estate agent in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana got a nasty surprise while showing a house to prospective buyers. In the basement of the house, they discovered a pile containing roughly 100 human bones. Apparently, the previous residents would occasionally discover the bones in their yard and simply toss them into the basement. Adding to the creep factor of the house, it was apparently built on top of a circular mound which parish officials believe is an Indian burial mound. Nice... didn't anybody involved in the building of the home ever see Poltergeist? You just don't build houses on Indian burial mounds!

From the "Mr. Mom" files... An 18-year old in Indianapolis was recently pulled out of his high school classroom and arrested on charges of burglary, robbery, criminal confinement and pointing a firearm. Detectives said that the 18-year old was one of two suspects that forced their way into a home and began ransacking it. However, when a baby began crying, he warmed a bottle in the microwave and gave it to the infant. So take note ladies... he may be a thieving scumbag but at least he's good with kids! Or at least he will be once he gets out of prison.

From the "Super, Super Freak" files... 39-year old Charles Hersel of Thousand Oaks, California has been arrested and charged with "misdemeanor child annoyance" after contacting teens on MySpace and paying them to perform... certain acts. According to several students from Westlake High School in Ventura County, Hersel paid them to slap him and yell profanities at him. He offered cash to the teens to urinate and defecate on him. He was finally arrested after paying a teen the whopping sum of $31 to spit in his face. $31? How in the world did they arrive at that figure? Police said Hersel's motive "wasn't clear." Wasn't clear? How about the motive is... Hersel is a sick and disgusting FREAK?

From the "Til Death Do Us Part" files... 39-year old John Gerholt of Bedford County, Pennsylvania has been charged with forging documents to "steal" a cemetery plot next to his wife... a wife that he allegedly shot and killed in November 2008. Gerholt claims that he "accidentally" shot his 24-year old wife Karen with a sawed-off shotgun... twice. Gerholt's attorney Thomas Dickey said, "This is just another sign of his true love and devotion to his wife, albeit deceased." Wow... he makes cold-blooded murder seem almost romantic, doesn't he?

From the "Special Place in Hell" files... 24-year old Trista Joy Lathern of Waco, Texas recently held a benefit that netted some $10,000 that was to go for her cancer treatment. Unfortunately for all of the folks that donated to Trista's cause though, it seems that all of the hard-earned cash they so willingly gave was actually going to pay for her... breast enlargement. Trista has been charged with "theft by deception" but I think there's a real special spot in hell waiting for her.

From the "Sick Day" files... 29-year old Aaron Siebers of Edgewater, Colorado was recently arrested and charged with filing a false report and obstructing a police investigation after staging an attack on himself all in a ploy to miss his shift at the video store. Siebers apparently stabbed himself in the leg and superficially cut various other places on his body and then told police that he was assaulted by 3 men dressed in black who were either Hispanic or skinheads. Seriously dude... next time you want a day off, I'd suggest throwing yourself in front of a small car or maybe just doing what everybody else does and just fake a cough!

From the "Grassy Knoll" files... Well, we've heard of the Twinkie Defense now get ready for the Jabba Defense. 62-year old Edward Ates is on trial, having been charged with killing his son-in-law and is using a rather unique defense... he was too fat to have committed the crime. Testifying for the defense, a doctor claimed that even though Ates is an expert marksman, he simply could not have made the shot that killed his former son-in-law, Paul Duncsak. The doctor claims that Ates' weight would have prevented him from racing up a flight of stairs and making the accurate shot prosecutors allege because the exertion would have left him short of breath and shaking. Just when you think you've heard everything...

From the "Good Parenting" files... 37-year old Jackie Knott recently pled guilty to endangering the welfare of a child and will spend 5 days in jail after letting her 13-year old daughter ride in a cardboard box on top of her van. Knott's defense was that the box wouldn't fit inside the van so her daughter was simply weighing it down while she drove. I suppose that's better than using the "too fat" defense.

From the "Persistence Pays" files... 68-year old Cha Sa-soon of South Korea recently passed her written drivers test... on the 950th time she took it. Sa-soon has been attempting to pass the test since 2005 but until that magic number 950, had failed to hit the required 60 out of 100 necessary to pass the test. But now that she's passed the written exam, she must take the actual driving test... yikes. Here's hoping the residents of Seoul keep their children indoors and keep themselves away from streets and sidewalks while Sa-soon is testing. This could be a very long few years for the people of South Korea.

And finally... a bonus clip for ya'll. This is an actual customer complaint call that is just hilarious. Especially at the very end when this good ol' boy thought he'd hung up the phone. Enjoy!

I was feeling ... : amused

I'm being a little generous counting "Something's Coming" at this point - currently it only has two verses and really needs a third, but it's got structure and it makes sense as it is, so I'm going with it. However, I'm counting the current 3m length rather than the eventual 4m30 or so it'll have once it's done, so:

Currently: 31 minutes. I have now written eight minutes more music than my previous nanotewrimo attempt! I will not make 50 minutes on schedule, but so far, this really isn't bad. Seriously, this makes ten songs of various grades of quality, all of them have something I like, and a few of them (Shout at the Desert, America in Amber, December Storms) I just plain like as they are right now.

...strangely, counting my songs, I seem to count 34 minutes of music. Did I miss one of the instrumentals? I'll figure it out again from scratch at the end of the month. For now we'll leave it at 31.

This post originated at ソラバドのおん: Solarbird Makes Noises, on Dreamwidth.

I was feeling ... : sleepy

I feel the world getting smaller and smaller - soon it will nestle on my palm ;)

Landed Haneda

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

I was feeling ... : accomplished

A few months back, Morton Zuckerman of U.S. News and World Report had an editorial on the U.S. health care situation which looked at it as a simple problem of supply and demand. Since supply is not changing any time soon, the conclusion was to blame the people for demanding too much health care. I sent in a letter arguing otherwise, noting among other things that people trust their doctors for medical decisions and citing a news report about financial incentives for doctors to over-prescribe services.

In the latest issue of U.S. News and World Report, Zuckerman has an editorial on health care which at one point blames high health care costs on institutional incentives for doctors to over-prescribe services, and at another point notes that the people cannot be blamed for using too many services because people trust their doctors for medical decisions such as what tests to take. Overall he takes a different stance than before, and these two points are awfully familiar.

I cannot honestly take credit for changing Zuckerman's mind since other people could have argued the same things more convincingly and it is easy enough to come to the same conclusions. One of Zuckerman's new conclusions, that aspects of the crisis attracting everyone's attention are symptoms of rising costs caused by a less visible crisis or crises, parallels an argument that I cut out of my letter to save space, so he certainly got that from somewhere else.

However, I like to feel like I made a positive difference, so let's forget honesty for a moment and I'll take credit for it anyways.

I was feeling ... : geeky

http://www.sniggle.net/Experiment/index.php?entry=29Nov09

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

I was feeling ... : amused

http://www.metafilter.com/87039/YOU-SHOULD-ALL-BE-FIRED-IMMEDIATELY

http://www.metafilter.com/87038/And-the-Pursuit-of-Happiness

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2009/11/395722.shtml

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2009/11/395723.shtml