Why I Love Werner Herzog, part 7:

"Herzog, as if it was the most normal thing in the world, said, 'Oh, someone is shooting at us. We must go.'


He's so dreamy....

more stolen superbowl content: Mrs. Tatum Reports

from her workplace in downtown Pitt:

It's cold. It's snowing. The Victory Parade is scheduled to begin at 11am and conclude at the Plaza across from my office at 12:30.
By 7:50 this morning, when I was rushing through the wind on my way to work, the plaza- the endpoint of the parade - was already a sea of black-n-gold clad steeler fans, apparently just milling about in anticipation of the parade FOUR and a Half Hours later.

My colleagues just made a trip outside for steelers gear, which is being hawked
from every streetcorner.
As if anyone needed yet another tee-hat-jersey-towel.
As I write, at 9:15, the Plaza is nearly at capacity.
Only 3 hours to go!

Human Customer Service

gethuman.com is a site dedicated to sneaking customers past the automated corporate firewall and connecting them with an actual human being.

Some good general tips to be had.

books: this I need to read

of all the manifold literary genres to be had, the 'brief history of disparate people joined by a profession' is one I strive to avoid in both my personal and professional life.

But I am moved to abandon principle by some of the excellent quotes from this article.

As I say, this is a delightful volume. Marías closes it with a longish piece about his collection of portrait postcards of writers, meditating on what the various images mean to him: The young Gide, he concludes, looks like "a professional duellist"; T.S. Eliot like "a man who has spent decades combing his hair in exactly the same way." But let me finish with Marías's reflections on a photograph of Rilke:

"Rilke does not have the face one would suppose him to have, so delicate and unbearable was he in his habits and needs as a great poet. . . . His face is frankly dangerous, with those dark circles under deep-set eyes, and the sparse, drooping moustache which gives him a strangely Mongolian appearance; those cold, oblique eyes make him look almost cruel, and only his hands -- clasped as they should be, unlike Conrad's indecisive hands -- and the quality of his clothes -- an excellent tie and excellent cloth -- give him some semblance of repose or somewhat mitigate that cruelty. The truth is that he could be a visionary doctor in his laboratory, awaiting the results of some monstrous and forbidden experiment."

One glance at Rilke's picture and you'll see that Marías's description is exactly right.

Gotta get that one...

flip a coin

Two opposing facts collide-

one, Bobo hates good movies.
two, Bobo likes mexican wrestlers.

so what will he make of this?

I don't remember if you were one of those sticks-in-the-mud who didn't like School of Rock, that would help with handicapping.

What say you, good readers? Will Bobo say 'yea' or 'nay'?

Superbowl (stolen content)

Steel Town local DT, on his daughters reaction to the game:

Her interest in the Steelers can be boiled down to getting to wear a shirt with big numbers on it. She isn't really clear on the game concept yet. She "played cars" rather than sitting on daddy's lap to watch the game. I don't think the game came up in our conversation this morning, which focused more on the pink boots / purple shoes discussion.

She did like the "Steelers are going to the Super Bowl" endless loop in front of the cheese shop there. Every time the song ended she would say "uh oh, here it comes again" and then dance around squealing and screeching with her pal there. I think we did that for about 20 minutes.

I missed most of it and didn't have a rooting interest since Cali wasn't represented (even when the hated Raiders make it, I root for the other team), but I'm glad the Steelers won.
I have fond memories of the Bradshaw/Harris/Swann/Stallworth dynasty, relatively unsullied by Terry's subsequent career playing the country yokel on television. Memories of when it was still a championship game and not a half-assed national holiday which generates more news coverage of how much consumers spent on pizza and what corporations paid for 60 second ad spots than the game itself.

books: cover of the week

It's been a while since I've had a cover worthy of this honor.
I think this one fits the bill...




It's got the whole package, but my especial favorite is the recommendation at the bottom:




I think I'll start signing all my correspondence that way.

Stephan "the man from O.R.G.Y." Baxter.

classy!

We Are All Brack People

Engrish comdom package

Cthulego Rising!

Yet another geek with too much time on his hands and a digital camera.

That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange æons, even death may die.


ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!

Yahoo floats bottom line on urine runoff from human rights

Yahoo joines MS and Google in fucking over their customers to kiss China's ass.


w00t for free enterprise!

Computer stuff: crappy headphone alert

It's rare that a bit of consumer electronics is wretched enough to inspire a profane diatribe from your humble narrator, but this past week I came across a pair of headphones fit to act as a muse for Lenny Bruce.

The microphone on my previous headset of record, the estimable and long-serving Plantronics Audio 90 Multimedia Stereo Headset, gave out last week. And in today's high tech gaming landscape, typed chat just doesn't fly- it's like trying to hold up your end of a conference call via telegraph, or semaphore, or notes tied to the legs of pigeons.

Driven to a rash act by the goad of instant gratification, I pissed on one of my own cardinal rules and picked up a headset at Best Buy, home not only to a rotating cast of lardass teens camping the Xbox 360 to play Madden but also high prices and limited selection.

It was an immature and foolish act.
And the gods saw fit to punish my willful hubris with the Logitech Precision Gaming Headset. As it was the only headset available that wasn't one of those spidery telemarketer deals, I didn't look too close at it- Logitech makes great mice and keyboards, people like their speakers, how badly could they fuck up something simple like a pair of gaming headphones?

Oh, foolish man!

First, the good news- installation was a snap, and the microphone worked fine.

Alas, those two positives were trampled underfoot by the seething mass of fatal flaws: torturous fit like a wearable Iron Maiden (I gently probed my ears and scalp for wounds after my first experience with them), awful sound quality reminiscent of my first set of Walkman headphones in Jr High, not to mention the clumsy faux futuristic look of them, a balding middle-aged engineer's idea of something with appeal for "the kids".

I mean, you're never going to cut much of a figure in a pair of headphones with a boom mic poking out of the side, but these were so profoundly dorky the wife took time out of her busy crochet schedule to mock them. If you dared wear them to work at the call center the other operators would peck you to death like a sick crow, and you would ascend to the afterlife knowing they were right to do so.

I just don't understand these things.

They're so profoundly fucked it's like they were constructed in some Cthulean dimension with different physical rules than ours...the angles are all wrong, just looking at them makes you uneasy, and the sounds they produce are a grotesque, unholy mockery of human speech.

So I did what I should have done in the first place and ordered another pair of Plantronics from Amazon. They arrived today, and after work I'm going to exorcise the Logitechs from my home, salt the earth, burn sage and have the ground re-consecrated, then hopefully enjoy an evening of chattin' with my pals minus the torment and dismay of the Headphones from Hell.