Today was my last day at my former employer.

There was a bit of work, a really good lunch, and many well wishers.

My brain is in this weird "can't quite grasp the magnitude" state, and has been since I gave notice. Even very final actions like sanitizing my work machine's hard drive, performing my final checkins to the repository, or saying good bye to all these people I've worked with don't seem real somehow...

I bet reality will kick in soon enough, when I sit down at a new desk, surrounded by new people and a new machine running some foreign operating system on Monday (eek! a Mac!)

I eat this celebratory bowl of Kashi Autumn Wheat in celebration of good endings and new beginnings.

It's amazing what you can find on old backup CD's. This is from a program called "Casette" for making custom casette inserts that I apparently used back in December, 1995.

Do you recognize the track list?

Elastica - Connection
Elastica - Stutter
Sisters of Mercy - More
Siouxie & the Banshees - Killing Jar
Talk Talk - It's my life
Psychedelic Furs - The ghost in you
Lush - For Love
Lulabox - I believe
Icicle Works - Whisper to a scream
Soft Cell - Tainted Love
Sarah McLachlan - Vox
Curve - Sweetest Pie

Despite a large part of my brain fighting incredibly hard to nitpick all the stuff that they HAD to leave out, I loved it.

I worry that there was just too much packed in for it to make sense to non-comic geeks though. :-(

Then again, LOTS of people are buying the graphic novel, and that makes me very happy:

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/13/graphic-books-best-seller-lists/

By the by, if it hadn't been for Watchmen, I never would have started seriously reading comics, and I likely never would have met kaliopi all those years ago. Thanks Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons!

Dave attell - "look who's not crying"

Mike birbiglia - Hippos don't eat marbles? Thinking about PIE.

"the adventure" by angels and airwaves. Life's waiting to begin. Gonna stop soon...

"Message to you" by gnr. No moon, just diesel trucks. Thirsty.

Pretty blue widflowers and cat tails.

Hojo room 104. Fox news in breakfast.room. 125k/s wifi.

Gas stop. One bag ruffles, one bottle iced white tea.

http://www.edge-online.com/magazine/inside-world%E2%80%99s-largest-arcade?page=0%2C0

"This idea became the Classic Arcade Museum – a non-profit organization and collection of over 250 working video arcade machines from the early ’70s through to 1987, including the likes of Computer Space and Pong – which has become an international focal point for retrogaming and its followers."

Their game list is to die for:

http://www.classicarcademuseum.org/gamelist2.htm

I think I want a road trip to Funspot for my birthday this year.

We miss you. :-(

I'd not heard the term until reading Mr. Pollan's "Unhappy Meals":

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t.html?pagewanted=all

La définition:

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Transwiki:Flexitarianism

These days, about the only meat I eat is when I eat with office-folk or grab something fast-food-window-terrible on the way home from somewhere (MUST HAVE BURGER). Even for our anniversary dinner @ Restaurant Eve I had 100% veggie fare.

Who'd a thunk it?

Heard on Writer's Alamanac:

Cynicism is often the shamefaced product of inexperience.
-- A.J. Liebling (1964) Mollie and Other War Pieces

The one person on my team that I care about and who is smart, competent, resourceful and insightful is leaving. He's off to work for a financial services company that apparently actually values their employees.

The rest of my team is basically summed up by the following Banksy quote:

"A lot of people never use their initiative because no-one told them to."

Hell begins ... now!

"People complain about the bad things that happen to em that they dont deserve but they seldom mention the good. About what they done to deserve them things. I dont recall that I ever give the good Lord all that much cause to smile on me. But he did."

Cormac McCarthy
No Country for Old Men

An interesting comparison of the 1963 edition and the 1991 edition of Richard Scarry's "The Best Word Book Ever". The summary is:

1. they took out the indians


2. dad helps out in the kitchen now


3. girls are taking over

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kokogiak/sets/1425737/

I wonder what other books they've messed with? :-(

This morning's 5AM drive to work was brought to you by Ishmael (and peculiarly good 7-11 coffee, and the letter Q). I was thinking about what mother culture communicates to us about child raising, how that could conflict with our own selfish desires for self-realization, and how the "acceptable" number of children a couple can have varies geographically...

Anyhow, when I get to my desk, what do I find in my inbox:


Date: Sun, 16 Oct 2005 18:07:59 -0700
Reply-to: Reply@ishmael.org
Subject: [ISHMAEL] Daniel Quinn's New Book
To: geoff@****.com
...
TALES OF ADAM, which many of you have been asking about, will be in bookstores November 1, 2005. It's a lovely book (and my favorite
), delightfully illustrated with woodcuts by Michael McCurdy. You can find out more about it and see excerpts on the Ishmael website
at: http://www.Ishmael.com/books/TalesOfAdam/


Weird coincidink.

If you believe the "lets-flee-to-Canada-to-escape-4-more-years-of-the-shrub" AP article that I've seen at various news sources there already "may" be one million Americans living in Canada.

Per the CIA Factbook, there are 32,507,874 people in Canada, so Americans "may" make up 3% of the population.

Where the heck are they? I sure didn't notice them while I was there. They must be a lot better at blending into the landscape than some Canadians are.