My son is listening to his iPod as we take off from Tampa, heading back to Orange County. We’ve been cautioned to turn off electronic devices during takeoff.
Driving the Plane
NARCh – Day 4
Semifinal – 1:35 P.M. vs. NW Rebels
The NW Rebels are from Oregon. We saw them play a little bit in the round-robin games. They have one very talented kid, but hockey is a team game.
Final score: Bulls 8, Rebels 0.
NARCh – Day 3
Game 4 – 9:00 A.M. vs. Mission Cooler Selects
The Selects are from Georgia. They fall behind 2-0 on the first shift and go downhill from there.
Final score: Bulls 8, Selects 0.
NARCh – Day 2
Game 3 – 9:00 A.M. vs. Extreme Wolfpack
Extreme Wolfpack is from New Jersey, Like the Bulls, they are 2-0 so far in the tournament.
Final score: Bulls 4, Wolfpack 1.
NARCh – Day 1
One Day to Rest
The hockey tournament starts tomorrow . . . the first game’s at 9 in the morning. We’ll need to be there by 8 to check in, so we’ll have to leave the hotel by 7:30.
Off to Florida
My son and I are off to Florida, land of hurricanes and shark attacks, where his team will compete in the North American Roller Hockey Championships.
Argumentation
My wife signed our 11-year-old boy up for a week-long class in argumentation — sort of a moot court thing, I think — at UC Irvine.
The cost: $400.
Why a Jukebox?
Sometimes I get a song in my head and I have to walk around the house singing it:
I love rock ‘n’ roll
So put another dime in the jukebox, baby
“Why a jukebox?” my kid asks.
Icarus
- Icarus by Edward Field
- Icarus by Christine Hemp
- Landscape with the Fall of Icarus by William Carlos Williams
- Musee des Beaux Arts by W. H. Auden
- To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Triumph by Anne Sexton
- Waiting for Icarus by Muriel Rukeyser
Summer Vacation
It’s the first morning of summer vacation and my boy is on the computer loading up his iPod . . .
“And what might you be doing?” he says as I walk by.
“Getting ready for work,” I say.
“Oh yeah . . . work.”
Critics
I’m listening to some new music on my laptop, while my kid delivers a running critique . . .
“Boring,” he says. “Lame.”
“If you don’t like it, go somewhere else. Move along!”
“Critics don’t ‘move along,'” he says. “Critics have to criticize.”
Little Racketeers
Few Americans either behind or in front of our cameras give evidence of any recognition or respect for themselves or one another as human beings, or have any desire to be themselves or to let others be themselves. On both ends of the camera you find very few people who are not essentially, instead, just promoters, little racketeers, interested in ‘the angle.’
One Thing We Agree On
The West reveals here a hatred of itself, which is strange and can be only considered pathological; the West is laudably trying to open itself, full of understanding, to external values, but it no longer loves itself; in its own history, it now sees only what is deplorable and destructive, while it is no longer able to perceive what is great and pure.
At the Dog Park
A woman calls to her dog, a mutt named Lucky.
“Why did you name him Lucky?” I ask.
“He got hit by a car and survived,” she says.
Hmmm . . . it seems to me if he were really lucky, he wouldn’t have been hit by a car in the first place.
What was his name before he got hit by the car? Bullseye?
Dead and Loving It
Wal-Mart heir John Walton died Monday when his ultralight aircraft crashed after taking off from an airport in Jackson, Wyoming.
We Don’t Have the Money, So We Have to Think
We don’t have the money, so we have to think.
Ernest Rutherford was an illustrious scientist — the 1908 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, and the father of nuclear physics.
His humble upbringing as the fourth in a family of 12 children in rural New Zealand influenced his approach to science, as summarized in the above quote.
A recruiter called me today about a job managing an $80 million IT project.
How in the world can you spend $80 million on an IT project?! I could put your company logo on Mars for $80 million.
Most of the big, expensive IT projects that I’m familiar with, there really was no reason for them to take so long or cost so much. A lot of time and money could have been saved with some upfront thinking.
I get a lot of this now — recruiters asking me if I have experience managing multi-year, multi-million dollar projects, as if there’s some competitive advantage to be had from spending huge sums of money over long periods of time.
A modern variation on Rutherford’s famous saying might be: “We’ve got 80 million dollars! Why should we have to think?!”
Thus spoke The Programmer.
Often-Repeated Lies
A lie repeated often enough becomes truth.
As the GOP drifts further to the right, and becomes more starkly the party of the wealthy, it is gaining support among the working class.
I have never seen a wholly satisfactory explanation for this trend, which now spans two generations. . . . Republicans, of course, will argue that it’s simply the working man’s understanding that the GOP has the better argument, i.e., that the best way to help the working class is to shower the rich with tax breaks. But the Bush administration has been showering the rich with tax breaks for more than four years, and the working class has nothing to show for it.
Steve Jobs: Me, Me, Me
Self-absorbed, self-aggrandizing BS, a.k.a. Steve Jobs’ commencement speech at Stanford, gets a good skewering . . .
Don’t Trade Insults With a 6th Grader on the Day Vocabulary Words Are Assigned
ME: You’re a real wise guy.
HIM: You’re lamentable.