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I still seek my Agent 99

Edward G Nilges — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 18:18:25 -0800

:-)

The Apparent Contradiction

Daniel Read — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 08:06:58 -0800

"Growing up" today means making your peace with the insufferable: yet the alternative is "the Peter Pan syndrome". The two opposing forces shut in front of your face like the doors in the credits to the old (Americanski) TV program Get Smart! Yet the apparent contradiction can be overcome. By what?

By what? I hope you won't keep up waiting too long to find out!

:-)

Dan

Quiz time!

Edward G Nilges — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 00:46:16 -0800

(1) Vaclav Havel says that today, systems of Fascist control may be exerted by mass media in such a subtle fashion that they become accepted as "reality". Michel Foucault describes Power as "capillary" insofar as it is exercised in the small and even in the way we discipline our bodies to meet its demands, which we are taught to confuse with our needs, systematically.

So what is with Alice? Why is it so important to have a pure or *reinen* checker upper onner who is so deliberately ignorant of anything with meaning or substance? Give us an inch, and what is the nature of the mile we will so surely take?

(2) Am I a chauvinist pig or what?

(3) So why cannot Willy simply set Windows Policies to prevent screen savers? Mao Zedong's purpose in the Hundred Flowers campaign was to identify dissidents, and nail them. To what extent is openness and an apparent "freedom" used in the office to bring out people who might be dumb enough to try it?

(4) Are we not men? So why do we so readily accept tuition in how to be grownups, beginning with the headhunter who told me I hadda get a haircut to get sent to a job interview at Turtle Wax in Chicago, and ending just the other day with the young whippersnapper who informed me that my Levi's cut-offs are unacceptably short for his taste?

[Don't get me started on board shorts. They are ugly and they make a man look like a yobboe hooligan. I strive mightily to preserve the line of my legs, which are the last to go in an old man of 56 like me. I'll never forget the freedom I felt, running marathons, in itty bitty shorts, because prior to that I was ashamed of everything. So don't get me started on board shorts. You know how I get.]

[I have ONE pair of board shorts for running in Islamic countries under sha'aria. They are in the dismal black and grey colors of the Oakland Raiders "American Football" side, because when I bought them cheaply in San Francisco, the only colors available were the colors of this team, which is far more popular amongst the proletariat of the Bay Area than the San Francisco "Giants", a team as Yupped out as the Chicago "Cubs" "American cricket" side, or "team".]

(5) "Growing up" today means making your peace with the insufferable: yet the alternative is "the Peter Pan syndrome". The two opposing forces shut in front of your face like the doors in the credits to the old (Americanski) TV program Get Smart! Yet the apparent contradiction can be overcome. By what?

Good Story!

Ron Porter — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 14:02:42 -0800

Thank-you for making a crappy day better.

I'm not sure why I'm attracted to stories of refugees and those left behind, but I am. This is likely to be one of the shortest I've read, which gives it a certain amount of power. Of course, the story itself hits all too close to home, so there is more than a bit of power already!

Are we not men? A data processing short story.

Edward G Nilges — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 21:18:23 -0800

I got into work at ten after ten AM and settled down to read my email. At 10:30, Bob arrived with a sigh at his cubicle next to mine. As he was unpacking "his" laptop (the laptop that the company gives us to work on at home), Ted-the-manager emerged from his samesize cubicle and said, "Bob, do you have a minute?" Bob had a minute, of course. Ted settled his bulk into the chair adjoining Bob's desk and said, "I need to talk to you about your screen saver, Bob".