Missouri Loves Company provides some One-Liners Overhead While Hunting. Since Mr Missouri is actually a participant in this well-loved tale, we’ll provide a bit of context, just for fun:

“Madder than a captured Jap”

We were there for that one. One of the guides had taken a lone hunter to a field that ended up having no avian visitors. A city boy, said hunter was lost and essentially marooned until the guide came back to fetch him. Also, obviously the speaker is a war baby, since we can’t imagine anyone younger having this in their vernacular. Other than us.

“How do you put the magazine restrictor…”

That was us. Said game warden was a humorless fuckwit we’d already been warned about, but as we were manifestly complying with all available regulations (i.e., we had precious few birds), we felt comfortable jerking him around. He didn’t like it, but nobody liked him, so there you go.

“It’s not beer, it’s aiming fluid.”

We’re pretty sure Mr Missouri said that one, but the memory is necessarily hazy…

“If you miss the first two shots, the third one is just anger”

That was us, but we were quoting our dad. He was right. We used this line as partial justification for moving to an over and under a while back, too. Shut up.

Nearly four years ago, we first noted Firefly Press, in Somerville, Mass. It’s come up again over at the aforementioned notebook fetish blog, so we figured we’d point out their fine work again. For what it’s worth, the excellent short film about the letterpress firm is also now on YouTube. (About 5 minutes. Take the time.)

Via BoingBoing:

Jennifer Sutton, 23, recently visited her own heart at an exhibition in London. Sutton received a heart transplant and her original ticker is on display as part of the Wellcome Collection’s educational exhibition The Heart.

Best Proposal ever. (Direct YouTube link, in case the embedded version doesn’t work. Via MeFi.)

The Modern Drunkard Guide To After Hours Parties may help some of you. We just remain pleased as hell that there IS such a thing as “Modern Drunkard Magazine.”

Apparently, some researchers have happened upon an old philosophy class notion: namely, that we can’t actually know whether or not the world around us is real. This, combined with the ongoing increase in computing power, led them to the conclusion that humans may eventually decide to model the whole world in much the same way millions play with Sims. Denizens therein would not be aware that they weren’t real, natch (see also the works of the Wachowski brothers).

This all ties into Cartesian thought; ol’ Rene is the one who gave us “Cogito, ergo sum,” or “I think, therefore I am.” It’s less a statement of being than an affirmation that this, in fact, is all we can really know. If we can think, we must exist in some form, somehow, somewhere. We take everything else on faith.

Our first exposure to this was, like many others’, in a freshman philosophy class 20 years ago. Dr. Hestevold asked us one morning something along the lines of how much we trusted our senses and perceptions, and how firm we were in our conviction that we were actually sitting in ten Hoor Hall, on the campus of the University of Alabama, in the year 1987. Virtually everyone agreed that, yes, this was the truth, so he passed out a letter (mimeographed blue ink on ever-so-slightly damn paper!) that we paraphrase for you now:

Greetings!

I’m sure you’ll agree the simulation is a smashing success! Every aspect of late-20th-century life has been modeled with the greatest degree of accuracy possible, right down to my old colleague Scott Hestevold, who tragically passed away in 2006. You are, of course, safe and sound on a table in my laboratory in Switzerland, though we’ve conditioned your brain to view this information as only slightly more credible than the ravings of a streetcorner madman.

We’ll have a fine meal when you emerge, which we’ve planned for a few hours from now as you perceive time.

The Magnolia Office expressed some distress in re: the influx of cat-related content. Fear not, as football season approaches, which will bring with it an entirely different set of content-related gripes.

This long profile is a bit of a sad coda to the 70s daredevil’s life of death-defying showmanship. We sorta wonder if our Snake River Canyon playset is still in the Ancestral Heathen Estate’s attic.

The Magnolia Office celebrates a birthday today. Buy him a drink!

“Trust me, a little open-bar scotch and any decent imam will overlook the flaws in your color scheme.”

From this breath of fresh air on the whole process of wedding planning. Granted, the author admits they spent a boatload of cash, but the real point of the thing was that they never once went nuts. That’s key.

There’s a Flickr group concerned entirely with photos of [hat its members carry in their pockets every day; this as opposed to the much larger, and potentially more revealing “What’s In Your Bag?” group that’s been around forever.

We like the pockets version better, especially this one, about Gary, and this one, which includes several options not present in most photos. This guy should probably hook up with him.

Unsurprisingly, Moleskine notebooks and certain telephones are heavily represented.

We did one; we think you should, too.

“Is there any way we, in our current line of work, can deduct the purchase of a Santa Claus suit?”

It’s Mrs Heathen’s birthday. Wish her a happy one! We got her a new worm new iPod. It’s green.

From a discussion on a mailing list regarding the construction of parabolic microphones:

Well first, you gots ta get yerself a parabola. Parabolas mostly come out at night. Mostly. Try putting some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches under the shrubbery and then when you hear them rustling around under there, start beating those bushes real hard with a broom and screamin’ “Hoo Waaaaa! Hoo Waaaa!” The parabola will keel over from fright then you can grab it and wring it’s neck. Don’t wring it too hard, though, cause then you’ll have a hyperbola on your hands, and they ain’t really good for nothing. Then you’re gonna want to take a good knife and carefully peel off the outer layer. Now most people would throw that away, but if you want some real good eating, take it and deep fry it in some hot peanut oil with a few jalapano peppers thrown in. Mmmm, mmmm, that’s good stuff right there. After that, all you have to do is jam a microphone up the parabola’s ass and point it at what you want to listen to. Just last week I turnt mine on and heard my brother and his wife three trailers over doing the weekly deed, if you know what I mean…

This, dear readers, is what happens to smart people in the South. The good ones, anyway. Inshallah.

Hunter Thompson would be 70 today.

We miss you, Hunter.

So You’ve Gone And Made a Baby. Enjoy.

(Incidentally, you’ll note that said office celebrated their fifth anniversary yesterday. Congrats!)

The Albany office has spawned again! Don’t tell Agent K that we’re still calling her “Coco” down in Texas.

It’s come to our attention that a certain Dallas-area blogger is celebrating his TENTH anniversary.

Wow. The time, where do it go? It seems like only yesterday we were taking our lives into our own hands riding with a hell-bent-for-leather cabbie to some, er, entertainment venues on the night before the wedding. Wow.

For the second time in a year, our DSL is down.

For the 6 years prior, the DSL was never down. Since changing providers last October, we’ve had now two distinct problems — one of which, a drastic reduction in bandwidth, lasted for weeks.

Grrrrr.

From a Newsweek poll:

Perhaps most alarmingly, 41% of Americans answered ‘Yes’ to the question “Do you think Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq was directly involved in planning, financing, or carrying out the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001?”

That total is actually up 5 points since September 2004.

Further, a majority of people couldn’t identify Saudia Arabia as the country of origin of most of the 9/11 hijackers, even given the question in multiple choice format. 20% answered Iraq, while 14% believed the hijackers came from Iran.

Travis Corcoran, an online acquaintence of ours, runs an interesting business called SmartFlix (nee “Technical Video Rental”; it’s basically NetFlix for geeks, specializing in how-to/technical video). Occasionally, someone unfamiliar with the First Sale Doctrine will contact him and get all up-in-arms about his firm renting their videos. It’s an utterly misguided anxiety — it’s deeply settled law, and foolish to complain about besides; ask Hollywood how much Blockbuster makes for them — but it happens, and so Travis keeps an attorney on retainer to deal with these folks.

Usually, they just don’t understand, and when the situation is explained, they go away. Usually, too, they don’t have lawyers of their own.

That’s what makes this dialog so hilarious: the copyright owner has retained a bloviating bully as an attorney — one Robert H. Tourtelot — who is subsequently wholly outclassed by Travis. It’s great stuff.

• Part I, wherein the story begins, legal discussions occur, it is made clear that Tourtelot’s client has no leg to stand on, and Travis suggests to the copyright owner that he find a more qualified attorney;
• Part II, wherein the septuagenarian Tourtelot invites Travis to come to California at his expense for a fistfight, and Travis calls his bluff;
• Part III, wherein Travis points out that, 5 days later, the promised ticket to California has not arrived;
• Part IV, wherein Tourtelot begins making vague allegations about “Travis’ history,” whatever that means;
• Part V, wherein Tourtelot suggests Travis is a “pedifile” (sic), and Travis notes that he’s begun his complaint to the California Bar.

Perhaps the best part of all this is what happens if you Google this legal eagle. Travis’ blog has more googlejuice than the lawyer’s site, and now BoingBoing has picked up the story, so it’s really only going to get worse.

HI-larious.

Update: Travis tells me there will be more updates over the weekend, so stay tuned.

This morning, we used Google Maps to locate (with help from the Jackson office) and annotate the small Mississipi farm our grandfather left us using satellite pictures and Internet magic. You can tell which areas are planted with farmed timber by the corduroy texture; before the mid-90s, more or less the whole property was leased to a soybean farmer.

Cool.

We’ve been fans of Levenger for better than 15 years, so it’s nice to report they’re still cool. Five years ago, we gave Mrs Heathen (who was at that time merely Heathen Girlfriend) a nice briefcase for a college graduation present. She loved, and loves said bag, so she was sad to report last week that the bag had broken. Specifically, one of the metal D-rings on either end of the bag had worn completely through due to abrasion with the strap’s metal clip. (The other side was also warn to nearly the point of failure.)

The leather’s fine. In fact, it’s gotten a great patina over the years; it’s just that someone at Bag Makers For Levenger R Us picked a poor combination of alloys — obviously, the strap hardware is much harder than the bag hardware, and the result is eventual but unavoidable failure. Oops.

Well, we called ’em, and we knew we were going to do well when (a) they picked up after one ring and (b) it was a real person, not an ARU. We described the issue, and also our desired outcome (repair, not replacement — the bag itself is fine, and further has sentimental value). The representative quickly offered to cover any cost of repair; we’re to send them the bill.

Nice.

We’ve just realized that we have, for some time, enjoyed the professional output of two completely different slightly famous people named “Alex Ross.”

First, there’s the Alex Ross who writes about music for the New Yorker, and on his aforelinked blog.

Second, there’s the Eisner-winning comic book graphic literature artist Alex Ross whose work is unusual for the medium, as its typically painted.

Weird.

Happy Bloomsday, heathen.

Today, we got a little amazed when we went to buy a memory card for our new phone, and spent $14.99 for a 1-gig card smaller than our pinkie nail. And then thought nothing of it.

Not that we’re not still bitter out our missing jetpacks and flying cars, though, dammit.

Fear not! We’re fine! The long hiatus is all about “busy” and “travel;” we had to go see some weirdo get married over the weekend, which made it hard to catch up on Saturday. Rest assured we’ve got some posty goodness coming soon. In the meantime, here’s a tiny bit of dialog from a hung-over Saturday brunch:

Mrs. N: “You know, it IS possible for things to be shitty and fantastic at the same time.”

Mr. N: “Especially if you’re a coprophile.”

Later, we’ll also write about the most over-the-top wedding we’ve attended in a long while; perhaps the finest intro to the reception can be found in the fact that, upon entering the museum where said reception was held, we were confronted by the juxtaposition of Jesus, Juleps, and Sushi.

D-Day and the Battle of Normandy, perhaps the most significant day of the 20th century, began 63 years ago today.

Godspeed, Tucker. Send your wishes to Mike and Anne.

Hey, Mrs Heathen, why don’t we do this with our stairs?

For most of the last five or eight weeks, we’ve had sufficient mojo with Continental that our flights have been in First Class. This is good for all sorts of reasons, but the biggest one is the aggregate: it turns 3 hours of discomfort and annoyance into a relatively benign nap-snack-and-cocktail event. Flying still sucks, but the suck is muffled by the increased personal space, free liquor, and somewhat passable food. Also in front, the aforementioned increase in space means that even very, um, girthful companions don’t encroach on your own sovereign zone, so you win again.

Also — and this is the key part — one’s seatmates up front tend to be of a slightly different group than the random mingling of hoi polloi found in coach. It’s not a socioeconomic thing, at least not purely; most First Class fliers didn’t buy First Class tickets. Front cabins are dominated by upgraded frequent fliers who — yes — do tend to have decent jobs, and often wear fancy watches, but the important difference is attitude about flight. We do this a lot. We’re seated quickly, don’t annoy the attendants or each other, etc. In back, you run the risk of chatty Cathy babbling about her first flight, her boyfriend, her grandchildren, her dog, The fucking Secret, or whatever. In front, this usually doesn’t happen. We sit, listen to our iPods, read books, or work on our laptops.

Given all that, then, imagine our shock and horror upon discovering that, on Friday last, our seatmate was (a) dressed like a middle-aged goth pimp, in black denim, a studded belt from Motley Crue’s yard sale, and an 80s-riffic pinstriped shirt and (b) intending to pass his 3 hour flight perusing not one but TWO classy publications: Penthouse and Hustler, which were the only items he carried aboard.

Really? You mean it, Huggy Bear? What the fuck, man?

We’ve got nothing against porn, but Christ Almighty, buddy, there’s a time and a place. Someone could passably read Playboy in public — they have been, at least in years past, one of the great American magazines, and published no end of strong writing. Sure, there are pretty naked girls, but there really ARE articles in there. With PimpMan’s choices, though, no articles were on offer — or, rather, certainly no articles written for or by persons who do not move their lips when they read, or extending beyond a paragraph or two attached to shots of a positively gynecological nature. He made some attempts to shield the magazine from the attendant when she came by — which was often, as there were only 2 rows in First — but when he thought he was “safe,” he was holding them like one might read the Economist.

(He came aboard with a co-worker, who was seated across the aisle. Their conversation dried up once he realized what Pimpy was reading.)

“Do YOU usually smell like deer urine if you don’t shower?”

(No, we were not a part of the conversation.)

Consumerist lays it out:

1. Are your most profitable customers those who have the most reason to be dissatisfied with you?
2. Do you have rules that you want customers to break because doing so generates profits?
3. Do you make it difficult for customers to understand or abide by your rules, and to you actually help customers break them?
4. Do you depend on contracts to prevent customers from defecting?

Telcos, we’re looking at you.

Due to our own human fuckery, blogging was not possible on Sunday or Monday. Get over it. We’re back now.

Gas is now officially more expensive than ever. The previous high was $1.35 in 1981, which, when adjusted for inflation, comes to about $3.15 in 2007 dollars. The latest reading from the Lundberg Survey puts the current average at $3.18.

“Hey, did you know that just anybody can edit Wikipedia?”

sigh.

Frankly, we’ve been waiting for this one. As a kid, after too many episodes of The Six Million Dollar Man, we asked our parents how long they thought before prosthetic limbs might impart an athletic advantage. Pure fiction, they told us.

Well, now we have Oscar Pistorius, an amputee sprinter facing challenges from the tnternational track & field governing body over whether his carbon fiber legs do just that.

Since March, Pistorius has delivered startling record performances for disabled athletes at 100 meters (10.91 seconds), 200 meters (21.58 seconds) and 400 meters (46.34 seconds). Those times do not meet Olympic qualifying standards for men, but the Beijing Games are still 15 months away. Already, Pistorius is fast enough that his marks would have won gold medals in equivalent women’s races at the 2004 Athens Olympics.

Pistorius’s time of 46.56 in the 400 earned him a second-place finish in March against able-bodied runners at the South African national championships. This seemingly makes him a candidate for the Olympic 4×400-meter relay should South Africa qualify as one of the world’s 16 fastest teams.

Sure, the Taliban is scary — and quite far from mainstream Islam — but American Protestantism has its own brand of nutbird frootbat fundamentalism. Check out what Bill Barnwell to say about The Troubling Worldview of the ‘Rapture-Ready’ Christian.

Once you begin thinking of the implications involved, you begin to see why this doctrine is so dangerous to everybody. Dispensationalists seem to have a preoccupation with war. In fact, right now, dispensationalist mega-church pastor John Hagee is preaching that a war with Iran is not only the right thing to do, but is prophetically inevitable. Apparently, Bible prophecy demands a showdown with Iran. You see, if you aren’t on the side of war, then you aren’t on the side of God. Talk of peace now becomes irrelevant. It’s God’s will that we be militarists.

[…]

The dispensationalist view of Daniel 9:27 provides some troubling implications as well. They don’t care that tearing down the al-Aqsa mosque would result in a regional war and cause all sorts of global distress. This would not be a bad thing in their minds. They believe that it was all foreordained and is a sign that the end of the world would be soon upon us.

Also, if you buy into these interpretations, talks of peace in the Middle East are futile. Jews and Muslims must continue killing each other at high rates. And who will be the one bringing peace to the Middle East in this popular end-time paradigm? Not Jesus, but the Antichrist. Therefore, talk of Middle East peace during this current “dispensation” is not from Jesus, but the Antichrist. When dispensationalists hear talk of peace summits or treaties in the Middle East, they assume it must have evil origins and be antichristic. If that’s the cause, why bother trying to make the world a better place? All we need to do is be good Christians and wait for our ticket out of this earth and make way for the Antichrist.

It’s Carl’s birthday.

Why automatic cell billing is a potentially bad idea

You don’t notice when, after one month of 100% travel, you blow the top out of your cell plan

What do you mean by “blow the top out of”?

$325 instead of $160 for March.

How we noticed.

We really want one of these, but our carrier isn’t carrying it yet. We logged into the site to get their customer service address, and saw what the current bill is.

And that was?

$650

HOLY CRAP!

That’s what we said. Among other things. Actually, at first we thought it was some sort of auto-billing failure, and the amount represented several months. No such luck; thanks to the combination of a 100% travel job and some drama on the nonprofit side, we spent some 2900 minutes on the cell last month. Oops.

So what did you do?

Called them and begged for mercy.

How’d they react?

The first-line un-empowered drones were pretty unhelpful; they were willing to credit half the minute overage (i.e., $200 of about $400) on the April bill if we agreed to up the contract, but frankly we wanted more than that.

Why? What are you, some kind of entitlement freak?

In a word, yes. First, it’s absurd that the penalty for going over is so high — Cingular charges 45 cents per minute for any overage, versus less than a dime a minute for our plan minutes. While they clearly need to provide a disincentive for folks to constantly exceed their plan (i.e., for provisioning and bandwidth planning, it’s best to have a good idea how much Joe Blow is going to be on the phone in a given month), they’re just as clearly enjoying the financial ass-rape associated with plan overages. Furthermore, we’ve been with Cingular — nee Houston Cellular — for nearly 13 years, minus a year or two slumming with other carriers. We spend a decent amount a month normally, have two lines with them, and are — crucially, as it turns out — up for renewal now.

Escalation Uber Alles

At the next level, we got a guy who could only repeat the “half of the overage” mantra over and over, and we were about to give up when he mentioned the plan change would likely force a contract renewal. Uh, no thank you. We pushed and pushed, politely, on this point — and mentioned again that, since we’re not on contract now, and since we’re actively shopping for phones, it seems like this would be a great opportunity to reduce that bane of cell carriers, churn. Under no circumstances were we willing to take the coerced contract re-up for only $200. Getting in that situation would make us pretty certain, we noted, to look elsewhere in the coming weeks for our next wireless carrier

Did it work?

Yep. After a few more go-rounds on the party line, the second-level guy went away for a while to talk to his supervisor (as our request; it’s all about the escalation). When he came back, they were offering more than we’d overtly requested: complete April overage refund + a no-new-contract rate plan change.

And so who are you likely to deal with at upgrade time?

Whoever has the Nokia, unless that answer remains “no US carrier”.

We’re so glad ours was cool, fairly cheap, and nearly 2 years ago:

Advice books warn brides not to reveal that they are shopping for a wedding, if possible, Ms. Mead said; vendors know that “if it’s wedding, you’re going to spend more.” So her suspicion is immediately aroused when the woman at East Coast Limousine asks, “Is it for a wedding?” when the question of a 22-passenger excursion in a long, white stretch limousine comes up. The wedding special is $720 for 3-1/2 hours and includes an aisle runner, Champagne, bar and “horns” that play a recording of “Here Comes the Bride” when the car stops. Ever the experienced shopper, Ms. Mead asks how much the regular rental would be, if there were no wedding.

“A four-hour minimum is $576.” So you could spend $144 less and receive a half-hour more? Why not do that instead?

“You can’t,” the saleswoman replies. If it’s a wedding, you must do the wedding special. “If the bride and groom are in the car, you can’t do it. We’ve pulled in, and there is a woman in a wedding dress, and they can’t do it. The car had to leave.”

After taking a few steps away, Ms. Mead said, “This is the kind of thing that I’m really interested in — that mentality: you’re going to get the horns whether you want them or not.”

She imagines the scene: “They won’t let you in,” she repeats, picturing the bride, groom and 20 other passengers stranded on a street as the limo driver slams the door and pulls away. “That’s the one you need the videographer for.”

From NYT.

James Randi debunks homeopathy in his own inimitable style. Enjoy.

In which we realize we probably hold some inappropriate race-based correlations in our head

We assumed the expensively-dressed, very tall black gentleman we saw at BWI on Friday was a basketball player.

Of course, sometimes stereotypes are correct

It was David Robinson. .

Joey Devilla points out NASCAR now has romance novels.

Is it worse that (a) they exist or that (b) they might be successful?

We suspect most business travelers with a consistent and long-term destination do what we do, which is arrange for the hotel to hold onto one’s major suitcase over each weekend of the contract. (Some are able to escape the weekly packing/unpacking ritual entirely, by arranging for a long-term rental of the room, but the economics of this are sketchy at best.) Doing so greatly streamlines the whole airline thing; we fly with a briefcase and a small carryon with any other incidentals or return/replacement clothing, check nothing, and have nothing with us that requires a pointless TSA baggie.

The fine folks at the Holiday Inn Express in ClientTown have been very nice about this from week one, and we’re very glad of that. They are quite used to seeing Mr Heathen arrive, tired from the road, ’round about 11 local time each Sunday evening. We pass over the all-powerful Amex, pick up our key to 108 — it’s always 108 — and head down the hall to drop off the travel bags before returning to pick up the big-ass rolling hanging bag we leave here. It’s a routine.

In recent weeks, we’ve actually taken more advantage of this hospitality: we’re now leaving two bags, and have discovered that they’ll gleefully hold onto any leftover beer for the weekend as well, kept safe and cold in the office fridge. Perhaps in response to this, or perhaps because they’re just darned nice people, they’ve started being even more helpful: in the last couple weeks, the Sunday night girl has taken to bringing our bags to the room as soon as we check in, instead of waiting for us to knock on the office door. This isn’t a hotel with bellmen; it’s a business deal without so much as a coffeeshop, so it’s definitely more service than we expected.

Well, this week they did one better. As we checked in, we were informed by the nice desk lady that our bags were in fact already in our room, as was our leftover beer. “Have a nice night, Mr Heathen.”

That was nice. We liked it.

Bored with marathons? Try this one. (Via Rob.)

Mrs Heathen prefers to confuse him with certain Soprano characters, but according to his wife, the real, live local CEJ is a year older today. See you tomorrow, buddy!

The Onion: “This American Life Completes Documentation Of Liberal, Upper-Middle-Class Existence“. Heh.

We bought a Playstation Portable, and therefore managed to blink away the entire 3+ hour flight yesterday fighting terrorists.

We note that our virtual kills were precisely as effective and protective as anything TSA did all day.

(Seriously, this thing is pretty excellent. We need game recs.)

Via BoingBoing, we find Esquire’s list of 60 things worth shortening your life for. Call us crazy, but we’re pretty sure 5., 12., 15, 35., and 39. all sound like good ideas. Don’t miss and 14. and 32., just for the writing.

(Seriously, we want some of that coffee.)