Is it wrong that, if you’re under 30 and not immediately connected to it, I almost certainly don’t care about your 9/11 experience?

Get off my lawn.

This is Norah Anne. She joined planet Earth yesterday, August 23, 2011. She lives in Louisville, and joins two other miniHeathen in the care of Mrs Heathen’s sister and her delightful husband. Everybody’s doing fine, but Mrs Heathen is beside herself to meet Norah, and I’d be lying if I suggested I wasn’t kinda jazzed about it myself.

The next couple of weeks are going to be completely insufferable as we approach the 10th anniversary of the attacks, but at least we can kick off the occasion with this utterly pointless story about know-nothing hysteria and idiot chatter around a rock band’s concert.

It won’t help much, but perhaps the guys in the band in question could look up these guys, who had it much rougher in the fall of 2001.

I don’t write about him much, but it would feel weird not to note this somehow: today is the 25th anniversary of my dad’s passing. I was 16 then (Frank had just turned 11). I’m 41 now, or only a few years younger than he was.

I don’t have lots of pictures of him worth scanning, but here’s one my cousin put on Facebook. My guess is that it’s from 1975 or ’76, taken in our grandparents’ house in Laurel, Mississippi. Short sleeves and shorts suggests summer, so I’d be 5 or 6, and Dad would be approaching 35 or 36. I probably still have that comic book somewhere, to say nothing of the GI Joe on the table:

He’s missed a lot of cool things since 1986, obviously, but the biggest part is Layla. My brother’s daughter is a complete joy, nearly always bubbly and happy in a way that only a child can sustain, and full of love for her friends and family. She’s gotten old enough that even though I only get over there a few times a year, she remembers and immediately hugs me, and becomes obsessed with Uncle Chet reading stories, or putting on her shoes, or going with her places until I have to come back home (actually, I’m usually just the opening act for Aunt Erin). I of course always oblige. She loves our mom to distraction, and would I’m sure be just as fond of the grandfather she never got to meet. Imagining him beaming over her is the first new pang of regret I’ve felt over his loss in a long time.

We have no real shortage of Farmers — Dad’s uncles produced offspring, one of which even lives in Houston with his family; Dad’s sister has two daughters with children of their own — but his absence leaves a hole in the tree that still seems weird despite the fact that it’s utterly normal for parents to die. It’s sad and breaks your heart, sure, but they’re older than we are; they’ll get to threescore and ten well before we will. The difference is timing. It is increasingly less weird that my father is dead, but it will always be weird that he died when he did, at the age he was, and when Frank and I were as young as we were. It’s weird that neither of us ever got to have an adult conversation with him, about women or football or college or anxiety about Vietnam or any of a thousand other things a guy born in 1940 could talk about. Hell, he went to Auburn for veterinary school; imagine the fun that could’ve produced every November.

I do not idealize my Dad. He wasn’t very good at “happy,” but he was probably better at it than his father was. He held ideas about race in the South that were common to men of his age and class, and probably still are. He worked too much, but he did happen to be very good at what he did, and what he did touched a whole lot of small, furry lives in south Mississippi for the 22 years he practiced veterinary medicine there. Lots of those animals belonged to people who could not pay, or who did not look like he did, and near as I could tell he didn’t care.

He did his best with Frank and I, and taught us important lessons in the time he had. We learned to drive from him, in an old Chevy pickup, and to do a job right, and take care of the tools when you finish. He taught us both to shoot, and to be safe with firearms, to take care of them, too. Above all, his example taught us to love and care for those my friend Igor charmingly calls “quadruped-Americans.” More subtly, his support of the Humane Society showed us how to give quietly what we could when we could, and to share skills as well as money.

He was a good dad, and it’s sad that he’s been gone as long as he has. Forty-six seemed pretty young when I was 16; it’s safe to say I think of it as a whole lot younger now that I can see it from here.

A man in the Dallas suburb of Flower Mound may get a $330K minimansion for $16 through via the fortuitous hat trick of (a) foreclosure, (b) mortgage company collapse, and (c) knowing what “adverse possession” means.

If he pulls this off, he’s my new hero.

Screech Owls.

Subsection 9, paragraph 12, What To Do When Life Gives You Lemons.

First world problems may hit close to home for, well, anyone with the wherewithall to read this site. Heh.

So this past weekend, in addition to its usual holiday doodle, Google commemorated Father’s Day by adding a “call your dad” reminder on the bottom of the main search page plus a “Reminder: Call Dad” entry in the web-based GTalk interface. It’s both the sort of cute holiday schtick we associate with Google and, it should be noted, a subtle bit of marketing (it’s now possible to call folks from GTalk).

Apparently, some folks were offended, and started calling this a “Google social media fail,” because, you know, some people’s dads are dead, or some people don’t have dads, or are estranged, or whatever.

I hate finding myself in the “oh, go shut the fuck up” crowd, but doesn’t it really seem like this is an example of people waiting around to be sad about something? Both Heathen HQ dads shuffled off this mortal coil long ago, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to get up in arms about the whole idea of Father’s Day.

Mostly what we have here is the intersection of a tech press without enough actual meat to cover (I’m looking at you, Techcrunch) combined with some free-floating anti-Google sentiment and agitated to a froth by the eternal presence of people who are, apparently, going through life looking for things to become upset and put-upon about.

The official Heathen position on this? These people should go piss up a rope. Google has a personality, unlike many corporate behemoths. They do interesting, fun things. And they are discovering that, at a certain point, anything they do that is at all out of the ordinary results in some X number of hundreds of people online getting all whiney. THEY SHOULD NOT CARE. This comment at the Metafilter thread is pretty spot on:

This is why corporations retreat to bland, impersonal, inoffensive personas that become indistinguishable from one another.

Roger Ebert calls our attention to this bit with his tweet “The obituaries in London newspapers are rarely boring.” An excerpt:

John Kingsley-Heath, who has died aged 84, ran African safaris for more than half a century, and as a big-game hunter survived many hair-raising encounters with the fiercest beasts of the bush.

One such occurred in August 1961, when Kingsley-Heath was leading a private safari along the Kisigo river in Tanganyika. From inside a blind (a shelter for hunters), he turned to see a huge, maned lion crouching behind him not 15ft away. As it gathered itself to spring, Kingsley-Heath shot it, and the lion fled. He and his gunbearers gave chase and found the wounded creature lying on its side, breathing heavily.

It was down, but not out. When Kingsley-Heath’s client opened fire, the lion made a single bound of 22ft towards the two men. Kingsley-Heath dropped to the ground and smashed the barrel of his .470 rifle over the animal’s head, breaking the stock at the pistol grip; the lion staggered. As his gunbearers and client ran for cover Kingsley-Heath struggled on to his elbows to get clear.

“Too late,” he recalled, “the lion was upon me, I smelt his foul breath as, doubling my legs up to protect my stomach, I hit him in the mouth with my right fist as hard as I could. His mouth must have been partly open as my fist went straight in.”

With a single jerk of its head, the lion broke Kingsley-Heath’s right arm; as he punched it with his left fist, the lion bit clean through his left wrist, breaking the left arm and leaving the hand hanging by its sinews. Next it clamped his foot in its jaws, crushing the bones in it by twisting his ankle.

One of the gunbearers arrived, threw himself on the animal’s back and stabbed it repeatedly with a hunting knife. With Kingsley-Heath’s foot still locked in its mouth, the lion was finally shot dead. The client reappeared, and with his rifle blew the creature’s jaws apart so that Kingsley-Heath’s foot could be removed.

“I was bleeding heavily … shaking uncontrollably, felt cold, and was likely to lose consciousness,” he wrote later. “I knew that if I did so, I might die.” Instead, after an agonising and protracted medical evacuation, followed by surgery and a bout of malaria, he eventually recovered.

It goes on from there. Kingsley-Heath comes off as the sort of guy the Most Interesting Man in the World might find intimidating.

The CDC has a blog post up about how they’d respond to the zombie apocalypse — and, more generally, how you should prepare for one. Or, you know, any other sort of disaster.

Remember what Banana Republic used to be like, before douches took over? The product descriptions were stories, the gear was wonderful, and you got the impression you were dealing with humans, not a faceless corporation.

Yeah, me too. I wore the shit out of some Ghurka shorts back then, too. Turns out, we’re not the only ones who miss ’em.

Obviously, the market loved the approach — after the founders sold to the aforementioned douches and the brand became something else entirely, another company started doing something very similar. Heathen HQ has a bunch of Peterman stuff, too.

And as long as we’re lamenting dead brands, pour a little out for Willis & Geiger; they were the real deal, to be sure.

So go look at this. It’s way more damaging than the now-tedious-and-overreaching Beloit list ever is.

I think the most shocking one to me was the fact that, when initially cast as Frodo, Elijah Wood was 18. He is now 30.

There are lots more resources online about the Tuscaloosa storm, but the most useful I pulled from this Metafilter post: a zoomable “slider” graphic showing before-and-after satellite photos of the tornado’s path.

There are also some similar graphics at the Tuscaloosa News site.

Finally, my friend Quin — a Malleteer, former Army Ranger, and EMT working in Tuscaloosa — was interviewed by the Washington Post for a story that is worth your time.

This is not Bear, but it may as well be.

He is Gene Stallings, the only coach who won a championship in Tuscaloosa between Bryant and the incumbent, Nick Saban. Stallings is legitimately legendary in his own right — he was one of Bryant’s Junction Boys in the fifites back at A&M, and coached under Bear at Alabama from ’58 to ’64 before he came back to take the big job in 1990. Coach Stallings retired in 1996, but continues to keep a home in Tuscaloosa.

This is how a 76-year-old man came to be standing in a parking log, surrounded by debris and destruction, grilling burgers for tornado victims.

Roll Tide.

Buried in this “list of things” story at the Houston Press is staggering notion that John Tyler, the 10th President of the United States and a man born in 1790, has two living grandchildren today, in 2011.

• Lyon Tyler, Jr , born in 1924, and
• Harrison Ruffin Tyler, born in 1928, who maintains President Tyler’s home in Virginia.

This is, of course, only possible because President Tyler had many children between two wives; his oldest schild was born in 1815, but his youngest wasn’t born until 1860. The surviving grandchildren are sons of Lyon Gardiner Tyler, his fifth child from his second wife. Lyon Sr. was born in 1853 — when Tyler the elder was about 63.

Further, Lyon Sr. had these surviving sons quite late as well: he was about 71 and 73 for their arrivals. But that’s the kind of age spread you need to have living people with grandfathers born during the Washington Administration.

Wow.

To hell with frou-frou drinks. “Drink alcohol. Quite a bit. Mostly bourbon.”

This is the sort of thing you can’t really make up: a Brooklyn bar owner was recently contacted by his birth father, who turns out to be Ted Nugent.

Dominic is small, but he wonders what his special soft friend Bity the Monkey does at night. Dominic’s father obliges, in a lovely and hilarious video.

Dominic loves his monkey toy. So i made a short film to show him what he does at night while he’s sleeping.This is what Bity the Monkey does from 2am to 6am.

Just because you could get both kittens in the carrier 18 months ago when you first took ’em to the goddamn vet doesn’t mean you can do it today with two full-grown cats, Dr Doolittle. It’s been 25 years since you had to deal with genuinely unhappy felines, and having had a vet for a dad doesn’t impart to you permanent amounts of Dog Whisperer-level animal husbandry skills, you doofus.

Now go bandage your hand, reschedule the appointment, and buy a second fucking carrier.

Imagine what sort of magnum opus I might’ve penned had my parents just been a bit crazier!

Study: Family History of Alcoholism Raises Risk of One-Man Show.

The Krewe of Chewbacchus takes to the streets on March 6.

Confessions of a Disney Employee. Long, but worth it.

You think Julius from Pulp Fiction was a bad motherfucker? Did John Wayne embody “tough sumbitch” for you? Yeah, they’re pansies. Check out Samuel Whittemore, hero of the American Revolution:

Samuel Whittemore (1694 – February 3, 1793) was a farmer. He was eighty years old and living in Menotomy, Massachusetts (present-day Arlington) when he became the oldest known colonial combatant in the American Revolutionary War. […]

On April 19, 1775, British forces were returning to Boston from the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the opening engagements of the war. On their march, they were continually shot at by colonial militiamen.

Whittemore was in his fields when he spotted an approaching British relief brigade under Earl Percy, sent to assist the retreat. Whittemore loaded his musket and ambushed the British from behind a nearby stone wall, killing one soldier. He then drew his dueling pistols and killed a grenadier and mortally wounded a second. He managed to fire five shots before a British detachment reached his position.

N.B. that the revolution was fully 100 years before “firing five shots” was possible without reloading, manually, 5 times. Whittemore was, of course, not yet done:

Whittemore then attacked with a sword. He was shot in the face, bayoneted thirteen times, and left for dead in a pool of blood. He was found alive, trying to load his musket to fight again. He was taken to Dr. Cotton Tufts of Medford, who perceived no hope for his survival. However, Whittemore lived another 18 years until dying of natural causes at the age of 98.

His account of it is arresting and moving and beautiful, and you should read it.

Nate, it should be noted, appears to be fine.

A Salt Lake area band really make a busker’s holiday by first setting up along side him to play, and then by doing some pretty serious spirit of Christmas stuff. Enjoy.

If you’ve ever been in professional services of any kind — software, graphic design, etc — this video is going to hit hilariously close to home.

Go, now, and enjoy Dogs Don’t Understand Basic Concepts Like Moving.

Entirely too cute for their own good: Zooborns.com.

Li’l RoboCop is actually pretty darn cute.

“Rescued Baby Hummingbird“

But it IS, absolutely, the coolest apartment in Seattle.

Five years ago today, we threw one hell of a party, for the best reason ever.

Happy anniversary, baby. I love you.

Today, the President released the following statement:

October 2, 2010

Statement by the President on the Occasion of the 20th Anniversary of the Reunification of East and West Germany

On Sunday, October 3, the people of the United States join with the people of the Federal Republic of Germany in celebrating the Day of German Unity and the 20th anniversary of the unification of East and West Germany. This was an historic achievement, as Germans peacefully reunited and advanced our shared vision of a Europe whole and free, anchored in the Euro-Atlantic institutions of NATO and the European Union. The United States commemorates today that spirit and the many accomplishments of Germany, one of our closest allies and greatest friends. We pay tribute to the countless contributions Germans have made to our own history and society. We honor the courage and conviction of the German people that brought down the Berlin Wall, ending decades of painful and artificial separation. It unleashed a spirit of hope and joy, and opened the door to unprecedented freedom throughout the European continent and around the world. The American people are proud of our role in defending a free Berlin and in supporting the German people in their quest for human dignity. We remain proud of our partnership with our German allies to advance freedom, prosperity, and stability around the world. We congratulate the people of Germany on this National Day, and we express our gratitude for our vital friendship.

Germany, of course, was traditionally one nation, except for 45-year postwar period that was considered “normal” for GenX. People who can vote today have never heard of “East Germany.”

A year ago, I flew home quickly from Kansas and went straight to the critical care clinic, where Erin and I and Sharon said goodbye to Bob. September 23 was the first day ever that Erin and I woke up without our little fuzzy pal.

Our house has two cats now. We lasted not quite a month before we tried to fill the hole in our hearts with two kittens, but they just wormed their way into entirely new areas and left the Bob-shaped cavity pretty much as it was. I still sometimes forget she’s not here, in the night, or when I’m moving through the house and a corner of shadow looks inky and fuzzy enough to be my old girl.

We love Saracen and Wiggins. They were made to be ours. They picked us, at the rescue site, as much as we picked them. Saracen thinks Erin hung the moon, and follows her around like a puppy. She stalks and captures all manner of small textiles when we’re not looking, which means our house actually does have a tiny gremlin who steals socks. Wiggins is absolutely fascinated with just about everything I do, and spends a good chunk of every day insisting her way into my lap. She vocalizes more than any animal I’ve ever seen, which is hilarious, and has invented a game for herself involving our stairs and wine corks. They romp and run through the house like the juveniles they are, and then collapse together in the increaseingly-too-small-for-them cat condo, or in extra chairs, or next to us on the couch when they’re done.

But neither of them are Bob, and in some ways they’re both still strangers compared to her. And I still miss my girl even though I love these new guys, too.

Last night, Mrs Heathen came home and said “Instead of going to a bar, can we just go get some champagne and stay home and watch Return of the King?”

I still don’t want to click on your bullshit emails to find out when the goddamn party is, you fuckers. Please stop this.

Dog plays with baby. Warm hearts ensue.

This process is even MORE true for corporate service: Why I’d rather be punched in the testicles than call customer service.

Check out the delighful map used as an example of Bing’s health mapping feature over at Lifehacker. Oh, Magnolia State…

Important Memo: What Disney Princesses Teach Girls.

State Farm accidentally stole $20,000 from several customers.

Nobody gets to draft my account.

When you coldcall me to try to sell my company something and suggest that “my company president said we should call you,” it’s more convincing if you can actually NAME the president in question.

When I ask that you email me your information, it’s also better if your PDF of talking points has actually been proofread, explains what you’re selling, and has a clear pitch the explains why I want it. A shotgun approach of unconnected capabilities and features is rarely the way to a sale.

Finally, if I reply with questions and explicitly state at the bottom of my mail that you should reply in email, not call me directly, why on earth would you call me? And when I point out your failure to honor my request, maybe it’s not a good idea to get defensive and suggest that you’re somehow doing me a favor.

Wow. Just wow.

Well, not the whole thing, really, and also not for everybody — but if you’re like Official Heathen Counsel Triple-F, your pancreas is all jacked up on account of the sugar diabetes. Jeffrey Brewer wants to give you an artificial one instead.

For it is a day of great rejoicing.

(File photo.)

The NYT’s Ethicist says “Buying a book or a piece of music should be regarded as a license to enjoy it on any platform.” in response to a question about the ethics of downloading an illegal digital copy of a book previously purchased in hardback.

Cohen gets it. Publishers don’t, at least not yet. Here’s the whole bit:

I bought an e-reader for travel and was eager to begin “Under the Dome,” the new Stephen King novel. Unfortunately, the electronic version was not yet available. The publisher apparently withheld it to encourage people to buy the more expensive hardcover. So I did, all 1,074 pages, more than three and a half pounds. Then I found a pirated version online, downloaded it to my e-reader and took it on my trip. I generally disapprove of illegal downloads, but wasn’t this O.K.? C.D., BRIGHTWATERS, N.Y.

An illegal download is — to use an ugly word — illegal. But in this case, it is not unethical. Author and publisher are entitled to be paid for their work, and by purchasing the hardcover, you did so. Your subsequent downloading is akin to buying a CD, then copying it to your iPod.

Buying a book or a piece of music should be regarded as a license to enjoy it on any platform. Sadly, the anachronistic conventions of bookselling and copyright law lag the technology. Thus you’ve violated the publishing company’s legal right to control the distribution of its intellectual property, but you’ve done no harm or so little as to meet my threshold of acceptability.

Unsurprisingly, many in the book business take a harder line. My friend Jamie Raab, the publisher of Grand Central Publishing and an executive vice president of the Hachette Book Group, says: “Anyone who downloads a pirated e-book has, in effect, stolen the intellectual property of an author and publisher. To condone this is to condone theft.”

Yet it is a curious sort of theft that involves actually paying for a book. Publishers do delay the release of e-books to encourage hardcover sales — a process called “windowing” — so it is difficult to see you as piratical for actually buying the book ($35 list price, $20 from Amazon) rather than waiting for the $9.99 Kindle edition.

(There’s more; click through.)

Hey, dude, check out Bant. Of course, the better option would be one that interfaced with your existing equipment…

Anything worth doing is worth doing again. I present the following for your amusement. Many of you are in these pictures, but (to a first approximation) none of you are with the right boyfriends or girlfriends. Except Eric and Lindsey, God bless ’em. Anyway, what follows is more or less the text of the original photodocumentation of this party from spring of 2000. Back then, there were no Flickr; we rolled our own and we liked it, so these were on the unfortunately defunct NoGators.com site. Since a server crash took it down, they’ve been tragically offline . . . until now!

In Which We Review Photo-Graphs Taken at Birthday Festivities in March, 2000.

Some time ago, I turned 30. (March, 2000.)

What follows is something like a photographic record. These shots were taken by my brother, who was apparently flummoxed slightly by his new camera; they’re a bit hot in places. Additionally, the photolab transfer to lo-res .jpg files didn’t do them any favors. Even so, however, here they are.

They are in no particular order. Though it should be rather clear which are early and which are drunker (er, later) in in the evening.

• Part the First: In which general party groups are documented, some better than others.
• Part the Second: In which events in the back yard are investigated, and a lapse in judgement is forever preserved in kodachrome.
• Part the Third: In which things are set afire and carried forth in shopping carts, much to the consternation of neighbors and miscellaneous civic support organizations

UPDATE – 2003

Yeah, now I’m even older, but in reformatting these pages for use on the new server, it occurs to me that a monstrous number of these pictures are, well, waaaay out of date. Certain people have gently pointed out that, well, their sister is my girlfriend now, and she even lives with me and stuff, and why is that other girl in my 30th birthday pictures?

The answer, gentle reader, is that Erin wasn’t even AT my 30th birthday party. So there. I mean, there was an Erin, but not THE Erin.

Also, I intend to keep these pictures up long enough for them to be embarrassing to certain children whose parents are shown here (when you’re old enough to read the Internet, kids, give Uncle Chet a call and he’ll tell you stories about your parents; Eva, Matilde, and Hadley, I’m talking to YOU).

UPDATE AGAIN – 2010

Now I’m even older than I was when I commented in 2003, but I’m not sure I’ll cop to wiser. Anyway, these pix have been forgotten for years, but looking at ’em now made me smile enough that I wanted to put them back online. But the bit about your kids calling me for an explanation in a few years? That’s still TOTALLY on, except now we have to add Gwen, Carl, and Layla to the list.

I’m a lucky, lucky boy. Cheers, friends.

Today, I’m 40. Which means ten years ago, this happened:

A somewhat more modest festival is planned for this evening. If you know where I live, odds are you’re welcome.