Yes, today is square root day - 03-03-09.  Rejoice, ye math geeks; the next of this won't happen for a little over 7 years (04-04-16).

Dear Wayne Coyne:  If the Flaming Lips hadn't been name-checked by Curt Cobain at Unplugged in New York, you'd still be playing clubs.  NB:  He didn't do any favors; your pre-93 stuff was much better IMO.

If you are not a fan of XKCD, you are missing out.

Desperately trying to get my ducks in a row for this client site.  Seems like it's taking forever, and I'm stuck working with a crippled computer until its done.  Rather a nasty bit of vicious circle.  I still have a lot of irons on the back of the fire, and I've been able to attend to none of them since the outage started.  Boo.

Rumor has it a certain LowGenius may be making an appearance in sunny Collie Phone Ya sometime in late spring or early summer.  I'll keep you posted.

I noted this on a message board "elsewhere" earlier in the week, but wanted to touch on it here too.  You often hear people talking about "10% of the people are carrying the other 90% on this planet," or in a more nihilistic, angry form, "what we need is a major catastrophe to wipe out 90% of the people on the planet!"

What I want to know is this:  Why do these people always assume that they will be part of the surviving 10%, or that theyare not part of the 90% being carried?  Everybody can see the problems...but not many folks are coming up with solutions.

This idleness is driving me nuts.  So is the lack of musical instruments.  Along with a lot of other things.  Thankfully, in this difficult economy...it's not a long drive.

Tessa, where in the world are you?  Haven't heard from you in a couple of weeks, get in touch!  Gettin a lil worried over here, darlin...

I've been having this recurring set of dreams where I'm running around doing various things at a very fancy, shiny, hi-tech office building that ID's itself as Nortel in the context of the dream. 

In all the dreams, I'm there in some not-quite-kosher manner; in the first, there was some kind of outdoor party/festival thing that was a Republican fundraiser, and I ambushed the band and took over - with a full orchestra - replacing the evening of planned generic noisemaking with a gorgeous symphonic rendition of Bob Dylan's "Masters of War" as interpreted by Pearl Jam. 

In the second, I was sneaking around in the building after-hours, looking for cool new computer equipment for no apparent reason or purpose.  This may relate to the waste I witnessed while I was there, combined with my specific need for new equipment and my general enjoyment of gadgets.  One of my "dark side regrets" about that place - things I wished I'd been evil enough to actually do - is that I didn't help myself to some equipment before they hosed me in 12/01.  Chances are they'd have never noticed - lord knows there was plenty of equipment walking out of there at the time, and even when someone did notice - like me, for instance - nobody in the management chain seemed to care much.  And people wonder why they're trading at about 2% of peak.  Oh well.

In the third I was attending some kind of seminar, but also trying to take some really gorgeous outdoor photos - really huge moon on the horizon, that kind of thing - that were nicely framed/composed by the elements of the fancy building.  I've now seen this building enough times in my head that I could create a rudimentary blueprint for it from scratch if I were so inclined (or if I HAD A DECENT COMPUTER RUNNING grrrr).  In this one though, my daughter and her boyfriend were tagging along, and here's what kills me:  they were working on becoming a musical duet, and in the course of the dream they performed a song that I've never heard, was absolutely gorgeous, and even included lyrics...but now I can't remember the melody or the lyrics.  If I'd had an instrument available, I might have been able to preserve it.  It was damn good.

I've been reminded recently by the making of a new friend (to whom I mean no insult, disrespect, or correction by saying this) that being too cool to enjoy the mainstream has a down-side.  I tend to shun popularity myself, and would never look to sales numbers or mass acceptance to find what I like artistically, but at the same time there are a lot of really great bits of work out there that have achieved mass popularity.  The Beatles.  Stephen King.  Don't limit your experiences, for any reason. Take a chance.  Again, that's not directed at anyone in particular, just a general rule.  Something being popular doesn't mean it's great, by any means...but it doesn't mean it isn't, either.  I think everyone should, just as a matter of principle, force themselves to occasionally do things that they would normally not do.  Listen to music you usually wouldn't, read something you usually wouldn't, watch a TV show that you think is crap even though you've never actually seen it.  You might be surprised.

Some day I'm going to work the phrase "I draw more pussy than Dr. Seuss" into a song.  Then I'll be accused of misogyny.  Oh well.

Here's a treat for my friends from home: