RIP Chairman

As any of you know who have come over to our house in the last year, we've got a couple neighborhood cats that have adopted us, including a cute little old lady named Chairman Meow, who has been part of our house for about a year, and could be found every night on either my lap or Adrienne's, completely content.

She also absolutely loved heat, she'd go and sit and watch the fire for hours, or sit on the heating grate. Between heat and people, her world was pure joy. She was pretty much the friendliest cat I've ever seen. She loved to come up and give people a little nudge with her head until they petted her. Unlike every other cat in the world, she loved to be picked up, never ran away, never got angry, never scratched. She was pure affection.

Last night, she showed up with a huge lump on her back, which turned out to be a herniated bladder - the vet says she either got hit by a car or fell from something too high. Since she was 15 years old, the surgery would have been too much for her, so our neighbors (who she belonged to), put her down.

What stuns me is how upset I am. Chairman quietly became part of my family, and she was so happy and innocent, and to have her gone forever from a freak accident, when I didn't even get to say goodbye, is heartbreaking. It's almost harder for me to see animals hurt than people because they don't know why they're being put down, or why they're in pain.

I think my own fear and hatred of mortality makes me less able to deal with this sort of stuff than the rest of you normal people, I don't think it's okay that anyone has to go. I can't wrap my head around how it's okay that we never get to see someone again when they're gone, forever. Whether it's a cat or a person, it's just as permanent, and just as wrong.

Sorry to see you go, Chairman. I find myself missing you every time I sit on the couch. Life is really unfair sometimes.


















Bye, kiddo.

podcasts for a road trip

Does anyone have any good suggestions for podcasts? I'm going to drive from Santa Clara to Tucson, and then from Tucson to Maryland. So we're talking about five straight days in a car. Good podcasts would be nice.

I've been listening to The Future and You, Hardcore History, the Singularity Podcast, and Astronomy Cast... I've downloaded JapanesePod101, and some others. But what do you guys listen to? Better yet, what are some good serialized podcasts of books or old radio shows? Any suggestions?

girls are weird

You ever notice how at big parties, you frequently get conversation migration such that the women and men separate like oil and water? Sure, there's some mixing, but for the most part, you get little clumps, organized by sex.

I've been in several situations in the last few weeks where it was me and a gaggle of women, and it's made me realize that the conversational style of the sexes is vastly different.

Sure, guys talk about cars and farting and robots, and women get bored with us. Everyone knows that.

What's bizarre is how women talk. (Well, bizarre to me and my penis).

Often in groups of women, there's this completely unordered stream of consciousness type conversational flow, where anything that any girl says can remind another girl of something, and they just start talking about it. Often in mid sentence. While the other girl is talking.

And they don't seem to mind, or think this is rude at all!

I can't really wrap my head around this. I'm used to conversations where a topic is raised, and people give their opinions about it, or raise points, and then once everyone has said their piece, or it's clear that no one is going to change their mind, another topic is raised. If someone else has something to say, they mentally file it into a queue, and they use this as the next conversational topic when a lull arises.

Let me give you an example of how the conversation appeared to me recently:

Girl: "What do you think about X?"
Me: "Well, I think that..."
Girl1: "OH MY GOD I LOVE THAT RESTAURANT!"
Girl2: "Yeah, it's great, but I don't like their curry"
Girl1: "You know who has great curry? This other place"
Me: "Uh, anyway, like you just asked me, I think..."
Girl2: "Jesus, what is that guy doing!" (regarding another driver)
Girl1: "Look at that beautiful dog!"
Girl3: "HELLO DOGGY!"

and so on, and so on...

I'm not really able to let go of the linear nature of my mind, and just let conversations flow from moment to moment, whatever stray impulse hits the brain of people around me. It's not ordered, and it doesn't allow for very much depth.

Not only that, but sometimes I get the impression that they're not actually listening to each other. They all feel the need to talk and have other people listen, but they are somehow able to all do it at the same time, and feel satisfied. Or maybe they've mastered the art of listening while talking.

It's very strange mental wiring. And it never seems to happen one-on-one, it's a phenomenon of multiple women, like a specialized protocol. I'd love to see the RFC for that one.

If you'll excuse me now, I've got to go find some dudes, I just saw a video of a farting robot that I need to show them.

coming out to DC/MD/VA

Hey East Coast peeps-

I'm heading out to the East Coast with Rusty, to help him move to Maryland for good. We're leaving Tucson right after Christmas, and we'll be arriving in Silver Spring around the 30th.

I'm thinking about hanging around town for a few days, maybe till the 4th or so, going down to DC, seeing the sights, riding the metro, eating east coast food, seeing old friends, that sort of thing.

If you're in that area, and you want to get dinner or lunch, or show me something cool, or get a beer, drop me an email or comment on this post. I'd love to see people, it feels like I hardly ever come out east anymore. I'll have a rental car, so I don't need to be hauled around, either.

Let me know!