OK, That's Enough Moving Headaches Department

You know it's bad when I have to drop the "Never Enough" tagline.

Well, it could be worse, I guess. But the main issue before me truly is a pain. To wit, the phone company shut down the phone and DSL service at our apartment, on schedule. If we were also on schedule, this would be no problem. As is, it's a fairly serious problem, as I can only read my email at work through a fairly kludgy ISP shell connection. And it's not easy to temporarily switch my Yahoo! Groups to digest mode, only because the groups I'm most concerned about post pictures that I dare not show at work, if you get my drift. (Ghods, I'm such a pervy thing. :) )

As the French would say, "Merde, alors!"

Never Enough Moving Headaches Department

It's appoaching June 28, the date that Thea and I had set for our move.

We aren't nearly done packing.

The people who were living in the house are still moving out.

We signed the lease, but until the house is fully vacated, we have no key.

We're hoping to get a week's extension on our current apartment, and only pay a portion of July's rent, so that we can buy time (literally!) to finish the move.

The new owner of our apartment building has been reluctant to give us the extension.

We're annoyed. But it'll be worth it, when all is said and done.

If only the tenants of the old house would stop repainting and cleaning and concentrate on moving their crap out.

Oh well. Even Eden had a snake in it.

Never Enough Organic Waste Fuel Stock Department

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin have come up with a catalyst that uses inexpensive metals to extract hydrogen from organic wastes. This device is expected to give a good boost to the conversion from a fossil fuel based economy to a hydrogen fuel based economy. Food processing plants, dairy farms, and paper mills--to name but a few--can dump their glucose-rich wastes into the catalyst and generate hydrogen that can be used to run the facilities.

As my friend Rev. Prostata Cantata said, "I wanna run my fuel-cell car on cheese."

Never Enough Big Plans Department

A small gray house overlooking the Garden of Eden--complete with apple tree.

That's our future.

Thea and I will begin moving in after the 20th, after which our new home--Grayhaven Slack Recovery Center--will be open to the few souls worthy of being able to lounge under evergreen trees, walk on mossy ground, munch on blackberry brambles, then go inside for a hot bath in a real tub, cook in a large kitchen, and then go back out onto the porch for a cool, shady nap.

And the rent is very affordable.

BRING IT ON!!!

Never Enough Mad Props Department

Go to dictionary.com and look up slack. Search the page for "SubGenius". Be surprised. Or not.

Never Enough Playstation Fun Department

My kind of fun, anyhow.

The National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has assembled a supercomputer from a cluster of seventy networked Sony PlayStation 2 devices, each running Linux and networked Beowulf style with a Hewlett-Packard network switch. The graphics processor, designed to handle billions of mathematical operations a second for excellent gaming graphics, is instead being used to calculate quantum chromodynamics simulations.

I wonder if they can be used by third-world countries that otherwise have problems gaining supercomputing power. If so, all those fake explosions in computer games can be turned into painfully real ones. But they'd need a 12-year-old to help set it up....

Never Enough Honest Holidays Department

Ah, Memorial Day. Already the Space Needle has been temporarily (I hope!) decorated with that flag theme that this country has worked upon for the past several decades--red, white, blue with white stars. Can't forget the stars, otherwise we just look French. I'm sure that there are plenty of op-ed columns being written about what Memorial Day is "all about." Some, from the progressive end of the accepted political spectrum, have thoughtfully raised questions of what constitutes a patriot or a hero. Others, from more mainstream media, will of course wax poetically about brave soldiers dying in America's wars, oblivious to the jingoism or to any attempt at understanding their sacrifices in a broader sense.

But we know what Memorial Day is really about: Barbecue and beer. The average American is rather pagan in attitudes, despite paying lip service to the Christian and American creeds. It is only natural that, on the first recognized holiday in mid-Spring and in the absense of Beltane celebrations, hoards of American families will fire up the backyard barbecue grills, prepare steaks and burgers and ribs and other succulent bits of flesh, and sip on intoxicating malted drinks the whole lazy afternoon.

So, from me to you: Happy Charred Meat Product & Fermented Grain Beverage Day!

Never Enough Glitches Department

Sorry for the problems with blogspot.com--this will not be a problem when we move the foolspress.com domain. Again.

Never Enough Chimp Promotions Department

According to a new study of "functionally important" DNA--that is, DNA that codes for proteins which can modify amino acids in the body--at 99.4% similarity to human DNA, chimpanzees are even more closely related to humans than previously thought, and should therefore be moved to the genus homo. Yes, this incluses bonobos.

They didn't mention anything about YETI DNA, however. I guess science still has a ways to go....

Never Enough Ballsy Texans Department

As an expatriate Texan, a progressively-minded voter, and a fan of hell-raising, I've been following the news of over 50 Texas House Democrats thwarting a quorum in order to block a redistricting plan drawn up by US House Speaker Tom DeLay. Jim Hightower, one of my favorite fellow progressive Texan hellions, tells the story from his angle, and it's very enlightening. ALL HAIL THE KILLER Ds!!!