Friday Four

Friday, January 18, 2013

1. Earlier in the week, I noticed my daughter quietly saying strange variants of "da-da", including "da-doo" and "da-dee". That evening, she started calling me "Daddy" instead of "Da-da".

Another word, "chocolate" (really meaning something like "candy-chocolate-cookies"), she mispronounces, but in a way that makes it hard to keep a straight face: "Ka-ka!" It's too bad that I have no way to transcribe the almost maniacal way this comes out.

I had to take her to the doctor yesterday for an ear infection, and she caused the office staff to start laughing by soliciting "ka-ka" from them. When she's not asking everyone else for the candy that her dad somehow hasn't realized should become the major component of her diet, she asks for "pah-pah" (pacifiers). I allow her at most one, but she prefers at least three: one in the mouth and one in each hand.

2. Heh! A commenter led me to this gem: Tony Robbins (TM) helps Dave Barry achieve an Exit State.

3. It was fun to see the tables turned in this parody about, "The State of Windows on the Desktop":

I really did not set the bar too high: I just hoped to have a nice user-friendly interface and recover the email I have in Maildir, and maybe watch my video collection on an external hard drive. You know, the usual stuff I do on Linux every day.
The punchline for me was, "Friend finally took off, saying he had better things to do than fiddle with an OS he knows very little about."

4. For good and bad, here's an amusing sign of the times: a web site that offers fake Facebook girlfriends for sale.

-- CAV

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Heh, that piece about Anthony Robbins is pure gold!

Anonymous said...

Hi Gus,

Here's another one about Tony Robbins. I don't know if you are a fan of Joss Whedon, but this comes from his Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series.

Adam: Two Slayers.
Spike: That's right.
Adam: And you killed them both.
Spike: Yep. I killed the hell out of 'em.
Adam: Yet you fear this one.
Spike: Hey, watch it, mate. I don't fear anything. Just know my enemies.
Adam: Do you? Then why haven't you killed this Slayer yet?
Spike: Because... Stinking rotten luck, is why. On top of that, now I've got this buggering chip up my head.
Adam: Yes. Your behavior modification circuitry. I know what you feel.
Spike: Not likely.
Adam: You feel smothered. Trapped like an animal. Pure in its ferocity, unable to actualize the urges within. Clinging to one truth like a flame struggling to burn within an enclosed glass. That a beast this powerful cannot be contained. Inevitably it will break free and savage the land again. I will make you whole again. Make you savage.
Spike: Wow. I mean, yeah. I get why the demons all fall in line with you. You're like Tony Robbins, if he was a big, scary Frankenstein-looking... You're exactly like Tony Robbins.

c. andrew