Thank you for the kind birthday wishes; they are truly appreciated. The day itself was rather uneventful, which is what I wanted. I live too much of a jet-set lifestyle¹ as it is, so the downtime was valuable. Also, I should have known that Verticus would be the only person to pick up on the Last Tango reference. Is he a film scholar, a pervert, or both?

My employer's fiscal year ends with January, so this is a rather spastic time for me, filled with post-holiday recaps, preparations for annual reviews², last-ditch efforts toward project completion, and trying to use the remaining vacation days before they are lost forever. (Nope, no payout option is offered.) All this activity has an unpleasant effect on the attitudes of my co-workers, so the new year tends to start with an escalation of stress. This, in turn, leads to a reduction in side-writing.

One of my computers has also suffered a hardware failure, so I'm spending some time sucking the last bits of data from the hard drive before it spins its last. Ah, yes, I love working on computers, I forgot³. Fortunately I still have three more at home to fill in the gaps.

It seems that Blogger is now going to start forcing people to switch to their new version. For people who use BlogSpot the bugs seem to have been worked out. Unfortunately, those of us who own our own domains and have arcane back-stage set-ups have not been so lucky. If the "upgrade" goes badly you may not hear from me for a couple of months⁴ while I build a new site from scratch on another platform⁵. I'll let you know.

1: We call this sarcasm.
2: Reviewing the performance of my team is something I enjoy only slightly less than reviewing my own performance. Someday I should write about the pointlessness of the entire endeavor.
3: This is a lie.
4: I'll be even busier than usual with the day job from now until April, so the time to spend building templates and learning new syntax will be very limited.
5: Ye, yes, I should have done it years ago, but if it ain't broke...

Sometimes, particularly when I am being excessively cynical, I am asked just what I actually believe in. Since today I am beginning my forty-eighth year among you, this seems an appropriate time as any to indulge in a little introspection and list-making. So allow me to offer my apologies in advance to both Crash Davis and a marvelous NPR project.

I believe in absolute freedom of self-expression, without limits. I also believe in taking responsibility for your self-expression.

It is possible to hold strong opinions without being an ass, but it's too much work for most people.

I believe we are born to leave our bodies, and seek transcendence wherever we can find it. Some find it in religion, in the immersive power of art, in pushing physical limits, in technological enhancement, or through altered perception. While achieving that momentary transcendence is good, sometimes the quest is better.

Each person has the potential for greatness, if society doesn't beat it out of them first.

Similarly, I believe that we are all creative people, but most have been convinced by television that unless you can make a living at it, it doesn't count.

I believe in strong coffee, real sugar, dark rum, red meat, free love, and butter. I clearly don't believe in living forever.

The old-style Crayola 64 crayon box with the sharpener on the back is one of the greatest inventions ever, but the 96 crayon box is too much of a good thing.

I believe humanity will never achieve utopia, but failing to try is the greatest crime of all.

I believe we have an obligation to help those less fortunate, and that those who have the most to give should give the most to those who have not.

As clichéd as it may be, I believe in the transformative power of love. However, it isn't a controllable transformation, so be prepared for the changes.

I do not believe in predestination, although I do believe in destiny. We are inextricably caught up in the movement of the invisible brass clockworks around us, and to understand the mechanics behind the universal tick is to achieve illumination.

Language is the tool that shapes the world. Use your power wisely.

These beliefs have served me well for a few years now. Let's see if they continue to hold up.

Last Saturday morning two professionally dressed young men knocked on my door. After recoiling in horror at my shirtless, unshaven appearance — or perhaps my coffee breath — they were quite cordial, and gave me a copy of Awake! magazine. They did not, however, waste any time in making good their exit from my porch.

During a lull this week I read over the pamphlet. In the middle of features about medicine, nanotechnology, and the relationship between Noah's Ark and aircraft carriers, I found a short piece about dating. The specific topic was directed toward teens, and specifically, when should you start dating.

Somewhat predictably the JW take is that you should postpone dating until you are ready to get married. While I started out thinking how silly that was, the more I considered it, the more I came to realize I know a lot of people in the 20s, 30s, and 40s who feel the same way. Dating isn't about having a good time for those people, it's about sizing up potential mates. Given our goal-oriented culture and all the emphasis on production of swift results, I found myself wondering if I missed a memo somewhere. Isn't life* supposed to be about enjoying yourself?

So in my hour of &mdash well, despair is far too strong a word, let's say incipient melancholy — my hour of incipient melancholy, I turn to you, dear readers. For those of you still single, is dating analogous to a job interview for you, where you come prepared with a mental list of required qualifications for the position? And for those of you who have already paired (or tripled) off, was your first thought "S/He's cute!" or was it "S/He seems like a potential spouse?"

I eagerly await your responses.

*Please note that this does not represent my own life, but rather an idealized version of life in general. My own life is rarely about personal satisfaction and enjoyment, but I like to know how the rest of you live.

"London is not a battlefield. Those innocents who were murdered on July 7 2005 were not victims of war. And the men who killed them were not, as in their vanity they claimed on their ludicrous videos, 'soldiers'. They were deluded, narcissistic inadequates. They were criminals. They were fantasists. We need to be very clear about this. On the streets of London, there is no such thing as a 'war on terror', just as there can be no such thing as a 'war on drugs'.

This comes from the UK's director of public prosecutions, Sir Ken Macdonald, as quoted in The Guardian. Read the article; it's fascinating.

I wish our own government officials understood this distinction.

"So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. But to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its colour, in deference to some Headmaster with a silver pot in his hand or to some professor with a measuring-rod up his sleeve, is the most abject treachery."

Perhaps it is a bit much to apply this to personal web sites, but it works for me. [via Jonathan Carroll]

What's on your portable music device? Something from the Gay Bands list, perhaps?

Oddly enough, this list is a tool to help young people and their parents avoid music which might inspire them to walk on the wild side. I think it's serious, not parody, but in the 21st Century it can be so hard to tell.

Some choices are obvious (Elton John), some are just odd (Morton Subotnik), and some make me think his readers are messing with him (Motorhead). However, I question the motivation behind his use of an Oscar Wilde quote on the site, and describing old Oscar as a "reformed homosexual."

Twice during my morning drive the NPR announcer refered to "secretarian violence" in Iraq. It is a simple mistake, true, but I immediately imagined Maggie Gyllenhaal in a catfight with Miss Hathaway. Yes, I am a sick, sick man.

Heavy Metal: Yes, I saw then in the theater when it was first released. Since I had not been indulging in min-altering substances at the time, I can only guess that my fond memories of the film were based on my date (a lovely young woman), an appreciation for comics, and the animated naked women with large breasts (speaking of my date). Unfortunately, the movie doesn't hold up terribly well. The Superbit DVD edition looks grainy and the animation is choppy as hell, almost Scooby-Doo quality in places. Yes, I know it was made back in 1981, but I don't see those problems on other animated feature films from earlier years. The stories (and naked chicks) are still okay, though, and it's interesting to see how the visual styles of the comic artists who created the stories (Moebius, Richard Corben, Angus McKie, etc.) translated to the big screen. Still, the Harry Canyon sequence made me laugh, even after all these years.

Immortel (Ad Vitam): This odd little science-fiction film has been shown in the SciFi Channel, I hear, so you may have seen it. There's certainly little chance that you saw it in the theaters, where it apparently played for about fifteen minutes in 2004. A French-made English-language film directed by Luc Besson, it is loosely based on a trilogy of graphic novels by Belgian artist Enki Bilal. As mentioned in my entry about The Fifth Element, I admit to a certain fascination with French science-fiction's tropes: American cars, Egyptian gods, female assassins (and Nixon, although he doesn't appear in this film), so a DVD cover with a pyramid floating over some megalopolis and Bilal's name was enough for me. (The price being $6.99 didn't hurt any, either.) It isn't bad, although it's heavy on atmosphere and visuals and skimpy on plot. I admire the production's willingness to take a chance on mixing CGI and live action, and for the most part it works. Similar to Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, the film was shot entirely against blue screens, with all the sets and many of the characters added digitally. Again, for the most part it works, and the New York City of the future looks as dystopian as you'd expect. However, an unfortunate reliance on deus ex WFT? left me a bit cold. While this is clearly more a film of style rather than ideas, I had hoped for more.

It does bring up an interesting point, though, and one which has been the subject of some debate on-line. A woman in the film is raped by a man possessed by a god. Afterward the woman — who is not entirely human herself, having perhaps been created for the purpose of carrying a god's progeny — becomes somewhat nonchalant about the ordeal, and even falls in love with the man who's body was the conduit for the assault. So do the facts that the non-human woman doesn't care and that the possessed person doesn't get punished (though the god does) mean that the film is anti-woman and pro-rape? Immortel has been criticized by some viewers for just that, which makes little sense to me,mainly because the film just isn't that deep.

At the beginning of the month I said I was going to mention any media I consumed this year, and I have fallen a bit behind. This is in large part due to my unfortunate tendency to excessively analyze and over-explain my interests; the explanations are often needed, though, because so much of what I enjoy is out of the mainstream.

So this week I'm going to play a bit of catch-up. I have a list of DVDs I've watched recently, as well as a couple of books I've read and some CDs. Let's see where it takes me.

It was with no small amount of trepidation that I approached the first airport security checkpoint. Doubly confirmed by the airline or not, I didn't have a lot of faith that the TSA people would know what to do when faced with someone lacking a photo ID.

I handed the smartly-blazered young woman my boarding pass, Social Security card, and Voter Information Card. She took them and glanced at me with a puzzled expression. "Where's your photo ID?"

"I don't have it any longer. I called, Delta, though, and they told me that I could use these instead. Do you need to check with someone?"

She continued to look puzzled, then called over another screener. "He doesn't have a license." The new woman took the papers and cards, looked them over, and told the first woman "If he has his Social then it's okay." With that she waved me through.

After moving through the queue to the scanners and unpacking my laptop and whatnot for x-raying, the screener at the detector barely looked at my papers before sending me off to redress. And that was that. Two of my traveling companions got more grief for failure to comply with the 3-1-1 liquid rule than I did for not having a photo ID.

I have mixed feelings about this. I am certainly grateful that I wasn't forced to spend another week in NYC while waiting for a replacement driver's license to arrive. On the other hand, if exceptions can be made so easily, why bother with the policy at all? And sad as it is, I wonder if I would have received the same treatment if I was not a bald and middle-aged white guy, but a young, swarthy, and bearded guy wearing a turban?

If this works, above you should see a film of the snowfall this morning. Yeah, no big deal, really, but it made me surprisingly nostalgic for my midwestern youth.

I like cold weather, even when it's an abrupt change, like leaving Miami and flying to NYC for about 24 hours. The change feels great, really; something hard-wired into my biology is satisfied with the wind's reminder of seasonal change. Plus it was great seeing snow fall again, even if it was only through an office window.

What I do not like is going back inside. My perfectly lovely hotel has heat on in the rooms, understandably, but that heat sucks all the moisture from the air. Yes, it's true, the humidity is the worst thing about living in Miami; I can now tell you from experience that 0% humidity will also keep me up all night as thoroughly as a sweltering Miami August.

However, being awake all night has its advantages. Watching it start to snow, and build from a fine dusting to a brief but powerful snow shower, that's nice.

"I'm on the phone with Delta. They says if you've lost your driver's license you can still go through security but you need other ID."

"Okay, what kind of ID?"

"...(hang on, I'm on hold while they check)..."

"Oh, this isn't good. You need a Social Security card..."

"Got it."

"...and a Voter Registration card."

"Okay, got it."

"What, you have those with you?"

"Yes, I do."

"What kind of freak carries those around with them? All I have is a credit card and a license."

"The kind of freak who will be getting back on the plane tomorrow after all."

"Let's hope they're right."

I received spam this morning with the subject line "Freddy Kreuger Wears Rolex." Well, hell, if that isn't a noteworthy celebrity endorsement I don't know what is! That pansy-ass Jason probably wears a Swatch, too.

For the last few weeks I have occasionally seen skaters outside my parking garage at night. These guys seem to be having a pretty good time.

In the left center portion of the photo you can just make out the dark blur of one of the skaters jumping.

The surprise — although I suppose it shouldn't have been — is that they were also sneaking into the garage and riding down the six-story ramp. I couldn't get an action shot of that, probably because they knew I was still in the garage, and didn't want to get run down.

This photo leaves off the top level of the ramp because I was standing on it. The A/C unit is surrounded by a 10' iron fence topped with serious spikes.

It's a bit of a sad commentary, I guess, that at 8:00pm the downtown streets are dead enough to allow unimpeded skating, but I'm sure that will change, someday.

The Fifth Element is one of those genre films I never seemed to find time to watch, even though many friends told me I'd enjoy it. I finally got around to putting the disc in the player after watching another English-language French science fiction film, Immortal (Ad Vitem), about which more tomorrow. Somewhat to my surprise, it was quite enjoyable.

Mind you, this is not deep, though-provoking Russian futurist film-making. All you really need to know about Fifth Element's priorities is summed up in the opening credit: Costumes by Jean-Paul Gaultier. This is a film reveling in its own sense of style, without a thought in its head. Yes, it is perhaps a little too reminiscent of Blade Runner in places, but it uses a much brighter palette, as is appropriate for a light action-comedy.

Fortunately, it has a lot of style. Weird mid-90s style, to be sure, but it's hard to deny that it is visually inventive. Of course, the same charges are also leveled at French science fiction comics, from which this gets its ambiance and most of its motifs. What is the modern French fascination with extraterrestrial Egyptians; thin, athletic, naked female assassins; and American cars from the 1940s, anyway?

In the end it was two hours of flashy costumes, inventive visuals, cheesy plot, Bruce Willis and Gary Oldman chewing scenery, action-comedy soup, and Milla Jovovich naked. There are certainly worse ways to spend an evening.

I've always been fascinated with on-line image generators. This one allows you to make an old style card catalog card for whatever you want. [via Mustang Bobby]

Novelist and philosopher Robert Anton Wilson has left for the universe next door, this time for real. RAW was as bizarre and forceful a persona as Hunter S. Thompson, but directing his drive inward toward self-discovery, and then sharing what he learned with the world with his tongue planted firmly in cheek. He was also a researcher, a magician, a futurist, a comedian, and a holy fool. There's no doubt he was Illuminated, and the world's a more interesting place for his time in it.

For the curious, here is some on-line reading material (interviews and texts), and a nice little tribute from Mondo 2000 alumnus RU Sirius.

I flew to Atlanta today for a meeting. Man, I hate up-back in the same day out of town trips.

But I will admit that it was cool using my laptop and EvDo card in a moving car to pull up Google Maps and getting directions from the airport to the meeting place. (No, I wasn't driving.)

It was also cool that the weather was beautiful, clear, and in the low 50s. Perfect t-shirt weather, even if I had to wear a jacket and tie, instead.

James has asked that people post lists of five personal traits for which they unduly care about the opinions of others. As I have said before, I don't usually participate in this sort of "blog challenge" rigmarole, but in this case it took me long enough to sort of exactly what he was asking that I am already somewhat invested.

This is not a difficult challenge. As much as it pains me to admit it, I do care too much about the opinions of others. I just don't care as much in the traditional "Does this make my butt look big?" kind of way. My social insecurities are subtler than that, much to my dismay.

• "My co-workers think I am a slacker." When viewed logically, this is patently ridiculous. I put in a lot of hours at my job, I perform work-related tasks on my own time, and I never take a vacation where I am unavailable to my team. In spite of this, I always feel like I am not working hard enough.
• "People think I am ignorant and poorly educated." I'm a college drop-out, and even though I do the best I can, I spend a fair amount of time among those equipped with sheepskins. As a result I tend to feel as though people can tell I haven't had a formal education, and this bothers me.
• "My manners mark me as a bumpkin." I know without a doubt the source of this insecurity. My mother was always nervous about eating in "fancy restaurants" (anything further upscale than TGIFridays), because she thought she would use the wrong fork and be publicly mocked for it. Even today, when I am in a formal setting, I feel that same frisson of terror on looking at the place settings and seeing more than one fork.
• "I don't care enough, or I care about the wrong things." I tend to become too emotionally invested in people and causes, and do so too quickly. Predictably, when I encounter gross injustice I have a hard time letting go and accepting the "things we cannot change" from the platitude. When I do let go I often pull back so far I become remote and self-isolating. Yea, verily, I lack emotional discretion.
• "I am boring and pedantic and pretentious." Well, okay, they might be right about this one. I don't handle parties well, and I do frequently ramble on about things no-one else cares about, or even knows about. Some people say that's part of my charm; others reply "Charm? What charm?" And I use semi-colons on a blog, ferchrissakes. How pretentious is that?

How many of these can I change in 2007? None, I imagine, but I will continue to keep them in mind. That's the best I can manage.

A week or so ago I started to notice a fairly high volume of incoming traffic from an unfamiliar URL: http://www.placeblogger.com/placeblog/hidden-city. Being the curious sort I am I followed it back and was surprised to find it is a new kind of aggregator based on location. Somehow Hidden City ended up on the list, not that I mind.

In the Placeblogger FAQ, creator Lisa Williams defines it this way:

A placeblog is an act of sustained attention to a particular place over time
It can be done by one person, a defined group of people, or in a way that's open to community contribution
It's not a newspaper, though it may contain random acts of journalism
It's about the lived experience of a place

In other words, it sounds like something that was proposed for the South Florida area a while back: a directory of local sites.

So far it's interesting, although I found the navigation a bit confusing at first, and I still don't get the purpose of the selective yellow highlighting on quotes. The site seems to be new, though, and it's a good idea.

If you have a site, do a search and see if you are listed. If not, you might want to add yourself in (or add someone else in, for that matter). At the very least, you might find a neighbor you didn't know you had.

While shopping at Costco the other day I bought a copy of Thomas Pynchon's latest novel, Against the Day. It was a good price — a $35 book for $20 — but still, Costco? Laid out on a table next to an enormous stack of those Chicken Soup... books?

Time will tell if I am actually able to read it. After having thrown myself against Gravity's Rainbow close to twenty times and having still failed to get past the first couple of hundred pages, it may be a lost cause. However, if I get stuck I can always ask Max for some correspondence courses.

If you live in Florida and haven't read Carl Hiaasen's novels, you're doing yourself a disservice. His depictions of the madness that permeates life in our drained swamp is both darkly humorous and depressingly realistic.

Nature Girl is the most recent in the series beginning with 1986's Tourist Season. However, unlike the norm for mysteries, the only consistent continuing character from one novel to the next is the state itself.

Now that I think about it, Florida may be the strangest and funniest character ever seen in fiction.

Anyway, this isn't Hiaasen's best novel — I still prefer Stormy Weather, and have a soft spot for the aforementioned Tourist Season — but the tale of a philandering telemarketer, a bipolar mother, a blue-eyed Seminole in atonement, and the way their lives intersect is still a lot of fun.

(Want to read an excerpt? Here you go.)

As a follow-up to the previous post, another thing I found odd about the supposed case made by Margolis was her inability to actually tie this proposed change to a lessening of corruption in the county. Her arguments basically boiled down to this:

• Other big cities have strong mayors, so we should, too.
• Carlos Alvarez is a good guy, and we should trust him.
• The county commission is stupid and corrupt.
• Corruption is bad, mmkay?

There was never any explanation of how building a political machine will reduce corruption in the county. Oddly enough, the supporters of the strong mayor proposal among local bloggers seem much more interested in changing county structure to punish the commission than in actually effecting reform. MVB has a clever "Uncle Sam" poster encouraging us to "K.O. Corruption," but I've not seen any explanation of how concentrating power in one person will achieve this. Can anyone enlighten me?

Last evening I attended a debate between State Senator Gwen Margolis and Miami-Dade County Commissioner Sally Heyman on the subject of changing the county charter to create a "strong mayor." The event was held at the American Legion Hall, and was hosted by Nancy Leibman of the Urban Environment League.

I walked in the room with an open mind. I hadn't done any in-depth research on the subject, but hearing that the county commissioners were willing to spend a lot of money in attorneys' fees trying to keep the charter change off the ballot and out of the hands of the citizens was enough to turn me off a little. I was genuinely curious to hear an open debate on the topic, and to have the ramifications explained to my satisfaction. Unfortunately, the first indication that I wasn't going to get an open debate came when I saw they didn't have enough microphones for the moderator and both guests, and when the moderator made it clear she supports the pending proposal. This was not a professional debate in any way.

I'm happy to say that thanks to Senator Margolis's arguments in favor of the "strong mayor" proposal, I am now solidly against the idea. Her smug and condescending attitude toward the debate, her barely concealed contempt for the very idea of a county commission, her blasé remark that she didn't do anything about corruption during her time as a county commissioner because she "didn't want to embarrass Alex [Penelas]", and her cynicism toward local elections turned me off so much that had she been unopposed in the debate I would have likely gone the other way.

I expect bloggers to be cynical about elections, and about the role money plays in them. But to hear a sitting state senator say "to be a mayor here you just need $3,000,000" and "Anyone with $400,000 can be a county commissioner" was pretty staggering. Even more astounding is that somehow this is supposed to reinforce the idea that we should give unchecked power to anyone who can raise three million bucks.

By and large I am in favor of political gridlock. In an organization the size of the county government with a multi-billion dollar budget, giving one political animal that much power (including hire-and-fire over 30,000 county employees) is a huge risk, and one I'm not willing to take. All department head positions will be political appointments by the mayor, similar to presidential cabinet positions. If someone can come up with a better scenario to create a Boss Tweed/Old Daley political machine, I'd like to hear it.

Strong leader positions are great, provided you get a qualified and decent person. Unfortunately, we don't get to set up a system where we say "Okay, this guy is good, so we'll give him additional powers," and then in four years "This guy's a weasel, let's strip his powers." You make the change and to a great extent, you are stuck with it. It's like I tell my conservative friends who get all lathered up when I complain about Bush's signing statements and power grabs, saying that the president needs that power: imagine President Hillary Clinton, and tell me you want her to have those same powers.

Sure, maybe Alvarez isn't that bad (but having been at the FTAA demonstrations a few years back, I have my own doubts), but what if a complete numb-nuts got elected? After all, Gwen Margolis says it's all about money, and god knows there are plenty of rich idiots out there.

The current commission is a mess, and political maneuvering has allowed our long-standing Miami tradition of rampant development-based greed and corruption to reach new heights. However, handing the mayor new powers without significant oversight isn't going to fix the problem, it's just going to put us on the express train to hell. The solution is complex, but better enforcement of existing laws and regulations is the place to start.

On the other hand, the developers and lobbyists must love the prospect of a strong mayor. It will simplify their bookkeeping so much, with all the payoff checks being made out to the same name.

$500 later I have a new driver side rear vent window in my car. It's a damned shame that my insurance company bases their deductibles on a calendar year, but c'est la vie.

Many people have asked me when I'm moving out of my neighborhood. Besides the downward lifestyle move relocating would entail, I don't really know how much difference it would make. According to all the police with whom I've spoken, the simple fact is this: I live alone and work long hours, making me a choice target. Thieves don't even need to know if I have anything worthwhile in my home or car, since they know they have ample opportunity to look for themselves. Unless I either (a) get a roommate (not likely at this stage of my life and level of independence), or (b) move to a gated community (not likely due to my income level and general abhorrence of the concept), I will remain a prime target for burglaries and window-smashing.

Of course, I could always move to the outskirts of Nowhere, Montana, and live in a cabin miles from my nearest primate neighbor, but that doesn't suit me. It would only be a matter of time before I lost what little semblance of socialization I have and became a manifesto-writing, bomb-throwing anarchist, and I hate sequels too much for that.

See also this post. Same shit, different side of the car. Hell of a way to start the year, ain't it?

If appropriate and interesting, I take a lot of pictures at public events. Acting on the principle that digital photos are essentially free, I fire away until the battery runs dry, and then I pop in the spare. Consequently, I end up with a lot of pictures, most of them* crap.

In an attempt to do something vaguely useful with one batch of photos, I have reconstructed this year's King Mango Strut on Flickr. The Strut is a weird and wonderful quasi-parade held on the last Sunday of the year in Coconut Grove, with "floats" geared toward the absurd, satirical, and occasionally obscene. If you haven't gone, then here is your chance to find out what you have been missing without getting someone's beer spilled on you.

It is a big photo set: 121 pictures, most with captions. But if you've got the time (or are on salary), then start here. Please feel free to leave comments or ask for more explanation.

*"Most of them" for values up to 100%.

As part of my resolutionary¹ resolve in 2007 I am going to post something about any non-web media I consume during the year. All CDs, DVDs, books, comics, and possibly public presentations (concerts, films, plays, live sex shows, etc.) that pass through my sensory inputs will receive at least a passing mention. Few will get in-depth reviews, though; I'm not going to spend time doing that until I'm getting paid for it.

At one point I had a separate site for this sort of thing, and considered reviving it for this project. But hell, why should I make you few dedicated readers chase my barely coherent thoughts all around the informational aether²?

Neologisms: (1) pertaining to the execution of a New Year's resolution (dedicated to James Burnett); (2) the Internet and related hypertextual systems, derived from luminiferous aether.

Against all logic (and in spite of the best efforts of Miami's maniac pre-dawn drivers) I managed to get out of bed and to the beach in time to watch the sunrise. Once again the effort has paid off in renewed energy; sadly, it isn't renewed enough to overcome my dragged out of bed at 5:00am fatigue.

Three compatriots also met up with me, but I will let them remain anonymous unless they want to reveal themselves in the comments. After taking some pictures and chatting for a while, we retired to the soon-to-be demolished Rascal House for huge plates of food and lively conversation. Happily, the corned beef hash was every bit as good as I remembered. Given that they are going to shut down, I wonder if they'd be willing to part with the recipe?

All in all, a good start to 2007. May you all have new years filled with health, contentment, and marvels.