Jamie (Internet remix)

hrrrthrrr: Hotel Yorba | The White Stripes London’s Uncut...

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:36:24 -0600

Hotel Yorba | The White Stripes

London’s Uncut Magazine recently named Jack White man of the decade and White Blood Cells the decade’s best record. I know I certainly don’t tire of him or this album. Love this song!

I cannot help but sing along when it gets to the part: “Let’s get married in a big cathedral by a priest/cause if I’m the man you love the most, you could say ‘I do’ at least.”

What did I do today? Oh, just labeled and ordered more than 600...

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:31:28 -0600

What did I do today?

Oh, just labeled and ordered more than 600 letters. You?

Real calculators modeled after desktop calculators

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:34:57 -0600

Real calculators modeled after desktop calculators

It’s called a Milwaukee Brace

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:39:49 -0600

(another Tl;Dr Tuesday)

It was June of 1993 when I had my first appointment with Dr. Liss, the spine doctor. The week before that, I taught kindergarten at Vacation Bible School. My mother was there, too, teaching second grade, just like she taught at CCD. One day, as I was standing in front on the table with the kids, my mother sent another high school student over to my table. “Your mother says to stand up straight, so you don’t cost her a thousand dollars for a brace,” she whispered in my ear.

My mother had been talking to my uncle. We don’t have any medical doctors in the family, so he was the resident expert, being, as he was, head cardiac nurse at Presbyterian Hospital. He told her spine braces were expensive. I would need a Milwaukee brace. My uncle looked it up for us.

He gave us a medical encyclopedia entry with a picture of a little girl in a brace. It was plastic and covered her from her hips to her sternum. Along the front, a piece of metal about 2 inches wide came up to her chin and split off over either shoulder. A back view showed the bars coming back down on either side of her spine, with straps holding the plastic part of the brace together. Her mother hadn’t done a good job of doing her hair on the day of the photo. Her pigtails were different lengths and her part was off-center. On the top of the photocopied page, my uncle had written a little note: “Caution: Apparently the brace will make your pigtails crooked.”

I pictured me, at school, in an all-male Catholic high school that required all the boys to wear ties as the only kid without one on. It didn’t please me. Not remotely. I was 14, chubby, wore glasses, was painfully shy. The last thing I wanted to do was to stand out. And as far as I could tell, the slouching set me apart a little bit, but the brace would broadcast my location to everyone. At a small private high school like mine fitting in was actually a rule.

The handbook dictated acceptable haircuts – hair should be no longer than the top of the shirt collar – acceptable facial hair – sideburns no longer than the earlobe, neatly trimmed mustaches, no goatees or beards – and dress code – every students will wear a dress shirt, slacks and a tie at all times during the school day.

I’d always slouched, as long as anyone could remember. My grandfather had chalked it up to my being a teenager. My father had slouched, he informed me, until he started poking my father in the back every time he walked by. So he tried that with me too. It didn’t work, but at least it drew attention to my back.

My mother worried about it starting when I was in the eighth grade. She took me to our pediatrician, who told her I was just being lazy. My twin brother didn’t slouch, so there couldn’t be a medical reason. And it was left at that. I was a lazy teenager, and I slouched for some reason – obviously not medical, though.

So it went on like that for a year or two, into high school. And I didn’t get any better. So during my freshman year, my mother took me to a different doctor, who didn’t like the fact I’d been slouching for so long and couldn’t stand up straight. He made me put my arms out in front of me and bend at the waist. As he looked down my spine, he made a clucking noise.

We made an appointment with Liss. He took a few x-rays, examined them for less than a minute. “Scheuermann’s Kyphosis,” he announced. My spine didn’t grow normally. It caused me to slouch – a small victory! I wasn’t just a lazy teenager! I had a legitimate medical reason not to stand up straight.

In September, the brace arrived. It was beige plastic, with bars the same as the picture, and in the back, straps held it tight. At the back of the neck, a thumbscrew secured the top part in place, and the bars came up to my shoulders when I was standing and nearly to my chin when I sat down. It was lined with a thin layer of soft foam rubber.

I couldn’t button the collar of the dress shirt I put on over top of the brace. My father and I went to the assistant principal of the school and explained it to him, I was even wearing the brace at the time, so he could see what it was like. He’d never before excused a student from the dress code, but in my case, what choice did he have? I got a note that said I didn’t have to wear a tie.

On the first day I wore the brace to school, I sat next to Brian Senger. We were in the same track, knew each other, but weren’t close, except in a we-would-share-a-bus-bench-seat-when-it was-crowded kind of way. He looked over at me. “Forget your tie today?” he asked. “No,” I mumbled. “I’mwearingthisbracesoIcan’twearatie,” He mercifully dropped it.

For the better part of the next year, I had to explain to teachers why I wasn’t wearing a tie. Reaction depended on who you asked. Mostly I got questions. They ranged from the simple – “what’s that?” – to the impertinent – “how much did that thing cost?” – to the vaguely threatening – “what would you do if I broke that?” The answer to the last would have been dance, but I never answered it.

I lived to be out of what I saw as a mobile prison. When I took a shower, it came off, usually for an hour, but sometimes I could slip into bed without having it put back on. But that was inevitably followed by a morning of chastising from my father, who had to get to work, and guilt from my mother, who sympathized with me not wanting to wear it, but would hear none of my not actually wearing it.

When I slept, I had two options: on my back or on my front. The rounded sides wouldn’t let me perch on them, and my neck would get caught on the bars. In the winter, I froze as cold metal rubbed my neck, and in the summer I sweltered as my body heat was trapped by the rubber insulation. A line formed where the brace sat on my hips and across my chest where the plastic ended. Reaction softened over time, as teachers remembered why I didn’t wear a tie, and students got used to it.

My reaction never changed, though I did get used to it. Any moment where I could be out of it, I would be. Friends delighted in telling girls that I was the man of steel, then demonstrating by punching my stomach as hard as they could. One kid, John Angeles, broke a knuckle pulling that stunt. It didn’t hurt me at all, I always explained, feeling guilty for taking credit for what the brace did. It was, depending on who you asked, my exo-skeleton, the source of my super-powers or simply that metal thing. I learned to laugh about it, I really had no choice.

Unless I brought it up, it went unmentioned. Then before my senior year began, I stopped wearing it. I convinced my parents that my back was better – it really was, I could actually stand up straight – and that was enough. So I returned to normality, with only a few yearbook photos to remind me of the brace. But we kept it. It’s still sitting in a garbage bag in my parents’ attic.

Research: news execs don’t know what their users want | Online...

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:24:45 -0600

Research: news execs don’t know what their users want | Online Journalism Blog

File this one under: Totally unsurprising yet absolutely maddening.

Younger readers have turned away from the printed newspaper almost entirely. Do some of them still like it? Absolutely. But that isn’t enough to replace the newspaper fans who’ve died off.

And what’s more: print is in no way the superior solution. It’s slow, expensive and hard to distribute.

The fascinating fact to me is that newspaper executives have yet to figure out that it isn’t an official media site that will replace them, but a community-based site dedicated to covering only some of the things the paper always did.

Evolution of the mobile phone.

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 07:59:59 -0600

Evolution of the mobile phone.

Human-shaped root

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:13:24 -0600

Human-shaped root

delgrosso: yowhatsthehaps: In November, little old men stand...

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 20:12:51 -0600

delgrosso:

yowhatsthehaps:

In November, little old men stand outside in the freezing cold and sell these poppy pins. They wear their military uniforms, which are always just a little too big because people shrink when they get older. I am always amazed that they are willing to do this, considering that they’ve already done their part. What with going to war and all.

I could probably learn a lot from these old men.

We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

I see my old comrades, how proudly they march
Reliving their dreams of past glories
I see the old men all tired, stiff and worn
Those weary old heroes of a forgotten war
And the young people ask “What are they marching for?”
And I ask myself the same question

reflection (via jamietie) Taken in 2006 in Louisville, Kentucky....

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 19:42:12 -0600

reflection (via jamietie)

Taken in 2006 in Louisville, Kentucky. One of my favorite pictures I’ve ever taken.

Skellig Michael (via jamietie) One of the two of my photos I...

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 19:41:14 -0600

Skellig Michael (via jamietie)

One of the two of my photos I printed. I may well have posted this here before.

Finally printed some pictures/ hung some things. Two of my own,...

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 18:51:22 -0600

Finally printed some pictures/ hung some things. Two of my own, two from the Library of Congress. The two of mine are in my Flickr portfolio set and the LoC ones are from Pennsylvania (where I’m from) and Iowa (where Emily is from)

When my sister called me and the first words out of her mouth were “Mom wanted me to tell you...

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 13:06:08 -0600

When my sister called me and the first words out of her mouth were “Mom wanted me to tell you she’s OK,” I wasn’t sure what to say. I knew she’d been sick, but as far as I knew, she was OK. But apparently yesterday, her doctor was worried she had shingles on her eye, which was causing double vision. She doesn’t. The doctor at the hospital told her she’d probably had swine flu, and that the virus had affected one of the nerves in her eye. So she will be fine. They didn’t call because they didn’t want to worry me. But I always worry.

Remind me why I do laundry here again

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 13:00:03 -0600

“Hey, man.” He’s on the payphone a few feet from me, but I don’t know if he’s talking to me. “Hey, man, I just got outta jail; can I get a cigarette?” I reach in my pocket, pull one out and hand it to him. He shuffles the papers in his hand. “All I’ve got on me is my license.” I hand him my lighter, finish my cigarette and head back in to wait for my laundry to dry.

gorillasushi: Speaking of fine wines… I wish I still lived in...

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 22:19:26 -0600

gorillasushi:

Speaking of fine wines…

I wish I still lived in one of “those” neighborhoods. I’d gather up some spare change, get a bottle of Mad Dog and have one of “those” nights.

I have had many of “those” nights, mostly with MD Kiwi Strawberry.

So if you ever thought about following Tumblr via RSS…

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:29:14 -0600

funsizebytes:

Every Tumblr has an RSS feed.

Just throw /rss at the end. For example: http://funsizebytes.com/ becomes http://funsizebytes.com/rss

You could then import them all into Google Reader.

Why?

Biggest Advantage IMO: You could read them oldest to newest rather than newest first.

Because then you could know how many posts you’d missed, you could sort them by person or by date.

You could do that.

But don’t.

Why?

Because Google reader and Tumblr don’t get along well, or didn’t for me… I ended up re-reading a bunch of the same posts (not reblogs) so it actually took longer to read, and was more frustrating (obviously hearts and reblogs were harder too).

FWIW.

See, I’ve had the opposite experience. Re-blogs are harder to follow, thanks to the vagaries of RSS delivery time, but I can’t keep up with the dashboard, so I have everyone come over as RSS

inthefade: The Cure - Friday I’m in Love TGIF, indeed. I...

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:08:22 -0600

inthefade:

The Cure - Friday I’m in Love

TGIF, indeed. I thought this week would never end.

delgrosso: Nothing like a little Tumblr fan mail to raise your...

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 07:56:49 -0600

delgrosso:

Nothing like a little Tumblr fan mail to raise your spirits at the end of the day.

I’m don’t get such fan mail here, but I really wonder what drives people to keep looking at things that make them mad.

This is what I’ve been working on for two months, put into...

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:02:00 -0600

This is what I’ve been working on for two months, put into folders and ready to be filed. The election, after all, is over, so it’s time to move on.

Dig a hole, fill it up.

don't worry, little candy corns

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:39:28 -0600

ljm:

i still love you even though it’s november

I went the entire month of October without candy corn or mellowcreme pumpkins. That makes me sad.

rrrrred: Dark Roasted Blend: Weird Stuff McDonalds Sells Around...

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:42:11 -0600

rrrrred:

Dark Roasted Blend: Weird Stuff McDonalds Sells Around The World

(not pictured: Lobster Thermidor a Crevette with a mornay sauce served in a Provencale manner with shallots and aubergines garnished with truffle pate, brandy and with a fried egg on top and spam)