Something snapped when I saw that bird picture. It looks like my Dad had a similar experience. I bet you did too. The series of heartbreaking photos capturing a generation of pelicans whose deaths are just the opening salvo in a slaughter of untold proportions unfolding on the Gulf Coast.

It’s of little significance when compared to the American slaughter of Afghans and Iraqis, but it’s still something. It’s something to consider that if the oil keeps gushing till August or December, as they’re saying now, that maybe every single beach in the world will somehow be impacted by the endless stream of our greed for petroleum. This isn’t something esoteric about the future, ten, twenty years. Not even as debatable as global warming or the extinction of species. It’s the end of beaches, coastlines, oceans. For as long as the potential for something like this exists, unchecked, it has every reason to happen repeatedly in the future, until we’ve nothing left to show our children but the few sickly animals we’ve salvaged for zoos, or perhaps the handful of species considered lucky enough to save for ritual slaughter and consumption.

It’s to this end that I’ve made manifest the first thing that struck me when I saw the outstretch-winged pelican, how closely it resembled the flag of its home state. And so I am presenting five new designs of Blue Pyramid Merchandise, not as opportunism so much as an outlet for outrage. I feel better knowing that I’ve been able to convey what I feel in something simple, and that someone else might take small solace in the power of this harnessed anger.

For as has been clear from Duck and Cover lately, clear from anyone thinking carefully about this issue, it’s not about BP. It’s not about the particular company or group of individuals who made this one incident happen. It’s about a system, a way of life, an approach to the Earth and its contents that is innately unsustainable and always has been. The sooner we realize that all drilling is wrong, that all oil companies are doing ill, the sooner we can stop the nonsense of trying to ream one scapegoat while we sow the seeds of tomorrow’s disaster.

Congratulations go to Adam “Zimmy” Zimmerman, the grand prize winner of this year’s first-ever Blue Pyramid University Quiz March Madness Challenge. Zimmy wins an Amazon gift certificate and the adulation of hoops bracketeers everywhere.

Zim-Zim the Mayonnaise Man

News of a new set of brackets, namely that involving APDA’s 2010 National Championship if it were a 64-team single-elimination tournament, is forthcoming sometime early tomorrow.

Despite my concerns with Facebook’s impact on blogging, the time has come for me to recognize that the train is leaving the station and I might as well get on board…

Click the above to become a fan of this site which, if you’re here, you already enjoy!

This is certainly no reason to join Facebook if you haven’t already, but it will make your enjoyment of the BP a little more streamlined if Facebook is a big part of your life in the status quo. I will be updating every time there’s new content (why did I sign up to do this again?) here, including D&C strips, blog posts, quizzes, updates, and so forth.

Plus, this is clearly the gateway to the long-awaited Blue Pyramid Facebook quizzes, which have been in the works for a long time, but might actually come to fruition once the BP has a fanbase to launch from on Facebook.

If the entire Internet is going to take place on Facebook in the future, the BP might as well be part of the picture. So click away! See you on the ‘book…

Just updated the Book List for the first time since September 2008, including a raft of new submitters and their submissions. The total stats are up to 1,159 books by 795 authors as submitted by 89 individuals with their 25 favorite books each.

For the unfamiliar, this is an aggregate effort to rank the best books of all-time as viewed by my friends and other visitors to the Blue Pyramid. This remains one of the most popular elements of the BP and generating this much interest about books surely is unlikely to hurt an aspiring author.

This update, I decided to tack on a little extra, so I ran some numbers about the Top Authors on the Book List as well, done up with some snazzy but small pics. No matter how you slice and dice the stats, it’s hard to underestimate the overwhelming impact Harper Lee had with one 300-page volume. With 494 total points, not only is she the sole and dominant place-holder of the top book of all-time, but her single tome puts her 5th in aggregate points for all authors. Only Tolkien, Shakespeare, Orwell, and Garcia Marquez could beat her, needing an average of 6.25 books each to do so.

The late great J.D. Salinger is well represented as well, checking in as 10th author of all-time on the whole and 4th in quality-per-book for those with more than one volume on the List. Surely this is helped by the fact that not one of the 89 submitters includes Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters and Seymour, an Introduction among their 25 best.

A late list I considered adding but didn’t, mostly for fear of making this project too onerous to update (I do it less than once a year as-is), is a list of top books that none of the 89 submitters consider their all-time favorite. What’s remarkable is how many of the very highest regarded books still escape the #1 slot for anyone. Most impressive among these is 1984, which is 2nd place all-time despite receiving zero first place votes. I wonder what it says that these books are so widely regarded, but no one would take them as their only choice to a desert island…

1. 1984, George Orwell, 2nd overall
2. Catch-22, Joseph Heller, 9th overall
3. The Return of the King, J.R.R. Tolkien, 10th overall
4. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain, 14th overall
5. Night, Elie Wiesel, 17th overall
6. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte, 20th overall
7. Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut, 21st overall
8. Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky, 22nd overall
9. The Two Towers, J.R.R. Tolkien, 23rd (tied) overall
10. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen, 25th (tied) overall

Of course, on the flip side, no fewer than 21 of the 89 first-place-vote-getters (a full 24%) are unique books, appearing on none of the other 88 lists. So there’s probably something about the process of picking a favorite that’s more likely to make it unique than the average book.

Back when I had a really popular website, I used to get e-mails almost constantly, e-mails that criticized or questioned certain decisions I would make in my quizzes. The epicenter of this feedback crystallized into three key critiques which I summarized as the top three Frequently Asked Quiztions.

But today I got a new one – totally unprecedented. Something that almost reminds me of my meeting-people gimmick of challenging them to come up with an original play on my name as they’re digesting its similarity to a word they use daily. It is presumably from someone in China… while the e-mail address is inconclusive, the hold on English and the sentiments expressed are not:

date Sat, Jan 30, 2010 at 10:21 AM
subject what’s problem with your quiz?

To whom it may concern,

Today I took a “what country are you” quiz on your web and it says I’m the country Taiwan… Huh?? when did Taiwan become a C-O-U-N-T-R-Y???!!!! WTF with your web????

Taiwan has always been a part of territory of China!!

Taiwan is only a province of China!!!

Don’t ever forget this!!!

SHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAME ON YOU :-(

If only they’d used a couple more exclamation points, I might really never forget this. Although I highly doubt they expected me to record the verbatim transcript of their e-mail. Here’s your shot at immortality, friend.

The Internet is so liberating.

Speaking of the Internet, the big meme going around Facebook is to find your “celebrity doppelganger” and make said person your profile picture. I am hardly so cavalier about said picture, but I was reading the best article about David Foster Wallace since his death the other night, so I figure he might have to do:

Of course, that may just be the most authentic celebrity who looks like me, or the person I’d most like to be compared to. After all, we all know that reality shows have produced the people who really look the most like me:

No matter how much long brown hair they grow, though, none of these people ever seem quite as thin as I am. Ah well.

Don’t freak out if you’re getting scary-looking red screens from portions of the Blue Pyramid, especially the front page or the currently archived Women World Leaders Quiz. The site was hacked. It was actually hacked via PHP scripts that were hacked on the Camp Kupugani website (hence why the WWLQ is the epicenter of the problem and has accordingly been archived). Everything should be fine now and even look fine to everyone (i.e. no red screens) soon.

In the meantime, hi, how are you?

We made it to the Bay Area on Friday night for a whirlwind meet-up at Mario’s La Fiesta in Berkeley with a bunch of old friends and co-workers. Then we drove over to Tracy that night, down to Fresno Saturday morning, and have been holed up with the Garin Clan ever since, mostly still unassembled until later this week. I’ve been editing about as much as I can stomach, finally over the halfway point for chapters (51%), but still with about 60% of the pages to go. The later chapters are (apparently much) longer, although there’s one exceptional chapter that helps throw that off, and hopefully won’t require much editing.

New Year’s Day distribution to volunteer readers is looking less likely, but is still sort of the optimistic goal. I’ll keep you (probably excessively) posted.

The only other real news to report from this relaxing tenure with my manuscript and Em’s fam is how heartbroken I was to miss the foot-plus snow in Princeton that came the day after we flew away. The odds are overwhelming that it will be the largest winter storm in Jersey during our two years living there, and while getting snowed in and having to delay this trip would have been less than ideal, editing by the heater between frolics in foot-deep snow is just about my idea of the best living ever. I still can’t think about the storm without getting this gut-turning sadness. As I told Emily, I just don’t think I’ll ever really be happy until I live somewhere like Minnesota or Nevada City or Buffalo or Siberia for at least a year or two, where snow is so commonplace and expected that I don’t have to cling to every prediction and forecast, but can instead have confidence that it will abound. Suffice it to say that had I been born in such an environment, I think I would be a lifelong optimist. Snow makes me that happy.

I hope you’re as happy these holidays as I am in snow. Once I’ve sent out PDF’s of my fully edited tome, I will be too.

The Book Quiz II is finally here!

Here’s my result:

You’re Jane Eyre!
by Charlotte Bronte
Epic in scope and vision, you like looking at your own complete history. That said, your complete history is pretty much crazy. You seem to be followed by suitors, craziness, fires, and incredible turns of both good and bad fortune. Through it all, you persevere while maintaining adherence to your own somewhat middle-ground moral code. While you have confidence that everything will work out in the end, you sometimes wonder if it’s worth it along the way. Oh sweet sweet Jane.
Take the Book Quiz II at the Blue Pyramid.

Go take it now! Tell your friends!

After working on it on and off for a few weeks, I’m proud to announce the full-scale relaunch of the State Quiz, replete with new images and merchandise.

I guess it’s not technically a relaunch if the quiz was never down, but it’s a good opportunity to, as they say, “take it again for the first time.” The images represent the fulfillment of the original vision I had for them over five years ago when the quiz launched, which was to be state-shaped cutouts of the state flag, rather than outlines that featured the flag in awkward partial locations.

An example, with my current state (one of the better images, if I do say so), is here:


You’re New Jersey!
You don’t just live in the suburbs, you define the culture of all Surburbia. You drive everywhere you go, love to eat at diners, and pretend to have a garden. While everyone knows that your house was built on a toxic waste dump, you do your best to hide this information and keep referring to those mythical gardens. Driving on a road without paying for it was a revolutionary experience you once had that you still think about all the time. You owe the Mafia so many favors that you’re thinking of renaming yourself Sicily.

Take the State Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

I’ve also added the full complement of merchandise available on the now-prodigious Cafe Press site, just in time for the holidays. So if there was ever an old design or description you were looking for on a shirt or a mug, now’s your chance.

And while you’re out and about looking at links and holiday cheer, there are some of you who might not know about my Mom’s latest sock doll project, Buttons and Socks. There’s some pretty neat stuff available there too, all hand-sewn by my very own mother. I mean, can you turn down a face like this?:

I thought not.

Now if I can only get the pumpkins down from this page and start writing again, I’ll really be in good shape!

DOS and Windows 3.1 were great operating systems. DOS was possibly the best, since everything was intuitive and everything was in its place, but if you really require a visual setup, then I guess Windows 3.1 was the answer. It was organized and manageable without being cartoony or impossible to follow.

Windows XP… it’s fine. But it’s got nothing on those older systems and is demonstrably worse in all ways not relating to processor speed or some underlying aspect of the hardware running it (which, frankly, has nothing to do with operating system). But you can’t run Windows 3.1 or DOS on a modern machine and expect it to run today’s software. Because instead of making sure Windows 3.1 was compatible with web browsing, they just replaced it with lousier versions of the system, so-called “upgrades”, culminating in the colossal disaster known as Vista.

I have often railed against CD’s, which are infinitely inferior to tapes. While CD’s are pretty much falling by the wayside in the face of pocket-sized infinite MP3 players, I maintain that the loss of sides of an album is one of the great failings of our modern musical world. It’s hard to argue with the infinite-players, I guess, but it certainly seems like a mix loses even more luster than it did when it became sideless by being marginalized to a “playlist”. It just doesn’t reflect the same craftsmanship.

Microsoft Works was always better than Microsoft Word – the view of the screen made infinitely more sense and a work one was writing could actually fill the whole screen. The toolbar was more intuitive. And I could go on and on. (Don’t even get me started on cell phones vs. landlines and the collapse of the telephone conversation – that’s a whole dissertation topic in itself and of course something with which I do not play ball.) The larger point is that in feeling a need to “upgrade” things, people most often screw them up. Whether they are too beholden to overpaid consultants or just feel like something isn’t fresh enough unless they keep tweaking it, they just futz with things until the charm that made them enjoyable in the first place is wholly eradicated.

If you’re wondering what all this is really about, I “upgraded” my WordPress account today. While the needling little exhortation to upgrade had been gracing my screen from about the third week after my initial installation (October 2007, as you may recall – hard to believe it’s only been two years in this format), I had found nothing compelling about the request until I read a nasty little article about worms today. WP basically tried to make the case that my blog would be overrun with malware and garbage if I failed to upgrade, then drew all these weird analogies to vitamins and surgery. It being almost 3 in the morning and me not having yet settled into my writing groove (I have a streak of over a week going, but tonight may break it), I was particularly susceptible to the idea of not having to mortgage days of my writing life salvaging 800 days worth of posts. I gave in.

I was an idiot. I should have known how much I would hate the new WP “upgrade” system, because I’ve already seen it at The Mep Report, the other place I blog from time to time. The look and feel of the interface is all wrong, too antiseptic, too institutional. It’s like blogging on a hospital wall. And now it’s what I’m doing. Right now. Blech.

I mean, it’s not like the old WP system was the greatest thing ever, but it at least had some color and contrast and an intuitive layout. This looks like an unending billboard for the random people who design add-ons to WordPress. In a hospital. A poorly designed hospital.

And there’s a running word count. Not a fan. I make a point of only checking my word counts on fiction after I’ve wrapped up for the night. The running count is like being forced to look at one’s watch every second of a passing class. It’s just too much awareness of exactly what’s going on. It breeds self-consciousness and competitiveness and even potentially bad writing because one is focused on the number and not the content. Yargh.

I’m sure I’ll get used to it eventually, all of it, even the stupid word counter. But it’s a bad sign when all I want to do with the rest of my waking overnight hours is figure out how to find a theme editor for the freaking blog-posting format of the blog. That’s not only a bad sign, it’s a meta-bad-sign. In a poorly designed hospital with billboards.

It’s almost enough to make me want to go back to manually editing my blog in Notepad. Almost.

In October 2002, back in the relatively early days of Introspection, I first came up with the idea of altering the whole theme of the blog site to celebrate Halloween. In 2004, after two years of just changing the color scheme, I actually overhauled the graphic header as well. The rest has been history. As you can see (if you can’t see, hit refresh!), it’s another October season today.

The rains have been sweeping through, often hightailing it on the back of even stronger winds. Today is the first really chilly seeming day and I can already envision the crispness of my breath emerging as the barracks become even more depressing and the walls seem even thinner. Already I’m starting to wonder when we should start moving stuff away from the heater so we can be prepared.

And yet there’s the anticipation of October that seems even more exciting on the East Coast, what with the promise of leaves changing and falling and eventual snow. This is what I’ve missed so dearly, the real seasonal change that is present in most of the world but sorely lacking in the Bay Area. A change in the surroundings that matches the internal perceptual change of the time. People do better with external confirmations of their internal understanding.

Which, I guess, is why I revel in the visualization present on the page. So there you go.

When I lived in Oregon and wasn’t attending sixth grade, somewhere between my acting life and my speech and debate life, I opened a play directed by a friend of my parents with a recitation of “Sea-Fever” by John Masefield.

The poem is brief (briefer than I remember), but conveys powerful imagery of the pull of the ocean and its eternal hold on those who sail upon it. I was adorned in a cap not unlike what I’d worn as Oliver Twist (but newer and nicer) and some sort of scarf that the director had determined sufficiently aquatic. Despite these elements of costuming and the placement of a stage beneath my feet, I think this may have been the birth of my understanding of the power of spoken words. Not the magic of theater, in full regalia, which I’d long known and loved, but the actual power and presence of mere strings of syntax, dramatically spoken.

Of course, there was my third grade talent show rendition of the Gettysburg Address, which I remembered made a couple teachers cry. But I’d been disappointed with my performance there, forgetting some words and feeling immense pressure. I had not felt the command over that performance that I did in the practiced rhythms of Masefield’s cadence.

It is somehow fitting to remember that preface on a night back from introducing members of the Rutgers class of 2013 to the basic tenets of parliamentary debate. Just as every word written makes for better writing next time, so every word spoken has led me to this point in my life. And perhaps I can forgive myself for sacrificing tonight’s writing efforts (unless I can start after completing this post) to the twin duties of education and navigation.

This last is the true inspiration for tonight’s title, for a navigation bar has been introduced to The Blue Pyramid for the first time ever. Over the course of the next few weeks, the navigation system will filter out through the rest of the website. The focal points of this bar also come with an acknowledgment that several projects have been archived, most permanently lost at sea.

I would like to say that this move will usher in a new era of updated content at the site, with quizzes and new projects abounding as long planned. I have learned enough over my millions of spoken words, of course, to know that such promises are of no worth. Either I shall make good, which will speak for itself, or I shan’t, which will undermine the promises’ purpose.

So I present what is done and will call it a night. Perhaps to write briefly before sailing for sunrise.

And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover
and quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.

This is the old straight-up appeal to the masses – if you’re involved in the Digg thing (or can easily sign up), please help us get our new AIG March Madness commercial (Youtube, previously posted about):

Digg It!

Also, the final new (spoof) video we created finally uploaded properly:

Tell your friends!

Russ and I have spent the better part of the last 24 hours at it again. We unearthed secret archived videos from the good old days of AIG and are sharing them with the world. Better yet, we are spoofing some of our favorites directly. For example:

Before:

After:

Here’s another spoof we didn’t include the new one of:

And a whole bunch of old ones:

Enjoy.

Can’t get enough of my opinion? Ha ha!

If so, head on over to The Mep Report, for new quick-hitting posts like this one, which I almost cross-posted here.

It’s mostly going to be stuff like obvious news stories and general making fun (basically, the same stuff that I used to say on TMR, now in text format).

Cross-posting (except for big announcements or really important stuff) sort of undermines the idea of writing in two places. By posting different content, you need to follow two blogs just to make sure you aren’t missing anything. And that’s how they getchya. And by “they”, I mean “I”.

Hey kids!

Lest you somehow think that I have completely wasted this weekend, I am conflictedly proud to announce the availability of Duck and Cover merchandise!

Here’s an example of the kind of unparalleled quality and homespun handwritten charm you can expect from said products:

Or, if you prefer more overt puns:

This is the completion of a long-ago resolved (but undone) task of mine, at the request of a couple of regular D&C readers who aren’t even personally known to me. Also, it’s fun. Also, it’s just in time for the holidays and remarkably BP Merch sales haven’t slacked year-over-year from last year. Good thing it’s not available in malls.

Also, your money won’t be worth anything this time next year, so would you rather have money or your favorite political cartoon characters on a shirt? I mean, really.

You’re Adam Schiff,
representing California’s 29th district.
“In two important respects, the bill still has serious flaws: The taxpayer protections need to be much stronger, and the root of the problem – declining home values and a raft of foreclosures – has yet to be meaningfully addressed. The Senate also tacked on a host of unrelated measures to attract support.”
Despite this, you voted for the bailout because of the importance of protecting those with quarter-million-dollar savings accounts.

Take the Bailout Betrayal Quiz
and Hold ‘Em Accountable.

This Blue Pyramid has not been sold.

“Established in 2006, Blue Pyramid brings to ABS three core competencies within IT support…” Hm. I wonder where they got the idea for the name “Blue Pyramid”. Or that it would somehow be associated with quality web output. Serves me right for not tying up the .com and .net extensions when I registered bluepyramid.org in July 2001.

Sure, they could’ve come up with it on their own. After all, the Gone Jackals might raise their eyebrows in my direction after their 1998 album by the same name. And of course, it’s not my name anyway. As I freely admit, I stole this concept from Ray Bradbury, who had dibs on it in 1948.

At least Google knows what’s up.

It calls into question a lot of things. Can you own a concept? Where does copyright end and fair use begin? What is the nature of intellectual property? I had a few discussions of this with people this weekend – it seems to be a burgeoning realm of law that does some good in some areas and “keeps the price of AIDS drugs high” in others. My friend Russ recently fought the law and the Russ won, reinstating a video tribute to Major League Baseball after MLB asked him to stop promoting their products. Then, of course, they gobbled up his promotion as soon as he convinced them to reinstate it. People, even (especially?) managers, often have no idea what they’re doing or what’s in their best interests. Too often, like my recent former boss’ boss, they just want to keep their head down, not get in trouble, and not have to think too closely about anything (see also today’s D&C).

It could be argued that I haven’t done much for the BP’s best interests lately, either, given the static nature of the front page, much of the content, and so on. I wouldn’t protest at this point, except to whisper Civilization-like promises of a future rebirth. Like my workplace and my self-perception itself, there’s plenty of limitless potential hot and bubbling underneath the cooled, flaky crust of day-to-day operations. When the volcanoes start popping and the earth starts moving, things are going to get good. Or at least exciting.

In the meantime, we’re plowing toward an October that has made up its mind. I argued that the October season this year really started at the top of last week, but it’ll be firmly entrenched by the end of this one. Still fighting off a coldish thing that I acquired just before traveling to Nuevo and I am desperately trying to keep out of my ears and sinuses. So far, I’m towing the line.

Good luck on same today.

You’re Madeline Albright!
While you have a way with words, it’s hardly always pleasant for those around you to hear them. Even though you see it as your duty to be diplomatic, this rarely means that you use kid gloves. This iron-fisted approach has given you great influence over those around you, while also making a few enemies along the way. The name you use is much sunnier than your reputation, and hasn’t been your real name for years. Check, please!

Take the Women World Leaders Quiz at Camp Kupugani Multicultural Summer Camp for Girls.

I’ve spent far too much of my weekend trying to develop an application for the much-ballyhooed Facebook. We’re nearing a year since users could create Facebook apps and over five years since the original Country Quiz came out, so I figured: why not combine the two? After all, Facebook only has eleventy-billion members, so there may even be one or two who haven’t taken the Country Quiz already.

The problem is that I’ve never really learned PHP or MySQL. And rapidly, these are leaving HTML in the dust. You say increased functionality, I say decreased usability to require people to pay $100/hour for tech support. Whatever the real motivation (a combo no doubt), wrestling with the edges of what one knows about these things as a self-taught intermittent web designer is roughly as much fun as being the feature entree at a banquet for piranhas, big cats, and twenty-six-foot-high spiders. But perhaps slightly more painful.

This is not necessarily a cry for help. But if any of you have, say, designed a Facebook application in the past or really love explaining PHP to novices, I wouldn’t exactly say no.

With or without assistance, I optimistically (naively?) believe that I can get this thing chunked out before June. Depending on the timelines of other projects (it was, after all, a setback in the new quiz I’m working on that enabled me to thus spend my weekend in the first place). And then I will be begging you all to download and use (read: beta test) my lovely new application.

I’m pretty much set with the whole thing, except getting (A) results into profile boxes and news feeds, (B) view friends’ country functionality, and (C) invitations to friends to add the app.

Which is pretty much everything.

So I haven’t updated in a while in part because I’ve been crafting and then moderating a Werewolf/Mafia game with a whopping 45 players online on the APDA Forum.

And just now, the Forum exceeded its bandwidth.

This is just a note to the players in this game that we are pausing the game and I would like to do anything possible to get the APDA Forum back up and running ASAP. I can’t imagine it taking longer than the first of the month, since I think these limits are monthly. Maybe we can then figure out how to expand the bandwidth, if not do that before.

The game will continue! Even if I have to find another forum to revive it in, we are not going to stop the game like at least one past game was halted by a Forum crash. So do not despair and do not stop thinking about the game! It will be revived.

And now, I must away to baseball. Hopefully it will be restored as early as tonight.