George Stankow's Journal

8:30am: Hello
Hi. I'm George. This is my LJ. A few months back, I made a semiconscious decision to post everything friends-only. If you're reading this because you've actually heard of me and want to know what's going on in my life, drop me a line at my last name at gmail.

And if you're just skipping randomly around and stumbled upon this, I'm not really that interesting, so you're not missing much. Have a good day.

8:45pm: Ganked from various:

Step 1: Put your media player on random
Step 2: Post the first line(s) of the first 25 songs that play, no matter how embarrassing the song.
Step 3: Post and let everyone guess what song and artist the lines come from.

( Read more... )

10:34am: The Gay Basketball Diaries
So an NBA player has come out of the closet. John Amaechi is, of course, a former player, because no one is yet dumb enough to come out while still playing the game. And, just as inevitably, the idiots immediately start in with their idioting:

LeBron James, however, said he didn't think an openly gay person could survive in the league.

"With teammates you have to be trustworthy, and if you're gay and you're not admitting that you are, then you are not trustworthy," James said. "So that's like the No. 1 thing as teammates -- we all trust each other. You've heard of the in-room, locker room code. What happens in the locker room stays in there. It's a trust factor, honestly. A big trust factor."

Injured Philadelphia Sixers forward Shavlik Randolph acknowledged it's a new situation.

"As long as you don't bring your gayness on me I'm fine," Randolph said. "As far as business-wise, I'm sure I could play with him. But I think it would create a little awkwardness in the locker room."

So there are the rules:

A) "Don't bring your gayness on" other players -- especially after they admit to "a little awkwardness," which I'm sure means they won't freak out every time your line of sight happens to intersect their bodies. Luckily, you can play professional basketball without ever actually looking at any of the other players on the court.

B) Come out right at the beginning of your career -- or as most people call it, high school -- because if you don't, then you're never going to be "trustworthy." And since LeBron James is only about an hour and a half out of high school himself, I'm sure he can relate to the tolerance and acceptance that "trustworthy" gay teens face when they come out of the closet.

On the plus side, at least these guys aren't as openly disingenuous as the passel of flag officers who all stand up and say, "Well, I'm okay with fags and dykes sullying the uniform, but the unenlightened troglodytes it is my honor to command won't stand for it" every time someone suggests that we replace Don't Ask Don't Tell with something a tad more reasonable.

11:59pm: It's pronounced "MemAHJ"
List six songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they're any good, but they must be songs you're really enjoying now. Post these instructions in your LJ along with your six songs...

I'm a rocker who rocks out to:

1. "Libby I'm Listening," Blue October
2. "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner," Warren Zevon
3. "Anna Begins," Counting Crows
4. "The Monster Is Loose," Meat Loaf
5. "Sugar, We're Goin' Down," Fall Out Boy
6. "Wave on Wave," Pat Green

8:17am: Seriously, just stop with the "unclean" thing already
You know, back in the day, it was a good idea to listen to your "god" about what you should and shouldn't eat, because couched in all that crap about how this animal is unclean and that animal is unholy was some pretty good advice. Pork isn't the best choice in societies without refrigeration and the ability to cook foods consistently at high temperatures. It's a lot easier to get people to listen to "God will smite you" than "The Trichinosis roundworm, which is too small for you to see, travels its way through your lymphatic system, which you really can't see either, until it encysts somewhere in your body."

But when you refuse to accept that maybe agriculture and medicine haven't advanced in the intervening centuries, then maybe, juuust maybe, you shouldn't be a doctor, for crying out loud.

Honestly, people -- follow your rules, sure. Eat the olives and breast-feed and whatever the hell else you want to do, and then get the goddamn vaccinations. Because if your god is so grossed out by pigs -- which, let us remember, he supposedly created in the first place -- that he's willing to let your kid die, then you picked the wrong god.

12:30am: Haiku Book Revu Red... Oh, sod it.
Glass Houses, Rachel Caine
"Young adult novel"?
Caine writes damn good vampires
Good for all ages

Gravity Wells, James Alan Gardner
Lots of good stories
Gardner's kind of showing off
"Teleology"?

9:54pm: Haiku Book Revu Redux Twu
Children of Chaos, Dave Duncan
Logical magic
The only kind that I like
So this was quite good

The Right Nation, John Micklethwait and Adrian Woolridge
Brits reasonably
Talk to us about our own
Conservatism

8:07pm: Art Buchwald, RIP
In those thankfully infrequent moments where I just cannot think of the next word, when a sentence is so convoluted I can't even remember where the hell I started it, I close my eyes and lean back and think, Art Buchwald thinks you're pretty goddamn funny. And that works every time.

Buchwald died this week, after a lifetime of poking at the establishment. And fifteen years after paying for my summer in Los Angeles. I saw the city recover from the Rodney King riots first-hand, and the only reason I could was that he endowed a scholarship for humor writing. I lucked into it my sophomore year, submitting three columns I'd already written for the school paper, and along with the money, I got a card from the Man Himself. I've long forgotten what it said, and it went missing in one of the twenty moves I've made since then, but I'll always remember that in the overly self-serious world of journalism (and journalism schools especially), he had the stones to set up a scholarship solely for humorists.

I never had the chance to meet Buchwald in person. I wish I'd taken the opportunity at some point when I lived on the East Coast. The world is just a little less funny today.

Thanks again, Art.

1:24am: Well, harrumph
Ganked from ajax:
You are The Joker

The Joker 67% Riddler 61% Mr. Freeze 53% Dark Phoenix 50% Green Goblin 44% Dr. Doom 44% Venom 39% Lex Luthor 37% Magneto 35% Apocalypse 31% Poison Ivy 31% Catwoman 28% Mystique 24% Juggernaut 24% Two-Face 24% Kingpin 19%

The Clown Prince of Crime. You are a brilliant mastermind but are criminally insane. You love to joke around while accomplishing the task at hand.

Click here to take the "Which Super Villain are you?" quiz...

Obviously, I'd rather be Lex Luthor, but I guess I'll settle for the second-greatest villain in comics history.

9:49pm: Power Outages Suck
Well, looks like we're finally back on Baghdad municipal power. Apparently, our generator sucks ass or has some sort of evaporation problem or whatever. On the plus side, my new alarm clock/flashlight rules. Already worth the thirty-five bucks. And it even has a thermometer in it to tell me that, no, it's not my imagination, and the brand-new AC/heater thingus they installed in my new room is definitely not heating a damn thing. All in all, things are okay. No nearby KABOOMs lately, either (he said, daring the universe to screw with him).

10:40am: Haiku Book Revu Redux
Night Train to Rigel, by Timothy Zahn
Mysteries galore
Better than Zahn's Star Wars
Recommend highly

9:24pm: Well, that was an ass-kicking
I was only watching the play-by-play update for the BCS title game last night (well, this morning), and it was still a drubbing. I'm kinda glad -- the BCS one-off is starting to wear on me, for reasons exemplified by this season. (Plus it means that USC is still the only school to win a Heisman trophy and a BCS title in the same year.)

What do you do when the #1 and #2 teams already played each other? It was a possibility no less than three ways this year (Texas was damn close), and I'm sure a lot of OSU apologists will bemoan their 51 days off and claim that everyone knows the real national championship game was back in November. But then both sides of that "real" national championship game got exposed in the bowls.

And what do you do when you've got multiple contenders like when an undefeated Auburn got to watch Oklahoma lie down and die against USC two years ago? Or, even worse, exactly what happened this year -- one dominant team and a bunch of "Well, maaaybe" teams, and then one of those "Well, maaaybe" teams kicks the crap out of that dominant team?

If we'd had a four-team playoff this year, we'd've seen just two conferences represented, and the potential for two rematches. An eight-team playoff would have included yet another Big Ten team, for cry-yi-yi (and tell me Auburn wouldn't have been whining about some punk-ass non-major-conference team beating them out).

I think they need to scrap the whole poll-based ranking system and just have a conference-based playoff: Eleven conferences means three games to get into the Elite Eight. Those games are played by the conference champions who didn't have to play an actual championship game (by sheer coincidence, there are six). Handle the seedings just like they do in basketball -- with great ceremony and much gnashing of teeth, but if you win your conference, then you're in. Period.

I've always disliked the poll-based rankings, because they're too inertial. This takes away the human element entirely.

8:28pm: Haiku Book Revu Twu
The Protector's War, S.M. Stirling

Usual Stirling
Highly detailed, lots of blood
Fewer lesbians

12:55am: SuperMeme!
Ganked from samueljl. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I am very, very:

Your results:
You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man 90% Hulk 80% Superman 70% Supergirl 53% The Flash 50% Robin 45% Green Lantern 30% Batman 30% Catwoman 25% Wonder Woman 18% Iron Man 10%

You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz

1:12am: Haiku Book Revu
Hell to Pay, Simon R. Green (Nightside 7)
Still kicking much ass
John Taylor finds a lost girl,
Ultraviolence

End of the Beginning, Harry Turtledove (Days of Infamy 2)
If you like his stuff
This is classic Turtledove
But seems quite pointless

The Traveler, John Twelve Hawks (The Fourth Realm 1)
Do you remember
The Celestine Prophecy?
This one has fight scenes

Bad Prince Charlie, John Moore
One more parodist
Who would be the new Pratchett
He's getting closer

11:40pm: Back Again
Once again, I have navigated the perilous international air travel system successfully. My reward? They want to take away my room and move me to a different building. Nobs.

3:08pm: Tales of Potty Training
So Scooter (so sayeth the voters) is more or less fully potty trained at this point, but she does have the occasional accident. Her reward system is that she gets a Hershey's Kiss for dinner if she has no accidents all day. Coincidentally, my wife is on a diet and therefore takes any excuse not to have dessert. Ergo, the following conversation at dinner:

Scooter: "I want special chocolate."
Mom: "You can't have any. You had an accident."
Scooter: "Oh. Is Mama having chocolate?"
Mom: "No, honey. Mama's not having chocolate."
Scooter: "Did you have an accident?"
Dad: [nearly swallows his own tongue trying not to laugh]

5:35pm: Lootwatch 06
My parents got Rory the Tickle Me Elmo Extreme or whatever the heck "TMX" stands for. And then my aunt and uncle got her a "musical book" featuring Elmo and The Count with various reworded nursery rhymes, each triggered by a simple button press. Apparently, everyone on the Stankow side hates my wife a lot.

But hey, new pics.

10:20am: Well, frak
So I have to get all new blue jeans now. Apparently, at some point over the last nine months, I've gone from a 32x32 to a 34x32. And I'm up to 187 pounds, which isn't absurdly over where I usually am, but geez. I'm used to being right on the edge of "overweight" according to the BMI calculators, but now I'm a good percent and a half over the line.

I guess my genes have finally caught up to me. I'm going to have to start watching my weight now, dammit.

8:37pm: Best Wishes, Senator Johnson
Senator Tim Johnson of South Dakota is, as I type this, in critical condition following surgery to repair a brain hemorrhage. I've never met him nor heard of him before the last day or so, but I wish him and his family the best.

And all those of you who care solely because he's of one party and the Governor of South Dakota, who would appoint his replacement, is of the other party? I'd wish a brain hemorrhage on you, except that I'm not as big a cretin as you are, so I just hope your foot gets caught in a door at some point today. Anyone caught strategizing over this while doctors are still digging around in this man's brain should not only be drummed out of politics, but should be run out of town on a rail.

Sadly, none of this will happen. So I hope that he gets better fast if only so he might return to the Senate floor and personally condemn all of those vultures unto the hell in which they belong.

2:12am: Up Way Too Late
But I finally finished a book (November kicks my ass -- at some point several years ago, I decided to read all non-fiction during this month. No idea why.), so I might as well post for once.

1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare, James Shapiro. Okay, everyone who thinks "the man from Stratford" didn't write the plays attributed to William Shakespeare? You're wrong. It's just that simple. The four plays written in this one year alone are so patently drawn from the life of a guy who was doing what the historical record shows the person we all think is William Shakespeare was doing that you can't deny it unless you're just impossibly convinced that a bumpkin can't write. Shapiro probably didn't intend for this book to be a rousing demolition of the anti-Stratfordian arguments (like the vast majority of Shakespearean scholars, he considers the possibility of someone else writing them to be somewhere along the lines of aliens beaming the plays down into Shakespeare's brain). But about two-thirds of the way through, I suddenly realized that by detailing a hundred small things that reflected from Shakespeare's life (that's right, Shakespeare's life, not Bacon's, not DeVere's) into the plays, he provides ample evidence that the man from Stratford was the guy. I used to be a DeVerean, but then over the years, I realized that all anti-Stratfordian arguments begin and end with pure elitism -- "This uneducated commoner could not possibly be a great writer -- it simply must have been one of these noblemen." Well, bah. And even if you don't care about that part, it's an interesting survey of a time that most people really don't know much about -- the end of chivalry, the beginning of pure drama, the point at which the British Empire nearly drowned in the swamps of Ireland. If you like history and Shakespeare, then give it a whack. Five stars (but that's a non-fiction historical five stars, so don't even try if this ain't your cup of tea).

8:52pm: Ph33r my symbiotic baby!

COMBAT CARDS 2.1

watch stankow fight

CREATE YOUR CARD

12:43pm: My "Friends" Do Not Support Me
From #predicate:

[stankow] Oh, do NOT start in on me about the proper formatting of a military memorandum, Captain.
[CyGuy_afk] you tell him George - in haiku
[byrneout] I took a whole correspondence course about that. Not that I remember it, but my point is, there are resources. There is no doubt about the right answer. It's all wrote down.
[stankow] People really don't believe that, though.
[stankow] I am 100 percent certain that he will backpedal to "Well, that's how we do it here in Iraq."
[naked_irish] Just point and laugh.
[stankow] And then to "Well, that's how we do it here on our FOB," and finally to "I don't see why you're making such a big deal of this." At which point I will be forced to kill him with a croquet mallet.
[stankow] And I don't know where the fuck I'll be able to get my hands on a croquet mallet here, so it's gonna take some fucking effort.
[Irish-] ebay
[stankow] Shipping time will dim my rage.
[Irish-] You're not committed enough.
[byrne] Your rage sucks, dude.

10:52pm: Thank you
Thank you, SPC byrneout, for risking a great job and taking time away from a patient and understanding husband to join the Army Reserve, knowing full well that you would likely be sent to some godawful land to get shot at.

Thank you, LT squorch, for going through the long, hard process of getting a commission and learning how to fly helicopters, knowing full well that you will be heading somewhere that you probably weren't thinking of when you first thought, "That's it -- I'll join the Navy."

hirightnow, naked_irish, metallicaguns, shh_no_one, any others that I have unforgivably forgotten -- thank you for serving. No matter when you did or for how long, you answered the call and faced the very real possibility that you would end up in Flanders Field. The rest of you -- call someone you know who was in the military and just say "Thanks." If for nothing else, then for standing up for a system where you are under no obligation to do so.

6:25pm: "Six Words Is Not Enough To
...tell a compelling story," you say?

Wired would disagree, as would Ernest Hemingway, who is said to have called "For sale: Baby shoes, never worn" the finest thing he ever wrote (I'd tend to agree with him on that).

My own attempts:

The music swelled. The curtain stuck.

"His amnesia pill worked," she sobbed.

Your mother is quite promiscuous. Ha!

Go ahead, take a whack.