Author Archives: Jerry

Two Beers

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French – deux bières
Spanish – dos cervezas
Polish – dwa piwa
Czech – dve piva
Romanian – doua bere
Afrikaans – Twee Biere
Redneck: Cheap date!
German: Zwei Bier
Italian: Due birre
Russian: dva piva
Serbian: dva piva
Malay – “Dua bir”, or “dua gelas bir” although that’s rather clunky.
Mandarin Chinese: Liang ping pijiu (“lee-yang ping pee-jee-you”)
Danish – to øl
Swedish – Två öl
Latin: Duo cerevisiae
Finnish: Kaksi olutta
Portuguese: dois cervejas
Pig Latin: ootay eersbay
Canadian: 1/12th of a two-four.
Dutch: Twee bier
Flemish: Twee pintjes
Irish: Dha Beoir
Japanese: Ni-hai biiru
Esperanto: du bier
Swahili: pombe mbili
Turkish: Iki bira (ee-kee bee-rah)

Just thought you might want to know.

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Thanks!

Post-NaNo depression

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Not exactly sure what it is I miss about NaNoWriMo once it is past, but I have a hard time getting motivated to do much of anything.

Perhaps I miss the camaraderie. It is great fun gathering with other crappy writers, both virtually and face-to-face to talk about our creations and how much fun we’re having creating them. There are other NaNoWriMo participants that try to make the event last all year. Some have declared January to be NaNoEdMo, the month they go back and edit their November masterpieces, while others have created NaNoWriYe, and have built an annual schedule for cranking out some number of crappy novels. I like both those things, but the latter especially strikes me as greedy. Part of NaNoWriMo is that it is a unique event when you can suspend the normal rules of your life and do what you really want to do.

Perhaps it is the writing itself, but I don’t think so. I don’t stop writing just because November is over. I may not write every day, but I still spend a lot of time at the keyboard.

Maybe I miss the deadline. I try to give myself deadlines, but when thousands of people share the same one, it makes the deadline more serious. When the entire world can see how you are tracking to the schedule, there is a motivation there that can’t be reproduced.

I think the main reason I feel melancholy, though, is that I realize how far from finished my story really is. I easily beat the word count goal for November, but I had set another goal for myself, and that goal I fell far short of. So I am continuing to pound away, but my desire to have something that is good to read from cover to cover is still far in the future, and no November is going to get me any closer.

Thanks!

Howard who?

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A couple of weeks ago one of my roommates asked me if I wanted to join him at some sort of event for Howard Dean. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m glad that someone who at times appears to be an actual liberal is getting so much support. It should make for a more lively debate on the upcoming election year. I’m glad that the Democrats are considering putting up a candidate for President based on ideology rather than electability. Relatively speaking, that is.

That notwithstanding, why on Earth would I contribute to the Dean campaign when the most basic tenet of my own candidacy is that money and politics should be separate? No, I do not support Dean, he has baskets of money and he is working hard to get more. His much-ballyhooed ‘grass roots’ fundraising is great, but don’t think there aren’t tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars in the DNC coffers with plenty of strings attached. The way things are right now, it is not possible for a Democrat or Republican to be elected without bringing along an enormous amount of baggage.

On top of that, I would be a better President than Howard Dean.

Thanks!

I’m Baaaaaack…

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We’ll see if I can get my momentum back. I’ve had thoughts about things to write here; I just haven’t done it. Now that there is no way on earth that anyone is reading this, maybe I can get somewhere with it.

Thanks!

Not much to blog about

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We’ll se what December brings.

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Thanks!

I think I need a napkin scanner.

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Gyroscopically balanced GPS-guided motorcycles to win some contest sponsored by the pentagon. Ways to cool the London underground. Most of all, construction details for the hotel on the moon. Napkin Scanner. Naaaapkin Scanner. Yeah, that’s it.

Thanks!

NaNoWriMo coming

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and I am ready to go. My story has crowded everything else out of my head, making me even less productive than I was while I was traveling. Is is very hard to wait till saturday to start typing.

Thanks!

House Still Standing

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The weather cooled off today – there were even a couple of raindrops – and the wind was off the sea and brisk enough that air quality was finally good enough ride my bike. A good day.

Thanks!

Incredulous Rant

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if he can possibly believe the things he says. His repeated mantra was that as a result of his foreign policy, the world is safer and freer.

Picture the giant exclamation point and question mark popping out of my head when he said that. China may be freer now than it was three years ago, and you could argue that Afghanistan (or, at least Kabul) has more freedom now, but we in the United States are considerably less free than we were.

And safer – he’s joking, right? RIGHT? This comes from the same administration that has insisted that we need to surrender the constitution because of dire international threats. So just what danger has been reduced? There are more countries that dislike us. There are more arab countries unwilling to cooperate with us materially to combat international terrorism. We have erected ineffective security measures all over the country so we will get the feeling that something is being done, but none of those measures do more than inconvenience the populace.

Oh, but if I’m wrong, and we are safer now, can we have our freedom back?

Thanks!

bad news is illegal

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OK, I see where the desire of the media to use those images for their own agenda would be objectionable to the families and to the servicemen themselves, but you can’t help but wonder about the timing. Never has an administration been in the position of sacrificing the lives of Americans at such a rate in a war that is ostensibly over. I would love to see Wolfowitz explain to the mothers of those slain servicemen how the sacrifice of their loved ones was worthwhile as it furthered his personal vendetta against Iraq. The dude was jonesing to go over there long before 9/11. Before that day, his opinions were being sidelined. After that day, his agenda became US policy, over the objection of many cabinet members. It will take us decades to repair the damage he has caused.

Where was Bush? You don’t really think he’s making the decisions, do you?

Thanks!

La Dolce Vida

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Right now I am sitting in my back yard in a lounge chair, one dog in my lap, the other sitting in the sun nearby, on a cloudless sunny day in late October. The wireless network has a good signal out here, and I have been working on my word processor and exchanging emails all morning. The screen is a little dimmer than I would like, and the fridge is a long way away, but those are quibbles.

This is really, really nice.

Addendum 4/10/04:
To all you people who got here because of the inexplicably high position Google gives this rather mundane blog entry when one searches for “la dolce vida”, welcome! Try the main page, and see what’s going on with my homeless tour, or put in your $0.02 on one of my Get-Poor-Quick Schemes. Perhaps you have a crackpot idea of your own to share. What fun!

Thanks!

NaNoWriMo Plan-O: Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow!

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I read a bit on a site by a software engineer/writer who had a system that really made sense to me, called the snowflake process. I have started to use it to plan my November novel and it has already paid great dividends. It has forced me to pay attention to the parts of the story I had been glossing over in my mind, and I was surprised at how easily ideas came once I forced myself to address them. There was a big hole in the middle of the narrative, and now I know (in a very general way, to be sure) how I’m going to fill it.

Cool.

Thanks!

Better Get Hoppin’

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before someone aces me out. I saw another plan for a moon hotel, designed (like all of them) to look cool FROM THE OUTSIDE. Aye, yi, yi. So far no one seems to be considering making the place the best experience possible for the guests.

I’ll try to put together a description of my plan and put a link to it here. Multi-billionaires looking for and investment may contact me directly.

By the way, the astro-jump concession has already been spoken for.

Thanks!

Air Show This Weekend

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A B-2 went over a few minutes ago while I was out back with the dogs. They were unimpressed. I thought about going; watching those things take off and land is a visceral experience, and hell, I’ve paid tens of thousands of dollars to build those things; I may as well get something out of it.

Of course, Santa Ana winds started this morning, so it will be hotter than hell out there on the tarmac at Miramar MCAS. I think that’s God saying “stay home and work on your resume instead.” After all, if I don’t get another job real soon, who’s going to pay for the next batch of planes?

Thanks!

Scratch one cat

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It’s pretty common for me to hear the coyotes partying late at night, but last night was unusual because they invited a cat to the affair. The cat must have been cornered or surrounded, because it put up a fight for quite a while but did not escape.

Spike and Lefty were very interested in going out to join the fun, their tiny dog brains not capable of understanding that they would not last nearly as long as the cat. I closed the glass door before the end, for my own peace of mind and to keep the boys from tearing through the screen. For all I know the cat finally got away, but I doubt it.

Thanks!