Yep. I find myself mumbling "it is what it is", over and over.

But I find titles easy, cos I don't think of 'em as encapsulations -- more like puns or pointers.

What I find nearly impossible is a summary or a precis. Even after it's written, I argue that it just can't be boiled down without losing something. Maybe steam, but *special* steam, steam with purpose...

<Stop thinking I can read your mind - it's not true!>

No, really, I'm a little confused with this one... even if the above-described perception of the male of the species were true - and <then> if it were actually some inborn deficiency rather than, possibly, cultural - you, specifically, are still - by far - the least likely specimen to be selected for a typical demonstration of such characteristics...? :s

<Okay, guilty as charged. Plug me into a wall socket, 220 volts is fine but I can live with 110. I *can* talk to electrons, I can, and I believe in the anode, the cathode, and the holy grid.>

ROFL, BTW. ;)

I've grown really tired of the text up there that passes for intro/biog/mission statement. It's been trimmed away with time, and is now an accretion of favorite quotes and lines I didn't want to lose. But you have to kill your babies in the writing game.

A new model is under preparation. I might run it as a test version tomorrow, then take it back to the lab for debugging. Doctors Jekyll, Gates and Frankenstein swear by this method.

Or I could just open the floor to suggestions right now.

A third option is favored by dictator/geniuses, certain optimistic deities, and Steve Jobs. Make it perfect, then make it so.

Small world, innit?

<But I digress too. Speaking of... ;p

<I digress> which, in most cases is a brief self-corrective observation, and in your case could serve as profile text*, if you ever wanted a <REALLY> short profile. ;)

*(I would have suggested forum title, but the Frogspawn series is an inviolable establishment!)

Or, a slightly more convoluted version:

<Domdaniel>
* I Digress *
Detourist de Force>

Let's see what you're planning, eh? :D

<Abba/The Residents>

Never heard of the latter. Interesting lyric(s)...

Hmm, old memories. Back when I was about 6 years old. Family vacation at a Romanian spa town - I don't even remember the name. Anyway, the hotel was close to some outdoor stadium, we got in very tired the first night and desperately wanted to get some sleep, but there was some group performing in the stadium that night. At that age I had not the least interest in music, and the noise was just awful... the name of the "disturbing" band had become something of a family idiom swear word for some years thereafter.

Oops. Start again. But leave the babble-intro as a piece of metafiction ... Pompidou-esque Po-mo with the tubes outside ... a case of hidden wiring made visible, now a standard reflex in postmodern art, and usually dull. Still ...

<Quote #1>
"Let the hare sit" ... the sort of thing an Irish politician says when trying to be folksy. These days, like pols everywhere, the Irish ones tend to be lawyers (plus teachers) - the state allows teachers to hold their job for life, going back to it if necessary after 30 years as an MP, if the voters turf 'em out. So politics is a good '2nd career for teachers'.

I had an interesting conversation with a friend today on this subject. Our instinct - or our generation - growing up in a Europe run by benign social democrats, with assumptions about what it was 'proper' for the state to run.

From teaching with a national curriculum, to bus and train services, to coal mines, power supplies, utilities. One simply felt that it was natural for such things to be publicly owned, as the profit motive would damage them.

I recall being in London after Thatcher came to power, and being deeply shocked when she privatized something. Railways, maybe, or airwaves. Seems normal now. But I felt acute shock: it had never occurred to me that *companies* could be allowed to compete for such things. It was a type of future shock (and even if you write sci-fi, 'the future always arrives too quickly and in the wrong order' [quote #2].

Of course, to many Americans this all sounds like rank socialism, if not communism. (I *do* wish they'd stop using 'liberal' to mean extreme left, but it's too late) -- in Europe a liberal is a centrist with a mild, benign view of government. An innocent do-gooder at worst; at best a decent, caring person who believes politics can improve people's lives, and not by making a handful of rich folk even richer.

That's just a gripe. I've noticed the American version catching on here - bizarrely, even in countries like the UK with an actual Liberal Party, squeezed in the middle between (Neo-Thatcherite) New Labour and (Neo-caring) New Conservatives. Not much middle there.

I'm tired, it's late, how (on Earth) did I get onto politics? My point was the way early assumptions frame us, shape us. Things seem natural, when very little really is. DNA is natural, maybe.

Quoto #3: "Nothing matters much, and very little matters at all". A politician, amazingly, said that: a rich 19th century English minister who could afford to be a philosopher in his spare time.

And I'll loop back to the 1st quote, 'let the hare sit'. It comes from the so-called 'sport' of having dogs chase rabbits or hares. Maybe the bloody 'country pursuit' of hare coursing, still legal and popular in parts of Ireland, now banned in Britain. A barbaric atavism. There's also the fake version with electric hares on dog tracks. Said to be 'a good night out'. I haven't tried.

So letting the hare sit is more than doing nothing. It's a wary watchfulness. A countryman, like a rod fisherman, willing to wait calmly until something happens.

The pol who says it is doing two things. A subliminal appeal to the rural and traditional voters; and advocating measured caution before acting, ie old-style conservatism.

Sometimes crude-sounding people are very sophisticated speakers. I think I have more respect for the hare-sitting pol, with his cautious rural ambiguities, than the urban lawyer with new model jargon.

Enough. I just changed all the topics and reset the frog parameters. Hey, it's what we do.

Good to hear from you, <Niels>. They also serve who only stand and lurk.

Like Hubbard, I've always fancied having one of my own. But my best Effort to date is the Harvey's Bristol Witnesses, who drink too much sherry and hallucinate rabbits. Not a *great* theological base.

<Stop thinking I can read your mind - it's not true!>

Here's a Gibson version, from (tired) memory:

Of course not. Shouldn't even be much hassle chez Woods -- have a row, shout, move on.

There *is* a socio (but not very logical) pattern. These guys with hyperactive libidos who are also driven to be best in the world at something.

It's a well-known syndrome, though. No-one can pretend the Woods circus is news because it shows us this phenomenon. There are many other cases.

My point is that regardless of competitive health care providers, the big ones count on the mal-informed public to increase their control and make maximum profit. This should of course be monitored by the federal and local inspection, backed up by legislature and the works, to "protect" the less fortunate citizens, and keep the practices of the HC providers within among others "ethical" boundaries.

The guy I spoke with, 35, was about to move up north closer to his home, to work within a correctional institution, providing psychiatric advice. He's a psychologist.

No longer did he have the stamina to comply with the pressures he was working under here at a stone's throw from Amsterdam, not just the traffic, but his conscience didn't allow him to go along and conform to the new communist type over control, regulations, forced upon him, through <Corporatism in Health Care>... You see, whether you get it from the left or right, or a triple helix loop no-one understands, the control of every facet of our lives, relinquishing of freedoms, is part of the New Environmental movement merged with Capitalism, and a vehicle for a small group of CEO's to fill their pockets very fast, and a large following filling them pockets fast as well, also within Health Care.

Martin, as his name is, didn't want to participate anymore in a scheme that in essence meant a steep decline in quality of care the he, and his colleages, could offer to their clients...

After I let it sink in I went into a mild rage, rant, questioning him and offer encouragement to address these developments in the media, with his co-workers, but he didn't have the time nor energy, he said, to swim upstream while barely being able to keep his head above water.

On the plus side, a well informed public can still make a difference and bad publicity and major liquidity loss still makes'em nervous.

<Sometimes crude-sounding people are very sophisticated speakers. I think I have more respect for the hare-sitting pol, with his cautious rural ambiguities, than the urban lawyer with new model jargon.> Indeed, same type feelings here, mostly, though I hate generalizations and ... .

Period.

You surprised me!!

Ahhh, the moment when Ian Anderson cocked his leg and took out his flute ... or was it a *lute*, played by a galliard in a minster?

*Dogs* cock their legs. Maybe humans leg their ... *no*. Not. Going. There. Today. No way to start a new schemata, or even an old one in drag.

We need narratives. Roy Keane, enigmatic football manager and former Man Utd captain, used to respond to media attention by walking his dog. No-one knew whether the savage beast could be controlled, or contained if it slipped the leash. And they didn't know much about the dog either.

See, I *do* know a little about sport and music and celebs and, uh, the defenestration of Prague (there were two notable ones, actually, and a few lesser ones - inevitable when you combine high windows with piles of snow-covered manure) ... all the *normal stuff*, you know?

And I can quote Viv Stanshall forever, more or less (And *do* - where'd you think I got the routine about being 'fagged out' after some terrible incident involving Jehovah's Witnesses? Made it up? Heh.)

Let no-one else's work evade your eyes, as Lobachevsky told Lehrer. Plagiarize!

English as tuppence, changing yet changeless as canal water, feudal still ... suddenly a half-thawed chicken caught him in the back of the head.

Don't get me started. <mack> is cringing already. My upper-class anglo-twit accent is plausible but flawed. It's those dahned intwusive RRRs.

- I say, I say, do you have intwusive RRRs?
- Hai. No, Angora-san. [beheads him gracefully]. Nippon bum better for sumo!

(If you're the rhotic type, now would be a good moment to roll your tongue and lick the edges) - or rattle your jewelry - into something hyperbolic, and say "irrepressible". Or get weally ambitious and try French ("L'arriviste rouge") or Gaelic ("Se Ri-ra ag rith an fior-rud"). Or even show off with a barrage of Khoisan clicks, Japanase honorific ingressives (spoken while breathing *in*, as to expel air in the company of a social superior is insulting - people used to *die* after a chat withe the emperor) ... Arabic pharyngeals like a huge stage whisper and plain glo'al stops.

Oy, languages. Gaelic has eleven distinct L-sounds, but gaelic-speakers tend to be utterly unaware of this - unless they belong to one of those gaelic academic language cults I mentioned before.

- Um, actually, old boy, you've pretty much mentioned *everything* by now. Even football. Take a break while we demolish the walls.

- It will rain tonight.

Two-and-a-bit quick family tales of my own. Age 6-8, approx. Taken to a 'light opera' concert, I wept and cried, saying "Why is the lady screaming?"

So they tried me on church music. Dunno what: Handelesque choirs and Bach style organists, maybe, but smaller. At the end I applauded loudly and happily.

Not done, of course. But people liked to indulge the 'innocence' of children.

Me, I think innocence is just ignorance that hasn't mapped its escape route yet.

Vonnegut: <No names have been changed to protect the innocent, as god almighty protects the innocent as a matter of heavenly routine>.

Innocence can be dangerous. One of my former teachers, a cleric, was recently jailed for acts of sex abuse dating from the 70s - the period in my teens when I was in that school. But I never figured on his radar - he never even called me in for a chat, which was known by the boys to be his opening gambit.

- You reading my mind with that?
- Minds aren't *read*. Wrong paradigm. But ...>>

:) Something about that seems familiar. Which Gibson?

<And they didn't know much about the dog either.>

LOL

<Innocence> - definition & anecdote - approved. ;)

<Lack of respect for authority>

Check. Hehe... I've been on military trial (calling it court-martial would be a little exaggerated...) - a total of three (3) times. For insubordination, naturally. :p

The even funnier part is that I got a sentence of "warning" - i.e., no punishment at all - all 3 times. This is not supposed to be possible: by military rules, you can get "warned" <once>. However, I was justified each time - and since the judges couldn't proclaim me "innocent" - the fact of insubordination per se is "guilt", and of the 3 possible pleas (innocent / guilty of the facts / guilty as charged) I chose "guilty of the facts" each time - that was the best they could do, and fine by me -

Omigod, I just laughed at something. Audibly, if there were auditors in earshot, which, well ... Deffi is the expert, but they say that in a typical city house there's always a Rat within three meters and an *auditor* within two. A cool Russian word from the soviet era comes to mind: *stukach*, meaning rat or informer.

BTW, whole books could be written on the difference between 'informer' and 'informant' in Irish discourse. Neither has much to do with information as we normally understand it. Informant aims for neutrality, but misses, while remaining a loaded term. Informer is explosive, even now: a death sentence in some quarters. Like spraying South-Central LA with the line 'Fat Freddy is a supergrass' just because you're running low on meat. (Remember, kids, cannibalism will get you through times of no TV better than TV will get you ... have I got that right?)

Annie, you're LOLLING like crazy. I useta crack down hard on this -- the theory was, if you face the buggers down after their first LOLs then they won't grow up as merchant bankers.

A tip. When I say 'Cale', it's former classically-trained ex-Velvet Underground noise/drone maestro John Cale, Never JJ or cabbage, but just possibly 'calembour' (a pun) or 'calefaction' (the act of heating).

Cale's main recordings in no rational order - today's preferences - are: Music for a New Society; Sabotage/Live; Fear; Vintage Violence; The Academy in Peril; Paris 1919; Honi Soit; Hobo Sapiens; Fragments of a Rainy Season ... etc.

Likewise, 'Gibson' is generally my old pal and erstwhile doppelganger, William, who wrote Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Burning Chrome, Virtual Light, Idoru, All Tomorrow's Parties, Pattern Recognition, Spook Country. And some other stuff. I think they're getting better.

Most of his books feature a character with a freakish talent for zeroing in on patterns in the media ecology. This is becoming less science-fictional, less cartoon cyberpunk, and closer to dirty magic realism. It's also what WG himself does: he's writing ideal autobiographies. There was a blog too for a while But I think it was too distracting.

Speaking of, how *is* that mail coming along?? ;)

<Guess it's not altogether unlike the 'armies' that teens join in less militarized places? Different modes of discipline, but the same grunts and officer castes.>

No, army service is no game. Most Israelis, even most of us politically far-left-leaning ones, understand the reality of the need for the "D" in IDF - the Israeli DEFENSE Forces - to be taken seriously. And if you've grown up knowing the whole time that army service is just what comes after graduating from high school, there's really not much pressganging to be done.

Of course, on the day to day basis, things (including the noisy things walking around with stripes) can get as petty as anywhere else, and particularly brand-new officers need some cutting down to size before they realize that rank is all very well, but they won't get far by antagonizing everybody they think they can afford to - and I was always one to teach quick and effective lessons on the subject. :p

<Omigod, I just laughed at something. Audibly [...]>

OK, 'fess up, what exactly was so funny? ;)

As for me, it's really very simple - I will LOL - exactly - when and where I really mean it. It's a compliment. So quitchercomplaining. :D

<Likewise, 'Gibson' is generally my old pal and erstwhile doppelganger, William, who wrote Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Burning Chrome, Virtual Light, Idoru, All Tomorrow's Parties, Pattern Recognition, Spook Country. And some other stuff. I think they're getting better.>

Aha, *that* Gibson. :) Just asked 'cause t'other one came up at some point too.

And that quote really seems familiar. Furthermore, I have a feeling I *may* have read something by William Gibson at some point, but none of the titles ring any bells,which doesn't mean I haven't read any of them, but it does mean that if I did, it didn't stand out much to me at the time, which, again, may not mean much. :)

I might try some of those titles sometime.

<I useta say "Me and Bill Gibson are the future of the written word". I may have overestimated one of us slightly.>

I don’t know whether you have read my recent messages at Kibitzer’s Café or not and so I am posting it here too. On Monday of last week I have become proud father of (the second) daughter named Aneta. You can see her picture on the site of regional newspaper “Kladensky denik” (Kladno’s Daily) at http://kladensky.denik.cz/miminka/m... where is just now till this Friday (12:00 A.M. CET) running a polling contest for the most sympathetic baby born last week in regional maternity hospitals organized by the newspaper. Personally I am not much interested in such a kind of competitions but my wife likes it very much and she would be much happy to see our little girl on the top. Right now we are on the second place in very tense and close race with two other contenders and so every additional vote is very important for the final outcome. If you would like to help me to make my wife even happier than she already is now, just click on the link above, flag “Aneta Cervenkova, Stredokluky” (the first name in gray box on the right side on the screen) and hit the “hlasovat” button below. It is possible to vote repeatedly always after 60 minutes from one IP address... :-D