Preparing to head home

Well, the deed is done — there are now three sets of ‘Mr. and Mrs. Hanscom’ in our branch of the Hanscom family.

The wedding was yesterday at the Memphis Botanic Garden, and went off very nicely. Dad and Aunt Susan were the officiates for the ceremony, Kev’s friend Stu and I were groomsmen (and I was best man), Em’s sister Elizabeth and friend Heather were the bridesmaids, and music was provided by mom and dad. Very nice, short, and sweet. There was a good laugh when Susan got names slightly confused and directed Em to place the ring onto Michael’s finger rather than Kevin’s — I didn’t realize that I was coming to Memphis to get married! Em knew which hand to aim for, though, and aside from being able to gently tease Susan about it, it didn’t cause a fuss at all.

Lots of pictures were taken, of course. Dad and I will be posting ours in the Hanscom Family photo gallery as soon as we get home, we should be getting Susan and Eric’s pictures added after they’re developed and sent to us, and there may be more after that. Quite likely only of any real interest to close family and friends, but still, they’ll be there.

Right now mom and dad are visiting with Em’s parents, and I’ll be getting shuttled off to the airport in about three hours or so. A short hop from Memphis to Cincinatti, and then from Cincinatti to Seattle, and I’ll be back home.

It’s been a wonderful weekend, though. I got to spend some time getting to know my cousins better — one of the downsides to being up in Alaska for much of my life was that I haven’t had as many chances to meet many of my relatives as often as I might have otherwise. Big family get-togethers such as weddings are good for rectifying such situations, though, which was a lot of fun. Mom, Eric and I spent a fun few hours debating politics last night (Susan and Eric form one of the few bastions of Republicanism in our immediate family), and Doug, Pam, Kayt, and Hannah came by our hotel room to visit for a while yesterday, which gave me some time to visit with Kayt (and give her a demo of my iPod that ended with her gently reminding her parents that she’s got a birthday coming up, and the iPod mini‘s are only \$250…).

Anyway, this is coming out all jumbled — I’m still a little out of it (hotel fold-out beds are not comfortable and do not promote a good night’s sleep), and there’s been so much going on this weekend that my brain’s still processing a fair amount of it. Not a bad thing in the least, but I’m sure that it doesn’t necessarily lead to the most coherent narratives. :) So on that note, I think I’m out until I get home.

Too many people!

Well, no, not really “too many.” One hell of a lot, though.

We had our big dinner tonight at Rendevouz, a barbecue joint in downtown Memphis. I walked in, and was amazed — and ended up remarking to mom at one point how much I liked “small weddings.” Final count was forty people. I suppose that doesn’t really sound like all that much, but it was definitely something of a surprise (albeit a pleasant one).

Afterwards Kev and I wandered around Beale Street, apparently the main nightlife district here. Looked like fun, but between lots of people holed up for Valentines day and a chilly, rainy evening, it was apparently much slower than usual. Still, it was at least worth a lot.

I’m going to be crashing out with Em’s family for the night, but at the moment Kev, Wes and I are heading out to a local bar for Kev’s last night out as a bachelor — I’m not sure it’s going to be much of a “bachelor party,” but it’s at least more than just coming straight home and crashing out.

Besides — my little brother’s going to be married in another fourteen hours. I owe him a drink. :)

The day before

I’m sitting at the house that Kevin and Emily have been staying at, taking advantage of a momentary lull in the activities of the day to check in for a few minutes.

So far, things have been fairly expectedly hectic. I arrived in Memphis yesterday evening about 7:30pm local time, and Kevin met me at the airport. Mom and Dad were arriving just an hour later, so Kev and I just hung out there for a while, gathered mom and dad when they came off of their plane, and we all found our way back to our hotel.

A late dinner followed at a local restaurant, where the four of us met up with Emily and her parents, Ted and Sally. Lots of good conversation there, as everyone got to know each other (since mom, dad and I had yet to meet any of the rest of Em’s family), until travel caught up with us all and we headed back to the hotel.

Today started really early, with a 9:30am breakfast gathering at Em’s grandparents farm just across the border in Mississippi (so I’m actually adding two states to my “where I’ve been” list than just one on this trip). Lots of people there that I’m having a hard time keeping them all seperate in my head. Myself, mom, dad, Kev, Em, Em’s brothers Ted and Wes and her sister Elizabeth, her parents Ted and Sally, her grandparents, a friend of Em’s from the Peace Corps, and a few other assorted cousins (?) and other relations that I’m losing track of.

More people are coming in over the course of the day today, including my dad’s sister Susan and her son Eric; dad’s brother Doug and his wife Pam, and their daughters Kayt and Hannah; my great-uncle (?) Bob Wills and possibly some of his clan; another of Em’s friends from Peace Corps just showed up; Kev’s currently off attempting to rescue his friend Stuart and his wife Sara from a hotel that apparently overbooked and left them without a room; and I’m sure there are more appearing (or already here) that I’ve forgotten. Considering that Kev and Em were originally just going to “elope” until Em’s aunt convinced them to have a “small wedding” here, the list of names and people involved just seems to get longer and longer every time I turn around!

Right now, with Kev off playing the gallant hero, mom and dad resting at the hotel, much of Em’s family invovled in prearations for tonight’s barbecue gathering (and possibly mini-rehearsal, though we keep being assured that a rehearsal hasn’t been planned), and Em holed up in a room here with her sister and friends working on her dress (or hair, or something…I’m male, I’m not expected to know what’s going on, I think), I’ve ended up without any responsibilities for a few minutes.

And so I’m here.

Now there’s a surprise. ;)

Kev just showed up with Sara (though Stu is still missing in action), so I think I’m expected to interact with people again…

Goin’ to the chapel and they’re gonna get married…

I’m off to the airport — my brother Kevin and his fiancee Emily are getting married on Sunday in Memphis, Tennessee, and I’m heading down to be best man at the wedding!

I have absolutely no clue if I’ll have any sort of computer access while I’m gone, so posting may be infrequent to nonexistent until sometime late Monday or Tuesday, as will replies to any e-mail.

While I’m gone, have fun, be good, and try not to burn the place down.

And no parties.

I mean it.

Atom feed now available

Seeing as how an Atom-enabled beta of NetNewsWire just hit the ‘net, I took a few moments to get an Atom newsfeed up and running for Eclecticism.

While TypePad has supported Atom for a while now, Atom feeds were only automatically included on sites using any of the Basic or Plus level auto-generated template sets. Those of us using custom coded Advanced template sets (especially those created before TypePad added Atom support) need to manually add the Atom template to our template sets.

The template code for my Atom feed is in the rest of this entry. It’s almost exactly the same as the template provided by TypePad — the only change I’ve made is to substitute AtomEnabled for the “more info” link rather than www.example.com. Posting this is just a convenience — while finding the template code wasn’t really difficult it did involve a few steps (creating a new advanced template set from one of the default system-provided template sets and go into the template editor to find the code), and posting it here will make it a bit easier if I need to track it down again in the future.

Here’s the template to use:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<feed version="0.3" xmlns="http://purl.org/atom/ns#" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">
  <title><$MTBlogName remove_html="1" encode_xml="1"$></title>
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<MTBlogIfDescription>
  <tagline><$MTBlogDescription remove_html="1" encode_xml="1"$></tagline>
</MTBlogIfDescription>
  <generator url="http://www.typepad.com/" version="<$MTVersion$>">TypePad</generator>
  <info type="application/xhtml+xml">
  <div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">This is an Atom formatted XML site feed. It is intended to be viewed in a Newsreader or syndicated to another site. Please visit <a href="http://www.atomenabled.org/">AtomEnabled</a> for more info.</div>
  </info>
<MTEntries lastn="15">
  <entry>
    <title><$MTEntryTitle remove_html="1" encode_xml="1"$></title>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="<$MTEntryPermalink encode_xml="1"$>" />
    <link rel="service.edit" type="application/x.atom+xml" href="<$MTCGIPath$>atom/weblog/blog_id=<$MTBlogID$>/entry_id=<$MTEntryID$>" title="<$MTEntryTitle encode_html="1"$>" />
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<MTWeblogIfFullRSSContent>
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</feed>

iTunes: “Steamroller (Skatenigs)” by Pigface from the album Industrial Mix Machine (1996, 3:29).

Biggest breakup of the year

Ben who?

J-Lo who?

Get your priorities straight, folks. That gossip mill is so yesterday.

I’m talking a breakup of real importance here — one that will be inspiring headlines in all the rags, sending the talk-show hosts into a flurry, and prompting a whole slew of rabid fan sites lamenting the passing of such a long-adored perfect couple.

I’m talking Ken and Barbie.

After 43 years as one of the world’s prettiest pairs, the perfect plastic couple is breaking up. The couple’s “business manager,” Russell Arons, vice president of marketing at Mattel, said that Barbie and Ken “feel it’s time to spend some quality time — apart.”

“Like other celebrity couples, their Hollywood romance has come to an end,” said Arons, who quickly added that the duo “will remain friends.”

[…]

Arons hinted Wednesday that the separation may be partially due to Ken’s reluctance to getting married. All those bridal Barbie dolls in toy chests around the globe are really just examples of Barbie’s wishful thinking, she explained.

The single most mindblowing piece of information in that article, though…

…CNN revealed Barbie’s full maiden name. I guess they figured that since she’s still without a ring, there’s not much point in hiding it anymore: Barbie Millicent Roberts (and incidentally, take a look at the cover photo for that book — why, I do think that Barbie has had a facelift at some point! What is this world coming to, that even Barbie is getting plastic surgery…um…wait…).

Personally, though, I’ve got to give full props to Ken.

Not many guys could duck the altar and still keep their girlfriend for a full forty-plus years.

(via Prairie)

iTunes: “Resurrection Hex (Giganto)” by Love and Rockets from the album Resurrection Hex (1998, 5:53).

The Grey Album

Vocal tracks from Jay-Z’s “The Black Album” + samples from The Beatles’ “The White Album” = Danger Mouse’s “The Grey Album“.

Interesting project, which I’d heard about, but have not yet heard. However, as Danger Mouse (the DJ who constructed this project) has been served with a cease-and-desist order, Waxy.org is hosting the .mp3 files.

I’m downloading them now…

(via Mike)

iTunes: “TNT” by Sister Machine Gun from the album Covered in Black (1997, 3:47).

Good advice

Quite a few of these gave me a good laugh.

Kids, this is all the shit I had to learn the hard way. Now that I’m retired it’s time to pass it on, so you won’t have to suffer the same indignities I did.

Don’t use one of those little Handi-Vac things to empty an ashtray. Because the inrush of air could potentially reignite any fading embers. And, uh, a big jet of flame might shoot out of the thing, surprising you and making you scream like a ten-year-old girl. And you might knock over your beer.

If you’re ever fishing, and a poisonous water moccasin swims up to try and eat one of the fish on your stringer, and you think that maybe flipping the snake out of the water and onto, say, me is a good idea, please reconsider.

Just because you can stick toothpicks in your forehead and they’ll stay there and it doesn’t really hurt all that bad doesn’t mean you should go ahead and do it, at Denny’s or any other restaurant.

All those skinheads over there? They’ll beat your ass.

Yes, popping a paper bag in the mall makes a very loud noise. Yes, you can hear that shit echoing all through the place. Yes, rent-a-cops are all dicks.

Don’t try to pee and ride a bicycle at the same time, even if Jim Marburger can do it. Not that you were watching or anything.

The rash won’t go away on its own.

Should you ever decide to use bamboo sticks and stretchy, decorative string that’s designed to wrap presents to make a bow and arrow, and should you decide to wad up a bunch of duct tape on the end of your arrow and soak it with WD-40 so it’ll, you know, burn better, I would recommend not shooting the flaming arrow onto the roof of a house, or into the lap of your friend’s cousin. Even by accident.

There are no secrets when it comes to fucking. Everyone will eventually find out about it, and probably a lot sooner than you want them to.

God created assistant managers when he was in a really shitty mood.

Knife wounds inflicted on bodily extremities, such as hands, should receive firm pressure with a clean, dry towel or cloth. Elevate if possible. Remember, dry is the key. The wet washcloth is a poor choice for staunching blood flow, no matter what you’ve heard.

Be careful of what you headbutt. Some doors are not as sturdy as they might first look, and it can be hard to estimate your own strength immediately after inhaling nitrous oxide.

Wear the condom. No, for the love of Pete, not the mint-flavored one. Jesus, that thing burns.

Here’s a helpful tip for job interviews: try not to stab your future boss in the arm with a freshly sharpened pencil. If you must stab someone with a pencil, have the common sense to dull the point to a state where you can be sure it won’t easily break the skin.

Burt Reynolds? Nope. Tom Selleck? Uh uh. Try Chile D. Molester. Shave that fucking mustache.

If someone passes out on the couch and you want to put them in a figure-four leglock, ensure that the hold is correctly applied before they wake and fuck your goddamn knee all up.

Head wounds do tend to bleed a lot. Don’t panic.

Pajamas are indeed comfy, but society dictates we not wear them to school, work or the bowling alley.

For that matter, be aware that bowling alley employees may have a limited tolerance for other non-pajama-related behaviors, such as getting all loaded and pretending to be Godzilla and stomping on that windmill over there in the indoor miniature golf course.

You better ask before you try and stick your finger up there.

Socks should match your pants, and your belt should match your shoes. After that, if anyone complains, tell ’em they should be happy you’re wearing any clothes at all.

If you suspect someone likes to do a lot of cocaine, don’t let them “borrow” your CDs.

Try not to get too depressed. There’s always something to look forward to. Keep alert, and sooner or later you’ll see someone slip and hurt themselves.

Beat off enough and eventually someone will walk in on you while you’re doing it. When this happens, pause, look them directly in the eye and say, “You done ruined the romance, so go ahead and say whatever it is you want to say.” If they don’t immediately apologize and leave, run over there and put your hands on their face.

You should never put a string of lit Black Cat firecrackers in someone’s back pocket while they’re on stage playing bass guitar with their band. Even if they fucked your knee up by reversing the figure-four on you that one time. And even if you crack up at just the idea of someone with their pants are on fire jumping up and down and spinning around and around like a dog chasing its tail while trying to figure out what’s going on. Yup, someone could get their ass burned, so it’s wrong. Despite the fact that shit is really, really funny.

You can whoop those two guys easy enough. But what if they come back with a friend who’s big enough to lift you off the ground and pin you to the wall with one hand? What then, slugger? (You’re going to feel like a fucking idiot, that’s what.)

If, while chugging a beer, the phrase, “I bet this is going to be the last coherent thought I have tonight,” runs through your head, get someone to take you home. Now.

The cops never think it’s as funny as you do.

Be advised: the “Minnesota wristwatch” maneuver is correctly performed by using only the penis. The scrotum and testicles should neither be substituted nor included in any way.

Yeah, I know Sid Vicious wore a lock on a chain around his neck just like that. But the first time you try and pogo with that thing on it’s gonna chip a tooth, Road Warrior.

Sure, she’s good-lookin’. She’s also crazy. Crazy as a shithouse rat. Run for your life.

Just because one of those made you feel nice and two of ’em made you feel even better, taking the whole bottle will not exponentially increase your good time. In fact, you may get dizzy, or throw up, or end up spending half of the next day wondering where the hell your pants are. Or die.

The bouncer at Mons Venus always knows best. If he says you should stop, then you should stop.

Strictly speaking, ranch dressing is not an ingredient.

Yes, you got grounded for having the very same porn stash that turned up in Dad’s closet six months later. You still can’t bring it up. The cosmic scales of justice will never tip in your favor on this one, trust me. Bide your time patiently, and one day you might get the chance for revenge. Like, by unplugging his dialysis machine. Or something.

Now that you’ve climbed up there, it’s a lot higher than it looks, isn’t it? Dumbass.

You can use Krazy Glue in lieu of surgical stitches. For when you’re, you know, too poor to go to the emergency room. Or trying to avoid explaining things to the police.

The Renaissance Faire may not be the source of all your problems, but it sure as shit isn’t helping any.

You’re probably doing something that bugs the next guy twice as much. Clam up and get on with your life.

Powdered cocoa won’t put out the fire.

If you accidentally rear-end another car while driving, Florida law dictates that you must stop and confer with the affected party. Turns out just waving to let folks know you’re alright while driving away is a little something the state troopers like to call “leaving the scene of an accident.”

When it comes time to pick out that first tattoo, remember: it doesn’t matter how much you like that one comic book. There’s always a chance that eight years later someone will make a movie of it that stars Sylvester Stallone. And you’ll be fucked.

You might not be able to remember it, but if you wake up the next day with a bloody nose, no money, barf all over your jeans and a finger or two smelling like poontang then you had a good night.

Always look behind you before you make that first cast. That boat may be smaller than you think. And Jim Marburger’s dad might be taking up more space than you think, too.

Dungeons and Dragons never goes away. Girls will still sense that shit 20 years later.

Last but certainly not least: if you don’t want Sweet Dick Willy to give you a lapdance, don’t sit so damn close to the stage.

(via Something Positive)

iTunes: “Faith to Believe” by Liquid Jesus from the album Pour In the Sky (1991, 4:55).

Relationships

One of the things that’s always bothered me (and many other people) about social networking sites such as Orkut, Friendster, or any other *ster meme-of-the-moment is the binary nature of their setups — either someone is your friend, or they aren’t. That’s it. Those are your only choices.

My world just isn’t that black and white, sorry.

I was grumbling about this in #joiito last week sometime when Tantek pointed me to XFN, which looks very interesting. Essentially, it takes advantage of a little-used link attribute — specifically, the rel attribute — to define the relationship between the linker and the linkee. Various values have been defined, such as ‘friend’, ‘acquaintance’, ‘met’, ‘spouse’, etc.

For instance, while linking to Dad’s site, I can include the value ‘parent’ in the link (<a href=“http://www.hanscomfamily.com/” title=“The Hanscom Family Weblog” rel=“parent”>like this</a>); linking to Kirsten’s site I can use ‘friend’ and ‘met’ (<a href=“http://www.geekmuffin.com/” title="geek*muffin" rel=“friend met”>like this</a>), linking to Mike I can use ‘acquaintance’ (<a href=“http://mike.whybark.com” title=“mike.whybark.com” rel=“acquaintance”>like this</a>), and so on.

Now this, I like.

Of course, now I have to figure out how to work it into my site. It’ll be easy enough on posts such as this, of course, as I can code the relationship values in as I’m creating the post. What I need to figure out, though, is how I want to attack my blogroll.

Hey, Anil, Mena, Ben, et al — any chance of putting XFN into TypePad‘s People TypeLists? That would be enough to coax me back away from Blogrolling, even if I lose the recent-update highlighting! Currently I’m using the Blogrolling service, which has some definite advantages (easy to update, automatically highlights sites that have been updated recently, etc.). ~~However, there isn’t a way for me to add XFN values to the links there, so if I want to add XFN to my blogroll, I’m going to have to go back to updating it manually. A bit of a bummer, that (not least because quite simply, knowing me, I’m more likely to leave it as-is and forego the XFN niftyness).~~ [As it turns out, you can add XFN to a Blogrolling blogroll if you have a paid “Gold” account. Just go to the ‘edit links’ screen, and for each item, add rel=“whatever” to the ‘Extra Link Attributes’ field. Thanks to Dori for pointing that out in the comments!]{.underline}

Still, at the very least it’s worth playing with, and I’ll do my best to remember to do so on all future posts.

And if that weren’t enough, Jonas pointed out that Tantek and Kevin Marks have proposed another use for the rel attribute called VoteLinks: using values of ‘vote-for’, ‘vote-abstain’, or ‘vote-against’ when linking to an article or post on the web to indicate your opinion of the resource being linked to.

Currently, any automated indexing application (such as the robots/spiders that Google or Technorati use) only see a link as a “vote” in favor of a particular resource — i.e., Site A links to Site B, therefore Site A believes that Site B is useful or provides an important resource of some form or another. While human readers can draw upon the context of a link to decide whether that’s actually the case (while I might link to a page about George Bush, for example, it’s extremely unlikely that I’d be saying anything favorable), the spiders aren’t able to do that — and that’s exactly what VoteLinks aims to correct.

Now all I need to do is come up with some simple “thumbs-up” and “thumbs down” graphics. With those, I can work VoteLinks into my CSS so that links that I’ve designated “vote-for” will get a thumbs-up appended after the link, and links designated “vote-against” will get a thumbs-down appended after the link. Will I do this? Who knows. ;)

Some very interesting toys to play with, each a worthy attempt to add a little more value to everyone’s travels around the web.

iTunes: “She and Mr. Jones (Uncensored)” by Lords of Acid from the album [R]Ejected Tracks (1998, 4:52).