Your Levity is Good. It Relieves Tension and the Fear of Death.

"Fireplace" or "plier face," you decide...

I was never much of a handyman, so I'd have to go with "fireplace"...

Interesting day today, to say the least... went into the rug shop, got some more website-related things done. On the rug blog, I posted a link to an article my mom found about these guys who made a flatweave using silk from golden orb spiders of Madagascar. In fact, I might as well share it here, too... check this out...

These two guys (Simon Peers and Nicholas Godley) decided to weave a rug using the silk from these guys...


Don't worry, they can bite, but they're not poisonous. From what the article says, the silk from the Golden Orb Spider is 5 times stronger (tensile strength) than steel...


The article doesn't say exactly how long it took the two men and their assistants to harvest, spin and weave the silk into the 11-foot rug, but they did say it took about a million spiders and a half-million dollars total investment to produce it.

While it isn't the first time spider silk has been used in weaving, it is the first rug to be made of it. The article is a fascinating read, if you want to check it out... but it's the New York Times site, so I'm not sure how long the article will be accessible.

Anyway, during the day, I chatted with someone I hadn't talked to in years. I used to work for a sculptor down in La Jolla named Malcolm Jones - worked for him for years, and we were close. After I stopped working for him, we would chat off and on via phone, to catch up. Well, you know how things go; the off stretched out farther than the on, and years have gone by since last we spoke. Anyway, in a fit of optimism, I tried (successfully) to track him down, and it was great to talk to him again. I'm going to build him a website, now that I have the (limited) skill. Nothing flashy or too fancy, but something clean and cool, to showcase his art and his accomplishments. It's the least I can do for all he'd done for me and my family over the years.

So that was cool.

Had an uneventful trip home, and an oddly eventful prayer meeting at Stan's tonight... unexpectedly had a rather lengthy heated discussion (to put it mildly), and I certainly left with plenty to think about. It's never easy to have your whole MO for life called into question. If I'm wrong, I want to know, and changes will be made; I don't cling to anything. A little intense introspection never hurt, I guess. That's what I'll be doing tonight, no doubt... I now know why you cry... but it's something I can never do.

I wanted to express some mild concerns for the second Mistborn book, which I'm about 100 pages into. There's a surprising amount of filler so far, and a handful of obvious typos so far - ones that a competent editor and/or proofreader should have easily caught and corrected. There's a disappointing amount of re-explaining of stuff going on, both of the magic system and of events from Book 1... I suppose that's to be expected, in case (I suppose) someone decided to start reading the series at the second book instead of the first, or (more likely, I suppose), a potential reader took a loooong time to pick the second book up to continue the story. But for someone moving seamlessly from Book 1 to 2, it's a bit of a downer. I shall, of course, continue to read it, assuming everyone else is correct in saying the series, as a whole, is consistently awesome, but it is a noticeable downshift to me so far... white light... pain... it's like being born, maybe...

Man, I am blabbing a lot tonight. Better track down a cool video or something... brb...

OK, in this round of Animal vs Machine...

Todayve in History: September 24
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- September 24, 1789: The office of US Attorney General is established. (I'm not authorized to answer your questions...)

- September 24, 1890: The Mormon Church officially renounces polygamy. (Kyle, the women in your time, what are they like?)

- September 24, 1906: Pres. Teddy Roosevelt proclaims Devil's Tower in Wyoming the nation's first National Monument. (And all hell rejoiced...)

- September 24, 1948: Honda Motor Co. is born! (What, do you guys come off an assembly line or something?)

- September 24, 1968: 60 Minutes debuts on CBS. (Because calling it "Hour" was not catchy enough...)

Among those celebrating birthdays on Sept 24: Sir Arthur Guinness (1725 - Patron saint of Irish Beer), F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896 - the quintessential Trivial Pursuit literature answer), Jim Henson (1936 - can you tell me how to get... how to get to Sesame Street?), and Mean Joe Green (1946 - had a coke... smiled...).

Dr. Suess died on September 24, 1991. Here's a link to a clip of Jesse Jackson reading from Green Eggs & Ham.

Well, I guess I'm going to skedaddle for the night. Mellow post again tonight, sorry... I'm still pretty upended from the prayer meeting. I'll try to be goofy tomorrow... look at it this way: in a hundred years, who's gonna care? Anyway, congrats to Crystal for snagging every quote from yesterday's post, and kudos to everyone else for not snatching most of them away from her... you could have... but they're officially hers now! Someone could at least get the 10 points for the obvious theme...

Until tomorrow, remember, desire is irrelevant. I am a machine.