Arms & the man. And woman

My friend Stretch sent me this from the College of Arms, which is apparently a branch of Her Majesty’s Government. (Meaning it’s supported by UK taxpayers.) It sets out new rules for the display of coats of arms in the cases of same-sex marriages.

I’m guessing that somewhere there are similar guidelines for the previously-normal man-woman kind of marriages.

Well, you know me—I got to thinking about this, and I have some questions that need clarification.

Such as—the man gets to “impale”, but the woman doesn’t? What’s up with that? And what, exactly, is impaling? I mean, in these circumstances?

And does this mean that each male in the marriage has different arms on account of impaling each other? On their shields, I mean?

This is just taking me places I don’t think I want to go.

But look—what about the children of these marriages? What do their shields look like? What do they look like when they grow up and enter into same-sex marriages?

And who decides who’s the husband or wife in these marriages? And how do they do that?

And finally—I say this with all the respect a fourth-generation Californian can scrape together about such endeavors: who actually cares about this stuff?

Not a dog-bites-man story

This video has been trending on social media, so I thought I’d chime in.

I’m not showing you the one from CNN because frankly if given the choice between being mauled by a dog (or a cat) and listening to those blow-dry twits, I’ll take my chances with the animals every time.

(You can tell I never watch commercial TV news, because I’m sure they’re all like that—prattling idiots who don’t have three synapses in sequence that aren’t held together by hairspray.)

But a couple of things about this are interesting to me: first off, this is Bakersfield, which is not exactly Bel Air or SoHo; so I wonder why there are at least two CCTV cameras in play in that neighborhood?

Second, of course, is that is definitely one amazing attack cat. I hope it’s getting some extra scritches and a side of tuna.

Domestic bliss

When I got home from that quasi-conference on Friday I discovered that the power was out in my complex. Since I live in a third-floor walk-up, I didn’t notice it until I tried to make a phone call.

I used my mobile to call PG&E, and it turns out that it wasn’t just the complex—more than 3500 customers in Sunnyvale had no power. I told the guy that I’d just got home and without power I couldn’t make iced tea, so could they please step on it.

But what I find mildly amusing is that in a power outage—absent TV, Internet, stereo or microwave oven—I thought, “well, maybe I’ll just vacuum.”

And then I realized, um…

Yeah, I could have washed the floors, but I wasn’t really in the mood for that. So I read a book until the power came back on about an hour later.

But by that time the urge commit acts of household drudgery had disappeared. Whew!

Cyber crime

I spent a good part of Friday at an event sponsored by the Internet Society. It was billed as a conference on Cyber Surveillance and its impact on the Valley they call Silicon.

But, see, to me, a “conference” implies something with a point, and some degree of organization. And from 0900 until 1430 I never really deduced the former, and the latter…well.

I was actually pleased that I understood pretty much all the two journalists were talking about with respect to cryptography. I’ve done some reading and I’ve spoken with someone who’s an expert, who got down to words of one syllable for me.

And lunch was interesting—I got to listen to some moke with a name tag proclaiming him “Director” at NBC Universal as he pontificated about how their parent company Comcast doesn’t throttle streaming feeds from competitors. It’s really down to the fact that Comcast never planned on having the kinds of traffic streaming brings, so we should just watch what they program for us.

I must have been wearing a particularly gullible face that he thought I'd swallow that hogwash.

(I didn’t mention anything about NBC’s Olympics coverage in either London or Sochi. But you’ll recall that #NBCfail was trending pretty heavily throughout both.)

But it was when we got back into the auditorium and they trotted out a post-prandial panel of four people to talk policy that things really went to hell. Because having a lawyer, a policy analyst and a law professor isn’t bad enough; they dragged on a social scientist. Who spent about three minutes introducing herself with every academic credential she’s ever had (or possibly thought about).

And then she lit into…well, I’m not sure. Because she was spewing the most convoluted, multiple-clause sentences I’ve ever heard. I mean they looped back and forth around themselves like the Gordian Knot. For all I know, she may still be trying to finish one.

I’m serious: if you straightened them out and laid them end to end they’d circumnavigate the Equator several times.

So, that was kind of interesting in a horrid-fascination kind of way. But I was sat there between Ms. Dr. Very Special-Person and a guy behind me who was snoring. So I left.

And thereby missed two more panel presentations (because there never was anything that resembled a discussion). I’ll just have to take that hit, though.

Gratitude Monday: Just discomfort

It’s Gratitude Monday, and what I’m thankful for today is not even be a ripple in the space-time continuum, but it’s huge for me:

I’m grateful that I’ve had three days in which the pain in my back hasn’t risen above the 2 mark on the scale (of 1 to 10, 10 being "shoot me")—at least until most of the day was over.

(And this is even with me engaged in several hours—spread over the three days—inputting data into a spreadsheet. My idea of Hell is doing anything with Excel.)

I have not had such a long period of low-grade discomfort since early January. It may even be possible for me to concentrate on other things.

I don't know whether it's finally the exercises I've been doing every day for six weeks or the anti-inflammatory or the muscle relaxant. But I don't care; I'm now in discomfort, not pain..

Yippee!