The Importance of Saying the Right Thing

Found in my old e-mail from 2001. Unfortunately, I do not know where it came from any longer.

Three women are about to be executed. One's a brunette, one's a redhead,
and one's a blonde. The guard brings the brunette forward and the
executioner asks if she has any last requests. She says no and the
executioner shouts,

“Ready!…Aim!! …” Suddenly the brunette yells, “EARTHQUAKE!!!”

Everyone is startled and looks around. She escapes. The guard brings the
redhead forward and the executioner asks if she has any last requests. She
say no and the executioner shouts,

“Ready! … Aim!!…” Suddenly the redhead yells, “TORNADO!!!”

Everyone is startled and looks around. She escapes. By now the blonde has
it all figured out. The guard brings her forward and the executioner asks if
she has any last requests. She says no and the executioner shouts, “Ready!
… Aim!! …” …and the blonde yells, “FIRE!!!”

I Did It eBay!

I'm borrowing Michael's Friday Three questions from yesterday.

1. Have you ever bought anything on Ebay?
Yes, a number of things. Most memorably, my first modern Macintosh, an iMac G3/400 (Ruby), which got me started on my journey to becoming a Mac addict, a port replicator for my old Dell Inspiron 5000e and the hard to find Sixpence None the Richer Kiss Me single (with “Sad But True”) that completed my Sixpence collection.

2. Would you buy anything on Ebay?
Apparently, yes.

3. Have you ever sold anything on Ebay?
Well, personally, I haven't, but my account is selling stuff right now. My mother wanted to try to sell some purses without signing up for an account, so I listed 'em the other day. So far, we're still looking for bidders.

What a Week

I was going to do the PhotoQuest finally, but I am so tired, I think I shall instead just complain.

It has been quite a week. I went into it a bit tired from my re-org project. I've moved onto my office now, and it has a ways to go. So far, I've moved out several old computers, retired a HP PSC 2210 inkjet multifunction in favor of a new Brother 7820N networked laser multifunction, and started clearing off my hard disk in preparation for a new computer which arrived today.

The week also started off with a big worry. I wrote about it in a prayer request on TSN. A friend of mine residing in another part of the country, who normally seems to returns calls very quickly, failed to do so for five days. I had a bad feeling that something was wrong almost from the beginning, since this all started when the said friend called at an odd time (for her) on last Saturday and I missed the call… I started to wonder what the call had been about, since there was no message. Thankfully, after actually sending an e-mail noting my concern (rather than just saying I was returning the call, as I had previously), she called and my fears that something bad might have happened turned out to be false. That was truly a wonderful relief and an answered prayer!

Unfortunately, the call from her coincided with a call from my grandmother's nursing home that said what we had suspected for several days: that my grandmother is making a steep decline and death seems eminent. I won't hash out all the details here, but I'd ask for prayers. You can find a bit more of the details, along with more specific prayer requests here. I blogged about the beginning of the long journey that has been most pronounced part of my grandmother's decline here on asisaid a couple of years ago.

It has been an emotionally and physically draining week. Now, I think I should get some sleep.

Late Night Haiku IX

Regularly scheduled programming really should resume tomorrow.

XIII.
Frogs croak softly, softly.
Day has passed and night is here,
The day fades away.

XXIV.
Decisions to make,
Should not always wait fore're
But what should I do?

XXV.
Though the crickets chirp,
The silence is deafening,
And time rolls onward.

Reorganization

I've been busy reorganizing my bedroom/study area. I've added some new book cases, a new desk to setup a spare computer or two on and a new file cabinet; I've also just generally tried to straighten everything. That last part isn't quite done yet. But that's why I've been so scarce the past few days. Expect my return soon. Oh, and I have my Photo Quest ready… in fact, I even redid part of it! Hopefully, more will be said on that, tomorrow.

Duet

The story revolves around a man named Marritza (Harris Yulin), a file clerk who ended up working under the leader of a forced labor camp the Cardassians were running while occupying Bajor. He arrives on Deep Space Nine in need of medical assistance for a rare disease that only those present at that camp are inflicted with (caused by a mining accident). Station second officer Major Kira thinks that the ill person in sickbay must be a Bajoran who had been in the mines. Instead she finds a Cardassian, so she immediately presumes guilt and orders his arrest.

Kira struggles with a serious issue: is she interested in justice or merely vengeance against any Cardassian? She tries to wrap her desires in a cloak of justice, but his prodding, as well as the council of others leads her to admit what she wants: revenge. She wants Marritza to be a terrible war criminal, not a file clerk.

When trying to confirm the identity of Marritza, they find he instead looks like a photo of the cruel leader of the labor camp, not the file clerk he claims to be. When presented with the evidence, he concedes that and glories in the atrocities committed, providing details of how much he enjoyed killing innocent Bajorans. He sees Bajorans as insignificant “scum,” the killing of whom were a bonus to the occupation that mostly served to provide Cardassia with material resources its empire needed. Kira is tortured by the horrid things that spew out of the man's mouth, but she is thrilled with the idea of the evil head of the camp being executed.

But then there is a twist: the Cardassian government informs the station that the man they now believe Marritza to be died six years prior and, further more, it becomes clear that the said leader was not present on Bajor at the time of the mining accident. This information, combined with other bits that they gather, reveals a strange picture: the man they are holding wanted to be caught. In fact, he cosmetically altered himself to look like the camp leader and then arranged for an “emergency medical stop” at the Bajoran owned station — a strange thing for a Cardassian to do. The man is not the leader, but Marritza the file clerk after all.

When confronted with this, the man being held bursts out in even more atrocious descriptions of the acts he claims to have committed; claiming it is insane to compare him to that mere “bug” Marritza. He tries to go on, but he comes apart describing how, first still describing Marritza in third person, then finally switching to first person, he would cower by his bed trying to cover his ears to shield himself from the screams of the prisoners in the camp. He was a coward too afraid to stop the crimes his people were committing. He has come in hopes of receiving the trial his former boss should have, to force the details out and make his people finally admit their guilt; in other words, he has essentially sought to offer himself as a vicarious substitute for his people in hopes of righting the wrongs he was too scared to stop before.

Kira, recognizing the man as the epitome of honor, rather than a war criminal, releases her former nemesis, instead of furthering the prosecution against him, and makes arrangements for him to return to his home planet safely. Unfortunately, this man, who was seeking to heal the wounds between the Cardassians and Bajorans, is fatally stabbed by a Bajoran who runs up behind Kira and Marritza. The major, aghast, cries out to the murderer, who claims he was justified by the fact that Marritza was a Cardassian. “That is not enough,” Kira responds as she holds the now lifeless body of Marritza and the camera pans out to end the episode. The major has come to see that her former hatred and lust for vengeance was empty and destructive, but unfortunately the other Bajoran did not.

The tragic ending, like I said, is classical. The hero, Marritza, is killed unjustly in the midst of his attempts to right the wrongs he was not responsible for. The acting — especially Yulin's powerful enactment of Marritza — and well-written dialogue serve to bring this ever-present issue into a very dramatic height that is dynamic and touching. How often do we let our own need to be avenged, under the cloak of justice, blind us from seeing the innocent people that end up being the victims of a new set of crimes — those that we end up perpetrating?

Duet is an appropriate name, as one finds oneself in the constant dance between mercy and vengeance, between overwhelming guilt and ignorant self-righteousness. The tragic reminds us of how close we could come to being on either side of the situation.

Catharsis.

Michael Makes a Move

I mentioned Christopher's blog-in-exile (BiE) yesterday; another one of my blogging buddies from Cranium Leakage, Michael Morgan, has also started a BiE, which you can find here. Tell 'im Tim sent ya, so I get my referral fees.

Psssst: Christopher, you said you were paying me $20 per person referred, right?

Late Night Haiku VIII

XX.
A cricket chirps soft,
The wind blows slowly forward,
Summer almost past.

XXI.
A lonely feeling,
Wishing to hear your voice now,
Instead, cicadas.

XXII.
Sleep conquers my eyes,
I shall drift off again soon,
Morning comes quickly.

What the Freak!?!?!

It seems the Cranium Leakage gang is having a bit of trouble at the moment. I talked to Christopher, and he pointed me to a Spare Change entry he posted, which links to his blog in exile, What the Freak. I'm hoping this gets resolved quickly for them.

Palladium Not in Mac Dev Kits

A source tipped me off that Apple is not including TPM/TCPA/Palladium modules in their dev kits, contrary to earlier reports. I know this is a reliable source, so this looks like it might trump the other reports that have come from questionable parts of the web. Read more here at OfB.