She thought about it for a minute and then told me a remarkable story about her relationship with technology during the last 40 years living up the mountain a bit east of where we stood. She did not exactly answer my question, but made a point nonetheless.

“I pretty much stayed on the mountain. There are no phone lines. There is no electricity,” she said. “I have my iPhone and I can get 3G and I can get what I want and I have a little solar panel and propane and candles. I’ve been off the grid forever. Now, I have the small solar panel and I can turn on the light and charge my cell phone. I’m not used to it. My daughter tells me, ‘You can plug things in!’ And I say, ‘I don’t have anything to plug in.’ Blow out the lights, not turn out the lights, is my thing.”

Her boss, the chef Michael Jones, filled in the rest of Liz’s story on his blog (punctuation all his). “Liz lives in a trailer on the mountain with no power and no water…two horses, a goat and two dogs. Cats don’t count. She carries water in plastic buckets to the critters….and to her own self,” he wrote. “She pays child support to a scumbag in Missouri or one of those other M states or square states…..Her daughter that I know is an honor student at Davis…….Because she has no power or water, Liz hangs with us after working her 10 hr shift at The Store. We are her TV.”

I’ve ridden my bike out past Cachagua Road and I can attest to the beauty and isolation of the area. It was very near Jamesburg that, climbing a long hill, I passed a man in a cowboy hat and boots, his back to me, urinating. The two cyclists coming down the hill had a much better view and the man made no attempt to stand behind cover.

This particular excerpt reminds me of the photos I’ve seen and the stories I’ve heard about my mother-in-law’s family when they lived in the mountains above Big Sur – a kind of lifestyle that seems almost extinct.

Joel and Deron* have put on something over their jockstraps.

*The one he wears like a mask*.

*To block the image of Michael nesting in Troy Polamalu’s hair*.

*A frequent dream of Deron’s that leaves him feeling oddly aroused.

Originally created by Michael on September 9, 2010 and scheduled to publish the morning following the Super Bowl the post looked like this:

The NFL season has ended

And was changed by Deron on September 12:

I have the strength to say it. Deron, you are the handsomest man I know.

Michael, September 13:

I have the strength to say it. Deron, came on to me and, when I turned him down, he tried to blame the entire incident on his being distraught over the end the NFL season.

Deron, September 14:

What can I say? My lust for Deron outweighs my love even for NFL linemen.

Michael, September 26:

Now that the NFL season is over, Deron might stop talking about Troy Polamalu’s beautiful locks.

Deron, October 1:

I am able to open my heart to the depth of my love for Troy Palamalu’s hair. I want to build a nest in it. A sexual nest.

Michael, October 5:

I figured it out. Troy Palamalu’s hair is less efficient than Deron’s.

Also, the NFL season is over so there’s a chance Deron might take of that helmet and wash his “lucky” jock-strap.

Deron, October 23:

I, Michael Smith, am not wearing pants.

Joel, January 5:

I’m tempted to post the revision history of this post on its own.

Michael, January 10:

Joel and Deron have put on something over their jockstraps.

Deron, February 4:

Joel and Deron* have put on something over their jockstraps.

*Lies! [Deron]

Michael, February 4:

Joel and Deron* have put on something over their jockstraps.

*The one he wears like a mask.

Deron, February 6:

Joel and Deron* have put on something over their jockstraps.

*The one he wears like a mask*.

*To block the image of Michael nesting in Troy Polamalu’s hair.

Happy last day of the NFL Season to all of you!

At the Shmoocon security conference Friday in Washington D.C., O’Connor plans to present the F-BOMB, or Falling or Ballistically-launched Object that Makes Backdoors.

The night was cool and the tree frogs chirped. Rosy cheeked children the world over dreamed of birthday cake and going to the pool. Angora bunnies piled on top of each other and were the coziest things ever. A man with a hat sat in his window somewhere and played a tune on his saxophone, and I, snug in my pajamas, quietly poured over book after book looking for the word “nipple”.

“Whatever you say about the euro, it’s a great insulator.”

When it becomes feasible for a consumer to print a complex structure like a grandfather clock or an iPhone, the stakes of preventing the dissemination of ideas are raised considerably.

Whenever folks who have lived or traveled in Germany gather for a beer, sooner or later one subject is sure to rear its ugly head: what is the deal with those toilets?

People who resemble each other in some physical way tend to be connected as well; for Hadza people, similarity in age, body fat, and handgrip strength increases the likelihood of friendship.

The basic philosophical question, going back to Plato, is “What is x?” What is virtue? What is justice? What is matter? What is time? You can ask that about dark energy — what is it? And it’s a perfectly good question.

These types of distributions, unlike the bell curves we are used to for such quantities as human height, have values that reach far out into the upper reaches of the scale, allowing for both exceedingly common words such as “the” as well as much rarer words like “flother.”

The technique is painless, all indications at the moment are that it is safe, and the effects can last over the long term.

There is determinism, at differing levels, ranging from “it’s tough to come from a broken home” to “lead poisoning is bad for you” to “what if the universe is a frozen four-dimensional Einsteinian/Parmenidean block of space-time?”

When someone conjures up the image of self-important art house films, this must be exactly what comes to mind.

Tough Guy promotes itself as “the safest most dangerous event in the world!”

The chest bandages had to go on every day, which made it hard for her to take deep breaths, and the sailors began to notice that “Jean” never relieved himself with the rest of the crew, always carried a loaded pistol, and never, ever undressed with the others.

Monogamous marriage reduces the competition, making communities more stable and — in terms of cultural evolution — better able to compete against unstable, non-monogamous communities.

Update:

Demetri Martin once joked that life vests protect you from drowning, bulletproof vests protect you from gunfire — and sweater vests protect you from pretty girls.

Some of the overcompensated Rs stuck in the dialect; others didn’t.

I am a living male turtleneck. You are an art teacher in winter. You put your whole head through me

The invention of Vulcanite hard rubber changed everything.

Dreams of vintage Lee’s return go sadly unfulfilled, however, as the film is a long-winded, rambling mess.

Herewith, please find proof that my aesthetic intuitions are superior to yours.

For instance, Iron Lady becomes Total Bitch, Tree of Life becomes Wuh?, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo becomes All the Rape, No Subtitles.

Africa was my second home. I had never been there, though.

The idea of the unified self has had a rough few centuries however.

I know I’m making it sound unhealthy, like the TV is suffocating me but just think of it like I do, as electronic swaddling. That hum is a seductive sotto voce murmur.

As Darwin said: “False views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for everyone takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness; and when this is done, one path towards error is closed and the road to truth is often at the same time opened”.

Why is metaphysics so uniformly crazy?

Huh. So the more symmetrical a guy is, the more straight he seems.

The larger point is that mere imagination is not enough, for even those with prodigious gifts must still be able to sort their best from their worst, sifting through the clutter to find what’s actually worthwhile.

If you are offended, maybe you’re taking things a little too personally. But I’m sure there are some people who think, ‘Wow, that girl is an asshole.’

We think of ourselves as citizens when it comes to our rights and privileges, but not our responsibilities. We abdicate our civic responsibilities to the government and expect the government, in effect, to legislate morality.

In one experiment, each participant was seated either inside or outside of a five-by-five-foot cardboard box.

Translation: I don’t hate the game.

The dog’s name is Angus MacDougall, and he is a very cute three-year-old terrier mix. The image of Jesus can be clearly seen in the fur surrounding his anus.

CONCLUSION: It may someday be possible to use brain technology to learn to play the piano, reduce mental stress, or even master kung fu with little or no conscious effort.

The objects survived in outer space for ages and include some of the first samples ever returned from another planetary body, but after just a few short years on Earth they met the same fate as a set of car keys or a 29-cent postcard.

The mission had been so easy that one of the youths, Natacha, seriously asked herself if she had dreamed it. No, she concluded: “In a dream, it would have been more complicated.”

Assuming that high-level concepts are represented in different parts of the brain, such excess connections would create an opportunity for linking seemingly unrelated ideas.

Yes, the Terminewter is right. Nothing should take longer than WWII.

The writers not relegated to traffic-whoring duty will still post, just less frequently than many of them are probably used to.

Human evolution may to some extent have been shaped by interactions between genes and friendship choices, said the scientists.

The notion of women’s relative sexual passivity became fundamental to sexual dynamics across the western world. Its effects were ubiquitous — they still are.