This line from God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater comes as part of a baptismal speech the protagonist says he’s planning for his neighbor’s twins:

Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got 100 years here. there’s only one rule that I know of, babies–God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.

It’s an odd speech to make over a couple of infants, but it’s playful, sweet, yet keenly precise in its summation of everything a new addition to the planet should need to know. By narrowing down all his advice for the future down to a few simple words, Vonnegut emphasizes what’s most important in life. At the same time, he lets his frustration with all the people who obviously do not get it leak through just a little.

From 15 Things Kurt Vonnegut Said Better Than Anyone Else Ever Has Or Will

In the words of John F. Kennedy: “On Thanksgiving, as we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.”

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness concerning all acts of initiative and creation. There is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans; that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen events, meetings and material assistance which no one could have dreamed would have come their way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets: “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now!”

—W.H. Murray Quotes

The above reference to Goethe is widely misattributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The “Goethe couplet” referred to here is from an extremely loose translation of Goethe’s Faust lines 214–30 made by John Anster in 1835.

There’s no sunbeam too small for a cat nap, but the early April sun gave forth voluminously today, and my parent’s cat, for whom we are catsitting, took full advantage. His name is Mookie—and my wife, Katie, caught him in this shot.

Mookie’s 19 years old and named for Mookie Wilson, who the Mets traded to the Blue Jays in exchange for Jeff Musselman and Mike Brady on August 1, 1989. Wilson’s last appearance with the Jays was October 6, 1991. So, our cat Mookie is ~19 years old.

On Thursday February 5, my friend Marc Binkley and his buddy Thomas Mo are hosting a wine and cheese event to celebrate the grand opening of their photography exhibit entitled Still Life Large. Their opening coincides with Art Central’s ‘1st Thursday’ and the month-long photography festival called Exposure. In fact, all of the galleries will be hosting the opening of other artist exhibits which should make for a fantastic evening.

This will be the first time they are showing some of their favorite photos here in Calgary in large format print. Here follow the details:

When:
Thursday, February 5, 2008; 6–9pm

Where:
Fraser Gallery—3rd Floor
Art Central
205-100 7 Avenue SW
Calgary, AB T2P 0W4
(403) 543-9600

Why:
Tell a few stories, share some laughs and enjoy photography

For Sale:
Their work will be for sale. A credit card/debit machine is on site should you wish to purchase or order a print.

Bonus:
$20 Raffle tickets may be purchased (cash preferred) to win one photo from Marc and one from Thomas

Here’s the Facebook event page, should you wish to RSVP — it’s open invite. Click here for more info. To check out Marc’s work at his site, click here. If you do go as a result of this blog post, please pass on my best wishes! Marc’s a great guy and very friendly, so be sure to say hello.

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year from the Sendecki Family. That’s Dennis above, dressed as Santa — ushering in the Holiday Season!

Ahadada’s back in Google—that didn’t take very long!

Today, I receieved a notice that our site for Ahadada Books (www.ahadadabooks.com) had violated Google’s quality guidelines. Here’s the note:

While we were indexing your webpages, we detected that some of your pages were using techniques that are outside our quality guidelines . . . this appears to be because your site has been modified by a third party. Typically, the offending party gains access to an insecure directory that has open permissions. Many times, they will upload files or modify existing ones, which then show up as spam in our index.

What had happened was that Google had discovered some hidden text appended to our site’s template—referring mostly to erectile dysfunction medication, et al.

In order to preserve the quality of Google’s search engine, pages from ahadadabooks.com were removed temporarily from its search results. I’ve now corrected the problem and have contacted Google to be reconsidered. Hopefully, we’ll be relisted soon.

Essentially, Google flexed its muscles and suspended Ahadada Books from its search engine because of a perceived attempt to artificially boost its popularity ranking.

Something similar happened to BMW Germany, following the German car manufacturer’s attempts to game the Google index. The major difference here was that the Ahadada Books site was a victim of foul play, whereas BMW Germany had made concerted efforts to game the system.

Regardless, the move illustrates the fact that one company has a lot of power over a website’s access to the public. While the methods used by BMW were a violation of the search engine’s guidelines, and not something that we at Ahadada Books endorse, we look forward to re-inclusion in Google; hopefully, very soon!

Despite the setback, traffic at Ahadada Books has stayed pretty consistent!

Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for – in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.

Anyway — check her out she’s a Pulitzer prize–winning columnist, author, speaker, and commentator who refuses to call herself a pundit. Offers some good insight.

Feet, yards, inches, miles, gallons, ounces, these may mean something to some people around the world, while others struggle with online converters or, worse, software designed to convert these values, that are not reliable most of the times.

“The money would be pretty good/ if a quart of milk were still a dollar/ or even if a quart of milk were still a quart”

—Cowboy Junkies, “A Horse in the Country”, from Black Eyed Man, (1992).

The Junkies lyric is a reference to the mid-70s when Canada was shifiting to the metric system which meant that an imperial quart shrunk by about 14 percent into a litre.

Canada passed the metric enabling legislation, as I discoverd, in the late 60s, and began the changever in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Had we waited a few years to pass this legislation, we’d still be on the Imperial/Avoirdupois system.

But come on. Liberia, Burma and the US? Map discovered via Digg! Click here to read the entry.