Oh the things you will see...

I saw the sign

The Sphinx 2

The sphinx has seen them come and go. The strong and the wrong, the wise and the wicked, the haughty and the lowly. She has seen elegant structures and torrents of chaos. Great swirling embers of power, and heart, and loss. She has stood both outside the gate and inside the gate, and found them to be the same place. The sphinx has endured the chattering sandstorms of the ages, and has remained unmoved. In her defense, it must be noted that she is made of 270 tons of stone. The sphinx is mostly sedentary.

The sphinx has lived through alphabets and minarets, prophets and parapets; she has emerged smoothened and wizened and so free of fear. She has eaten the choking dust of memory and been fed. She has seen breadths of time lap against impossibly distant shores and even still, she has not yet seen everything. Why is there always something new? What fresh momentum moves these crossing currents, turns these driving wheels, dances these many, many feet?

It's worth considering that the sphinx may not know. Her tears are long dried, baking daily in the punishing heat. For all her years, what has she accrued beyond survey? Her untold wrinkles are untelling. What has she seen but the sights? The world is set in motion, adrift but alight, and our human countless nows weigh nothing.

Our time is weightless but our actions have force. We can run circles around the sphinx, but we can also run forward. Run ecstatic, run through the gates, run in time as though time could never catch up. No, the sphinx does not know. She will never blink or lift a paw. We are the ones, the sands that blow, and breathe, and build.

Actual virtual problems

• Why does my Sim get no comfort from sitting in a recliner?
• My Sim has a night job. How can I take a night off without getting fired?
• Why did my Sim suddenly start twitching and then melt into ashes?
• Why does my Sim's carpool fail to arrive sometimes?
• I always go to work, but I'm not getting promoted. What's going on?
• Sometimes, after a burglary, I can't move or sell my table.
• How can I remove a snack from the floor? My Sims can't clean it up and I can't move it.
• Some neighbors seem to be "stuck" on my property. I can’t talk to them or anything. What do I do?
• Anyone know how the monkey butler works? I call it out of its tree, but most of the time it does nothing and simply climbs back into it.
• The repairman keeps showing up -- even when I didn’t call him -- not fixing anything, then leaving! Sometimes, he won’t even leave! What is his problem?
• Why does Sims2 completely slow down during 'create a family' and bathroom use?
• My Sims's hunger motive does not improve when he or she rents a picnic basket?
• Why Won't My Sims' Relationships Save?
• How do I score with someone at the party?
• HELP how do you get kids?
• Alien babies crashes the game.
• Help! My Sims Can't Sit Down!
• Help! my Sim is stuck on the couch!
• How do I keep the repairman from getting killed?
• Can I import a family from another country?
• How Come I have no bathrooms downtown?
• Once a visiting friend remained in the house after being asked to leave and I couldn't pick him up. He spent 3 days fainting from exhaustion, then coming round and bawling that he was uncomfortable!
• My mad scientist, having made it to the top of the science career ladder suddenly turned into a master criminal. Does this always happen?
• My photo journalist lost his job. Can you tell me what career path he was on as I'd like to get him back there? Jeff Pleasant also lost his job. Can I still get him to Mars?
• I have a nightlife install problem.

Meat Week 8

Picture taken by Tombland @ Flickr.

internet cafe

This is one of those Third-World internet cafés you've read about. In the front of the store by the registers, near the winter coats, next to the partially-stacked boxes of undershirts, behind the pallet of disassembled what? Also, no "cafe." The spirit of Zayre is alive and well at Kmart store #9360, Forest Park, Illinois. August 29, 2007.

No longer a Virgin

Virgin Megastore closes July 14, 2007.
Overheard at their 35%-off closing sale: "I could get this stuff cheaper at Wal-Mart."

Banish human toil forever:

from "Americade," by the National Association of Manufacturers, 1955.